Kent is a big county, and in the north and east of the county, three boroughs have very high infection rates. The rate in our borough stands at 87/100k, but our whole county is placed in the most restrictive category, Tier 3. The Council District next door, where I usually do the shopping, has the much higher rate of 138/100k, yet is placed in Tier 2 because some other East Sussex boroughs have among the lowest rates in the country. For once in its life, the next village is all over the news: it straddles the county boundary, so one of its pubs is closed and the other is allowed to stay open.
This doesn’t make a lot of difference to us, since we’ve been behaving for months largely as if we were in the top risk category. But it means that, unlike during lockdown proper, I am not allowed to shop where I usually do. Granted, once I’d clocked the figures ‘next door’, I’d decided to give my nearest Fortnums a miss for the duration anyway, but of course this means that our shopping bill is a good bit higher. We struggle to know what we’re allowed to do. We also struggle with the logic that confines us to the county, yet leaves tattoo shops, massage parlours and nail bars open, even in Swale, which has the highest rate in England. I fear that many people will either carry on disregarding the rules, or start disregarding them out of bolshiness or inability to master the detail of the rather complicated regulations.
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