Boris Johnson deserves all our best wishes even if normally they would be delivered through gritted teeth.

To have our prime minister in intensive care with coronavirus is shocking and worrying. Johnson is in St Thomas’s Hospital, over the Thames from Westminster, and hopefully he will be well again soon and back to his annoying old self.

The prime minister’s present vulnerability reminds us of the politics of health, how a leader’s wellbeing can be built up or exaggerated to bolster their image.

This morning cabinet minister Michael Gove was on the BBC Today programme saying that Johnson, 55, had been given oxygen but not put on a ventilator.

Gove and presenter Nick Robinson animatedly praised the prime minister’s “zest for life”, at which point, while still wishing him well, I turned off the radio.

Beforehand, others discussed Johnson’s great good health, how he went running, could beat anyone at tennis and so on. The Times report today describes Johnson as being reasonably fit, adding that he plays tennis regularly and while at No 10 follows online video workouts mixing yoga, Pilates and aerobics.

The Times adds that he has given up jogging because of problems with his knees and is troubled by his weight, said to have reached 16-and-half stone a little over two years ago, in the obese category as he is not particularly tall.

It was always possible to wonder at the running as he didn’t look like a natural, and he did seem to like running whenever photographers were around.

Still, trying to keep fit isn’t easy, as various muscles and tendons in my old jogging legs can testify.

The political side comes from having to create myths about the fitness of our leaders. The orange flab mountain Donald Trump has made great play of his personal fitness, as proclaimed by his doctor.

Before he became president his personal physical, Dr Harold Bornstein, wrote: “If elected, Mr Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” A statement so bold it might almost have been dictated by Trump himself – which, according to reports three years later, is exactly what happened.

Trump proudly boasts about his health while looking, it must be said, decidedly tubby. Photographs of him playing/cheating at golf always show him looking very rotund for someone purportedly so healthy.

In the past Johnson’s illness may well have been kept from us, but such state secrecy over delicate matters of health is no longer possible. Those sort of secrets are just harder to keep.

Winston Churchill had various health problems and assorted mishaps, including burning his hand when accidentally placing a lit cigar in a box of matches.

Churchill also suffered a tooth abscess in 1941, a heart attack while staying at the White House and pneumonia in 1943, and a severe stroke when a peacetime prime minister in 1953 that saw him off work for four months.

There has always been much debate about Churchill’s health and about habits that now seem remarkably hazardous, yet he lived until he was 90, so perhaps he wins that argument.

When he arrived at the White House in 1941, Churchill, then 67, made eccentric demands according to the Smithsonian magazine: “I must have a tumbler of sherry in my room before breakfast, a couple of glasses of scotch and soda before lunch and French champagne, and 90-year-old brandy before I go to sleep at night.”

Boris Johnson, according Michael Gove, is receiving “the very best medical care” – as, of course, is everyone blighted by this virus. He is receiving the same sort of high care provided to all virus patients by the NHS. Perhaps he will have time, when he recovers, to take to task Charles Moore, who yesterday wrote in Johnson’s old newspaper the Daily Telegraph: “The inflexibility of our lumbering NHS is why the country has had to be shut down.”

Blaming the NHS for the lockdown is the sort of weird logic proudly flourished by a Daily Telegraph columnist. But, of course, as a former inhabitant of that role, Johnson knows that all too well.

With staying in being the old going out, the National Theatre is putting a different past production on YouTube each week. You can’t go to the theatre, but the theatre can come to you.

Using Google glue to mend punctured memory, here are some shows I saw at the National Theatre in the early to mid-1980s.

What must have been the first was Warren Mitchell in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. That was in 1979, apparently, which I refuse to believe.

Other shows attended, chewed biro in hand, included Richard Eyre’s production of Guys and Dolls, David Hare’s savage Fleet Street satire Pravda, and Michael Gambon starring in Miller’s A View From The Bridge, a revival directed by Alan Ayckbourn (it says here).

Ayckbourn’s own play Way Upstream, set in a floating boat as designed by Bill Dudley, proved problematic, springing a leak that flooded the Lyttelton Theatre. Another play to stick in mind was David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, and the promenade production of The Mysteries.

