Why I spoilt my ballot paper

The headline ‘Government to allow people to hug’ one might have expected to hear on early evening news bulletins in January 1661, shortly after Oliver Cromwell was posthumously executed and puritanism began its slow and welcome withdrawal from England. It sounds a little odd in 2021. Below the headline came the inevitable caveats from the medical clerisy. While hugging you should turn your face aside so as to minimise the risk of infecting the person you are embracing. I think people are also enjoined to keep their hands well above the waist — during amorous encounters with people in your ‘bubble’ you are allowed only to ‘get your tops’, as we schoolboys used to put it. No kissing, and certainly not with tongues. I assume the popular gay practice of ‘frombling’, the details of which I cannot go into here, is still completely banned and we will need another announcement from Professor Whittle on this activity in the months ahead. Somewhere on the bloody roadmap there will be a possible date for the resumption of such stuff.

The headline about hugging prompted everyone asked about it on our airwaves to lie through their teeth. They could not wait to start hugging people again, they all said. Really? How needy and cloying have we all become? I simply don’t believe this. Nor do I believe that they have refrained from hugging anyone for the best part of a year, as they all dutifully insisted they had. I’ve been in the north-east for the past month or so and it already had a very post-Covid feel to it, very different from London. There was plenty of hugging going on and, shops excepted, a general lack of concern about social distancing. I have the suspicion that the ‘Yes, you can now hug — fill your boots’ announcement was something of a fait accompli.