Dear Reader - Film crew hoo ha in Harrogate + reacting badly to coronavirus

“It was sunny in London. Why is it so cold in the north? I need a cup of tea.”

It had only been ten minutes since Britain’s greatest-ever music documentary filmmaker had stepped off the train from the 'Big Smoke' at Harrogate railway station.

Rather than let the BAFTA-winning Tony Palmer, 78, head straight to his room at the White Hart Hotel last Thursday before his starring appearance at Harrogate Film Festival that night, I had decided it would be better to rush him round in my own cultural tour of Harrogate’s film and music history by foot and by car, my own tiny Fiat 500.

Still, this truly great man and champion name-dropper seemed impressed by mentions of Ken Russell, The Beatles, Dustin Hoffman, Oscar Wilde, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Kinks, Malcolm McLaren et al.

Impressed but cold.

After an impromptu look round the Victorian splendour of Harrogate Theatre, which he loved, came that request for a warming drink.

“Let’s pop inside Baltzsersen’s café,” I suggested which is what we proceeded to do. Nice coffee. Nice tea. Nice bun.

If only I had remembered we were bringing an entire film crew from Harrogate Film Society in tow it may have caused less of a hoo-ha.

Closed: Royal Hall and Harrogate Convention Centres shut temporarily in Covid-19 safety move

The days of fun are over for a while as crisis turns into normality - or is it the other way around?

Just a week ago the ‘elbow bump’ greeting seemed a bit of a novelty.

Now that bizarre replacement for shaking hands may itself be in contravention of the Government’s rules on ‘social distancing.’

The scale of the shutdown as a result of the new stringent measures to counter the spread of coronavirus is such that we are now living in a new world, albeit not forever, hopefully.

The boundaries of our lives are shrinking to the front doors of the houses we live in as businesses, bars, churches, cafes, gyms, restaurants, theatres and, perhaps sooner or later, schools close their doors to the contagion.

No one’s lives will be unaffected even the lucky ones who escape the virus itself.

I, too, will soon be under voluntary house arrest as I become one of the millions of people asked to work from home.

I suspect my natural reaction to the crisis means this may not turn out to be my finest hour.

My first thought on hearing of the nationwide lockdown designed to save lives and bring coronavirus under control was “they didn’t close the pubs in the Second World War.”

Yes, I know it's a pandemic. I know it’s serious. Deadly serious.

I, myself, am worried about my 82-year-old mum whose medical CV means she is on the vulnerable list.

But I may not be alone in the inadequacy of my response to the unprecedented situation the nation finds itself in.

Standing on Tuesday morning in the aisle of a rare Harrogate store whose shelves had not been stripped bare by panic buying, I overheard a conversation between two fellow shoppers.”

“Demand has sky rocketed so much,” one said to the other, “that I can’t get an organic veg box delivered for three weeks.”

Harrogate MP to launch 'army of volunteers' to help people during coronavirus lockdown