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?