My confusing life on the border of Tiers 1 and 2

As I scoffed down a fabulous supper in a candlelit room full of ecstatic diners, it struck me that this was what the Jazz Age must have felt like.

This was a night out at what can only be described as a speakeasy, complete with live music from a crooner serenading us from a safe distance, beyond the spatter range.

The mood among the merrymakers was very much one of living for today, for tomorrow we may be either dead of Covid (unlikely) or fined for breaking draconian bans on everything, everywhere (highly likely).

I had been temperature scanned and disinfected at the door with such ferocity that I feared the maître d’ might insist on a full set of bloods and a liver biopsy before I was allowed to proceed to my table.

‘Can I take your things?’ asked the girl on the coat counter, but as I instinctively then reached for my mask to put it away in my coat pocket before handing it over, she shouted that I must desist or I would be put outside. I must wear my mask to walk to the table — of course, silly me.

A few brave places in London have managed to salvage some tattered remnants of our civil liberties out of a loophole that means you can have a business dinner. I had a splendid business dinner that night, and I must say the ideas flowed much better than they would have done on Zoom, so as far as I am concerned, this loophole is legitimate.

If they close it, as though it were a kind of tax dodge, they will probably extinguish the last chink of light and hope in our capital city and with it the last forlorn trickle of revenue dribbling into their coffers, which they will need to feed the masses they are forcing into poverty by cutting off their ability to earn a living.