People were dying, in their hundreds if not thousands; I couldn’t stop reading, the stories were horrific. Hospitals were overwhelmed; corridors filled with patients and emergency departments crowded with terrified and angry relatives, struggling to get help. The BBC had a map of the outbreak. They were encouraging people to tweet their symptoms, with the hashtag #Ihaveflu, so they could track the epidemic. There was a list of closed A&E departments, and where to go instead. The advice from Public Health England and the NHS, was to stay at home, and if a member of the family became unresponsive, to call NHS Direct.
I remained glued to the computer until the early hours of the morning, trying to understand what was happening and how to best stay safe. When I woke up late on Sunday, I checked the BBC again. There was an in depth analysis, comparing it to Spanish flu and other pandemics. It was more widespread than I had realised, with cases being reported in Europe and America.
The UK map of the outbreak was covered in red circles; London had the largest circles, indicating many cases, but Manchester and Birmingham were similarly covered. Some rural areas seemed to have almost none. I looked around my kitchen, would it be safer further away from London? I would have to stay in a B&B or hotel if I left, and persuade mum and Vik to come with me… was it really worth it? I did a bit of research on booking.com and even rang a couple of places, but everywhere was either fully booked, or closed. After a couple of hours of research, I left the computer. The best strategy would be to stay in, hide, and wait until things went back to normal.
I tidied up a bit, then looked up at the loft hatch in the hallway. A flick of a long metal pole had it falling open. I pulled down the ladder and climbed up. The sun shone through the Velux windows in the roof, dust motes danced through the rays of light, which also highlighted the fine strands of cobweb, hanging from the rafters. At least there weren’t any wasps’ nests. The loft was light and bare, a large open area, great for a loft conversion if I ever needed the space. I stepped onto the boarded floor, juggling some of the extra items I had bought at the garden centre. I ducked under one of the supporting beams and opened the largest of several crates that were stacked on one side. The crate contained my emergency kit. It was much as I remembered, but there was also a six-pack of bottled water, five tins of sardines, and some custard and dried milk powder. I checked their expiry dates, and then added the camping stove, gas, and the hot chocolate and climbed carefully back down the ladder. I closed it all back up and then went back online, but this time to the prepper websites.
The prepper sites were interesting but scary, I scrolled through; did people have guns in this country? And what was with all the knives? I decided to take the advice about leaving the lights off, and closed the doors to the front bedroom and living room. Okay, anyone looking at the front would see an empty house. I dug out the old net curtains and put them up for more privacy. Then I started to flag, was this really what I wanted to do on my day off? I’d be knackered by Monday at this rate, and I still had marking to do.
Sunday passed and around 6pm the school sent an email saying it was closed for the forthcoming week, and to provide homework. I checked the school website and sure enough, there was a notice:
‘Due to the recent outbreak the school is currently closed. Please click on the links below to find the homework for your child. Please check this website regularly for updates.’
I spent the rest of the evening writing homework booklets and creating resources to use with my favourite science website, before emailing it all off to the website administrator just before 10pm. Then I sat back, stretching, this wasn’t just a one-day closure, like a snow day in winter. The school was closed, and it didn’t look like it would be opening again any time soon. My year eleven GCSE students would be ecstatic, but what had started out as a fun exercise in prepping, seemed to be turning deadly serious.
The rubbish collection trucks came round Monday morning as normal, waking me from a lovely dream about gingerbread. The news confirmed widespread school closures. The infection rates in schools were so high; I could see it made sense. But as the morning progressed, the news reported disruption to many other services, as parents stayed home looking after children or ill relatives. The scale of the outbreak was reaching wider and wider, and my Facebook feed was filled with posts of condolences as people lost family and friends. A couple of cousins who did go to work, found no-one there, and turned around and came home again, so we spent the day Whatsapping each other and reading the news.
It all felt remote to me; no one close to me had died, and although I had a lot of work colleagues and acquaintances, my circle of close friends was tiny. But I could feel the danger of getting caught up in the mass grief, so I closed Facebook and concentrated on the factual stories from the BBC and updates from the CDC. There were some worrying stories of panic buying and food shortages. I had seen the panic buying first hand, but it seemed rather soon to have food shortages. But I was a single person, living alone, maybe large families would run out of food much faster.
There were some lovely stories of restaurants staying open to feed friends and neighbours, but fresh produce seemed to be running out quickly, especially things like bread and milk. There were also stories of people knocking on doors, demanding food. People weren’t used to doing without and there was a lot of unrest building; it made me uneasy.
I spent the day moving between the computer and the garden. I planted the courgettes and then began to clear weeds with fresh zeal. This year they would not get on top of me… I needed the space. I looked around as I worked. What would be the best layout for maximum food production?
The front half of the garden was a small lawn, divided down the middle by a concrete path. There were flowerbeds in the middle of the garden, with trellis dividing the front from the vegetable garden at the back. I had removed the lawn from the back, and built L-shaped raised beds using decking boards. The greenhouse was in the centre of the raised beds, and the paths were just wood chippings, laid over weedstop fabric. The beds were easy to maintain, as the raised sides kept out some of the weed seeds, and made it easier to cover them with fleece or netting. The L-beds usually contained the onions, carrots, tomatoes, beans, sweetcorn, and other veg. But maybe I should try the Three Sisters method and grow the sweetcorn beans and pumpkins together? I grabbed some paper and began to plan.
I decided to turn some more of the lawn into beds for the main-crop potatoes. Throughout the day, I alternated between energetic bursts; lifting the grass and piling it onto the compost heap, feverishly drawing and redrawing my plans, and then staring at the computer; researching subsistence farming.
Later in the evening, I walked down to the shops to see if there was anything left. The place was very different to Saturday afternoon; just a single car, parked askew and very few people, all scurrying by, scarfs wrapped over their mouths and keeping their distance from anyone else. The fear was palpable. The shops were all closed up, I squinted through the gaps in the co-op shutters; the shelves inside were entirely bare. The staff must have locked up early, taken the remaining food, and gone. Would they be open tomorrow? Next week? It was a good thing I had powdered milk in the cupboard. Walking round to the chemist, I was shocked to see the front window had been shattered, with pebbles of glass scattered on the ground below. A large hole had been ripped out of the toughened glass pane and the store inside was a chaotic mess of products. The previously neat shelves and displays were just a memory. I stood, disturbed by the violence implicit in the fractured glass, it must have been hit hard, over and over again, to make that hole. I looked around me and shivered in the sunshine, then turned and walked away.