Forest lost 3-0 last night, as several of our customers lamented today. I follow football on a casual basis and one more loss for Forest doesn’t really affect me one way or another. The big football news of the day as far as I’m concerned, is that they are discussing banning people over 70 from going to football matches. As the demographic most at risk from coronavirus it is seen as a good thing to ban the over 70s from large gatherings where they may catch the virus.

As panic and over-reaction gradually become the norm this prize piece of buffoonery comes as no surprise. I was mainly surprised that people over 70 could afford the ticket prices for football matches.

This evening we went shopping and found that the shelves were nearly empty of toilet rolls. As far as I can see coronavirus has no gastric symptoms so extra toilet rolls aren’t necessary. It just seems to be a growing 21st century reaction to any crisis (including Brexit). There seems to be no problem in the world that doesn’t trigger panic-buying toilet rolls. Julia was talking to a shop assistant in Boots (that’s a pharmacy chain, not a sort of footwear, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the world of British retailing) this morning. It seems that people are panic-buying cold cures, hand-washing gels and baby products. I can’t see that any of that is really going to help.

If I was going to panic-buy I’d buy toilet rolls (because they always come in useful and have no sell-by date), sausages (because a good breakfast always improves things) and chocolate (because there is nothing that can’t be improved by chocolate). For the purposes of this blog I’m ignoring diabetes, obesity and tooth decay, which are, I admit, all things that can’t be improved by chocolate. However, there is enough reality in the world without me adding to it. If I’m going to die from an exotic virus I don’t see any point in having a trim waistline and a gleaming smile.

And that, for the sake of posterity, is my diary relating to a world in the grip of coronavirus panic.

Incidentally, has anyone noticed that the WP spellchecker does not like coronavirus? It prefers corona virus. But when I put corona virus into Google it asks Did you mean: coronavirus?

I don’t know about you, but I’m a trifle concerned that we’ll never be able to cure something we can’t spell.

I don’t have a picture of coronavirus or chocolate so you’ll have to make do with a picture of a Cook Islands $5 gold coin depicting Captain James Cook. It’s 11 mm in diameter and weighs 0.5 g. That’s 11/25 of an inch and 1/56 of an ounce for those of you who don’t do metric. It is very small, not particularly attractive and part of a fashion for small gold coins. No, I don’t know why, but people seem to like them.