Friday 28^th February, 2020 2045

I hate to keep coming back to the coronavirus thing but it does rather dominate the world news now, not to mention my life!

I have been appalled at the sheer ignorance of people regarding China and the utterly hateful comments being posted on Facebook from people who have clearly never been here and have a primal fear of the unknown. Such things as “hateful people, I hope they all die!” and others in that ilk.

So the Chinese eat things westerners don't – and don't have to. Do you think I like pangolins being used for medicine is a good thing? That I want to know dogs are being treated so badly? Of course I bloody don't but equally I am aware that China has 20% of the world's population and only 10% of the arable land from which to feed them. Of course they are going to eat anything that sustains life!

However, now the virus is rapidly becoming the rest of the world's problem, whilst I do not in any way rejoice, I admit it is with some sense of schadenfreude that I observe the reaction in other countries.

I have read of panic-buying in some countries in case they have to self-quarantine for Christ's sake. How many deaths in Croatia, where a friend told me the supermarkets have been stripped bare!??

My last pictures were of a supermarket that deals predominantly in imported goods which has been closed for a month now due to the lockdown. The empty shelves are either due to a failure to restock yet or an inability to obtain imported goods seeing as ships are avoiding China altogether. The Chinese supermarkets have no shortages – although Jody did bag the last can of Spam from BHG!

Panic buying seems to be a uniquely western trait, one that thankfully I do not possess. Well, not unless there's an alcohol or tobacco scare on and that's never happened to me!

China seems to slowly, albeit after taking draconian measures, being getting this thing under control, it's now the people scorning China that find it dropping in their laps and not liking it one little bit.

It will fizzle out in time as they all do but humanity would do well to learn a lesson about being humane and not kicking people when they are down, it's a most distasteful thing.

Anyway, yippee!!! Today one class sent me their first week assignments! Not due until next week but with now an estimated 300+ to mark each week I was seriously worried about getting snowed under and not being up to the job. In fact last night I slept little, thinking I would be found wanting.

It took me four hours to mark an entire class this afternoon – properly – and make comments on each submission so now at least I know I will be able to deliver the goods. And it was great to have something I absolutely had to do instead of watching TV shows and films on my laptop. Plus I won't be embarrassed collecting my wages in eight days time.

Tonight Jody went shopping for me. She didn't want to go to BHG (and I only wanted to but didn't need to but wanted to use her as a mule for wine) so off she went. Should have been gone for twenty minutes maximum, yet took ninety!

She went on the bus to downtown to a bakery she really likes! Ok, she bought me some proper sugary doughnuts and then came back to get the vegetables I had asked for. She needed to get out as we all do here. Tonight was all about introducing her to minestrone soup.

I think I have already said I had wanted to make it ever since Joanna expressed a liking. Took me a while but some time back I made it successfully. One day I hope to serve it to Joanna as well.

Anyway, Jody, who cannot even boil an egg but has been watching me to learn, commented on the fact I was putting tinned tomatoes and puree in. You can imagine that I told her to try it when it was done and then tell me it was too much. I said that she would like it. “I can't give you a positive answer!” I responded that I could and she WOULD like it because she is all but a veggie.

Her comment on tasting it (and before her second bowl) was that to date it's the most delicious food I have ever cooked her. I am guessing her breakfast will be more of the same with some bread........

Sadly I think she will leave on Sunday or perhaps Monday morning because she needs to actually start live streaming her classes (although I can keep out of shot so nobody knows she is here). If she does go then suddenly with the lockdown and no company I will feel very alone once again.

Do you know, she asked me if she could stay at my place for two days a month ago?? I keep telling her it has been the longest two days of my life!

But we survive. Life always finds a way to survive. Until we die......

                                       How about now?

Wednesday 26^th February, 2020 1815

Went to bed just after one last night and woke up about four for a pee. Then despite being dog-tired I simply couldn't get back to sleep again. The only plus is, I am not working so can take a nap any time I wish. In fact for the next four weeks with the online stuff I can do likewise.

After that it will be hectic. Seventeen periods a week plus the commute. Jody spent quite some time trying to sort my timetable this morning, the blithering idiots who made up timetables from two different departments had only done one thing right and that was give me Tuesday and Thursday afternoons off (I only asked for either of them so I can top up electricity as needed). At least it gives me two shopping days in the week.

They had clearly not collaborated because I was down on Mondays to work 0800-0950 and then 1430-1620. I am too old to spend another hour or so of my day going home because of a 4½ hour break and so I simply said “non” - not doing that. That's now been changed. As far as I know, currently, rather than having everything on the ground floor, I still have classes scheduled for the 3^rd and 4^th floors. Once I officially have the timetable I will probably whinge. Being the only foreigner here they should be wishing to keep me happy! To be fair, the building changes and higher floors I can handle because I will have the 1200-1430 lunch break to move locations, plus it seems I only need to take my laptop and a lunch box/drink two days a week. More work than last term (in fact more than any time since I've been at this school) but I was rather expecting it, being short-handed.

Anyway, then Jody told me the big mall was open again today! Well that meant Burger King and no cooking tonight and a trip to Metro after. Yippee!