I saw these plays, and much more besides, on behalf of the lucky readers of the South East London Mercury. Under the guise of being a theatre critic, I skirted the theatrical fringes with the likes of Michael Billington. I saw many plays and once saw Lilly Allen’s dad Keith strip naked for a laugh (that’s another hairy story).

Other theatres were available, as was the pub. Life was a pub/theatre seesaw back then.

These fragments floated back after watching James Corden in One Man, Two Guvnors. Now if I told you to watch this, you might not thank me. But, honestly, you really should give it a go, even if you struggle with Corden.

This is an English adaptation of Servant of Two Masters, an Italian comedy of 1743 by Carlo Goldoni.

It’s also a tremendously funny, daft and gloriously stupid updating by Richard Bean, with Corden excelling as the put-upon hungry man who lands two jobs at the same time.

Bean sets his production in Brighton in 1963, and it’s all very rock’n’roll with a band on stage.

The plot has a glancing resemblance to those Shakespeare comedies where boys are girls and girls are boys, and love is lost and found again. But the plot hardly matters, other than as a contrivance to keep the farcical action in the air.

The set-pieces are furiously funny, and in one extended sequence a woman from the audience ends up being much abused, set on fire and covered in extinguisher foam. And, yes, Christine Patterson is a plant, as by tradition there’s always an audience member called that. Kosher members of the audience are also pulled into the action; at least they seemed real enough.

Bean made a success of adapting this old Italian comedy, but he wasn’t the first to have a go.

Blake Morrison served up his version, The Man With Two Gaffers, in a production with York Theatre Royal and Northern Broadsides. When I knew him, Blake Morrison lived in a flat in the walls of Greenwich Park. He was the literary editor of the Observer and I interviewed him about his poetry. Shortly after that, he put me in touch with the Observer and I started three years of shifts, that only ended when York called.

Anyway, do give One Man, Two Guvnors a go before Wednesday night. You won’t regret it. Take that from one man who used to pretend to be a theatre critic.

Motorbike and sidecar from the 1950s

Boris Johnson fancies himself as Churchill, so there is a passing irony in road traffic dropping to levels last seen when his hero was prime minister.

According to a report in the Guardian, the coronavirus restrictions have sent traffic back to 1955 levels. This is an accidental achievement taken by some as proof that we should mend our ways. The trouble is, it’s been got at a price society couldn’t afford or sustain.

I’ve gone from driving a lot to hardly at all. A trip to Wetherby the other day to go shopping for the self-sequestered in-laws took place on roads so deserted, it was as if someone forgot to mention that the apocalypse just happened.

Still, all this set me thinking about family cars. In 1955, the year before I was born, the Ford Anglia was a popular choice. We couldn’t stretch that far. Our first family transport was a motorbike-and-sidecar, mother and baby me in the wheeled appendage, father astride the motorbike, wearing a leather helmet and goggles and frowning into the sunset (those images added here as a romantic false memory).

By the time my brothers were born, that sidecar combo was long gone. Here are family cars that memory can summon up: the green Minivan that took our family of five on long summer camping holidays to France in the 1960s; a Ford Zephyr with expansive bench seats; a Hillman Husky estate based on the rear-engine Imp; a sky-blue Volkswagen Beetle; and a Morris Marina or possibly two. If there were others, I’ve forgotten them.

My own list goes like this: Renault 11, MG Midget, MG Metro, Ford Escort estate, Volvo 240 GT, Volvo V70 estate and a Seat Leon times two.

Our deserted streets have seen a big fall in air pollution and that’s clearly a bonus and could reduce early deaths from heart and lung disease, although pessimists will be a gloomy nuisance and point out that the virus has the opposite effect.

Thus far into lockdown, people are beginning to ask what we will learn and if life will be different afterwards. The cynical snap answer is life will be as it was – and we will learn nothing, as that’s what always happens.

