Coronavirus diary - Jeremy Thompson on life under lockdown. Week 8

The former Sky newsreader ponders how the lockdown will end and the challenges of a year of home holidays.

Jeremy Thompson is a former Sky News presenter in his 70s. He is documenting how the coronavirus lockdown is impacting his everyday life in a personal diary.

Monday 4th May

It's all about finding things to look forward to when this is over.

We just enjoyed a weekend of birthdays. There was Frida in Cape Town entering her teens, Fi in Ho Chi Minh City celebrating far from family and friends, and Saul in Johannesburg remembering how we marked his big day last year with a surprise lunch at La Colombe d'Or in Saint Paul de Vence.

We agree, there's only one thing for it - make a date to be there same time, same place next May for a liberation birthday bash.

My rugby-going mates get together over Zoom and a few beers. I note they've all gone for the isolation inmate look - piebald beards and unkempt or home-trimmed hair.

Apart from Pete, wearing his full Harlequins fan kit, the rest opt for lockdown chic: T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops.

"I haven't worn anything else for six weeks," we admit in unison.

There's plenty of rugby chat, mainly worries about the damage this enforced break will do to the clubs and the league. Will there be anything left to watch?

None of us really expect to be attending a live match until 2021. For Jamie and me, England v Wales at Twickenham on 7th March was probably the last action we'll see this year. And he caught coronavirus there. Happy memories!

But the lads save the most passion for describing the trials of working from home while keeping their kids fed, watered, amused and educated.

"We're knackered," they all agree. "Never realised it would be this hard juggling work and children 24/7."

They all have stories about conference calls punctuated by unscheduled child appearances. One little one ran in at a crucial moment and shouted "I want a poo".

They are not alone. Bob in Melbourne puts it very succinctly: "Parents here are going troppo (Australian slang for crazy) trying to play teacher as well as working from home."

Tuesday 5th May

I sense a bit of lockdown languor setting in. We're now in our eighth week and the novelty is definitely wearing off.

We agree - we've eaten too well, drunk too much, zoomed to infinity and beyond and we've watched too much rubbish telly. Even the WhatsApp humour mill is grinding a little slower.

The answer? More salads, more exercise, more discipline. A 10 mile walk today was a good start. I feel virtuous. How long will it last though?

Our big new project is launching ourselves into the tech age. We bought a swanky new photo scanner and we're digitising thousands of old prints from life before smart phone cameras.

It's dusty, daunting and hugely rewarding. There is box upon box bursting with memories - from my parents wedding in 1937 to family christenings and friends' parties to dozens of major news events I reported.

Photo scanning has put me in touch with old work buddies. "My god, we were all so young," cameraman Mark Erder exclaims from Hong Kong. I just sent him photos of us secretly filming Karen rebel soldiers in Burma in 1988.

Andy Rex, now hunkered down at Hartbeespoort in South Africa, remembers the trip well. So does former ABC Correspondent Mark Litke, retired and sporting a jaunty face mask against the virus in New York City.

We share memories of stories from Cambodia to South Korea to the Gulf War in Saudi.

When the photos are finally sorted more missions await to transport me into my past. I'm determined to bring order to my cherished collection of Whitbread inn signs from the 50s and 60s, and file all the cigarette and bubble gum picture cards from my youth.

Then there's my dad's treasured coin collection. All that should stave off lockdown boredom for a couple more months.

Wednesday 6th May

As I've touched on before, air travel isn't going to be much fun for a while.

Paul in Thailand sends me photos of AirAsia's relaunch showing crew in new boiler suit uniforms complete with full protective gear. Paul, a very frequent flyer, tells me a three hour check in will be the norm and serious social distancing on board.

"It'll be more like a flying ambulance than luxury travel," he adds.

UK analysts reckon it could take four hours to board, allowing for health screening and testing, with inflated prices and deflated schedules. The Heathrow boss warns social distancing at airports could mean kilometre-long queues to board each jumbo jet.

If only 30% of seats are used, tickets could be three times as expensive. Then you'll probably be put in quarantine when you land. Experts predict it'll be five years until prepandemic service is resumed.

None of the friends we talk to are thinking of flying for a long, long time. One airline mate says his company's fleet is likely to be mothballed until next year. They don't want to start hiring crew again only to be hit by a second COVID wave.

When we head to Spain again it'll be by road. Travel the long way round.

Niece Emma is having a dramatic week keeping 10-year-old daughter Bea in one piece. First there's a badly chipped tooth and the discovery that no dentist will consult face-to-face. No sooner has Emma patched her up with a temporary filling kit, than she's rushing her to Whittington A&E after Bea fell off her Heelys wheelie shoes.

She arrives expecting a hospital stretched to the limits coping with virus patients. "It wasn't nearly as frighteningly apocalyptic as I expected - there was nobody there."

Thursday 7th May

Roger tries to put my lockdown diary into historic perspective, observing wryly that diaries "haven't been as much fun since Mrs Dale". And maybe less partial than Pepys.

We're struck by how resilient older folk are proving. Lynn's Dad, now nearly 90 and on his own in West Yorkshire, sounds very chipper in their daily phone calls.

