This is not how I imagined I'd be 2020

I did not expect to be sitting at home on a lovely first Sunday in April. I thought I might be on the allotment or going for a trip to one of the many now empty garden centres that are just a few miles drive from us.

Not that driving is something I can see myself doing anytime soon. We now have our groceries delivered - that's the weekly supermarket run off the list. I walk to the allotment when I go; no point in taking the car can't use the car park or get on site. Driving Miss Daisy  my wife to her teaching weekends no: the weekends have been cancelled. Our car sits, along with our neighbours', unused in the road.

My diary was full of important Me things. Meetings here, lectures there, poetry society events, trips to the theatre, plans to go kayaking in Scotland or Wales - to prepare myself for my trip to Franz Joseph Land in July 2021. I'm now not sure if the company I booked with is still in existence.

Now nothing planned - blank pages stretch ahead.

On the up side it is so quiet - the sky is empty and the roads are still. I've spoken to people I haven't seen in months, I've had a WhatsApp conference call, a Zoom virtual poetry meeting and I'm getting to be a dab hand at on line shopping. I've been using my cooking skills to create lovely soups and sauces. My wife is using her enforced leisure to tidy up the garden and she is thoroughly enjoying herself.

We are very, very lucky we have a home large enough for the two of us and three cats, with a garden in a well established  neighbourhood. Neither of us is short of cash, with decent pensions and savings.

There are loads for whom this emergency is a nightmare. Families with young children living in cramped accommodation, scant savings and little money coming in. There are those with serious health concerns, who are on their own with little or no family support.

And it's occurring in what was the fifth wealthiest nation on the planet. How are families in India's congested cities coping or the millions in refugee camps. Then there's those countries with totally inadequate health systems - how will many African countries cope -  torn by war  - hardly able to function.

The hope is that some good will come out of this. That we'll realise we're all one family of humanity. I doubt it. If anything what this has extenuated is the nationalistic, isolationist, beggar my neighbour attitudes we've seen in the recent past. The risk is that the poor will be even poorer; the rich jealously keeping hold of what they claim is theirs.

I do hope that this hiatus in man's "progress" will allow much of the natural world to reboot, refresh and rejuvenate. Well you can hope!