A brief thread on how, a few weeks ago, I drove 260miles to go & pick up my family from Dorset & bring them back to London, and on how simple it & straightforward was to do so sensibly, carefully & respectfully to everyone on my route, & entirely within the Lockdown rules. /1

On March 5th I flew from Heathrow to Delhi with my Dad's ashes to go to conduct his last funeral rites in his ancestral village in Punjab. I flew back to London on March 20th, 2 days before the start of India's draconian lockdown, and 3 days before Britain's looser one began.

I had been very aware of the risk of a pandemic spreading ever since mid-January when I first heard of a virus spreading in China during Chinese New Year, the largest annual migration of people in the world. It just seemed very obvious that it was worth keeping a close eye on.

I had already ordered us some PPE back in late January by when it had become clear from Wuhan's condition that the virus was very serious and that our own response in the UK seemed to me to be rather lacklustre. I was wearing a mask whenever I took the tube by early Feb.

By the time I had to go to India in early March, I was certain that we were messing up, & that a lockdown of some sort would be coming down the line, regardless of what the British public health authorities & government were saying. So my wife and I discussed it & made a plan.

We agreed that while I was away, she would take our baby daughter & head down to her parents place in Dorset. We agreed that she would rent a hire car rather than take the train, which she then did. I was very happy to know they were safe & sound at my very lovely In-Laws place.

While I was in India, I was keeping a very close eye on events in the UK via news sites, twitter & a few plugged in, smart & prudent friends who I was pooling information with. We implicitly understood that we shouldn't rely on a Johnson/Cummings government for sensible advice.

I was originally booked to fly back on Monday 23th March, but on March 18th I decided that I didn't think that flight would leave, & so I bought an expensive one-way ticket on what turned out to be the penultimate Virgin flight from Delhi to LHR. I took a private car to Delhi.

In a mask & gloves I flew home. From Heathrow, I took a cab to Dad's house, where my car was parked, & I then drove home to our flat in East Central London. I didn't stop. I didn't get petrol. I didn't see or speak with anyone. To protect others, I behaved as if I had the virus.

Once back in London, I went & put my car in our Resident's car park nearby, went home with my bags, closed the door, & then stayed alone in our flat for the next FOUR WEEKS. The first TWO weeks, I didn't go out AT ALL. I had food delivered, & my neighbour kindly shopped for me.

I know 4 weeks is twice the official advice for quarantine, but it seemed to me there were more unknowns than knowns abt Covid-19 & there was NO WAY I was going to put my family, or anyone else, at risk of my infecting them by virtue of my possibly being an asymptomatic carrier.

All this time, my wife & daughter were still at grandparents' place. To be honest, those first two weeks, at end of March & start of April, alone at home, hearing endless news of a wave of death & disease, with nearby Hackney having 3rd highest rate of deaths in UK were SCARY.

The worst were the stories of people dying alone, at home, the hospitals not admitting them until it was almost too late. You can't help but wonder, however focussed & strong you try to stay. You have to let the fear in, else it overwhelms you. I wanted to see my wife & daughter.

But instead, I sat it out. I waited. I made preparations. I spoke with a close friend & asked him, if anything terrible happened to me, to be there for my wife & child. I holed up, stayed home, did lots of yoga, lots of writing, & ate too much pizza while worrying about my BMI.

Eventually, after 4 weeks, my wife & I decided that, if I could, I would go & pick her up from her parents. So I did the sensible thing: I called my local council's offices on a non-urgent number, so as not to stress the system unnecessarily, & asked to speak to the Police there.

The man on the Council switchboard asked me what it regarded. I explained my circumstances, explained how I'd self-quarantined, & explained that I wanted to travel to Dorset to pick up my family, & could the Police tell me if that was OK. The man was very nice, very understanding

"Give me a minute," he said. "I'll call through to the Police Control Room & speak with them."

"Thank you," I said.

He put me on hold. 2 minutes later he was back.

"I've explained it to the Police,"he said. "They say yes it's fine for you to go & come back in the same day."

"Oh, that's great, thank you so much," I said.

"They suggested you ask yr wife to email you asking you to come & collect her on the day you've agreed, so if any Police stop you on the way, you can show them the email."

"Oh that's a good idea," I said. "Could you email me too?"

"Yes, of course, Sir, I'll be happy to."

Two minutes later he sent me an email confirming that I'd called, that he'd spoken to Police Control Room, & that they had said it was fine for me to travel to collect my family under the sensible, transparent & careful terms I'd set out.

A few days after that, I did precisely that. In a mask & gloves, I went to our local Petrol Station, very carefully filling the tank with petrol & then getting rid of the gloves (I'd heard petrol pumps were super-spreaders), before driving down to Dorset. I didn't stop anywhere.

When I got there, I made sure I parked right outside the house, I didn't linger, I didn't have lunch, I didn't even have a cup of tea. And even though I'd now been self-isolated for 5 weeks, in an abundance of caution, I didn't allow anyone near me from the town or wife's family.

We loaded up the car, strapped in baby seat, & 10mins later we had left & were heading back to London. We didn't stop on the way back. We went straight home. When we got there, we locked ourselves in & didn't got out of the house until lockdown was slightly loosened this month.

Even now, we are being super careful. Going for jogs early in the morning, staying in at weekends bc we know there are too many people out there, that there is another wave coming, that this is far from over, & that our government's catastrophic response is not to be relied on.

It wasn't hard to do things sensibly, it wasn't hard to be transparent, it wasn't hard to be responsible. We always understood that this critical situation requires CO-OPERATION & RESPONSIBILITY: we've got to think of each other if we are going to make it through this pandemic.

Right now I'm listening to Dominic Cummings giving his speech in the Rose Garden at Number 10. Now, I understand that he may have been panicking, that he may have been scared, that his wife had symptoms. (Halfway through my own lockdown, my Sister in Reading came down with Covid)

But none of that excuses his rashness, none of that excuses he & his wife concealing that they travelled to Durham in their respective Spectator articles, none of that explains why they had to travel 260miles north when they could - & should - have stayed at home in London.

None of this stuff he is reporting excuses the Cummings Family not doing what millions of us have done:
- stayed home
- dealt with our own or our family's illness as best we could without risking others
- dealt with our fear, our isolation, our vulnerability RESPONSIBLY

This apologia he's currently trotting out is absolutely no excuse for his behaviour, nor is his Uncle's tragic death. In this complex situation, we have ALL had to make difficult decision, & if, as a Senior Govt Advisor, you make the wrong decisions, as he has, YOU MUST RESIGN.

It's not about point-scoring, it's not about partisan mud-slinging. It's about taking responsibility for your actions, including your errors, & facing up to them. Cummings should NEVER have taken the Virus 260miles out of London just when the pandemic curve was skyrocketing. NO.