Good day, isolators.

Frankly, I’m ashamed of you. The amount of confused confusion over and around the clearness of the clarity and non-unambiguity relating to and concerning the government’s recent and previous but now and continually updated guidelines on how we should act and behave and not misbehave not only but definitely now and also in the immediate and potentially foreseeable future, is pitiful.

The slogan ‘Stay alert’ appears to be the crux of the befuddlement, which is ridiculous because it’s self-explanatory and couldn’t be clearer. I mean, it’s not as though a load of oiks at Number 10 would just come up with a vacuous and meaningless slogan and hope the general public will just accept it and abide by its ambiguous instruction, is it? Think, you fools!

But as I’m a responsible citizen I thought I’d explain it to those of you whose brains have clearly been besmoggled by lockdown inertia and not doing enough crosswords.

The concept – nay, the science behind the ‘stay alert’ slogan – is essentially a 1,046.723% guarantee that we will be just as safe travelling on public transport, or sitting in an office, or sending our children to school, or meeting people in the park, or exercising outside 29 times a day, or buying a much-needed phormium tenax variegate from the local garden centre, as we were when we stayed at home. But how? the more dense amongst you are asking. Why are we allowed to start doing all this when hundreds 0f people a day are still dying of the virus and there’s no PPE and no vaccine and workplaces aren’t ready and don’t know how to put social distancing measures in place and it’s impossible to get on a train without having at least three people empty a bodily fluid onto you? 

Because, dunderheads, just do what the slogan tells you to do: stay alert. It’s foolproof! If you stay alert, you will see the virus coming. If you don’t stay alert, you will not see the virus coming. If you’re lolling about in a queue for a supermarket poking around on your phone instead of staying alert, you’re not going to see the virus scuttle up your trouser leg, up your jumper and into your mouth, are you?

So what should you do if, through your continued alertness, you see the virus?

If you see the virus, you should then – as the slogan advises – control the virus. If the virus approaches you, shout very loudly and clearly ‘I see you’ or simply ‘No no no’, and the virus should scuttle off into the distance, embarrassed. Or, consider purchasing a virus alarm. If you see the virus – which, again, to stress so there is absolutely no ambiguity, you will only do if you stay alert – blow four short blasts followed by six long blasts into your virus alarm and three officials from the Virus Apprehension Group (VAG) will immediately appear and control the virus by tackling it to the ground.

If you are being forced to go back to work because the government has told you to if you can’t work from home but you should definitely try to continue to work from home but if you can’t you should go to work but don’t go to work if you can work from home but do go to work anyway, despite the fact your employer doesn’t know what ‘Covid Secure’ means but has made it very clear to you that your employed days will be numbered if you don’t get the hell back to work even though you can technically work from home but they’d prefer you in work because they don’t want you to work from home, and you have no option but to travel by public transport despite the fact the government advises you not to travel on public transport and to work from home if you can but please do go to work, there are several things you can do:

1 – Stay alert. If you are alert the moment you leave your house, you are more likely to spy one of several thousand mythical animal volunteers who have signed up under the Mythical Animal Transport Scheme (MATS) to transport people to work who live miles away from their workplaces but don’t want to risk the virus-soaked air of busses and trains.

2- Stay alert. If you don’t manage to hitch a lift from a unicorn volunteer, stay alert on the Bakerloo Line by staying alert for the virus and staying alert to maintain social distancing and, as the government suggests, simply keeping your head turned away from other commuters, because, if you use your common sense, there is plenty of empty breathable air on the London Underground, you just need to be sensible enough to find it.

3 – Stay alert. Once you arrive at your workplace, do not question your employer’s dubious social distancing measures: your workplace will be Covid Secure. Covid Secure means that, due to a watertight combination of social distancing, staying alert and good old English common sense, it will be literally impossible for the virus to either enter or survive inside your workplace.

Some of you are also having problems with the government’s calculations about how we keep down the R rate and keep up the alertness and keep the things in the middle at an even level but not too much and as much as possible, so because you’re clearly all so dopey I’ve recreated the government’s helpful and extremely clear graphs as though I would for a toddler.

Speaking of toddlers, if, as a teacher, you’re unable to stop a class of 4 year-olds hugging each other or putting bits of the classroom in their mouths or all licking the same windowsill, quite frankly I’m not sure how you got to be a teacher in the first place, but as everyone appears to be so dense I’ll spell it out to you: use your common sense to instil common sense in the children, I mean this really isn’t difficult, a 4 year-old is bound to be understanding of the situation.

I trust that’s all clear now, because I hope you realise that if you now go to work or get on public transport or pop off to the garden centre and contract the virus, it will be as a direct result of not staying alert and therefore entirely your fault. What else can the government do to keep us safe other than release us back into society way before they originally said they would and give us extremely clear guidance on how not to be so witless as to catch the virus?

I know these things because I’m alert. I am so alert I haven’t slept since the government told me to be alert. This slogan came out last week. I am literally crippled with sleep deprivation but I am alert alert alert, and with a little bit of common sense, you could be too.

To test your own alertness I have devised a self-alertness test by inserting a picture of a chicken in this paragraph and if you see the chicken you

are clearly alert enough to go about your business and remain 1,046.723% safe from the virus. If you didn’t see the chicken you are clearly not alert enough and I suggest you just stay at home. Except don’t. Except do. Kind of.