The poet Wilfred Owen, killed in the last days of the Great War, famously said ‘my subject is war and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity.’

I wonder how many great literary works will come out of this other type of war: the war against disease and the Covid -19 pandemic? There is pity here too and there will also be sadness in recollecting these very strange and very hard-to-take times.

For example, look at the children’s playground in front of Fornoli’s electrical shop. I can hardly bear to pass this place now; a place where in normal times parents congregate with their small children and supervise them playing on the swings, the roundabout and the little spring horse. I can hardly bear to see this place now deserted, its fixture rendered out-of-bounds with red and white bunting. It shows a complete reversal of the most essential human qualities of sociability which are learnt from an early age through play, like any other species on this planet. All these precautions may be necessary but they’re just not fair!

That red and white bunting seems to be everywhere here. In Eurospin’s store at Fornaci for instance it has been put up to distinguish things one can buy, like food, and clothes, which one can’t. Crazy – I think clothes are almost as essential!

Another year, indeed another day, may become ever more important to us the older we get but let’s think of children’s youngest days when so much changes in so short a time and so much is being learnt.

I just hope, like all of us, that this bloody pandemic will be over as soon as possible. If we had to learn quickly to adapt to the virus’ presence it will be rather more difficult to re-adapt ourselves back to the life we regarded as normal before all this happened. May the voices of children soon return to our locked down playgrounds!