This desert of nothing.

This desert of nothing.

With every passing day you begin to feel like one of those lost tribes wandering through the desert. We are now in Biblical times where David, Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Rachel and Sarah once so tirelessly roamed or perhaps it only seemed as though they had. Through dusty storms, turbulent times, endless trudging, all they had were their worldly belongings and perhaps a couple of sheep to keep them company. They wiped the sweat from fevered foreheads and made the best of it all. It must have seemed at the time that they were completely lacking in any sense of direction since there was nothing to guide them at all at the time.

The world has, quite literally turned into a real life version of Radio 4's timeless and celebrated Desert Island Discs in which none of us could possibly tell you what your favourite music was if they were marooned for an indefinite time. The late Roy Plomley would ask those intriguing questions, flirt with the women if the occasion was fitting and then we would all close our eyes in some romantic reverie, thinking back to  those rock and roll masters of their craft such as Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde and Jerry Lee Lewis. Anything to lift the mood, shake off the despondency and relieve the prevailing worry.

But there are no desert islands around here and besides it can't be that bad. We are still an island and we are still a civilisation but increasingly the footsteps of humanity are becoming less audible with every hour, week, month and year. The streets of London are turning into a blank canvas, a crumpled piece of paper with little in the way of constructive suggestions or meaningful value on it. It is a yellowing parchment from many centuries ago where the small print is more or less illegible.

Wherever we go we find ourselves in the ultimate ghost town, a Wild West town where the saloon doors creak open ominously and the cowboys spit out their cigarettes with a brooding menace. Then the cavalry arrive in a procession of horses galloping towards the cactus bushes and firing off their rifles and guns just to remind you that they still rule the West. But there are no swinging doors here and there are no cowboys with stetson hats on their heads. This is much more serious than that.

For the last month or so the coronavirus disease has swept the globe rather like one of those unwelcome wintry blasts that bring with it barrel loads of snow, freezing winds, slush, ice and then yet more and more rain. It began in China, landed in Italy and then the rest of the world. This is the kind of disastrous pandemic which has killed thousands and left most of us completely dumbfounded.

Of course there was the Black Death during the Middle Ages, the Spanish flu that left a wretched trail of death during the First World War but now the 21st century is beginning to experience the same kind of fear and dread. There is a very chronic state of stagnation here, a nation gripped by something totally inexplicable, a nation frozen and immobilised by disease, pain and suffering.

Suddenly we find ourselves in a vaccum, our minds well and truly numbed, our coping mechanisms totally held hostage by events that none of us can possibly handle without the latest news and even then we're none the more enlightened. We get a whole sets of contradictory messages every day, repetitive slogans and a whole ticker tape of warm reassurances. The best advice of course is to stay at home which begins to sound more and more irritating and condescending by the day.

For those with the coronavirus this is not the kind of advice or guidance we may be looking for. Besides it's not as if any of us are going anywhere since everything is shut and even if we do venture out for a while we're likely to be arrested by the police. The wine bars have put up their shutters, the pubs are no go areas, the nightclubs have switched off the background music and everything is off limits, banned, postponed, banished to history and not about to open until somebody tells us that normal service can be resumed.

Yesterday you scanned the desolation that was the West End of London and thought you were dreaming yet again. Trafalgar Square left you with a broken heart, Piccadilly Circus looked as if it had been evacuated owing to the detonation of a Second World War unexploded bomb and Waterloo Bridge was just a grey landscape of lifeless roads, a River Thames that sparkled in the spring sunshine but was totally lacking in any kind of movement. Where once vast masses of marching feet had trodden there was now nothing but silence, solitude and despair.

We are now living lives that have changed dramatically if temporarily stifled, restricted and overwhelmed by a disease and illness that only the most erudite of doctors and professors can even begin to explain or clarify. The coronavirus, we are told, is not a severe bout of flu but something that has the potential to kill and thank goodness we may never suffer from. It'll leave you with a draining fever, a cough from hell and little else.

We are housebound for hours on end, allowed to go out for a specific period of time but then ordered to return to your warm, cosy home and just put your feet up. It is, after all Sunday and for those of a religious persuasion you should have been in church this morning. But hold on all churches have been shut so where do you take your place of worship? In the old days everything was closed anyway and only the local laundry was open for your dirty washing. You remembered carrying baskets of washing for your mum as a kid and suddenly discovering the paradise that was the drinks machine in the corner. A cup of hot chocolate was just what the doctor ordered and it was six old pence shrewdly spent.

But even religion has had to take a back seat or pew if your local chapel still has a closed door. There are no contemplative prayers or hymns, none of those resounding pieces of ancient ditties paying homage. The shopping malls have little to offer in the way of attractively priced merchandise, shelves still echoing and hollow now, tumbleweeds of crisp packets and sweet wrappers flying off into the distance.

And so here we are again baffled, weary and wary, listless and sluggish, confined to our castles of contentment, locked down, chained down, shackled by the laws and strictures, following the Government's hardline if sensible words of wisdom. We will continue to take our daily exercise routine of one exertion only, keep away from our families and friends before just being dictated by commonsense. It's hard, of course it's hard. It was never likely to be easy. But there will be light at the end of the tunnel.

In America, president Donald Trump is doing his utmost to play down the gravity of coronavirus. The country should go back to work as soon as possible. Don't panic Mr Trump. We're all immune from this destructive disease and once we get hold of vital supplies of ventilators everything will be just fine in the not too distant future. Trump has never been anything other than businesslike and pragmatic so we're all getting flustered about nothing. Soon the highways, byways and freeways of America will be seething with activity, men and women in Wall Street earning obscene amounts of money, millions of dollars changing hands in the blink of an eyelid.

So that's where we've been going wrong throughout this crisis. The end of the world is not nigh and we've all been reacting, unnecessarily melodramatic and if you listen to doctor Trump you'll all wake up tomorrow, heart pumping, blood pumping, arms and legs stretching with vigorous vim and vitality. If you go back to work and stop dwelling on coronavirus then nothing can possibly go wrong.

Here in Britain Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been laid low with the symptoms of coronavirus. He conducts his interviews from the safety of his video conference room. Johnson still looks careworn, eyes narrowing, hair noticeably blonder than ever before and in desperate need of a good, old fashioned dose of lemon and honey. He must be wishing that he'd seen the last of those tough, challenging days of Brexit and the future would just be plain sailing. Sadly the duties of a Prime Minister are always difficult, taxing and onerous. For Johnson coronavirus may represent his most daunting task of all. Keep well everybody and please stay at home. None of us can really go anywhere as such, anyway.