What a strange time we are living in. A time when all of our expectations of our daily lives are turned upside down. I never thought I would see empty shelves in my local Tesco. These are scenes from Eastern Bloc countries in the time of Stalin or war time rationing. My visit to Tesco today in search of potatoes, my third attempt this week, was successful and I picked bread off the trolly as the bread delivery man pushed it into place. He didn't get a chance to put it onto the shelves because the locusts arrived and the trolley was emptied immediately. Surely people are fully stocked up by now but panic buying is contagious, more so than the virus itself.

<a href="http://pigyard.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/GarySteve-Skype.jpeg"><img class="alignright wp-image-6162 size-medium" src="http://pigyard.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/GarySteve-Skype-200x300.jpeg" alt="" width="200" height="300" /></a>In the meantime I've reintroduced myself to Skype. I haven't used it for over 6 years but at the suggestion of my friend, beekeeper mentor and ex work colleague Gary we connected. He managed to capture a screenshot of one of the many lighter moments during our conversation. We've now scheduled this on a weekly basis.

I've heard other people doing similar things as they sit through self isolation and they enhance the conversation by agreeing to read the same books and/or films and then discuss them.

I was also in a Skype "meeting" with some people from Lincoln university. They're are about to do some research into "Partnering in later life" and have asked me to help set up the pilot study. It sounds fascinating and with my experiencing of dating over the last 3 years I'm sure I'll have something to contribute.