Lockdown in London -- Day One

Last night PM Boris Johnson advised everyone over 70 to stay indoors for the next three months, while asking everyone else to "social distance." Today we adopted a rather liberal interpretation of what is required of us. 

Of course we both took long walks in Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, which is well within the spirit of what has been asked. However, what Boris has asked is that we not sit down anywhere in public. This prohibits us from indulging our deeply-ingrained habit of going to a pub for lunch every day. In fact, we haven't eaten lunch together in our house for several years.  (When Kathy has a lunch engagement with a friend, I go to a pub by myself. When I have a lunch engagement with a friend, she eats sushi at home.)

One of our go-to pubs is the Duke of Clarence, a seven-minute walk from our house, on the Old Brompton Road. Except when there's an important rugby, football or cricket match on TV, there's hardly ever anyone in the Duke at lunchtime. Yesterday (before Boris handed down the injunction) we ensconced ourselves at our favorite corner table, and were fifty feet away from the only other patron in the house. So today we looked at each other and said, "why not?" Our corner table was unoccupied, and the nearest other patron (there were three) was forty feet away. 

Yesterday (pre-injuncion) I went to one of my go-to coffee shops to find it shuttered. Moving on to another -- Cafe Society in Kynance Place -- I was able to sit twenty feet away from the only other patron. I understand why it makes sense to restrict over-70s more than younger folks -- if we catch the virus, But it makes sense to me that I should sit down in public places if I can be twenty feet or more from other human beings. In February we chanced the odds and spent two weeks in Asia on our way around the world. We won. Perhaps this is why we're comfortable bending the rules (guidance, actually) now. But for how long?