19. Dum spiro, spero
But then I think of the people of St Andrews – the lecturer holding a tutorial from under the stairs; the student in a hall of residence, talking to her mother on the other side of the world; the children in Pittenweem, playing in a garden; the cinema usher, asleep, dreaming that this is all a movie and that Bruce Willis will rescue us now; the factory worker sewing face masks; the woman, trembling and praying that today there won’t be shouts, or worse; the gift shop owner, crying over his accounts; the waiters; the salespeople; the delivery drivers; the shopkeepers; the cleaners; the professors; the clerics; the golfers; the artists; the ambulance drivers; the firefighters; the police; the dispatchers; the doctors; the nurses; the care-home workers – I think of them all, and repeat to myself the motto of St Andrews: Dum spiro, spero.
While I breathe, I hope.