St David’s day – hurray. Feel flat as a pancake, partly because of university strike which I can’t afford at all. Went for a few beers in the pub which was nice, but I am certainly starting to sit on my own and feel stupid going. Certainly getting nervey about trip back to Oz. Flight booked for 28^th and I cant see that happening – at all. Me and Kylie have started to talk about it and taking Joanie out of school. I think we are heading toward international lock down in something like 2-3 weeks. Had another chat to folks and they are still going to Tesco. It is quite hard to get home to them how serious this will be. Case fatality rate (look at me) for over 70s looks like around 15%, which is huge. Worried for them. Joe and Trish are flying to Vietnam for a holiday which I think is not a good decision, but as is often the case at the moment I am just keeping it to myself. Government here still AWOL here. Leeds seems increasingly surreal, but I think living on my own is part of that strory. # days to go on bids. The corporate determinants of health is a really good line up. Surie is now in, McKee, but I think I have lost Stuckler which is a big shame. Maybe he is caught up in this madness in Italy. Support services here for bids are really good. The climate change and health is also great line up. But it all seems a bit marginal at the moment.

Talk with kids was great. We all sat down and I told them what I knew about COVID and current projects for the spike in UK 2-3 weeks at present. A bit brutal, but I wanted them to know what scale we are looking at. In fairness to all they got it, Edie and Marty went out for ‘controlled panic buy’, we all aiming to get 2-3 weeks of food in, maybe more. Tom joked that he was ready for isolation and had been practising all year. Its true! Need to get folks and Beth to do the same re food. As of today cases have been detected in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, a further 13 cases were reported bringing the total to 36. Australia reported the first death today, a 78-year-old Perth man, who was one of the passengers from the Diamond Princess, being treated in WA.