A depressing thought when depressing thoughts are not needed, so perhaps we will moderate our behaviour. If anyone wants to employ me in York or give a nod to the Lottery gods, I happily will pledge to cut down on driving.

Working from home shows that this can be done, and for a short while it’s fine. I’ve enjoyed my first three weeks or so commuting upstairs to the study, but you do miss the company.

The broad sweep of politics may change, too. The after-effects of the coronavirus should prevent any future Conservative government from suffocating the NHS through cruel choice. What a remarkable turnaround from NHS slashers to big-spending supporters of the health service. What’s important now is to look forward, while not entirely forgetting that ten years of austerity was a political choice.

Damn, saying things like that make you sound like Jeremy Corbyn, last seen shuffling off the political stage saying he was right all along and besides he’s not going anywhere (exit stage left pursued by two election defeats).

Anyway, the Labour Party has a new leader and perhaps Sir Keir Starmer will give the government the forensic once-over it has so far avoided.

But I have drifted from cars. This afternoon, in keeping with sitcom-style cliché, I will handwash the latest Leon instead of visiting the local car-wash place.

I may be a while and I may be soggy.

The small things hit first: no squash, badminton or visits to the local bar, no films or gigs. No anything much. And no bread flour, a triviality but bread-and-butter to my eyes.

Other personal aspects are more serious, such as not meeting family or friends. Elderly parents go unseen; two of our three grown-up children go unmet, even though one lives two miles away. Our youngest is cooped up here with us, kept away from the school where she is training to be a teacher.

For those fighting the coronavirus, this interlude is not worrying or wearisome but terrifying. At the time of writing the recorded death toll from the virus is 1,789, with 381 people dying yesterday, including, tragically, a 13-year-old boy.

Those are the facts and that is why we are being asked to live as we are.

Boris Johnson has the virus and, thinking about it, he’d been looking peaky for a while. His personal ratings are high over his handling of the crisis, yet that’s as much to do with the job as the man. President Trump’s ratings are also firm, even though his handling of the crisis has been abjectly crazy and wildly inconsistent.

Coming off the back of Brexit (ah, cosy old Brexit with its endless shouty rows), this crisis arrived when much of the media was still stuck in yah boo mode.

All that buttering-up of Boris set the tone for too long. Fortunately, journalists are now asking important questions: why is Britain behind in testing; why did ministers say they ‘missed the email’ from the EU offering ventilators (and was that just more Brexit blather)?

Also, remember that Johnson is a question-dodger at heart, as the shutting down of Parliament showed us. Everything is shut now too, making it harder for proper scrutiny. Remember, too, that Johnson never really gives interviews, the closest being those daily press briefings. Yesterday’s briefing was taken by Michael Gove, which was about as reassuring as finding a cocky, lying little devil perched at the foot of your bed.

To all this you can add the behaviour of the police. Let’s freely admit the police have a difficult job to do. Let’s also freely admit that the police have used their big boots to trample over what in normal times constitute our rights.

Derbyshire police have had the most criticism, for drone-shaming walkers and even putting black dye in a blue lagoon to deter visitors. On the radio the other morning, former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption branded such behaviour “disgraceful”, said it was close to a police state, and added that officers had no power to “enforce ministers’ preferences”.

Derbyshire chief constable, Peter Goodman, now admits Lord Sumption is right, but adds that he also must consider locals frightened by tourists trekking through their villages.

The new rules fall somewhere between law and ministerial edict. The police rushed into that gap as if in pursuit of criminals, rather than people going for a walk when perhaps they shouldn’t.

Anyway, two loaves made from my diminishing supply of bread flour are about to go in the oven.

God, we all need a post to lean on. Here are two of mine: a ‘private’ audience with Richard Thompson and plenty of fork into mouth action on MasterChef.

Thompson, that noted wearer of berets, is a spinner of great songs and a fretboard wizard who can make one guitar sound like two. He has been performing for more than 50 years – around 5,000 gigs, as he confided last night.

“Can’t remember any of them,” he quipped, his voice now confident but still running ahead of a childhood stammer.

