Drawn together by isolation

As the period of mutual isolation continues, there seems to be a mood developing of comradeship, and "we're all in this together". Walking the dogs, people I've never seen wave and say hello, before we cross the road to avoid each other. If we see our neighbours we shout down the road to ask how they are, and we are getting phone calls from people we rarely hear from, as though keen to know the world is somehow continuing outside our four-walled cells. Today, Ann Hynard, an old friend from Edwin's school days, rang for a chat, mentioning the difficulty of looking after her aged parents. She only lives in the village, but normally we don't see her or hear from her. Simultaneously, our friends Rae and Malcolm rang to swap stories of how we are all managing, and who buys our food now we're confined to the house.

We are lucky that MA does ours, though this week we shared our Tesco shop so she came round again to pick her bags up from the garden and shout through the window. Even while she was here the phone rang again and it was Anne in Luxembourg who we never usually hear from. Her children live in UK, so she has to rely on church members and neighbours to help out. Her husband Colin's Alzheimer's is worsening since he had a fall, and he remains in a care home in high dependency. Anne had been visiting each day but is now barred from doing so, so their son is trying to fix up a FaceTime link for them to use; at Colin's end, the carers can help, but the hardest part will be getting Anne to use it by remote-teaching.

Our Hundon Men's Group can no longer meet as an excuse for drinking. We are not given to long, intelligent conversations, so we don't do long or expressive e-mails or phone-ins, but today we went each other a simple email expressing our sentiments: various ways of saying "Cheers!" and each raising a glass in absentia.

It is announced that a mortuary is to be built in Epping Forest for CV19 victims from the new Nightingale Hosptial. Epping Forest is an appropriate site for this, because there are so many bodies buried there already (see Picnic in the forest); but another one at Milton Keynes Icerink less so; people won't want to think of skating over the bodies when this is over. Another bizarre thing is the new government slogan: "Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives!". If Dominic Cummings dreamt this one up, he must be loosing his touch, or perhaps we was touched with dilerium from his own CV infection. This is too negative: the NHS is supposed to protect us. A better slogan would simply be, "Stay home, Save lives".