So far, I am loving being at home. It’s really difficult to explain to people who don’t feel such a strong pull but just pottering about, going for a run, hell, even booking a service visit for a disobedient steam oven, these things all feel gemutlich.

I’ve started to feel that I’m perhaps a little too cocooned here in my house, though. I am, after all, supposed to be travelling around the world alone. I ought to start somewhere. I’ve been wanting to visit the Covid memorial on the South Bank in London for a while, so I made that my mission yesterday.

I’ve been wary of setting foot in the wider world with good reason. People walking around, or gathering at crowded tourist attractions do not generally wear masks at all. I walked through a crowd near the London Eye where a children’s entertainer was distracting groups of shouting, screaming children, all potentially spreading Covid to anyone in the vicinity. I do feel self-conscious wearing my mask outside, when hardly anyone else does, or on buses or trains where people often pay lip service to protecting the community, pulling their masks under their chins are every opportunity. At one road crossing I was shouted at by someone dressed as the Green Man – I think – as he passed me on his bike. How did he feel able to tell me off for protecting others or myself? What harm was I doing him, exactly? It’s heartbreaking to witness the descent of this country into the boiling pit of populist idiocy.

The poignant memorial, on the Albert Embankment takes a good quarter of an hour to traverse. Of course it is salutary and heartbreaking but I feel that it is also a commemoration the lives of the people lost to this virus, to make sure that they are not forgotten, in the same way that a funeral can be a muted commemoration of the richness of someone’s life as well as a marking of their passing. Families and friends have been deprived of their opportunity to come together and speak their fond memories. The Covid wall is a reminder of those friendships and stored memories, and futures lost.

Tens of thousands of red hearts have been painted on this stretch of wall that faces the Houses of Parliament as a silent rebuke,  and people have written the names of a deceased friends and families in some of them. Some have bunched the hearts into of a mass of balloons, a celebration of their connection to the dead loved one. Many are yet to be claimed.

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Earlier, I visited the Turner Exhibition at Tate Britain which described how Turner depicted exciting new technologies of the 18th and early 19th centuries whilst  also lamenting the demise of the old. It was the first time I had appreciated the subtle political commentaries in the art of this era, rather then viewing them just as lovely painting with beautiful light. I’ve always been embarrassed by my lack of Art History knowledge but this was a day of learning, a good day.