No I did not do the eat-out thing. Now what did I just say? I said that I don't want edicts. I want the government to give us all full and abundant information and advice. Tell us what the science really says. Better still, put a sock in Boris's stupid mouth and get the scientists to tell us. The government encouraged us to go and dine out. Was that the sort of advice you think I meant? People came to the Westcountry in droves last year. The whole place was overcrowded between June and the end of October, all the accommodation full and the place crawling, literally, with extra day trippers who couldn't go on their foreign hols or cruises. No-one was advising them not to come. The risks were played down. We got away with it until half way through September, and then the numbers started going up. It was another SIX WEEKS before there was any clampdown. The science was there and the science was ignored. The upshot of that delay was the dreadful winter that we've just had, far worse than it should have been. Thank God that the vaccine rollout has staunched it. So where was the information, the advice, the urging, last mid-September? You go to a place heaving with people and you think, well, it must be OK because we haven't been advised not to come here. Then when we do finally get the edicts, it all suddenly seems so arbitrary. In the last few weeks the Westcountry has been just about the safest place in the country. But the blunt instrument of lockdown has hit us just as badly as in the worst-affected areas. The only reason we need to wear masks round here is because no-one is telling people that coming here from all over the place from next week onward isn't sensible. "Try to stay local." What does that mean? I read somewhere it means stay in your local authority area. For me, that means I'm OK driving two hours to Penzance or Land's End! As for those masks, I disagree with you. They are the single most visible manifestation of government control. Have you ever seen anyone checking that the masks people are wearing are clean? Not a paper one worn every day for a week before chucking it? The front not touched? Never been hitched under the nose or chin? Never been stuffed in your pants pocket next to your ten-pound notes, bank cards and tissues? No big gaps? Nobody cares about any of that. All they care about is that half your face has something shoved over it. Never mind the quality, feel the control.

Tell us what we need to know, about the disease, the transmission, the risks, how to be safe, the vaccines. Give us good advice predicated on real scientific information. We'll do the rest, at least as well as we are doing now. There's little or no social distancing going on here in Bude, and round here we generally behave ourselves. No-one told Morrisons to limit numbers, to make the aisles wider, to institute a one-way system. No-one takes any notice of the one-way arrows painted on our crowded, narrow pavements. You can't enforce arbitrary edicts in a country used to being a democracy. So let's make sure they are ditched. With no rules but good advice we certainly won't do any worse than we do now, and a more positive ethos founded on personal responsibility may even mean we do it better. And I'll always have a mask with me.