Thirteen miles. Thirteen point six to be exact.
That’s the distance Gloucestershire Police actually travelled to the home of an 82-year-old pensioner who’d had a socially distanced cup of tea with her neighbours in their communal garden last week.
To make matters worse, the officers – one male, one female – turned up at her sheltered housing complex home in Charlton Kings at 9.45pm to question her about the incident.
Really? Quarter to 10 over a cup of tea?
I thought immediately of my own elderly in-laws as the details emerged on Friday.
I thought of the anxiety and unnecessary stress they’d be put through with a knock at the door from the police at that time of night. I’d be spooked, let alone them. Wouldn’t you?
I wondered what my in-laws would have made of the officers’ threat to fine the pensioner if she did it again.
Couldn’t it all have waited until the morning? And who on earth saw fit to involve the police to report four socially distanced pensioners having a cup of tea?
What an embarrassing statement on what we’ve become. Has the lockdown really turned us into such pedantic snitches, willing to do the bidding of a government whose census is already designed to mine even more information from one of the most watched and heavily monitored nation in the world?
Last autumn, Home Secretary Priti Patel urged the public to betray their neighbours breaching the rule of six.
Since then we’ve all been locked down – with only zoom and social media for company – getting angry with each other.
No wonder some people have ended up groomed to grass up their nearest and dearest.
Gloucestershire Police defended their position, of course. Jobsworths always do.
The region, however, recorded a 39% rise in violent crime last summer – the largest in a decade. Gun crime there also reached its highest level in a decade, according to the Office for National Statistics.
But yes, target illicit cups of tea. That will do it.
We may never understand why Gloucestershire Police saw it as worth their time. Then again, lockdown has done strange things to people.
