Yesterday was Monday, and normally I would have written my weekly blog post at the cafe next to work in the hour before I start. Obviously, that didn’t happen, on the fifth day of our national lockdown. 

But as I pledged to do last week, I’m focusing on the positive. My pandemic poetry, bad as it is, has caught the eye of the neighbours who walk past on their daily outings.

“Mum! There’s another one!” a little girl shouted yesterday.

Mum took it as an opportunity for some homeschooling, having her child sound out the tricky word pandemic.

So the poems are doing exactly what I’d hoped, giving at least a few people something novel and upbeat to discover every day. Easing the strain of our forced solitude, and maybe even eliciting a chuckle now and then.

And when this is over and we can actually go and meet our new neighbours, we’ll have a way to break the ice. I can hear it now …

“Oh, you’re the ones with the poems on the fence!”