Being an accounting of the recent and continuing pandemic and its various circumstances, from the perspective of an inhabitant of the regions lately called the Lost Quarter. Dates unknown.

Day Sixty Six

Rain falls heavily with no sign of letting up. I watch it descend from my window, the drops so large it looks like slanted waves cutting through the air. The rivers, already swollen with spring melt, will be near to overflowing their banks by the end of this spring storm. The trees outside my home grow greener and greener, their leaves lengthening.

Pie for breakfast with my coffee, a fine luxury. It is an iron law of pie that whoever rises first can partake of the leftovers to break their fast. This morning that is me, though in truth it is only because my love is kind. She always rises earlier than me and could claim the pie by right, but she knows how much I love it and is willing to forgo her claim. There is no dessert finer than a pie in my estimation.

My love doesn’t believe in laws regarding food. To her there are no foods unsuitable for breakfast or dinner. Anything can be eaten at any time. Spaghetti, chicken or noodles can be eaten as breakfast, dinner or snack. Her only law is that rice is life and must be eaten with every meal, though even on this she is not as constant as many of her fellow islanders are.

It is, I must admit, a much more sensible approach than that practised here in the Lost Quarter and elsewhere, declaring certain foods only suitable to particular meals. Eating should never be so rigorous. It should be about taking pleasure with your sustenance.

She eats her eggs with ketchup though, which is an abomination before man and gods and which I refuse to countenance.