Isolation VI:When Death Came To Town.

Death has ridden into town. It didn't ride in on a black horse, it didn't appear on a beach in a long black cloak and challenge us to a game of chess, and it didn't knock menacingly on our window in the wee small hours and coax us outside in our final pajamas. Instead, it arrived in the form of 'droplets'. What could sound more innocent than droplets? What next? A deadly virus that is transmitted through bubblebath? Ginger beer? Lemon drizzle cake?

These droplets of death were more likely carried into your life, into your town, by your nearest and dearest, your friends and family, than by the strange and exotic foreign bogeymen so many of us have been whipped up into fearing, hating, blaming, othering, and, ultimately, excluding over the last few years. This is a global crisis and that's because we live on a fucking globe. Not in small fenced off, impenetrable, nations. We can continue to compete with or demonise our neighbours but it'll make things worse. Not better. We might not, now, be able to spend time in rooms with each other but we certainly need to work together against this. A medical breakthrough and/or an essential vaccine could come from any country. It certainly shouldn't be confined to being used in that one country.

Since my last Isolation blog (on Saturday) the global death toll has risen from 28,250 to over 34,000, Italy has become the first nation to register over 10,000 deaths, Spain has now seen over 6,800 die, France and the US are sneaking up behind China and Iran on the list with over 2,500 deaths each, and here in the UK the current death toll is 1,228. Brazil and Turkey are the latest members of the 100 club. Unlike the one on Wardour Street, it's not a club anyone wants to be part of.

In America, Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and generally considered that country's leading expert on infectious diseases, has warned his compatriots to expect an eventual American death toll somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000. 

A bitter pill to swallow, but now is not the time for emotional placebos. With Johnson, Hancock, and Whitty now quarantined, it's fallen to the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Jenny Harries, to deliver the English press briefing. Like Fauci, she's not beating about the bush, suggesting a six month lockdown may be required in the UK. It's not what anyone wants to hear but it was refreshing in its honesty and admirable in its lack of sugaring the pill. She said it could be longer, she said it could be shorter, she said nobody knows. One thing I've felt for a long time is if you don't know the answer to something - don't bullshit. Be honest and admit it.

Everyone keeps saying this is a surreal time. But it's not. It's real, and it's getting more painfully real all the time. One piece of artwork I saw relating to it, however, did border on the surreal. Cold War Steve's Boschian diorama (that tops this piece) suggests that we have found the artist for this crisis. I wrote to him, on Twitter, a little tipsy, to say that he is to coronavirus what Picasso was to the Spanish Civil War or Goya to the Peninsular War. High praise indeed and one that his reply, 'Oof thank you' followed by a smiling emoji, suggested he was both touched and slightly embarrassed by.

But look at it. It's amazing. It contains multitudes and it's inspired me to stop heading up these blogs with pictures of coronavirus itself and replace them with works of art. Six blogs in and it's time for a new chapter and a gradual change, or evolution, in tone. I'll still be doing my best to point out positives, crumbs of comfort really, but I'll also be pointing the finger at that new tribe of people the Internet has decided to call covidiots.

Former world champion boxer Billy Joe Saunders may be a middleweight in the fight game but when it comes to intellect and morality he's the lightest of lightweights - and a nasty bastard too. Making a prank phone call to Delta Airlines to say he was aware of people on one of their flights carrying the virus was idiotic in the extreme but posting an online video giving men instructions on how to beat their female partners during isolation if they're giving too much 'mouth' possibly marked a new low in a long and excruciatingly painful history of sports stars acting like absolute twats.

More well meaning, but nonetheless incredibly stupid and irresponsible, was the lady in Russia interviewed in a crowded cathedral who believed it was not possible to catch Covid-19 in a holy building because God would not allow it. If that was true it would make God an absolute bastard, But, of course, it's no more true you can't catch it in cathedrals than it is you can't catch it in Wetherspoons.

I've long felt this destructive wave of populist political (and medical) denial was built on the foundations of religious denial. Religions, and religious institutes, have been allowed to lie for centuries now and anyone who questions them, say Richard Dawkins, is painted as the nasty, angry player in this hugely one sided game. The worst example of a politician aping the styles of the fire and brimstone preachers is, of course, the world's most dangerous idiot (and most idiotic danger) Donald Trump.

Trump's latest piece of utter fuckwittery is to boast that the ratings of his press conferences are as high as the finale of the Bachelor or a Monday night football game. It was bad enough when he treated the presidency as a TV reality show. Now he's treating the pandemic in the same way you have to think that Fauci's estimated death toll may be way too conservative. Trump is living proof that elevated idiocy kills.

