Coronavirus diary, Tuesday 21 April

What on earth would we be doing in lockdown without emails, Zoom, FaceTime and other miracles of modern technology? It's hard to imagine but life would certainly be duller, the hours and days even longer. We have television and radio, of course, both of which have adapted quickly and cleverly, informing, entertaining and educating us and our children. Had the epidemic struck when I was a child there would have just been total boredom. This has brought home to me almost daily by being able to keep in touch regularly with family and friends. I had never heard of Zoom until very recently. Now I have managed thanks to Robert's patient teaching to see and speak to my family and friends where-ever they are. We even had a family party organised by my grand daughters Sian and Ria. Email is still my favoured way of communicating, ranking with the phone as one of the best ever discoveries or inventions.

Emails pour in. Yesterday  my cousin [technically first cousin once removed!], Rosie Dymond, a much travelled vicar, told me how she is carrying on with her work in North Wales  as an 'interim minister'. She is leading the worship for three churches from her temporary home, a vicarage overlooking the Menai Strats, using Zoom  to run bilingual worship. There were quite a few laughs, she said, when they tried to sing together. Now, a church warden, a singer, and his wife at the piano, lead the scattered congregation - the oldest 99 - in English and Welsh hymns. On Easter Sunday Rosie preached  a sermon at an online service for a parish in Kiev, Ukraine, where she served as locus priest in December. Marvellous, Rosie.

Another email was from Ursula and Dieter, family friends for more than fifty years through the Caerphilly-Ludwigsburg twinning.They now live in the lovely village of Malmsheim on the fringe of the Black Forest. Conditions in Germany are the same as here. They are confined to their third floor flat, unable to visit their daughter who works in a care home, but they can go into the village to shop. Ursula finds some consolation in having more time to read and write, she says, ending, and 'We are all looking forward to more or less or al times'. As does everyone around the world.