Moreen Simpson: Three adults, one lunch and no fairy godmother

Fit next? This pandemic is fair diggin’ in. Plunged into lockdown in March, most of us thought it would all be over by summer – autumn at worst.

However, it’s been one step forward and two steps back. Many of them hitting us out of the blue.

On Monday this week, I was supposed to be having a wonderful reunion with two pals I hadn’t seen for five months. Lunch in the Dutch Mill, where we’d still get our Eat Out discount. Couldna wait. Sooo much goss to swap.

Last Thursday, when Nippy Nicky announced her six-adults-only rule, I wasn’t fashed. We were only three.

But on Friday, I clocked the fiendish condition. “Only two households.”

Dammit. I could eat with one of my mates, but not with the other. If only we’d decided to go grouse-shooting instead!

So now we’re wondering how long this new Covid rule will prevail. Loadsa oldies like me are calculating Christmas like it’s a major mathematical equation.

Seven take away one mannie/wifie who’s not a bubble. Even if the two-households rule is relaxed, I’m still a buckshie seventh adult among our usual festive get-together.

I can just see it now; left, like Cinderella; when everyone else goes to the Christmas meal (ball). But minus the arrival of a fairy godmother. Awwww. Meanwhile, England’s “policing minister” has urged us all to become curtain-twitching snoopers, calling the cops if we spot our neighbours socialising plus-six.

Now I have to admit, I’ve peeped oot a lace net mony a time. In fact, I’m maybe even a bittie o’ a pro.

That’s because the school opposite is a magnet for night-time burglers (who aye trip the alarm), not to mention the zig-zag lines at my gate, habitually ignored by lazy, dangerous parents. And the narrow street used regularly as a race track for those scrambler-type, lethal, nut-case bikers. So I’ve got more reason than most to be a twitcher.

But would I clype on my neighbours? I doot it. I’m lucky to have super folkies on both sides. Aye there to help if I need it (apart from when Andy set fire to the side hedge!).

Why in the name of all that’s sensible would I start coontin’ their visitors to tip-off Lodge Walk? Good neighbours are like jewels in the crown of your happy home.

Besides, I’ll never forget that day at Mile End school when I spotted a loon swipin’ a quine’s pencil case oot her schoolbag. So I told the teacher, Mr Fraser. The thief was revealed and disgraced in front of the class.

I felt so prood. Until… time to go home, a line of loons chanted at me: “Clypie, clypie claspeye. Yer mother’s made oot o’ custard.”

Fit a humiliation!

Sickened by serial killer

I couldn’t bear to watch the first episode of Des, the ITV drama about serial killer Dennis Nilsen. I didn’t want to be sickened by scenes of stinking drains and boiling pots. Even all these years on, I’m still as accutely disgusted by his horrifying crimes as I was at the time.

On Tuesday there was much debate about David Tennant’s performance and accent. (I canna stick the mannie.) I decided to find out what a former EE colleague of mine, who had been to primary school in Strichen with Nilsen, thought of the production. What a coincidence – she couldn’t bear to watch it either. She even threw away Brian Masters’ biography of the killer after she had to review it for the paper, so graphic were the descriptions of his disposal of the bodies.

I’ve now watched the whole thing and, fortunately, only a handful of scenes were truly stomach-churning. Tennant looked eerily like the man and was indeed mesmerising in the part. However, I reckon his accent let him down. Having listened to police interviews Nilsen gave at the time, I reckon he spoke a sort of anglified Buchan, while Tennant kept slipping into his native south-west Scots.

My friend was remembering how she once interviewed Nilsen’s mother, Betty, after he was jailed. What an agony for a son to turn into such a monster.

Over-exposed wifies should be banned

I’m Mrs Angry from Aberdeen. The BBC can’t afford to subsidise the TV licence for the over-75s. But the corporation can afford to pay for two travel-documentary series featuring the most annoying, over-exposed wifies on telly in wonderful, faraway places.

There’s the habitually unfunny Sue Perkins on the US-Mexico border and faux-dippy Miriam Margolyes in Australia. They should both be banned from the box.