He makes Boris Johnson look good and, it pains me (again) to say this but, compared to Trump, Johnson is good. To make out Johnson has been an excellent leader, as some have, at this time is simply wrong. His party have underfunded the NHS, demotivated and belittled NHS staff, they didn't take the coronavirus seriously enough until much too late, and they still don't have anywhere near enough ventilators, masks, or hospital beds for either NHS staff or patients.The forty new hospitals and £350,000,000 promised each week to the NHS as a result of Brexit have, of course, not materialised either but did anyone really think they ever would?

At the same time, I'm not joining in with the conspiracy theorists who are claiming Johnson hasn't even got coronavirus (he'd lie about almost anything but even I don't think he'd lie about that) and I'm certainly not getting behind people who think we need a change of government. The public appetite for general elections was at an all time low before this happened. It's not going to happen so shut up about it.

Perhaps the most surprising thing I heard this week was Boris Johnson on television saying  "there really is such a thing as society". Johnson knows his political history so it'll have been a very intentional reference to another Tory PM, Margaret Thatcher's, 1987 comment that "there is no such thing as society". Johnson is drawing a line in the sand between himself and Thatcher and he knows that there are plenty of people out there who will recognise that.

I intensely dislike Boris Johnson's lies, his (previous) disregard for evidence, and his employment of the kind of dog whistle politics that have given such a voice to xenophobes but I wonder if this could be the moment when he changes and starts to become a PM for the whole country and not just rich Tory voters. More likely he's just bluffing and bullshitting again but, for now, there's a tiny bit of hope that there's some humanity beneath that carapace of charlatanism that, bizarrely, has proven such a crude and effective political tool.

Humour has been keeping my spirits high, as have regular calls with Mum and Dad, a long chat on the phone with Shep and, best of all, Ian's brilliant Zoom/Kahoot! quiz (see pic at end of this report) which passed away four hours (not all of it quizzing) on Saturday night so thanks to Darren, Cheryl, Tony, Alex, Grace, Izzie, Jo, Max, Carole, Dylan, Tina, Neil, Rob, Naomi, Maya, Zachary, Adam, Teresa, Miriam, Poppy, Peter, and the star of the night (despite not getting a single question right) Arlow. Can't wait for the next one.

Music, as always, is helping. Over the last few days I've been picked up by New Order (listening to the album Movement as I write this), Evelyn 'Champagne' King, The Rotary Fifth, Rio Da Yung OG, and, quite surprisingly, Elastica and Fleetwood Mac. I've been feeling strangely calm and I've not felt unwell at all. The only doctor I've dealt with is Dr Oetker (in the form of a quattro formaggio pizza) and I've got serious doubts about his medical qualifications.

I've been suggested so many podcasts, articles to read, films to watch etc; that I can barely even start them but how lovely that people are, mostly, trying to help each other stay strong. In London, it's well established that most people barely know who their neighbours are and, with one or two exceptions, that's true for me. But on my rare forays to the shops I've chatted to severalk neighbours (from a distance) and they've all been asking how am I and if there's anything they can do to help.

Most of us are unable to match James McAvoy's wonderful donation of £275,000 to an NHS crowdfunding app but I genuinely believe that a lot of people have been waiting for a time when to be kind was seen as the right thing. We've been living in times where, increasingly, lying, bullying, and shouting people down has been rewarded. It's given us Trump, Bolsonaro, and Johnson and further down the food chain thousands of jumped up little middle management bullies. It's felt to me, for the last few years, that the world's been slowly turning itself upside down. I'm not mad enough to say this is the world straightening itself out but it is true that we can use this situation to reassess our priorities. If you're still not for greater co-operation between people, between friends, between families, and between nations then you've not read the memo properly. You'll make this situation even worse than it is - and this situation is as grave as anything any of us have experienced.

Make no mistake, death is in town and death ain't leaving town for a while yet. But when death rode into town another stranger rode in in tandem. An old friend we'd almost forgotten. Kindness. Kindness is in town too. Kindness across the country, kindness across the continent, and kindness across the world. When this is done, let's remember that kindness was our friend during this crisis, let's remember who was kind to us and others, and let's carry on being kind. That's my ambition. If yours is to top the finale of The Bachelor in the ratings you've misread the situation.

Isolation V:Social Distancing With Tears In My Eyes.

Within minutes of publishing my most recent blog about the coronavirus crisis the news came through that the death toll, in the UK alone, had risen from 465 to 578. 113 people dead in one single day. The most deadly day on these shores for the pandemic so far. The next day was even worse. 182 dead. The day after, today, another 239. To make a total of 1,019 in this one country alone so far.

I'm not expecting those figures to improve any time soon, I don't think any of us are. Globally there have now been over 28,250 deaths. More than 9,000 in Italy, more than 5,000 in Spain, more than 3,000 in China, and more than 2,000 in Iran. The UK has joined France and the US with over 1,000 deaths and in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, South Korea, Sweden, Indonesia, and Portugal there are over one hundred dead.

