Why I will wear a face mask

We are enjoined by certain experts to wear face masks while having sexual intercourse. No change there, then, for me. It’s the only way I’m allowed it. I don’t even get to choose my own mask. My wife keeps several in a cupboard under the stairs. If, when I retire to bed, I see the face of Benito Mussolini or Douglas Murray neatly laid out on my pillow — or, for more exotic excursions, the late President Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon — I know that fun times are ahead.

This usually happens twice a year — on my birthday and on Walpurgisnacht. I don’t know if these largely latex creations protect either me or the recipient of my laboured exertions from Covid. Perhaps they do, perhaps they don’t. They certainly wouldn’t protect me from any of the other vile diseases associated with sins of the flesh (were my partner not chaste and pristine in this regard, obvs). You can wear the most expensive, hygienic face mask in the world and over the top of that a mask of Pope Francis, but if you are executing your courtship with Shania from telesales by the bins out the back of the local KFC, it won’t stop you catching a dose of something far more malevolent than this arguably over-promoted virus.

The mask business has caused a rift in our household just as it seems to have caused a rift within government. Michael Gove was seen out and about, maskless, exhaling his gamey Aberdonian breath over all and sundry, while the official regulations state that if you don’t wear a mask in a shop you will soon be fined a ton. Michael apparently disagrees with all this. There is the suspicion among many that these masks have become a sort of fetish and that even when Covid has disappeared we will still be required to wear them.