Unexpected Consequences...by Sheila Claydon

Click here for my books at Books We Love

In my last blog I talked about Shakespeare and the pandemic that affected him all of his life, starting with a fifth of the people of Stratford dying the year he was born. It was, of course, the bubonic plague, and it rampaged around the world for several hundred years, coming and going seemingly randomly until its cause, the fleas in rats, was discovered. Even that plague had its positives though, and in Shakespeare's case it gave him time, while he isolated himself and his family during the worst outbreaks, to write much of his best work.  

The Coronavirus that at the moment is affecting countries around the world also has some surprising upsides. I know businesses that are unexpectedly thriving because, with the closure of many shops, people are turning more and more to online shopping. The same with take-away meals and the many smaller restaurants that previously only offered table service are now barely able to keep up with requests for meals to be delivered.  And there are new local delivery services too where, for example, local farmers have seen a gap in the market and started delivering their fruit and vegetables directly, while family run butchers do the same with their meat.

Of course there are many, many people who are suffering, people who are wondering if their jobs are safe, people living in overcrowded conditions where the virus is more likely to run rife, people with barely enough to eat, but there are many, many more who are enjoying the unexpected freedom that has come with being paid to stay at home until the worst is over. This has led to family time, new hobbies, DIY house upgrades, healthier meals being cooked from scratch, more exercise, more fresh air...the list goes on. Although we live near a beach it is a bit off the beaten track, so we tend to recognise most of the people who park near us and set off through the woods and sand-hills to the sea. In the recent warm weather, however, we have seen so many new families visiting and enjoying themselves, and so many strangers exercising, that we doubt whether life here will ever be the same again. 

And that brings me to our own unexpected consequences. Three days ago we had coffee in Sydney. Yesterday we had lunch in Hong Kong. This evening we are having a drink with friends on the south coast of England and we will be meeting up with more friends in the Midlands on Tuesday. There are plans to see cousins in San Diego and we have already walked around a friend's garden in New Zealand and admired their burgeoning fruit trees and newly planted flower beds.

When I started writing I needed a strap line and at the time it was that my books were a 'ticket to romance' because many of them were set in places I've visited over the years. The fact that all that travelling is continuing virtually is the wonderful unexpected consequence of how Coronavirus is affecting us.  Where we used to exchange emails and maybe meet up once or twice a year, or only every few years if the distance was great, now we are very active Internet friends, talking weekly in many cases. With so many social platforms available it is so easy, and with practice has become almost as pleasurable as seeing one another face to face. We all have so much to say that we quickly forget about the screen between us as we lift our glasses to one another or excuse ourselves for a couple of minutes while we make another coffee. Why it has taken a pandemic to set up such an enjoyable online network of weekly contacts I can't fathom. We could have started doing this years ago instead of just limiting online calls to our granddaughter in Hong Kong. Everyone says the same and I think, when live gets back to whatever normal is going to, be this is an unexpected and very enjoyable consequence that will continue.

Cheers everyone!

Plans are made to be broken..by Sheila Claydon

At the moment the world is on tenterhooks because of the Coronavirus. Of all my books this is the only one where an unexpected illness strikes. Why? Well probably because nobody likes to think about illness unless they have to.

Click here for my books and author page

As Woody Allan once said:  If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans. Not that any of my plans were desperate or that important in the scheme of things, but I was due to be cruising around Japan at the end of March on the very ship that is now quarantined in the port at Yokohama as more and more members of its crew and passengers contract the Coronavirus. 

On top of that, the British citizens who were flown out of Wuhan, the centre of the epidemic, have been quarantined in hospital property only 12 miles away from where I live. 

And then, of course, there is my daughter-in-law, who is Chinese. She and my little Eurasian granddaughter spent the Chinese New Year in China with family and friends. My son, who had to work, stayed at home in Hong Kong, which was just as well as he has been their only contact with the outside world for the past 14 days. Although they were very far away from the epicentre of the Coronavirus they were still required to self-quarantine when they returned home,  and my daughter-in-law has only today been allowed to return to work.

My granddaughter is still at home because her school has been closed since Christmas and will not reopen until 4 March at the earliest. Also most of her friends have either left Hong Kong for a perceived safety with family elsewhere, or have not returned from the Christmas holidays they were celebrating somewhere else in the world, so with no school and few friends to play with, it is fortunate that she loves to draw, write, make things, help cook, and also do the homework she receives every week by email.

From a different perspective, however, some of what is happening is very interesting. My son, who works in change management in businesses in Hong Kong, is having to adapt his own work practice whilst also helping other people to cope with working from home. Culturally, home working is not the norm in Hong Kong and this, together with the very limited size of its family apartments, means that the forced confinement is having a deep psychological effect on many people.  Apartments in Hong Kong are on average the smallest in the world (484 sq ft). Many of these are homes to more than three people. As a comparison, the average one-bed flat size in Manhattan, New York, is 716 sq ft while in London it is 550 sq ft. Because I regularly help edit his various presentations and papers, it means I am able to be part of the whole thinking around the effects of Coronavirus on business around the world...not something I would have chosen given how it is affecting and frightening so many people, but interesting nevertheless.