These daily bulletins of awful news are like a regular punch in the guts to all of us. I felt shocked. Even numb. Unable to take in the enormity of it all. Eventually I turned to Twitter. As usual it was a mix of bloviating blowhards, well meaning bromides, humorous memes, and the occasional perceptive comment. But what had the most profound affect on me was a video of a whole street in Southampton singing happy birthday, from their windows and balconies, to eight year old Sophia Thomas who, of course, was unable to have a birthday party.

That was it for me. The tears started. It was late afternoon/early evening on Thursday and later on, at 8pm, I joined with my neighbours in clapping the doctors, nurses, and other key workers from our windows and balconies. I'm very fortunate in that my flat affords me a panoramic view of London and all across the capital ripples of applause rang out, joined by fireworks and air horns.

It was a genuinely moving moment and a Facebook post I made following it about how, after this, we need to properly remunerate NHS staff, properly value them, and make sure we hold on to this most wonderful of institutions itself got fifty-four likes. My mum even said it made her cry. Not the first time I've made her do that but one of the few times I've actually been proud of doing so.

Hopefully, after this, even the Tory party will never whoop and holler after they've voted down pay rises for nurses again. As so many have commented this horrible and challenging time is giving all of us a chance to reassess our values, reconsider what jobs and services are truly vital, and to tell people we love how much we love them and how much they mean to us.

One person who keeps going up in my estimation is 'the nation's PE teacher' Joe Wicks. I've been told he's got an annoying voice and he's a bit smug but my observations have been that he's trying to keep children fit, trying to put a smile on people's faces, and, last night, he announced that all the money generated by his increased advertising revenue at this time will be directed straight to the NHS.

He's one of the good guys. I might even try one of his workouts as my exercise of late has been walking to the shop and back to buy milk, bread, and booze. Not that I'm complaining. Some are much worse off than me. Prince Charles has tested positive for coronavirus and is couped up in pokey little Clarence House with, presumably, a bare minimum of butlers and bum-wipers. Boris Johnson, too, has tested positive and is working from home. Spare a thought for Boris. He won't even be able to visit his children. As usual.

Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, has got 'it' too and so, possibly, has the Chief medical officer Chris Whitty. It'd be easy to make a snide comment about how Johnson's insistence on continuing shaking hands in spite of evidence that doing so spreads the virus looks ridiculously idiotic and that our government look like an international laughing stock but we need to remember that the coronavirus does not discriminate. Even charlatans and liars are susceptible to it and we must wish him a speedy recovery. If only because Dominic Raab, a Foreign Secretary who didn't know there was a channel between England and France, is waiting in the wings to take over if Johnson gets more ill.


I'm not a fan of Johnson and I never will be but at least we've not saddled ourselves with Donald Trump. Polls in America now show huge numbers of Republicans and Trump supporters who think this is all some overblown media panic or even a conspiracy to remove Trump from office or lose him the next election.

It's a strange policy that Trump's operating. Persuading huge numbers of your own political base to go out and catch a disease that will possibly kill them. When that happens Trump will, of course, just blame somebody else. That's what he does. This constant shifting of blame will never stop until he breathes his last breath which, hopefully, will be very soon. It's bad to wish death on anyone but, in the case of Trump, his death will save hundreds, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of lives so the sooner he dies the better and when he does let's have no tears. The only bodily fluid that should be expended on Donald Trump should be urine. His grave should double up as a public urinal. The amount of people who'd travel round the world to piss on it would reawaken the American economy and Make America Great Again. Even his family would be able to say "it's what he would have wanted"

I decided, last night, to defriend a Trump supporter on Facebook. An elderly lady from Washington state who is the aunt of my friend Annasivia. I met her at Annasivia and Owen's wedding back in 2016 and she could not have been a nicer, friendlier, more accommodating host. So I added her as a Facebook friend and have gradually become more alarmed by how slavishly she follows and swallows Trump's lies. I thought I'd comment on her latest share of his dangerous, potentially fatal, propaganda but then I decided why waste time getting in barneys with people who are too far gone down that road. So I just defriended her.

Doing my tiny bit to discourage the spread of lies and hate on the Internet. Maybe this lady can't help it. Perhaps she's dumb or perhaps she's spent so many years watching Fox News she actually believes this crap. Either way it's not my problem. I hope the disease doesn't kill her but following Trump makes it more likely it will.

