Eat Lights, Become Lights:The Art of James Turrell.

"I come from a family that does not believe in art to this day. They think art is vanity" - James Turrell.

There's a lot of people who'd agree with James Turrell's family. Not least now. Art doesn't seem very important when there's a global pandemic sweeping the entire planet (death toll as I write:15,400+ and rising) and compared to health, safety, friends, family, nature, and love it's not. I'm pretty certain that, despite all these blogs about it, I've never made the case it is.

But, like most of you, I'm holed up at home and we all need some kind of distraction at the moment. One friend is watching old episodes of Brookside, another is getting her daughter to do puppet shows, and a few seem to be using the time to do some of the ol' keep fit. Good on them. We need to do what we can to lift the spirits, alleviate the boredom, and keep ourselves as healthy as possible. Habits formed in the early days of this crisis could become quite entrenched. Good ones are advisable (he types trying not to look at the empty bottles of San Miguel waiting to be recycled).

To keep me busy I am, of course, writing. I'm also keeping my cultural diary updated even though that mostly consists of crossing things out or pushing them forward to dates in the future before, probably, later crossing them out anyway. Most exhibitions I have planned, I accept I'll never go to. Possibly the likes of the Tate and the V&A will reschedule shows but it seems unlikely.

One show, however, simply moved online. Online exhibitions have never appealed to me before but I've never been isolated at home or social distancing before. I've never lived through a pandemic before. Very few of us have. James Turrell's The Materiality of Light (at the PACE Gallery, Piccadilly) became my first ever online exhibition and this, therefore, is my first ever review of an online exhibition. I suspect it won't be the last but I certainly hope that, eventually, I'll be going back to writing about both visiting actual exhibitions and having ice creams, pints in beer gardens, and walks in parks afterwards - and appreciating all of it more than I ever have done.

Sagittarius, Medium Elliptical Glass (2019)

It wasn't, necessarily, the best choice for an online exhibition as it definitely seemed like the sort of thing you were supposed to experience in situ. Turrell likes to do big outdoor works in the deserts of America so even a London gallery is probably a little cramped and contained for him.

Try spending eight days alone in my small flat, mate and then tell me about "spaces within spaces". For that's how Turrell describes his work. "Luminous portals", "instruments for altering our perception", and "the radiance of pure colour" are also themes bandied about in the press release. What this means, in reality, is they are oval sprites of colour, sometimes more than one colour, against a different coloured background.

Sagittarius, Medium Elliptical Glass (2019)

Sagittarius, Medium Elliptical Glass (2019)

Which was fine. It'd probably have been better in the large gallery space than online, of course it would - or why would we even go to galleries?, and I'd possibly have spent longer taking it in had I been there. Online it was pretty - and pretty underwhelming but, right now, that doesn't really matter. I was looking at nice things for a while and that was enough. 

The promise of a transcendental experience never really materialised but, again, how could looking at some pretty lights or, in my case, some online images of pretty lights be anywhere near as transcendental nature as living through a time when almost the entirety of the world is looking death straight in the face while everyday norms collapse all around us. Even Picasso would struggle to match that show.

Sagittarius, Medium Elliptical Glass (2019)

Sagittarius, Medium Elliptical Glass (2019)

Sagittarius, Medium Elliptical Glass (2019)

James Turrell's art, in more normal times, would deserve a more thorough consideration and before I can return to visiting actual real life galleries I'm hoping more exhibitions will appear online. Maybe I'll even feel more inclined to write about them in more depth.

For now, I simply thank the PACE Gallery for moving this online. For giving me a tiny glimmer of my normal life when I am, like everyone else, awash in an ocean of uncertainty. I imagine James Turrell would like to leave London for the desert now and stay there. As a man with an enduring love for London, I'd be quite inclined to join him.

The Materiality of Light (2019)

Isolation II:Saturday Night Cabin Fever.

As I write, and post, this I'm thinking, among many other things, of what I'd be doing right now if the world hadn't changed so drastically, so quickly, and so terrifyingly over the last few weeks. I should be in either the Dove pub in Hammersmith, by the river, or enjoying a dosa in Sagar just down the road from that pub. With friends. Having enjoyed a walk I'd lovingly curated, through the parks of Bushy and Richmond, some time ago. With nothing more troubling my mind than how long it'd take to get home and if a crafty extra pint would be a bit naughty.

Bloody hell. I wish that was how things had played out. Instead, I'm sat at home staring at a computer screen for the seventh day in a row. Other than necessary trips to the shops (I'm neither able to nor willing to stockpile) I've not left the flat. I live alone so I've not seen a single person since I said goodbye to Pam and Shep at the end of our Capital Ring walk this time last week.

But I'm one of the lucky ones. I've got a lot of friends - and they're bloody good friends too. Checking in on me, and each other, via Facebook, text, and WhatsApp. Both Shep and Vicki phoned for a chat, Dad kept good on his promise of upping his calls too, and Michelle and I have made our video call a daily occurrence. Today's was particularly great as her daughter, Evie, put on a puppet show for me. A series of puppet shows in fact. Involving a lonely clown, a t-rex and his grandfather, and a friendly owl. Each story ended with them all living 'happily ever after'. Just as stories should. It really was the most adorable and heart-warming thing.

We're still far too close to the start of this pandemic to have any idea how many of us, or which of us, will get to live happily ever after. Since I wrote my first coronavirus blog, just two days ago, global deaths have risen by 3,500 to 12,900, British deaths are up from 100 to 178, Spanish deaths from 767 to 1,378, and the Italian death toll has gone from 2,978 to 4,825 overtaking the much much larger country of China to top a table no country wants to top. A table no country wants to be on.

But most are. At time of writing there have been deaths in seventy-one different countries and in every continent bar Antarctica. It is, quite frankly, mindblowing. Almost too much to take in. The world is being turned upside down and what remains after this can, surely, never be the same again. Everyone talks about wanting to get back to normal but nobody knows what normal will look like once this is all over.

When the Daily Telegraph is demanding a Brexit extension and those who dress to the left politically are calling for more authoritarian measures from a Tory government we can be sure we are in extraordinary times. When that Tory government is promising huge, unprecedented, cash bail outs, miles bigger than anything Jeremy Corbyn's Labour were offering, we see how the free market can't cope and how capitalism can't cater for a crisis.

