Peter Rhodes on cavalier behaviour, idiots unmasked - and when did this pandemic really start?

The Cabinet minister Michael Gove warns that if people are told to wear face masks during the pandemic they may behave in a cavalier way. Especially if they wear the mask in conjunction with big boots, flouncy shirts and enormous feathered hats.

I suggested recently that the golden rule of reporting this contagion is that if anything goes right, we praise the NHS but if anything goes wrong we blame the Government. So if Oxford University, which is funded by the Government, is successful in developing a Covid-19 vaccine to save the world, can the Government take any credit? If not, why not?

The Left wing of British politics loves to claim the moral high ground. And then along comes this little message from a Guardian reader, published on that newspaper's website to mark the birth of Boris's son: “The bastard of No.10 has been usurped by b@st@rd b@by!” Lovely people.

Great ironies of our age. Just as the cops start using hi-tech face-recognition cameras, everybody starts wearing masks.

With the obvious exception, that is, of the 30 idiots who posed, maskless and brainless, for photos of their outdoors lockdown-breaking drinking session in Lanarkshire. They still don't get it, do they? They don't understand that for as long as those images are on the internet, they will be recognised as potential plague spreaders who put other people at risk. Months or even years from now they may get a sudden punch on the nose – or worse – accompanied by words on the lines of: “You're the sort of selfish **** who killed my wife.” Will they understand it then?

One newspaper referred to the Lanarkshire loonies as “revellers.” This is an interesting journalistic term, usually used to describe drunks before they commit a criminal offence. Once they start smashing street lights, revellers are magically transmogrified into hooligans.

Meanwhile, more research, this time in Iceland, suggests that coronavirus was well established in Britain right at the start of the pandemic. This surely rings a bell with many people who recall a particularly nasty infection after Christmas with temperature, dry cough and painful chest. These accounts are what experts describe as anecdotal. But is anybody recording these anecdotes? Would we be surprised to learn that this contagion came to Britain long before the official start date at the end of January?

One of the unexpected consequences of lockdown is being confined to Chateau Rhodes with our grandchild, Ruben, who is now ten weeks old, just discovering how to smile and a constant delight. We take our turn in singing the lullabies and rocking him to sleep. This means that among all the other things you have to remember in these strange times (wash hands, use sanitiser, order food online, etc) are the words to The Dingle Dangle Scarecrow. He had a flippy-floppy hat. A Cavalier, I bet.