There's been another defriending too. Not that these people will care but a friend of my brother, a huge Boris Johnson admirer who is often urging him to "c'mon" and "get Brexit done", has used this time, of all times, to spread racist and xenophobic posts. Defriending him was sad in a different way. He's very close, and very loyal, to family members. But my rules are, as ever, in fact now more than ever, you spread and share racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic bullshit on Twitter you're blocked, you do it on Facebook you're defriended. I hope it never comes to it but I'd apply those rules even for family members.

Now's the time for emotional unity, polite disagreement, and being there for friends, family, AND strangers no matter what country they live in, what country they come from, or what colour they are. Anyone who still can't see that I'm not wasting my time with. This crisis has underlined something I already knew. Haters gonna hate, and the short time we have on this planet we should try and spend with people who are kind, people who make us feel good about ourselves, and people who care about others.

I'm missing going out for walks with my various walking groups, I'm missing going to gigs (tonight I should be at the Barbican with Darren and Pam watching Richard Dawson), I'm missing visiting art galleries, and I'm missing sitting in the park with a can of Coke and The Guardian and watching the world go by. But, more than that, I'm missing the warm feeling of being physically, and emotionally, close to another human being. I'm missing the smell of a friend's freshly washed hair, I'm missing the softness of another person's skin when you hug them, I'm missing the sound of my friends laughing, I'm missing the glint in a close friend's eye as the corners of their mouth turn upwards into a gleeful grin, and I'm missing being in a room warmed by the comforting presence of people I have known, and loved for years.

Most likely it's going to be a while before I experience those things again but in the mean time I'm trying to stay in touch other ways. Sometimes getting it wrong, sometimes getting it right. We're most of us new to this. Social encounters have been migrating online for years now but as the harsh reality of all this clenches its stubborn jaws around us and refuses to let go we know that this is how it has to be. Possibly my biggest worry of all this, beyond even economies crashing and people dying, is that the human race will become ever more lethally divided. We make space between each other now because, finally, we respect experts and science - but is it too much to ask that at some point, when we know we're safe again to do so, we get closer, we become more entwined?

Or simply acknowledge that we already are. This has shown just how closely every single person on the planet is linked. Could the ultimate result be that this crisis which is currently building more borders, not just between states but between people, eventually brings those borders down?Sadly, I doubt it. But I hope so. I don't want to go back to normal. I want to go back to better than before.

I want the kindness shown by the vast majority of friends and family to carry on. I've been listening to music (Alice Coltrane while writing this), watching TV, reading endlessly, and drinkings lots of tea and that's been filling the time nicely. I still feel well physically and mentally I'm in a better state than I might have imagined. A lot of that is down to those friends and family so, as ever with these updates, I'd like to thank Mum, Dad, Rob H, and Vicki for their uplifting calls and to Darren and Cheryl (Luca got involved but Tommy had gone to bed) and Michelle and Evie for their video calls.

Tonight Ian has set up a quiz on Zoom for a group of us. I've got some beers in and I'm really looking forward to it. Then the clocks go forward. Unfortunately one hour and not six months. We're in British Summer Time but it may be a summer like no other we have ever lived through. The rest of the week could see some of the worst news most of us have ever witnessed so it seems to me more important than ever to remove toxic and poisonous individuals from our lives, both online and in real life - which now are closer than ever, while, at the same time, remaining more unified with those we do care about and who care about us. There's a saying that if you can choose between being right and being kind you should always choose being kind. It's one I like. But, right now, we really need to try and do both the right thing and the kind thing. Love is still stronger than hate.

Isolation IV:Silent Spring

"All the time in the world and you never changed a thing. All the time in the world and you stood back and watched the silent spring" - Silent Spring, Primal Scream.

The sun is shining, the birds are singing in the blue skies, and the blossom that I so love and so looked forward to seeing on the trees is starting to appear. It's as glorious a March day as you could wish for but if I ruled the world this isn't the first day of spring that I'd choose to have every day. 

The lockdown continues, the curve rises, and the fear that lingers in the background for most of us becomes ever more real for ever larger numbers, for those who are suffering or those, in the NHS and elsewhere, who are dealing with the suffering. 'May you live in interesting times' they say, but I think most of us would choose boredom now.

Hell, many of us ARE bored. Which seems kind of strange at such a time. Doctors and nurses aren't bored though. They're overstretched, stressed, and have very real concerns for their own health. They're doing an amazing job against a deadly, and mysterious, 'enemy' that we're still not even close to understanding.

My third, and most recent, Isolation blog dropped on Tuesday and now, Thursday, the global death toll has risen from 16,500 to 23,000 and the UK death toll has gone from 335 to 465. Italy has registered over 8,000 deaths, Spain over 4,000, China over 3,000, and Iran over 2,000. Both France and the US are listed as having had more than one thousand deaths. The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, and South Korea have seen over one hundred deaths. More than fifty are dead in Indonesia, Sweden, Portugal, Brazil, and Turkey.

