Another kind of cabinet: (Domenico Remps, Cabinet of Curiosities)
I don’t actually know anybody who thought that the British – English, rather – government was handling the Covid-19 pandemic well, so have no one to ask whether recent events have changed their minds. Nor can I think of anyone who would have been surprised to learn just how much contempt Messrs Johnson and Cummings, along with those supine members of the cabinet, feel for the general public, so can’t gauge any shift in opinion there either. All I know for sure is that, given the clear evidence that protecting the nation’s health is not the prime minister’s first priority—and given the latest, wildly premature lockdown easings—I’m well advised to stick to my current strategy, which is to steer clear of anyone that I don’t already live with. Even that will get harder as the weather warms up, now that people have been shown how the rules can be bullied or bent into a more personally convenient shape.
So I’ll continue to read, cook, try to write – and find other diversions in the early morning walks, the stand-off between a magpie and a crow which seemed to go on for hours – and Harry’s early occupation of his favourite plant pot.
Journal, Tuesday 29 May 1764. ‘At three Tissot [a medical doctor] carried me to the Utrecht Bedlam. The poor creatures were almost all silly. They were mostly going about loose. They called me the King of England. I was amused with this scene. Tissot said mankind were all mad and differed only in degrees.’ (Boswell in Holland, 1763-1764, edited by Frederick A. Pottle, London: William Heinemann, 1952, 256.)
Degrees, perhaps, M. Tissot, but very large ones in some cases.
Reconstructionary Tales 