It's quiet outside. An occasional car passes by, perhaps a dog walker or a jogger. I can see the Shard from my living room window, with its blue lighted apex, shining like a beacon of hope that we will all get through this difficult period.
It's easy to sound a bit dramatic when writing about what is happening right now. Cocooned inside my flat, I have only the views from my window, or the sounds from the street below, to convince me that there is life still going on. Like the opening scene of a horror film, where the people have all vanished, except for a few shell-shocked individuals roaming about.
In addition to that it is easy for my imagination to go wild. I listen to the news and the daily mortality rates are starting to reach surreal proportions. We've seen it happen in Italy or course, and now Spain. But surely not in Great Britain, where everything is great, where we make great decisions to protect our great people.
We are all deluded. It is going to hit us, hard. We are following the trajectory of Spain and Italy, only a couple of weeks behind. In a short time we will be war-weary as if it really is the Blitz, with bombs raining down on us from this invisible enemy.
Today in the online news I read about a 108 year old, who had survived the Spanish flu, only to succumb to this new disease. I often think of my own grandma who was struck down in 1918, lost all her hair, but yet survived. It really is a game of chance whether it takes us or not. A game that we can cheat though by implementing social distancing and washing our hands. But still a game. A horrid game.
So let's keep looking up at the blue apex, that gives us hope, that celebrates our NHS. It might let us forget how we never bought enough ventilators, or that we stopped testing in the community, or that we refused to participate in the EU procurement scheme. Let's keep living our lives via the spirit of the Blitz.
It's easy to sound a bit dramatic when writing about what is happening right now. Cocooned inside my flat, I have only the views from my window, or the sounds from the street below, to convince me that there is life still going on. Like the opening scene of a horror film, where the people have all vanished, except for a few shell-shocked individuals roaming about.
In addition to that it is easy for my imagination to go wild. I listen to the news and the daily mortality rates are starting to reach surreal proportions. We've seen it happen in Italy or course, and now Spain. But surely not in Great Britain, where everything is great, where we make great decisions to protect our great people.
We are all deluded. It is going to hit us, hard. We are following the trajectory of Spain and Italy, only a couple of weeks behind. In a short time we will be war-weary as if it really is the Blitz, with bombs raining down on us from this invisible enemy.
Today in the online news I read about a 108 year old, who had survived the Spanish flu, only to succumb to this new disease. I often think of my own grandma who was struck down in 1918, lost all her hair, but yet survived. It really is a game of chance whether it takes us or not. A game that we can cheat though by implementing social distancing and washing our hands. But still a game. A horrid game.
So let's keep looking up at the blue apex, that gives us hope, that celebrates our NHS. It might let us forget how we never bought enough ventilators, or that we stopped testing in the community, or that we refused to participate in the EU procurement scheme. Let's keep living our lives via the spirit of the Blitz.
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