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We don't even know which rules we're supposed to be ignoring

"It now seems possible to go hugger-mugger with hundreds in Turkey but not in Fishguard" - getty
"It now seems possible to go hugger-mugger with hundreds in Turkey but not in Fishguard" - getty

Well we are all confused now. Except possibly Mrs Jones. We got back from examining megalithic cromlechs in Pembrokeshire just as the rule of six tightened its grip on parts of the Dis-united Kingdom. Then we went out to eat (at my brother’s request) in a basement in Bloomsbury. (Have I blamed everybody else enough yet?)

No phone details were left, no masks were worn – and there were no available seats. Forty people were crammed cheek by jowl, spluttering all over each other in a hot cellar. This place was smaller than the front room of our holiday cottage.

The waitress leaned in to share her distress. Her wedding in Naples had been cancelled. We commiserated. It would have been fewer than in this place on a Saturday night. The rest of her family were sweating it out in the kitchen. Well, something has to give. Illegal holiday bubbles have to be it.

Except not, in some parts of the world. I recently abandoned a planned expedition to the South of France. We always go there at the end of October – for regattas. But I put my crew on shore leave. If citizens of Scotland aren’t allowed to share their bothies, then the Prefecture of the seriously highly infected Var would surely ban mass yo-ho-hoing on the Croisette. Wrong. They have limited the gathering to a mere thousand in the “village”, and those frighteningly big boats have set sail with their crews of 40 just as they always do.

Eh? I am plagued by Instagrams of my former shipmates embracing in the Irish Bar. Sandy is expecting to quarantine when she gets back. My other mate, who urged me to come over, tells me I can easily avoid the check-ups by booking another flight out “which you don’t take.” (“They are so cheap.”) Yes, they are.

The Italians’ word for this is “menefreghismo” – “it doesn’t apply to me.” Benito Mussolini defined it as “an education to fighting, and the acceptance of the risks that implies... this is how the Fascist understands life: as duty, exaltation, conquest.” Rules, you see, are for little people.

The party continues in Cannes - getty
The party continues in Cannes - getty

I don’t expect the owners of super-duper yachts to toe the line. And there are some who might point out that a particular manoeuvre that got me disqualified from the final race at the Regates Royales in Cannes last year was the ultimate in menefreghismo. (My outrageous behaviour at the start figures large on this year’s poster for the whole affair.)

But the truth is, none of us know what rules we are ignoring any more, let alone how they are being thought up. They appear to follow no logic. It now seems possible to go hugger-mugger with hundreds in Turkey but not in Fishguard. I have just decided on an autumn break in Fishguard.

I might be able to go there as long as I limit my holiday companions to another mini-household of semi-retired folk in a country cottage in the germ-free, remote location of West Wales, but for how long? As Mrs Jones wisely points out, that strange pasty-faced geography teacher who rules Wales with an iron fist and a determination not to do anything those diseased English do, might not let us drive through the locked down areas of Newport in order to get there.

Today we will be learning about longshore drift - getty
Today we will be learning about longshore drift - getty

I am not saying there is another way. I am only, like everybody else, suddenly, stupidly, human. After three months I got the urge to see somebody else. I went to eat in a restaurant. I didn’t die. I went in a shop with a mask. I survived. I started enjoying mingling and thought the economy might survive after all and now it’s hard to get me back in the box, especially when some fevered public activities seem to be so very OK and others, like funerals and weddings, or even family dinners, are not.

I should be sailing my boat away into the wild blue yonder. But that’s probably under lock down too. I will have to go down to a noisy pub to drown my sorrows with a few hundred untested strangers.