'PM struggled with whole concept of doubling times... just couldn't get it.'

sir patrick vallance the government’s then chief scientific adviser at the covid inquiry. 

'number 10 chaos as usual. on friday, the two-metre rule meeting made it abundantly clear that no one in number 10 or the cabinet office had really read or taken time to understand the science advice on two metres. quite extraordinary.'

you see horsemouth gets doubling times (he thinks) - that's as near to an objective fact as you can get in a crisis - if on monday x amount of people are being hospitalized and then on friday 2x amount of people are being hospitalized you have a 4 day doubling time (somebody please tell him he's got that right). it can reasonably be expected that by tuesday it will have doubled again (and so on until it hits peak).

in comparison the scientific basis of the 2m rule horsemouth would require more convincing. if there's an infectious airborne disease doing the rounds then obviously getting people further apart will help - why 2m suddenly makes it safe horsemouth has no idea.   

'horsemouth has taken to writing these posts not on the morning of the day but in the afternoon/evening of the day before. he will then add a little (largely based on his watching and reading) on the morning of the day.'

during this week horsemouth and his mum are on abbey duty. in the morning horsemouth went down to open up the abbey in the morning. his mum went down to close it up in the evening. and so on.

in the day they got on with clearing out the greenhouse. (this was not without it's disagreements to put it mildly). there's a second greenhouse (horsemouth thinks they will leave it a bit before making a start on that one).

on the tuesday his mum is off into town. 

'for a long time everyone in that society  knew that nothing really worked anymore, (and) there was nothing they could do about it.'

of course there are distinct parallels between the russians 30 years ago and us now- and as adam curtis points out with sunak and co we are back with the austeriteers (and here's cameron! all it needs is george osborne and we've got the set!).  there is something ballardian in the distance of his vision. 

'in a sense these people were the vanguard of a well-to-do and well-educated proletariat of the future boxed up in these expensive apartments with their elegant furniture and intelligent sensibilities...' 

the birds sidle into the hedge like cheap spivs up to no good. they ae waiting their turn on the bird feeder. there they wait like an advent calendar each one  surrounded by its own peculiar darkness. the jay is too big for the bird feeder. emptied out of plants and tools the greenhouse is like an illustration in a catalogue.