Am I going off the reservation?

The priest said it would be a short service because he wanted to make an important announcement.

After rushing through the Mass so quickly he missed out most of the good bits, he solemnly declared the following: he urgently needed volunteers to say prayers over the bodies.

The number of funerals in this small corner of West Cork has now got to the point where one priest cannot handle the arrival of the coffins at the funeral home opposite the church, where, in Irish tradition, the business of praying begins.

He said they also needed volunteers to do the same in the next village. He sounded like he was at his wits’ end. He said that if no one came forward he would take suggestions for people who would be good at it, then approach them himself to talk them into it.

I nudged the builder boyfriend sitting next to me, and he pulled a face.

The next day I asked a friend to get me a certain MP’s phone number and after a while the friend sent me a cryptic message back. ‘He’s gone off reservation.’ I typed the phrase into a search engine, because what does ‘off reservation’ even mean now, given that one is probably not allowed to say it for fear of offending Native Americans?

Dictionary definition: entering hostile territory without orders (in military or political terms) or deviating from the norm.

I would say that’s a good thing. It means this MP is being brave and thinking for himself. It sounds to me like he’s making a lot of noise about excess death figures that no one wants to listen to. But I do.

When you are in a minority widely condemned as mad on a major issue, when it feels like all the evidence is so clear but so ignored, there is always the nagging worry of having lost the plot.