Lockdown diary, day 17

Suddenly Easter is nearly on us: it is Maundy Thursday today, with Good Friday tomorrow and the long Easter weekend about to start:

Intellectually I have been aware it was coming but emotionally it crept up unawares.

All the usual cues which teach one to expect the approach of Easter have been disrupted: No Palm crosses given out at a palm Sunday service, schools and colleges already closed so no sense of students being off or coming home for the Easter holidays.

It's not the first time I have had this thought but with all the churches closed it feels as though we have gone back eight hundred and six years in time to the period from 1208 to 1214 when the Pope Innocent III closed every church in England over a dispute with King John about who should be Archbishop of Canterbury.

(Or if you're Scottish, as if we have gone back seven hundred years, to the period when Pope John XXII did the same thing to Scotland when Robert the Bruce would neither accept papal mediation nor stop Scottish raids into England.)

Pleased to hear that Boris is out of intensive care. Whatever you think of his politics he is a human being who is a son, father, and father-to-be. From everything I hear of COVID-19 I would not wish it on my worst enemy.

Keep well.

Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save Lives.

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