Then a new development. We got in a taxi to go there and found ourselves hermetically sealed off from the driver! I think all the cabs are the same, they have had the interior trims removed, plastic sheeting put it and the trims screwed back in to hold it in place! Worse, they aren't taking cash! You can only pay by scanning the QR with your phone. I asked Jody to ask the driver how I could get a taxi on my own when I have an old man's phone that won't do that, plenty of older people are the same? Walk was the answer! After a while he relented and said if it really was the only way I could pay then they would take it. Until this is over I shall be sure to take the exact fare needed, for those trips I do normally take I know pretty much what they cost. I can lob the money through the front window!

The Mall was open but Burger King wasn't. Bummer. Let's check out McDonald's, the poor second cousin. Open but nobody allowed inside and you had to order and pay online! Dumbphone victimisation again! Good job Jody was with me. We managed to find a sofa on which to eat, during which time I never saw anyone entering or leaving Metro. I did decide we should check the second entrance in case they were herding people into pens so nobody escaped the fever check. They were.

The good news is, I got cheddar and cream cheese (the latter for my smoked salmon), tinned tomatoes and cannellini beans for making minestrone and that was it. I was going to buy two frozen pizzas for tomorrow but as you can see from the photos, the cupboards were largely bare!

I am wondering whether to email Oxfam for a relief parcel!!

Monday 24^th February, 2020 1230

What did I say about evacuating natives ages ago just after this bug broke out? Rescue your people and bring the infection into your country. Four new cases from the Diamond Princess evacuees in the UK.

Mind you, I nearly had a heart attack this morning (got up really late as I stayed up to listen to the England game last night) and checked the Coronaometer. It was showing 984 new deaths in China during the last 24 hours! Thankfully someone screwed up because now that has been revised downwards to 150, still a large number but less concerning than nearly a thousand a day. Mind you, if you are one of the 150 it really doesn't matter to you how many others went with you. You're still heading for the crematorium.

There's a great deal of hope being pinned on the weather warming up for summer. They believe it will simply fizzle out because the nasties can't last very long in the heat. There are though now signs that Beijing is starting to relax ever so slightly some restrictions. Efforts are now being concentrated on getting the delivery infrastructure back up to full capacity, with delivery firms being exempted from road tolls and checks when entering residential areas, with drivers merely having a temperature check and their vehicle disinfected.

Being (I think) typically western, I am not the most patient of people and I think I have conveyed my sense of frustration with the situation quite amply. Now, the Chinese stoical psyche is legendary but even that only goes so far. I have had many teachers and students emailing me expressing their own feelings and they are, surprisingly given their normally almost bovine placidity (and that is not in any way said insultingly) in accepting their lot, feeling every bit as hacked off as I am.

I think everyone realises the measures taken are in fact necessary (and I see today Italy has sh*t itself and is doing exactly the same!) but it's a bit like medicine – it tastes disgusting and you don't want to drink it but you know you have to. And now a Chinese pensioner has tested positive after twenty-seven days, blowing the fourteen day incubation period theory right out of the water.

In other news, Wuhu Alice has been refused a place at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where she applied to study for her doctorate. They said they only had a “limited number” of vacancies and competition was intense. The places are probably limited because half the place was trashed in the democracy protests!

Sadly it appears she is abandoning the idea and wants to start earning. Hopefully she will at some point in the future resume her studies because she is so close.

1800

A brief moment of joy a short while ago!

We were going out to the little supermarket (too late to bother with BHG, we'll do that tomorrow) and Jody mentioned she had heard two women talking about the restaurants having reopened. On the walk to the ATM we could both smell food cooking and with Jody going to foot the bill for dinner cooked by someone other than me, I was rather looking forward to maybe some sweet pork, prawns or sashimi.

There's bugger all open still, the smell must have been coming from someone's home!

So I am cooking later. 

Easy enough and satisfies her craving for rice and Chinese food made with vegetables. I have a feeling I might like it too, which helps!

Sunday 23^rd February, 2020 1730

I am advised it is in fact possible to download Skype to mobiles in China. Not that they will, they are all on Wechat groups the school communicates with them through. I'm sticking to my plan, after all, it's only for four weeks, isn't it? Maybe........

I am still in contact with Annie and she brought something up I hadn't thought of. With Nordine not returning until the all-clear sounds I did wonder if he was still going to be paid but she asked whether he had been asked to do his lessons from France. Well he could if he followed my format. I know he's on Wechat but with a seven hour time difference, live streaming would be problematic unless he wanted to start his days at 0100hrs.

Since switching VPN providers I have now downloaded the entire backlog of BBC shows I watch, so many in fact that my memory is full! This laptop actually has three drives and I can't figure out how to get the overflow to go into the next memory. Why on earth they give you three when one would be so easy is beyond me. Having binge-watched soaps and dramas I freed up enough space to complete my logjam of downloads. Not that I will have a great deal of time to do anything much shortly, I'll be snowed under with essays and videos! But no set hours, at least.

