“London Diary” by Jimmy Burns OBE

Friday the 13th March

It’s been a week of relative normality  compared to other big cities hit by a more advanced stage of the virus.  We  seem to still be in semi-crisis mode, with  the emphasis  on self-containment rather than draconian enforcement. A phoney war while others elsewhere in Europe and the planet seem immersed  in  a real one? Or are we going to be better prepared?

I am restricting my own long distance travel and  attendance of mass gatherings.  I am working from home.  My daily schedule  otherwise relatively unchanged, for now : collect  The Times and El Pais from  my local shop, then back for breakfast  followed by  walk in Battersea Park and double  expresso at my neighbourhood café Il Caffetino; then back home to write; lunch, another double expresso, more writing.

This evening I and my wife have been  invited to a birthday    dinner in a private room in private club, closed to the public. We expect our host a 90 year old  Cambridge academic  to cancel, but he is youthful in spirit and had aged well.

He is determined to go ahead with it and we are not to abandon him. So the twenty of us   invited turn  up with no apparent symptoms, or declared underlying health issues,  washing hands before gathering-average age about mid 70’s.  No coughs , no sneezes, throughout a  genial evening. Good friends enjoying each other’s company, mindful of our mental as well as physical health , mindful of the virus but not making a topic of conversation. Exquisite French wines, cold salmon,  and venison.

Saturday the 14th March

I ring my oldest brother Tom who lives in Spain where  the state of emergency has been  declared. He is writing from his home in a mountain  village outside Madrid, while looking after his garden, and spending more quality time with his wife.

My brother has friends who have developed symptoms of the virus but have got  through it without needing hospital treatment. He worries about many others in the country who are vulnerable and are dying and has doubts the Spanish state’s ability to deal with it efficiently and with the united support of the Spanish people.

When my brother turns on the British and asks whether they are  being irresponsible, I reply that the British, for better or for worse, are drawing from their own history and political culture. I  mention the spirit of the Blitz, and the liberal philosophy of government by consent which has long been considered an inviolate principle of British democracy.

Sunday 15th March

At  home, crisis planning as chairman of the bicultural  charity the   British Spanish Society. By day’s  end a statement goes  out  to our members & supporters  on behalf of the Board of Trustees postponing until further notice all planned events in the UK and Spain. The charity will endeavor to maximize the use of its  website news and social media feeds to keep engaged with our members and corporate and institutional partners and help support each other in a positive and constructive way.

Monday 16t March

My wife and I decide we have no option but to postpone all holiday plans including a flight we had booked to Barcelona at the end of the month.  This follows cancellation of a talk I had been invited to give in Madrid on March 26 at the Universidad Pontificia de Comillas who have been showing my  Churchill & Spain exhibition. Will I eventually return to Madrid-my birthplace- and talk about Boris, Churchill, and the corona virus  when this is over?

For now, it’s a  blue and sunny day in London. Longer walk that usual in Battersea  Park. I post photographs, a video, and a poetic reflection on social media.

“I am not alone but there are no crowds thrown upon each other. Humanity is spread out and yet curiously engaged and respectful, joined by a shared experience of community, of solidarity, of the common good, uplifted as they walk or run, or simply reflecting on the place and moment. After the drought of summer and the storms and floods, there is the shimmering silver of morning dew, the translucent leaf of the willows mirrored on the shores of the lake water. Nearby the celebratory broom in bud, an avenue of cherry blossom, and the majesty of the magnolia. Across each tree and bush , there is the symphony of bird song, chaffinch, black bird, and thrush. In the tropical garden, the plants have been released from their winter covering and now seem to breath the pure air, reach out towards the sun. Spring reassures us that nature still has its cycle, that it has the ability to help us pull through , to regenerate, to give life, to remind us there is light to be found.”

Tuesday  17th March

I receive an email from a local Battersea councilor Tony Belton identifying himself as one of the very few nowadays to have a “direct connection with the 1918 “Spanish flu” pandemic, having had quite a lot of  conversations about it with his grandmother. Her husband died of it in November 1918.

“Gran told me that her husband died in her arms, which chimes with the stories of just how suddenly that disease struck, particularly young people aged in their twenties and thirties, with some waking up in the morning hale and hearty and being dead by the evening. It was particularly bitter because it was only on the 11thof the very same month that the First World War had ended, so that after 4 years of death and destruction, she, and many others like her, suddenly faced the loss of husband (and bread-winner), having just had a real expectation of a bright and happy future, “ writes Tony.

I am prompted to reflect on my own connection with  the Spanish Flu that began in 1918. In September of that year my Spanish grandfather  Dr Gregorio  Marañón, then a 31 year old doctor in a Madrid volunteered to  travel from neutral Spain to war-torn   France where  the epidemic was developing among young soldiers  in Reims. He survived the ‘flu’  having treated many patients on both sides of the Pyrenees  . As he later  wrote: “A the time  the service we did  for  the State was done free of charge, without copious diets or subsequent photographs of impositions of crosses and medals, or patriotic fuss.” .

Wednesday 18th March

‘Thought for the Day’ on BBC Radio Four. Anglican woman priest Liz Adekumie on the need to prioritizing a caring community spirit, drawing on the analogy of the self-protection  and nourishment  which trees draw on   from their roots and from each other.

Thursday 19th March

To the local garden center. The manager John hands me some pots, organic soil,  and fast growing lettuce and spinach seeds so I can try and grow my own in our patio. On the way back my local shopkeeper  Vinay, covered with a face mask,  tells me that a woman customer punched him while trying to take more that her allotted two rolls of toilet from his shop.

I wish Angelo, the owner  of  my neighborhood café  a Happy Birthday with a gift of a  bottle wine and a poem. As it turns out it is the last day before the café  closes.  In London the Phony War is turning into the Blitz.

Friday 20th March

An email from my friend whose 90th we celebrated a week ago. “I am as bewildered as everyone else by the catastrophe that has befallen us, but apart from the dearth of toilet rolls and other things I like to buy in the supermarket I do not seem to be suffering particularly badly so far.”

Meanwhile I am trying my best not to get drawn into binary politics by what comes to me from Spain and from   those in the UK who will never have a good word to say about a Tory government left alone Boris Johnson.

This is a real test for governance by consent and the concept of the common good . I never thought I would say this but I think Boris and is advisers are doing a pretty good job as is the bulk of the British political class and media in the UK and the many unknown heroes on the NHS and civil service.

This is a real test for governance by consent and the concept of the common good . I never thought I would say this but I think Boris and is advisers are doing a pretty good job as is the bulk of the British political class and media in the UK and the many unknown heroes on the NHS and civil service.

I draw hope from the volunteer spirit and care for the vulnerable that is beginning to gather steam and that fresh local produce will be ready for harvesting in the coming days but if we need rationing to check the selfish hoarders then so be it. As for the longer term, one can only hope a better world and the kind of global and cooperation action long necessary will emerge from all this.

I go for another long walk in Battersea before getting back to writing-I like to think of it as creative  therapy. The beginning of the week already seems a long time ago.

* Jimmy Burns is the chairman of the BritishSpanishSociety. He is an Anglo-Spanish author & journalist.