What a crazy title for a blog post. But it's truly crazy times that we find ourselves living in at the moment. Let me back track a little. At the start of the year, we started hearing news reports coming out of Asia about a new illness. Coronavirus. It sounded like another BirdFlu, or SwineFlu; some unusual strain of a common illness coming (yet again) from China where it had been passed from animals to humans. Something triggers in your brain, but it all seems very distant, and remote, and something happening elsewhere to other unfortunate people. But days passed and news reports began to get rather odd. Footage was emerging of temporary, but huge, hospitals being erected in just days to try and combat and deal with the numbers of people who needed treatment. Some reports suggested these weren't hospitals, but in fact mass graves. Whole provinces were shut down. The Chinese government were imposing strict sanctions. Things were starting to look like something from a Netflix boxset. I followed twitter, and different news outlets but I was taking things with a pinch of salt, trying to separate the truth from the FakeNews. British journalists commended the way in which the Chinese were able to stop their people from going out and spreading the virus. One even said that he simply couldn't imagine similar scenes in the UK, that our society simply wouldn't be told what do like that. Things still seemed far away, and even better they seemed to be tapering off. Phew.
Then the first case was confirmed in Europe. In France. And then it started getting weird in Italy. I still don't really know how the virus made the jump from Wuhan in China, to northern Italy but whoever brought it in clearly travelled all over the place, infecting scores of people, and without any checks whatsoever. Numbers with the infection in Italy soared, and with it, the death rate. Before we knew it, we were reaching the end of February and the Italian government were introducing measures unheard of since WWII: cities on lockdown. And then the whole country. Other hot spots began emerging across Europe and with them a sense of uneasiness. We had a trip booked back to Scotland leaving on the 1st of March and we headed off whilst joking, "Haha, imagine it progressed in France to a point that we got stuck in Scotland."
We didn't get stuck but it was close. In fact, the whole world seems to be spinning on a different axis at the moment. The whole time we were in Scotland, we followed news reports of the virus taking a hold across Europe and now also in the UK. It's just been one big hideous wave coming from the east. The World Health Organisation have now declared it a global pandemic and last week people started emptying shelves of bog roll and hand wash due to panic buying. On Thursday, it was announced that all creches, schools, colleges etc in France would be closing as of Monday 16th March (yesterday). We were hoping that Macron would close the borders and we would get stuck (in Scotland) but all he managed to add on Saturday night was that all bars, restaurants and cafes now needed to close. We flew back to Pau on Sunday with no problems although we did see quite a lot of people in masks and someone in a full CSI type suit. I have to admit that I didn't look like I was in good health whatsoever so many of my fellow travellers kept a wide berth, however, my state of (un)health was due to a raging hangover from Brain Martin's wedding, rather than from some vague flu-like respiratory illness. Staying classy.
Since returning to Pau, life has taken a strange turn. Iain went into work on Monday morning in the hope that they would be able to put together some sort of programme to keep the guys training while the competition is suspended. Not only is the Top14 cancelled, but every sporting fixture you can imagine in Europe is off: 6 Nations, La Liga, Bundesliga, EPL, SPL and the Euro2020 were cancelled today. In addition, all sorts of arts/comedy/events etc all off. No indoor meetings of any kind. France seems to be a couple of weeks ahead of the UK but even Susie's gig at the King's is postponed already. I went to Auchan yesterday morning. I was nervous about going. I didn't really want to take William and potentially subject him to contracting it but I knew we needed to get a big shop done and then just hunker down and wait things out. We went. It was absolutely mobbed. Large areas were empty: soap, hand wash, bleach, toilet roll, rice, pasta, tinned items. But, we managed a good haul and I was pleased. The queues were enormous but we were round and out in about 90mins which isn't that much longer that usual. I was so pleased to get home, especially as Iain was already back with the news that he wasn't to return to work for a minimum of two weeks. He was a bit spooked after hearing stories from his Boss' son who is currently in Barcelona (which is on lockdown already).
Last night, at 8pm President Macron made a National Address confirming what people had been predicting all day: the country was going on lockdown as of today at midday. You cannot go out on the streets unless it is for food, medicine or a special reason, and you must carry papers with you at all times or face police fines. My phone is constantly pinging with different group chats looking for confirmation/translations of the latest updates and government directives. Sometimes you forget it's happening, and then it suddenly hits you that this is going on and you shit yourself all over again. It's truly frightening times.
We managed to get out for some fresh air this morning and the town was quiet but there were still quite a few people out getting essentials. William doesn't quite understand what is happening and it was all a bit overwhelming for him. We spoke to friends who were hanging out their apartment windows and William just couldn't understand why we couldn't go up. Just after midday, I got a text from the government saying STAY HOME. We spent the rest of the afternoon back in the house, playing, doing chores and watching a movie. I'm trying not to read the news too often as I feel that we can't do anything more anyway. I've seen photos from Auchan today and it looks mental: one in, one out. We have food, and we're all together, here, in our home. We just need to wait this out and hope for the best. I have a bit of a cold, and sore throat but reckon it's probably just being run down from the trip and the travel. I don't have a fever or a persistent cough which are, apparently, the symptoms I should be looking out for. Keeping hydrated and need a good night's sleep is hopefully all I need. And hopefully no more Covid-19/Coronavirus dreams tonight. I've had enough of it during waking hours!
LM :-(
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