They closed the bridge on the Welsh side. Drivers already on the bridge going westwards beat furiously on the dashboards of their halted vehicles in the hot midday sun, then tuned-in to Radio Wales to discover that ‘the virus’ was the reason. ‘It’s coming from the east,’ a politician said, too diplomatic to blame ‘England’. ‘We’re not letting it into Wales.’ The three lanes east were now empty; all traffic from Wales had ceased.

            At the far end of the bridge traffic police made vehicles reverse into England, the outside lane first. After a long boiling hour, the middle lane began to go backwards and then stopped. Each driver tuned into English radio stations to hear a politician with a plummy voice say that due to the ‘prevalence’ of the virus in Wales, the Prime Minister had closed the bridge in ‘both directions’.