LETTER FROM LONDON MARCH 2020


As the trees blossom like flowers and the days become longer it feels like a strange spring, nature unaware of the clammy disaster that has invaded the city. We seem to be paused momentarily at the point just before the contagion is about to devour significant numbers of the unwary and foolish, who flock to the London parks, many who will soon be ill, while others fill their shopping trolleys with kitchen towel, toilet roll, pasta  and anything else they can find on the shelves  in a daze of angry panic. The citizens will not submit without a fight, albeit for the last pack of Andrex toilet tissue.
There are no potatoes, or indeed any fresh veg in Tesco. Where once there were carrots, onions and purple sprouting broccoli in abundance there are only empty pallets. I find some sea bass which fills me with joy as I place it in my basket. In the freezer there is little to buy, bar ice cream, potato waffles and chocolate cake. However, I do find some breaded mushrooms which I can have with my sea bass.
I approach the self-checkout feeling slightly nauseous as I breath in TCP fumes from my homemade mask, feeling like Jesse James fresh from the dentist. But check out is a humourless process as I key in my pin, - soon I will have to wash my hands again.
Portobello is denuded of many of its stalls and the tourists look bemused, like they have been conned. But the streets are neither crowded nor empty, just full of lost souls and the indifferent. I am one such lost soul, robbed of the familiar and predictable. Only the blossom consoles.
Indoors I put away my spoils and go to scrub my hands.  


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