I made a carrot and lentil soup last night and baked a loaf. No red lentils in the nearby mart so they gave me some khaki-coloured ones. She loved it, I didn't that much, especially as at one point when I was using the stick blender I angled it incorrectly and as a result the shirt I hadn't long put on was smothered in soup and my belly got a little scalded! Beans on toast to use the rest of the loaf tonight – it's safer!

I am seriously considering buying a couple of lobsters tomorrow from BHG if they still have them. The one thing the closedown has done is ensure I don't spend as much money as I would normally. It might be nice to have a luxury treat in Tumbleweed Town.

Friday 21^st February, 2020 1900

Well so much for giving the blog a break today.

First of all, I decided to make the break after nine and a half years with my lifeline to the western world and television. Bought three years with another provider and promptly found myself unable to download it!

Two hours later after getting online help from the geeks, I was in. Touch wood, not only can I watch what I want but it seems the BBC is downloading for the first time in a month. I did fire several warnings to the firm I was in because they concentrated only on American customers and left Brits like me at the end of the queue. Well, no longer. This Brit spent his money elsewhere.

And then Dean Delia called me.

Remember I said I thought the beginning of March was ambitious?

Hate to say I was right but I was. Seems the school won't open until April now – as I predicted. So online classes have been ordered. Great. A chance to ask THEM how the hell I am supposed to actually conduct oral classes because if you recall I said days ago I had no idea how it would be possible.

It seems the authorities have no idea either! Physics, Maths etc, no problem, just conduct a lesson with a blackboard and beam it to the kids. Oral? Not possible!

Mentioned my writing project, well received, then asked if I had Wechat. Nope! I have Skype though? Well Jody just informed me that in China you can't get Skype on your phones, only laptops and desktops. I never knew that. Not that it would be possible to effectively monitor 30 students in an online class anyway.

And the hell of it is – when I am not actually teaching in classrooms I am going to be twice as busy marking and giving feedback on videos and essays they send me!

On a personal note, I would enter a classroom full of students with no mask and take that chance but of course they don't want to take the chance with the pupils.

And now Jody tells me we can't leave the Province even if we want to take a trip or we need to self-quarantine for 14 days.

Paradise?

Thursday 20^th February, 2020 2300

Well there we have the lunacy of the “policies”. New ID card that I had to have yesterday? A load of kids manning the barriers today and none of them dared challenge me when I walked through today! I think the only reason I had to be issued one yesterday was because Jody was with me and could translate. I know there are disadvantages to being in China and not speaking English, hell I should know, but there are also advantages. Quite often they simply don't know what to do with you.

But today I did move myself and we did have that roast chicken dinner. As usual I cooked twice as much as I needed but it was the first proper food for three days. And yes, those potatoes were somewhere between the shit ones and the good ones. Maybe soon the good ones will return. Jody was upset because her plate was too full. Now, in China the steamed rice comes after the meal, I found that out early on. That's for the people who aren't full to fill their bellies. Well, they don't seem to realise western people do similar, just that we like to overfill their plates so they don't empty them. I told her there was no way I would eat all mine and I was happy for her to throw what she couldn't eat, the entire meal cost less than £3. But I'm going to stop wasting gravy on her – she's devouring my Linghams chilli sauce like nobody else!

Brenda emailed me today to tell me I am famous. I said yes because I am fat. “Who said that??! I said I did. No, she said I am respected and famous because I never ran away. Even Nordine, the Algerian/French teacher is still in France and refuses to return until the all-clear is sounded.

Quite why I am respected is unclear, the Chinese have no choice but to sweat it out yet they are not thought any different. But I will take the respect if it means I get my two more years!

I did actually ask Brenda if I could give blood because I had read that cities are running out of it and as a universal donor (O+) I could get rid of some of the haemoglobin from my smoking. Age range 18-55. Ok, so I am an old fart and they refused to take my claret in the UK because I was on medication but just maybe in China?

She said they only want blood from people who recovered from the virus. Well that's nonsense.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202002/19/WS5e4c8a55a310128217278908.html

Still working on that bit. I know I am old and they won't want a laowei to peg out on them but a few drops of blood? I doubt though that in China you get chocolate digestives and a cup of Twinings afterwards!

So, ten days until we allegedly go back to work. Still not got my timetable or coursebooks. Good job I am best at winging the teaching thing, eh?

Oh, and the taxi back seat thing? Yes, they all have notices now telling you to sit in the back. As if two feet will make a difference!

Wednesday 19^th February, 2020 2040

The Firewall Police struck again last night and I was put on the naughty step for 24 hours. It's bad enough with the situation as it is without not being able to access UK television. Service only resumed about an hour ago and even now I can only connect via Hong Kong so it's YouTube.

Once I had read the news, well, such news sites as are not blocked here, I didn't dare watch any films I had downloaded in case it left me with nothing to watch tonight so I played online dou dizhou all day. I played it so long I never realised the time and when I did, it was too late to even think of making a carrot and lentil soup as intended and also too late to bake a loaf. The local bakery and the new supermarket only sell “cake” bread and neither of us wanted to make the trip to BHG. She ended up with cake bread and jam, thankfully I had some frozen pasta thingy I cooked weeks ago. Tomorrow we really should eat some proper food. I think I saw the stirrings of some decent potatoes in the shop so maybe a roast. I just need to move my backside earlier!