We're going to need to think long and hard about how we do things. We can't keep worshipping at the altar of money and GDP, we can't keep treating people as units of productivity that serve no purpose unless they sell their labour, constantly buy things they don't need (often don't even want), and endlessly buy into aspirational anxiety driven dreams that only hurt us as people. It's the kind of thinking that sees people fighting over bog roll instead of just buying as much as they need.

Just because more shit than average comes out of your mouth, it doesn't follow more also comes out of your arse. If you have more than, say, ten rolls of toilet paper per person in your house at the moment do the world a favour, now, and take them back to the shop. Apologise while you're there - and then thank that person working in the shop. They're keeping vital and important services running and you're making both their life more difficult and their death more likely.

Stockpilers, who by leaving some without adequate toiletries are increasing the risk of virus spread, are the common or garden bellends of the coronavirus crisis. But, further up the food chain, some of Britain's highest profile morons have clearly decided they're not going to miss an opportunity like this. Nigel Farage has, of course, ramped up the xenophobia (just like Trump, who appears to be in even more of a complete meltdown than normal), Ant Middleton has told his 275,000 Twitter followers that as it doesn't affect him he's going to carry on as normal (virtually an act of manslaughter at this time), and Tim Martin has appeared on television to insist there is no evidence that coronavirus can be transmitted in pubs.

Especially in his pubs. Wetherspoons. Where, admittedly, most men do sit at least six feet apart and never talk to each other. Tim Martin, a slightly deflated helium balloon of Worzel Gummidge that's been left in a stock room since the mid-seventies, is not a medical expert. Tim Martin runs a large chain of pubs that serve cheap booze to miserable and desperate alcoholics and daytime drinkers. He's probably not the best person to speak to at the time of a major world health crisis.

Neither is Farage. He's the leader of a political party that doesn't have one single standing MP. It's really time he fucked off. Others proving, even in a crisis when we need to support each other more than ever, that they're out for themselves and themselves only include Richard Branson (never trust a hippy) who owns a private island in the Caribbean and has a net worth of US$3.4bn but still thinks the government should bail him out while he lays his staff off.

'Sir' Philip Green is a wanker in anyone's book - and always has been. The chairman of the Arcadia Group (net worth:somewhere between two & three billion US dollars) is also looking for the government to help him out. As the man who all but stole hundreds of millions of pounds of pension money from BHS, it's not even the shittiest thing he's done this decade. Here's a photo taken of him and a friend at an international competition to find the world's very worst man.

Alex Langsam, the owner of Britannia Hotels, is another leading coronavirus cunt. The poor hygiene and maintenance of his company's hotel had already earned his firm a reputation as 'Britain's worst hotel chain' but this week, in response to Covid-19, he fired thirty staff at Coylumbridge Aviemore Hotel in Scotland without notice or redundancy pay. Many of them lived at the hotel so became homeless instantly too.

Increasing their risk of contagion. If Covid-19 doesn't do for the businesses of Martin, Green, Branson, and Langsam we should all, when this is over, do the very best to make sure we never support any of their businesses again. Their execrable behaviour has been put into such sharp contrast by the simple fact that, elsewhere, so many other people are doing, or trying to do, the right thing.

From high profile, and very wealthy, hotel owners like Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs closing their two Manchester hotels and offering the rooms free of charge for NHS staff to the British nurse, Dawn Bilbrough, who in a widely distributed short video clip pleaded, in tears, for people not to take more food than they need so key workers like her could eat at the end of the day. Further afield I saw a story on the news about a nurse in Iran who was still helping her patients even with a drip attached to her. She continued until she was unable to, before dying of the virus herself.

Even in arenas that have been riven with division recently there has been consensus and listening. Thursday's Question Time (a programme many have turned their backs on in recent years) from Weston-Super-Mare saw Conservative Health Secrtary Matt Hancock and the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham let each other finish sentences, often agreed, and, when they didn't, patiently explained why they didn't.

It was a tonic to watch. The virus meant there was no studio audience and, as it turned out, that was a vast improvement too. The programme has been so marred by red faced racists screaming ill informed xenophobic rubbish of late that the word 'gammon' has been coined to describe them. With none of that nonsense the panel could actually make their points clearly.

The big political debating point of the last couple of days revolved around Boris Johnson's initial decision to advise people not to go to pubs, clubs, restaurants, theatres, cinemas, and gyms instead of just ordering those establishments to close. The belief being, as I wrote in my earlier blog, that he was helping his chums in the world of insurance.

Writer and broadcaster Guto Harri appeared on Newsnight to suggest that persuasion rather than direct orders is the way you treat adults and it sounded reasonable enough, but it was fluently expressed bollocks. People didn't stop going to any of those places in anything like large enough numbers and for much of that I blame Boris Johnson, and his cocaine addled homunculus Michael Gove, for spending the last five years encouraging people to believe that feelings are more important than facts, that emotion endures over evidence.

You can't let these genies out of the lamp and expect them to go back in if you ask them nicely. Eventually pressure, a growing death toll, and public opinion, got the better of Johnson and now the pubs and all those other places mentioned are closed. Which makes for a very weird, very surreal, feeling in villages, towns, and cities right now.

It's spring, birds are singing, the blossom is appearing on the trees, but we're hiding away from it for the most part. Apart from family bike rides and solitary walks that's exactly what we need to do now and what we need to keep doing until this pandemic is either in abeyance or is done. Until medical experts, not a jumped up prick like Ant fucking Middleton, tell us otherwise.

It's tough. I have friends who have been in floods of tears, worried about the future for their families and the future for everyone. Staying in can be great when it's not enforced and when it's not accompanied by an apocalyptic dread unsurpassed in at least seventy years. Jon Ronson has proposed a theory that long term anxiety sufferers like himself, and introverted ones especially, are discovering that, quite surprisingly, they have better coping mechanisms than most others.

It's a theory I buy into, at least to a degree. If you spend your whole time catastrophising about what can go wrong and what you'll do when that happens you've probably imagined so many different disaster scenarios that when you're finally faced with a real one you've got at least some idea of what to do. It's like that thing when successful sports people talk about visualing scoring penalties or winning Wimbledon. You play it out in your mind ready for playing it out in real life.

But I'm also getting a bit bored of some smug gits boasting that social distancing comes naturally to them. It stinks of "I'm alright, Jack". I don't like it when extroverted people are rude to introverts and, now the weight on the seesaw has been displaced, I'm not liking introverts being rude about extroverts. It suggests a clearly defined binary, an us and them, rather than a spectrum. Dividing people into two distinct camps is never a good idea. Right now it's a terrible idea.

