Last weekend, I went to space. Or, at least, to a youth hostel in the Lake District which was doing a very good job of pretending to be a 40K voidship.

This weekend, I’m… well, I guess also in space, if you’re willing to allow terraced house == ISS (though at least our space station has a rather less dangerous set of surroundings for external excursions).

Honestly, I’ve got nothing when it comes to the current Everything. I can tell you to stay indoors, and wash your hands, and not panic buy, but you’ve been hearing that from literally everyone and it’s not going to make it more of a thing to hear it from some random person on the internet whose entire medical background is a Biology GCSE and some half-remembered first-aid courses. I can tell you to be kind to each other, and not to burn yourself out, and to reach out when you’re hurting and check in on people when you have the spoons to do so – but again, you’re hearing that from literally everyone and, let’s be honest, there’s only so much well-meaning advice most of us can take before we start hissing and metaphorically hiding under the furniture (or literally, I’m not going to judge).

I can tell you that our stories still matter, but I think you already know that. I can tell you that people will always need escapism, that we will always sing and dance and weave words and tell jokes and paint pictures and make art, whatever’s happening to us. I can remind you of the existence of animals painted on the walls of caves, and little clay horses on wheels made for children who lived and died thousands of years before our time, of every song and story passed down the generations from cultures who’re long gone but whose echoes still live on in us, of the fact we still have freaking dirty jokes from hundreds if not thousands of years ago because people have always been people, but… I think you already know all of that.

We can still make art. There will still be singing, even in the dark times. And someone, I tell you, in another time, will remember us.

(With apologies to both Brecht and Sappho for that last, because those are the two lines which have been rocketing around my head for the last couple of days. I blame a combination of social media and Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey)