Peter Rhodes on close-quarter clapping, preparing for another disaster and looking good in a surgical mask

What will tonight bring? This time last week the inelegantly styled “Clap for Our Carers” event on Westminster Bridge was marred by police allowing safe-distance rules to be broken. No surprises there. As I pointed out some days ago, it is second nature for most cops to stick their face in yours.

But it's not only the police who have a curious attitude to social distancing. Time after time, NHS workers are pictured arm in arm, head to head. The rules seem to be: keep your distance – unless there's a really good photo-opportunity. Shall we perish by selfies?

Mask-chic. Have you noticed how some people look better than others in anti-virus face masks which will probably become the must-have accessory of the 21st century? On the telly, a woman was demonstrating how to wear one and she made it look as alluring as the yashmaks in the Turkish Delight adverts (ask your grandfather). It will probably be the same for blokes. A lucky few will manage to resemble Dr Kildare but the rest of us, alas, will look like plasterers.

My special sympathy, in these masked-up times, for those of you who have shelled out a fortune at the dentist's for beautifully straight and Hollywood-white teeth. All flossed up and nowhere to go.

“How can it possibly be wrong to seek to call the Government to account?” asks a reader at a time when other readers are getting a wee bit fed up of government ministers getting hammered every time they show their face.

The answer is that it is entirely right to question government policy, so long as you also ask yourself this: How many emails, texts or other messages have you ever sent supporting anything this Government has done? Every time you put hand to keyboard, is it to have a pop at the Tories? Is this pandemic anything more to you than yet another opportunity for Government-bashing? In short, have you considered calling yourself to account?

On the subject of preparing for disaster, you can bet your life that somewhere in Whitehall is a contingency plan for a re-run of the Bristol Channel Floods. On January 30, 1607 a “wall of water,” described as faster than a greyhound swept up the Channel, flooding 200 square miles, sweeping away villages and drowning 2,000-plus people. No-one knows what caused it but most theories involve a tsunami or a storm surge. There is no earthly reason why it might not happen again. Studies have predicted that a similar inundation today would cause £13 billion damage and threaten two nuclear power stations.

Now the challenge. How much money does a prudent government spend preparing for an event which could strike tomorrow but may not happen for another 400 years? One thing is certain. If the tsunami did happen tomorrow, it would definitely be Boris's fault.