It was a silly time
Lockdowns were pretty drastic here. Not Australia-drastic or Canada-drastic, but we had plenty of petty restrictions and overzealous coppers.
It was almost worse when they started trying to ease up. It was sillier, anyway. They couldn’t figure out how to tear the band-aid off.
So we had arcane rules like, you could go to a pub, but only if you had a meal. There were learnèd discussions about what is a meal?
Bag of potato chips? probably not. But a scotch egg? Is a scotch egg a meal? Maybe. Maybe if it’s served with potato chips, the two together constitute a meal.
You had to wear a mask walking into the pub, but you could take it off once you sat down. You had to put it back on to leave or go to the toilet, but I seem to recall you could get a refill at the bar without.
The rules changed constantly as areas moved through various “risk tiers”.
Most of my friend group shrugged and complied, as though goofy regulations were just the price you paid to live in a civil society.
But the wokest member of my group absolutely loved it. She always knew exactly what we were expected to do. It was a great mystery to me why this was, but I figured it out.
If the rules made sense, everyone would know what to do. But if the rules make no sense at all, then you have to read the Guardian every morning and commit them to memory, and that makes you a very smart girl indeed. Knowing the screwy rules was high status.
It explained a lot.
Posted: August 22nd, 2023 under personal, plague.
Comments: 7
Comments
Comment from Uncle Al
Time: August 22, 2023, 9:07 pm
Over there you have the Grauniad, over here we have USA Toady. Both of them helping TPTB try to fill our heads with worms.
I’m cautious about it, but I’m somewhat heartened by the much louder and larger contingent of WE WILL NOT COMPLY people right now.
Comment from I still can’t think of anything
Time: August 23, 2023, 12:15 am
Stoaty, aren’t you officially a Briton now? I’m pretty sure you’re required to call them crisps.
Comment from durnedyankee
Time: August 23, 2023, 12:32 am
Exposed face 3 & 1/2 feet above the ground sitting at a restaurant, life.
Exposed face 4 feet above the ground walking in a restaurant, death! Death!
Cloth handkerchief worn over your nose and mouth like a desperado from a western, life.
Exposed face, DEATH!
Yes, science. We shall have science, and you shall be arrested.
Just once I’d like to see someone drag the ‘officials’ and their rules through a court to PROVE that their mask mandates worked and that Covid was skeered of their rules and masks.
Endlessly repeating “We say so” wasn’t formerly accepted as sufficient evidence of truth, but now it’s “science”.
As for me, I’m fine with them shoving this shambling wreck over the edge of the cliff, the sooner they finish doing it, the sooner we can deal with the result.
Comment from Anonymous
Time: August 23, 2023, 1:18 am
It was a silly time
Yes it was indeed a silly time. It would have been a funny silly time if all the lucre-lust and statist dick-waving hadn’t impoverished, starved, and killed so many millions of people, not to mention the countless children whose mental and social development was permanently stunted.
OK, I’ll fess up. The above downer comment is from Uncle Al.
Comment from Jon
Time: August 23, 2023, 7:06 pm
I think I might have a go at trying the Baldur’s Gate and seeing how the telepathic brain worms work for me. Particularly if I act like quite opposite to the nice path.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 23, 2023, 7:21 pm
Not a Brit yet. I don’t expect to hear on my citizenship petition for four months or so.
Sometimes, you’ve got to use the Brit word for things or nobody understands what you’re talking about. If you say you’re going for gas, not petrol, the assumption would be you’re buying propane.
Wherever practical, though, I try to stick with the American version of things.
Except dates. Month/Day/Year is just stupid, my fellow Americans.
Comment from Chicken Farmer
Time: August 25, 2023, 8:18 pm
During the Daft Times I never wore a mask. My wife, a working nurse at a large NHS Hospital never wore a mask either. She said that masks were only to prevent the wearer’s saliva droplets from infecting a patient being operated upon or to stop the gunge from a patient, be it snot, saliva, blood or worse, from reaching the nurse’s mouth.
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