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# Tessa's diary: Closing the front door feels a bit final
- URL: https://lichfieldlive.co.uk/tessas-diary-closing-the-front-door-feels-a-bit-final/
- Published: 2020-03-18T10:25:59.000Z
- Updated: 2020-03-18T10:45:32.000Z
- Description: An email has arrived from Lichfield Cathedral – ‘all volunteers are to stand down until further notice’.
- Author: Tessa Calvert-Linnell
- Tags: Health, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-22 18:18, News

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### With large sections of society preparing to go into ‘social-isolation’, one Lichfield resident lifts the lid on her thoughts in the latest of a series of diary posts on the coronavirus outbreak.

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An email has arrived from Lichfield Cathedral – ‘all volunteers are to stand down until further notice’.

So my usual guiding shift has gone. One of a stream of cancellations – group meetings, lunch with one friend, a visit from another, a trip to London…

So I’ve put on some disposable gloves and dived into Aldi for the last time – at least for the foreseeable future.

With every surface suspect, living dangerously takes on a whole new meaning. There are only a few gaps on the shelves, but the butter has disappeared.

When I get back home, closing the front door feels a bit final.

I have no symptoms and no one’s actually ordering me to get inside and stay there, but my sons are insistent and phone repeatedly.

> “There are cases in Staffordshire, Mum!”

So I read the papers picked up at a nearby garage, wash my hands, then pour a large glass of wine.

The isolation begins.