For the past forty years, I have lived in an old Victorian mill town, a relic of the Industrial Revolution, some of it unchanged for 200 years. Only five minutes from my home stands Crank Mill, built in 1790, according to the plaque on the wall, and still in use as a furniture factory. The footpath leading down to it through the trees from the rows of the millworkers’ terraced houses on the hillside above is still cobbled. Walking down it today from my crack-of-dawn weekly trek to Morrisons (to beat the queue), I am mightily thankful, even in these bizarre days, that I am walking down it in 2020 and not 1820, on my way, at 6 a.m. on a freezing winter morning, along with my fellow workers, to my long shift in that woollen mill, in unspeakable conditions.

I have been thinking for a while now, just how fortunate many of my generation have been. Whatever some might think to the contrary, we have had it easy. Our parents experienced World War Two. Some didn’t survive it. And our grandparents experienced World War One. As if that weren’t enough, it was followed in 1918 by the so-called Spanish ‘flu pandemic, with a global death toll of around fifty million.

Of course, there have been conflicts in our lifetime, but most of them were on the other side of the world. Apart from that, the worst I can think of, on this sunny lockdown morning, is the three day week. Oh, there was Mrs Thatcher, but I had better not go there. And those other events, when we remember exactly where we were. In college, one evening in November 1963, a door curiously closing on its own, and a guy I had never seen before saying, “Have you heard..?”

So, whatever anyone else thinks, I think we’ve had a cushy time. And now, here a lot of us are, in our comfy homes, mortgages paid off, our company or public sector pensions in our on-line bank accounts every month, groceries delivered to the door, fancy cars, holidays abroad (but not this year). How lucky we have been.

And, perhaps like most, I thought things would never change. I thought my personal three-act comedy would sail along in its own sweet way, till the final curtain fell. I was wrong. I didn’t see this coming. But apparently there were plenty who did. So, in our post-postmodern age of scientific and technological sophistication, why was the world caught napping? Perhaps the world was so busy tweeting and taking selfies that it didn’t notice. The after-pandemic inquests will be long and difficult, and for some in power, extremely embarrassing. Will they make sure it doesn’t happen again? For the sake of our grandchildren and the future generations, let’s hope so.