As I was going out I met the postman, and thoughtfully stepped back to give him his 2m, for which he thanked me.

Felt weirdly sleepy and dissociated from afternoon onwards, as if this is all just a dream.

Clearer later
Sun

Gave the car another 10-minute idle, a 3-yard drive and a good rock to exercise the suspension.

While I totally agree with the distancing measures, a lot of people seem to be using them as a way of getting their neighbours arrested. For some people the Difficulties are bringing out their inner Sergeant Wilson, for others they're bringing out their Warden Hodges.

<8 large Cu
Windy
Sun
1200 SHOWER

Occurred to me that, if I do catch coronavirus and die, I'll never find out whether the pandemic destroys humanity or not.

Half the remaining buddleia blew down in the squalls. It never rains but it fucking pours.

5-8 large Cu
SHOWERS some with HAIL
Sun Windy

Weather rather cloudier today, quite cold in town in the morning.

Town very quiet, like a Sunday before 1994. All the shops were doing the 2m thing and most of them were making people wait outside.

Coming home I felt quite good - I realised it was because I'd been out of the house for 2 hours, longer than I have been for a week.

These last few weeks, I've been facing the prospect of dying more than I ever have before. I think I can face it though, because - although I've still got lots of issues - I've become a version of myself that I like. I would not like to have died the angry bitter person of 2008, or the nihilistic one of 2010.

Ci, Ac Sun
1000 6
1600 4
Windy

Co-op had loo rolls! It's taken 2 weeks for supplies to return.

When I'd unpacked the shopping I put the telly on about 11.20, and heard that Creepton had coronavirus! During the day the health minister and that chief medical officer also went down with it. 'Damage control computer damaged.'

Rather more traffic this morning, I thought.

Sun Cold
Typically 6 Ci
Breezy

Helped E fix an issue on his PC. It was very high-tech, we had a Zoom meeting into which he shared his PC desktop so I could see what he was doing.
Historians - if there are going to be any - will say that remote working was an idea whose time had truly come.

Trump appears to have gone even madder, he's talking about undoing isolation and having 'packed churches on Easter Sunday', which will mean packed hospitals by the end of April. 'Let me tell you, Harriet...'

0600 FROST
Sun Cold
Typically 6 Ci

Tesco Express had eggs, the first ones I've seen for nearly 2 weeks. So far my foraging strategy has been to go to small stores, buy whatever they've got fresh, and eat that, leaving my preserved stockpile for the future. It's working well.
Almost everyone at the shops was very carefully social distancing..

Greenish comet being talked about. From Survivors to Day of the Triffids.

Email from M. He remarked that it's hard to remember what day of the week it is, like at Christmas.

Sun Cold
Typically 4 Ci

Was really slow working, because I'd just have managed to concentrate when then I'd remember how frightening real life has suddenly become. I say 'frightening', but it's what might happen that's frightening. On the surface everything is calm and benign, it's beautifully quiet, the weather is fine if cold, the daffodils from yesterday are brightening up the room.

477 people dead from coronavirus. This is the most stressful time I've ever lived through, by two orders of magnitude I think. If anything I'm impressed that I'm coping as well as I am.

Forced myself to do music practice, which was hard at first because I started crying again. But I persevered, and I found some music that fits: Let Me Die In My Footsteps. I played it through 5 times and my spirits were raised again.

Put the laundry away. A person who does music practice hopes to live to play better, a person who puts clothes away hopes to live to need to wear them.

One good thing about this situation, and Survivors, is that they've helped me remember what it is to be human.

Sun
typically 4 Ci
Cold

Into town immediately after the video conference. Everyone, almost, practicing social distancing. Sainsburys giving out free flowers, presumably unsold Mothers' Day ones. Thanked them nicely. Put them in a jug when I got home. Small daffodils. Nice - cheered me up.

My coronavirus 'degrees of separation' poll on the forum is showing a steady rise in people reporting a '1 remove' connection, ie an acquaintance who's got it. Though 63% still have no connection at all.

I gathered during the evening that Creepton had announced the expected new rules - all non-essential shops to close, no-one to go out except to the remaining shops, etc. The one consolation is that he dislikes having to make that announcement to me just as much as I dislike hearing it from him. But we both have to put up with it if we don't want to be very shortly plunged into Survivors. (And there I'd have the advantage, because I bet he's only seen the remake if he's seen either of them).

0600 0 Sun
Cold
1600 4 Ci

Another beautiful day. Although the sun was bright it was cold outside.

