Coronavirus has even kept the sex-strikers at home

When we left this Britain on Thursday last week, life was almost as usual. Shops and restaurants were open. The Battle Observer was reporting that environmentalists, angry that East Sussex County Council’s pension funds are invested in fossil fuels, were organising a one-day protest demanding a ‘sex strike’. No one, they insisted, must have sexual intercourse with any of the county’s 50 elected councillors ‘until they agree to stop funding climate change’. As a campaign, this latter-day reworking of Lysistrata had the merit that most people would probably agree to its conditions, whatever their views on climate change. We returned home on Monday, however, to read that the protest had collapsed. Faced with the onrush of Covid-19, even the zealous green sex-strikers were daunted, and did not turn up outside Lewes town hall. Those wishing to copulate with our county councillors were left in peace.

It was in those four days that the coronavirus took hold in Britain. We were in the charming, understated Mill Reef Club on Antigua, where I was giving a speech. In that lovely island’s bright sun, fresh breezes and blue sea, the world-fever seemed remote. It was coming, however. We soon heard that the island’s first case had been notified — an Englishwoman bringing it in on a flight from London. On Sunday, we attended an Anglican service. Conducted according to the Book of Common Prayer of the West Indies, it was similar to what might be found in an old-fashioned English parish church, except twice as long, due to more of everything — hymns, prayers, notices, blessings for children, and a half-hour sermon. In the last, interrupted by cries of ‘Amen’, the rector, a distinguished-looking grey-haired woman, expounded not only the lessons of the day, but also the song ‘I beg your pardon,/ I never promised you a rose garden’.