All those gigs, and now he’s stuck at home in New Jersey with the latest woman in his life, the singer Zara Phillips (not the royal equestrian one).

Unable to travel anywhere, Thompson, 71 this week, made do with a lockdown gig streamed from his studio.

Lovely stuff to this long-time fan, just Thompson and his acoustic guitar, singing and strumming out the rhythm while laying flurries of notes on top, as he does. He is drily witty, his British humour undimmed by years in the US. At one point, Phillips came on to do the vacuuming, took his temperature and then joined in on vocals.

Thompson played songs old and new, including Down When The Drunkards Roll, one of two great drinking anthems by this now teetotal singer, God Loves A Drunk being the other.

On the Facebook feed fans scrolled out their gratitude and, remarkably, their grumbles. The moaners wanted to see his hands better so they could learn to play the songs properly.

“They’re not easy to play,” I told Thompson once during a phone interview.

“They’re not meant to be,” he said.

After last night, I have a better handle on Walking The Long Miles Home, so thanks, Richard. Oh, and he played that song now accidentally of the moment: Keep Your Distance.

MasterChef ­­is a guilty pleasure just when you need one. Never has this show been more welcome. These hopeful Hestons are on hand to cheer us up. And if you want to know what a scallop or a chocolate fondant look like, they’re eager to oblige.

It’s an odd addiction, I’ll agree. A programme about food you never taste, cooked by people you don’t know from Adam keeping six feet away in the supermarket.

The tasting is all down to that pair of professional mouths, John (‘Parsta’) Torode and Gregg (‘Sorse’) Wallace. Forks plunge into their mouths like JCBs going into muddy holes. We froze the programme on play-back the other day and one or other of them was there for ages with his gob stuck on open.

All very ridiculous, yet I love this show as much as Gregg with two gees loves his puddings. In case you don’t know, he’s the one who looks like a permanently surprised tortoise.

I even love the voice-over drawl at the start, all that doomy excess of second-rate Hollywood blockbusters – “MasterChef is back!” It is my sworn duty to repeat that phrase every time we sit down to watch. A habit warmly welcomed by everyone else (all two of them).

Anyway, it’s knockout week and we will be watching tonight, happily distracted for an hour.

The words jumped out at me from beneath a rainbow painted by a child – “This too shall pass.”

I was running and those four words trotted along for a while. They have a biblical cadence, I thought, a good short sentence. The keystone is the placement of ‘too’, I thought (pant, pant).

Try the same four words with ‘too’ at the end and nothing really works: ‘This shall pass too’ has the stresses all wrong. That arrangement also raises a comma conundrum: do we get fussy and include one after ‘pass’? By the time you’ve pondered all that, a lovely phrase has curled up and died (pant, pant).

Back home and sweaty, I turned to Google. Turns out the phrase is not biblical but thought to be an old Persian adage.

It’s a noble sentiment and better than, say, all this shit will be over one day, won’t it, with the virus gone and that orange virus in the White House gone too, along with other shitty things?

Those rainbows displayed in house windows provide something cheerful for children to do. At least our three are grown up, so we don’t have to worry about home schooling. On social media you will find many amusing posts on this theme, and one or two outright rants about the impossibility of teaching your own children at home.

Painting rainbows only goes so far.

With much to feel unsettled about, it’s good to find comfort in words, even four simple words that are probably a terrible cliche by now.

Not going out is weird. Those runs and a weekly shop are my outings. Oh, and I drove into town to pick my wife up after she’d had a long day at work. The following day in York police were stopping drivers and asking them why they were out in their cars.

Also castigated by the police have been walkers in the countryside. Is this the right approach? Those walkers are breathing fresh air and generally keep a distance from others. Surely a case of over-policing, but these restrictions are swallowed for now.

Anyway, we can at least walk from our front door to those edge-lands where town and country meet, or head into the emptied streets of York.

Last night we opened a bedroom window, as others in this road out of town did, and soon everyone was clapping their support for the NHS. It was strangely moving. A cynical quip inserted here about the Tories and the NHS has been removed, as Boris Johnson now has the virus and needs our best wishes (not something said often around here).