My diet has become much more varied because I'm having to buy what's available and vaguely in my target area - in these cases avocados, fresh noodles and marinated tofu.

Sun Wind cold E
1200 4 Ci
1600 0 LIGHT AIR

Slept badly, only about 4½ hours. Beautiful spring weather, very cold East wind, white cherry blossom and budding trees. Nature's cheerful indifference to our concerns. The coronavirus is one of her manufactures just as we are.
I have been thinking 'we' a lot lately, it's a positive development from my usual misanthropy.

Into town for the FT (while money still means something...)

Much sun
Cold wind E

Across the road someone's recycling box had blown into the road, so I crossed over and put it back on the pavement. Heartened by this small act of orderliness, I set off for work. I looked up at the blowing low clouds in the south and my morale improved still further.

I got the connectors I needed and emptied my work stash of paracetamol and other first aid into my bag. This reminded me very strongly indeed of the supplies gathering that everyone does in apocalypse drama.

Sun came out in the afternoon continuing the rising mood. But when the sunset light began reflecting off the clouds, the bright indifference of Nature reminded me that we're still a long way from safety, a year perhaps.

So strange how quickly I've got used to that idea. I think last Thursday was the last day I had something else on my mind - the 12th. Sunday to Tuesday I was upset, Wednesday I began to deal with it, yesterday I was feeling better.

0900 <8 As, low fragments
Wind cold E
1500 ~6 Cu Sun
1700 4 Cu

Felt better today - I still realise civilisation might collapse, but also that it isn't helpful to expect the power to go off every moment. 'Enjoy the silence.' Ep 3 of Survivors last night helped.

8 Sc
->low dark Sc by 1700

Rather eerie quietness a lot of the day, with the birdsong unnaturally loud.

Worked from home. There'll be a regular video chat with all of us at 9.30 each day from tomorrow.

At the Co-op you weren't allowed more than 2 of anything. Now, if they'd all brought that in a week ago, this whole thing would've been a lot easier.

Read Journal of the Plague Year on Gutenberg. Lot of apposite quotes.

The day went by quite fast. Is this what unemployment would've been like if I'd had the internet?

Story about a flu antiviral being effective in some COVID cases. Probably too soon to relax. Might punt on equities though. If things turn out bad, money will be no good to me anyway.

Occurred to me today that the two groups of people I probably most despise - Leavers and the far-right fuel blockaders from 2000 - have done me a big, big favour by prompting me to lay in supplies. Otherwise I might have been caught like the narrator of Plague Year, with nothing in stock.

Also occurred to me today that, if there is going to be any more history, future historians will be fascinated by us, they'll think 'What was it like to live through 2020-21, how was it to see one's whole view of the universe contradicted and destroyed?' We'll seem to them like the people of 1939 or 1929 or 1914 or 1796 or 1687 do to us.

8 high Sc

Very quiet at work. At lunchtime in the library felt like re-enacting that Burgess Meredith ep of Twilight Zone.

In the afternoon we got the word that we could work at home henceforth. That was a weird bit of packing away, a sort of sombre version of when I'm going on holiday.

I know how to cope up until the power and water go out. After that I'll have to improvise.

Some sun
Cold

Got to Sainsburys at 6.50am, ¼ hour earlier than usual, and found it at least 3x busier than it should be. All the expected things were sold out, including toilet rolls and paracetamol, and only the weird varieties of baked beans were left. No bin bags either. I stocked up on everything they did have, but didn't buy more than 2 of anything.

Couldn't concentrate on work, though I did manage to get bin bags at the Co-op. Felt like I did when I had depression, especially in Mar 1995, that mood where the bright daylight seems cold and hollow.

But with the small victory of the bin bags my mood began to improve. Understand that I'm not afraid of getting coronavirus, I'm afraid of starving to death or being violently killed in some Changes/Survivors/Threads dystopia. I have a very clear mental picture of the latter fate.

2-4 Ac Sun
Cold

Lot of panic buying reported from yesterday. Email this morning from Sainsburys' chief executive assuring me they had plenty of food, and asking me please not to buy more than I needed.

Am disconcerted by the way Britain, and only Britain, is keeping mass gatherings going. I was initially prepared to believe that Creepton really was taking scientific advice, but now I'm beginning to wonder if the 'scientific advice' is just whatever Cummings happens to've read on nazi Twitter.

Watched ep 1 of Survivors.

8 low Sc

Drizzling in the morning, but fortunately wind behind me on walk to salon.

