‘Am told by sister to live in the caravan parked on her front lawn’

How Ben Aitken came to spend lockdown in Australia with no brown sauce and a book deadline to hit ‘Do spot of travelling in the van, seeking diversion in the cupboards and so on’

MARCH 11

Gatwick Airport. Off to Adelaide for a family wedding. I buy a pair of flipflops, then manhandle a dozen books in WHSmith. Of the dozen, I purchase one about gerontology because I’m writing a book about older people that was due two weeks ago. News of lockdown in Spain as corona cases climb.

MARCH 12

Somewhere over the Suez Canal, the World Health Organisation starts calling it a pandemic. Immediately harder to focus on in-flight drama starring Tom Hanks. All change in Dubai.

MARCH 13

Adelaide. Land of the Kaurna people.

I’m collected by my sister and her children. It’s all hugs and no worries.

MARCH 14

It’s fewer hugs and more worries, as Australia closes its borders and declares a state of emergency. Am told by my sister to live in the caravan parked on her lawn and not to take it personally. Am told the caravan is called Deirdre, which means “sorrow” in Gaelic. Am told meals will be left outside the caravan three times a day. Am told good luck getting that book finished.

MARCH 17

Reduction can be fruitful. I can make a cup of tea sitting on the loo, for example. I’m given a Wi-Fi password and the news gets to me; it enfolds me in its perplexing smother until nothing else matters. Din of information offset by the stillness and quiet of the world. You could hear a mouse on Donald Bradman Drive, and there’s no roar of planes overhead. The normal traffic of living is hushed. Instead, there is birdsong, and the patter of dog paws, and the odd opening of an empty letterbox.

MARCH 21

Am delivered a bacon roll by my nephew because he’s less vulnerable. I ask for brown sauce and he returns with barbecue, the philistine. Eat breakfast at desk (which is to say in bed), then write 150 words an hour for 45 minutes. Then do a spot of travelling in the