Serenity is not something you associate with crisis. And, yet, opening the bedroom curtains this morning, that's exactly what I encountered. The sky was poster paint blue, the sunshine bright and inviting, and a pair of postmen traded banter from an appropriate social distance, delivering to opposite sides of the street. The usual hustle and bustle of this London suburb has dropped off a cliff. Our turn-of-the-century street in the "village", as the town is referred to (despite being well within the capital), had almost been returned to its original state, save for the scattering of residents' cars parked up and down it.
Yesterday was the same - the silence only occasionally broken by frantic delivery vans charging over the speed humps, their drivers desperate to make the next dump-and-run as part of their new game of contact-free Knock Down Ginger. Even though we're in the midst of a medical crisis, the urban soundtrack of emergency vehicle sirens around here has also been turned right down. On any given day, living close to a high street and its intersection with another local artery, ambulance, police and fire engine sirens are an almost constant cacophony as they battle their way through choked streets. But not now. It is eerie. People really are staying at home.
The other notable silence is in the air. When Heathrow is running takeoffs from its easterly runways, there is usually a steady stream of planes in their initial climb overhead our part of south-west London. But not any more. Last night the quiet was broken only by a helicopter. It reminds me of Tuesday 11 September, 2001. I was living in Sunnyvale in California, in an area served by three international airports - San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose. On any given day there are hundreds of planes in that airspace, including flights making their 180-degree turns over Sunnyvale itself to line up for landing at SFO. 9/11 unfolded in real time for me. Having been awake, unusually, at 6am and watching CNN as I eat breakfast, a report came in of a plane hitting one of the World Trade Center towers in New York. Initially it was assumed to be a light aircraft or one of the many helicopters that fly up and down the Hudson River, delivering banking executives to Manhattan's heliports, or taking tourists on sight-seeing flights. Very quickly it became something else.
By 6.45am my time, the Federal Aviation Authority had grounded all commercial aircraft within the continental United States. It was a full twelve hours later that I emerged from the apartment for some fresh air, having spent the day in my pyjamas, frantically channel-hopping to see if any one broadcaster had more news than the others. My break for freedom was to drive up the 101 freeway, with no particular destination in mind, just a desire to see something other than my living room. It was as I drove that I noticed how clear the skies were, and how clear the freeway was. One of the San Francisco Peninsular's two main motorways was notably free-flowing at a time of day when traffic would normally be solid. On an impulse, I came off the 101 at Millbrae and drove up to Junipero Serra Park, which has a view over to SFO. It was then that I fully realised how silent it was. Nothing overhead, nothing moving on the ground. Planes that had been given the 'All Stop' order appeared to be scattered all over the airport's taxiways, like toys abandoned by a child ordered to the dinner table.
That night, around 2am, I was woken by the noise of a jet aircraft flying overhead. The nights were warm in California that September, so I'd left a bedroom window open. As the jet - possibly a fighter - approached, I felt myself bracing. No one knew for sure if that morning's attacks had ended, and middle-of-the-night paranoia meant that there was a fair chance that whatever was approaching could be heading for San Francisco, or the heart of Silicon Valley or, frankly, anywhere. The next morning we gathered at the Philips campus in Sunnyvale, everyone numbed by the previous day's events, all trying to get some collective semblance of understanding of what had happened on the other side of the country. Everyone who lived in the South Bay reported the same experience as mine, of being woken by the sound of an aircraft, and wondering where it might go.
That Wednesday morning we all assembled around the campus barbecue pit (about as Silicon Valley as you get) for an impromptu moment of sombre reflection and to sing (or, in my case, attempt to sing) the Star-Spangled Banner, the US national anthem before returning to our desks and try to get on with some work. I remained there for a few minutes longer, still trying to get my head around the lack of noise in the sky. Amid the continuing uncertainty, the calm, the beatific calm, was as unnerving as it was peaceful. Today, outside this house, it is a reassurance that people are paying attention to the instruction to stay at home. Or, at least, they are in this village.
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