I was going to call this series "plague diary", but then I thought it would be too miserable to be writing that week by week. So let's try to stay positive... Let's assume we're going to survive.

On the home front, there seems to be confusion over the lockdown guidelines on exercise. I guess it's reasonable to tell people that driving in order to exercise or dog-walk is a bad idea, but generally there's not much clarity about how long we should be out for exercise, or how far we should go. The closest we've come is Cabinet Minister Gove's pronouncement that "people can go for the standard length of run or walk that they ordinarily would have done. But… the important thing is, once a day."

Yesterday we did a little circuit to Felbrigg and back. This was really beautiful, and a welcome injection of tranquillity. We encountered perhaps a dozen people all told, and everyone -- as has been the case for quite a while now -- was very alive to the need to do the social-distancing dance when passing each other. There seems to be a strong argument for this more remote type of walk for those who can do it, leaving the streets of the villages and towns freer for those who can't get very far.







Today (Friday) and Wednesday were shopping days, and as we walk in order to shop, we don't go for additional walks on shopping days.

On the subject of shopping, this is still the Achilles heel of the whole lockdown situation (as delivery slots remain obdurately unavailable).

This is how one of the bigger supermarkets near here looked on Wednesday:


It seems pretty good, right? They've obviously tried hard. Stocked shelves, rationed items, a well-spaced single queue, perspex screens in front of cashiers, and (mostly) cooperative and aware shoppers.

But the sheer geography of the supermarket means people can't always keep their distance in the aisles. And as you're queuing to pay, people are walking past at quite close proximity.

We've shopped three times in total this week, to try to build up stores (I'm pre-making meals, and freezing them in all sorts of random containers). But our aim is to get shopping down to twice a week absolute maximum.

As we briefly passed through the town on the way home from our walk yesterday, queues of customers for the smaller shops (which will, sensibly, admit only one or two customers at a time) were stretching out along the chilly, wind-raked streets.

This morning, we couldn't help but hear pairs of people having very poignant, two-metre-distant conversations:

"The kids don't understand not to come close. They'll be all right, but I won't be." "I've got a terrible immune system. I'm a diabetic, and I have Crohn's disease."

Sad and fearful times.

We're also on a much more rigorous cleaning regime than we've ever implemented in our lives, I think... Nigel is in charge of bleaching the hell out of everything on a regular basis.

Here's the place where we're spending the majority of our time at the moment. It could be a whole lot worse, no? We're lucky people.




Upstairs live the Clumpy family, unfortunately... They vary in their intensity. But I try to tell myself that the sounds of heavy feet and loud talking and thumpy music are welcome signs of the life that is being silenced in so many places.

On the home-but-away front, there are many questions. Our beloved Kuching is one of Malaysia's 13 virus hotspots. How soon can they bring this under control?

Last year, we had our first real experience of the Qing Ming tomb-sweeping festival. What is going to happen this year?

Is there any way to stop Indonesia going down the track that so many fear?

And what went wrong in Spain, and does the UK have any chance of doing better?

Strange and sobering times...