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The past week has felt very strange. Last Tuesday, my faithful old laptop finally gave up the ghost (it was at least ten years old), so for the six days it has taken to purchase a replacement, I’ve felt isolated in a way that I didn’t think possible. Fifty years ago, I spent days on end on my own in the heart of the Australian Outback, hundreds of miles from anywhere, without once feeling isolated. This has been different.

I didn’t want to check my Gmail account through Paula’s laptop, because I’d be signing in myself on a new device a few days later, and I was afraid that Google would flag this up as some kind of hacking. It does do that, as I recall from past experience. The second problem was that I don’t remember phone numbers. I keep my friends’ numbers in a Note file on my computer, a file that perished alongside its host. Then there is the coronavirus situation. People may be going about their lives as best they can in the circumstances, but nothing is actually happening. The pubs are shut for a start, and, unfortunately, for a good reason. So ‘social distancing’ really means ‘social shrinkage’.

This is to let regular readers know that only a few new items will be posted on this blog over the next few months as I grapple with a new PC—and the rigours of a new operating system.

However, on the same day that my computer collapsed and died, Paula and I did enjoy a walk along a section of the local river, on which I took some interesting photos. I had planned to write about it that afternoon, but I now hope to complete the project within the next week or so.