Anyway, while other cities are awakening, Lanzhou continues to remain an open prison and today just became ever so slightly worse. Now, when I leave or return home, I have to show a card! Ok, I understand they can't know everyone by sight, especially with these bloody masks, but.....

There is but one fat foreigner living here, in fact for the foreseeable only one foreigner and every guard knows me because without fail when I pass I greet them or wave to them in the guardhouse! It's a bit like asking your own brother for ID! I have always maintained good relations with security in China because I don't want them to bar entry to my taxis when I come home, particularly with boxes of wine and heavy shopping. If I owned a car they'd let me in.

People keep saying everything will be fine in March. That's eleven days away. Really?

Ah well, at least I did a huge load of laundry yesterday!

Tuesday 18^th February, 2020 1600

OK, so yes, I have time on my hands. Just thought of an amusing (to me at least) tale.

One leave, after I had returned following a six-week stint in Chittagong, Bangladesh (incidentally the worst place I have ever been and I've been to a few dreadful places) I fell into my normal routine again.

That routine involved three or four evenings a week after the pub, going to a now-defunct restaurant, the Shaheen Tandoori in High Wycombe. They did a great curry, great butterfly prawn and great everything else. Over the course of a leave I would slowly graduate from a bhoona to a Madras. Once I tried a Tindaloo but was defeated. And they did the best nan bread I have ever had anywhere in the world, topped with ghee, succulently soft and perfectly fluffy, I'm getting hungry now!

Anyway, one particular night there were five male friends and I eating heartily our curries. When the bill came I pulled out my wallet and produced a wad of taka, the Bangladesh currency. Making a show of it, I counted it out and asked the manager if it was enough.

My friends were aghast! “You can't pay with that Mickey Mouse money!” they exclaimed. Usually I used Amex but not this time. “Yes, that's fine sir” said the boss, leaving my friends open-mouthed, or as they say these days, gobsmacked.

What they didn't know was that the previous week I had, purely by chance, asked the manager if anyone was going back to Bangladesh for a holiday because I had a walletful of notes the UK banks wouldn't change. By luck, HE was! So I arranged the set-up and told him to say nothing if it wasn't enough and I would settle the difference another day. As it happens, I got change!

I hope you don't mind but little things like this sometimes return and make me chuckle.

Tuesday 18^th February, 2020 1450

Reminiscent of similar “scares” in the past in the UK, apparently people in Hong Kong have been panic-buying. Maybe we passed on a little too much to them under our rule? So much so in fact that today I read an armed gang staged a heist and escaped with what? About £100 worth of toilet rolls! Despite assurances there are no shortages, people have been clearing the shelves. Loo rolls now attract a premium price, so I believe. Don't know what's wrong with China Daily, when I was a kid we sometimes had to use the News of the World.....

Say what you like about the Chinese but I have seen no evidence of plagues of locusts clearing supermarket shelves, quite unlike trying to buy food on Christmas Eve in England because the supermarkets are closed for two days!

I am sure I'm not the only one who gets annoyed at “targeted” (or as they like to put it, personalised) adverts every mortal time I go on Facebook or check my emails. I only need to check out a city to have Trip Advisor recommending hotels for me within hours for instance. I'm only either daydreaming or checking some research for Christ's sake! And the latest is Facebook. I'm in China. It's impossible to leave now without a fortnight's quarantine the moment your plane burns rubber on the tarmac. And what do they do? Send me an avalanche of “tempting” flight ads to exotic places! As for Trip Advisor, now out of spite I search dozens of places I have no intention of ever going to.

Now, if they sent me adverts for Christmas Island detention centre (actually I really used to like the place! Always we would clear out the solitary supermarket of Linghams chilli sauce – try it, you'll love it!) or Arrowe Park hospital I could understand but honestly, it's like sending Budweiser ads to someone stuck in Saudi Arabia!

And I neither have the time (life's too short) nor the inclination to keep blocking the damned things. They only start again a short while later anyway. There was one sponsored ad I kept getting a while ago that trumpeted Sweden had ditched the Euro. They've never had the Euro to ditch! So I reported it as being misleading. Ten times. Finally they stopped sending me it. If I am looking for something then I will find it, I don't need them to gratuitously send me prompts for laser eye surgery, penis lengtheners, skin-tautening creams or bloody haemorrhoid treatments! I don't want the first, too late for the second, couldn't care less about the third and don't have the fourth!

Hey! It's great not to talk about the “virus” for once! It's boring me so I must be boring you too.

Georgina in Beijing Skyped me earlier. Ok so I will talk a little about the virus. Beijing is now a “closed” city, meaning returnees need to self-isolate upon their return. Well, she's done that but she told me she had changed her job again. I think she changes jobs as often as I change my bedding. Maybe more. Anyway, she's now working for a UK legal partnership. No, not as a lawyer but recruiting lawyers to work for them. So much for her intention to work for Tesla! Good on her, always nice to know your “chicks” are getting on in the world. And by “chicks” I mean in the sense of ex-students of course. So many maybe send me a text once after they have left and then I never know what becomes of them. I still have my little harem in Shanghai although some of those seem to be drifting away lately. I reckon that's the only reason Roland likes me visiting in summer, for the pretty girls!

