So that daily dose of televisual Mogadon known as the coronavirus press conference has been pulled.
However, as with every new TV series these days it’s been perfectly set up for a sequel.
With Chris Whitty’s alpaca-esque features silently screaming “don’t associate me with anything this dangerous clown says” as Boris Johnson told us to fill our lungs with Covid-laced air from next Saturday, you sense the TV graphs of doom could be back in our living rooms by autumn.
How can you have confidence in someone who’s incapable of organising a p*ss-up in a brewery telling you to go back to the pub?
Still, with crossed fingers, let’s hope the gamble we’re taking sees the service sector, not the funeral sector, flourish.
Christ knows we need it. I’ve already booked the barbers for Saturday morning and I’m taking a bucket so I can keep all my white hair and produce a lucrative line of Santa beards. I’ve also booked 54 hourly slots in my local pub. For the first week.
I’m looking forward to going to cinemas again as, under social distancing rules, that selfish slob who crunches tortilla chips and slurps cola will be at least three rows away.
Although I’m not looking forward to Mark Francois’s demands for Big Ben to Bong for Beating the Beijing Bug.
Or having to leave my address at every restaurant as I’ll never be able to do a runner again.
If the grand reopening is a success and the lockdown doesn’t reappear, I hope we keep in mind all the lessons we learned from this unique time in our lives.
Let’s not forget Johnson’s arrogance and incompetence at the start of the pandemic when he skipped COBRA meetings and fatally delayed the lockdown.
Or how the NHS staff and carers couldn’t access PPE equipment or tests, and how the elderly in care homes were callously left to die.
I hope voters remember all the times the Tories brushed away howls of anguish about their austerity policies with the patronising phrase “there’s no magic money tree”.
Turns out there was. How they said we couldn’t solve the homeless problem on our streets.
Turns out we could.
Let’s recall the key workers who carried on in the face of personal danger enabling us to keep our lives ticking over – and argue to pay them properly.
Don’t lose sight of where this killer virus was hatched, in barbaric wet markets, and the human price we pay for animal cruelty.
Let’s remember how walking through city streets didn’t leave us snorting black snot because the air was clearer. And ask why we’re killing the planet?
Let’s memorise all the decent companies who refused to furlough workers and freely devoted their resources to fighting the virus.
But mostly, let’s remember the wealthy who saw it as an opportunity to sack workers, like British Airways, and demand taxpayer subsidies to bail out their firms despite not paying income tax here for years, like Richard Branson.
And when the pubs open, recall the words of Wetherspoons’ boss, Tim Martin, about lockdown being “over the top,” and how his 40,000 workers could “get a job at Tesco”.
And take your custom elsewhere. Cheers.
