My lockdown regime, generally speaking, will involve a daily trip to Tesco - via the hilliest route in this hilly city, so as to get my cardiovascular system going, i.e. a footpath over the railway cuttings of St Werburghs. However, although supermarkets are booming (and, to be fair, their logistical expertise and the labour of their workers are ( Read more... )

One's relationship with time runs strangely in times like these, and not only because normal schedules of work and school are disrupted. For one thing, time and space are strangely entangled. The future has acquired a compass point: it lies to the south-east, through France (a week ahead) and beyond, Italy (a fortnight ( Read more... )

We're repeatedly told that there is enough food, etc., for all, if only people would stop panic buying. Panic buying, as the name implies, is an irrational behaviour taken as a whole; but for individuals in a panic-buying environment, there is a point at which it becomes rational, because if you don't stock up you won't be able to buy anything at ( Read more... )

It's strange how quickly one's notion of normality changes. Seeing a programme from twenty years ago, one flinches slightly at how easily and automatically people will light a cigarette in a pub or somebody's living room - we've been trained to notice it as a taboo. Meanwhile I've been watching YouTube, etc., over the last few days, and every time ( Read more... )

I decided to make occasional notes of developments here as they happen, because this is the kind of long-running crisis where it's going to be very difficult to remember how things used to be, or the order they happened in, even after a short time ( Read more... )

I can't say I exactly recommend watching the opening episode of Survivors, which I just watched for the first time since it was broadcast, forty-five years ago, but it is very good:

Click to view

In the last few weeks Johnson and his gang of however-many-people-are-in-the-cabinet have discovered that they do rather like experts after all, and indeed are going to let government policy be entirely directed by them for the foreseeable future. But which kind of expert? Will it be your bog-standard scientists, or a selection of Dominic Cummings ( Read more... )