This morning, as usual, I jogged in the Forêt de Soignes before joining N° 2 sprog for the closing minutes of his football match. Normally, the pitches at Tervuren are constantly overflown by aircraft taking off from Zaventum. Habitually the planes do a sharp left after they take off and gradually climb over the playing fields. This morning there were no planes and there was no noise. And the forest was quiet, as forests should be. On Friday morning the BBC’s Today radio programme broadcast a minute of the silence in the air over London and told its listeners that this was probably a once-in-a-generation experience. The curious thing – and I have seen no explanation for this – is that all aircraft are grounded, including lower-flying helicopters and propeller-driven planes. I know that this crisis is causing a lot of grief and is already having dreadful economic consequences (African flower and vegetable producers, for example, are having to throw away their rotting crops). We must all hope that it can be speedily resolved. On the other hand, I wonder whether the silence we have gained will remain only as a simple folk memory. It has, in any case, given us insights, in more than one sense, into how one aspect of our lives used to be.