Coronavirus diary, September 26 (Part 1)

Nursing homes are back in the news and it is not good. 

Just when we were thinking we were getting out of the woods we are being struck by another wave. Disappointing to say the least, discouraging for us and for our families.

 After the welcome, if sporadic and strictly controlled visiting, the shutters are up again in Sunrise, for a month, after a second confirmed case among our carers.

The diary for the one-hour, garden visits was full with families anxious to see us. 

Karen's long and eagerly awaited trip from Buckinghamshire this week for a chat with me has been cancelled

That and the arrival of more normal autumn weather is a setback but we have to take it in our stride.

In Sunrise the carers are getting on with their job, as cheerful and helpful as ever, reassuring, softening the disappointment. 

It is still incomprehensible to have our lives on hold, almost like willing yourself to wake up from long dream.

However slim the risk it is a unique experience for all of us.

In all my years I think the only physical danger I have faced was in wartime with the blitz, in London and Cardiff, from 1940 to 1944.

My first experience was when, evacuated to my aunt Flo in Splott, Cardiff, bombs fell a few hundred yards along from our street, prompting my mother to recall me to London, just in  time for  the massive months-long bombardment that sent us down our shelter in the garden for weeks on end.

The last air raid I remember was the night before I sat my CWB examination at Cardiff High School in late June 1942

Long, noisy and dangerous nights, but strangely, as as a teenager I cannot remember feeling afraid and my family were the same.

Those years were some of my memorable experiences, almost all benign, so this pandemic, whether it ends in the hoped for six months or goes on even longer, will pass and life will  get back to normal. It needs patience.