So here I am, living in a coastal village in the North West of England, miles away from any major centre, in a place of clean beaches and fresh, unpolluted air, and yet, because of globalisation, I am still caught up in the world-wide effects of the Coronavirus. It is a strange, strange world.

Now all I have to do is to send the medical face masks I've managed to buy in the UK over to my family in Hong Kong because there the shops have sold out altogether, and without a mask nobody goes out! In usual circumstances China makes 20 million face masks a day and Chinese people use them regularly both as a protection against traffic pollution and when they have a cold or cough which they don't want to pass onto other people. Now, however, production has fallen and people are panic buying. Fortunately we still have plenty in the UK where wearing them is not the norm at all. Who is to say when that will change, however. In the meantime we can spare some where they are needed most.

In my son's words at the end of his recent advisory leaflet to Hong Kong employees working from home for the first time: until it's over and we can all relax, work well and stay healthy.

Somewhere a bit different...by Sheila Claydon

Click this link for purchase information

In my last blog I was just about to set off to spend Christmas in Hong Kong. It was, as always, wonderful to catch up with family and friends, especially our 4 year old granddaughter, and Christmas Day was much enjoyed by all. Then, a few days later, the whole family made a trip to Schenzen in southeastern China. This is the modern metropolis that links Hong Kong to the Chinese mainland.

Schenzen is one of the country's special economic zones, which means it is allowed more free market-oriented economic policies and flexible governmental measures compared to the more planned economy of most of China. Consequently its tax and business incentives make it attractive to both foreign and domestic investors and this has made it a very successful city. Westerners can apply for a 5 day visa at the border although this does not entitle them to visit any other part of China.

What can I say about Schenzen other than wow! It's growing economy, mainly in the technological industry, has led to it being dubbed China's Silicon Valley, and it really is the most amazing place. With an estimated population of over 20 million, mainly young, inhabitants, it is vibrant and forward looking. It is also spotlessly clean despite its many fast food outlets. The streets, beautifully manicured parks, and huge, modern shopping malls are all pristine, as is the Schenzen metro, which is vast and growing but so easy to use thanks to its technologically friendly maps.  More important than any of this though, is the friendliness of its people. On crowded trains, as older visitors, we were greeted with smiles and instantly offered seats. We were also entitled to travel everywhere for free as are all its own older citizens. All we had to do was show our passport or driver's licence to be nodded through the barrier, again with a smile.

And there were so many things to do. In one shopping mall, for instance, was a Virtual Reality (VR) station where anyone could try their hand at activities as far apart as Formula One driving or skiing down vertiginous mountain passes, or, if they wanted something more calming, they could take a trip to the stars, visiting planets and staring back at the earth through a virtual reality window. There were so many VR options it would have taken days to experience them all. Then there were the slightly larger than usual child-sized electric cars that tiny drivers (or more usually their parents with children as passengers) could drive around the malls, waving and smiling as fond family members looked on. I was even persuaded to take my little granddaughter on one of these 5 minute trips and quickly learned to weave in and out of the strolling shoppers despite nervously anticipating a traffic snarl up that never happened.  Then there was the lake with its huge stationary ship that doubled as a bar and restaurant where we watched fireworks from beneath the warmth of outdoor heaters because it was cold by then.  

Everywhere we went people were enjoying themselves. Family groups, young people holding hands, parents, grandparents, the whole place seemed to be full of laughter and enjoyment.There was the ball pool for small children that was bigger than any I have ever seen before, big enough for the parents who wanted to revert to their childhood too. And a wonderful Sea World. And skating. And jogging. And themed exhibitions, both cultural and modern. And interactive museums. We didn't have anywhere near enough time to visit everything, nor was the weather conducive as it was (to us a very mild) winter, so we missed the wonderful beaches and the botanical gardens that integrate serious research with tourism, and we gave the technological area a miss too, and the theme parks in Happy Valley, because by then our brains and senses were full. 

While we were there Chinese friends also invited us to join them for two memorable meals, allowing us to see behind the scenes sufficiently to experience how the locals live. Because we have a Chinese daughter-in-law we have become reasonably adept with chopsticks, something that is really an essential for anyone wishing to enjoy Chinese food at its best. Reaching forward to take a carefully prepared portion from the myriad dishes that keep on coming is the only way to truly understand the Chinese love of food and their even greater enjoyment when they see a guest eating well.

This wasn't our first visit to China. In the past we have visited several other major cities as well as heritage sites ,and have also climbed a portion of the Great Wall, but when we did this, enjoyable as it all was, we knew we were in another culture. In Schenzen, with its oh so young population, it didn't feel like that at all. It is a place that has taken the best of the West and the East and merged them into a city of the future where, certainly to all outward appearances, everything works smoothly and efficiently. It both amazed and fascinated us in equal measure. It also made us realise, all over again, as does every trip we take to another country, that people are the same the world over even if they do things a little differently sometimes.

I haven't written a story based in China yet, although the day might come, but in a number of my books the characters have to learn to live in another culture. Reluctant Date is just one of them but in this case, Clare, the English heroine, has to learn to live in a small town in Florida. That might not seem such a steep learning curve as moving to China, but learning to live anywhere different needs adjustment until the day, without realising quite how it happened, it becomes home.