I was going to make a carrot and lentil soup later but someone informed me she was on a diet. Now my carrot and lentil soup is world-class and is a meal in itself. To the best of my knowledge neither carrots nor lentils are fattening or bad for you, although I am quite sure in time there will be cancer scares regarding both.

So instead of a nice, hearty soup with croutons and possibly homemade flatbread, today we will be having diet sardines on toast! And no, the contradiction is not lost on me!

Keep safe England just in case I am ever allowed back without spending the first two weeks in a bubble!

Monday 17^th February, 2020 1745

Still it continues.

News from Jody's friend who works as some sort of manager in the Starbuck's at the mall where BK and Metro are told her they were open. She wasn't sure about the mall but they were. Great! They do ham and cheese panninis! If nothing else I can have that for dinner!

Then at lunchtime came the rider that they were only open for people to have takeaways. Sometimes I could scream. It's freezing cold, why would I want a takeaway hot pannini that would be ice cubes ten seconds after leaving??

Sod that, had I known earlier I would have showered and gone and got the makings for a roast dinner as intended but too late now. Ok, looks like sandwiches or sardines on toast then. We could still go out? To be fair, good idea, being cooped up all day for four weeks so far, it's good to just get out occasionally.

So we went. I wanted to see if China Tobacco had my brand yet because the things I have been buying are twice as pricey and just make me cough – but I could easily do that alone another day. No, let's go.

So we did. China Tobacco was open but you couldn't go inside. Big table across the door and the obligatory temperature check. My brand? Of course not. Ok, what about 3G? I cough less but they cost 3X as much. Ten days worth cost as much as a month of my normal brand but I am stuffed. Except I wasn't allowed to pay cash or with my bank card in case they were infected from the germs I am not carrying! No, Jody had to pay by scanning with her phone, something I neither can nor want to be able to do.

The whole journey on the bus I had been looking to see where was open. Still just supermarkets, convenience stores and pharmacies. I had a bad feeling. Sure enough the mall was closed and the McDonald's nearby was only doing takeaways. I might have a digestive biscuit later.

Four weeks now and it is getting worse. Frozen on the bus because the drivers are now actually taping the windows open so you can't close them, taxis have notices saying you can only sit in the back and now there's a cone with a no entry tape to my own road! Ok that last is not too dreadful, it's about twenty yards to my place from there but nonetheless.........

I am pissed off with the whole affair now. This is not Wuhan, people are not dropping like flies and Shanghai, far worse affected and way closer to Wuhan, is now coming back to life while this backwoods place is simply closing down more!

Still, it could be worse, I could be in England getting a bit wet!

Sunday 16^th February, 2020 1600

I'm not quite sure what has happened since my last post but once again there is an army on the gate. This time it was quite hard to get my taxi back through but once I got out and showed a guard my face, he told the other people, strangers to me, I was Ok and that I live here.

But for the first time, when I went to get in my taxi to take me to BHG the driver was insistent that I sat in the back, I normally sit in the front. That may just be a lone driver being ultra-cautious, no doubt I will find out in due course.

Again the gauntlet of thermometers at the mall but to my delight the bakery was open again. I really didn't want to cook today so now we are having ham, tomato and lettuce with Colman's mustard in a baguette. I'll do a roast chicken dinner tomorrow but buy the stuff from my new-found local shop, especially as the potatoes in BHG were not exactly appetising aesthetically.

But the shop was quite busy (10 mins to get one tomato weighed and priced) and when I came out I discovered why when I had entered the mall there was a security tape dividing the aisle. You have to now enter on one side and exit the other!

And when I did get out I was stunned. They were restricting the number of customers going in. Never has that happened even at peak spring festival times. The queue of would-be shoppers must have been fifty yards long but for once there was no waiting for a taxi to happen along, there must have been twenty of them lined up waiting for fares!

Now for months BHG has gone from dreadful bacon to none at all (I can probably get the awful stuff in the new place now) but today, just when I actually wanted some of that square plastic ham there was none to be seen! The best I could find were some packets of lumps that looked a bit pink so I am hoping they are a facsimile of ham, Jody could only confirm it was dead pig. With her aversion to cheese and eggs, sandwiches are problematic.

She never ended up going in to work today, someone else who knows what she is doing and was on skeleton duty relieved her of the job and we currently await an emailed copy of my new timetable. I'm hoping I won't need to make a fuss.

Someone said to me on Facebook today (difficult to tell remotely whether the comment was facetious or not) that he was beginning to wonder if the virus was a scam. I'll be honest, I was lost as to a suitable response!

A scam that has paralysed a country home to a fifth of the world, that has affected other countries now and triggered evacuations, ships of all nationalities caught up in it – a scam??

Tinfoil hat, anyone?

Saturday 15^th February, 2020 1800

Below zero again today but there is talk of northern China dropping 8-10 degrees next week. Great.

