Tony Evans, another of my former colleagues from decades ago (and an enduring friend) is one of the youngest eightysomethings I know though I do have an amazingly sprightly French aunt-in-law pushing 100. Here he tells of a heartwarming gesture ...
My wife, Tina, and I are fine, as far as we know.
I got my pacemaker just in time, as they've stopped doing that sort of thing now. I went to a rather eerie follow-up at Hammersmith Hospital, which was totally empty of people. Normally it is swarming with the lame, the weak and the stricken, escorted by clean looking medical staff in gowns.
This day I wandered through the underground tunnel linking the car park with the south side without passing a soul and found one nurse in the cardiology centre. He rushed me into a room and started sticking leads to my ankles for some reason.
Finally, he told me the pacemaker thing had worked, I was all right and should come back in May. Then he disappeared. That was Tuesday March 17, more or less when people were just beginning to realise this virus was a killer.
Anyway, I braved up and took my car for its first service on the Thursday, and sat gloved and hunched up in Audi's waiting room for two hours, flinching every time somebody came within two metres. But that is nearly two weeks ago now and I'm still showing no signs, so I suppose I'm clear so far.
For many years we rented out a spare room to Japanese and later Chinese girls who came to England, the first to improve their English and the second to study at Westminster University.
Last week I opened a nice e-mail from one of the Chinese girls from Hong Kong, who was really worried about our health and access to essentials. So worried, in fact, that she then sent an enormous cardboard box full of the most amazing stuff, all of which was virtually unobtainable in UK.
There were 23 toilet rolls, about 50 face masks, a set of personal hand disinfectant gel bottles, dozens of packs of wet wipes, packs of paper handkerchieves, some towels, a tablecloth, two packs of spaghetti, and two children's vests for our grandson. What do you say to somebody who goes the whole hog, and then some? All I could do was say when all this is over we hope she'll come and visit us again.
It's very hard accepting the probable future for the next couple of years. Here I am sitting at home, where the best I can do is walk down the garden and back, while sitting abandoned in my garage is the car I have always wanted to own - and I can't flipping well drive it!
I had all sorts of plans about driving to lots of different places in the coming year, now that we've given up our annual Goan odyssey, but they're all in the mud now.
Every two or three weeks we would drive to Wotton-under-Edge in the Cotswolds to see our son and grandson - now blocked by the clampdown. By the time this is over, Josiah will be four and will have no idea who Nanny Tina and Granpa Tony are. And I'll be 88!
So, that's the state of play in Harrow. We walk around Northwick Park for exercise, making big loops to avoid other strollers, telling ourselves how much good this is doing us. What I'd really like to be doing is my 40 lengths every morning in the pool, but the cardiology people said I couldn't do that until my pacemaker was well settled in, and now the Harrow School pool we were using is closed due to the virus, and I don't really fancy taking my chances in the changing room at Vale Farm pool, even if the cardio people said I could.
So I'm now spending my life on the internet, and pausing every so often to read my Kindle. Tina keeps thinking up interesting new recipes to try out on me - nettle soup is the latest - and we've unusually started into the stock of wine that I usually build up in St Omer or Calais every year. I think that's a dead horse now...
Suddenly, there doesn't seem to be the pressure on time that there always was.
* Tony on himself: Started in journalism late, aged 23, on a 16-year old's salary at the Woking Herald. Progressed to the Middlesex Chronicle, Leicester Mercury, Uganda Argus, Associated Press and then the Press Association (where I met Colin). Went to the Edmonton Journal in Canada in 1976, but came back in the Winter of Discontent and couldn't get a job in Fleet Street because nobody was hiring. Finished up on the Uxbridge Gazette, then the Press Council and Press Complaints Commission. Taught IT at a public school for a few years, then bought a flat in Goa, where my wife comes from, and spent the next 20 years wintering there. Now twiddling my thumbs and playing on the internet at home.
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