Subtitle: It’s a dog’s life

It may come as a surprise to some readers,  but I’ve got friends.  Not friends in high places, necessarily, but good mates nonetheless.    And decent, law abiding folk they are too; for the most part.   There are, I have to admit, one or two who, from time to time, indulge in acts of hooliganism, the sending of unsolicited videos & so on, but when the long arm of the law descends, as descend it must, they soon see the error of their ways.  Most of them.

There are one or two who are, shall we say, a little less compliant.   Take for example, a dog-owning friend of mine, aged well north of 70.  Let’s call him Rover.  His opening salvo was a fervent hope that “they” would not close the town swimming pool; next he popped round “for a chat.”  His daughters, both old enough to know better, dropped in on him and his good lady, Mrs Rover, for supper on Mother’s Day.    Government advice has now – finally – been issued to the effect that dogs should be walked once a day, and if a second walk is necessary it should be given by a different  member of the household, to ensure that each takes just one round of exercise a day, thus limiting their social contact.    I don’t know why they bothered, Rover is still taking his pooches (he has two of them) out 3 times a day, on the grounds that “they need it.”  So do the rest of us, like a hole in the head.  But that’s not his problem.  Not for him to change the routine, put the bloody animals in kennels, or show some social responsibility. 

For the best part of forty years, since the days of Thatcher, government has been telling us that social responsibility is a form of weakness, greed is good,  and all the rest of it.  Now we begin to see the world that mantra invokes: a world in which an elderly man – himself high risk in terms of the virus – chooses to ignore pleas to behave with consideration for others,  on the grounds that it would inconvenience himself, or, rather, his pets.