10 MARCH 2020
Italy is closed. The coronavirus Covid-19 – or, rather, the fear of it – has beaten a whole country into submission. In two months' time, I am due to embark on an odyssey, parts of which will see me travel the length of Italy, from north to south and from south to north – with a long sweep through Greece and its islands slotted in between. Thanks to Greta Thunberg, I decided against flying to Athens to start my trip, and instead have booked more environmentally friendly trains from London to Paris, Paris to Milan, and Milan to Bari, then a boat from Bari to Patra in the Peloponnese, from where I will get a bus to the Greek capital.
All that is if Italy re-opens in time. I'm thinking of booking a cheap flight from Luton (alleged to be a London airport, despite the fact that such a description must go a long way to justify using the word ludicrous) to Athens as an insurance policy – and probably cheaper than any travel insurance policy that I could buy now, bearing in mind the prevailing apocalyptic atmosphere. But with airlines facing closure, flights being cancelled, and the Greek Orthodox Church insisting that the power of faith will protect those taking communion from infection, there is no guarantee that Greece, too, won't soon be rather difficult to get into.
While I join the rest of the UK in stocking up on cans of beans and toilet rolls, it seems all I can do is wait. I've spent several hundred pounds on trains and boats for some of the crucial parts of my six-week journey and most of that is probably not refundable.
Italian friends report being confined to home, some with no way to go outdoors for fresh air. Trips to the supermarket or pharmacy are still possible, but any other journey has to be seriously justified or else it can bring down the law on you. Some Italians say that the problem has not been Covid-19 but the way that the authorities have reacted to it: causing chaos, particularly for parents of children who can no longer go to school, and for small businesses that are already going bust.
I seem to have tempted the gods by starting to write. Greece has just announced that all of its schools and universities will shut down for the next two weeks – which is what Italy did before it decided to go all the way.
An odyssey isn't supposed to be easy, of course. Odysseus, who had to spend 10 years laying siege to Troy, then took another 10 years to get home to Ithaca and his wife, Penelope. Gods, giants, monsters and enchantresses played havoc with his return journey. If Homer had been able to imagine microscopic entities that could penetrate a man's lungs and stop him breathing, he might have added them to the list of horrors faced by his hero.
So am I going to Greece and Italy in the wake of Odysseus? Will I stand on the shores of Ithaca and Phaeacia? Will I feel the winds of Aeolus and hear the sound of the Sirens? Will I see the mouth of the Underworld, walk in the land of man-eating giants, and visit the lair of Circe? Like Odysseus, my fate is in the hands of the gods and their 21st-century instrument, a weapon that measures 125 billionths of a metre.
Perhaps one needs to look on the bright side. It seems that more than 3,000 people have just painted themselves blue and dressed as Smurfs to attend a rally in a small commune in Brittany, only a day before a French ban on meetings of more than 1,000 people came into force. News of the mass Smurfing was not well received in Italy. But the commune's mayor, Patrick Leclerc, was reported to have said: "We must not stop living. It was the chance to say that we are alive."
11 MARCH 2020
Not only has Italy been closed down, but the authorities are talking about closing it down even more tightly, particularly in the north. Two friends have suggested – kindly – that maybe I should just cancel the trip. But that certainly hasn't entered my head at this point. However, I am beginning to be seriously tempted by spending £80 on an "insurance policy" – that cheap flight to Athens – which would enable me to do the Greek half of my odyssey and delay my arrival in Italy for 17 days. Flying there in early June, after Greece, rather than in mid-May on the way to Greece by land and sea, could rescue this adventure.REWRITE And if Italy is open again by mid-May, I will only have spent an extra £80 – and will be happy that I still have a chance of waking up on the boat on its way to the Peloponnese and seeing the island of Ithaca – where the original Odyssey started and finished. The only downside to my "insurance" is that Greece could decide to close – and the budget airline WizzAir could hit the deck. There is a cheap flight with Ryanair, but I swore 25 years ago that I would never use Ryanair again (after it ripped off one of my travel pieces for its website, without any credit to me or The Daily Telegraph, which had commissioned and published it, and eventually offered me compensation of two free flights on Ryanair, which was the last thing I wanted). I have a commission to write about this upcoming trip, focusing on the Odyssean sites of Sicily and southern Italy (of which there are many). I may well also have a commission for part of the Greek half of the journey. These are part of the reason for not wanting to give up – along with my general stubbornness.
