The end of British Covid apartheid

The cerebral Spectator magazine has laid this bare in recent weeks and I thank it, along with its brave and insightful journalists, for their honest coverage especially as the international media at large currently has the resolve and spine of a pile of Jell.o. Trust it? No thanks.

Now the British prime minister finds himself standing on the brink of one heck of a cliff fall. Looking down at those salty, snapping waves, he has suddenly experienced the briny taste of redemption. He is surrounded by vicious detractors within his own party demanding his blood and an electorate keen to lynch him. In the midst of the chaos, and with the attributes of a Teflon frying pan or greased pig, he has come up with a potential way of saving his own skin, a veritable life raft in stormy, choppy seas.

He has announced (dust down that bunting) that as of next week, all the lazy-fully-paid-stay-at-homes will have to get their backsides back into the office again and that masks and Covid passports – the biggest joke since shoe umbrellas and beard beanies – will be abolished.

No more karaoke testing with Covid home kits that on fourth take test positive so that you can call the boss and say, oh no, que lastima, I’ve got to self-isolate for ten days with Netflix. Was it that difficult, Boris, to make a simple and commonsensical decision based on fact and economic survival rather than sci-fi, quasi-scientific lunacy and mumbo-jumbo? Why did Boris’s impending downfall have to be the impetus to restore sanity to the UK and potentially the world at large?

Sadly, sanity is still far away in Cuckoo-land here in the Baleares but with a failing economy and increasing insurrection, it hopefully won’t take long for the new Berlin wall to crumble. The other day I spoke with a doctor who condemned the current rules here in Majorca but would only speak with me via an encrypted site or out in the open.

These days, I feel as if I’m living in a Cold War movie. I’ve spoken to countless international medical specialists and nurses too terrified to speak out publicly about their views for fear of losing their jobs. Some have ‘fessed up to how these joke-worthy PCR and Lateral Flow tests are just a great money-spinner and are completely unreliable. How tragic that we have reached this sorry state of affairs in the whole Covid pantomime.

So, I salute the squirming rat that is Boris Johnson. Frankly, I can’t say I care either way whether he survives his term or not but I applaud him nonetheless. Hopefully, his forced initiative and decisiveness will jet-propel the dithery, lily-livered and ineffectual European leaders into backtracking on their ludicrous totalitarian mandates. Perhaps Austria is unsalvageable but France might still be saved from economic extinction.

Get walking

My sister despairs of walking with me. She says I have absolutely no idea how to stroll at a leisurely pace but rather surge ahead like an unstoppable Titanic, hellbent on the upcoming iceberg. It’s fair criticism as I find it hard to do anything very gently. I’m an all or nothing person so walking becomes yet another victim of an impatience to achieve my goal. I want to get wherever I’m heading as quickly as possible and I take few prisoners.

So, amusingly, she sent me an article today which underlined how important it was for women in middle years not to dawdle but to sally forth like seamless streamers. Consequently, I’m apparently unlikely to suffer from cardiac arrest anytime soon. All the same, as I said to my dear sis, if my heart should fail me currently, it will be the fault of suffering too many fools.

Drones and Millie the wonder dog

I loved the cheery story of the Jack Russell saved from a ghastly fate, thanks to a drone. Millie, a Romanian street dog rescued by a loving UK owner, found herself stranded on mudflats in Portsmouth after running off on a reckless spree. For days, coastguards and the police tried to find a way to save the dog (well, they only had Covid to concern themselves with, after all) , and finally came up with a plan. A drone was sent to Millie with a string attached from which dangled a sausage.

The dog was so hungry and desperate for the meaty treat that she followed it until she reached higher land and could be saved.

It’s a lovely story but it brings me onto a local drone matter. The other day, I returned from a frosty early morning run to find a low flying drone hovering over my chicken coop. In some irritation, I gave it a very rude sign and put the hose on full and aimed it high. The loud buzzing monster immediately did an about turn and fled off to spy on a neighbour’s garden.

I was outraged and will attempt to find a way to bring action against this infringement on our personal privacy. Some snooping weirdo thinks he or she has the right to creepily poke around my land and that of my neighbours. Luckily, I have a rather nice Wai Wai Guyanese jungle blow pipe and poison darts that might just fit the purpose. If this particular invasive drone should foolishly infiltrate our land again, it might not make it out alive.

Anna Nicholas’s second Mallorca based crime novel, Haunted Magpie, is available from Come In & Llibres Colom in Palma, and at Alameda gift shop in Soller, also at all good UK bookshops & via amazon.