Isolation 31.3

ISOLATION 31.3

The milk is gone -- all four pints of it. Not satisfied with that, the selfish so-and-so has also taken our

milk- bottle basket, fruit juices and bread, all of which came with our delivery early

morning yesterday. Corona brings out the worst in some people, fortunately a tiny deluded minority We have occasionally had one pint stolen, (I thought I should put some sugar out to go with it) but the whole delivery? Jesus wept!

  I normally wake up to the sounds of the workmen tinkering with metal and stone from the building

site across the road from us. This whole road is gradually being re-constructed by greedy developers.

Old England is disappearing fast. (Some of it like, houses without central heating or indoor toilets

for instance, we are glad to forget) Alan Bennet, where are you, who moaned so powerfully about

that lost landscape?

  Our road was the epitome’ of grace and privilege. Houses set back from the road, lovely green

lawns and trees, three-car families flaunting their wealth… I often felt out of place here, like a bag

lady at the Savoy grille) Now, we have these monstrosities, three and four storey flats with mean

little windows and no parking spaces. Maybe the new residents who will move into the flats in front

will be a little more friendly (I hope) than the stuck-up doctors and such-like, with their heads up

their fundamentals, who took the developer’s generous cash and disappeared

   Today, finally, the workmen are staying at home. So, I have unobstructed view of the three mobile

toilets, one cobalt blue, one leaf green and the other sky-blue, which served the builders. As I write,

the only distraction is the 24-hour news-feed about COVID 19.