Physical distance we need. Emotionally, let's get closer. Let's not boast that we're doing social distancing better than others, that our kids are being home schooled better than other kids, or that we're using this time to write amazing novels (or, ahem, blogs). It's not about who can do the most creative and worthwhile things with this time. It's about helping your friends and neighbours out when you can, staying in touch, and not acting a prick like Richard Branson.

For my part, I've been watching TV, writing, having a couple of beers, and making sure I'm keeping in contact with friends and family as regularly as I can or I feel they'd like. I'm trying not to judge people who are coming to different decisions to me about how to approach this (having read this far you'll see I've not totally succeeded with that) and I'm trying to be tolerant when people act out of character because they're stressed or scared.

This is going to be a long and frightening journey and, as much as we can, no person should be left behind to fend for themselves. I've been thinking about friends and family that are no longer here, people like my nan and my brother, and wondering what they'd have made of all this. Last year I lost one of my oldest and most loved friends, Bugsy, to cancer and part of me has been wanting to call him up and say "mate. You'll NEVER guess what the fuck happened after you left".

As if it was some weird incident on a night out that spiralled out of control and that once we'd had a quick laugh about it we could move on to the next thing. But Bugsy's not here anymore and this is not some weird incident we'll be able to consign to history any time soon. This is big. This is most likely the biggest thing the world will have to deal with during my lifetime with the possible exception of an oncoming global climate catastrophe.

I'm not sure if I'll be here for that but hopefully those that are, and who live through this, will realise that we can't deny nature or truth any more, we can't pretend we live unconnected to all others on the planet, and we can no longer go on acting as if thinking something hard enough makes it true. There are no such things as alternative facts. There are absolute truths. We need to realise that and act on it and then there's a chance we'll, most of us, get through this.

If we don't - we're fucked, and my saturday night cabin fever will move on to another Bee Gees song and become a tragedy. Instead of that, let's try stayin' alive!

True Colours:Noughts + Crosses.

"What was it about the differences in others that scared some people so much?" - Malorie Blackman, Noughts + Crosses.

In some ways BBC1's ongoing (but all currently up on iPlayer) six parter Noughts + Crosses got overtaken by real life events. It's probably just as well that the remit wasn't to imagine a dystopian future as, a few weeks into the coronavirus crisis, anything but the most hellish and most fevered depiction would just play out like a reasonably accurate forecast for the planet's next few months.

Noughts + Crosses, though, was not set in the future but in a parallel world in the present time. Parallel, but with one very crucial difference. Race. Black people are in charge and white people are a suppressed, othered, and often beaten, underclass. The premise is that, seven hundred years ago, Africa colonised Europe. The British part of that colony became, and remains, Albion.

Albion has been under African rule, via an all black Albion government, ever since and everything that has happened, and is happening, is seen through the cultural gaze of black, rather than white, eyes. The London skyline, though recognisable, has elements of Wakanda about it (and it looks fucking amazing), there is black on white police brutality, white gang violence scars the areas of South London where the 'noughts' or, more racially charged still 'blankers', live, and 'cross' women juicily speculate if the rumours are true about what nought men are like in bed.

The naming of noughts and crosses sounds a bit silly at first but the idea that the underclass are noughts, that they are zeroes, that they are worth nothing in the eyes of their masters makes more sense as this tightly scripted, gripping, and powerful drama moves ever faster forward. In a black dominated Albion even the whites, under cultural hegemony, listen to black music (their midsummer festival has the feel of Notting Hill Carnival), wear clothes and style their hair in ways more associated with black, specifically African, people, and agonise and argue among themselves about the best way to deal with their grim lives and prospects.

Do they campaign for equality? Do they fight to usurp their colonial masters and take back control of their own country? Do they just accept their status as second class citizens and keep their heads down so as not to end up in prison, hospital, or dead? There are, of course, noughts that work with the crosses to maintain the status quo and are rewarded for doing so. Not handsomely, but these self-serving anti-spartacist actors are always vital in maintaining the hierarchies of power.

The attention to detail is fantastic. We see students being taught about the 1950s Segregation Act and how colonisation helped the 'savage' noughts, we hear it said of the noughts that "they're always so cheeful - but you get a few uppity ones", and we see a hospital where most of the cleaners are white and the doctors black. Following a tragedy, dead crosses are named, dead noughts are numbered. Even when we see the characters texting each other the emojis used are brown rather than yellow.

Some of the black characters, or crosses, are seen occasionally wrestling with their consciences about the imbalance of power and the cruelty and brutality that enforces it. But not much. Not as often. Because that's how privilege works. Those who have privilege are protected from even being aware of it, even having to think about it. It's something Laurence Fox, a rentagob bloviating blowhard who had his brief moment in the sun on Question Time earlier this year, seems not to have the intellectual capacity to register.

This reversal, and evisceration, of racial politics could easily be leaden, instructive, and sloganeering. A dull history lesson lacking subtlety. But it's anything but that. It's tense, dramatic, emotional, and, at times, terribly poignant. Characters motivations are not tied to their race or their position in society. Love, familial duty, and revenge all fuel the action in ways that, occasionally, remind me of Michael Dobbs' 1990 House of Cards and at other times of David Simon's epic, and beyond comparison, The Wire. High praise indeed.

There are even scenes that seem to have been lifted, and updated, from Shakespearean or Greek tragedies but if there's one series that Noughts + Crosses most reminded me of it's last years fantastic and terrifying Years and Years by Russell T Davies. That's because, away from the high drama and high stakes, there's a soap opera element underpinning the action.

Or two soap operas. The upper class, black, Hadley family would fit in with Dallas and Dynasty more than the white, poorer, McGregors whose lives feel more akin to some of Albert Square's more unfortunate residents. These two families are the core of the drama and if the multiple links between them are often implausibly made for the convenience of the script and the thrust of the narrative that can be forgiven because Noughts + Crosses tells a story that is sad, frightening, and, disappointingly, as politically pertinent as it's ever been.

Kamal Hadley (Paterson Joseph, you may know him best as Johnson on Peep Show, this is a very different character) is the ambitious, and ruthless, head of the family. He's the Home Secretary but he's got his eyes on the top job and is prepared to do what it takes to get there. But he's not a two dimensional character and he's shown to be a man who very much loves his family.

