Close encounters of the Covid checkpoint kind

Going to the supermarket has gone from a routine exercise to an ordeal of epic proportions – but as TESS FINCH-LEES admits this week, it’s reaches new heights of pandemic panic when you get way too close at a Garda checkpoint.

For the past four weeks I’ve managed to studiously avoid going beyond two kilometres of my house. I would rather have root canal treatment – without anaesthetic – than venture further than my garden right now.

The thought of collecting the shopping conjures up traumatic childhood memories.

When I was five, there was a nun from the Sisters of (no) Mercy, who made us sit in the wicker rubbish bin if we got a maths question wrong. I spent an inordinate amount of time in that bosca bruscair, sitting atop peeled banana skins and Agnes McGinty’s congealed tissues, legs akimbo, feeling, in equal measure, mortified and petrified.

Every morning, I clung to my mother’s coat tails and begged her to let me stay at home.

I recounted this story to himself, sitting in my office wicker paper bin for dramatic effect (not the best look in an Easter Bunny onesie) but he, like the Sisters, showed no mercy. “It’s your turn to collect the shopping”.

It was indeed.

When I saw the checkpoint, I slowed and noticed there were two Gardaí standing shoulder to shoulder talking to the driver of a car coming in the opposite direction. They weren’t standing back, let alone two metres.

One of the officers gestured for me to open my window. I was so close to the other car, I could have shaken hands with the driver, so, complying with the Garda’s instruction would have exposed the two officers and both drivers to the risk of Covid-19 contagion, as well as breaching social distancing legislation.

Smiling, I reached for my Covid car kit and held up my handwritten sign asking the Garda to step back two metres. He tried, but realised there was no space to move.

Bizarrely, he then gestured for me to get out of the car, but the other vehicle and officer were still there so I shook my head and held up my sign again. He eventually went around the passenger side, which was better, but not quite two metres.

Disconbobulated, I opened my mouth and out came the jarring twang of a Donnybrook banker.

There’s only one thing worse than having a D reg car (luckily I don’t) at a lockdown check point in Galway and that’s having a Dublin accent (ill-advised in Galway, at any time) completed with a D4 inflection…at a lockdown checkpoint in Galway.

Having split my childhood between a housing estate in Santry, where Doberman Pinschers doubled up as fashion accessory and personal security, and the rest of the time tramping hay and footing turf on the grandparents’ farms in Loughrea and Charlestown respectively, it was far from D4 that I was reared.

Yet, there I was with my frazzled head saying ‘grewsareees’ (groceries) and ‘gorda’ (which is Spanish for ‘fat’ and potentially offensive).

To be fair to the Garda, he was doing his job in incredibly stressful circumstances. I have family and friends who are Gardaí, nationally, and my thoughts turned to them and their safety. They, like all our essential workers, have fears like the rest of us, but they still have to go to work every day.

They reassured me that they either stand back two metres or speak to drivers through closed windows.

They were more concerned about PPE, which was requested by the Garda Representative Association three weeks ago (a lifetime in a pandemic), for Gardaí on patrol, but distribution has allegedly been slow and haphazard.

Some officers said they had to buy their own hand sanitisers and wipes initially to clean patrol cars before and after shifts.

Even in Britain, where the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis has been shambolic and where PPE is like hen’s teeth, frontline police officers have received face masks.

The police federation of England and Wales has issued guidance recognising that social distancing cannot always be maintained, such as when apprehending criminals, presenting an infection risk to officers, the public and the health service.

Therefore, ‘face masks, gloves and hand sanitisers are the absolute basic we would expect our colleagues to be provided with in this current crisis’.

The Gardaí are fathers and mothers foregoing their children’s bedtime stories – indefinitely – so that ours can sleep soundly. They’re delivering food parcels to our vulnerable and checking in on our elderly, so that we can stay safe at home.

While we’re waiting for Charlie Flanagan to catch up with the rest of the world and protect our Gardai who, like the other emergency services, are putting their lives at risk to protect us, we can do our bit by staying home and avoiding unnecessary journeys.

Míle buíochas, a Ghárdaí Síochána. Fanaigí sábháilte.

■ Tess Finch-Lees is an international human rights journalist, who writes for the Guardian and other outlets. She is also a therapist and lecturer in ethics and discrimination. Having spent her childhood between Dublin, Galway and Mayo, she recently returned home to live in her mother’s native Galway.