The Eeriness of Rose Street

Edinburgh's Rose Street, just after 11.00am on Sunday. Usually this place would be bustling with shoppers, diners, tourists et al. I am reliably informed there are a couple of bookies there along with the odd pub or two...Instead, it looked an eerie place, symbolic of a lockdown that has now gone on for more than three months.

Tomorrow, in Scotland, roadside shops re-open, subject to appropriate social distancing measures being in place. Indeed, on adjacent Princes Street, many stores had staff working today preparing for re-opening tomorrow and several shops had two metre distancing signs marked on the pavement outside.

Tomorrow will mark another step towards something approaching normality in Scotland. Today, in central Edinburgh at least, it was the calm before the storm.