They love him too. But they don't always like him. Wife Jasmine (Bonnie Mbuli) takes lovers and booze behind his back and while one daughter, Minerva (Kike Brimah), is the obedient and unquestioning type just right for family photo shoots, another, Sephy (Masali Baduza), most certainly isn't. An intelligent student with a streak of independence and a strong social conscience, Sephy has been brought up more by (white) housekeeper Meggie (Helen Baxendale) than she has her own mum, and she's grown up playing with Meggie's son, Calum (Jack Rowan), too.

Now, older, she's falling in love with him and their star crossed romance is the central relationship in the whole series and the one in which all the other action revolves around. Romeo and Juliet have nothing on these two. Callum's training to be a soldier at Mercy Point under a new initiative, from outgoing PM Opal Folami (Rakie Ayola), to allow noughts into the armed forces.

His brother, Jude (Josh Dylan), sees this a cop-out. Jude, made militant by the death of a friend at the hands of the police, links up with the Liberation Militia under the leadership of Jack Dorn. Played by Shaun Dingwall as a thin, ratty faced, straggly haired, speed dealer fresh from a 1980s crusty convoy and, occasionally, backed up by some textbook scowling biker baddies in cut off denim jackets a la one of Breaking Bad's more preposterous episodes.

Dorn's an amoral operator too, and nobody's left in much doubt about that. Callum and Jude's dad, and Meggie's husband, Ryan (Ian Hart - a great actor who I'd clean forgotten about), has been involved with the white liberation movement before but is reticent to re-engage, not least with Dorn involved, but in a land where his son has been stopped by the police over three hundred times in seven years ("about average") and where all black juries hand down life, and death, sentences to white people it becomes a mere matter of time before he's dragged into the fight.

Lethally so. Noughts + Crosses becomes a drama of two deeply entwined, but hugely unequal, families and the love across the barricades between Callum and Sephy whose snatched moments, often in wretched love hotels, are heavy with the ever present threat of violence. Sephy's partner Lekan is close to her father Kamal and he's a respected, and upwardly mobile, soldier.

He's played brilliantly by Jonathan Ajayi as a perfect exemplar of a small child in the body of a large and powerful man. His wounded pride and his toxic machismo give him the air of a bomb that could go off at any moment and whenever he's near Sephy you fear for her. You're never quite sure if Lekan is about to explode or implode but his mere presence unnerves.

It'd be very easy to hold a crude mirror up to society but in showing how historical racism, white privilege, and hierarchical power structures play out on both macro and micro levels Noughts + Crosses remembers to allow for nuance and grey areas. It does a great job of explaining the divide and conquer tactics that hegemonies use to maintain power and in shining a light on how the bullying of weaker members and outliers within the dominant group is played out it manages to expertly excoriate both the process and results.

Witness the boss who won't let his employee off for a funeral he calls a "daft, blasphemous, and un-African ritual" and witness Elaine (Jodie Tyack), a fellow white cadet at Mercy Point with Callum, and the ostracism and shame that is heaped upon her for partaking in an interracial relationship.

It's fun to see Stormzy crop up in a cameo role as a newspaper editor, the architecture of South Africa (where filming took place - and a country that knows more than a little about inequality) is a great fit for the series, and the soundtrack is exactly right. Run the Jewels, Jlin, Gaika, Fatoumata Diawara, Handsome Boy Modelling School, Sampha, Salif Keita, and Ebo Taylor all crop up and Matthew Herbert's official theme builds menace quietly and effectively. Best of all, Songhoy Blues appear live and The Comet is Coming's maelstrom of a track, Summon the Fire, adds urgent emphasis to one particularly dramatic scene.

All these little touches come together to back up some wonderful performances (Ajayi, as mentioned, was the breakout star for me but Joseph, Baduza, and Hart were all excellent throughout and not one single person disappointed) and a brilliant script from Clapham born Malorie Blackman. A script that didn't shy away from showing how extremists from either ends (far right/far left, ISIS/white power movements) can and do, when needs must, enable and empower each other and how, when they fall out as they inevitably always will do, it's often those who tried to hold the centre that suffer the most devastating blowback.

Tension was ratcheted up time and again in Noughts + Crosses and there were times I wondered how on Earth it could ever be resolved or even if it would. I'm not going to tell you that as I want you to watch the series yourself but I will tell you that by the end I was in tears and not just, I think, because - as mentioned at the start of this review, it's been a pretty emotional and intense week. What was required was a drama powerful enough to match the week we're all living through but one that could also distract from it. Noughts + Crosses, luckily, was that drama.

Isolation.

"If we can't come out of this terrifying and unprecedented, in our lifetime, situation with more humanity and more love for each other then love and humanity no longer exist and we'll deserve every single thing that happens to us. The planet will be better off without us" - me, Wednesday night.

I'd not been planning a super busy week as it was. A possible trip to the cinema, a couple of art galleries, and a long overdue return to the wonderful Lexington pop quiz on Monday night had been the key diary entries up until this coming Saturday. For Saturday I'd arranged, curated, written, and planned my first London by Foot walk of 2020. It was due to be a stroll from Fulwell to Hammersmith crossing the river twice, taking in the parks of Bushy and Richmond as well as Barnes Common and a couple of pubs (of course) before ending up with south Indian veggie food in Sagar in Hammersmith.

I'd really really been looking forward to it. These walks have become one of the most important things in my life in recent years and the fact that a selection of good friends always turn up has made them one of the key social events in my diary. But - coronavirus doesn't care about that. It doesn't care about anything at all. So I've postponed the walk and though it was with a heavy heart that I did so, do you know what? It really doesn't matter. Social life, exercise, and culture are all important but staying alive, and keeping other people alive, are much more important.

You'd think it would go without saying but for, a small minority, that's not proving the case. In the last week alone I've had a theatre visit cancelled, a gig cancelled, Greenwich Skeptics and London Fortean Society have announced cancellations, most of the art exhibitions and galleries I'd been meaning to visit (Tate Modern, V&A for example) are closed for a month at least, and, beyond my own personal interests and activities things are shutting down left, right, and centre.

Correctly. Euro 2020 is now Euro 2021, the Premier League football season has been suspended, various GPs are off, and Glastonbury is off. There's a lad who works in my local Co-Op who's quite upset that he won't be able to make his annual trip to Wrestlemania in America of all things. It sounds daft but often people live for their holidays. This guy does a boring job working seemingly endless hours stacking shelves and I bet every day, probably every hour, he thinks about that trip to Wrestlemania.