Interested to know whether WizzAir might be in trouble of any sort, I took a quick look at some news stories and a website I chanced across called http://www.wizzairsucks.com. The latter suggests that they are not so much "in trouble" as just plain "trouble". I have a feeling that I've flown with them once before and it was ok. I'm reminding myself that no airline can be as bad as Ryanair.
12 MARCH 2020
Now Trump, in a stroke of very stable genius, has banned travel between Europe and the US, one of the knock-on effects, presumably, will be to make life extremely difficult for airlines (let alone their passengers). WizzAir will probably keep wizzing for the time being. What about British Airways? I'd been thinking it was perhaps a safer bet for a back-up flight to Athens – and am still thinking that at the moment. A red-eye to Greece isn't too expensive, and it would give me a day and night in Athens before heading for the islands: Andros, Tinos, Syros, Kefalonia and Ithaca.
These Cycladic and Ionian islands are free of coronavirus at the moment, but there seems to have been a case on a ferry, relatively far away, at Limnos, in the northern Aegean. If the Greek ferries are put out of action, then my odyssey would have to be abandoned – unless I follow Odysseus and build myself a raft. Coronavirus may yet do what Calypso, Circe and Polyphemus the Cyclops failed to...
Meantime, the Greeks are going ahead today and lighting the flame at Olympia which, in theory, will travel all the way to Tokyo for the 2020 Olympic Games. Is that a sign of optimism or stupidity? One could ask the same question about my starting to write this journal. I suppose the answer to both questions is that there is no choice but to press on as if things are going to work out. I have fond memories of a visit to Olympia (in Greece, not Kensington) in the 1980s and running (as one does) the length of the ancient track there. Probably not my most impressive running feat in Greece… but perhaps more on that subject if/when I get to Athens.
13 MARCH 2020
Tutto andrá bene is the slogan adopted by Italians in the midst of their lockdown and now appearing on posters and windows. I'm adopting it, too. The news globally, and particularly from Italy, may be awful, but optimism seems the only way forward. A neighbour told me this morning how she had been to an exhibition at the Royal Academy and there was hardly anyone there – "It was wonderful," she said. "It's usually so crowded that you can't see things properly." Similar delight has been expressed by people in Florence and Venice, where the streets are close to empty and the beauty of the cities can be fully appreciated by the few who are there.
14 MARCH 2020
British Airways is talking about grounding planes, sacking staff and fighting for survival because of Covid-19 and travel bans. It's saying that the seriousness of the situation is unprecedented. I've still decided to go for an "insurance policy" with BA, ie a cheap-ish flight that will get me into Athens in the early hours of the day when I hoped to arrive there by bus and/or train from Patras. I'm sorry, Greta – I'll make it up to you. Perhaps a bit of carbon offsetting might help... In the current climate of anxiety and uncertainty, BA is doing the sensible thing and offering customers the chance to cancel flights and re-book or use the money towards another flight any time in the next 12 months. So £94 means I can get to Greece (if it's still open then) and put off by 18 days my arrival in Italy, thus increasing my chances of getting to Italy when it's up and running. And if by some miracle the trains are running through to Milan and Bari, I will still be able to follow my original plan. Disease, ill health and businesses running by the seats of their pants seem to be the monsters that threaten a contemporary Odyssey. I have a friend who lives just south of Rome who said (pre-coronavirus catastrophe) that she looked forward to us sitting on her balcony one evening for the recounting of some traveller's tales. That has become my equivalent of Odysseus making it home to Penelope – and I am determined to be there. Having to pay for the BA flight to Athens may be the lesser of two evils – but then, as Odysseus found, there may be more than two evils yet to come...
15 MARCH 2020
... and there are, of course. France is starting to restrict train journeys (presumably, like the ones I've paid for to Paris and on to Milan). And Greece has just closed all its ancient monuments, including the Acropolis (which doesn't bother me too much – with my been-there-done-that attitude to countless Greek sites – as long as I can get to Athens, as stepping stone to the Greek antiquities that really matter: the Aegean and the islands). Meanwhile, Northern Ireland is talking about closing schools for up to 16 weeks (and presumably wouldn't suggest that if it wasn't in line with what the UK government is contemplating) and Britain is saying it has plans to ask all over-70s to stay at home for up to four months... Four months! The official line is that this is for these "elderly" people's own good. I wonder if the aim would actually be to cover up the shortcomings of a health service that has been so starved of resources that it won't be able to cope with large numbers of ailing oldies. These scenarios that involve 16 weeks/four months don't augur well. I try to stay optimistic on the basis that the British authorities are making it up as they go along, as they don't really know how this is going to pan out. But it's easy to be pessimistic on that very same basis.