The Excel Centre in London's Docklands is being converted into a 1km long hospital with four thousand beds and, terrifyingly, two morgues in preparation for the toll in the UK to rise as steeply as in Italy and Spain. Or, possibly, even steeper. Even more deaths. We don't know. Nobody does. Anybody who says they do should be shamed as the charlatan and chancer they so clearly are.

We were in a time of rising populism but now is not the time for populists. Now is the time for a hard-headed, and truthful, assessment of evidence and facts. The fatal flaw in the approach adopted in the UK, including initially by me, and other nations has been to not listen to the experts. We're seeing what happens when knowledge and expertise are degraded, belittled, and ultimately ignored by politicians and press barons with their own, often financially motivated, agendas.

The people who have put their faith in bigmouths, liars, and populists while asking 'what's the worst that could happen?' are, right now, finding out the answer to that question. It's not a pretty one. Make no mistake, coronavirus/Covid-19 is not discriminating between nations or political styles, it pays no heed to national boundaries, race, or gender. It is, age excepted, an equal opportunities killer. But some nations prepared better for others and some are handling it better than others. That can be in no doubt.

Boris Johnson, I have put it on records many times, is neither a politician I trust nor a man I admire and some of his messaging has been confusing, unclear, borderline jingoistic, and has depended on the kind of slogans he used to hoodwink people into thinking he's already delivered Brexit. But there have been occasions, and it pains me to say this, where he has struck the right tone and his popularity is on the rise.

I believe there are far better people to lead the country than Boris Johnson. In the past, now, and in the future. But trying to get rid of him now as some are? It's a waste of time, it's not going to happen, and it's a waste of effort. We are where we are. In a place where my friend Sanda, as confirmed a Jeremy Corbyn supporter as anybody you could meet, has shared an appeal by Johnson for people to volunteer for the NHS. The only thing as surprising as her sharing it was that I, a Johnson hater for over a decade now, 'liked' it. Strange times.

Maybe if this government, and many previous administrations - let's not let New Labour off the hook here, hadn't been involved in slowly destroying the NHS we'd be more prepared for this pandemic. It's about as out of character as me staying in (12th day in a row now - bar necessary visits to the shops) for me to say nice things about Tories but Matt Hancock and Rishi Sunak can at least string sentences together and give the impression that (a) they're listening and (b) they're at least trying to do the right thing.

The other Tory move I have to say has been a good one is keeping Jacob Rees-Mogg and Priti Patel hidden. Rees-Mogg, along with Iain Duncan Smith, is one of the cruellest politicians in the country and Patel matches him in that cruelty and excels him when it comes to stupidity. Where she's on a level with the likes of Chris Grayling and Dominic Raab. The perma-smirking Patel, famously, doesn't know the difference between terrorism and counter-terrorism so imagine the gaffes that would come out of her mouth if Dominic Cummings allowed her anywhere near a television interview now.

Patel and Rees-Mogg are the worst of British. Politicians so shameless they have to be hidden away from the public at a time of a global crisis. Out in that big wide world, though, there are people even more craven and venal and they're in positions of enormous power. Bigly. Donald Trump seems to be suggesting this could all be over by Easter and it's unsure if this idiotic statement is driven by financial imperatives to say this or he's had his ear bent by right-wing Christian fundamentalist zealots.

One thing that is clear about Trump is that he is, as so often, talking out of his arse. Dangerously so. The Trump of the Tropics, Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro, has taken notes from his idol's playbook too. He's dismissed coronavirus as both a fantasy and a trick and, like Trump, he's blaming the media and suggesting it's all a big conspiracy to stop him getting re-elected.

We shouldn't be surprised. These people have always made everything about themselves. Their narcissism mistaken for confidence and ability so often and so fully that they've risen, lethally, to positions of huge power. Their admirers like them because they don't just bend the rules, they refuse to even acknowledge them. They create new rules, new truths, and new facts.

Because so many people voted for the hate, greed, and lies of these people it's now no longer possible to deprive them of air time but every single utterance they spew forth from their ill informed and bigoted mouths should be subject to televised scrutiny and examination. Each statement made by these men should be clearly followed in the LARGE CAPITAL LETTERS so beloved of those who defend them on the Internet with the disclaimer THIS IS A LIE!

It's time to get serious. Time to prioritise lives over the economy and stop all non-essential work. It's not easy to define what is and isn't essential because our societies are so intertwined but DIY shops and building sites (except for hospitals or ones which would be a danger to leave as they are) don't count, in my mind, as essential right now.

Johnson's message on Monday night wasn't clear enough about this and he needs to come forward and put some flesh on the bones of this policy. The rest of us, those of us still standing when this is all over, need to remember what people like Richard Branson, Mike Ashley, Tim Martin, Rick Stein, and Gordon Ramsay did during this crisis.

