Rearing... whatever

Two friends were fined this week for meeting up five miles from home to go for a walk together. Amongst other things, the government's guidance says that one may "leave the home to exercise with your household (or support bubble) or one other person, this should be limited to once per day, and you should not travel outside your local area."

Putting aside the fact that the author had clearly run out of full stops, the obvious flaw here is the lack of definition for "your local area". Five miles certainly seems OK to me. I wonder if those police officers would have been quite so quick with the fines if the two friends in question weren't women?

I certainly wouldn't have accepted any fine if they had stopped me and Steve, today, when we met for a walk. I had come across to the office and decided it would be more nourishing for my mental health and general happiness to catch up with Steve in person rather than over the phone, so we took a safe and socially distanced stroll from the A65 up to Oxenholme, taking the single track road that runs beneath the helm.*

It's over sixteen years since I first met Steve; he was the first person I ever employed, although these days he is a director of the company. It's been a long haul and we've weathered some serious ups and downs together, as we've grown the business. (I should say that, on balance, the ups have consistently outweighed the downs.)

It turned out that, in the end, this last year was not that difficult in practice but the combination of Covid 19 and the prospect of Brexit have been a constant source of concern. As far as the former is concerned, I think we've adjusted to it now, but it's obviously disconcerting to watch Brexit wrenching the wheels off the economy, no matter how predictable it was.

So we discussed the year ahead and largely reassured ourselves, as far as it was sensible to do so. And then we bumped elbows and returned to our respective bubbles.

*This marvellous if somewhat inexplicable piece of art is just up by the car park at Oxenholme station.

****
Reading: 'Mayflies' Andrew O'Hagan