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The Situation - a snapshot

Back in 2009 or so, when we had a bad winter (the one where people stuck at John Lewis in High Wycombe stayed overnight) I remember going to retrieve our car from the road where my wife had abandoned it in order to walk home. I looked up the road at all the cars abandoned at odd angles and the piles of snow and took a mental snapshot. A summer or two later it was over 30 degrees C and I was on the same road. I took another mental snapshot and contrasted it with the cold winter scene. This is my mental snapshot of the Situation.

It's a bit like the time when I opened a double glazed window outwards on the first floor (US - second floor) and it fell out. My instincts kicked in and I managed to not drop it. Then my instincts said to my slower conscious brain - I've caught it, now you've got to do something with it. So there I was holding this heavy window out over the empty space below and I had to get it back inside.

The instincts have done their bit, albeit in slower time. We've got everyone at work working from home; the family are all around all day, working as they can. Now we've got to do something with it.

It's like the bit after Christmas when everyone's around, but the weather had been lovely and sunny for the first two weeks.

The roads are as quiet as a Sunday morning, even at "rush hour", which is just strange. Those that are still driving sometimes drive more dangerously. Families are out walking and everyone is pretty much keeping their two metre distance. I'm enjoying finding new cycling routes different to my usual commute. I'm missing the distance between home and work that the commute gives, and I've turned the time from the morning commute into more time in bed. The news is wall to wall virus, except for Alex Salmond, who probably wishes he wasn't the only story to get included before the weather. Twitter and Facebook talk about little else, which was annoying when I wasn't locked in, but now is something I'm happy to see - in moderation.

James Heywood sums it up really well:


There's plenty of advice for the bored, but fortunately I'm able to continue working, so I have little extra time than before.

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