Saturday 4 July:

No dawn walking (as you now know, I try to avoid weekend people!), despite the fact that I could have been queuing outside a pub waiting for the 6am opening (pubs re-open today).

First thing, I finished off and posted my thoughts on the various government mixed messages about coronanvirus ‘rules’… somewhat ironically, I later read a report in the Guardian saying that Downing Street posted a tweet at 9am which contained incorrect coronavirus rules – my blog post had been making similar comments (the tweet was subsequently deleted). Hey ho!

Another ‘virtual’ urban sketching meet-up – this time in Istanbul. Another excellent zoom ‘turn-out’ (15 people) and another really enjoyable get together.

Continued to read my ‘Black+British’ book – which, unsurprisingly, goes into far more detail than the accompanying TV series.

Dan, from StorySmith, delivered two books for me – ‘An American Marriage’ (our bookgroup book) and ‘Lockdown’ (by Peter May, published February 2020 – which he wrote it in 2005, about a pandemic that hits London, but his publishers felt it was too far-fetched and declined to publish it!).

Watched the first episode of ‘The Young Montalbano’ (and was quite impressed).

Image: one of my ‘virtual’ sketches from Istanbul (Hagia Sophia Museum).