Murder in the cathedral: Praise the Lord and heed the Rule of Six

HOW are you coping with the Rule of Six?

It would be a great book title, wouldn’t it? Maybe an early Agatha Christie, or a lost manuscript by Conan Doyle, or even one of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series if you count their part-time friend Jo.

It definitely beats the other updated diktat: Hands, Face, Space. I doubt that would sell many copies.

Before that, it was Stay Alert, Control the Virus, Save Lives, slammed by PR experts as unhelpful, vague and open to interpretation. So what’s next? Hands, Knees and Boomps-a-Daisy?

As we approach the half-year anniversary of anti-Covid measures, at least it’s good to know the great British public remains united – if only by their widely shared confusion.

In the interests of that same public I decided to stick my nose out of the door to check that everyone was abiding by the new rules. Within yards, I bumped into a group of a dozen or so co-workers outside City Hall receiving a briefing from the bloke in charge, no doubt about social distancing in the office.

But the real shocker awaited me just down the road. There I encountered almost a score of Anglican divines rubbing cassocks in the precincts of Southwark Cathedral (today’s picture).

They weren’t carrying shotguns, so they can’t have been hunting grouse, a mandated exception to the government’s Rule of Six. Perhaps they had just nipped out for a fag break mid-service. I was tempted to have a word, but as they were mob-handed I decided discretion was the better part of valour.

Better surely to nip home and study the Rule before laying down the law.

The Cabinet Office has helpfully boiled down its latest catch phrase to just over 400 words. You can apparently still go to a wedding or a funeral or “other religious and belief-based life cycle ceremonies”. Perhaps the Southwark vicars were involved in one of the latter. Or maybe they all live in the same clerical bubble.

I suppose that before we get too animated about transgressions of the Rule of Six, we should recall the Rule of One – don’t snitch!

So keep today’s revelation to yourselves. I don’t want the law dumping on the diocese.

Priti Patel, the Home Secretary – yes, you read that right – has said she would call the police to report neighbours she discovered flouting the restrictions. Patel says families should not stop to chat to other families if they bump into them in the street because it was “absolutely minglin’.”

Boris Johnson made it even more confusing by slapping her down as a “sneak” and saying you should first have a quiet word with the offenders. Good luck with that round here! Who’d risk a showdown with the local vicar?

I suppose there’s a bit of the curtain-twitcher in all of us and all these rules have only made it worse. Hands up if you’ve harrumphed at the bloke who sailed into the corner shop without his mask or if you’ve glared at a gang of teens yacking it up in the local park.

None of us is immune. I was in Waterloo at the weekend where a growing flock of cackling henpartyers gathered in force before heading to some mass gathering in The Cut.

Some old pensioner was grumbling into his collar about “thoughtless young floozies…no better than they ought to be…skirts smaller than their face masks”. Then I realised to my horror it was me!