Monday, March 16, 2020

A Journal of the Plague Year

In her column for last Saturday’s Guardian, Marina Hyde chose to talk about Daniel Defoe’s account of the 1665-1666 London Plague — A Journal of the Plague Year (which, somewhat confusingly, was written in 1722). This gave me an idea. Since I am highly likely to be holed up at home for some time as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic, I thought it might be interesting to write my own journal and to publish it via my blog.

Of course one of the many unusual things about the current pandemic, is that there are few people whom it will not touch — either directly or indirectly — and consequently the prospect of not only dealing with your own stuff but reading about mine as well might strike you as a bit too much of a good thing. With this in mind, I have decided against sending out an email with every new blog post, as I have done till now. Instead I propose limiting email notifications to the occasional reminder that I’m still around. Of course, you are free to have a look at the blog any time at the usual web address.

But I can’t recall a time when there was a greater sense of impending change and over the coming days and weeks I intend largely to reflect on how this story plays out and, frankly, on anything else that comes to mind. For the most part it is likely to be a reflective, interior narrative as that is the sort of person I am, but hopefully there will be a few laughs to be had as well.

Please email me if you’d like to — most of my email appears to be spam these days so I would welcome the interchange.

Wishing everyone the best over the coming days.

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