Coronavirus diary, Easter Saturday 11 April

Like most children, I suspect, I used to find learning tables boring. The two-twos-are-four lesson was drummed into us day after day, month after month. 

We get the message...

I am getting the same feeling now with the lessons we are getting every day from our new teachers: government ministers and health experts. Important, vital messages but do we need to be bombarded with them day and night? Don't they realise they are overdoing it, that boredom is setting in? By now everyone must have got the message even if a tiny minority are ignoring it. In these high-tech days, spreading alarm and despondency is too easy yet that is what's happening. Coronavirus is the dominant, almost only subject on television, radio and in newspapers. BBC TV, with fewer programmes to trail, is even urging us to keep up to date with their non-stop news output. Yes, we need to know what is happening at home and around the world but please let us see the broader picture.

Harking back again to the war when there was the same uncertainty and fearfulness, with deaths mounting on the battlefields and in our cities, the media reporting was limited to radio and the press. There were no breaking news reports by the minute, just daily news bulletins. In the first world war, there was just the newspapers. On balance I think 'no news is good news' is better than non-stop bad news. 

There's still laughter at Sunrise, Cardiff, thanks to the carers. They have made a video that deserves a drum roll introduction .... pass the loo roll! I am one of the residents shown passing a loo roll like rugby players. Not a pass was dropped. We were on a roll!