Bulletin from Abroad

Floods and Covid-19 leave a hapless Brit gazing wistfully in the direction of sunny New Zealand.

For many years, my wife and I have had a recurring difference of opinion about one of life’s eternal questions: where does it rain more, New Zealand or the UK? I’ve always maintained that the reputation the British Isles have for being a soggy outcrop hunched beneath mop-grey skies is unfair, at least when it comes to London.

But during these past few months, my defence has been an increasingly difficult one to maintain. As Kiwi friends continue to send us photos of themselves basking in an apparently endless summer, the rain up here seems to have been falling ever since time began.

As far back as November, I went to Yorkshire to report on extensive flooding, but now it feels like the whole country is one giant lake. Rare is the week that passes without a month’s worth of rain falling in some place or other within the space of a day. The storms that keep arriving from across the Atlantic are big enough to warrant their own names: Ciara, Dennis, Jorge. But their characters are all the same: wet.

Naturally, the unusual amount of rain has had many observers citing the effects of man-made climate change, and on cue Greta Thunberg turned up in Bristol recently for a “Climate Strike”, at which thousands of schoolchildren and other protesters gathered to hear the teenager speak. Many of them carried umbrellas, because it was, of course, raining heavily.

Yet climate change sounds like a modern concept, whereas the relentless downpour has felt rather ancient, dare I say biblical. And as if to emphasise the Book of Revelations vibe of this sodden misbegotten winter, we’ve also had to contend with the threat of plague or, to give it its correct name, Sars-CoV-2, otherwise known as the coronavirus.

However, this contemporary plague is presented in a very cutting-edge 21st-century fashion. It’s hard to know where sensible precautions end and hysteria begins, but the daily or even hourly news updates of the number of confirmed cases have a definite sci-fi edge to them, as if you’re watching a futuristic drama – an effect that’s underlined by the follow-up bulletins on the collapse of the stock market.

Today, as I write, the Health Secretary was asked if he’d consider isolating whole cities, the way that China has. Rather ominously he said that the

Government wouldn’t “take anything off the table at this stage”.

I’m not sure how a city could be isolated, other than by blockading all routes out of it – with what? Armed police? It doesn’t sound like a very British response to a disease that, at this moment in time, has only 39 confirmed cases in the UK (a day later, it’s up to 51), none of which, I’m happy to report, have so far proved fatal.

It’s said what will most likely halt the progression of the virus is – just as with flu – the onset of hot weather. Personally, I’d be happy if it just stopped raining. But yes, hot weather; the British yearn for it. They’ll go anywhere in the winter months to find some sun – on a Pacific cruise, for example, or to Tenerife, which have both seen coronavirus outbreaks leading to extended quarantines.

So with foreign travel looking suspect, and in any case the cause of carbon emissions that are fuelling climate change, we have little choice but to stick it out, sitting at home, watching the rain fall and looking at sunny Facebook photos of bronzed friends in New Zealand.

At least it’s settled our long-standing marital dispute. As very few husbands will be surprised to learn, my wife was right all along.

“Mouthwear is totally in! This trend could go viral.”

How can a city be isolated, other than by blockading all routes out of it – with what? Armed police?