Should we stay or should we go

A strange last trip to the shops (one of a number of last trips) before we shut the gates. Staff in masks and gloves in the chemist, hand gel at the Agricola, the supermarket empty with signs everywhere saying keep at a least a metre apart. Felt really sad and lonesome. Suddenly we’re eyeing each other up with one thing in mind: has he or she got it. It is really very weird.

In one shop an old bore glorying in a sort of fascist - it-will-only-take-the-weak- display of sickening braggadocio. Little did he seem to know it but at his age he may be one of the weak he relishes seeing swept from this earth. I should have punched him but the latest decrees say no social touching.

Prison riots sweeping italy, six dead, stories of the mad rush to escape the fairly non-existent net around Lombardy and 16 ? Provinces. Puglia issues decree making all northern returning to go into 14 day domestic quarantine. In Tuscan the numbers tick up - 206 cases with an increase of 43 and about 2000 in home quarantine. Our friends in Emilia we’re finally given a home swab test. Here’s hoping for the best.

The Principal has admission interviews in two weeks. Hopefully they will go ahead with Skype only. We did have a serious think about doing a runner back to Edinburgh but we’d have to self quarantine for 14 days and probably see the car with its Italian plates torched.

So we are sitting tight. Looks like Swiss Italian border has been closed. We’ve got other English friends who just driven back from London.. Hard to know where it’s best to be. Choice in this context being an insidious thing.

You find yourself self- monitoring. Is that a fever or am I just hot? Is that a dry cough or a wet cough? But it sounds like the system is holding up in Tuscany while on the edge of collapse in Lombardy. 10% of known cases need ICU in Italy - which has an ageing population. The Chinese data suggests men are more vulnerable to fatality and older ones more so but this may be skewed by much higher rate of smoking amongst Chinese men - he says hopefully...

This has all happened since Feb 21st. Remarkable speed of spread and lagging counter measures. The birds sing louder everyday and I grabbed an armful of seed packs and fertiliser from the Agricola. Hope springs eternal. Or spring is hope’s eternal promise.