Pick Me. Don’t Pick Me

This weekend the papers are speculating about the end of lockdown again.

Last week they came up with some plans for schools going back that when you read the articles properly were no more than a list of things the ministers had thought about discussing with the Prime Minister. This week someone has made a suggestion that we can extend our social groups. I haven’t read the articles but I will make a prediction that this hasn’t even been discussed at Cobra and is just a thought that Barry from the School of Mildly Infectious Diseases at Lolworth University had, while sitting in his back garden after his fifth G&T.

I can’t be the only one that has heard of these suggestions and come out in a cold sweat.

Barry has proposed that instead of just staying with the family we live with we can pick up to ten other people to hug.

I’m going to make a rash prediction.....this will never happen. Scientists are fairly certain that the greatest infection rate happens through family transmission and through small groups inside. Also, the Cobra group of scientific advisers contains two, excellent, behavioural scientists.

When I heard the suggestion (on Friday from my daughter, who thought it might not be the best one to put in the local paper at the weekend) I was immediately transported back to school PE lessons.
There I was, standing in a white T-shirt and huge, school-issue baggy-grey knickers, on the field with my hockey stick in my hand, waiting to be picked. Unsurprisingly, I was a bit nerdy and not very good at sport, so I was always picked last. The anxiety, thinking about those moments, still feels like a physical ball in my throat and chest.

Just imagine, your family picking 10 people that they could socialise with and those ten not picking anyone else. It’s a etiquette nightmare. What if you picked your brother and he didn’t pick you? What would happen to the people no one picked? Would they have to partner the sadistic hockey teacher, who would hit them round the legs? Would they just get put on the team that groaned as they walked near or would their sense of isolation just deepen further? What if you were picked by someone who only did so to pull off your PE skirt in rounders to cause the most humiliation when you’d forgotten your grey knickers?

I’ve been enjoying wild flowers on my walks. They are full of hope. They can grow anywhere. You don’t need to go to the best wood to see bluebells because there will be an isolated bluebell growing somewhere at this time of year: maybe through a wall or a crack in a pavement but look carefully and it will be there. These flowers, growing in the wrong place, in their isolated way are a reminder that we will find a way.

The temptation to pick them is huge but you shouldn’t.