So now, with my youngest daughter back from university, we have three of us at home under lockdown. But my wife, as a key NHS worker, still has to go out. Her patients need her, which is why she and all of those others carry on, despite putting themselves at direct risk of catching the virus.

My older daughter and her family live quite close and have been self-isolating for two weeks now. Just over a year ago, when they lived in the UAE, her youngest child had a stroke at the age of just two years. They moved back to the UK and my grandson has been having some amazing care from the NHS for the condition which caused his stroke. Four weeks ago he had an operation at Great Ormond Street Hospital to increase the blood supply to his brain and, hopefully, prevent any further strokes.

The effect on them as a family has been profound, from a very comfortable lifestyle in the UAE they now live in a small rented flat and survive on my daughter’s earnings as a supply teacher. Even that erratic income has now ended as they have been advised to totally self-isolate for at least twelve weeks to protect her little boy.

And yet the human spirit is so resilient: my daughter is enjoying home-schooling her two children and told me on WhatsApp the other day how lucky she felt to live near open countryside where she and the children can get out to enjoy their daily fresh air and exercise.

Her daughter, my grand-daughter, was six last Friday. We visited and stood several metres distant in the yard outside their flat while she opened her presents. They went inside then for cake and games, without us. At bedtime she told my daughter that it had been the ‘best birthday ever’. Yesterday, when I delivered some supplies to them and I spoke to the kids who were at the first floor window, I noticed that my grand-daughter had stuck a rainbow picture she had drawn and coloured to the kitchen window facing outwards with the message ‘We Are OK’ written across it. It is this spirit that gives us hope for the future.

If I close my eyes and let my mind wander, I can step outside our present cares and walk the wild Cairngorms with Nan Shepherd:

Here and there in the moss a few white stones have been piled together. I go to them, and water is welling up, strong and copious, pure cold water that flows away in rivulets and drops over the rock. These are the Wells of Dee. This is the river. Water, that strong white stuff, one of the four elemental mysteries, can here be seen at its origins. Like all profound mysteries, it is so simple that it frightens me. It wells from the rock, and flows away. For unnumbered years it has welled from the rock, and flowed away. It does nothing, absolutely nothing, but be itself.

Nan Shepherd – The Living Mountain

Picture of River Alun near Rhydymwyn, © Bobby Seal