Overheard across Britain this week:
“It’s all very well worrying about a million people a minute dying in India, but Peter and I were supposed to be going to Tunisia on Tuesday and now it’s been taken off the purple list, which is SO unfair as now we have to pay for a test before we go so we don’t infect the locals, but you’d think they’d be glad to have us there to hear our wonderful anecdote about how Wickes delivered the wrong tiles for our kitchen, so we looked on the website as Richard Madeley told us to on Good Morning Britain and it said we COULD go as long as we lived for three days in the fridge before we went but now with NO WARNING WHATSOEVER it’s gone on to the turquoise list, so we have to quarantine for 25 minutes in a four-star hotel when we get back, but Peter can’t do that because he’s head of marketing for Pringles across the whole of Reigate and we SO deserve a break because we had a lot of stress when we furloughed the cleaner and then she went back to Albania because everyone in her village caught Covid, which was SO selfish after all we’d done for her, and then we had all that trouble with Nectarine and her anxiety about wearing masks at school.
(Image: Getty)
The most annoying thing is we booked it three months ago, but the travel agent didn’t tell us the pandemic might not be finished, and then Boris Johnson explained everything clearly when he announced: ‘You will be permitted to travel to countries such as Portugal with the exception of Portugal, and may enjoy a holiday in any country you choose as long as you don’t travel there.’
So we thought about going to Cornwall as we could buy some houses while we were there, but the ‘locals’ have already sold them all which is SO ungrateful, and my friend Abacus from the spin class booked a weekend break to Gaza, but while she was out there the government put it on the ultra-violet list so she’s stuck there and had to isolate in a bubble with the military commander of Hamas.
I contacted the Foreign Office to suggest the Army invade the hotel we’re staying at because if we annexed it and made it part of Surrey we wouldn’t be travelling abroad, but I haven’t heard back, which is typical. Then to add insult to injury we watched a programme about the pandemic and they went on and on about how hard it’s been for nurses and care homes and places in Brazil where the entire town’s conked out, but there wasn’t a mention about us and how we DESERVE a couple of weeks by a swimming pool while a peasant brings us margaritas on a tray, and I can’t believe these countries that don’t let us in unless we have the test with that ghastly stick up our nose just so they can make sure we don’t kill them all, but that’s the trouble with this world, it’s just ‘me me me’ with some people, isn’t it?”