They protected themselves and threw their staff under the bus and, in some cases, put lives at risk rather than dip into their own huge piles of cash. Fat dragons sleeping on beds of gold while the peasants starve. Fuck 'em. Don't visit Wetherspoons when this is over (there are much nicer pubs), don't shop at Sports Direct, and don't eat in any of Gordon fucking Ramsay's restaurants. He's a wanker anyway. He probably actually wanks in to your dinner before he serves it to you. He seems the type.

But let's not just focus on the shitbags. Let's hear it for the good guys. The restaurant chain Leon has announced it'll be staying open to provide meals for NHS workers and that any profit made will be directed towards the NHS, the fashion designer Giorgio Armani has pledged 1.1m in Euros to Italian hospitals, an astonishing 400,000 people have signed up as NHS volunteers, a team of Cuban doctors have landed in Milan to help out (Cuba is famous for its excellent health service and it raises important question as to why capitalist states treat their infirm worse than socialist states do), and the comedian Matt Lucas released a video of his reworked baked potato song with the lyrics changed to reflect current medical advice.

A smaller gesture than Armani's for sure but laughter is a medicine we can all do with a bit of now. Like music and, most of all, interaction (but not physical) with friends and family. Mum and Dad have kept their word by keeping their daily calls coming (they must be bored). Ben, an important key worker who is more overworked than ever, still finds time in his day to ring for a chat and my friend Rob in Birmingham has rung several times in calls that tend to take us back thirty years to the days of the Basingstoke music scene of that era.

The best morale boost of all is coming from Michelle's video calls and her videos of Evie (four). She's been doing planet quizzes, learning from Horrible Histories, painting, crafting, and creating an assault course that involved leaping over a pencil. Hardly a challenging task for a jumping bean like Evie who is so full of life and joy, such a ray of sunshine, that she constantly reminds me not to get too down with all of this. When this is all over she'll be getting a very squashy cuddle.

Tonight I had a ticket for Pass Over at the Kiln Theatre in Kilburn, last night I was due in The Bell in Whitechapel for a London Fortean Society talk titled John Keel and the Mothman Prophecies. Obviously, and correctly, none of that happened or is happening and instead I'm sitting in with Question Time and Mark Kermode's new series of Secrets of the Cinema. It's not so bad. It's not jail.

I've been filling the rest of the time listening to music, writing these blogs, compiling my reggae top 100, and applying to be an NHS volunteer myself. The other night I ordered a green paneer shashlik, dall samba, and chapati (and a couple of bottles of Cobra) from Zainab Mahal down the road. I paid over the phone and the guy drove out and left it at my door as I shouted my thankyous at him through that door. I posted about it on Facebook and it got twenty-five 'likes' making it the most popular meal, probably, I've ever eaten. It wasn't even hot. But it was tasty.

Days are beginning to take some sort of shape now, some kind of vague routine is coming into being. The weekend, I expect, will be tougher (especially now the sun is out) but, so far, I'm feeling both physically and mentally as strong as I could hope to be and I'm finding writing these blogs to be enormously therapeutic. Hopefully somebody, somewhere, is getting something out of them too. One or two people have said they've enjoyed them and one even said reading it helped.


If you're enjoying, sharing, or finding them useful then that's great, I thank you. I have the luxury, and the time, to write them. Circumstances provided that. Other friends are looking after kids. Others are out doing very essential work or work that is, as I wrote earlier, heavily intertwined with that essential work. They're doing much more important stuff that I'm not qualified, or able, to do. So I get to write. Which I like doing anyway.

I'm fortunate there and I'm fortunate to have great friends and family around me. I've even got some milk in so I can have a cup of tea (I was running seriously low) and as the usual bread I buy wasn't in stock I've purchased a rather tasty looking Romanian loaf that I'm looking forward to trying. I even scored a Cadbury's Creme Egg.

Small pleasures, like a bubblebath or a cup of tea, are becoming big pleasures, things to look forward to, and the few tasks I have to carry out seem to be expanding to fill the time. I realise I'm absolutely one of the lucky ones. Like every single person in the world right now, I have no idea how this is all going to pan out or how long this will last. Of course I'm anxious but I'm always anxious so that's not new. I at least know that people, at least most people, really do come together for the common good when they need to. On my short walk to the shop today it felt like I had all the time in the world but this time, with virtually nobody else about, I really did see that silent spring. The blossom is still beautiful, even when we glimpse it briefly.

Isolation III:I Think I'll Call It Morning.

"I'm gonna take myself a piece of sunshine and paint it all over my sky. Be no rain. Be no rain. I'm gonna take the song from every bird  and make 'em sing it just for me. Bird's got something to teach us all about bein' free" - I Think I'll Call It Morning, Gil Scott-Heron.

