Coronavirus diary - 16 March 2020

I wake up and stare at my phone on the bedside table, afraid to turn it on, to scroll on to Twitter or check the news. For so long now, every day the crisis has worsened, every time I check, something else is shutting down, something else is cancelled, people are being placed into lockdown … first whole towns, then whole countries. Then, in America, people started queueing up to buy guns.

I’m scared for the world, for my children, for my friends already on the edge, struggling to pay bills, who are now losing vital work. People online joke about what to do after they’ve watched everything on Netflix. But boredom is trivial compared to the catastrophe looming for some like a tidal wave on an already stricken beach, rooted to the spot, nowhere to run.

My problems are relatively small. I have some steady income. We still have food. An already tight situation is squeezed tighter, but we’ll cope.

I grapple hour after hour with what to do about a running retreat I’m hosting on Dartmoor. People have signed up, but surely I’m mad to go ahead with it? Or is it totally fine? Ten people in splendid isolation in rural Dartmoor - we’re safer than safe, right? I walk through my local high street and people sit drinking coffee and having lunch, laughing and joking. The sun is out. Life trundles along. Turn off the news and your phone, and it’s not even happening. I go for a run and the woods glisten in the morning light. I step out into the garden at night and look up at the sky, serene, oblivious. I feel calm. Then I turn on the news, and it all collapses again.

The thing is, my kids are still going to school. My office still wants me to catch the train to London to sit with hundreds of other people. How can this be possible, and yet 10 people on Dartmoor running around together is a risk to society? I’m confused. And so I toss and turn at night. I feel genuine anxiety. I have book events coming up, in April, May, June, a running camp in September. I rely on these things to support my family. How long will this thing go on? It’s starting to feel a lot like the beginning of those apocalyptic movies, when the TV newsflash comes on and everyone in bars crowds around with looks of horror. Where people start queuing up to buy guns. America, what the hell are you doing? Put down the frigging guns!