In the wide range of unlikely eventualities which, only a year ago, you could not even have imagined - pubs closed, elbow-bumping, home-schooling, cutting your own hair and not being allowed into a bank WITHOUT a mask - this week has produced another stonker: being threatened with 10 years in prison for telling lies about where you've been on holiday. Ten years! To put this in context, Al Capone got 11.
It's not even a new thing - people lying about their holidays. Not so long ago, it was standard policy to talk your break up a bit.
"Oh, you should have seen the hotel. Fabulous. And the weather - it was almost too hot. Total chill-out for both of us."
When the truth was the hotel was a dive, it rained every day and the pair of you fought the bit out for the week you were there.
Holidays are now more or less illegal. Fly back to England from 30 red-list destinations and you'll be lifted at the airport and whisked to a three-star airport hotel for 10 days' incarceration at your own expense. Quite hefty expense, too. £1,750 per person.
For that, you get three meals a day, wash your own sheets and are confined to quarters by guards.
Even San Quentin has an exercise yard.
Okay. There are good reasons for strict rules. Scary new mutant strains. And in the grand scheme of things, given the suffering that so many people have had to go through over this last, awful year, being told that we're going to have to put up with restrictions on freedom for a while yet is understandable. But the reason, I think, why so many people have gone off at the deep end this week over the Government's suggestion that vacations, even staycations, will be out for summer 2021, is that it's further evidence of what you could call the suppression of hope. Made worse by Matt Hancock revealing, only hours after Grant Shapps had delivered his getaway fatwa, that actually he and Mrs Hancock and the kids had booked for a break in Cornwall. Nice for some.
Say what you will about Stormont Health Minister Robin Swann, but while he may not always be official spokesperson for the light at the end of the tunnel, at least he is consistent and honest.
This week, he outlined a roadmap for restriction release. (Next week, we may hear from Arlene on local holiday travel rules.)
Westminster, by contrast, is continually all over the show. In any 24-hour period, they go through more U-turns and contradictory pronouncements than we go through seasons in a day. In one press conference, Boris is holding out a brochure for Sun, Sand and Sea, 2021. Next one, he's pulling the beach towel from under you.
Don't, whatever you do, imagine that one day soon you can park your campervan on the sunlit uplands.
They're not just curtailing our liberty with this - they're outlawing daydreaming.
Even on the telly, the getaways have gone - the travel shows and the travel ads. Now the ads (daytime TV especially) are mostly charity appeals for poor donkeys and unfortunate kittens.
It would wear you down, it really would.
Not so long ago, we were being told the vaccine would be a game-changer.
There was optimistic talk about holidays in summer 2021. People made bookings on the back of it.
Now, unlike the airline industry, that's once again all up in the air. People need something to look forward to. A break from gloom.
They may take away our freedom, but they shall never take away our holiday brochures.
Keep eyes glued on DIY hair stylist
In Louisiana, DIY hair stylist Tessica Brown, having run out of Got2B Glued hairspray, reached for that obvious replacement - Gorilla Glue. A permanent adhesive so strong it can even bond metal. A month on, she's still stuck with her new hairdo. She's been to ER and has sought cosmetic surgery. Joking aside, it does sound horrible. But on the plus side, Tessica's attracted a global online following and now has a manager and an agent. She's also said to be considering court action against the glue company. A legal sticking-point may be that she's obviously daft as a brush.
Campbell’s observations un-Christian
In an unusual move for a DUP politician, Gregory Campbell has taken it upon himself to castigate Christians singing the praises of the Lord.
Not on theological grounds, but on account of skin colour.
Gregory insists he is not a racist, but, having done an inventory of those participating in a TV gospel-singing competition, notes that contestants, judges and presenters were all black.
This is a BBC sop, he feels, to the Black Lives Matter lobby.
He missed one participant. Jesus, central to many of those songs of praise, would also count as BAME.
Meghan Markle this week won a legal action against the Mail on Sunday. But might it feel like a hollow victory?
What the court case has flagged up, yet again, is that this cheerleader for love and understanding and outreach to all mankind remains estranged from her dear old da. He's never met Prince Harry. Never met his own grandson.
The royals live by the dictum Never Explain, Never Complain.
Sometimes when you do, you win the battle. But you lose the war.
