Well its nearly two weeks under lockdown now. I keep getting lovely emails from guests asking how we are… keep them coming!!! it is great to hear from people and know that they care about you… although we criticise the social media it is so useful for keeping in touch, when you cant go and see your parents face time or messenger keeps them and you sane! Same with grandchildren and grandparents, it stops you feeling quite so isolated.
One positive thing that I hope is coming out of this horrendous virus is the rising sense of solidarity between people and hopefully nations, afterwards. (Sadly there are some glaring exceptions of some politicians but hopefully they dont reflect their countries) We are all in this together now… I know at the start some countries made rather bad taste jokes about Italy and the coronavirus but I’m sure that was just a small percentage of their populations who found these memes funny, now other nations are also having lockdowns, having watched italy worriedly now they are starting to go through the same things that we have. It’s not that ‘foreign’ virus, it is here now.
Anyhow the real point of this article is: the hero’s of this ‘war’ are not the John Wayne’s type of hero but the nurses, doctors, anyone in health care, also people who work keeping food stores open risking their health so that we can keep eating and having toilet paper, people in factories producing the necessities of life, the lorry drivers travelling around Europe with essential goods. Also the good politicians who have to make extremely unpleasant decisions to help their country, I was particularly impressed with Conti, he has been firm and decisive about this, it is not easy stopping the economy of a country and risking the livelihoods of a large part of the electorate, especially with a country which on paper is not far away from a recession… plus of course every pass that he makes he has certain parties who criticise. Not a easy job for anyone.
The problem is that also we were the first as well so we didn’t really have any European models to follow, just the Chinese ones. Italians have a totally different mindset to the chinese, we dont tend to obey the rules as much as maybe we should… however most people realise that to beat this virus we have to stay at home. The majority have been ‘obedient’ and done the right thing. A bit like when they banned smoking indoor in public places, I never thought the Italians would accept that but guess what, they did without much polemic. Maybe we accept what we know is good for us?
I’m sure I dont need to say this to any of my guests… they have always been so nice and friendly and I’m sure they dont need telling, however just in case, now I think we should appreciate more the people who are risking their health to serve us… years ago in the holidays I worked at Marks and Spencers on the check out tills and it was a thankless task only made bearable by the polite friendly people who passed through (not all obviously) and of course the staff I worked with (hi Francis!) now their job is even worse, not only are people agitated and upset but also you might catch this blooming virus off them. Not only should we say a big thanks to the hospital staff docs, nurses, cleaners, ambulance drivers, everyone who works with anything to do with health care, the people in the old peoples homes, care assistants, everybody (hope I haven’t missed anyone) but also the shop assistants. Please smile at them, ask them how THEY are, treat them like human beings. They are not robots, they might have aged parents in lockdown, they might have a mortgage to pay, desperately worrying about how to pay the bills. It’s so easy to forget other people when we are worried ourselves, stressed by kids, husbands, aged parents, all stuck at home between 4 walls. I bet the bosses of some of these great big supermarkets are not down on the ‘front line’ with a mask and gloves on, they are not brave enough to ‘man’ or ‘woman’ a till. This week a shop assistant died of coronavirus in Bergamo, she wasn’t old or ill, just on the ‘front line’ of this virus.
Oh and when all this is over let’s keep on remembering that when we were in our houses scared to go out they had to go to work everyday and risk their health.
Villa Tres jolie 