My eight ‘good reasons’ for leaving the country

We commemorated one year of lockdown by sacrificing a goat to the Highly Revered Virus Deity on a hastily assembled altar in the back garden, in front of a blazing fire. We then drank a little of the creature’s blood and danced naked around a pentagram, delivering incantations to the Covid Divine — Oh Great Lord Of The Slightly Ticklish Persistent Cough. Vaccines were presented and respirators borne aloft. It all seemed a bit rough on the goat, frankly, which had done nobody any harm. But it was preferable to the usual rituals which we are these days enjoined to observe — the endless minute silences for everybody who has died of anything ever, taking a knee, banging saucepans to thank nurses for turning up to work. The Covid Divine’s emissaries and handmaidens were invoked to be appeased: the crepuscular daemon Long Covid, with his impressive beard and collection of doctor’s certificates for leave of absence; the sultry ‘whore-goddess’ Brazilian Variant, sweetly scented, bedecked in lotus flowers, but with a carnivorous vagina, according to legend.