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.

We will do the same thing next year in the hope that it will help us in this existential struggle (except we are out of goats and may need to use a small child). Because we will be in a very similar position next year, won’t we? Middle of May for the next major lockdown and then another one in November is my guess, all ushered in with the assurance that one more sacrifice will do the job and we’ll beat this virus. You think I’m wrong and that the end is in sight? Give me the address of your dealer then. He must have some powerful stuff.

The latest news is that foreign holidays are off. Indeed, the government has now warned us that we must not leave the United Kingdom without ‘a reasonable excuse’ for doing so.