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Graham has kept himself busy by organising Kirsty's funeral. It will take place on Tuesday at Mortonhall. We have had a steady stream of phone calls but very few visitors - to be honest we have asked people to stay away but no doubt many are scared of coming to the house.


I had to break the news to the two grandmothers. Graham's mum is 84 and lives in a residential home in Stonehaven. She was remarkably calm about it and told me about her mother who had lost two brothers in the 1918 influenza outbreak. They had been waiting to come back after having survived the 1914-18 war but never made it home. I found it strange that she had never mentioned this before.


Mum told me that she had been deeply worried when she had last spoken to me on the phone. She said she knew something was wrong - I've never been any good at hiding things from her. She is determined to come to the funeral, although I have tried to put her off.

I took the car down to Stockbridge to do some shopping but most of the shops were closed. I went along to the Waitrose Supermarket which was still open. The store was limiting the some of the things you could purchase and had provided disinfectant cloths to wipe down the trolley handles. Almost everyone was wearing a face mask which created a strangely disconnected environment.


On returning home I watched the telly for most of the day. Apparently the human to human transmission of H5N1 had started in Thailand three weeks ago but the poultry industry had tried to suppress the news fearing it would harm their profits.


Some of the workers at Phuket Airport had been suffering from the infection and many people from throughout the world had left to go home with the virus as a fellow traveller. In the enclosed plane and the recycled air most of the passengers of these planes had then been infected. These passengers had then started to fall ill within a two to three days of getting home - wherever that was. Unfortunately many of them had still gone to New Year parties giving the virus another foothold.

So often you watch the news with a sense of detachment - I couldn't make the shift to participant, especially when they mentioned that the Edinburgh outbreak (there are outbreaks taking place throughout the UK, Europe and throughout the World) had been particularly quick to spread due to the Hogmany celebrations. They mentioned Jenny and used her as an example of how easily the virus had spread. Kirsty wasn't mentioned by name but 75 people have died so far in the Edinburgh area.

They don't know how virulent it is at the moment but the experts are talking about it being much worse than the 1918 strain. So much of the information that they are talking about as to do with facts and figures. It's like watching an election with maps and graphs and interviews but underneath it all it's very very different - people are terrified. You can see it in their eyes. I saw it this morning and it's even more exaggerated when it's only the eyes you can see. I saw it again just a few minutes ago when I caught my own reflection in the mirror.