Karen, stayed in Spain with husband Ted, to be near her elderly parents. She says they're coping remarkably well in their late 80s. "But then Dad was a POW in the Korean War so - as he says - he's seen worse!"

Nicky is off to visit her elderly mum and step-dad in Sussex, "to take them some goodies and talk to them from the conservatory". Even at a social distance they seem to be coping well.

A video chat with Bruce and Olive ends up as a reminiscence fest, recalling homes we've bought. I tell them about the 1937 bill of sale I just found for my parents' first house at Eynsford, Kent, costing £975.

Then Lynn and Olive start salivating over the best pork pies from their childhood. For Lynn, it was Weegmans of Otley. Olive's choice was Newboulds on Teesside. It was almost a Pie Bake Off.

Olive admits she's been gardening like a Land Girl from World War Two.

While Vicky in Dorset tells me she's worn through her favourite gardening gloves during her lockdown labours. Life is good in rural Wessex, she assures me. An honesty box to pay the farmer for fresh eggs and produce. Spring lambs, rabbits and pheasants in the fields. Woods full of bluebells and wild garlic.

The only thing disturbing this idyll is the new sound of the countryside - vans delivering online retail packages.

Friday 8th May

I missed VE the first time round - only by a couple of years. My parents told me later in life that it was a "jolly good party." So it was nice to catch it properly 75 years on.

We put bunting out on our terrace. What with the Blitz Spirit, Dig for Victory, Vera Lynn and Land Girls all reappearing in Covidland, 2020 is beginning to feel like the new Peacetime Wartime. Though there's no end in sight for this conflict.

Friends and family report restrictions easing in countries around the world.

Paul and Ruth are playing golf again in Thailand. Face masks are compulsory. Angie has friends round to dinner in Geneva. Folks are outdoors exercising in Spain, Vietnam, Australia and South Africa.

Ron says that when they were all allowed out in Spain for the first time "every man was out walking, running and cycling". Chaos in the campo.

Around the world I sense the captives are growing restless. In Hong Kong, there have been no new cases in weeks.

Lucy says her local tennis courts have re-opened: "But we have to play in a face mask. It's rather hot and difficult!"

Also in Hong Kong, Mark says resuming normal activity simply means "we come out of months of virus and prepare for the return of protests and police crackdowns."

As Kieno tells me from Cape Town it's one thing to create a lockdown, it's another to figure a way out of it, saying "it all comes down to politics."

And while ministers muddle, the masses are ever more jobless and destitute.

"It's really sad," says Kieno.

The starkness of the crisis in South Africa is echoed by friend Jackie, who worries about the huge numbers of 'undocumented' workers, economic refugees from across Africa who aren't in the system.

She says: "Officially they don't exist."

Now without work or support or food, they are quite simply starving.

Other friends in SA fear that the government's restrictions could do far more damage to their struggling economy than the disease itself.

One friend in the States has just alerted me to the fact that COVID has killed more Americans in three months than in the entire Vietnam War. No wonder my old author pal, Jeffrey Robinson, tells me: "NYC is like Dresden without the fires."

Saturday 9th May

Every week brings such mixed news. Big Al tells me that three members of the regular roll-up crew at his golf club have died of coronavirus. And the club captain has been in intensive care. On the positive side, Al reports the nuthatch in his garden has had six chicks. And his onions and potatoes are growing nicely. Small mercies.

My favourite South African crime writer Deon Meyer is using lockdown time to write another book based on his engaging Cape Town cop Benny Griessel. Deon tells me it's definitely a pre-pandemic storyline. So no COVID-19 to complicate the plot. Hurry up Deon. I'm consuming books so fast I need your latest very soon.

Another Cape resident friend, Mark Sherrington, is staying sane by writing a long letter to someone new each day.

"Today, you have drawn the short straw," he delights in informing me.

"The good news is that my correspondence is a bit like COVID, once you've had it you build immunity and it moves on to someone else."

As for socialising nearer to home, the new norm is a cycle-by chat. Woodsie was the latest mate to hail me from his saddle as he pedalled past our terrace. Good to catch up - even at 10m.

Sunday 10th May

At times it feels like I'm a walk-on part in The Year of Living Dangerously, one of my favourite films, as the debate rages about how vulnerable we 70-plussers really are.

Age seems a rather crude scale for measuring risk. From my experience our group ranges from very fit to fading fast. So I'll decide what's best for me, if that's okay.

And that's just one of the uncertainties of this coronavirus. There's the great face mask squabble - to mask or not to mask.

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the coughs and sneezes of outrageous fortune, or to take masks against a sea of sniffles, and by opposing end them? Sorry Bard.

Then there's the whole kerfuffle about what we really know and what we've learned about COVID-19. One week the government's screaming for more ventilators, the next medics are saying they're not the answer.

First up it's described as a respiratory problem. Now my doctor mates tell me it's a cardio-vascular illness. Loads of nations implement strict lockdowns. Sweden doesn't. Yet their stats are no worse than the clampdown countries.

Just about every projection model for this disease seems to have unravelled. As Donald Rumsfeld once mused "there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns."

Does anyone really know what's going on?