Also, last night we did a virtual pub quiz on Instagram. All very enjoyable even if we did only tolerably well. There were four of us on team sofa, as our daughter’s boyfriend joined in remotely, helping on screen.

This too shall pass, and he’ll be allowed in the house again and we’ll be allowed back in the bar where the pub quiz wasn’t taking place.

We should be suspicious whenever someone pulls out that dusty old bottle of Blitz spirit.

This spirit refers to something that can be said to have happened, namely the grit and guts of Londoners during the air raids of the Second World War. Yet it is also the distillation of something else – a noble myth of our wonderfulness to be revived whenever life turns tough.

Anyone armed only with Google and five minutes to spare can easily discover a different version of history.

While most bombed-out Londoners stayed the right side of the law others didn’t and the Blitz saw a sharp rise in crime.

According to the War History Online website, Britain during the Blitz was marked by looting, violence and organised crime.

“During the years of the Second World War, there was a marked increase in crime,” that website records.

“This was due to a combination of different factors. Some were opportunistic crimes, in which not only criminals but also members of the public took advantage of the chaos during air raids and blackouts.”

Writing on the BBC History Extra website, author Mark Ellis records that reported crimes in England and Wales rose from 303,711 to 478,394, an increase of 57 per cent.

“What was behind this huge jump? The blackout and the bombs were the most obvious factors, and murder, rape, robbery, burglary and theft all flourished in the dark and the chaos,” Ellis writes.

The war also introduced a raft of new restrictions and regulations which people broke or circumvented, sometimes because there were few other choices.

“Rationing of various staples of life offered huge opportunities to fraudsters, forgers and thieves and created a vibrant black market, and there were a variety of other new or expanded criminal opportunities,” Ellis writes.

Murder continued too. One killer, nicknamed the “Blackout Ripper”, killed a suspected four women, before being caught and unmasked as a young airman called Gordon Cummins.

Ten years ago, as the 70^th anniversary of the Blitz approached, Duncan Campbell recorded some of the era’s characters for the Observer. He noted that prisoners with less than three months left to serve were let out of prison at the start of the war.

“One of the first lucky ones to pick up a get-out-of-jail-free card was Billy Hill, the dapper gangster from Seven Dials central London, who would emerge from the war as the leading figure in the capital’s underworld,” Campbell wrote.

For Hill, the war represented a fabulous opportunity. “I don’t pretend to be a King and country man, but I must say I did put my name down to serve and until they came to get me I was making the most out of a situation,” Hill wrote in his ghosted autobiography, Boss of Britain’s Underworld, published in 1955. “So that big, wide, handsome and, oh, so profitable black market walked into our ever-open arms.”

Campbell also recorded that thieves used to dress up as air raid wardens and smash their way into shops when no one was looking. Seeing their armbands, members of the public would help load up a car with stolen goods, thinking they were being removed to a safe place.

“Some unscrupulous villains used vehicles disguised as ambulances for their getaways,” Campbell wrote.

One gruesome incident often appears in chronicles of crime during the Blitz. In 1941, when the Café de Paris, which was thought to have a secure underground ballroom, suffered a direct hit, “rescuers were shocked to find that looters were among them, yanking brooches and rings from the bodies of the revellers,” as Campbell writes.

All of this is true, with many more examples to be found. Remembering the darker side of what happened isn’t dishonourable, just realistic, and a reminder to say no thanks the next time that bottle of Blitz spirit is being passed around by Nigel Farage (other slippery opportunists are available).

Only later did the doubts come: should any of that have happened?

I went for a short run first thing yesterday, then the three of us (wife, flown-home daughter and myself) drove out of York to do a shortish walk.

An amount of exercise that allowed for a guilt-free beer or two in the evening, at home instead of at the local bar.

This is not going to be an aggressive manifesto for going outdoors during this health crisis. It’s more a case of puzzling out what’s sensible and what is not.

First item for the (self)-defence: originally the advice seemed to be that exercising outdoors was all right. Boris Johnson even suggested as much during one of his daily announcements.