Nothing much to report today really but I just went to the jing jo shop and forgot my mask. It was one way of getting people to give me a wide berth! Everything still all locked up but the situation is much less bleak now we found that supermarket nearby.

Jody was asked to go to the campus office tomorrow to meet with someone from the English language department so they can get together and come up with my timetable. She's not happy because her time doing office work finished at the end of term and she's going back to teaching. The reason she's been asked is that although the girl whose job it is has now returned from New Zealand, the girl doesn't have a clue. So it's the usual case of she makes an awful cup of tea so don't ask her but so and so makes a great one, ask her.

Mind you, I'd rather have Jody doing it, that way I may just get a friendly timetable!

The virus precautions seem to be rather hit and miss though, certainly here. One day there's an army on the gate and today they were all inside the guardhouse keeping warm. There was however a speaker on the quarantine desk which was presumably pumping out propaganda of some sort. Maybe it's a fair weather thing!

So tomorrow I have no choice but to go to BHG unless I want to give up smoking. Will the bakery be open? When will the big mall be open again? When will China Tobacco?

I've never been in this situation before and doubt many of my readers have been either unless they are much older than me. It's nothing I cannot handle but it doesn't half seem inconvenient. It is not anything on the scale of wartime shortages in the UK that my grandparents went through, that's for sure but these days people squeal if they lose internet for fifteen minutes or their favourite brand of cereal is out of stock. I would simply like to know what is and isn't open before I make the trip!

Valentine's Day, 2020 1440

Brenda enquired as to my health earlier. Then a little later asked me to tell her what I would say if I was asked what have we learnt from the epidemic and what should ordinary people do?

I strongly suspect she has been asked that question and wants to pinch anything I may have said to use herself but it did give me a chance to have a little rant!

I pointed out that whenever there's an outbreak the world panics but then that's human nature for you. I did my sums. So far 1488 fatalities in China, most in Hubei province. As a percentage of the 1.4 billion people in China it is 0.0001%. Annually, a quarter of a million people in China are killed on the roads, or 20,000 a month but it doesn't stop people doing it. Yet now the national dress is a pigging face mask! In fact yesterday, as well as being scanned with heat-seeking equipment, at the bakery we had to stand in a disinfecting “wet tray” before entering!

She has just informed me the school has instructed the staff to be ready for work on the 1^st March. I can't see it personally even though I hope it happens. I've also stated it would be nice to have my timetable of classes and subjects so I can make preparations. At the moment it is limbo.

1615

Nordine the French teacher is apparently still in France. I would have laid money on him returning so I hope my character assessment doesn't prove to be wrong.

1750

Just went to the jing jo shop. Two days ago I almost didn't need my coat to go out. Today? Jesus! I was actually for the first time, glad of the mask because it kept my face a bit warmer!

All the restaurants and stalls are still closed and tomorrow I need to procure more smokes. Do I potentially waste two or three hours on an expedition to China Tobacco and find that still closed, then have to go to BHG anyway or do I cut out the middleman? I will see how I feel tomorrow but probably a trip straight to BHG. Mind you, if it's a bit warmer the outing will make a nice change.

From your not-so-roving reporter it's goodnight for today!

Thursday 13^th February, 2020 1500

I nearly had a fit when I checked the latest figures this morning! It was with no small sense of relief that I discovered the huge leap was the result of an altered set of diagnostic criteria. Yesterday's graph showed hope that the infection rate may have peaked, although not mortalities. Quite aside from the human cost, this has to be costing China trillions.

I am waiting for my school to say something about teaching online. As yet they are silent because our postponement doesn't even start until 22^nd. If they do say I need to teach online there is only one question I can respond with – how??

Firstly I don't have Wechat and can't get it, although maybe if I got someone with a smartphone to scan the barcode thing I could. Secondly, how on earth can you conduct online oral English classes? I cannot imagine it is possible for me to have thirty-five or so small screens on my screen showing every student and being able to interact with them as in the classroom?

What I could do, and will probably suggest before that happens, is that maybe I could ask all the students to write about their experiences this spring festival and email their essays to me. Probably be shooting myself in the foot, given that I may have three hundred of them next term and that would take an awful lot of reading and correcting but hey, it's a sort of solution. It's not as if I can even offer to conduct open air classes in a field because the students are at home, the school daren't let them sleep en masse in their dormitories.

Ideas anyone?

I read today that this thing is now even affecting seamen. Not the cruise ships in the news but merchant crews. Apparently there are now huge logistical problems in getting reliefs out to the ships and serving crew on flights back home. There are reports of ships having to divert just to effect crew changes.

1800

We went out. First off bought about eight or nine months' worth of gas, then my monthly medicines which Jody very kindly paid for using her medical card. I don't have one here but I did in Chizhou and it was great, the school put so much on it each month I never actually had to fork out cash for my pills.

And after the chemist, Jody said oh look! there's a supermarket! Well, it was to be fair down a dead-end I have only ever ventured into twice, both times to get to the Ukrainian restaurant for spare ribs – which I also never knew existed until she showed me.

