Apologies for starting on Day 3: The news of all the pubs shutting shocked me. On Day 1 I drank 2 bottles of Red, then spent all day 2 feeling awful and suspecting the worst. Day 3, today, I woke up smelling of roses and thought i’d better get back on it.

Middle class slightly rushed buy, I only went in for some lunch and turns out everything had been taken, the Tescos shelves naked, raped by the hoi polloi. I’ve now got a freezer full of Duck Breasts and Jumbo uncooked prawns, plenty of coffee though, keeps the wolf  from the door.

When they shut the pubs and bars, restaurants and cafes on Friday, that, to me, seemed like when the Shit got real. My local, having being badly flooded twice since January is now closed until further notice, poor fuckers, I must put a note in my largely blank diary to get very squiffy there when time allows.

We’ve got a village volunteer squad; SNOG, Shrawley Neighbours Online Group, strictly no touching and no bodily fluids to be exchanged. We are the front line in our little parish, asking if people want to be kept safe, if folk want a chat, if folk want any loo roll, all the things we seem to be faced with right now. Walking the streets and tracks yesterday I felt safe, in our little enclave; secure. The pub’s shut but the dark pub will probably crop up sometime in the future, exchanging pints for pasta, rice for toilet roll. Christ this is all so Strange.

My folks were struggling, a few days ago, thinking they could just call up M&S and they would deliver some food, whatever food they needed; its not like that, this is slightly more serious than that, I bought what I could, drove over and dropped it off, met the neighbours, one of whom turns out played in the village I live in with one of our friends who still lives here, she’s going to keep an eye out, isn’t nature wonderful? So on Friday was probably the last time i’m going to see my folks for a while, and I hope to see them again when all this is over, they’ll be ok, now Mum has agreed not to do luncheon club. The communities all over the country seem to be really taking this seriously, which of course it is. There will be no  moments of madness here thank you very much.

Today we ransacked the garden, I replaced the chain on the chain saw and tore through the willow stumps and branches which had been lying around for months; I said seasoning, Mrs T probably said I was just being lazy and in truth its probably a mixture of the two, somewhere in between. We burned any brash which we found, some one told me to cut up a massive Sage bush which was taking over, I would say that was Sage advice. Mrs T mowed, I destroyed and young A received my axe with a blessing as he smashed the shit out of the old G-Pig hutch, those times are gone, its time to look forward. This is year Zero, like with Pol Pot but with less murder, I’m not planning on killing anyone, not yet anyway, but we are in the early stages and so reserve the right to change my mind. We bought some seeds, for carrots and broccoli, and spoke at length about turning over the soil to create a veg patch, upon reflection we realised it would be better to concrete the area to build a patio where we could have some nice plastic real feel rattan furniture and get our carrots and broccoli from the farm shop, they are the experts after all. I will be growing some chillis however and maybe a peach tree, turns out the old door underneath the now destroyed G-Pig hutch was harbouring a germinating peach stone underneath, no light, no care, my kind of gardening.

And it’s mothers day, so Blessed Day to you all, Under his Eye. Lets see how the future unfolds, Tomorrow for me is going to be the day at work, I suspect I’ll be told to stay put, in which case the patio may get finished slightly quicker. Lets face it we’ve got plenty of hours, days, week and months for this thing to pass.

Lets just hope Dominic Cummings catches it, the bastard.