Authors Electric

I wrote on Facebook yesterday (Sunday) that it was a strange day. We went out for a walk late morning – down and over the river and onto Whitegate Way – the old railway track-now-bridleway/footpath. Off onto another footpath and back down to the bridge again and home again. About 3-4 miles in total, I think. Things to note: large and spreading clumps of Japanese knotweed in the field and across the path; I’ve never actually seen it in-the-flesh so to speak and it really is a distinctive plant, isn’t it? In the afternoon, the weather was very still. It was more overcast, but the atmosphere was heavy and pensive. Not the thundery precursor to a storm, but more like the world was holding its breath, waiting, anticipating … something. I’m not sure what. I know I couldn’t settle to anything, and I just wanted whatever it was that was going to happen to just get on with it and happen. It hasn’t yet. Comments on Facebook  varied from lockdown-fever, through moon phases and p...

So I started writing this bog in early March, conscious of my failure to come up with the goods in February. Early March, when reports were coming in and the world was just starting to wake up to the fact that this Chinese Thing might be something we ought to take seriously … Sunday 5 th  April. And the world as we knew it has changed forever. Which might sound a bit over the top, but personally I don’t think things will ever be the same afterwards. If there even is an afterwards and this pandemic isn’t something we will have to learn to live alongside. Too many people have already lost their jobs and livelihoods.  Have we done the right thing? I have to admit I’m in the camp which thinks that the cure may actually be worse than the disease and that more people will die from the economic impact than the virus. But we are lucky – we are healthy, we still have jobs and can work from home. I suspect that over the coming years, the post-apocalyptic novel will be the Nex...