Geneva, Tuesday 7 April 2020
The news gets no less bizarre. The UK’s Prime Minister is in intensive care with COVID-19. Most regrettably, less than twenty-four hours beforehand, we publicly named our new and petulant sourdough starter “Boris.” O Dear! We hope this causes no offence. We join many others in wishing Mr Johnson – and indeed all those hospitalised by this virus – a speedy recovery.
Also yesterday, a Malayan tiger called Nadia in a zoo in New York showed symptoms of and tested positive for infection by the coronavirus. It is believed she caught the infection from an asymptomatic zoo-keeper making this the first proven human to animal transmission.
Whilst noting advice on-line not to get too absorbed by stats, I can’t help looking at the Johns Hopkins site. It informs me that new cases per day in Switzerland have levelled off. Are Italy, France and Spain doing likewise? The stock markets seem to be reacting favourably. We can but hope.
At a local level, the 21:00 stay-home party of the residents of the apartment block on the other side of the park is louder than ever. It draws a small but near-illegal crowd out on to the car-less street. We can hear that the inhabitants of other buildings are now likewise rockin’ the town. Bella Ciao!
I jog around the park early most mornings. I noticed today that my fellow joggers have worn a new track two metres from and parallel to the main path maintaining the required distance from walkers. Respect!
Here’s my latest lockdown painting. Inspired by other spring-time happenings on our balcony, this is “Pigeon love!” Blue for Boys Are Back in Town (Thin Lizzy;) Pink for Girls Just Wanna Have Fun! (Cindy Lauper.) Room for improvement, I know, but this diary is a bit of a soul-baring exercise.
We missed our putting competition yesterday. Its resumption today saw a total loss of putting mojo on my part. I lost 5 and 4 missing 7 of 14 putts. That’s 11 games to 6 in my favour; but I’m not sure for how much longer I’ll stay ahead.
Us humans, having such a short attention span, have understandably been distracted away from the other great challenge facing us all, climate change. The Geneva winter has passed without a single flake of snow in town; this is a first. Also unprecedented, we played golf in nearby France throughout the whole of January and February. Now in lockdown, during this first week of April, it is warm enough to have dinner on our balcony; this also has never happened before.
Looks like the future is not what it used to be!