Social Distancing The Perfect Excuse For Anti-Social Brits
Most of us are following the government’s advice on social distancing and keeping at least two metres apart but for a significant minority of the UK these temporary measures provide the perfect excuse for what would normally be interpreted as rudeness.
Brian Parker from Cockermouth told NEWS of the NEWS,
“I’m not really a chatty person. I must admit that when I go outside I usually try to keep myself to myself so that I don’t end up in conversation. The thing is that normally if I bump into someone that I know I have stop for at least a few minutes and try to be friendly. Since the government introduced these new social distancing rules it’s been fantastic!”
He went on to explain why.
“Yesterday when I took our bull terrier, Monty, for an hour-long walk I must have passed at least five people that I knew. If that’d happened a month ago I would’ve been sucked into mind-numbing conversations with every single one of them. Thanks to Covid-19 the most I had to do was shout ‘alright’ to one of my neighbours who was on the other side of the road. With the rest of them I just nodded, stepped into the middle of the road and kept on walking. It was bliss!”
And he is not alone in seeing the silver lining in the cloud that is social distancing. Olivia Head from Ipswich told our reporters,
“If I’m being honest I think it’s fair to say that I’m not much of a people person. I’m easily irritated by them and, frankly, their neediness in social situations gets on my tits. Normally if I go outside I wear my AirPods and try to keep my head down and not make eye contact. It’s a semi-successful technique”, she added, “but I still find myself having to stop and talk to at least one of my boring neighbours or some loser that I used to go to school with. Not any more! Since the pandemic took hold I can walk down the street and basically ignore everyone around me. Nothing more than the occasional raise of the eyebrow or, at worst, mouthing ‘crazy, isn’t it’ at somebody. God, I love Coronavirus!”
Andy Spence from Barnstaple is even more relieved by the government’s temporary rules.
“Let’s not mince words”, he told our reporters, “I don’t like people. Most of them are idiots and I spend my life avoiding them like the plague. Social distancing isn’t perfect but at least it stops the vast majority of them from attempting to involve me in their mindless bollocks.”
His approach is possibly more radical than most though.
“If someone tries to get too close or start a conversation then, basically, I just lose it. In the last week I’ve told at least five people to get the f*** away from me and threatened to report a few more to the police. I’ve waited my whole life for an excuse to be able to do stuff like that! To be honest I’m not worried about Coronavirus at all”, he added, “I’m just dreading things going back to normal and me needing to find some level of basic civility.”