This evening Her Majesty the Queen will address the nation and I imagine her words will be considered, thoughtful and above all positive.

Happily not being a monarch, I am unconstrained by such things and can rant away as usual.  She will doubtless and rightly praise the people who are working to get us through this crisis, many quite literally putting their lives at risk.  I, on the other hand, would like to give a complete bollocking to the moronic element in society who appear incapable of understanding the very simple instruction to STAY INSIDE.  At the risk of appearing to drum up work for my son, I should like to have the words ‘I am completely selfish and stupid’ tattooed on their Neanderthal foreheads.  Or ‘I don’t give a toss about anyone else’.   Perhaps when things settle down we could extend it to ‘I drink and drive’ or ‘I beat my wife’?  Am I getting a little bit medieval spending too much time on my own?

I am also not entirely in favour of spending millions of pounds to repatriate Britons abroad, particularly anyone who left after the date on which it became clear that things were about to end in tears, or who had plenty of time and opportunity to get back but didn’t want to ‘cut short my holiday’. Bad decisions, as it turned out, and perhaps we should invoke the now forgotten rule that you lie in the bed you choose to make.

It is of course a privilege to live in a country where there is freedom of speech but I begin to wonder if we shouldn’t have the tiniest suspension of it for the duration which would spare us from the endless criticism of what the government is doing.  No, they are not perfect, perhaps not every decision has shown the wisdom of Solomon but how the hell is anyone supposed to know how to handle this?  Is there a book we should have been reading:  ‘Pandemics: An easy way to sort them for beginners’?  Can I appeal to the carping critics to share their infinite knowledge of how we should actually be solving this with the rest of us before I start a petition to have them done for treason?  You are not helping, people.

Dark thoughts but not quite as dark as how I felt on Wednesday when I hit what marathon runners call The Wall, as those of you who saw my posting on Facebook will already know.  A huge thank you to the friends who responded – just the sound of another human (Who’s not on the radio talking about the c word) made a world of difference and I’ve now got my second wind which will hopefully carry me to the finish line.  Let me know if you in turn need a hand.

Yesterday evening I had a phone call from a girlfriend who lives up North and who I only see about once a year. It is our long established  habit to settle down at either end of the line with a glass or three of wine while we have a catch up session.  It was a beautiful evening and I sat watching the sun go down as we chatted, gossiped and bitched for 90 minutes about our families, friends and pets, just as we always do.

I can’t describe how wonderful it was to feel normal.