In confine fettle

HEY’VE said that history books will look at life in terms of before and after the COVID-19 virus. The weekend before social distancing came into our lives was action packed, spent in Cornwall with Mr D’s brother. Currently he and his husband have some 100-odd rare animals in incredibly designed enclosures in the back garden of their house, with a flamboyance of flamingos in the pond out the front. It’s a serious set-up – we’re not talking Joe Exotic of the West Country here (although he’s eccentric enough to have once been reported in the as the Leopard Man of Peckham). So, a unique weekend began with stroking cheetahs and feeding lemurs, then we went on to making gin at the Salcombe distillery, feasting in Fowey, eating fresh Cornish crab in Newlyn and devouring fish at the Seahorse in Dartmouth. We meandered home via the Dart Vale & Haldon Harriers point-to-point, where hunting friends were still optimistic of finishing their season. Elsewhere in the UK, people were going loopy over loo roll but Cornish supplies were still in abundance and we were happily naïve of the reality looming.