PORTRAIT: THOMAS BOWLES. PHOTOGRAPHS & ILLUSTRATIONS: ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
Well, that got very strange, very quickly, didn’t it? I’m still not convinced it’s all sunk in, but maybe that’s for the best? That’s not to downplay the seriousness of the situation. Fear not – I’m following Government guidelines. I’m washing my hands a LOT. I’m staying home, I’m avoiding people – although as a middleaged, grumpy freelance journalist I’ve sort of been in training for those for years. But it’s important to find the positives in this, be it dazzlingly clean fingernails or any of the following…
1 People are, for the most part, lovely
We’ve come together wonderfully. We’ve put the social back in social media. Where I live we now have a WhatsApp group for our flats, which means, after 24 years here, I finally know more than three neighbours’ names. Ahem. Even with thousands of cancelled weddings, holidays and so on, people have generally shrugged, put their plans on hold and not complained. Here’s hoping kindness and community spirit last when this finally ends.