Day 02

The smell of baking is slowly spreading through the house. This is the second cake I’m making is less than a week. I’m not normally one to bake much but last Saturday and today are friends birthday. In normal circumstances I would have sent an e-mail, a card, and a present in the post but now I can’t.

It’s a pointless exercise preparing a cake to celebrate a birthday, when the person to celebrate is not here. But it feels more important now to do so than before. Birthdays are still happening and amongst the statistics of sickness and deaths, they are a needed reminder that life is carrying on.

Downstairs the daily briefing from the UK government is broadcasting but I’m not listening. I’ve retreated upstairs in the study where I am thinking of the children playing hockey with their father in an empty parking lot, a sign by the entrance forbidding ball games in the car park. I am remembering my partner laughing as we goofed around in a desolated football pitch, the goal posts lying forgotten on the ground.

I should be angry, I know. At the government for being slow and reactive, at politicians for dodging the questions they are being asked, for people who are forgotten in this crisis and less lucky than I am. But today, I can’t.

Today is my friend’s birthday and there is a cake to worry about, candles to light, and a song to sing.