Tuesday 21^st January, 2020 1110

Coronavirus is the latest thing. Anyone would think it's new but fifty years ago there was always a large bottle of it in my Dad's bread van. I remember in 2009 when I holidayed in Nanning at the height of the H1N1 outbreak. Airports were scanned by heat-seeking missiles and anyone with a high temperature was abducted and quarantined and when I went to a hospital to buy some pills thermometer was shoved in my lughole without so much as a by your leave. It gave cause for concern when I flew back to the UK in case I was incarcerated for the incubation/infectious period, however long that was. Do they have a bar in quarantine? I find myself with the symptoms of contamination – cough, shortness of breath etc – but I blame that on being forced to smoke unfamiliar cheroots.

Alice is home and I asked her last night where she had put the chamois leather as I couldn't find it anywhere and she had, after all, moved everything just to confuse the hell out of me. Inside the big black suitcase, came the reply. No it wasn't. You mean the fur hat? No. It was clear she had no idea what a chamois was so I sent an image of a used one. Oh, I threw that away, I thought it was rubbish. No dear, my cleaner uses it on my office windows. Isn't life wonderful?

I went to BHG yesterday for my last shop of the lunar year. It was bad enough then but as the days pass it will become ever worse until on Friday, new years eve, it will be carnage. I did that once inadvisedly in Chizhou and it took me over an hour to get chicken breasts for the animals. I bought everything for tonight and tomorrow's meals. Another lasagne for Jody on Wednesday and stuffed peppers for Adriana tonight. I bought four huge red capsicums and then Adriana cried off! Great. Now I'll need to try and rearrange the freezer to fit two in for another day.

Nearly all the recipes for the above are vegetarian, have you noticed? Not that I don't occasionally have something veggie (cheese and tomato sandwich, packet of crisps, carrot and lentil soup etc) but I could swear at sea they were stuffed with meat, or perhaps meat and rice combined. So that's what I shall attempt, pork mince, rice, chopped mushrooms and garlic with a bit of cheese on top. And Linghams chilli sauce just to make them special. Not sure I can eat two though.

1915

Ok, yes even I have felt the pinch on the pork prices since the swine flu thing - not that I eat that much of anything but every bit I get minced up seems to cost at least £6 these days – but the fruit???? Tonight ten strawberries (admittedly quite large and genetically modified probably), four lemons and two bananas cost me £4.50!!! No wonder I hardly ever eat fruit.

I don't know what it is about this city. It's the biggest day of their year on Friday when at midnight they welcome the year of the ratatouille, yet apart from the supermarket there is no sign of its impending arrival. Obviously I do not expect to see Christmas trees and fairy lights but this year I'm not even seeing the couplets they normally stick on the outside of the doors to their homes. It's almost as if they don't care. Even at the train station the other day there was none of the England v Germany Wembley stadium crowd I have come to expect, the only sign being on the train ticket sites that trains are sold out for sleeping berths.

Doesn't bother me in the slightest because I shan't be whooping it up but it does rather resemble a city where ambition dies. I am sure there will be the odd firework let off at midnight on Friday and copious plates of food served on Saturday in various homes but other than that it really seems to be a non event here.

Of course, there is a north-south divide in China, just as there is in the UK, here in the north they favour noodles, in the south, rice but here there is just no build up. It simply seems subdued, sedate, uncaring even. On the night I shall probably have some baby bangers let off nearby which, if I am in bed I shall in all likelihood not even hear and it will be in stark contrast to that foolish night in Chizhou where I wanted to get closer to the “action” for once.

I booked a night at the Dong Rong hotel close to the station and never got a wink of sleep until I went home the following afternoon because fireworks went off non stop for almost twelve hours.

This really is the strangest of cities, and not in a good way.