March 30

I start today as I do every day, by opening my eyes and, still half-asleep, stumble to my computer to try and bag an on line food delivery slot. My heart actually thumps against my chest as I discover there are fruit and vegetables and cheese and milk. It settles again as I realise I’m being offered these delicacies at the beginning of May. I spend two hours a day trying to order food. Kind (young) neighbours have offered to help but I’m reluctant to call on them till we’re desperate.

Last essential chore last night was to clean our white kitchen floor. Whoever is mad enough to have a white kitchen floor? Years ago I bought a small robot mop to do the job I hate. Sadly, it doesn’t have human form and looks more like a square, white crab as it shuffles backwards and sideways, spitting out a feeble jet of water in front of it, completely inadequate to the task. But why would I want to anthropomorphise it anyway?

The kitchen table and chairs baffle it and , as I get ready for bed, I hear it banging into the steel chair legs over and over until I rescue it, turning its back on the chairs and starting it off in another direction, as you would a child or a dog running towards a lake. Unfortunately, this tactic leaves the space under the kitchen table unspeakable and I will have to mop it anyway in the morning. I finish my bedtime routine, longer and longer with the advancing years, then, before getting into bed, feel oddly compelled to sneak back into the kitchen to check on the robot. There it is, still sidling along. As I leave, I turn on the kitchen light. Suppose it’s afraid of the dark?

“The writer” seems to be doing more exercise than he did BC (Before Covid) when he had every glorious London park at his disposal. Now, he tramps up and down the terrace every day clocking up his 10,000 steps and seeming to enjoy the monotony.

That’s him on lap 33 of the terrace, reflected on the wall opposite:

Yesterday, he spotted a traffic warden down below in the street. No cars, not one – just a traffic warden.

With perfect ironic timing, a Shalwar Kameez I bought on a recent trip to India to wear at a very grand party, turned up in the post today. I could hardly bear to go through my long cardboard disinfection routine, so excited was I to see it.

Yes, yes, I know all about cultural appropriation and I tell you that if I could culturally appropriate the grace and beauty of the women I saw wearing such garments, I would do so in a heartbeat.

Of course, I had tried my best to ascertain that the conditions under which it was being made were as good as possible, but there’s no way I could be certain and I was hit, as I opened the package, by the fact that this exquisitely delicate garment must have left the country just before the chaotic and devastating lockdown that has caused so much misery to so many.

The party was cancelled long ago and the dress will remain unworn, so maybe that’s my punishment for not resisting it, but it’s so beautiful, I can’t bear to put it away and it hangs in my study , an unlikely and inappropriate reminder of the distraught, packed crowds of migrant workers jostling and fighting to get back to their villages.