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It's just a cold!

As the world gets increasing panicked by the threat of Coronavirus, it is beginning to take over my life - at work at least. This week I had the dubious pleasure of being appointed the Group's Crisis Coordinator and so my already packed diary got shunted right as I stood up various working groups,  dusted off continuity plans and realised that we, along with most other organisations, aren't really equipped to deal with a mass shut down if it comes. On the one hand I can see the impact and so (from a professional perspective), we are taking it very seriously. We are trying to remind people to keep things in perspective, while also pointing out that washing your hands regularly is never a bad thing to do. On the other hand, I'm trying not to ask the obvious questions - like why is this so much more scary that normal flu (which kills 100s of thousands of people annually worldwide, Measles, which we have a vaccine for and people still choose not to use it, or obesity, which we can all do something about, kills increasing numbers of people every year and yet we are still stuffing our faces with unhealthy food every day.

Hopefully sanity will be restored soon, but with Italy effectively quarantining 16 million people and France beginning to shut down as well, it's only a matter of time. Maybe everyone will want to paint their bathrooms while self isolating and so we will see sales peak. So far most people are preparing with mass purchases of loo roll and dried pasta. Little do they know there is minimal fibre in white pasta and so they are unlikely to need all that loo roll!

Amongst all of the this fuss the kids are watching on with  interest. They switch from thinking "we are all going to die" to "why are we getting so worked up about a cold". Clearly the former is not helped by the media hype, and the latter is what we should encourage. No wonder people have higher levels of anxiety these days - if you turn on the news it's a daily body count and stories of declining stocks of face masks (not pointing out unless you are a health worker or actually suffering from the virus, these are of zero use anyway). At least we didn't book that weekend to Italy we talked about!

In other news, somehow we ended up with yet another reptile in the house this week. I really have said this is it now - we have 2 corn snakes and 2 royal pythons and surely that is enough for any budding zoologist?!? Welcome Penelope, a very sweet (I know, I have moved from not liking snakes to thinking they are sweet) young Royal Python. She's a beautiful colour and had originally been destined for a breeder but turned out not to be what they wanted so she came back into the shop and we came across her. I am a sucker for a sob story when animals are concerned.

This doses mean that Abi now has 4 Vivariums in her room and I suspect if you flew a drone over our house looking for power hotspots we would look like we've started some kind of cannabis farm! I think we may have to get Stuart the Electrician out to check we aren't overloading the system and in danger of setting fire to the place. That would be all that we need! The good news is that reptiles require very little day to day care and apparently don't care whether you get them out of not. Tell that to Monty who waits by his door every evening hoping someone will come by and get him out for a bit. In fact, he managed to do it himself quite recently - Abi came into her room, went up to the Viv's and felt something on her head - looked up to see him sitting on top of the Viv stack!! He had managed to pull the vent out at the back of the Viv by hanging on a wire then escaped out the back. Luckily he couldn't go far and hadn't fallen off. I'm not sure what we would have done if he was properly missing! There are stories of people losing their snakes in their houses for months on end - presumably not in this country because even we don't heat our house to that temperature, much to Glenn's dismay.

So, got to go - Abi wants to watch a scary movie (snakes in the house not good enough), Izzy is on her way home from a day out in London with a friend, and I need an early night before yet anther week where I'm not sure how it all gets packed in... deep breath - Friday will be here before I know it!

Waiting patiently while I type!





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