Club Tennis

For over ten years (!) I've been attending group tennis lessons, originally organised by the LTA under the Parks Tennis scheme.

Today, Ben our instructor wanted to spend some time with his Mum. A not unreasonable request on Mother's Day. So instead, a group of us went to the club anyway and played tennis for a couple of hours. 

It was rather odd. The clubhouse was locked, and the balls were kept in a shed used for maintaining the courts and surrounding hedges and gardens. We all washed our hands before we started (20 seconds of scrubbing, minimum) and there were no handshakes or physical contact between us during the whole time. At the end, we all washed our hands again. I should have mentioned everyone had their own towel and own soap.

It is this ordinary strangeness that is the essence of the Corona virus epidemic so far.

Back home, the BBC announced that the number of deaths in Italy today was 651. It means that 5,476 Italians have died from the disease. From a selfishly British point of view, the fear is that we're behind Italy by two to three weeks, although I feel there are important cultural differences that make the stand-offish UK a little different to Italy. 

We shall see.