The Coronavirus Diaries

This blip account will inevitably become The Coronavirus Diaries. This topic is occupying every work discussion and many broader aspects of life.

Today is my dad’s 70th birthday. I was concerned the rumoured government guidance (legislation?) that would confine all over 70s to home isolation would kick in officially today, but so far it remains media fodder. It would have been the worst kind of ironic birthday gift.

Our Cambridge head office will close as of tomorrow after a day occupied with much coronavirus chat and risk assessment for our portfolio. As with countless organisations and businesses, impacts big and small will ripple through due to complexities with travel and logistics. The guidance as of now is that we ‘should work from home’. In my case I came here to see and work with colleagues and don’t have a home as my flat is being rented by my colleague Chris and his Paraguayan wife Suzi, and my residence is in Mozambique. I’ll use the Airbnb place I’ve got for the two weeks’ original period of this trip and then it’s into rather a limbo period. I can’t use my return flight to South Africa as they’re refusing travellers originating in the UK, and my Mozambique visa must be renewed before I can go there. I sincerely hope coronavirus pandemonium (let’s say hysteria...) doesn’t ground me in the UK for months. My status in Mozambique is already what could be described as limbo as we wait for progress on official paperwork. Limbo within limbo.

I am hugely fortunate that I’ll be taken care of here in terms of accommodation, and that my salary isn’t threatened. I am gutted on behalf of the millions working in more unstable situations, in sectors gravely affected, on zero-hours contracts, in the gig economy or with employers who cannot or will not offer financial help. The implications of the shutdown will be massive and will be emerging for years at various scales. I hope history will prove the strict response was worth it overall.

My colleague Ali said in Waitrose she noticed a complete selling out of quinoa. How we laughed. A minor bit of good cheer in amongst the dystopian world we now occupy.

Some bikes and people were on the streets of Cambridge today, but it was fairly quiet.