Today is Thursday. You must not go outside!

May 7, 2020 7:49 AM

You must not go outside! Since the first day of the UK's lockdown, this blog has provided a daily dose of everything the government wants you to know ("YOU MUST NOT GO OUTSIDE!"), along with advice that the author thinks you probably ought to know. It started sensibly enough, with daily tips on washing your hands. But then, with a distinctly British sense of humour, it quickly devolved into sarcastic, sometimes surreal, additional tips: why not use oven gloves to handle incoming parcels, teach your dog to speak English to exploit dog-walking freedoms and deliver messages, or take the opportunity to count all of the pens in your house.
posted by avapoet (12 comments total)

Do not discuss The Event.
posted by pompomtom at 7:54 AM on May 7, 2020 [6 favorites]

Hello, good evening, and REMAIN INDOORS.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:57 AM on May 7, 2020 [7 favorites]

Hello, good evening, and scratching only makes it worse!
posted by SansPoint at 8:07 AM on May 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

This is lovely and reminds me of the internet back when MetaFilter first got started. Parody blogs appeared approximately 2 days after regular blogs did, and they really are always fun.
posted by hydropsyche at 8:11 AM on May 7, 2020 [2 favorites]

How many pens does my wife own? How many grains of sand on the beach, how many stars in the sky, etc..
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:22 AM on May 7, 2020

At 8:00pm this evening please dance on your doorstep. Dance to say thank you to sofas.

I'm sure I've seen Sofa Appreciation Dance Night posts making the rounds on WhatsApp. Pitch-perfect.
posted by Glier's Goetta at 8:26 AM on May 7, 2020

I could never get the hang of Thursdays.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:08 AM on May 7, 2020 [8 favorites]

Deliberate or accidental?
The first item:

Ordnance Survey, the national mapping agency for Great Britain, is set to publish revised maps for the whole of the British isles in the wake of social distancing measures. The new 1:50,000 scale maps are simply a revision of the older 1:25,000 scale map but all geographical features have been moved further apart.

Actually that moves things closer together and FWIW I'm going with deliberate.
posted by speug at 11:01 AM on May 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

My interpretation is that the new maps are actually identical except for having a different scale printed on them. The original scale has 1 cm = 250 m, the new scale has 1 cm = 500 m.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:55 AM on May 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

Scarfolk has been having a considerably grimmer field day with this lately.
posted by mykescipark at 12:28 PM on May 7, 2020 [2 favorites]

Take whatever injections are recommended in your sector and enjoy the show!
posted by Glinn at 2:08 PM on May 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

Thank you, this is good. Considering my local council's advice was literally "why not tidy your sock drawer" ... (I have said this here before but I still can't get over it).
posted by paduasoy at 3:12 PM on May 7, 2020 [3 favorites]