Covid police swoop on fashion designer’s church group meeting

It’s never good news when the police ring your doorbell. So when I undid the latch last Sunday to see two burly, 6ft uniformed Met officers, I feared the worst.

As my daughter had gone out for a cycle ride 40 minutes earlier, my mouth suddenly went dry.

Thankfully, the officers swiftly reassured me that nothing serious was amiss.

So, as a 60-year-old couturier who has never had reason to interact with the police, I awaited an explanation.

One of the officers started by saying: ‘I’m a bit embarrassed to tell you this but we’ve had a report that there’s a church group meeting in a Wendy house at this address.’

Yes, I have a Wendy house in my garden. Also, I had hosted a women’s group meeting there. But since when, I asked myself, had a ‘church group meeting’ been on a level of criminality with a drug baron’s warehouse?

I’d heard reports of Covid police breaking up illegal lockdown parties held by university students and officers issuing fixed penalty notices to people breaking restrictions by travelling 200 miles for a walk in Snowdonia. 

But it had never crossed my mind that they would bother with five ladies meeting in a Wendy house in Greenwich, South-East London.

Perhaps I wasn’t treating my visit from the boys in blue seriously enough but I proceeded to regale the pair with a potted history of my women’s friendship group. All the while wondering who would waste the police’s time.

Dressed in my pinny, sleeves rolled up from stirring our Sunday roast gravy, I explained how I had set up a support group for local ladies having seen how women had been particularly badly affected by the first lockdown.

The idea had been to offer fellowship for women – especially any elderly living alone and feeling isolated.

Most of those I had invited were connected to our local church, St Alfege. Before tiers 3 and 4 had been imposed, the group met in our garden every Sunday and it had been a magical thing.

Two Sundays ago, five of us had gathered to discuss the results of our first charitable effort, a virtual Christmas fair.

The officers seemed vaguely placated so I didn’t bother continuing. But it maddened me to wonder what kind of world are we living in where someone would call the police to report a woman in her 60s for meeting four other women in a Wendy house in her garden.

Eventually, the two police officers and I parted amicably after they told me all was fine.

Although when my daughter returned from her bike ride 30 minutes later, the pair were still sitting in their car across the road watching my front door. 

I like to think of myself as a resilient woman but it was pretty frightening to have the police visit after being grassed on by some Covid busybody. 

It upsets me to think that someone had thought we were being so thoughtless and selfish that it was necessary to call the police. 

In fact, during our women’s meeting, we had spent the last hour – hands red-raw with sanitiser – discussing who most needed the money we had recently raised and how to do good for others.

Life is currently bad enough without having curtain-twitcher neighbours.