This is bad for business, this is bad for our souls, and this is bad for our health - both mentally and physically. It's crept up on us in a way that it really shouldn't have. We all heard what was happening in Wuhan and we all read warnings about how it could, and probably would, spread. But it seemed so far away. Most of us have never been to Wuhan and, anyway, they do things differently in China, all that selling live animals in wet markets. The same thing couldn't happen here. Not in Britain. Not in exceptional Britain that has won two world wars and one world cup.

Turns out it very much can. Turns out a virus isn't really bothered about military history, sporting history, or even borders created and policed by man alone (no goose or sparrow worries what country it's in and fish don't care whose water they're swimming in, just fishermen).

I'm no fan of British (always meaning English) exceptionalism but even I thought there was an element of the scare story to it all. But the 10 UK deaths that had been announced by Saturday morning have risen to over 100 on Thursday. That's a fairly exponential growth. That's a very worrying curve. 767 deaths in Spain, 1,284 in Iran, and 2,978 in Italy to go with the 3,245 in China. Over sixty countries in total have reported a death and the confirmed current global toll stands at 9,276.

I've seen people sharing links about how more people die, annually, from the flu or the common cold. But the common cold has not had a 500% mortality rate increase in the last three weeks. Imagine you're standing in front of a car that is speeding towards you at 100mph and somebody advises you it might be a good idea to get out of its way. Would you refuse to move while citing the statistic that far more people die of flu than get run over by speeding cars?

Point being that while there's no vaccine it's probably best to try not to catch coronavirus (or, more accurately, COVID-19 - coronaviruses are a group of viruses, COVID-19 is the one that's doing all the damage right now). People sharing this stuff are often well meaning, sometimes they're a little thick and that can't always be helped. But there are one or two sharing it with malicious intent, trying to stir up a hornet's nest or to serve their own vested interests.

It's not the time for fighting past, and lost, battles. It's not the time for denial, denialism, hoaxes, or outlandish, and often racist, conspiracy theories. It's not the time to play Trump's game of blaming the media for reporting the news as it happens. It's not the time to be trying to score points. It's not the time for oneupmanship. It's not the time for overt party politicking.

It's the time for unity and if we can't agree on a course of action we can, you'd hope, at least debate it rationally. That means genuine political concerns can be, and should be, aired. Did our government leave it too long before taking drastic and serious measures? Did they leave it too long before they started following the science? Has Boris Johnson thrown small businesses like pubs, clubs, and theatres under one of his beloved buses by advising people not to go to them but refusing to close them down - ensuring insurance companies dodge a hefty bullet?

On the latter, I think he has. Managing to be utterly shameless and utterly shameful at the same time has long been Johnson's trademark but when it comes to how long it's taken to close down schools, tube lines, and to advise people to stay at home, I'm torn. I think the right decision has been reached and I'm no fan of the Tories (something I have been on record about for at least four decades now) but I do think there was a fear that they were damned if they did, damned if they didn't. A very real fear about this right wing government is that it will develop an overly, if not overtly, authoritarian streak and I think they were wary of that. A good way out of it would have been to not vote in a fairly extreme right wing government but, as I said earlier, I'm not here to rake over past battles. Well, not much!

As regards following the science, I'm pleased that during Johnson's press conferences he's being flanked by epidemiologist Chris Whitty and the physician, and government's Chief Scientific Officer, Patrick Vallance. Between them they've got more letters after their names than at least three bad hands of Scrabble which, of course, means they're qualified. They're experts and that's a welcome, if long overdue, u-turn by this government. One that prided itself on not trusting experts and encouraged, successfully, much of the general public to follow them in that dangerous way of thinking.

It's also good that some of the government's more cruel and more dense ministers are either taking a back seat or being, essentially, hidden from view. The likes of Priti Patel, Michael Gove, and Jacob Rees-Mogg can stay hidden long after the coronavirus crisis is over and it will be better for every single person in the country. None of them, though, can be as egregious as former Tory and now proud Brexit Party member Ann Widdecombe who has claimed that the pandemic will be no more dangerous than AIDS.

Which has so far killed an estimated thirty-five million people. It's a point of debate if Ann Widdecombe is vile, stupid, or homophobic but the smart money says that she's all three. Ann Widdecombe is seventy-two years old and is, therefore, more at risk of succumbing to the disease than most. Every cloud, it seems, has a silver lining.

I'm fifty-one, hardly the first flush of youth but I should be okay if I contract it. I've got no serious underlying health issues which is lucky because, despite all the walking, running, and swimming I've done over the last decade - and even the vegetarian diet, I've not always led the healthiest lifestyle. I had a bit of gout earlier this year which was painful, I had sinusitis (I think) for the first time back in January, I had a tickly cough and conjunctivitis (for the first time since being a kid) a couple of weeks back, and, quite weirdly, I had a sore and swollen right foot following Saturday's walk that then moved to the left foot and then my left hand (luckily not the right hand, eh? One for the fellow home workers there), suggesting it wasn't anything to do with walking at all.

So I worried about all that and the possible onset of early arthritis too. On top of all the everyday worries about health, money, the state of global politics, loneliness, and growing old. But I've not, so far, worried as much as I thought I might. I've not gone as stir crazy as I feared. Admittedly I've barely changed out of my pajamas (except for the daily jaunt to the shop - the only time I've been leaving the flat) but I've kept myself busy with reading, catching up on television, and, to be honest, sleeping more than normal.

Best of all, by far, I've kept in touch with friends and family. Mum and Dad always ring at least once a week as it is - but Mum's upped the regularity and Dad's promised too as well. It's good to hear from them. They're both over seventy. They're both worried - about themselves and about their family and friends too. Like all of us. As things go they're in pretty good nick, it seems, and their spirits aren't too down. Unlike many of my friends parents, it appears, they're also taking advice to stay in. My dad even mentioned online shopping and looking into signing up for Netflix. A word I never imagined him saying. I still hope he never adds an n'chill to the end of it. That'd be too much.

Friends have been great. Jack, Valia, and Ian all sent messages to see how I'm doing, aware of the fact that I'm on my own and I'm prone to feeling low as it is. Adam, Ben, and Neil all rang for long chats that took in the seriousness of the times but also involved lots of laughter, and Michelle has been WhatsApping me photos of her daughter Evie doing funny things and being completely adorable which have not failed to consistently bring a smile to my face. Darren said if I was feeling alone or bored or just wanted a change of scenery I could go and stay with them.

