Lord of the manor

It was no April Fool’s Day joke that this cat vomited on the floor and I had to begin my working day scrubbing the carpet. It then adopted this position for the duration of daylight hours, until it feigned interest in me when it was hungry.

My standard pattern of evening walks is emerging, and I use this as a reward for a day cooped up inside. I’ve been focusing a lot on the long-term societal impacts of the shutdown and I remain deeply concerned about these. However there will be some unexpected benefits for the world resulting from this period: less polluted air, lower carbon emissions, more innovation, less brainless consumerism (although some of that will have shifted online). The post-corona analysis is going to be vast and fascinating.

I took a very long evening walk, which would have been shorter but I was pinned to a route by railway tracks with limited crossings. My work is still fairly all-consuming but during lockdown it’s easier to be relaxed and to ‘go with the flow’ of an evening. Away from work there are only the occasional fixed online appointments or catch-ups, so it makes no difference if I walk for one hour, or two. Not running around like headless chickens is probably a very welcome change of pace for millions, with nice benefits for those usually controlled by the rat race.

I have almost run out of coffee. Visiting the shop to get more was definitely worth the extra risk of contracting coronavirus from a shopping basket.