How bizarre is it to see so little traffic on London roads at the moment? Moseyed on down from Chiswick to Brixton (supermarkets are for amateurs at the moment, get thee to thy nearest farmer’s market) and it took all of 40 minutes. Unbelievable. Last night was really quiet on the streets but today there are people jogging, out for walks, soaking in the sunshine but everyone is mobile; there are no groups sitting about. The Thames looks amazing with the bright sunshine bouncing off it, just like a giant rug studded with a gazillion diamonds and tiny tiny rainbows. Beautiful. There are a lot more people wearing masks or using their scarves as makeshift barriers but there are also loads of carefree youngsters on bikes, taing advantage of the car-free roads. It’s only now that you can see how much time we all wasted in shops on Sundays – I hope commerce is up and running soonest, safeguarding all those millions of jobs but there is something to be said for keeping Sunday special as far as I’m concerned. I think the sunshine will be the limiter for this virus personally; although it’s not an RNA virus like influenza, looking at the worldwide spread, I think it will burn out in the Northern Hemisphere, so to speak. I do then fear for the Southern Hemisphere where the temperature is about to drop though.

I was thinking that if anti-malarials are killing the virus, is it just the drug or is that in combination with the fact that people coming from malarious regions are usually chock-full of Vitamin D, again linked to sunlight? Just a hypothesis; I’m sure if there’s a link the eggheads will find one. Don’t believe me, just watch! I think we could all do with some Vit D anyway. If you’re lucky enough to have a garden, I’d get out there for some sunshine and Vitamin D if possible – grow some tomatoes or summat, saves you haunting the shelves in Sainsburys. My number one solution though? No-brainer, I’m a Christian – everyone who can should pray. Even if you’re a hardcore sceptic/atheist, what’s the harm? We all have plenty of time on our hands, the churches are closed, it’s mano e Deo so it’s private, you have nothing to lose. God knows ( 🙂 ) politicians and scientists are running around like headless chickens at the moment, they sure need some divine intervention. I certainly don’t wish to see the passing of the draconian laws being voted on in parliament tomorrow , no one wants to live in a police state. If you don’t know what to pray about, pray about that. If the virus is contained, those laws will not be necessary and we get to keep our civil liberties. In the meantime, can we all calm down a bit; I can assure you the stress and fear is not doing your immune system any good at all. Take a leaf out of the Bobster’s book:

All we can do is to try to be sensible and stay safe, keep your loved ones close and on my part, I’m doing some thinking about who I am, what I’m doing here, and what next when I kick the bucket. If I find out, I’ll let you know 🙂 In the meantime, since this is AlaraApothecary and our mission is to make your day better, I give you some Mark Ronson + Bruno Mars just in case unbelievably, Bob is not for you. Watching these boys dance makes me incredibly happy. Have a great week.

Well, hasn’t that been an eye-opening couple of weeks. I came back from the Mill Hill Souk to find the world changing right before my eyes. The only thing I can liken it to is how everything changed after 9/11. I was in the States with my Mother on that Tuesday; we went to bed on the 10th of September and I remember being called  by her, ‘Come and look at this’, and we sat on the bed watching the TV in total disbelief. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen both the best and worst of mankind – all human behaviour seems to have telescoped to a point. I’ve seen people trying to look after neighbours they hardly acknowledged before, I’ve seen people steal sanitiser gel from hospital wards, potentially condemning the sick to the possibility of sepsis. Before I start writing about other stuff, I hope you find the chart helpful. What you need to watch out for is a continual cough, a high temperature, and shortness of breath. All respiratory illness might have the usual cough/cold/flu symptoms but those three are red flags. Also, washing your hands and good hygiene is key. The virus might not kill young people in general but an opportunistic bacterial infection that piggybacks on a virus-weakened immune system can cause mayhem. If you are a vegetarian or vegan, unless your diet is exemplary, a course of extra multivitamins AND minerals, and maybe some iron supplementation might be something to consider – talk to your friendly local pharmacist.

It’s one thing to tell yourself that the stuff you accumulate is worthless; we all say it, but we don’t really believe it. It’s another thing to find life reduced to dried pasta, tinned tomatoes, and loo rolls. Even the things we think are sensible won’t help – we think we will have things to trade: gold, electronics, clothing. None of these are worth a thing when the only currency is Tamiflu, surgical spirit, and tinned peas. As a Christian, it brings into sharp focus Jesus asking, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his soul. What will a man exchange for his soul”, or in this case, what use is the Balenciaga bag or the Stella McCartney top if there is nowhere to wear it to, and no one to see it? It’s made many of us consider how and why we live, and even when (not if) we survive this virus, one day it will be game over. What next? And this isn’t THE pandemic, although the wretched media would have us believe otherwise with their scaremongering and incitement to panic. Turns out all the world needs is people to grow food and healthcare professionals and scientists to supply medication. And undertakers, sadly. Even if the power stations and water supply shut down, we would survive. But no food and no medicine? Not so much. At no time have I heard anyone say ‘If only I could see my lawyer or my facialist or my couturier’. Not that those things are worthless, we all play our part to make this planet work and play after all. But when push comes to shove, you end up with Italy….supermarkets and pharmacies. Even your GP can’t help unless she/he has a handy ventilator stored in a cupboard somewhere. It is entirely sobering.

And yet. This is exactly how the majority of the world lives – no power, no water, little food, no schools, no hospitals, no infrastructure. Can you imagine life in those refugee camps? The other thing that occured to me is that if you locked down the motorways, people in cities would starve within a fortnight. How did this happen – that we are so far from self-sufficiency? So much stuff is trucked in from elsewhere, it is absolutely crazy. We should start growing vegetables in those pretty gardens of ours if we have them. So, no working from home for pharmacists unfortunately but I have to say that although the job may sometimes be a pain in the neck, it’s at times like this that we realise how useful our profession is. When the surgeries are in lockdown and hospitals are guarded by the Army, I can guarantee that pharmacies will still be open and the staff will still be smiling – more or less 🙂 A big thank you to those ‘unskilled’ people who keep the country running, and to the awesome crowd filling our lives with memes and gifs. Some think the jokes are irreverent but I think, 1) over 40000 have died of the flu this year alone worldwide, and 60 million people die on average very single year, of not-coronavirus and 2) we are alive, and must live till we die. Redeem the time, hug a loved one, have a laugh. To this end, I have made a giant pot of ragu and will watch some brainless rubbish to calm my brain. I leave you with my favourite videos. I was going to share the ghastly coronavirus nail art but I’m holding back on grounds of taste. Stay safe, stay well, go see your Mother on Mother’s Day – she doesn’t want a present, she wants to see that her child is well and happy. Have a good one.