March 18

It is Sian's 15th birthday today and my aim is to keep it 'corona-free'; the atmosphere of certain doom we are all living under is enough to deal with.  People love digging up every single End Of The World prophecy that they have ever come across from Nostradamus to Revelations to some book some guy wrote ten years ago in which everything we are experiencing now is predicted. 

The Environmentalists are saying the virus is the world fighting back and the conspiracy theorists are saying it is biological warfare created by China to fight the US - or was it created by the US to fight China?  Whatever the case may be, it is great to see how quickly the world heals itself when humans aren't allowed outside.  Rivers and oceans are cleaner, pollution levels drop considerably and wild animals are spotted in town.  One almost hopes we will be wiped off the surface of the Earth.

In the afternoon, I take Sian horse-riding.  The stables are on the road I used to travel every day as a child, going to school and back from How Mine.  I have this very strong urge to just carry on past the stables and drive all the way to the mine, which is 30 kilometres from Bulawayo.  I have this strange feeling I would find my mum in the kitchen at home, busy baking or cooking and my dad would come home from work, looking like he did then, with a real spring in his step as I always remember him.  Wouldn't it be lovely to just drive back into the past, all the way into 1988?  My sister would be lying on her bed, listening to Madonna on her walkman and my younger sister would be playing with dolls or dressing up.  I can see it all so clearly: the pictures I had on the wall in my bedroom and my typewriter that my dad bought me in an auction.  In 1988, I was one year younger than Sian is now.  I wonder how much she will remember of her childhood?

Sian gets a set of second-hand Folio Society books by Jane Austen and is thrilled.  I am so glad that she loves literature.  She has just finished The Great Gatsby, which is perhaps my favourite book. She wanted old books particularly as she likes that 'vintage' look.