No doubt you’re feeling like you’re trapped in an episode of Prisoner: Cell Block H, or you’ve sold your soul in exchange for eternal working-from-home days – your probation is ambiguous, and the only way to escape is by mutilating your self-portrait that’s hidden in your attic, with Wilde and fatal consequences. Those sharing digs with family, bosom-buds, or flatmates will be experiencing all sorts of imprisonment torture. The appreciation for those education-experts soars as rug-rats gradually nibble away at your once saintly attributes; besties start to grate over the minutiae re etiquette for tonight’s obligatory Zoom drinks (as long as the lens can’t spy your lacy Agent Provocateurs, let the air roam free); and you’re now channelling your inner Myra Hindley as that festering hatred for Mr Spareroom.com is reaching other solar systems.
Good will (and a HUGE amount of effort from our Nightingale-Warriors the NHS) vanquish this top-selling, Mexican, pale lager named anomaly. We will ride this ominous global eruption and surge to defeat. But in the meantime – let’s veer away from Anna Nicole Smith conduct, and Overlook Hotel, The Shining shenanigan – no one wants to see Jonny!
Presenting three nugget to help keep the cuckoo firmly in the clock:
Stop Being Snappy, Get Snap Happy
Take a jaunt down memory boulevard. Give yourself, and others in penitentiary proximity, a jolly good belly workout by feather-dusting off your – pre-smartphone – box of photos. Guffaw at your supposedly super-cool, at the time, Miami Vice tout ensembles, complete with Afghan top lip (you know who you are); chortle away the hours reminiscing over that Deirdre Barlow barnet, those mingin’ Michael Bolton mullets, and the abounding absurd afros; and giggle your gaff down with the gallery of gayer than Rylan-at-a-Daddy-themed-rodeo quaffing cosmos, shots of you in tighty-whities and wife-beaters that had more chance of covering an 8oz piece of brisket that your midriff.
Composed During Cinematic Classics
You’ve lanced every conceivable docuseries on Netflix (“That bitch Carole Baskin”), watched every plausible picture on Prime, and terrestrial’s Stay At Home adverts are depleting your once admired bourbon collection by the hour. Fossil hunt your DVDs, or simply pay a couple of squid on BFI and Curzon Home Cinema, or Amazon for flix such as Rodeo Drive royalty Pretty Woman – “Fifty bucks, Grandpa. For seventy-five, the wife can watch”. Say hello to the night with the Lost Boys, a cult teen screenplay with hotter vamps than a binge Twilight session – “Great! The Bloodsucking Brady Bunch!”. And transport yourself back to the 90s drug-fuelled Trossachs with Renton, Sick Boy, and Spud – ashtray tapping to the euphoric palpitations of Born Slippy: Trainspotting – “take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty, and you’re still f…kin’ miles off the pace”.
Pass The Time With A Pastime
You now have the time to learn how to express yourself through the movement of dance, embark on that knots tying course, or wise-up cyber-space with your new-found hobby of Wikipedia editing. Once you’ve mastered said skills, put them straight to use: you’ll never need to speak to Mr Spareroom.com again, tell him to keep his distance through rhythmic, avant-garde, body motions – if this fails, tie him up, then screw with his head by changing the stats on the recently published Climate Change Initiative he’s always rattling on about. The boozers will be open before you know it.
