Corona Lockdown week 8.5: Figuring out the new lockdown rules

Earlier this week, Boris announced the new relaxed lockdown rules in a 14 minute bumbling presentation. This also included news that the schools would, hopefully, be reopening from June.

As you might expect, the school thing somewhat took priority in my head. However now that we have seen the 50-page further guidance document (snore) which has firmly cemented the decision that the children would be staying home from school until at least the new school year, we have started to look at the rest of the guidance.

From what I can gather (I am only educated to degree level, so I could be missing something but I do think if you don’t think the guidance is confusing then the chances are that you haven’t read it properly…);

It is fine to have a cleaner or a nanny enter your house.

It is also permitted to have estate agents visit, and to host viewings in order to sell it.

However you can’t see your mum, unless she is of course paid as a cleaner, nanny, or wants to buy your house.

You can meet up with one friend, on your own, in an open space.

This is absolutely great news.

I have several good friends who live alone, who I’ve missed greatly. In fact, I’ve already met up with one of them at a distance of no less than 3m; we chatted, drank cocktails from a can (passed to me wearing gloves and wiped over with dettol; we are taking this shit seriously) and helped an elderly couple jumpstart their dead car battery. It was life-affirming stuff and I wish I was fucking joking.

However, you cannot meet more than one person, even if they are from the same household and therefore equally as likely to be harbouring germs and will almost definitely pass each other whatever you may have given them on the drive home.

It is entirely permissible to meet with your mum in a park (albeit for me one 60 miles away…), but not if you kids and/or your dad happen to be there too.

Although, luckily, Herr Gruber from Allo Allo popped onto This Morning to confirm to a very confused Schofe that you can meet one parent and then the other ten minutes later, if you think my dad is going to sit in the car for ten minutes…

Maybe we can set up some kind of weird family speed dating effort? My dad can meet up with my oldest, while I see my mum, and my husband can look after the youngest and then we all swap; all at a sensible 2m distance. That is permissible.

Not totally weird and entirely unnecessary at all. And god knows what you are expected to do if you’re a single parent, looking after children on your own for the past eight weeks and now not even allowed to see a friend at a distance because it’s not yet legal to cage your children and leave them at home. I ask you.

You can go to work if you can’t work from home

Although the Government would prefer you not to use public transport if you can’t help it (do people get the bus for fun? No they fucking don’t).

So you can see your boss, your colleagues, Peter the creep from HR, but still, crucially, not your mum and dad or your elderly Grandad who is bored to tears sat in, on his own, the week before his hundredth birthday and keeps playing with the settings on his iPad so never knows you’re Facetiming him.

And you can only see them at work; you can’t sit in your garden and share a bottle of wine after a long day doing whatever it is people do at work (I forget).

Your kids can go to school

From June 1st, and only if they’re aged 4-6 or in year six.

They can mix with other children in their class – and will not be expected to social distance – but they can’t see their cousins except via Facetime.

You, meanwhile, cannot chat to more than one of their parents at a time even from two metres away.

All makes perfect sense, right?

Seriously though.

I have absolutely stuck to the rules, 100% for eight long weeks. I have done my best at home educating, I have social distanced. I have gone on one soul destroyingly slow walk a day, even when I wanted to go for two and it wouldn’t have hurt a soul.

I have not driven anywhere, I haven’t been in a shop unless doing The Weekly Shop no matter how much I’m craving bread or jaffa cakes.

But even I am reaching the point where I am fed up, and these rules take the fucking piss.

I. Want. To. See. My. Mum. And. Dad.

I want to see my hilarious little nephew, and my sister, and my grandad, and my in laws, and a hundred other people.

At this point, I am quite sure that we are facing a second wave because weirdly people don’t WANT to see their boss, they want to see the people that they love.

And Boris knows that. This is herd immunity by stealth and it fucking sucks.