Among many great anecdotes in Salut!'s series of Covid-19 diaries, there have been none to beat Tony Evans's story of the hamper of essential goods sent to him in London from China by a former lodger. The caption above shows the Good Samaritan - please eat your heart out Allison Pearson - while Tony, below, offers more on life in confinement ...
Bright sunshine this morning, and the air is warm, so I put on my blue jeans and got the lawnmower out of the shed. Used to be that I could mow the whole lawn in about 45 minutes. But not nowadays. With frequent breaks to ease whatever aches and pains the exercise brings, I reckon about three hours at present.
Funny thing, most people know that the denim in blue jeans is named after the city of Nîmes in Southern France, but what they don’t know is the true history. In fact the old de Nîmes material was a heavy woollen worsted, which the English used to buy from France in the 1600s.
The name changed to “denim” over the years, then in the 19th century the material changed to heavy duty cotton, and became an absolute MUST HAVE in the hippy days of rock ‘n’ roll of the 1960s. Remember them? Strangely enough, when I was in Canada in the 1970s, most restaurants wouldn’t allow you in if you were wearing denim. God knows why.
We used to finish up going to the Spaghetti Factory in Edmonton, Alberta, which was an enormous dining room full of people eating spaghetti and other cheap Italian dishes. Loved it! Wonder what’s happened to that now ...
It’s really sad, being unable to go out for a meal any more. Fortunately my wife loves cooking and is good at it, so I have no real cause for concern, but there you go.
My next door neighbour is a London bus driver. He’s had a holiday. He tells me he’s back to work tomorrow and well aware of the fact that five London bus drivers have died of this virus so far.
He has decided not to open the front door of his double decker, and only let people in through the back (middle? - Ed) door. And he'll put a tape across the gangway by the front seats so that nobody can get near him. I really don’t blame him. And he says that if his bosses complain about it, he’ll go off sick. Good on him.
Everybody says Amazon must be making billions out of this virus. They sell all sorts of groceries including milk and eggs. But all I’m using them for at the moment is to buy the occasional 99p book for my Kindle, whenever I need some light reading after banging my head against Gibbon and the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Cheers
* Allison Pearson didn't get an emergency package. She did tweet this message of solidarity ...
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