With a three week, and surely longer, lockdown now in force most of that sunshine and most of those birds are now going to be seen through our windows but we can't let go of Gil's words, we've got to remember there is sunshine, sky, and birds and one day soon, in the grand scheme of things, we will walk freely, and without fear, among them again. Not only that, we'll appreciate them more than we ever did before. Most of us anyway.

The measures announced by Boris Johnson at 8.30pm last night were tough. But they were necessary. Overdue if anything. Some have complained they weren't clear and, indeed, they could have been made clearer - but most of those who aren't acting in accord with them are exploiting that lack of clarity far more than they are confused by it.

Mike Ashley initially said he'd keep Sports Direct open as it provided an 'essential' service in keeping people fit. Keeping fit certainly is important but people can just do it on their old running shoes and jogging bottoms for now. Lots of people do buy exercise gear in Sports Direct but mostly people go there for giant mugs to drink oceans of tea out of and for grey marl joggers that certain men actually choose to wear out socially despite the fact that it reveals an often unflattering outline of their cock and balls.

Mike Ashley knows Sports Direct aren't an essential service. He just likes making money. It's good he's gone back on his original decision. It's a shame that it took bad publicity as opposed to public health concerns for him to do so. Let's remember what sort of person Mike Ashley is after this and give Sports Direct a berth even wider than the six feet we should now be giving everyone. Let's not give any more money to people who would, quite literally, kill your parents or grandparents to line their own pockets.

It always seemed likely there would be people complaining that the government has gone too far with this lockdown but you might have expected them to come from the libertarian left rather than megarich free marketeers. An upside down world we live in. Leading left wing commentator Owen Jones tweeted "never thought I'd be relieved to be placed under house arrest along with millions of people under a police state by a right wing Tory government". I never thought I'd read an Owen Jones tweet that said anything like that, but he's captured the mood accurately and succinctly as the form demands but so rarely achieves.

The lockdown mainly came about because advising, or nudging, people into staying home was, patently, not working. Photos showed people on the beach in Skegness, up Snowdon, in Richmond Park, in Victoria Park (at a farmer's market, ffs), and crowding into a Tesco in Hull this weekend. These caused understandable outrage and led to the inevitable social media shaming. All of which, I imagine, pushed the government towards their decision.

An article in The Spectator (not something I'd normally read, strange times result in strange behaviour) by Isabel Hardman made a reasonable point that a great deal of these people would have gone to Snowdon or the beach because they thought there'd be nobody else there. Trouble is, huge numbers of other people had exactly the same idea.

None of us have lived through a global pandemic before so we're still learning how to behave. There will be mistakes along the way. As Hardman said, we shouldn't be shaming these people with the equivalent of white feathers (to symbolise cowardice) or calling them idiots or wankers for making an honest mistake, but trying to educate them.

Further division won't help. Although if they turn up on the beaches next weekend then, fair season, they genuinely are idiots and wankers and should be arrested. My mum's friend Jean is neither an idiot nor a wanker but she's in her seventies and has continued working in her local shop. She says it'll be fine. There's no way she can catch the coronavirus. She has a glass of warm Ribena every afternoon and she hasn't had flu for decades.

It does sound idiotic but she's got no computer, no access to the Internet, and she hardly watches the news or reads any papers. She'll only believe this is real when she, or the sick and elderly brother she lives with, gets seriously ill.

Or dies. As many around the world still are. Since I dropped my last Isolation blog on Saturday the global death toll has risen from 12,900 to 16,500, deaths in Italy are up from 4,825 to over 6,000, in Spain from 1,378 to 2,696 (almost doubling), and in the UK from 178 to 335. There have been deaths in eighty-nine different countries so far. From Guatemala to Gambia, from Azerbaijan to Argentina, and from Indonesia to Iceland.

It's making it very very clear that nobody, no nation, is exceptional in anyway. We're all the same. We're all humans. We're all susceptible to not just the same health concerns but the same loves, passions, anxieties, and desires. The historian and author Giles Tremlett wrote a wonderful and frightening article for The Guardian in which he incisively outlined the dangers regarding the concept of exceptionalism at the time of a health crisis.

"Ideas of cultural or national superiority are the greatest risk factor of all at a time like this. Nowhere is that a more serious danger right now than in the United Kingdom and the United States – two countries especially prone to such delusions" were, to me, a particularly powerful pair of sentences that showed that empty slogans like Make America Great Again, Unleash Britain's Potential, and Get Brexit Done have sold a myth to many who live in these countries that, for some reason, we are better, stronger people and an accident of birth can save us from the ill fortunes and even ill health that affect others.

