I’ve been looking at several lists of ways to pass the time during lockdown and I decided mine was better, so here it is.

(1) Moan about the Government – despite what I have said recently about being positive, it’s important to vent your frustration so feel free to shout at politicians on TV and to mentally compose letters you intend sending after the lockdown. Feel free to include the WP spellcheckers and KFC in your ranting – even if you don’t have anything against them I do.

(2) Write something – blog, diary, poem, book. They all have their charms. Diaries never get seen so you can write what you like and write as badly as you like – it doesn’t matter and it might come in useful later. Blogs aren’t particularly taxing – look at me, I’ve been getting away with writing this tat for years. Poems are easy enough, I write hundreds every year. Sometimes I write a good one. Once in a blue moon an editor agrees. Books are trickier, but you might end up rich and famous

(3) Laze the day away – it’s a bonus holiday. According to what I read on other sites it’s important to have a structure in your day, so I timetable the time 9-10 for breakfast, 10-11 for coffee and biscuits, 12-1 for lunch, 1-2 for digestion, 2-3 for snoozing, 4-7 for quizzes and the rest of the evening for cookery and TV. That leaves an hour in the morning and the same in the afternoon for blogging and poetry. It’s not easy but I’m getting through it.

(4) Cook something new. I did Kensington Rarebit tonight. It was very good, though it isn’t, as Julia pointed out, really rarebit, just potatoes with grated cheese on top. I didn’t take pictures tonight but I will next time we have it.

(5) Read some improving literature. I have a copy of Mrs Dalloway around somewhere. I bought it as part of my attempt to read a selection of the 100 best novels. I looked at various lists, selected a number of books and started reading. My plan lasted about a dozen books. After struggling through Moby Dick, I made the mistake of starting Don Quixote. I wrote about that, several times, a few years ago. 

(6) Make inroads into your pile of unread books (not necessarily the same thing as Number 5). I just finished a couple of whodunnits –  Why Shoot a Butler? by Georgette Heyer, which is a middling sort of detective novel given to me by a neighbour. I thought she only wrote regency romances. It was OK, but I am not rushing to buy another. The other was Death of an Honest Man. It was dreadful, and is the last one of the series I will bother with. It’s like a mish-mash of all the Hamish Macbeth cliches thrown into a book and badly edited, if it was edited at all. It’s a sad end to a series, and an author, that I have enjoyed over the years.

I’m now on 1700, a book about London in the year 1700. I’m enjoying it, and it’s full of interesting detail.

(7) Work from home. Julia is doing this. I am definitely not. That is why she has high blood pressure and I don’t. Having said that, her blood pressure is going down as her workload goes up. I can only suggest that the doctor puts her blood pressure up. Last week (while we were theoretically on holiday) she was taking half a dozen calls a day and did three online courses. This week she has taken calls and written an online guide to making flowers from plastic bottles.

(8) Garden. Always a good thing to do. Sadly, we have had quite a lot of cold winds recently, which makes our northward-facing garden an unattractive proposition. You can’t do much apart from weeding anyway, as all the Garden Centres are shut.

(9) Talk to people (or text and email people). I am emailing and texting various people to keep in touch. I’m not very sociable, but it’s good to know that people are keeping well. You never know, I might even become a more sociable person at the end of all this.

(10) I’m leaving this one for you to fill in. What ideas do you have?