The tutor group have become very exercised about the prospect of coronavirus arriving in England, “Sir, what’s going to happen?”

Of course, Sir had no idea of the answer to their question, perhaps no-one can give a definitive answer. I attempted to reassure them. We do not live in the days of the Black Death, or the Bubonic Plague, or the Spanish Flu, we live in times of rapid research and advanced medicine.

For some of them, though, the question is not about the threat to human life, it’s about time off school. It would be time some of the boys would devote to playing online games and some of girls would spend on social media. The idea of death is an utterly remote prospect for them; they recognise that it happens, but, probably reasonably, assume that it is something they will not have to consider until late in this century or early in the next.

Is there a point when time suddenly becomes something infinitely valuable, something not to be passed in the virtual world of electronic media? Is there a point where the idea of death makes us focus on life, or is it only in extremis that we value the moments in ordinary life? Is it only when it’s almost too late that we place value upon things which otherwise slip past?

It is almost as though that even with the advancing years we assume that the supply remains unlimited – if we lived our life in days, rather than years, would it make a difference?

Philip Larkin, understood, I think:

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

Where can we live but days?

Isn’t it what the late great Kirsty McColl sang about?

Thank you for the days
Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me
I’m thinking of the days
I won’t forget a single day believe me

It is how Sebastian Faulks’ character Engleby copes,

Days. Days are what we live in.

Days came. Days went.

A thousand years BC the writer of Psalm 90 had come to the same conclusion,

Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Whatever happens about coronavirus, the days pass.