Even with a stiff upper lip, you can die in intense pain on a hospital bed or, due to the lack of them, in a hospital corridor on a trolley. Tremlett ends his article by saying that "when this is all over, we will count the dead and discover which governments did the best job of protecting their people. Ideas of national superiority will have to be buried with them".

I agree with every word he says. It makes for uncomfortable reading - but uncomfortable reading is required now. Heads in sand won't work. We must be informed and we must be informed reliably. Not by those peddling agendas or conspiracy theories. But we must keep our spirits up too - and mine, so far - surprising even to me, are quite high. All things considered.

Today is my tenth day in a row staying in my flat. I live alone, I've got no garden, and, other than necessary trips to the shops, I've not seen a single person. I've been writing blogs of couse (I find writing enormously therapeutic), I've been eating a lot of macaroni cheese, I've been drinking lots of tea, I've been watching TV (Noughts + Crosses, Simon Reeve, art programmes with Andrew Graham Dixon and Waldemar Januszczak, and Monday night is quiz night:- University Challenge, Only Connect, Mastermind), I've been doing crosswords and sudokus, I've been playing Words with Friends (with, er, friends - and one stranger), and I've been listening to a lot of music.

Music has always been a salve and, now, I'm finding that more than ever. While I'm writing this blog I'm listening to Cannonball Adderley, I heard his Mercy, Mercy, Mercy on the radio and it just moved me, just felt right for my mood. Gil Scott-Heron's I Think I'll Call It Morning hit home too (hence its position at the top of the blog), and so did Return to Forever. Jazz fusion not being an area I'm overly familiar with and may have backed away from in fear in the past.

I've always loved reggae and those songs of defiance in the face of struggle seem more potent than ever now. So much so that I've embarked on compiling a personal top 100 reggae tunes and posting one to Facebook each day (as I've previously done with The Fall and David Bowie) in an attempt to keep mine, and friends, spirits up and give us a daily talking point that isn't the coronavirus.

But the coronavirus, COVID-19, seeps into everything now, and music is no exception. This morning I read the news that Cameroonian saxophonist, vibraphonist, and all round funky dude Manu Dibango had passed away in Paris, aged 86. Not the first name musician to die of coronavirus (a couple of jazzers have too) but the first one that was known to me and the first one I was a fan of.

Very sad. Another well known person who has contracted COVID-19 is Harvey Weinstein. Dibango devoted his life to bringing joy to people. Weinstein's main contribution to the world was ruining young women's lives so it's hard to feel sympathy for him. To put it lightly, 'social distancing' was never his strong suit and he probably thought Covid was some hot starlet, that 19 was her age, and that she was just yet another woman he could rape.

He got a test though which is more than most Brits or Americans are getting. Most of my friends are in good health and good spirits but one or two are getting concerned and, at this time, we need to listen to people's concerns, take them seriously, not tell them they're over-reacting, and to find time for them. As a note to friends reading this, I'm at the end of the line whenever you want to call.

It's good to see my friends recommending films and music, arranging a Saturday night virtual get together (hopefully, with beer and curry), setting up their home schools and home offices and sharing pictures of them, and doing PE with Joe Wicks (a man who is proving incredibly popular at the moment, one of the good guys). There's still laughter too. Another salve to go along with music. This week William Roache, who plays Ken Barlow on Coronation Street, appeared on This Morning and Meditating with Ken Barlow took on a Twitter life of its own. An #accidentalpartridge we could all enjoy.

If Monkey Tennis is on by the end of the week I'll probably tune in. The best thing my friends are doing though, for me, is staying in touch. Since I wrote last I've had calls from Shep, Simon, Mum and Dad, and video calls with Valia and Michelle. We all talk about our concerns but we also talk about other stuff, as well. After each of these calls I feel a bit better about things. I can only hope it's working both ways.

As the lockdown bites harder I'm planning to keep those calls going, intending to carry on writing these (and other) blogs, and I'm going to continue drinking lots of tea and listening to lots of music. While outdoor exercise is allowed I will try to get out for a run. But I will keep checking the news as well.

Fearing the worst but hoping for little crumbs of comfort. The death rates in both the UK and Italy didn't rise quite as steeply as they have been doing yesterday and in China people are starting to go outside again. It's way way too early to be anything other than cautiously optimistic, and it would be homicidal to suggest we just carry on as normal, but we need to cling on to hope during what seem like hopeless times more than ever.

That's one thing I've learned from listening to all that reggae, jazz, soul, and blues. I think I'll call it morning. The morning of a very very long and challenging day, a day that may last months, but a morning nonetheless. I've woken up in the morning before and barely been able to face the day yet have found myself later that evening sat with friends laughing and joking. To get through this I have to view this as one ridiculously long and extended day. This bit now? I think I'll call it morning.