Second day of the shop being open, after seven weeks of not letting the public in. Funny watching people enter; we have hand sanitiser and a polite note at the doors asking people to use it. Some do, with great show -look at me! I do the right thing! - so

Second day of the shop being open, after seven weeks of not letting the public in. Funny watching people enter; we have hand sanitiser and a polite note at the doors asking people to use it. Some do, with great show -look at me! I do the right thing! - some use it matter-of-factly, because afterall it's what we've been doing for weeks - some look at it askance. I watched one man just wave his hands at it - the art of magical thinking? And even after so long that social distancing should be second nature, people still stand elbow to elbow browsing the books, even though there's plenty of room to spread out. It's like catching the train; sometimes you can be the only one in the compartment, but half the time when a new person gets on, they sit opposite you...the other half do the calculation: what is the furthest I can sit from those already seated? A new form of social maths!

The city is slightly busier. It's not quite the tumbleweed-blowing-through-emptiness of a month or so ago. A few more shops are open in the QVB and in the Pitt St mall, more people wandering round. Maybe not as aimlessly as pre-covid19 - window-shopping is rare these days - but not as furtively as it seemed last month, when 'scuttle' rather than 'saunter' seemed the pace of necessity. Now the feeling seems to have slipped from alarm to alert, even though we may not be at a stage where we should be casual. People are still falling sick with this viral disease; but I guess we are all feeling sick of it...