London – Day 20 of lockdown

I slept well last night. I’m not sure what the difference was between last night and the night before.

I’m also getting a bit of reading done. Not nearly as much as I would in normal times, but it’s a start. I’m currently flicking between a Stephen King short story collection and Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. And on occasion I pick up The Oatmeal’s How to tell if your cat is plotting to kill you. I have eclectic tastes when it comes to reading. These are from my local library, now of course closed. I’ve read most my own books.

I got up, showered, listened to some birds singing outside my window, drank coffee. Generally on Sundays I’d be woken up early by planes overhead. There are none these days.

It’s a bright sunny spring day in London. Rain forecast for later.

I went out and headed to Dulwich Park. Again there were lots of kids on bikes so I detoured and wandered around Dulwich.

Social distancing continues. People seem to get it now. And I think many runners by the end of this will be highly skilled at playing games like dodgeball with quick moves to the left or right to appropriately distance themselves from pedestrians. The Social Distancing Dodge.

Back at home I’ve been doing some work, a grant application which I’m putting together with some other folks. I swept my front stairs. There’s still some moss on them. I could get rid of the moss all in one go but at present it seems sensible to stretch it out.

Boris Johnson, the UK’s Prime Minister, has been released from hospital. I suspect it will be a few days at least before we see him at a press conference. He really does not look well.

And I had a little cry. Tim Brooke-Taylor died of Coronavirus. He was 79. He was a comedian best known for The Goodies. Growing up in Australia, every weekday The Goodies would be on at 5pm, followed by Dr Who. I must have watched each episode of The Goodies at least five times. I always got the sense that he was a really lovely chap and that show made me laugh. Maybe I would have had a moment of sadness if he’d died in normal times, not shed a tear. If it had been a ‘natural’ death. There seems nothing natural about these deaths and these times.

Perhaps because it doesn’t work in my head with the language politicians are using. That

we’re at war

our national battle

the public has formed a human shield around the NHS

we can’t be beaten

this is a global battle…

We haven’t been invaded by aliens. Tim and all the others, and the numbers are agonising with another 737 hospital deaths in the UK since yesterday 9am and today 9am, are not ‘casualties’ of war. I don’t know Tim. I don’t know if he saw it as ‘going into battle’, or if his family and friends somehow see Tim as being a ‘casualty of war’. I suspect not.

I still can’t make sense of a lot of this. This is why I write. That and generally having no idea what day of the week it is. Or indeed, what week it is. I overheard some folks chatting while I was on my walk. ‘Are we in the second or the third week?’

So that’s it for Day 20. Stay safe, stay well, and stay home!