A deep silence is descending. In our small town, during the day almost nothing moves. It’s the same kind of silence that you normally only find in villages in La France Profonde, or parts of high-summer Italy; the early warmth and sunshine only reinforces the impression. Or perhaps it reminds me of my West-Country childhood, where the summers seemed to go on forever…

A trunk road passes near the town; often there is a ceaseless, low-level roar of lorries heading for the East Coast ports, and cars heading to workplaces, or the nearby retail centres. That has gone. So have the aircraft in this most crowded of airspace. Even in the town centre, except for the occasional vehicle, and the singing of the birds, the silence is near-total. The town is never exactly busy, though over the years the influx of commuters has upped the tempo. It has a rush-hour; not any more. In twenty years here, never before have I heard my footsteps echoing in the streets. Human voices, when heard, have an unusual clarity…

Somehow, there is a depth to this quietness that isn’t normally there. The tempo of life is slowing. Apparently, seismologists say the country has stopped vibrating.

On our occasional forays, one gains snatches of voices out of sight in back gardens, or glimpses of people lolling in rooms. Now and again, a conversation is had (from a safe distance, of course), in an unhurried way that rarely happens when people have busy-ness to get back to. A sound-track for this would shatter the silence of course, but it seems like the right time for Prelude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune, or The Lark Ascending. Or perhaps La Mer.

It is of course not like this everywhere; it would be monstrous not to acknowledge the duress of those working to keep the rest of us serviced, let alone in the hellish places that some hospitals must be.

But for many, it is a matter of sitting and waiting. And from this, we can learn much. The country that originated il dolce far niente can be frantic too; life has to go on, everywhere. Here too, there is plenty of activity; the difference is the pace at which it needs to be done. But we can learn something valuable about a benign pace of life. We can remember that plenty of stuff can just Wait.

Even the names of the days are blurring; when it’s no longer a matter of work routines, do even they really matter? Did our ancestors get depressed about Mondays?

The meaning of that phrase does not refer to laziness, so much as the ability to stop and do nothing when circumstances permit. To linger over lunch or a chat, or just to sit and watch the play of sun and shadows on the wall. It is perhaps related to doing things well, rather than just quickly. It’s akin to mindfulness: an ability to be in, and to savour the present moment, to put one’s schedule on hold and just be.

No doubt there are many who are finding confinement extremely difficult – even holidays these days seem to be a mad rush for the coast or places to keep the kids entertained. In this pressure-cooker of a country everything, it seems, need to be done at break-neck speed, as though people are scared of simply slowing down.

Is it too much to hope that they too might eventually break through this, and also learn what our particular circumstances here admittedly make easy – that quietness is restful and restorative, that boredom comes from within, and that forever revving the pace of life is not the answer? That, insofar as there is one, seems to be in the quality of lived experience, not the quantity.

Even in cities, the pace does seem to have slowed; much of what we admire about the world’s most liveable conurbations relates to their pace of life – not only the buzz of things to do, but also the ability to step off that conveyor and just chill. That’s perhaps what makes continental cities so charming; maybe now is the time to see that it is possible here, too?

What does seem to be hurrying is Nature: the speed at which the air and water have cleared has been quite breath-taking. Maybe there is a desperately overdue lesson in there too. Even pandas are breeding, now we have learned just to leave them alone…

It might seem self-indulgent to talk about the benefits of the current situation, when there is so much tragedy unfolding. But even a cloud this dark is not without its silver lining. Perhaps we should be reading James Lovelock or E.M Forster – and pondering the world we have made? Deciding what positive things can come from this?

Surely the best way of commemorating the tragedy of lost and shattered lives is to learn how to live that which remains for the rest of us, less cheaply?