I'm sure there have been other kind gestures too. I'm very appreciative of all of them, touched even, but, for now, I'm okay at home watching TV, doing sudokus, writing blogs (again, now my left hand has improved), and looking at social media and the news more than most people would suggest is healthy.

I've always been a news junkie (World News Today/Beyond 100 Days and Newsnight every weekday, I've not even given up on Question Time yet) and that's only increasing in isolation. Like anything it's all about getting the balance right but for for different people there are different balances, our mileages may vary, horses for courses etc; etc; Personally, I like a lot of news but I want it from trusted sources and I still trust the BBC and The Guardian far more than I do clickbait websites and people who share stories without verifying them first.

The news has been very worrying, very concerning, the last couple of weeks but that's, surely, the way it should be? I don't want a press or a television news that tells us everything's fine and to keep calm and carry on. I want some honest advice on what's best to do so that people dear to me don't get ill and die. I feel much more able to make decisions based on rational advice than I would be able to do if I put my head in the sand and pretended none of this was happening.

Although I do have to occasionally watch an episode of Brass Eye or a documentary about Picasso to distract myself. The news that's really hit home the hardest hasn't been the horror stories of people dying in hospitals in Bergamo while not being allowed visitors or even a funeral, tragic though they are. They are, as so often, the small acts of kindness enacted by people that throw the random nature of misery and destruction into such stark relief.

The few acts of cruelty and selfishness we're witnessing (step forward, again, Ann Widdecombe, Nigel Farage, Richard Branson, and that dick in the Co-Op I saw nicking a load of Ferrero Rocher) are hugely outweighed by the human capacity for kindness, altruism, and love. This is where the media, social media particularly, can be a problem. It amplifies idiocy more than it does kindness. It's fair enough to subject bands like The Stereophonics to a Twitter shaming for going ahead with gigs/mass gatherings at this time and it helps to change behaviour. But it can make us think that everyone else, except us and the ones closest to us, are idiots who are doing this all wrong.

They're not. A leaflet was delivered through mine and my neighbour's letterboxes asking if we needed help with shopping, some restaurants (at a ridiculously hard time) are handing out free food to those in need, even big supermarkets are opening an hour earlier just for older visitors. During my visit to the shops I've noticed that, bar the Ferrero Rocher guy, most people are going out of their way to both be civil and to thank the staff. Staff who don't have an option of working from home.

We're finding out what jobs and services are really needed and they are, for the most part, people in low paid work that was, until a fortnight ago, deemed low skilled. Business tycoons and people managers were never vital to running society. Doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, shop staff, and carers always were. Everyone can see that now. How could there have once been people who could not?

Another wonderful example of human nature is that people are isolating and social distancing not so they don't get the virus, but so they don't spread it. They're putting others before themselves. It'd be a nice habit to stick to once this is all over. Like most people, I'm not particularly worried for myself. I'm far more worried for older people I know including my own parents. But I'm also worried for people who have that newly popular condition - 'underlying health problems' - as well as for those who have poor mental health and anxiety issues. Life's tough for them at the best of times and just because everyone else is coming in to line with them, it doesn't necessarily mean things will be feeling any easier.

I'm worried for people who need to explain to their frightened children what's happening. I'm worried for children growing up at such an abnormal time. We need to be honest with kids but at the same time try not to scare them. Being a parent looks fraught with angst at the best of times. It looks really tough now.

These are the things I think about when, already long hours into my pajama wearing part of the day, I go to bed at night. I worry what news the next morning will bring but I also wonder and hope if some of it may be positive. Everyone knows that this is going to get a lot worse and everyone knows that this is going to drag on but nobody knows for certain how much worse it will get or how long it will drag on for. We hope for a cure, a miracle of sorts even, but we know, deep down, that that's going to take time so we know we have to brace ourselves for a tough few weeks and months ahead at the very least.

As that goes on my concerns and thoughts may change. All of ours may. But now what I'm missing most isn't the talks, it's not the gigs, it's not the theatre, not the cinema, not even the walks, and not even the pubs. It's my friends and my family I go to those places with and do those things with. It's great, as I wrote earlier, to text, to WhatsApp, to call, and (earlier today) a really lovely video call. But none of them come close to quality face to face time with people you love and care about.

I knew that anyway but the absence of it right now makes it ever more poignant. How I look forward to it all being over and sitting with my friends in a beer garden, walking through country fields, telling jokes, laughing, hugging people, and spinning my friend's four year old daughter in the air.

I've spent almost my entire adult life getting over hang ups about physical intimacy, hugging, complimenting people and allowing myself to be close to them. Temporarily, and necessarily, I both accept and act upon the need to suspend that but when, and it could be a very long when, this is all over I don't want to return to a world of keyboard warriors attacking other strangers on the Internet, I don't wanna go back to division, hatred, and blame. I want to see more unity, I want to see more love, and I want to see green fields and blue seas. I want to hold somebody's hand and watch the sun go down together and think that in the most dangerous crisis that ever affected us we stuck together and we got through it. That may be beyond our control. We don't know. But I know we have to do what we can to make sure it's a real possibility. If that means cancelling a few gigs, walks, family visits, or even weddings, holidays, Euro 2020, and Wrestlefuckingmania then so be it.

I repeat:- if we can't come out of this terrifying and unprecedented, in our lifetimes, situation with more humanity and more love for each other then love and humanity no longer exist and we'll deserve every single thing that happens to us. The planet will be better off without us. We can't choose what happens to us but we can choose how we respond to it. We can respond with hate or we can respond with love. I choose love. Love and pajamas.

The Capital Ring:Parts III & IV:Grove Park to Streatham (Transport Was Arranged).

What strange and uncertain times we live in where even arranging the logistics of walking through commons and parks, stopping for a drink or two in pubs en route, and ending the evening with a curry suddenly become burdened with soul-searching, guilt, fear, and existential dread.

If you thought Brexit uncertainty was bad, welcome to coronavirus confusion. The day before yesterday's planned Capital Ring walk I checked with my two co-conspirators in this project, Shep and Pam, to see if we should postpone or if we should plough on with our intended plans. Government policy seems to be both to try avoid catching coronavirus and to try and catch it so we can create 'herd immunity'. The second of those seems a pretty dangerous gamble as it is but when you're operating both policies at once you're creating mass confusion and, potentially, vastly increasing the eventual death toll.

