Lockdown diary, day 32

Had a conversation with a colleague today whom I met while shopping for basic supplies (carefully keeping two metres apart while we talked.)

Both of us would normally have occasion to drive round the county a lot, the region a fair amount, and visit London occasionally. He thought he would have normally driven three thousand miles in the last month, but all the meetings he has been to would have been cancelled.

I'm in a similar situation. Between work, council meetings and activities, Conservative party functions, church and my social life I would normally have attended more than twenty events over the six weeks since the last meeting I actually did attend - St Bees Parish Council on 16th March. However, most have been cancelled and the rest replaced by Skype meetings. The number of miles I'd have driven would probably also have been in four figures, although the first digit would likely have been one rather than three. As it is I filled the car a week or two into the lockdown and the fuel indicator is still showing full. 

Talking of Skype meetings those are starting to get off the ground now on Cumbria County Council but we are not using them nearly as much as we should. Hopefully that will come. And I hope it will still be used where appropriate after the Coronavirus situation.

Ironically on the way back home from the shopping when I met my colleague I did call in at the Morrison's petrol kiosk, not because there was any space in the car's petrol tank but because it was a convenient place to buy a few food items.

One of the ladies in the queue asked in surprise "Has the price of petrol really gone down?"

I explained that because people are driving so much less the world the demand for oil has crashed and at times the oil companies have literally been paying people to take oil away when they've run out of storage capacity,.

It's a strange world - bet none of us thought we would ever live to see economic conditions in which the price of oil can occasionally literally go negative. But it has - I wasn't joking.

Then back home after my bit of essential shopping, where I stayed for the rest of the day.

Keep well.

Stay home: support the NHS; save lives.

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