Latibulate

 I was going to write about how holidays aren’t long enough, the day that went missing, the elegance and demise of the semi-colon, other punctuation facts from the late 1800s, how much I love Halloween, and a murder, but the government have done it again and I find I’m drawn to Suzie Dent’s word of the day. 

Latibulate - to hide in a corner in an attempt to escape reality.

The government in another excellent display of leadership spent the day sending Dominic Raab, who has perfect fingers for cello playing (don’t tell me you hadn’t noticed), on the TV to explain that the government had exactly the right policy; they’d learnt from the French; they had ruled out a second lockdown because the tier system was better. Then, on Friday night, as we were all settling into our PJs and making our cocoa the Times front page appeared on the news wires: second lockdown imminent. The article was full of details that could have only come from being told about what was actually discussed at the meeting. The government, again, thought they’d give the story to their buddies in the press and see how the public reacts. They know that by the time any announcement is made, even if it is as early as Monday, we will all be resigned to it, whether we agree or not. It’s quite clever but not exactly statesmanly.

This news will make us all behave oddly this weekend. We will stock up on loo roll and things we think we can’t do without. I’m grateful that I still have the emergency pastries I bought for lockdown 1 in the freezer, so there’s no need to panic, although I might take a trip to the bookshop and the lovely little chocolate shop in town. 

We might all rush out to see the people that we won’t be able to see for the next month. Oh, who are we kidding? Last time it was 13 weeks. Do any of us feel we can do that again?

This rushing around will then make the government think they do need to go to Lockdown Two: Electric Avenue. They’ll say, “See, we were right, we couldn’t trust people to stick to the simple tier system. We made it as clear as a muddy puddle and you didn’t stick to it, so you only have yourselves to blame!”

I’m advocating the latibulate approach and will be hiding in a corner until this is all over, maybe with a book, some chocolates and a list of names. The world has gone crazy and we are being governed by children, who play Chinese whispers with the public.

Even the dog isn’t sure if it’s worth going out.