Today an email arrives from sister T about my father’s funeral on Thursday. It generates a strong but measured response to all attendees from me. Were we 30 who were attending the funeral to head off afterwards to a grouse shoot that would be legal. Were we to head to the White Bear and book five tables in a crowded back room and sit there mask free that would be fine and dandy. But if we go on from the church to bury my father in the same plot as my late step-mother, in an open field, right on the edge of Shipston, there is a problem.
We can’t have a wake so agreed to toast Dad by his grave so this might be considered a wake. And so we were told by T that only half those at church can legally attend.
My father would have replied using words including bugger. So did I. If some worm with a small man (or woman) syndrome wearing a yellow Covid Marshal jacket or a member of the Warwickshire Fuzz turns up, it is on me. I will fight not to pay the fines levied on the organiser who I shall say is me. I have made it clear in an official memo involving my lawyer that if more than 15 attend, it is despite the urgings of the vicar, my sister and the funeral director and only because I urged folks to revolt. It is all on me.
If we, as a people, just lie down and accept these petty diktats which are based on no science at all then the Government will keep on imposing them. If, however, we start to stand up and say that there is no logic in this and these intrusions on our lives are just evil and wrong and that enough is enough, then the Government may stop.
The email from T also says that we must wear masks in church. Except if you are a vicar preaching, a choir member singing, someone reading the lesson, someone with a medical exemption or a son saying a few words, i.e. about a third of those attending.
There is no science behind this rule at all. The vicar has already said she will not throw me out for not muzzling up. I know my father would have refused on principle but also, having studied all the data, for logical reasons.
Once again, myself and Olaf will disobey and I hope that we are not alone. At some stage, we, the people, need to say that enough is enough. The funeral of a man who would have been the first to rebel seems as good a place as any to start.