Upon entering Christmas week …
Since the beginning on the month, I suspect in common with the bulk of the British public, my family has spent much of its time keeping our originally intended plans for celebrating Christmas under review while also monitoring the latest daily developments in the Omicron variant crisis in case the latter should affect the former.
I deliberately expressed myself in the above fashion because – against the background of the battle ranging in the media between (on the one hand) those scientists & public health officials calling for urgent Government restrictive action to head off a major health crisis including the potential collapse of the NHS and (on the other) those scientists, politicians, opinion formers and business leaders in the entertainment and hospitality industries who are screaming from the rooftops that imposing further restrictions at this stage (and most especially anything resembling a lockdown) will terminally devastate their businesses – it seems to be that the case that – adopting the position of the average citizen sitting upstairs on the proverbial Clapham omnibus – we are all going to have to make our own decisions as to what steps to take “in the cause of the general good”.
In my particular context – a situation in which my new partner and I have extended families whom, to all intents and purposes, we were effectively going to “bring together” for the first time in a veritable “gang-bang” of a Christmas Day gathering encompassing potentially sixteen-plus children and adults for lunch, followed by the Queen’s Message and then partying and games until such time in the evening at which everyone had gradually “had enough” – upon “reading the omens” in the media as to what Boris was likely to be forced to do, we unilaterally decided to limit ourselves to just three family units for two reasons.
Firstly, three family units has already been recommended by Scotland to be the maximum safe number.
And secondly, since between our extended families we had identified at least six currently “vulnerable/at risk” individuals, we didn’t think it was responsible to host more than three units together over Christmas.
We came to this view because of the theoretical dangers of the time-honoured principle epitomised by the 1927 song composed by Herbert Farjeon and Harold Scott – composed when our later disgraced King (Edward VIII) was at the height of his personal popularity – I’ve danced with a man, who’s danced with a girl, who’s danced with the Prince of Wales … i.e. the chance, however slight, that any one of us might come into contact with someone who has Covid and then, through later contact with someone who then passes it on to someone at our Christmas gathering, who then passes it on to one of our “vulnerables” … who (poor sod) had never been anywhere near us.
As a result – in practice – neither of my children are likely to be joining us on Christmas Day (which of course had been the primary purpose of organising such a big one in the first place) and one of my partner’s children is now also up in arms, having just been told that she is now excluded from attending because (1) she’s outside the three units we’ve settled upon, and (2) she could just as easily spend Christmas Day with her boyfriend whose family lives barely three miles away.
All this against a background in which, in apparent defiance of the chief scientists and medics advising him – or is it perhaps hamstrung by sceptical Cabinet ministers and/or jittery rebellious Tory MPs(?) – Boris has refused both to cancel Christmas and/or restrict numbers who can attend it – whilst at the same time recommending extreme caution as to whom one mixes with.
Ho hum … (and not “Ho! Ho! Ho!”, thank you Santa) …
