The days of the week melt into each other. It is hard to know when we are. There are regular zoom meetings set up but they arrive almost unheralded because we have so little fix on anything. Last night we went out into the street at 8pm and made a charivari for the NHS. It was a strange, distributed, echoing sound. I enjoyed clashing a big saucepan lid with a wooden spoon. It felt properly medieval. I could see small clusters of people on their doorsteps, joining in. No-one wants to get close to anyone else. Ostensibly this is to be virtuous - not to pass the infection on to anyone else, but of course more powerfully, it’s because we don’t want to get the damned thing ourselves. Out for a walk just now we happened to see Harold Goodwin, chairman of the FavSoc, who has famously actually HAD the coronavirus and is now recovering. He says he picked it up in London, ‘that shit hole’, and never wants to go there again. He says, ‘it’s really nasty. You don’t want to get it!’. ...
We have had such a marvellous spell of fine weather - clear blue skies, warm sun during the main part of the day - that it’s almost like summer. We have had lunch outside almost every day for a week or more, and work in the garden has been quite strenuous and pleasant - tidying away the detritus of winter, and preparing for the light and heat to come. It is an act of wilful extravagance to come inside to write this when I could be out there, luxuriating in the joys of a perfect English spring day. But actually it’s easier to see to type inside. We are so fortunate to have this house, these options. I feel we are like Roman senators in retirement, wanting for very little, just aware of the distance from the centre (and also from those we love). For us, untouched by any personal grief or deep anxiety (or any anxiety) for the last week or so, this is like a prolonged holiday, and that is what people passing by say too. We are tranquil. We enjoy the peace. We t...