I was going to say something about shopping. I live within five minutes walk of ‘local’ Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Co-op, health food shop, greengrocers, pharmacy and pet shop, and as they’re all so close I tend to just pick up what I need as and when, rather than doing a regular main shop – anyway, as I walk, I can’t carry too much at once, and sometimes it pushes me into going out on a day when I wouldn’t otherwise bother. At the beginning of the week nothing was noticeably different about any of them, though odd things started to go missing – eggs, for example, and potatoes (I bought sweet potatoes instead). Yesterday I went into the Sainsbury’s Local for the first time since Monday, and was shocked at how much things had changed in those few days. Where have all the fruit and veg gone? It’s not as though those are things that can be easily stored – unless you cut them up and freeze them, of course. I managed to get a bunch of under-ripe bananas, but there were no oranges.

Makes me think about how fragile our supply chains are if things can get this bad so quickly. Also, it has to be said, not a great sign for what’s likely to happen a few months down the line when current trading arrangements come to an end, and who the hell knows what’s going to happen then, when we’re still trying to manage the aftermath of… well, the aftermath. Talk about a double whammy.

Ah well, I was going to try and be cheery and upbeat.

I’ve started (for the third time) reading ‘Wolf Hall’ by Hilary Mantell. It is a big beast of a book, hard to notice at first when you read something on Kindle. I’m glad I don’t have to hold the whole thing in my hand to read it. I’m getting into it now, just read the passage about how Cromwell’s wife died suddenly from a ‘summer plague’ and the household went into isolation afterwards. Almost 500 years later, are we really any better at dealing with crises?