Tescos very busy; lucky I didn't want toilet rolls, or pasta, because they were both sold out again.

In the afternoon found my composure was a bit rattled by the very rapid spread of coronavirus in Spain. Could we be next? Am not concerned about getting ill so much as society breaking down, or it just getting difficult to buy food.

Realized that I feel I'll be lucky to not die, and for things to go back to normal (even 2020 normal); not that I think those two things are unlikely, just that I've accepted that neither are they certainties any more.

(11pm). Have found an Al-Jazeera audio-only stream. The perfect thing for these worrisome nights.

0700 8 DRIZZLE
1000 stops
1400 SHOWER

Further virus measures - sport postponed, elections postponed, some of the fascist E. European countries closing their borders. Looks like it will be the middle of June before things start returning to normal, if they ever do.

I wasn't planning to get the house on sale till Sep anyway, but at least this means I needn't worry if I should move any earlier, because I won't be able to even if I wanted.

Much sun
1530 VERY SHORT HAIL SHOWER

Pasta shelves in Tescos almost empty. Shares down 8-9% on both sides of the Atlantic.

VERY WINDY overnight
0300 0 Moon
->Typically 0-3 Sun
Cold
WINDY W

One of the health ministers has gone down with coronavirus!

Breezy
2-7 Cu Sun
Warm

Extraordinary scenes in Italy. The quarantine of Lombardy I was hearing about on the radio on Sunday morning as I drove down Annandale was extended last night to the whole country! That gave me a real 70s SF TV frisson.

2-6 Cu Sun
Windy
Warmer

Fine accidental sighting of the Full Moon at 4.30, floating in clear sky and illuminating a few wisps of cloud lower down. Another fine sighting as I was loading the car at 6.15, low down and perfect.

Did the shopping, got extra dried beans and UHT in case I have to self-isolate. Big drop in asset prices. Gladder than ever that I sold most of mine 4 weeks ago.

0730 IN AREA
Sun
->more cloud
->6 Cu, As
1600 8
1900 RAIN

Glasgow at 6.15 am Sunday quite peaceful. Got cloudier on the M74 with sun still breaking through. Sad to leave Scotland again. I shall return.

Extraordinary sight near Shap - a stream running down a hill over grass rather than in a stream bed. Something had obviously overflowed - all the rivers were very full.

At Welwyn saw two hares chasing each other in the hotel grounds. March hares?

Really wet morning - glad we didn't have this weather yesterday.

Last night someone online pointed out that Essex is one of the sunniest places in Britain. And Glasgow is not famous for sunshine. I see that the sunniest place in Scotland is Dundee, which I was also considering.

Realised Glasgow has been reminding me of Rath Eileann - clouds and mist, with sudden shafts of Vega-light breaking through.

Wandered all the way down to the Clyde, and leaned on the rail turning over the idea of making my life here. A seagull flew in a wide circle over the water. I walked across the Portland St suspension bridge and took a picture upstream from the middle: first impression of dark clouds, but the sun is bursting through and the colours of the buildings on the north bank are warm.

Dep 0615, got to Glasgow 1600, 425 miles. Crossed border 1345. Very impressed by the hills from the Yorkshire Dales onwards - snow on the tops of many of them.
Going west on the M80, murky yellow-grey stratocumulus but with sun coming through quite brightly, as if promising that effort would be rewarded with success. There was, thinking about it now, something Dec 88/Jan 89 about it. Things have changed but they have not [yet] crashed in a way which means there are no more possibilities than there were before.

(7pm). Someone in the UK has died from coronavirus - that's a step.

Went out again at one for supplies. Would've walked, but it was raining hard by then, so took car down to the Bagshot Rd Sainsburys where it all began in Aug 2014.

Coronavirus stakes being upped; they're citing a scenario where 20% of the workforce are off sick at any given time.
Odd how they can be rational about disease but not about Brexit.

Some sun
0930 OUT OF AREA

Decided to go ahead with my trip and see how it goes. Must keep an eye on the petrol station queues though, I'm not getting into such a close shave as I did with the far-right fuel blockades in 2000. If the coronavirus case numbers spike, people might start panic buying.

RAIN overnight
0800 <=8
-->
1400 2 Cu Sun

Coronavirus starting to take off in this country. A case in Essex, though they won't say where. I'm not afraid of getting it myself, more of the social/technological disruption it might cause. It is getting a bit 70s Doctor Who story.

Much sun
Breezy