But, hey, people voted in a government they knew was immoral and lied - so it's probably a bit late to start looking for serious advice from them. Elsewhere there seems to be the kind of panic and confusion that results in people stupidly, greedily, and damagingly stockpiling toilet rolls, hand sanitiser, and pasta (anyone stockpiling loo roll should be forced to wipe their neighbour's bums for them - with their hands if they value bogroll so much) or the kind of delusional thinking that suggests it's all a hoax or a conspiracy.

So to find a sane path between these two extremes is difficult. Some friends on social media seem to be demanding others stay in (many from busy outdoor locations, hypocritically) while others seem to be going about business pretty much as usual. Our considered choice, and one we have no idea if it's right or not, was to go for a walk. The basic thing seems to be no large gatherings in enclosed spaces and a walk for three/four people in mostly large open spaces seemed quite the opposite to that. I ended up walking 35,492 steps (more even than last Saturday, and a 2020 record) which is probably about the same distance I'll need to cover to find some toilet roll soon.

So yesterday at 10am I was on the 122 bus from Brockley Rise to (near) Eltham. We were starting at Eltham because last time we finished our walking there. The Park Tavern had been too inviting and it had got too dark to see Eltham Palace (which I, personally, wanted to see) so we'd hopped in an Uber to Grove Park to continue our day's fun. The plan had always been to walk from Eltham to Grove Park before adding the two stretches from Grove Park to Crystal Palace and from Crystal Palace to Streatham.

We knew it would be a long one. It certainly felt it. It was one I nearly didn't make but more of that later. I met both Shep and Pam in the Top Chef Cafe in Eltham. A perfectly serviceable greasy spoon with a Turkish slant and a couple of unusual meaty dishes called ENRICH YOUR IRON and BODY BUILDER as well as the mysterious breakfast stick, whatever that is.

I had a cup of tea and mistakenly ordered cheese on toast instead of scrambled egg on toast. It turned out to be a lucky accident, it was delicious and it set me up for a long stretch before we'd convene again. Pam's veggie breakfast was huge so she must have felt the same.

We passed into the centre of Eltham, past a church, the shops, and The Park Tavern which proved our undoing last time, and then we picked up the route of the Capital Ring on North Park which soon crossed into the wonderfully named Tilt Yard Approach and down towards Eltham Palace. A place I'd visited over a decade back but didn't have a very clear memory of.

It was certainly more impressive than I'd recalled. It's not changed. I have. It's hard to believe you're only a few minutes away from Eltham's bustling, and somewhat ordinary, high street here. A mustard and chocolate timber framed building from the 16th century (which was once the Chancellor's Lodgings where occasional visitors included Sir Thomas More and Cardinal Wolsey) looks across a road and a moat to the palace itself. It makes for a fantastic architectural set piece.

Eltham Palace was the principal country residence of the English monarchy for nearly two hundred and fifty years, from the early 14c to the mid 16c, and was surrounded by a huge deer park used, of course, for hunting. The hammerbeam roof of The Great Hall was added in 1470 but under the reign of Henry VIII the palace fell out of favour and activities were transferred to Greenwich and Hampton Court.

Even so, Elizabeth I still stayed at Eltham and during the Civil War both palace and gardens were ransacked by Cromwell's troops. In the 1930s the palace was acquired by the textile famous Courtauld family and they built a flamboyant art deco mansion (that's definitely worth a visit - we really didn't have the time). They moved out during WWII and the hall was used as a military college until, in 1992, English Heritage restored the whole complex since when it's stood as a popular, if somewhat off the beaten track, tourist attraction.

From the palace we headed down King John's Walk (a road thought to be named after the French king Jean II who exercised there while held captive in the 14c). Gates are adorned with the white rose of the House of York whose kings reigned 1461-1485. A sticker of a bear had been added and, nearby, somebody had fashioned an apple holder bird feeder from lolly sticks which hung from a tree, full of peck holes.

Views across rustic and rural fields of horses went as far as the skylines of the City and Docklands and on a grey day they looked incredibly distant, and incredibly different to where we were. The road descended downhill and crossed a railway line and the A20 Sidcup Road before cutting through a snicket and depositing us out on to Mottingham Road.

Some nice houses on this stretch even if we managed to miss W.G.Grace's former abode and Mottingham Farm - which, our trusty tome told us, was once the home of a character named Farmer Brown who adopted the typical garb of smock and tall hat and lived to the ripe age of 103 on a diet of whisky, ale, steak, and cigars.

We passed down an alley on the edge of Eltham College whose former students include Eric Liddell (who won the 400 metres at the 1924 Paris Olympics, a story later told in the film Chariots of Fire) and Gormenghast author Mervyn Peake. Soon we reach the culverted channel of the Quaggy, a tributary of the Ravensbourne. That took us to Marvels Road which led us up to the cute little Grove Park library and the end of part II/start of part III, of the Capital Ring. Wow, we'd only just got started.

After crossing another railway line (which was once the site of an accident that resulted in 49 deaths) we found ourselves on Railway Children Walk (named after the famous book by E.Nesbitt/Mrs Edith Bland who lived nearby) and Hither Green Cemetery came into view as the drizzle continued to fall, gently and refreshingly, from the sky.

A brief zig-zag section, and another great view down a suburban street to the skyscrapers of the city (thanks to Pam for photos, as ever), took us through some broad suburban avenues and on to Downham Woodland Walk. When we reached it the sun started to show its face. Downham Woodland Walk was lovely. A Z shaped and tree lined track through a large residential estate that seems as pleasant to walk as it would be to cycle or roller skate. A fellow walker, coming in the opposite direction, told us we might be able to hear woodpeckers soon but we couldn't. Much less see them.

We did see some little wooden seats fashioned to look like tea cups and a tree carved with patterns that looked like a wizard's pyjamas though, and when we finally come out on to busy roads again Shep was pleased to find he was on Oakridge Road. The same name as the road he lives on in Basingstoke. He even posed for a rare photograph.

We were only on the busy streets of Downham for a couple of minutes before we entered into the huge Beckenham Place Park, like most of the land in this area once part of the Great North Wood that stretched from Croydon to Deptford. I'd never been to Beckenham Place Park despite it not being far from where I live. It looks big on the map but it seems huge when you're in it.

Once the private estate of Beckenham Place it's now given over to dog-walkers, kids in playgrounds, discarded monkey toys, mysterious mounds, and a surprisingly large statue of a squirrel as well as lakes and forested areas. It could be a walk in its own right one day.