16 MARCH 2020
I'm certainly not alone in frustration over travel plans. In fact, most people have them – and these plans are all either being disrupted or torn up. Methinks, we do travel too much? Is that a big part of the problem? In Odysseus's day it would have taken a plague quite a while to cover the whole world, even with the whole "known" world then being more or less the lands surrounding the Mediterranean. Mass travel and globalisation means we're definitely in it – whatever mess that comes along – together. People in isolation in Italy are reported to be gathering on their balconies at night for communal singing. A friend of mine in Wales says she hopes that doesn't happen there, as it will all be dreadful rugby songs. I'm due to spend a few days in Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire in a couple of weeks... if we haven't been banned from moving about. One health-conscious friend tells me I should stay indoors – even though I've explained that I'm not quite that old yet. But more than one other person I know has railed against any restrictions as "ridiculous" unless you are in an "at risk" category. I tend to agree – otherwise, the whole system is going to explode.
Notwithstanding that, the UK government has now suggested we don't socialise and don't travel; and the follow-on from that is Greece has said that the UK isn't taking the problem seriously enough and anyone flying there from the UK will be subject to two weeks' quarantine. My cunning plan of flying to Athens seems to have been stymied – unless things change between now and 19 May. What could change in two months? Everything, presumably.
17 MARCH 2020
The UK's neither-one-thing-nor-the-other approach to the great plague seems not to be helping very much. Hardly anyone here knows whether they've got it, whether they've had it or whether they are likely to get it. And the rest of the world is very soon going to self-isolate from us. Two weeks' quarantine in Athens is beginning to sound more appealing than week after week of being in limbo in the UK. Switching to a flight two weeks earlier – on 5 May – and holing up in an apartment with a balcony in the Greek capital would make it possible to pick up all my pre-booked travel and accommodation through Rafina, Andros, Tinos, Syros, Patras, Kefalonia and Ithaca... or am I already going more than a little stir crazy? With no factors being predictable, doing nothing at all seems the most sensible thing. But then, doing nothing is the end of life...
Now the UK government is advising for the next 30 days against any non-essential foreign travel – because of the risk of not being able to get back to the UK. That's a risk that I'd be willing to take… if I could just get to Greece and/or Italy.
18 MARCH 2020
Outside, in London, many people seem to be continuing as normal. I was able to swim in the open air at Tooting Bec Lido this morning. The attitude of the regular cold-water swimmers there is that doing this boosts our immune system, makes us healthier, and ensures we are less susceptible to colds and flu. Let's hope the pool stays open. There seems a huge gulf between the wider "real life" and the narrow focus of the media coverage of the plague – each gives a very different view of what is happening. And the only thing that seems certain is that no one really knows what is happening... Glastonbury Festival has just been cancelled – and that was going to be in late June (although its big problem seems to have been the months of preparation necessary between now and then). June seems like another world away from here – either the apocalyptic predictions will have come true, or perhaps I will be in Greece. Who knows? No one.
19 MARCH 2020
London awaits lockdown. Panic buying (which is mainly commonsense buying) has emptied many supermarket shelves, although nearby Tooting's amazing shops still seem to be overflowing with fresh vegetables. Coronavirus seems to have generated as many theories as it has deaths. The thing most people agree on is that no one knows the truth. I've just cancelled a trip to south Wales next week – since it increasingly promised to be a pointless outing. Normally, Pembrokeshire is the place in the UK that I love to be the most, but it too has been hit by fear and closures and cancellations, and the prospect of struggling to get out of a locked-down London (and possibly struggling even more to get back in) has put me off trying. I don't feel the same way about my odyssey. There's still a candle burning for that... In perhaps the last post before lockdown, I just got my copy of Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad – well, I've read The Odyssey enough times, so I thought it was time to get the other side of the story – and Teach Yourself's Complete Greek course. I recently completed Michel Thomas's Italian course, in preparation for the odyssey, so I thought I'd better also brush up on Greek (of which I have a smattering, from countless trips to the islands, and from a familiarity with the Cyrillic alphabet from studying Russian at school and university). Anyway, I need something to keep me busy if we really are locked down.
20 MARCH 2020
The lockdown gets closer, with the UK government finally banning bars, pubs, cafés and restaurants from opening. More livelihoods go to the wall – examples of this are everywhere and some are very close to home. To save thousands of people, most of whom were going to die sooner rather than later, everyone is having their lives disrupted and, in many cases, ruined.
