Number of days since lockdown: 64

Number of days since I became a 24/7 carer: 3

Number of times I’ve wondered if we are living in some kind of Kafka-esque version of The Truman Show: quite a few.

Ten things about the Dominic Cummings Debacle that I am still seething about:

1. He went home knowing he had been in contact with people who had tested positive for Covid 19 AND THEN WENT BACK TO WORK.
2. He went home again and then DECIDED TO DRIVE 260 MILES to another part of the country so he could avoid the media and/or get help with child care.
3. He thought his eyesight was affected so he decided to test it by taking his wife and child FOR A 60 MILE ROUND TRIP IN THE CAR.
4. He thought he was better so HE DROVE 260 MILES BACK TO LONDON AGAIN. Apparently he doesn’t know about working remotely.
5. He can’t remember when he discussed any of this with the PM.
6. He can’t remember whether he stopped for petrol. So not quite as tech-savvie as we have been led to believe, because as well as not knowing how to use Zoom, he hasn’t heard of internet banking.
7. HE HASN’T EVEN APOLOGISED FOR CAUSING ANGER AND DISTRESS ON AN UNPRECEDENTED SCALE.
8. He was allowed to hold a personal press conference in the garden of No 10, Downing Street. For which he turned up HALF AN HOUR LATE.
9. THE GOVERNMENT IS STILL DEFENDING HIM.
10. HE THINKS HE DID NOTHING WRONG.

You couldn’t make it up, could you?

When I was still trying to stay married to Richard and the children were at their expensive private schools, we mixed in the kind of circles that include people like Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson. People who think they are better than other people. People who believe they are so clever and important that it is OK to make fun of the little people. People who get angry when questioned, because whatever they think or do must obviously be right. People who talk about themselves at great length but show no interest whatsoever in what you have to say. Who travel business class and put their badly-behaved children at the back of the plane in the cheap seats for the crew to look after. Who moan about expensive school fees but condemn people who send their children to state schools for being cheapskates who don’t care about their education. Who work in family businesses and inherit family properties and have options should they need a country bolthole and who consider people without such advantages to be no-hopers. And who simply have no idea what it’s like to be worried about having enough money to pay the rent or feed the baby or keep the loan sharks from the door.

And who am I to judge? I used to go along with all this. Sometimes I even joined in. I was proud of Charlotte’s excellent results and her brilliant career. I might even have crowed about them to friends whose children hadn’t done so well. I was embarrassed when Toby dropped out of the Royal College of Music because his band had got a recording contract – short-lived, as it turned out – so I kept quiet about that. And I did nothing to stop Richard when he employed a clever lawyer at vast expense to get him off his latest drink-driving offence and avoid a lengthy ban. We were just a provincial, lower-key version of the elitism and lack of humility that has been on display all weekend.

I cringe when I think about it.

Not that I have much time for cringing. Looking after an elderly person who is recovering from a fractured hip and Covid-19 and who is also my mother is a full-time job. By rights, there should be 3 of us here working shifts. But there is just me, and I am only just keeping my head above water. My mother watches a TV quiz show every afternoon called Tenable. This situation is only tenable in the short-term.

The hardest part is that she keeps asking to go and visit Dad. I don’t know if she understands how ill he is. I certainly don’t think she appreciates the lockdown rules, even though she watches the TV news in between all the quiz shows. It is hard to comprehend the cruelty of it, that an elderly woman who nearly died from the virus and has an uncertain future is not allowed to visit her husband who she has been married to for over 60 years, has had a massive stroke and lying semi-conscious in hospital being looked after by people he doesn’t know. And who may die any day.

I decide to get Lydia onto the case. She is extremely busy working out how to open her school to more pupils. But she says she will call the hospital and make special pleading for Mum to visit Dad, given she is now probably immune from the virus and therefore hopefully not a risk to herself or anyone else. If anyone can persuade them, Lydia can.

And Lydia and I agree we will only take her if we can do so without putting other people at risk, even though it is heartbreaking to listen to her pleading to see him.

To all those people thinking about breaking the lockdown rules because Dominic Cummings did, please don’t. We are better than him and his privileged, out-of-touch, I’m-alright-jack-pull-the-ladder-up ilk. Most of us are are in this together. Cummings and the odious man he helped to inveigle us to become our Prime Minister are not.

And yes, I am meant to be seeing Brian tonight. If I can stay awake that long.

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