A quick Google leads me to Runner’s World, a US website chosen because there wasn’t one called Old Puffer’s World.

There, the advice given is that all races and mass events should be cancelled, as mostly they now have been. But solitary running was OK, and according to David Nieman, an American health professor, it is safer to be outside than inside, as when people congregate droplets carrying the virus can be easily passed in a confined space.

“The best plan for running right now is to go out for a solo run and enjoy the outdoors,” he said.

In my plod around the local pavements only a few other runners were encountered. Smiles were exchanged but we all kept our distance.

The walk was in the Howardian hills, retracing steps often trod before. We distanced ourselves from other hikers and saw dog walkers at a long remove. Sandwiches and crisps were eaten on a bench overlooking a valley with Castle Howard in the distance. Back in the car, we drove home without stopping because there was nowhere much to stop.

We’d been shopping in the morning and, if anything, the supermarket seemed riskier as it’s hard to keep six or even three feet apart in a queue. But you do have to buy food. We didn’t stockpile anything, just gathered enough supplies to see us through a strange week.

The newspapers are horrified this morning by all those people who flocked in the sunshine to park or coast; or crammed themselves into London markets.

I wouldn’t wish to do either of those things, as keeping your distance seems sensible. But then sometimes you worry you are part of the problem; is your ‘sensible’ running or walking at a distance just as bad?

“OBEY THE VIRUS RULES – OR ELSE” is the stern headline in the Daily Mail this morning. If such strictures force us to stay at home, we are lucky in having a long garden. Running up and down that will have its limitations, especially if the gardener impedes my stumbling progress, but there you go.

Skipping may also be investigated, not that I know how to skip.

Social media can be a comfort in shut-down days. Here are two tweets I enjoyed. The writer Matt Haig: “I’ve never known so many people simultaneously feeling the need to go for a walk.”

Meanwhile, Alan Rusbridger, former editor of the Guardian, points up this letter in his old newspaper…

To keep my rebellious 75-year-old body safe and in line with approved social distancing policies, my wife has devised the mantra “better six feet apart than six feet under”. She won’t put it on social media in case it goes viral.
Graham Jones
Cold Ashby, Northamptonshire.

Ah, a letter that incidentally brings back to mind a favourite American drama series, Six Feet Under.

Even the horrible national shin-kicking squabble of Brexit occasionally gave us a break.

This coronavirus has turned us into one-track ponies. It’s easy to understand why as it’s all so fraying.

Each day brings something new to worry about, personally and more widely. I don’t wish to add to the fret pile with too many plague jottings. But some days the subject is hard to walk around.

Here then are a couple of serious thoughts, followed by a cheerful recommendation.

You really don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. The one politician talking calm and authoritative good sense is Gordon Brown, survivor/saviour of the 2008 crash, yet a prime minister who eventually disappointed.

But he’s the man you want in a crisis, displaying depth, urgency and asking the right questions. And agreeing to be interviewed by the BBC Today programme.

Boris Johnson desperately wanted the job he snatched, and now he’s landed the toughest beat possible. Whether you like the way he’s handling things is a matter of taste. I’d say he looks like a man in a stream wondering why he can no longer feel the riverbed beneath his feet.

He’s not well suited to the serious stuff, being only ever one bad joke away from putting his foot in it. Still, he has the support of the more lickspittle newspapers who continue to treat his karaoke Churchill act as if it were the real deal.

The media’s job in this sort of crisis is to keep us calmly informed but also to question constantly. Slapping Johnson on the back is not helpful. Praise him where it’s due for sure; but criticise him where it’s due, too.

Jeremy Corbyn says some sensible things, but you can’t help thinking it’s a shame he’s not Gordon Brown. While also thinking, heavens, are you still here?

Trending on Twitter at the time of writing is that loathsome slump of humanity going by the name of Nigel Farage. I won’t pass on what he said about China because in times like this we need sensible words, not self-propelling nastiness from a man who really should just shut up and walk away.

