Small Community, Long Memory

A friend writes to tell me of some "non-essential travel" he has planned to a small community where he keeps a second house and where the average age of its primary residents is over seventy. In recognition of the government recommended two week quarantine period he has picked up "a carload of groceries" and, in the same breath, he adds that he is looking forward to purchasing plants at the local nurseries and ceramics from the local potteries. Surely not during the quarantine period, right? Right?