It’s not always true

 Just because you say something it doesn’t always mean it’s true. Even if you passionately believe it, you could still be wrong. 

I know.

Mind blowing.

Surely, once you think something then you have to stick to your guns. No going back. No apologising. No reflecting on what happened with hindsight.

I was thinking about the Downing Street Christmas ‘gathering’ where ‘all guidelines were followed.’

Now, I like to bash the government as much as the next person but what if it was just a group of people, who had been together all day, trying to work out how to get the country through the mess of a pandemic, who had sat together in a room, cracked open a gin in a tin and a box of Mr Kipling mince pies and swapped their gifts? Was that against guidance? No. Admittedly, it wasn’t fair that some people got to do this and others were stuck at home, either working or on furlough, lonely and scared but some people did have to go to work and the rules were loose enough that they could be interpreted differently. Just because some people are saying laws were broken that doesn’t make it true. Just because the Prime Minister is saying that there’s nothing to see here it doesn’t mean the issue wouldn’t benefit from more scrutiny.

 Weirdly, the justice secretary is now saying that there can be no investigation into this to see if it was a crime because crimes aren’t prosecuted retrospectively. What he said might not be true. It has led to some very funny comments, particularly from writers of the most popular TV genre. Don’t we all love a cold case drama? Obviously, crimes have to be prosecuted retrospectively. It would be terrible if rapists or robbers could only be stopped if a policeman was present at the time. However, the people saying that all crimes are prosecuted retrospectively might not be saying the truth either. The Covid laws were not designed for witch-hunts. The point was that they gave the police powers to go in and break up large parties and fine people as a deterrent to others. It would be awful if anyone who didn’t like you could contact the police and insist that you were prosecuted because at the beginning of lockdown you walked your dog twice a day. 

As I was flicking through Twitter and laughing at the jokes being made by the writers of New Tricks, Silent Witness, The Unforgotten, The Missing,  Waking the Dead and the Pembrokeshire Murders I stumbled upon this picture.

It’s not true, is it? Although it’s a wonderful picture and the middle child looks so happy.

Getting outside is brilliant. I’m all for it. It’s good for your brain but I don’t have lasting memories of any walk I’ve taken. Not one. In fact that’s probably the benefit of them: that they allow your brain to rest and get on with the filing job without adding more to the pile.

However many of my early memories are TV. Mary, Mungo and Midge posting a letter and me wanted to do the same. Hartley Hare being stupid while I ate Heinz tomato soup. Trying to draw the test card. Thinking I was going to die as I laughed and cried at the same time over a Shirley Temple film. If you are a similar age to me then you know the end of this sentence.

“It’s Friday, it’s five to five and it’s …..”

I started senior school the same year as the first episode of Grange Hill and was convinced I would have my head flushed down the toilet. My teenage years are littered with jokes, humour and one liners from comedy programmes. Even now, I look forward to the next episode of a bloody murder programme more than I do a walk in the countryside and I love walking.