OUT of curiosity, what stage of lockdown are you at? Eating porridge from the saucepan because you can't be bothered getting a bowl out of the cupboard? Dreading a Zoom call because you’ll have to brush your hair?
Or might you be at the stage where you need your neighbours to stop power hosing their driveways and creating Chelsea Flower Show-standard gardens because now yours look dreadful in comparison? Is the weekly big shop the highlight of your social calendar?
All of the above? Snap.
Perhaps your heart lifted when lockdown restrictions were eased enough for groups of up to six people to meet outdoors providing they have no coronavirus symptoms and stay two metres apart at all times.
Sleb Safari greeted the news with caution. It still feels like early days and while social distancing with strangers is easy peasy, social distancing with friends is way more difficult.
A ‘picnic at intervals’ seems like the best solution and Sleb Safari has planned its own down to the last coronavirus-free detail.
(Disinfected) invitations will be going out soon with clear instructions: Bring your own soggy sandwiches and sausage rolls, cutlery, plate, napkins, china cup/crystal glass, flask of tea/bottle of warm white wine, picnic blanket, sunscreen, disinfectant wipes, toilet roll, bleach, face mask and plastic gloves. Leave nothing behind, not even footprints.
There will be large circles chalked on the grass at two-metre intervals. Do not stray outside your designated circle or an alarm will sound. The second infringement will trigger a small electric current through the soles of your feet and immediate expulsion. Guests will have complimentary and unlimited use of a shared portaloo which they are kindly asked to disinfect thoroughly after use.
Sleb Safari’s not going to be a total killjoy, there will be a bouncy castle. It will be one on, one off with a deep clean in between.
Sleb Safari will greet guests in a full hazmat suit and since its voice will be muffled it will hold up placards, like in Love Actually. They will say things such as:
- No you may not
- I texted you to remind you
- No you cannot nip indoors to put your phone on to charge
- Should have bought a screw top then shouldn’t you?
- Sorry I can’t really hear you
Sleb Safari suspects the last placard will be a constant throughout the afternoon.
Sleb Safari plans to spend today practising its calligraphy so that the invitations are ready to go in the post tomorrow. Sleb Safari just knows this picnic is going to be so popular that it’ll have to put people on a waiting list.
Alan Carr shares his best Prince Harry story
YOU can rely on Alan Carr to have a cracking story for every occasion and he has regaled Heat magazine with a corker.
Alan’s story begins when he was invited to the Mayfair Club by David Beckham after having partaken of “a few cups o’ merriment”.
“I’d lost my specs and I heard this posh voice say, ‘Where are your glasses?’ I thought, ‘I recognise that face and that ginger hair — it’s Mick Hucknall. But it was Prince Harry.”
And how did Alan react?
“I started doing the dutty wine and the butterfly and boiling. Then I grabbed Prince Harry’s tie and tried to pull him on top of me.”
Heat asked: “What did he do?”
“I’m not sure. I blacked out,” Alan said. “I had to see how the night ended by looking at the Mail Online. When you have to do that to see what you got up to, you know it’s bad. By rights, I should have been tasered by the SAS.”
You're fooling no-one Victoria Beckham
This is Victoria Beckham working from home. That’s what the caption says. “My warm weather working from home wardrobe! Shorts and slippers. The dream.” Victoria, you are fooling no-one.
You have quite clearly never sat on that stool before because you look like you’re unsure how to physically do that. Plus you have not been working from home on a laptop else you’d have it propped up on four hardbacks and be massaging your neck with one hand while typing with the other.
David Beckham, meanwhile, has taken to walking around the countryside dressed like the world’s wealthiest shepherd. Check out this outfit:
