A FEW weeks ago, I was feeling as optimistic as possible in the circumstances, given the 16-month long disaster foisted upon this country by Johnson and his government.

I was calm, reflective and ready to return to gigging. Carefully, slowly, preferably open-air and if indoors then socially distanced and well ventilated. The vaccine is working. To rewrite a currently popular refrain: “Two jabs in my arm, rules remain, start dreaming.”
 
I take risks most days: life is a risk, it’s just a question of balance. I cycle tens of miles every week, sometimes more than 100. I have taken that risk for 30 years now, it’s an integral part of my life.
 
And cycling is just a hobby. Live performance is my living and my vocation. I miss it more than I can put into words. My Collected Works has just been published. It needs promoting. I’ve just done a dub poetry album! Gig offers are rolling in.
 
And now a bunch of thick, heartless, far-right, free market, devil-take-the-hindmost-and-sod-you-if-you’re-vulnerable scumbags are about to lift all restrictions as cases soar.
 
The herd immunity solution is back, in all its gruesome inhumanity. My strong but vulnerable lungs, damaged by all those years breathing in other people’s smoke at gigs before the ban — I have literally never smoked anything in my life —  are getting me worried. How much does the vaccine protect them? I don’t know.
 
And so, just like the elegantly coiffured and extravagantly made-up Steve Priest, bassist of The Sweet, in his 1973 interjection during their Number One hit Blockbuster: “I just haven’t got a clue what to do.”
 
Most of my colleagues in the live entertainment industry are aching to get out there. Of course, I understand why. Venues are desperate to welcome back the crowds. People can’t wait to go to proper gigs again and soak up the atmosphere untrammelled by restrictions.

Mental health depends on it. Especially the mental health of young people. They’ve borne the brunt of all this but it still seems madness.
 
It’s recklessness, driven by populism and economics, not data. A hundred thousand cases a day in a few weeks. A Petri dish of new variants. Madness. We should be carrying on as we are till all adults are vaccinated and ramp up the vaccinations as much as possible.
 
However uplifting it has been to enjoy England’s success at the Euros, the sight of all those people crammed together just seems wrong. And it’s one law for football, another for festivals. A cynical preference for a constituency more likely to believe Tory bollocks? As a festival-loving football fanatic I fear so.
 
And so here I am, sat squarely on the horns of a dilemma. Not a comfortable place to be.
 
So rest assured that the summer gigs I do will be either outdoors or in well-ventilated spaces. I’ll be asking people to wear masks at the merch stall. And when the nights draw in and the cold weather comes, the same will apply, unless the statistics are vastly different from how they are now.
 
On Saturday myself and Robb Johnson are performing at a small Labour Party event in a garden in Tunbridge Wells. Nice. The following weekend I have three — all socially distanced, two open-air. The Kings Lock in Middlewich on Friday, Katie Fitzgerald’s in Stourbridge on Saturday and Paradiddles Music Cafe Bar in Worcester on Sunday afternoon.