Suzanne Harrington: 'Why are they offering me a mineral? Do I look rundown?'

Suzanne Harrington's daughter is navigating uniquely Irish cultural riddles

Daughter is visiting the fam in Ireland for the first time in plague ages, and has lots of questions. Starting with one which sounds like a maths riddle: if a plane leaves Gatwick airport and the flight takes an hour, why does the journey to Cork take a whole day? I explain about Cork airport being shut because they’re painting the bollards or something. Why couldn’t they have done that during lockdown, she wonders, seeing as it was outdoors anyway – couldn’t it have counted as exercise?

Before I can convolute a feasible explanation – not that I can find one that logically explains an airport shut down straight after a global shut down, just when everyone is gagging to get going again – she wants to know why is everyone still wearing masks and acting as if Covid is still a major thing. Or, she adds, why in the UK are we not? Because Brexit won’t let the virus in, I suggest weakly. I don’t know, ask Boris.