The Cotswolds And The Coronavirus

We face an invisible enemy that is changing forever the way that we live our lives. But we are resilient people – here’s how we’re coping with the lockdown and social isolation

- Candia McKormack

We may not have the singing skills of the Italians or the gun-toting I’m-protecting-what’s mine sensibilities of the Americans, but we Brits are dealing with the coronavirus in our own special way.

And we have form, of course. The Blitz spirit displayed during the Second World War saw us making hearty dishes out of Spam, powdered egg and allotment runner beans, while singing our hearts out in Anderson shelters with bombs raining all around... and there were no home wine deliveries then, either. The enemy we find ourselves facing now is a very different beast to any we’ve experienced before, but it’s heartening to know that – bar the odd squabble over a four-pint bottle of full-fat – the same sort of resilience is being exhibited across the Cotswolds, and even as far as Swindon.

So, in the spirit of coronavirus we’reall-in-this-together sharing, here are some highlights of what we’ve learned so far...

PANTRY APPRECIATION

Use-by dates are for wimps. This isn’t a flagrant disregard of government guidelines, this is basic common sense. That tin of corned beef that’s been keeping the spiders company for the past three years is (probably) fine. Did 17th-century man have date stamps on his food? No, he did not. He had a similarly-designed nose and sense of taste we’ve been gifted with (with the exception of some who may have come into contact with ‘the enemy’... just another example of the baffling array of symptoms we’ve been told about). Common sense is your friend, and he knows good corned beef from bad.