21 MARCH 2020
Ninety per cent of the deaths in Italy are of people with more than one existing health condition; the people who are truly vulnerable are over 50 and have more than one illness already. Applied to the UK, this means about one and a half million people are at risk of dying from the virus. And a reliable source says that the government has information that suggests the large majority of those dying from the virus would have died anyway within the next year. Governments appear to be rushing into panic measures as a response to panic headlines in the media. I could say more but am too angry to even write it down at the moment.
22 MARCH 2020
The government has announced it is writing to one and half million at-risk people to tell them to stay indoors – presumably the same one and a half million that my reliable resource referred to. People's attitudes are changing (including mine). An 80-year-old musician friend, who under two weeks ago was saying "If we die, we die" and was still going to the pub, is now frightened to leave his flat. I took him a load of groceries this morning, but am now back home and intending to stay put. Up until now, I've been blasé about going out (not to the pub) but to do shopping or see friends or family. I am now looking at going ahead with my odyssey, beginning in late August and going through September. I'll mull it over for a day or two, but that looks like probably the only thing to do – apart from give up altogether (which right now is definitely not on the cards).
23 MARCH 2020
Finally, the lockdown of the UK arrives – after a day of wonderful sunshine. It doesn't seem that dramatic, since most people had already got into a sort of lockdown mode.
24 MARCH 2020
The lockdown makes a walk to the corner shop an adventure. The sun shines, the cherry blossom glows, the leaves are appearing on the trees... As I sit outside to read later, a robin comes and settles by me. You would think all was right with the world. And maybe it is – apart from the human problem.
25 MARCH 2020
The good weather continues. A trip to Clapham Junction reveals that supermarkets are pretty much filled with stock again. Everything feels almost normal, apart from there being far less people around. A friend recently arrived in Greece is quarantined for 14 days – he promises to keep me in touch with developments there. My friend with the balcony just south of Rome seems to be coping ok with the lockdown there – and I've asked her, too, to let me know how things are unfolding. The problem remains for everyone, including the experts with their often very different "modelling", and as Sonny Boy Williamson once observed: "There's a lot of people talking, but there's mighty few people know."
26 MARCH 2020
Another day – like several days that have gone before. It must be like this in prison, or in a care home – but of course many, many times worse. The drifting of one day into another, the repetitious nature of the days which leads to not being able to distinguish one day from another. The prisoners in a gaol or in a home for the elderly face this weird ordinariness, or ordinary weirdness, way into the future – some to the end of their days. And how can any of us who are alive really complain when many old people are ending their lives in utterly horrible circumstances, and now even some younger ones too. That feeling that the thing can't touch you does tend to fade a bit with every day – and no doubt will continue to do that, until this thing has passed. Meanwhile, the sun shines and the trees bloom... Life really does go on...
27 MARCH 2020
British Airways seem keen for me to cancel my "insurance policy" flight to Athens and rearrange. I'm nearly at that point but not quite.
28 MARCH 2020
Groundhog Day...
29 MARCH 2020
Enjoyed a family get-together for my son's birthday – via video conference. He's locked down in Cornwall, his mother in Gloucestershire, and his sister in London (just down the road from me). Otherwise, an inexplicably gloomy day.
30 MARCH 2020
I checked in with my friend on the island of Syros – one of the stopping places on my odyssey – and she confirms "all of Greece is under house arrest" and "travelling to other places in Greece is possible only with a licence". She thinks I have to change my plans, and warns against even booking travel in September until things become clearer. I will wait to hear further from my friend in Italy before starting to unpick my travel arrangements – the government there has extended the lockdown to 12 April (just over a month before I am/was due to arrive there). My plans took many hours to set up, so at least I know it will occupy me for a lot of lockdown time taking them apart and possibly putting them back together.
31 MARCH 2020
Have dropped off vitamin C capsules to my younger daughter who lives nearby and last night said she had high temperature and breathlessness. Am worried about her of course. But unless symptoms worsen, the emergency services will do nothing apart from advise quarantine – and anyway, the last place one wants to be now is in hospital. A neighbour tells me that his daughter has just recovered from similar symptoms – and gives voice to many people's view: why is it taking so long to start testing people? If this were done, we might know the extent of the problem. As ever, this country ends up almost revelling in amateurish/Dad's Army/Dunkirk-style failure.
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