Day: 30 July 2020

Second Wave? Virus Has All But Disappeared Your daily reminder that the virus has dwindled away to almost nothing. This graph shows daily triage calls for 19-69 year-olds. Note no uptick during the Hyde Park BLM protests or during the "major incident" on Bournemouth Beach. (Hat tip Alistair Haimes.) Unfortunately, nobody's told the National Trust. Had an amusing email from a reader just back from the Lake District. My girlfriend and I took a trip up to Ambleside last week, arriving the day before Maskgeddon. We were denied an early check-in as the room-cleaning regime at our B&B involved multiple rounds of antibacterial fumigation!The National Trust seems to have completely lost the plot! The day of our first outing, we visited the Aira Force waterfall and parked in one of their car parks near the top of the trail down to the waterfall. As we walked towards the trail, a bedwetter loudly informed me that there was a one-way system on the trails, before we’d even reached the sign. When we got back to the car, I noticed that the Trust has helpfully supplied a hand-sanitiser dispenser embedded in a tree stump near the pay & display machine! Goodness knows how many thousands of lives they’ve already saved with such thoughtful measures!For the rest of the trip I refused to ...

by Guy de la Bédoyère Tom Hardy as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises Today (July 29th) I set off with some apprehension for my first masked shopping expedition. I went to my local Asda. As I approached the doors, I saw shoppers emerging and tearing off their masks like Batman after a hard day’s work in Gotham. Once inside I was faintly surprised by the security guard who seemed to be wearing one depicting the mouth of a grimacing large carnivore. Perhaps it was a tactic to suggest how tasty the food is inside. I had by then masked up (using one I had bought at the same shop last week), the very first time I have done so. I’m not in favour of these things at all but I also don’t want to be responsible for placing a shop worker in an uncomfortable position. As it happens, they seem to be a lot better off: maskless and swanning about inhaling and exhaling like swarm of Gupta fish. Or at least that’s what they looked like to me as I unwittingly started the slow process of suffocation. Within seconds I had become aware of a curious sensation: the layer of hot damp air that accumulated around my mouth under the mask, occasionally dispersed by the blissful relief of a ...