In isolation, friends ring to cheer me up. One did so yesterday to share a moment of absurd joy.

She told me that outside the Capital Chemist in Charnwood in Canberra, customers were lining up patiently.

The pharmacy had a member of staff outside, ensuring order - people were allowed in only one at a time, and after sanitising their hands.

At which point, a woman walking her magpie appeared.

She had the bird and a dog on leads. Sometimes the magpie would walk and sometimes it would stand on the lady's head.

"It made my day," my friend, Carolyn Kidd, said. "It was a moment of joy. It made me realise there are lovely things going on."

It sort of typifies the weird times in which we live. The world has been turned upside-down.

I know a rather posh street in London where the residents used to come out of the door every morning and exchange barely a nod and a grunt - more often only a sullen non-glance.

This week, they are all going to stand on their doorsteps and bang saucepans to show solidarity with health workers.

The idea of my friend, a rather grand, very English lady who is an executive at a big organisation, standing on her doorstep and banging a pan would have seemed ridiculous even a week ago, the stuff of comedy.

But there she will be, banging her makeshift drum of solidarity.

All this matters. It's important that people stand up and say "We are together".

A lady and a magpie bringing joy to worried people in Canberra does that. So does a bunch of posh people banging pots.

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It's not quite as flamboyant as those Italian opera singers who lean from their balconies these pestilent days and serenade their neighbours. But that's Italy.

Australians do good solidarity. Think of the fires and the outpouring of help.

May solidarity spread like, well, a virus.

Australians do good solidarity. Think of the fires and the outpouring of help.

And the "adopt an oldie" initiative launched by the Where There's a Will charity in the Hunter Valley is a great idea. It gets healthy people (to the extent that any of us know we are healthy these days) to take groceries to isolated, vulnerable people.

But it's not exactly like banging the makeshift drum or singing an aria. Maybe Australians need more flamboyance.

Getting the bird and spreading the joy.

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