Eliambulanza

Thank you for the kind comments re Silverio. Sorry I am replying to comments even less than usual.

Today was Day One of the lockdown. The force of the law is to stay at home. Work travel, trips for health reasons and very local shopping are only permitted.

The main road to Florence on the other side of the valley was quiet today - mainly commercial traffic. At night there seemed to be no one on it at all.

The air ambulance chopped overhead bound for Arezzo. It used to be a strangely cheery reassuring sight. I don’t know if this one took Silverio to Bologna but now it seems a portent.

The virus eats away at you even without being infected. Rolling waves of anxiety. Borders clanging closed. Airlines abandoning Italy. Routes home disappearing.

Early days. The numbers tick up. Some are calling for a much more drastic shutdown in areas like Bergamo to try and take the steam out of the beast.

We’ve linked into our local council’s WhatsApp group which is useful.

Can’t stress enough that Italy is not some weird lax Mediterranean outlier. It’s been unlucky. The next two three weeks will demonstrate if the rest of the west has learned anything from the Italian catastrophe. Seeing Cheltenham going on seems like suicide from an Italian perspective.

We lie awake. Waiting for the snake to strike. Or not. It is as the old flower people used to say, ‘A complete trip.’ Everything collapses into its voracious black hole. There is no other news.