These last few days, I have learnt the hand washing ceremony we all have to attend to whenever we touch our faces, it’s a cinch really. Water soap, lather and hands all over for two times singing happy birthday just to be safe. This, I am told will prevent the spread of Covid 19 and “delay” the spread of the virus.

Delay is the second phase in our Government’s manta of 4 phases;

• Contain
• Delay
• Research
• Mitigate

There doesn’t seem much we can do really, the important thing is to panic buy as much stuff as you can, pasta, crisps, wine and gin, make sure you’ve got plenty of box sets, make sure the phone is turned unto 11 when calling your folks because you won’t be able to visit them. Turns out self isolating at home with your family means keeping yourself to yourself, locked in a room for 2 weeks surrounded by biscuits and empty mugs. Each family member will be allowed out into the main part of the house for 6 hours of the day and then will have to sanitise every centimetre. Mrs T is good at cleaning, i’ll go after her. We’ll need some more logs, which we can arrange to have dropped at the door, same with the Tescos food shop, any records, please leave under the slate leaning up against the wall next to the front door.

They’re talking of a Dad’s army of retired health professionals, getting back into the saddle, so the most vulnerable will be looking after the most vulnerable, that must surely end badly. The Health secretary has just said he’d relax the rules on health care aid registration, opening the doors for the Harold Shipmans of this world.

We are teetering on the edge of an abyss, which we do not fully know the depth of. In order to capture the real essence of this crisis is to listen to Question Time, and see how after 30 minutes of softly, softly listening to each other, it soon decends into a political point scoring exercise. I must stop watching UK based news based programs, and listen to the theatre of the comedy of errors and lunatic ramblings of Trump from across the pond.

On the other hand Pritti Patel must go, there i’ve said it.