For our household - never mind a locked down household - we get an inordinate number of visitors today.
The first to show up are a father-and-son team of removers. They've come to deliver packing material and to take away large items we no longer need.
The pair destroys our bed base to carry it easily down our narrow staircase. God know how it ever got up there. Our mattress will rest on the floor for the next few weeks.
The removers are clearly not worried about covid-19: no face mask, no gloves; they gratefully grab two glasses of cold water we give them.
Our next guests are three of Carine's friends (the same trio she met in the park last week.) They turn up after lunch, and start with the best social-distancing intentions: they access the back garden through the side gate, and sit well away from each other.
The gathering is quite legal, but in two days’ time it will be (6 people will be able to meet outside, provided they stick with social distancing). So it can be seen as a minor infraction.
But as libations escalate, caution is relaxed. Glasses change hands, food is served. The girls ask if they can use the toilet. With the amount of rosé they drink, it would be cruel to refuse. There's a continuous procession in and out of the WC through the afternoon.
When the wine runs out, the girls repair to the shop as a group to buy something stronger. They're not bad kids, just English teenagers. What concerns me most is the noise. Their music gets louder and louder; they shriek and sing.
I have to play spoilsport and ask them to pipe down several times. I'm thinking about the neighbours - or rather about what the neighbours will think about us.
Around 16:00 – before the bacchanalia was in full swing, thankfully – our buyers come around. They've got questions about the equipment, the utilities, the recycling, the neighbours, etc. We have coffee and a chat in the garden, well away from the adolescents.
The couple's three-year-old daughter is delighted with the playhouse. We give the family another tour of the house. They parents are very happy too.
When they leave, after half an hour, Anthea and I resume our packing while our garden party moves through the gears. By the end of the afternoon the girls are plastered. The boyfriend of one of them joins them for an hour - no social distancing between those two.
The merrymaking ends around 19:00. I calculate that 12 people have been in the house at one point or other during the day (two families of three, two removers, four adolescent guests).
A study by the Office of National Statistics published this week says that 7% of the British population had been infected by coronavirus. So in a random sample of 12, there's a 90% chance that one has had it.
As the infection almost certainly happened a while back, that's good news: one small step towards herd immunity.