The Professor is Brave and Correct - I Wish She Weren't

 A friend just sent me this chilling exchange:

Jeremy Paxman: How do you think history will look back on this episode in the human story? Sunetra Gupta: As an extraordinary, panic-fuelled disaster where the affluent countries and the affluent sectors of the populations in those countries sought to protect themselves at the expense of the poor and at the expense of the younger generations and their futures.

Nothing I can say can add to the terrible wisdom of Professor Gupta's words.

I knew the expression "read and weep"; now I understand it.

And the Winner Is

I have been very quiet lately, because I have been playing a very complex modern game - with increasing intensity. I decided that one of the important strategies I needed to follow was to completely shut up, on the holding-your-cards-close-to-your-chest principle. If my opponents got wind of my latest strategy, they might find a way to block me. So I bit my tongue, I stilled my fingers from tap tap tapping away on the keyboard, I bided my time. 

I almost thought I'd lost a week ago - the cunning plan had been that we would all meet up in Vienna on 21 December. And then the Austrian government announced that from 20 December all visitors arriving from other countries would need to quarantine for a fortnight. Panic!

But we changed our dates to arrive today, instead of on 20 December. And we have actually all made it! Me, my husband and our children are all together! We greeted them with shots of mouthwash and admonitions to immediately wash their hands, but we restrained ourselves from donning full hazmat clothing to greet them.

Of course, readers, (if there are any), may be wagging their fingers and shaking their heads, and they may be right. There is a risk. But life is risky, and I am so happy we are all here.