Today we’re celebrating the birthday of one of our closest friends – let’s call him Tod. Tod and Trisha, his wife, Londoners their whole lives, will enjoy his big day isolated in the Highlands of Scotland, completely by accident. Having gone up there several weeks ago to stay in their daughter and son-in-law’s house for a weekend break, they were on the point of returning to London when Lockdown began and their son-in-law went down with Covid-19. How crazy it seemed for them to come home to crowded, dangerous, dying London. Rather stay in the glorious Scottish countryside and hike through the bracken with no chance of bumping into packs of heavy-breathing joggers or gangs of cyclists who refuse to keep their distance.

So they stayed.

And three weeks later, they are still there – with enough clothes for a weekend.

And I am envious.

They bombard us with pictures of the scenery outside their window, each landscape more achingly beautiful than the one before.They brag about the one-person queue outside the supermarket, 3 miles away down a bumpy track and of the bakery where they shop for Butteries. Tod is an early riser and photographs of deer crossing the river in this bucolic paradise drop into my inbox before I’m awake. It’s as though they are taunting us. Why are we here, doing our 10,000 steps up and down our terrace while they are free to roam where they like with no need even to think about social distancing, as there is no-one for miles from whom to distance themselves?

And yet, and yet – am I really envious? Here we are in our own home with our own history around us. There are photographs of our wedding, treasured books, drawers reproaching me for still not clearing them out, the mess in my study in which I claim to be able to find any document. This is where we belong and I fancy I can feel the buzz of the city around me, the city about which we’re still learning, even though we are so confined. Yesterday, for instance, as we walked on our terrace, we heard the loud, aggressive sound of seagulls shrieking and wheeling in a clear sky at the other end of it. As we rushed to look over the railing, my husband shouted that he could see a man on the roof of the apartment block across the road carrying a hawk. Could this be? Is he hallucinating? He’s already dreaming about viruses seeping under the doors.But it was real – a man extending his arm on which sat a huge bird craning its snaking neck to the sky. The screeching seagulls looked down, then faded quietly from the vicinity. Who knew that companies like Rentokil (Other Pest Control services are available!) send out hawks accompanied by men in high-vis jackets to scare seagulls from apartment blocks all over the city?

London is our home and I’m (sentimentally?) pleased to be part of it while it’s suffering. I wonder what Prince Harry is feeling, far away from the city he grew up in, as his grandmother takes the rare decision to speak about the gravity of this crisis. Does he wish he were here?. Does he feel like a deserter? Does he miss the beauty of the city?