Everyone is different - we all react to the things that life throws at us differently - and the coronavirus is no exception. I know people who are carrying on as if the whole shooting match was a figment of someone else’s imagination - which, alas, it isn’t.

After hearing a report on BBC Radio Four this morning about the effectiveness of China’s draconian shutdowns I, for one, am taking the whole self-isolation thing more seriously - and wish everyone else would too. It seems the only way to get this thing beaten more quickly.

Anyway, I’m not here to politicise - preferring instead to relate the very human reactions and impressions that can come a person’s way when they are locked down - especially when they are self-isolating deep in the countryside.

And so here is something cheerful. It might sound a bit naff or chocolate-box-ish - but the primroses are out - a whole month before it’s National Primrose Day.

Did you know there was such a date in the calendar? April 20th marks the official event - and it was introduced in honour of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli on his death on 19th April 1881, as the primrose was his favourite flower. Apparently Queen Victoria sent bouquets of primroses from Osborne Hill to his funeral.

But, let’s be honest, who cares about all the weird and wonderful special days that get thrown at us? As a journalist I have, over the years, had to write about everything from Cask Ale Week to Real Nappy Week. Now I no longer work as a daily jobbing journo, I’m going to forget such events.

But primroses? They’re different. And it’s looking like a great year for the little yellow stars of heaven that light up our hedgerows at this time of year. And blimey, didn’t we need it yesterday? Dark, cold, drizzle. That was how you could sum up that 24 hours.

Now, though, the sun is out in Lockdownsville…

And the hedges of the valley are swathed in a pale yellow glory. Daffodils are one thing, but their bright yellow somehow struts the vainglorious stuff of an American advertising hoarding – the yellow of primrose is a demure and altogether more British affair. Pastel and understated, it is perhaps the colour a blind poet might see when they think of sunshine.

But it’s the idea that it is a good year for the little flowers that interests me. Is there some weird inexplicable thing in a primrose’s time-clock when everything has to be just right for them to bloom brilliantly? What murky meteorological things are going on when? Which earthy mysteries have been stirring underground?

Perhaps it’s to do with the damp we’ve had. Maybe there’s some secret ingredient in mud that inspires perfection in a primrose. Or could it be that primrose profusion is merely a matter of some strange Arcadian cycle?

Just a year ago some city friends who were visiting regarded me with expressions of sympathy when I was waxing lyrical about the primroses. We were standing beside a floral version of the Milky Way eying ten million pastel yellow stars, and I was enthusing: “What a year – what a year!”

To which they were obviously thinking: “He ought to get out more.” Meaning: he should get out of the silent green prison, otherwise known as the countryside, and get a proper life… Fat chance of that happening now.

For them the idea that someone might notice annual differences in a hedgerow underlined the reason why country-folk are so far behind in levels of sophistication and wealth.

But I think the grow-old-in-the-place-where-you-were-born thing has bonuses. There is something wonderfully anchoring about the fact that you have intimate knowledge of an obscure hedgerow in the hills – just as there’s something organic about watching oneself slowly develop in the shadow of the very same woods that cast a chiaroscuro on your pram.

Being sixty-something and walking the dog in the area where you played as a kid is more exciting than it sounds. Everyday I notice things I’ve never seen before. Every month - every season – I draw new conclusions over seemingly trivial matters of geography and place. And this new, slow-born, knowledge is a delight.

For example, an old earth bank assumed a greater relevance the day I realised it was actually part of a prehistoric hill-fort.

A horizontal channel halfway up a steep field became a thing of wonder when I learned about the trouble people used to take in order to water crops while retaining precious topsoil.

Slowly and imperceptibly, there comes a deep-seated realisation that people have lived in a location for a very long time. Presumably they had similar highs and lows to you - you are just one of an endless number. With that comes a profound sense of continuity and permanence.

That is what I’ve been thinking on Day 3 of my Exmoor Lockdown Diary. Who knows, tomorrow I might be tearing my hair out with loneliness and frustration - but for now I’m enjoying the primroses.