Covid - August 2021

So we had 12 new cases of Covid in the Western Isles yesterday. Reading that back, I'd prefer 12 new cases of beer, wine or uisge-beatha, but never mind.

Co-dhiù (anyway), I was remembering last year between March and July. Arrive outside Tesco, and dreading the queue. You could be expected to wait for an hour and a half before even getting in the door. Then, it was a socially distanced shuffle round the shop. Absolutely no doubling back to pick something you'd forgotten or only that moment thought of. Going round the heads of the aisles, you were under no circumstances permitted to scoot across from aisle 4 to aisle 6. If you had forgotten your cans of soup after crossing into aisle 6 (you have to know the layout of Tesco Stornoway to appreciate this), you'd have to go without - or ask a member of staff to get it for you. Well, I'll always praise Tesco staff for being helpful, and they excelled themselves during that period. What remains today, is queuing up aisle 12 to wait to be called to a till.

Do we also remember the toilet-paper panic? The soap panic? Some unfortunate souls had to wipe with yesterday's edition of the Sun (insert name of your own reviled daily rag). Awww, the lovely days of yore. The days you couldn't even go on the ferry, other than for essential purposes. The days people couldn't come to the island other than for essential purposes. Number of Covid cases in Stornoway during that time? Zero, if I recall.

And here we are in August 2021. Tourists flooding into the island with their motorhomes, and it's not the sorts we're used to. If this is the way Brits behave in Ibiza, Magaluf or Aya Napa, then I pity the poor souls that have to be hospitable to them over there. Bet they're breating a sigh of relief.