I remember. That visceral childhood sense of an adult being unfair.

Take a random primary school assembly, in what was surely near the beginning of 1991.¹ Our headteacher – an unpleasant woman who even the other teachers whispered about – was holding court. At one point, she announced that as the school had already done something for charity this school year, we wouldn’t be engaging in any more charitable activities. This caused a bit of consternation. Clearly, some students had been planning. Someone meekly put up their hand, and asked about Comic Relief that year. Surely we could still do something for that?

No, we could not still do something for that. And our headteacher did not give a friendly, kind response. You know, “I’d love to, and I’m pleased you want to do something, but…” The response was rather harsher. Shouting, even. Did the pupil not listen to what she just said? Our headteacher was angry. Angry at someone who, erm, wanted to help out a charity.

And sitting there, on that bare floor in assembly, I just knew that… it was unfair.

*   *   *

Four years or so later, I’m on my paper round. An iron railing looms into view. Oh God. Time for that house again.

Sometimes, things happen in life which justify all the bad sitcoms in the world. And my nemesis on this paper round really is a dog . A nasty, vicious dog, who – unless you’re very fast – will race to the gate and start barking like it wants to eat you. The saving grace of the house is that I don’t have to go to the door – a letterbox is helpfully placed at the gate. It’s a sign of how violent this dog actually was that delivering the paper is still a challenge.

I distinctly remember complaining to my boss back at the post office. He was unsympathetic. People have the right to defend their own house, you know. “Maybe”, I thought bitterly. “But if they want to do that, they could at least walk 20 metres down the road to pick up their own newspaper.” But whatever. I continued to dread, deliver, and dash.

Until one day, as I gingerly approached the gate, the owner appeared. To be fair, she seemed a nice lady. I handed her the newspaper. She asked if I ever had any problems with the dog. I admitted that yes, I did.

Not to worry. She had a solution. All I had to do was bring some treats, and the dog would soon grow to love me.

Bring some treats. Buy some treats, unless I wanted to become another juvenile crime statistic. With, presumably, my own paper round money.

I did not earn a lot of money on this paper round. And now somebody I was delivering papers to expected me to spend some of it on their dog, just to avoid getting attacked.

At the time, I didn’t get that this was an allegory. I do now. But one thing I did know: it was damn well unfair.

*   *   *

Back to my primary school. It’s assembly time again, with my favourite headteacher. And at the end of most assemblies, we usually sing a song, with us all squinting at a blurry projector. We had a standard repertoire of songs, including a version of “I Can Sing A Rainbow”, rewritten to mention all the colours of the rainbow correctly, according to science.

And then there was another song we used to sing. A song full of hope for the future, for our future, the future of children. A rousing song, a beautiful song, a song to stir our emotions and lead us forward into the light.

That song was “Tomorrow Belongs to Me”. Yes, that one.

Stripped of the context of the film, and placed into a brand new, intensely worrying one, you have to wonder just what was going on in her mind.

After all, there’s being unfair, and then there’s thinking the holocaust was a grand idea.

1. It could be ’89, but I would have been seven, and that just seems a little too early. ↩

It’s 11pm, as I leave a certain broadcasting centre in West London. Time to go home. I take the tube; partly for cost reasons, and partly because of a rather nasty case of claustrophobia. The larger tube trains don’t set that off, you see. Either way, taking a taxi home after every late shift isn’t an option.

I get on the tube, and sit down. To my right are three people. None of them are wearing a mask. But hey, I’ve been the person saying that lung issues can be invisible, and that we shouldn’t leap to conclusions about people. Maybe they’re all exempt. I sit back with my book, and try not to think about it.

I’m soon at my interchange, and I quickly change lines. Annoyingly, my next train is at a different platform to normal; I have to run up some stairs. My lungs protest – I have some nasty scarring from pneumonia back in 2016 – but I manage to make it with about half a minute to spare.

We move off. At the next station, somebody comes aboard and sits in front of me. They’re wearing a mask. Good. I concentrate on my book. Until I suddenly become aware of somebody else sitting to my right… without a mask. But, y’know. I have lung issues myself – I manage to wear a mask, but it can be uncomfortable at times – but you wouldn’t know it to look at me. Maybe they’re exempt.

My stop. Thankfully. I can relax a little. I walk briskly out of the station… and into a group of people playing football with a plastic pint glass, and yelling. Well, we’re outside, masks aren’t really required, are they? I pick myself through the group – a little too close for comfort when there’s a lot of them, but whatever – and head for home.

But as I get to the traffic lights, two people cut across me. They’re not wearing masks, either… and they’re heading directly for the pub opposite. “You got your mask?”, asks one to the other.

The other bursts out laughing. “No!” And off they trot.

And that was my journey home from work tonight. A journey made by a key worker, who has zero opportunity to work from home. A journey made just at the point where a second wave of Covid has frankly already started. A journey made by someone who already has lungs which are shot to hell and back.

*   *   *

By the way, they were all men.