Twitteretter

I must be honest, coronavirus has been a godsend for me, despite contracting it early on, in March, and being pretty sick for a while. Before, it, my average week involved ten hours of driving and four flights, on top of long work hours, to the detriment of environment, health, family life, personal fitness and spare time. Since the pandemic started, I stay at home most of the time, have replaced car with bike, airplanes with running shoes, airport food with home cooked meals and security queues with good literature. I’ve even found the time to dust off my Twitteretter project. It would be easy, in this circumstance, to ignore the plight of the great majority, the coronavirus losers, to rejoice at the new state of affairs and wish its prolongation. But what is being lost is real lives, and livelihoods, and my previous pains were, after all, my choice. This is a case in which we should all understand the stark choice between our own good and the common good and choose, wisely, the latte...

There has been a lot of writing, during lockdown, about whether our habits may change, whether we may not go back to shops and bars. Online shopping, family walking and eBeers may replace high street shopping and bars for good. This speculation is justified but I think will be proven to be just that, speculation. Miles long queues outside the B&Qs which opened a few days ago give us an idea of what will happen with shopping. As for bars, I’ve been thinking about it. I am meeting my friends for ebeers because of lockdown. But many of my friends live in other countries, and we never did this before. Why not? Because we rather wait until we can meet at a good bar, for some beers and tapas, than have an ebeer. We rather build the anticipation of a superior experience, than tone it down by indulging in occasional inferior proxies. My rugby friends are planning 6 different food related events after lockdown, compared to our average 2 a year. Bars and restaurants are going to be just fin...