Coronavirus rules must be respected (even Mr Smokey agrees) – Christine Grahame

Tired of supermarket replacements like Whiskas for Encore cat food and cheesecake for oatcakes, Christine Grahame MSP urges people to stick by the Covid lockdown rules to help get rid of this deadly virus.

Christine Grahame is the SNP MSP for Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale

Well I’m afraid, yes, I’m going to have to mention coronavirus because there’s no escaping it as it has affected every aspect of our daily lives.

I still haven’t been in a supermarket 12 weeks on and still get annoyed at delivery substitutions to my grocery list. Non-returnable I would add. Mr Smokey like most spoiled cats (aren’t they all) will eat only Encore tins of chicken (very pricey) and Felix pouches and a scattering of Dreamies.

I start the day with Felix because he’s so hungry he will eat it but after that it’s downhill. To get to the point, for Encore the “shopper” had substituted Whiskas. I handed it back (without touching it ) and still haven’t had the promised refund.

Crowds flocked to Portrobello Beach at the weekend as the sun shone (Picture: SWNS)

The most recent was my order including oatcakes and additionally cheese oatcakes. What arrived was two lots of blackcurrant cheesecakes. OK the cheese bit is right but who does this shopping? My son? Is he moonlighting? I’m eating my way through them.

But these are small matters. In my inbox there are folk at their wits end, and financial end.

The lifting of some restrictions was welcome, and I managed a visit to see my grandchildren with a 40-mile round trip (no five-mile limit on that). My daughter-in-law had set up a table and chair in the garden for me, the regulation two-metre distance and it was a relaxed and natural meeting. Complying with the First Minster’s entreaties, I stayed until nature told me it was time to go – if you get my drift.

Not all folk seem, however, to be taking the rules seriously or as seriously as they used to. Yes, the sun has shone but the virus doesn’t respect the weather.

So crowded Porty beaches, Holyrood Park jam packed and folk meeting in gardens in mixed groups could swing the pendulum back to early March.

Of course, I have sympathy for the young who see the summer slipping away and hey they are not so vulnerable. True.

But their mum, their dad and certainly their gran or elderly neighbour may be the recipient of the virus they have unwittingly brought home with them along with the sand in their shoes.

Test, trace and isolate is, of course, what is allowing this modicum of freedom but that depends on the honesty of us all.

If you do catch the virus then it is you and only you who must be frank enough to contact the authorities even if it means spilling the beans on friends and colleagues who must self-isolate for 14 days (if they have been within two metres of you for 15 minutes or more).

If you keep schtum, then you are a prime source of the infection spreading. The answer is to keep those two metres away. No casual close meetings which may cost lives.

Indeed, I see the weather has broken and we are in for a more seasonal June: rain and lower temperatures. Perhaps cool winds will cool heads. Let’s hope so.

Now, I have umpteen blackcurrant cheesecakes to polish off before they pass their imminent consume-by date.

Christine Grahame is the SNP MSP for Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale

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