When the lock-down rules started, my mum was in a care home 120 miles from where I live, so I didn’t go to visit her. I understood we weren’t allowed to and that it was for a good reason.

On 17 April, my dad rang to say that mum had been taken ill. He passed the phone to the paramedic attending her who explained that they were doing all they could to ‘make her comfortable’. I knew what that meant, but I still didn’t jump in the car because I understood we weren’t allowed to and that it was for a good reason.

Mum died a week later following a ‘probable’ COVID19 infection. (She wasn’t tested. She just died in a care home.) I wasn’t able to say goodbye, nor to be there to support my dad and sister as they waited at her bedside, locked down with her for a week.

On the day before her funeral, dad was taken into hospital where he tested positive for COVID19. So, in the crematorium chapel there were just four of us. Not the send-off we would have wanted to give our mum, and I didn’t go to the hospital to visit my dad because I knew we weren’t allowed to and that it was for a good reason. Thankfully (and by that I mean, thanks to the NHS) my dad survived and is now recovering at home. I can’t go and see him, of course. I’m not allowed to. It’s for a reason.

Perhaps you could explain to me how Dominic Cummings loves his family more than I do mine. And why his circumstances were exceptional and mine were not.

Yours,

Alan Jewell