I went back through my March posts yesterday – surely a month none of us will ever forget – hoping that they would add up to some sort of story, but they don’t. You’d have to take them with a serious dose of some newspaper or other, to make any sense of it.  

It’s mildly interesting, and to my mind mildly depressing, that the USofA, like many other countries, seems to be rallying round its leader. Biden seems to be as useless as Jeremy Corbyn at striking a different note – or any note at all.

I have had another day of total seclusion. I spoke to Alexander, who says that life on the shores of Loch Fyne is much as it has always been, except that nobody’s  going down to the pub. He thinks it is just as well that I am not going out at all. I did a bit of mild exercise today.

And some knitting. That is beginning to seem almost irrelevant, although the Sunday papers continue to promote it as a settler of nerves.

My son James sounds as if he's enjoying himself -- he can do what needs to be done as the Economist's China editor from home, and spend the time saved from commuting and the coffee machine, in his beloved garden. Rachel, another Londoner, is less enthusiastic -- she used to spend the commuting time reading her book, and enjoyed the coffee machine. I suspect the difference is that James' wife is providing -- or at least organising -- lunch for four, as is Rachel. 

Tamar (comment yesterday), do you have access to Beatrix Potter’s “The Tale of Johnny Town Mouse”? It is brilliant on the differences between town and country mice, both in the text and even more in her wonderful drawings. Both species, clearly, are averse to cats.