The new normal
WHEN news of the lockdown was announced on the BBC 6pm bulletin, over the heads of my toddler, raking a toy hoover over a rug, and my husband, who caught my eye and held it, I was three-quarters of the way through the Countess of Ranfurly’s war diaries from 1939 to 1945, re-issued this year by Slightly Foxed. The Countess wrote the following from London in January 1940: ‘People are buying food to hoard; many
