Storm and Coronavirus

Storm Ciara has now arrived in the West of Scotland with high winds and heavy rain. But this morning it was still dry so, after visiting the police station to give our car details after last night’s incident, we walked along to Burnside for brunch. I do like Café Gelato. It’s a proper traditional Glaswegian Italian café. We had French toast with maple syrup and read the paper; James reads the news and I read the culture section, so it’s very harmonious. Back home James had to spend ages on thx phone to arrange the car repair and a courtesy car, he seemed to have to relate the whole story and give all of his details during each phone call. I was busy with odds and ends and a bit of grocery shopping. By the time I walked down to Morrison’s mid afternoon with Davie, it had turned much colder and the rain was starting.
Davie asked which ship we were on during our Alaska Cruise in 2013, wondering if it might be the ship that is currently quarantined off Japan with this new Coronavirus * which is headline news. James and I weren’t sure so I consulted my trusty blog, and found out that it was indeed the Diamond Princess. This Coronavirus is very new but seems to be spreading fast; it only started in December 2019 in Wuhan in China and doesn’t even have an official name yet. It has spread a lot in China and the Far East and has now arrived in Europe although all governments are being very vigilant and quarantining people who show symptoms. Apparently it may have started in a market in Wuhan where people buy a variety of live animals to eat including bats and that’s the sort of environment where a novel coronavirus can possibly be transmitted from animals to humans. Anyway, due to several confirmed cases on board the 3700 unfortunate current passengers on the Diamond Princess are in quarantine in Japanese waters.

* David told us that the reason for the name coronavirus (corona being Latin for crown) is that when you look at it through a microscope it looks like a little crown with spikes coming out of it. How handy to have a Biochemist in the family!