“You’ll be better off here”, my (Italian) husband insisted – “here at least we’re taking it seriously”. I am in shutdown – there are no locks, this too remains a free country – not in south London but in the north-western Italian province of Cuneo.
At the supermarket last week I chatted, at the prescribed distance, with the gloved and masked security guard. As he let in four customers at a time, Vittorio was determined nobody would catch the virus on his watch. An orderly wait was followed by a calm walk down aisles full of goods but almost empty of people. This contrasted with my mother’s reports from her northern English town; shoppers too young to remember Supermarket Sweep acting as if competing in it.
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