And we don’t need the incoherent ramblings of his friend Donald Trump either. Honestly, I watched one press conference clip about self-testing for coronavirus and, well, it was a test of my self to not scream and bang my head against the wall. What is that man talking about?

As Gordon Brown wrote in the Guardian the other day, an international crisis requires governments to work together. The populist nationalism of Trump’s America First policy, along with those of his copycats around the globe, puts us all at risk. Cooperation is what’s needed, not selfish nationalism and blame-shaming.

Incidentally, I went food shopping yesterday and there wasn’t any. Apparently, you need to arrive at 8am to buy luxuries such as potatoes and onions. Apparently (part two), in virus-ravaged Italy there are no food shortages, no selfish scramble to pull everything off the shelves.

Anyway, I promised something cheerful. On the BBC website there is a wonderful little interview with Doreen Burns, Carol Spark and Dotty Robinson. This trio of Salford grandmothers have known each other for more than 40 years.

As they tell BBC Breakfast reporter Jane McCubbin, they’ve hatched a plan to live together when further restrictions are introduced. Wine will be involved, plus love and squabbles, and stories of divorce and survival, and a front room to hide in if they get on each other’s nerves, or a long garden to exercise in.

Honestly, they’re an uplifting hoot and a holler. A reminder that if we have good friends in shitty times, we are indeed blessed.

As I eat breakfast, the frogs are frolicking in the pond beyond the window. It’s an oddly comforting sight, normal and seasonal. Queasy too as the water turns spunky white after a prolonged spell of frog-on-frog action.

I don’t look closely as I am eating bran flakes and listening to John Smith as he spins around on vinyl. What frogs get up to in their orgies is enough to put you off breakfast.

If you’ve dropped by to learn about the mating habits of frogs, you may be disappointed. But I can tell you, courtesy of the BBC, that by late February something is stirring in the garden pond (and in the male frogs’ tight shorts – the later observation not quite being from Sir David Attenborough).

Common frogs wake from hibernation with one thing on their mind, as sometimes do young men. The rampant male frogs emit deep, purring croaks to intimidate other males and attract the attention of females. Who are probably thinking, oh, look at him with his croaking; what’s a girl got to do for a bit of peace around here?

But I can pass on that male frogs grow pads on their forelegs that help them to grasp the females in an embrace known as amplexus which secures their position for the act. The male frog is the one on top and behind; whether they fall asleep straight away once the job is done is open to speculation.

John Smith is only coming out of one speaker now. A little non-technical tugging of wires restores his stereo self.

The news on my phone tells me that the Glastonbury festival is off and my copy of the Observer, read gradually over the week, reminds me that the word quarantine comes from the Italian quaranta giorni. This refers to the 14^th century practice of requiring plague-infected ships at Venice to “sit at anchor for 40 days before landing”.

The article containing this fact is about the village of Eyam in Derbyshire where, during the bubonic plague outbreak of 1665-6, the inhabitants quarantined themselves in what became regarded as a huge act of self-sacrifice. Isolation, self-chosen or otherwise, is nothing new.

The villagers kept their distance in the belief that the illness passed from person to person. In fact, infected fleas in a bundle of imported cloth were to blame, but the instinct that they should not move among other people was right.

Many of us are now getting used to the idea of not moving among other people as we are working from home. Usually it’s a combination for me: newspaper production work in an office, freelance work at home; university work face-to-face with students or preparation and marking at home.

I once spent the best part of a year sitting in this study in the mistaken belief that freelance journalism and novel writing could provide a sustainable living.

From this week all my work takes place at home, as is now general where possible (my wife works in a shop and there isn’t room for that shop in this house). Will all this homeworking prove a liberation or lead to us all going stir-crazy within weeks?

On my phone in a mates’ chat group, a friend has sent a clip of an old Cockney woman ranting about the lack of toilet rolls.

In a voice that could break windows, she swears forcefully, using the expected word but pronounced to rhyme with “lacking”. She recommends using newspaper for the job instead, as happened in the, ahem, lacking war.

An oddly cheering sight, although I do wish people from the prime minister downwards (upwards?) would stop chuntering on about the war.