Roman Quarantine – Day 11

Coronavirus, Rome, Villa Borghese

Tweet I’ve just realised it’s Friday. Who knew? Days have taken on an amorphous form, with an entirely unequal distribution of hours. Which, were it not for the underlying and palpable general anxiety, would not be unpleasant. I quite like the sensation of no...

Roman Quarantine – Day 10

Coronavirus, Rome

Tweet I spent today continuing to sort out our overgrown and neglected terrace. The potted lemon tree needed some heavy-duty pruning, and then I wiped down the leaves of the poor thing one by one with warm soapy water to get rid of the horrid black bug gunk they’re...

Roman Quarantine – Day 9

Coronavirus, Rome, Rus in urbe, Trastevere

Tweet Botanical Gardens, Rome. 28 February 2020. Three weeks ago (really, only three weeks?), and before this situation became a national emergency but after I’d already had all my work cancelled for what then then seemed like only a month, I went for a walk around...

Roman Quarantine – Day 8

Coronavirus, Legend, Origins, Rome

Tweet I haven’t been at street level since Saturday (definitely going out for a short walk tomorrow) and yet somehow at least at the moment time doesn’t drag at all. This morning I finally after months, maybe a year?, set to the crazy wildly overgrown terrace. One of...

Roman Quarantine – Day 7

Coronavirus, popes, Rome

Tweet Yesterday, the day after it was announced that Easter services in the Vatican would take place without a congregation this year, the Pope left the walls of the Vatican and visited two churches to pray for an end to this pandemic. The first was Santa Maria...

Roman Quarantine – Day 6

Coronavirus, Rome

Tweet Something very odd indeed has happened to time this week, but the calendar tells us that today is Sunday. And on Sunday we have lunch. So we had Sunday lockdown lunch with relatives di adozione, se non di sangue one might say in Italian, which somehow doesn’t...