Day six of the new rhythm, except that for me it’s pretty much the old rhythm minus the daily café break, weekly golf thrash and Friday night booze up.

The new absence of diary dates, unless they are work related international Skype calls puts me in mind of, (historian by distant degree background as I am) of the Western Roman Empire in the late fourth century, when the rise of opportunistic diseases, plagues, smallpox, and other illnesses disrupted the civilized system until battered and bruised it collapsed. Whether this particular long term system collapses is one thing but at the moment the social animal called humanity is taking a beating. That said the technology of working remotely is already in place - this Coronavirus (probably the first of a few in the next decade) is the sound of the penny dropping about how we use it going forward, if there is any forward.

I realize none of this helps us with the new daily housebound prospect of what mentally is like taking a long haul flight with only our own personality for company. After two hours you’ve run out of ideas. The subtlety of boredom becomes our specialist subject. What we might well realize while we savour this is how the old work environment was less work and more play - an episode of the ‘Green Wing’ comedy series rather than a documentary about the day to day workings of a hospital.