TONY - REPORT FROM SCOTLAND

I should not now be in Scotland, but Perth, Western Australia, for a five week family visit, but from the moment my wife and I got back from France in the first week of March, a further trip was already looking unlikely. 

Subsequent events made travelling to the far side of the world look ever more unwise, so when the Aussie government ruled that all visitors would have to self-isolate for the first two weeks of their stay, we knew we would have to stay in Edinburgh. 

Keeping in touch by video  is a great comfort at such a dreadful time.

We're using Zoom for talking in bigger groups now, and still use our iPads to FaceTime or Skype a variety of friends and family. 

Tonight I catch up with friends in Brussels.

Last week I  joined in a Zoom meeting of retired EU civil servants to discuss a Scotland-wide check we'd made to ensure the crisis had left no former colleague in distress.

I still find it strange how the distance between cyber participants has become immaterial, no matter how great. 

We get on well with our downstairs neighbours, and so keep up through the Internet for a chat and a glass of wine, although we're only 20 metres apart !

Our  link up regularly with Australia is 9,000 miles long; yet the experience is just the same! 

A strange, new lifestyle is evolving not just on-line, but in traditional public spaces,too.  We see, as we take our permitted daily outing in our local gardens and parks, a new  behaviour developing among our fellow citizens. People have already learned to give each other a wide berth, mostly with a smile, but occasionally with a scowl ! 

We had a clear premonition of what life with the Covid virus might be like, through our Chinese family connection. 

My son's mother-in-law had already experienced many weeks of home confinement, before the pandemic took hold in the UK. 

Last week, she sent us a welcome parcel of sanitizer and re-useable masks all the way from China, where they must be shaking their heads at the British failure to learn from their experience, and to prepare earlier for the Coronavirus threat. 

But we're both OK so far, if increasingly aware of how much of our life and projects are on hold, and anxious to know as soon as possible how long this emergency will go on !"

Tony  -   Edinburgh, Scotland

05 04 2020