And wow! Right on my doorstep is a medium-sized supermarket tucked away! Doesn't stock everything but it has everything bar red wine and even has tinned tuna! BHG doesn't. Now, if they sold cheese I would have been in paradise but when I don't want to fork out for taxis to BHG I can now buy almost everything a short walk away.

I learnt something today. And our temperatures were taken four times despite remaining in a 200 yard radius!

Then the jing jo shop and home.

I had 20m³ left of gas, enough for at least three weeks. Stuck the card in to put in the 180m³ I just bought and it peeped and promptly showed zero! Nothing I did could get any gas from it. It was eventually decided that hopefully the batteries in the box were flat. Sod's law, I had every other size except AA and had only one which had been used for something else. I thought replacing one from four would make a difference but no joy.

Jody kindly went to the shop, bought new ones and thankfully we are back in business again!

High drama indeed.........

Wednesday 12th February, 2020                                             2040

Apologies but font size options have disappeared for now.

This guy on the call, admittedly well before things became far more serious, says a fair bit of what I have said, albeit hilariously!

 https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/james-obrien/yorkshireman-stranded-china-coronavirus-funny/

And I forgot to post this earlier, very witty song by a Chinese girl in Shanghai. My favourite bit is that she can only buy western stuff

https://www.facebook.com/ThatsShanghai/videos/572793546635516/

Wednesday 12^th February, 2020 1530

Inertia has bested me again today, admittedly partly due to hip pain. I haven't mentioned that for a while because lately it has improved – hell, I managed to walk all the way up Maijishan in Tianshui and that was the least of my problems! It would seem to me that the optimum solution (injections too frequent and painful, replacament operation in China? No thanks!)is to keep taking the fish oil capsules. Not perfect and they take months to show results but yes, I do discern the difference. Of course, it also helped that I am not desperate for gas or medicine so can procrastinate with abandon.

Just the daily “school run” to see Mr Jing Jo today but this time I took my camera. For those wondering why I don't use my phone for pictures it's because I am a dinosaur armed only with a dumbphone.

For the first time here at the gate I was greeted by a small army of security guards and police. And for the first time they took my temperature. They have been taking it with the Chinese and strangers and making everyone sign a “visitor's book” but somehow I was never accosted before. Maybe that's because of the police presence today. I still haven't had to sign the book though but then as the only laowei here they know exactly when I am here and when I am not. Cars were being stopped for the same purpose and there's a “red carpet” for them to drive over which I assume they are keeping sprayed with disinfectant – not dissimilar to when I drove off a Red Funnel ferry on the Isle of Wight years ago, possibly when BSE was all the rage.

And as I half expected, still the lockups are, well, locked up. That street, even in spring festival is always populated. If you look hard or magnify the photo, every one of the tan-coloured “garages” is shut and normally all but one or two would be open for business.

Jody has decided to take a bus to find an open mall. Typically Chinese, she gets the shakes if she hasn't got plenty of fruit! She said yesterday she really wanted something really hot and spicy and I reminded her I made a prawn thing a few days ago that I ate ONE forkful before giving up! She's also going to stock up on pot noodles. I rarely eat them but when I do it has to be the one in the blue container with pictures of prawns. It's the only type I have found that doesn't detach the top of my skull. Even after a decade I haven't discovered which of the sachets not to include in the mix!

So I continue to hear from Shanghai that the city is slowly but surely coming back to life, whilst mine seems to have lost the will to live!

Tuesday 11^th February, 2020 1640

Talk about depressing!

I was going to take a walk to buy gas and my pills but left it too late to bother due to the internet having been on a go-slow today. Plus my laziness. So it was just a quick outing to the jing jo shop.

The place resembles even more a clip from an apocalyse film now. I counted six other people plus a gaggle of guards having a chinwag on the gate. The mini-mart is still shut, as are all the restaurants (even the noodle place) and this time I remembered to check on the lockups. Not a one of them open. The only places open around here are the jing jo shop and, seeing as they were a couple of days ago, the pharmacy but then two days ago some of the lockups were open too but now aren't.

Last night I made toasted paté and tomato sandwiches. Two rounds for Jody (she raved over them) and one for me which was vile. The bread I bought yesterday – both loaves – are cakes in disguise, I wish I'd baked my own. She's not hungry tonight and I'm not bothering cooking for myself so unless I break out the last packet of Jacobs crackers and use some of the remnants of cheese I have left, total intake for two days will be a sandwich and a couple of chocolate wafers. I wouldn't mind so much if the belly shrunk a little but it never does!

Joanna is still at home with her folks, not too far from Alice Wuhu. Joan last time we communicated was at home and teaching on the internet. Good news for Alice though, Beijing have decreed that students who ultimately have to cancel trains and flights booked to be taken before the end of March will, on production of their student card, receive a full refund. She'll be needing to get a refund on her 14^th February flight for sure.

The end of MARCH?? I'll be loopy before then!

But then there are other big news stories elsewhere, the UK just took a slapping from Ciara and NSW received the rains they must have prayed for to alleviate the drought and extinguish the bush fires. I reckon they prayed a bit too much though. And then there's the biggest news of all.

