Peter Rhodes on “fighting” illness, silly escapism and a great year for blossom

Boris Johnson's friends may attribute his recovery to his bulldog fighting spirit but Johnson himself knows better. He has told friends he was saved not by anything he did but by the skill and attention of doctors and nurses in an NHS hospital.

As the PM was taking his first steps after treatment, the Muslim lawyer and writer Nazir Afza was on Radio 4 condemning the use of words such as fight, battle, losing and winning. It creates the impression, he said, that those who do not survive the virus have not been brave enough or fought strongly enough. Some of us journalists deplore the fight / battle language used in describing cancer, as though all you have to do is screw up your courage, stiffen your resolve and that nasty tumour will put up the white flag. Cancer and coronavirus are not like that. You fall ill. You rely on the treatment of others and whether you live or die depends on their skill, possibly your genes and probably a measure of luck. Today, some people will recover from the virus and others will die. The survivors are not towering gladiators and those who pass away are not failures.

Strange, wasn't it, how the BBC focused on the ethnic aspect of coronavirus infection in the United States before reporting that much the same is happening here? British black and Asian communities are suffering worst. At one stage 37 per cent of intensive-care beds were occupied by so-called BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic people) and deaths among BAME medical staff were far in excess of their proportion in the UK population.

There must be a proper inquiry into this disparity. One of the most heartbreaking and shaming aspects of this crisis is the passing of so many elderly black and Asian people who came to Britain believing it to be a safe, modern place, only to die in the sort of epidemic we used to associate with the Third World.

At times like this a little silly escapism is no bad thing. If you've got a spare 100 minutes and access to Netflix, catch Dean Craig's new rom-com, Love Wedding Repeat. It's a tale with various endings, depending on who sits next to whom at a wedding breakfast. It stars Sam Claflin and, if nothing else, it proves that it's perfectly possible to have a tongue-tied, silly-arse Englishman as the main character without involving Richard Curtis or Hugh Grant.

Or if you fancy something more spiritual, raise your eyes and consider the blossom on the trees. Have you ever seen it so dense and bountiful? Presumably this dazzling display is the result of that long, mild and horrendously wet winter. Okay, I fully accept that a load of blossom is not much consolation if you're still shovelling mud out of your flooded basement but maybe it brings promise of better days to come.