We crossed the Ravensbourne river and another train track before looping round a fenced off lake and then heading uphill towards the ramshackle looking Beckenham Place itself. Once John Cator's 18c mansion, it now looks in need of repair yet stands an elegant relic atop the hill surveying all around it. Balconies that would have looked more correct in a coastal location and doors with broken glass hid a small cafe and even a craft ale bar but we'd arranged to meet Kathy at New Beckenham station and were already starting to run late so we needed to make tracks.

Cator, a wealthy timber mechant, acquired the park and an earlier building in 1773 before rebuilding Beckenham Place using parts of his former home, Wricklemarsh Park in Blackheath. As with Eltham Palace, it's a place one day I'd like to return to and explore in more detail.

Exiting the park we took a wrong turn past some very expensive and grand looking parkside dwellings before correcting ourselves and making our way towards New Beckenham station where, at roughly 3pm, Kathy joined us.

The next stage to Crystal Palace is not far as the crow flies but our book took us on a somewhat circuitous route, presumably so we could stay in parks and away from busy roads as much as possible. The Crystal Palace Tower would appear on the horizon regularly and was now, finally, starting to look reasonably close. Even if the path kept taking us away from it!

Dipping between houses into Cator Park we crossed two more culverted streams. Both The Beck and the Chaffinch Brook being further tributaries of the Pool River (a tributary of the Ravensbourne which becomes Deptford Creek and empties into the Thames between Deptford and Greenwich). This area, Kent House, marks the point where once London became Kent. There was no signifier of such a historical place that we could find, however.

We contented ourselves by singing Mr Woodbastwick to the tune of Shaggy's Boom Bas Tic before passing through Alexandra Recreation Ground (named for the wife of King Edward VII), considering what an appropriate penalty for unlicensed tricycling would be these days, and admiring a discarded mattress (as on the first stage of the ring) and a mural of a robin and a bee.

We were now in Penge and, having crossed a bridge over Penge East station to prove it, we stopped to admire some graffiti/art. One that could, maybe, have been a Banksy, one of a lovely and overly idyllic image of Penge and the Crystal Palace Tower, one of a naughty fox and a tin of Campbell's soup, and one of a policeman handing Mario a mushroom back (or is it Trump's dismembered cock?) and ticking him off.

What could it all mean? We weren't stopping to find out. A quick nose through the gates at an old, and impressive, and surprisingly not in our book, military school and we made our way to The Bridge House. Our first pub stop of the day and one we had most certainly earned. But would it be completely empty? Were people, those not in Beckenham Place Park, taking this self-isolation really seriously. Shep had reported that Waterloo station was virtually empty.

It was rammed - mostly with children too! I don't think I've ever seen so many children in one pub. It was almost as if they were celebrating, gloating about even, their increased immunity to coronavirus. We found the one spare table in the place, I had an Estrella, Shep and Pam a Beavertown Neck Oil, and Kathy an expensive lime'n'soda and a bowl of chips. The staff were polite. We left and passed under the railway bridge and in to Crystal Palace Park, site of the start of last year's last TADS walk but one worth visiting on numerous occasions.

Waterfowl, dinosaur sculptures, Guy the Gorilla, a bench with a placard saying it's for Capital Ring walkers to rest, and a drawing of dinosaurs riding a train. I've written in detail about Crystal Palace Park recently but, again, it didn't disappoint and soon we were climbing the hill, a little off route, towards the Crystal Palace triangle before stopping again in another pub.

The White Hart was rammed. One table full of very noisy, if totally harmless, men of a certain age. Our theory was they'd usually be at the football but as most of that was called off they'd gone to the pub instead and, a little bored, their day had developed into a pretty serious booze up. We had one quick drink and headed on. We were now on the final stretch of the day and my legs were not about to let me forget that either.

The twilit dusky skies looked radiant and even somewhat sad as we passed through the slightly careworn Westow Park and failed to spot the Greek Orthodox Church of Saints Constantine and Helen. Past large Victorian houses we walked along the edge, and even on, the Upper Norwood Recreation Ground with the South Norwood transmitter, Crystal Palace's not so little brother, standing proudly erect on the horizon.

Soon we crossed the recreation ground and climbed up towards Beulah Hill. We followed this road for a while before turning left into Dickens Hill Wood (where Dickens once stayed and set the scene where David Copperfield meets Dora Spenlow). The road descends quite sharply and my legs were twinging. It didn't help that we overshot the next turning and had to climb back up for about one hundred yards. Shep, who famously once took a roll in the mud in Happy Valley in Coulsdon, was pleased to see Croydon's entire skyline displayed in a dramatic panorama in front of him though.

We crossed Biggin Wood and when it reached a road on the other end the gate was so rusted up we had to squeeze through a hole in it. Luckily we all got through. The next section was due to take us through Norwood Grove and Streatham Common but as it was dark and further gates were closed we stuck to the road. We can come back next time and see what we missed. It won't be as large an extra section as we'd already done. We're making headway.

It wasn't a long stretch to Streatham proper but my foot was starting to swell up now and I was slowing down. Pam walked with me as Shep and Kathy took up the lead. We soon reached The Mere Scribbler pub where it was a relief to take the weight off my feet and enjoy a local Inkspot Streatham lager while we discussed our plans and listened to some of the most uninspiring indie rock imaginable (Kings of Leon).

Kathy decided to head home and we got the bus (mainly due to my foot getting worse rather than better) to the Taj Mahal further along Streatham's epic, longest in Europe, high street. I limped on to, and off, the bus but Shep got me a packet of Nurofen and the Taj Mahal had Bangla so things weren't so bad.

Paneer shashlik was taken with poppadums and, of course - be rude not to, another Bangla before, after my idea that Abu Hamza could release a Xmas single (a cover of Sex on Fire - you had to be there I suspect), and the news that Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV's Genesis P-Orridge had died, and a quick chat about the possibilities of finding a pub, we decided to go our separate ways. Shep stocked up on train booze, Pam (who only lives down the road) ordered me an Uber (for which I will be eternally grateful), and we all said goodbye.

The Uber ride was quick and quiet (the driver had a scarf over his mouth the whole way) and I was in bed by midnight, the UK death toll for coronavirus had doubled in one day and future walks now look seriously threatened, but I was glad I'd gone out. It'd been a tonic, but it looks like the country is gonna need more than a bracing walk, a Nurofen, and a couple of Banglas now. The next stage/two stages will take us from Streatham all the way to Richmond but when we embark on that is, for now, a complete mystery - and far far from the largest one facing us all. What strange and uncertain times we live in.