Phillip Schofield is gay.

According to UK tabloids, news doesn't get bigger than that........

Monday 10^th February, 2020 1640

Shopping day.

Buoyed by the news that the banks are now open in Shanghai and businesses are reopening, I went to BHG with my list. It was hardly encouraging looking out from the taxi going there to see shop shutters remain down.

Now your temperature gets checked when you enter the little mall and when you go in the supermarket. And to my utter disgust the bakery just inside the entrance was closed. I wanted to buy a French baguette because I have some tuna paté I'd forgotten about and was looking forward to an easy meal tonight. I was also going to buy some sliced bread to have toasted with sardines in a couple of days. Sure, the supermarket sells bread but every time I've bought some it always tastes like cake. I ended up buying two loaves, hoping at least one is edible. Just when I'd discovered bread I can actually use for my lunchbox whenever we start back at work.

I forgot to check and see if the stalls near here had started to open again but the little supermarket and the noodle restaurant are definitely still resolutely closed. I reckon Mr Jing Jo is making a killing, every second day I go in there he seems to have just had a huge delivery of alcohols and soft drinks, so much so that the available floorspace means with two customers the shop's packed!

It doesn't do anything for morale I am guessing when the epidemic has now surpassed both the SARS and the MERS outbreaks. Mind you, neither do the ubiquitous masks nor never knowing if where you want to go will be open or not. Still, it could be worse – I could just be starting a fortnight's quarantine in sunny Milton Keynes!!

Sunday 9^th February, 2020 1620

I've just been out for daily supplies, the plan for tonight's dinner was tiger prawns and steamed rice. I thought I'd chuck a red or green pepper in, along with anything else that didn't look too shrivelled. Given what Jody said yesterday about last night being the final day of the festival (loads of bangers were being let off), I was expecting to see most of the stalls open today.

Not a one!

The fruit lady has opened every day since this started and there have always been veg stalls and what with the meat place being open yesterday it came as a shock. I've never counted them but there must be about thirty lockups that comprise the stalls and I walked almost the length of them hoping for somewhere to be open.

The only place open was the jing jo shop. There were white hazmat suits outside the disease control centre again though.

So it was a case of “what the hell do I do about dinner now that I've defrosted the prawns?” The short answer is, I have two onions, two lemons, a bulb of garlic and a single tomato! I'll be inventing a new dish later, that's for sure, maybe some sesame oil and soy, maybe oyster sauce – needs must but I wish I'd known earlier, I'd have made a trip to BHG.

At least I remembered to wear my mask, even though it was so empty outside it was unnerving.

Saturday 8^th February, 2020 1610

The tedium continues.

Today's highlight was the outing to get spuds, apples and my daily liquids.

I keep forgetting the short cut is closed, therefore giving myself an even longer cut by having to walk back to the main gate. I also keep forgetting to put a sodding mask on and today there was no shortage of people telling me I wasn't wearing one. If only I knew how to tell them I was secretly Typhoid Mary. Oh, and that yes, I know I am not wearing one! What the hell, they are wearing theirs so I pose no threat.

They are now mob-handed on the gate and armed with digital thermometers although they left me well alone as I breezed past with a “Hello lads!” yesterday my wrist temperature at the supermarket was 34.1ºC but to be honest, whilst lower than normal body heat, I have no idea what skin temperature taken at the wrist should be, merely that I guess it should be lower.

Anyway, today the meat stall where I often buy my pork and chicken is open again and Jody seems to think things may go back to normal after tomorrow. I hope she's right, I may make another expedition to the Mall to see if I can go shopping in Metro sometime in the week. I'm not, as the Mercans would say, going stir-crazy – yet!

Roast pork dinner tonight, hence the apples for a sauce, “Broccoli and peas ok for you?”

“Yes but the broccoli was too soft last time”.

Ok I know the Chinese like their veg a bit crunchy but this is hardly a Michelin-starred place! And I don't even like broccoli!

I've been reading today on the BBC website and other places (before Uncle Mick chimes in!) about “brave” foreigners from England who have decided to stay. What the hell is brave about it? About not wanting to fly away and spend a fortnight in a Nissen hut before being released? Walking away from your job?

Well I certainly wouldn't describe myself as being particularly brave although I am no coward. Stupid sometimes to be sure, facing danger very occasionally probably because either I have no idea of the hazard or someone else not as strong is in peril. I'm not staying to be brave, I am staying because I have a job and a living which China has (albeit infuriatingly at times) been good enough to provide me with for almost a decade. I am staying because I think it would be an act of cowardice to run, particularly when I personally don't think the risk is that great and that I believe that even if I fell ill, my body has fought far greater battles than this.

I really wish there were other things to talk about other than closed businesses (even the Grand Soluxe hotel downtown was roped off yesterday) and I'm sorry if I seem to be moaning. In a normal spring festival I wouldn't be doing much anyway but that would be from choice or lack of funds or energy. It becomes annoying though that when you can't do anything even when you don't want to in any case, you can't – a bit like telling a kid not to shove puffed wheat up his nose – they will anyway!

And I need cheese.