Day 3 - At Sea

The newspaper is full of speculation about what might happen.  Nobody is speculating that Covid-19 could all be just a storm in a teacup which will burn itself out as soon as it appeared.  Most of the speculators lose little time in pinning the blame for insufficient; doctors, nurses, hospital beds, and ventilators, and the lack of resilience of key industries on the Government, which appears to be on a hiding to nothing.

The gloomy news of the day is that old folk like me could shorty be confined to barracks, possibly for months.  In response, I went out this morning to get some petrol and indulge in a bit of panic buying in the supermarket. I bought what I needed today and then joined the snaking queue for the checkout.  I contemplated just abandoning the cart and heading for home but decided to stick it out and watch the world go by.  My main observation was, despite the large number of customers, there was no evidence of bulk purchases.  Other people’s trollies were, generally, lightly and unexceptionally laden.  I assume, like me, other customers were anxious and not panicky.  I paid contactless with my phone which I fished out of my pocket with the unprotected hands I was using to push the trolley and made a mental note to give it a disinfectant wipe-over when I got home.

Mushroom Cottage is reasonably well prepared for siege.  There is plenty in the freezer and Mrs Mushroom makes all the bread.  Provided the tap water remains pure and running we shall be just fine for quite a while.  We also conducted a live communications exercise connecting all the offspring, simultaneously, via Skype.  It really was delightfully simple and the video and sound quality was excellent. Importantly, apart from data use, the connection service involved no additional cost to the users.

The Bridge Club, apparently, remains open so I shall attend on Monday as usual trusting that anyone who exhibits any symptoms will have the sense of duty to stay at home.

I have decided to add “On The Beach” to my reading list and “Dr Strangelove” to my watch list in case there any tips on post apocalypse survival.