One of those great covers Private Eye routinely produces. Buy the magazine as I do; it may be the best read in British publishing
My heartfelt thanks to Bill Taylor and Richard Pretorius for their superb contributions from Toronto and Madrid to this series on life under Covid-19. Here's my own first offering as a reluctant Londoner ...
Just over three weeks ago, I thought we might be sleepwalking into an unnecessary economic crisis.
I posted this sarcastic message at Facebook: "This is the moment to put aside partisan thoughts. In these dark times, let’s salute the Government’s valiant efforts to call an emergency Cobra meeting and then hold it only three days later. Let’s also salute the courage of 66m UK inhabitants who are going about their daily lives as if nothing much had happened. And may we also wish speedy recoveries to the 40 who’ve got Coronavirus?"
It can now be seen as utterly crass. Mitigating features? Plenty of highly intelligent people, including doctors known to me, at that stage shared my cynical outlook, arguing that ordinary decent winter flu was by far a greater threat, and one that never went away. The Government's own dallying over the timing of that "emergency" suggests similar thoughts had crossed ministerial minds.
We now know the crisis was not imagined and that, while many still seem to see no need to change their everyday lives, coronavirus is every bit as real a menace as suggested by one friend, Michael Smith, in his reply to my Facebook post back on March 2: "I tend to agree but I am assured by my neighbours, both senior NHS personnel, that it really is much more serious than it seems."
In any case, those of us capable of joined-up writing - and that is not intended to exclude any among the famous 17.4m who now recognise the idiocy of the Trump way, the way of their erstwhile hero, on Covid-19 as on so much else - now recognise the gravity of the pandemic. We have adjusted our habits accordingly, whether or not we did so before told we had to. And remember: Boris's unprecedented crackdown came a full week after President Emmanuel Macron imposed rather more restrictive measures in France.
On Sunday, for Mother's Day, I had promised to take Joelle, the mother of my children, to a National Trust site. We were being encouraged to do such things, for exercise and morale. We were almost there, at Black Down near Haslemere, the highest point of Surrey's South Downs, when the news on the radio told us the National Trust had changed its mind and was closing all its properties.
.
This being an open-air site, not a building, we completed the journey, parked and began to walk. Even the NT website (now) says only "Important notice - we've closed all our car parks, to further attempt to help restrict the spread of coronavirus. We encourage everyone to observe social distancing and not travel". It was quiet but not deserted and we passed enough other people - albeit keeping a distance - to make it clear to us that we should not stay, gorgeous as it was. Home by four.
But where is home? For me, it's the part of France where we've spent much of almost every year since 2007, holidays for 15 years before that. What work I still have mostly concerns France. I have downloaded and printed the necessary attestations to allow us to make the journey (or so we think) plus a professional justificatif confirming my need, as someone for once designated as an essential worker, to be there.
Yet we are unsure. Eurotunnel bookings come and go, mercifully without cost as our one-way ticket can be changed as often as we wish for a year. Family is here in the UK. I am not enthused by the idea of being stopped and made to justify my journey at a succession of 10, 20 or 30 police controls on a 1,400km trek. We believe we've a right to be at our home in France. But how would neighbours view us, given the resentment reportedly shown to Parisians deserting the capital for their second homes elsewhere in the country?
The crisis, we're told, will get worse before it eases, whether we are here or in the south of France. We are, simply, torn but on balance want to be back chez nous as soon as possible. On verra ...
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