” Now, Dinah,tell me the truth. Did you ever eat a bat?”

Down the Rabbit Hole from ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll

Like Alice on her journey down the rabbit hole, my own sense of unreality intensifies at unexpected moments. These moments often occur as we listen to each day’s mounting death-toll – 201 a day in London at the moment – I suddenly feel a disconnect from the deaths and the disease. Here we are, shut away, comfortably carrying on not that differently from before and outside our walls there is a seething Hell. What are we doing shut away? What are we waiting for? When this lockdown ends, we still won’t be able to go out safely. Not until there’s a vaccine and its discovery is far from certain. Will we be here until there is one? Will we be here for the rest of our lives? We are already old – though we didn’t feel it until this disease picked us out for slaughter – and these next years may be the last in which we are active, can travel, move without pain, function normally and think straight. Are these precious years being stolen from us in the name of keeping us safe?

In an effort at reassurance, “The Writer” reminds me that these are the precious years. They haven’t been stolen. We are living them. We are together, in our middle-class eerie, happy in each other’s company, though constantly aware of how terrifying it is for those in the thick of it. We may see the world change for the better, we may see unimaginable poverty or a global economic recovery, Who knows? But, however it turns out, we have never witnessed and will never witness such extreme change. And we should relish this time, though filled with fear, as a vivid part of our lives, not merely an empty interlude.

I know he’s right, but as the death- toll mounts and when we read the forecast that we may soon become the worst-hit country in Europe, it’s pretty hard to dredge up much optimism.

It may be that our friends living in the countryside are able to take some comfort in nature that’s unavailable to us city- dwellers. The pictures they send of their remote walks and wide landscapes are consoling. Meanwhile, we find the natural world where we can: plants on the terrace, birdsong that we can now hear clearly, bees from our neighbour’s hives busy in the flowers……..

………..A couple of days ago, I heard an interview with a nurseryman. His plants are dying, garden centres are closed and he is about to go bankrupt as his busiest time of the year passes without sales. Feeling guilty for such indulgence, I ordered a bunch of flowers and sent them – to myself. I know it won’t help him or the hundreds of other desperate seed- merchants and growers but they have brought a breath of Spring into the house and, for that, I’m grateful.