I had my first trip back into the west end today – to see Linda Heathcote Amory’s exhibition at Browse & Darby and have a sandwich in Green Park. It was a strange sensation – the streets so empty, so few people about, just a very few tourists forlornly carrying Fortnum & Mason’s green bags. One doesn’t know quite how to behave, giving people the widest possible berth on the pavement, half acknowledging their presence as fellow survivors, but without warmth. And yet the shops of Burlington Arcade were all staffed up, waiting vainly for customers. Then I got absolutely soaked bicycling home. I had forgotten that it rains sometimes.