Boris has spoken, all is now clear. We’re to Stay Alert, because lurking around every corner there might be a Russian or Chinese spy. We know that BJ is a huge admirer of good old Winnie, but sadly he doesn’t have quite the exceptional powers of oratory that so elevated our great wartime leader. You can hear Sir Winston (actually still just Winston then) exhorting the British people to treat every stranger as a Fifth Columnist, a potential German informer who might scupper the whole invasion plan. It was hard enough spotting a German in a group of anglo-saxons or discerning an IRA terrorist embedded amongst loyal supporters of the Crown. How much harder then in “Staying Alert” to the threat of an unseen, unheard, unfelt, unsmelt, determined enemy which could be anywhere and everywhere?
TTT is the answer. Test, Track and Trace. This theory has had me slightly confused in that I wasn’t sure what the difference between Track and Trace was. So, Google to the rescue; “when used as verbs, trace means to follow the trail of, whereas track means to observe the (measured) state of a person or object over time”. This suggests to me that our great scientific thinkers who seem to be running the country now have got things the wrong way round. Should they not be tracing before tracking? I merely ask the question. Being a bear of very little brain compared with the great intellectuals organising all this I am obviously missing something?
Back to Boris and the good news emanating from No.10 is that golf and tennis are back on the agenda, obviously with strict social distancing in place. In golf this should be quite easy. For the most part you only ever get close to your fellow competitor at the start and end of each hole, especially the golf I play nowadays and it shouldn’t be too difficult to maintain a seventy eight inch separation. Apart from the flagstick no mutual touching is required and Clubs are introducing rules that alleviate the necessity to handle even that. It’s disappointing that the last seven weeks of glorious sunshine have passed without a single shot being hit in anger, but hopefully there will be a few more sunny days on the horizon. When it comes to tennis, the days of sharp volleying rallies must go on the back burner and there’s no question of chairs being too close together at the net. Beware too of sharing towels or water bottles although as we’re only supposed to be beating up members of our own household, I guess there’s no real harm in that. The other danger is the gate latch to get onto the court and the handle to wind the net up. No one seems to know how long the infernal virus can linger on metal for? Stay Alert and that should prevent any problems.
In a mere three days I shall be 69. I’ll have a whole twelve months to enjoy the pleasures of still being a sixty something before my allotted three score and ten are up. 69 is a good score in golf……
ADayInTheStrifeOf 