The Seven Secrets of Successful Self-isolation
Of course, it’s going to be a challenge, but it’s also going to be an opportunity.
The government seems to be advising people over seventy (incredibly that includes me – amazing, I know: appearances can be so deceptive) and other potentially vulnerable folk to safeguard their health by self-isolating as much as possible from this weekend.
“Steer clear of other people and stay healthy” – that’s the message: for your own sake – and for other people’s. If you keep well, that’s great for you – and it’s great for society in general because it means you won’t be needing medical care or a hospital bed which others who aren’t so fortunate might be needing.
This social distancing and self-isolating looks set to last for twelve weeks. (That’s the equivalent of a six-month prison sentence: these days you get automatic release when you’ve served half your time.) It may be longer than twelve weeks, of course. At this stage, nobody quite knows. Best be prepared for the long haul.
Welcome to my Survival Guide: Brandreth’s 7 Secrets of Successful Self-isolation
1. Keep calm and plan your day
Over twelve weeks you will have around 2000 hours to fill. At seven to eight hours bed a night, you should be sleeping through roughly a third of those. With the rest, don’t let them pass by aimlessly. One or two duvet days spent slumped in front of the TV won’t do you much harm, but too many unstructured days will quickly make you listless, bored and morose. Plan your day. Get up at a sensible time. Eat proper meals. Work out what TV you are going to watch and when. Work out which activities are going to be filling each day and allocate a set time for each of them. Reading a good book for two hours is a treat, but may feel less rewarding after three or four. Make sure each day has a shape and a purpose. Create a timetable. Keep a diary. (I think my friend Jeffrey Archer’s prison diaries are among the best things he ever wrote.)
2. Stay sane
Ration the news. Don’t keep the radio or the TV running all the time. Don’t let yourself become a Coronavirus news junkie. You’ll go mad. Of course, the broadcasters and the commentators have to keep blathering – that’s their job. You don’t need it. You want to stay up to speed – naturally. But a news fix twice a day is more than sufficient to keep you fully posted. Any more and you’ll find Covid-19 overload will gradually wear you down.
3. Stay in touch
We need human contact. Human beings are social animals. Social distancing is unnatural – but right now it’s necessary. Every day make sure you make contact with another human being. Go through your Christmas card list and every day give a different old friend a call with your mid-morning coffee. If you have a computer, master Skype or FaceTime and use them to have lunch with a friend. You can each choose the same menu (or not) and agree to eat and chat together at the same time. You could even have a FaceTime dinner party, getting six friends to dress up for the occasion, sitting down at separate tables at the same time, eating and drinking in your own homes, but together. I have seven grandchildren: I don’t want them simply Skyping me to say, ‘Are you all right, grandpa?’ That gets a bit repetitive. With the youngest (he’s four) we’ve found a game to play. We google ‘Animal Sounds’ and then impersonate the noises animals make to one another. He has mastered all the squeaks and grunts of the wild animals of North America. My raccoon is quite impressive, too. The point is: don’t just get in touch – get in touch for a purpose, to gossip, to play a game, to talk about the book you’re reading (or writing), to solve the crossword together, to discuss the future of the universe.
4. Work your body
Part of your routine has to be exercise. Timetable that ten-minute morning work-out. If you have stairs, run up and down them. If you have a device that counts your steps, make sure you do your 10,000 a day. (Yes, I know it’s an arbitrary number – but we all need goals.). Go for a walk out of doors. Come wind or rain, if you’re able to walk, do. You are ‘social distancing’ so you won’t be stopping to chat with strangers – especially not the coughing ones – but you can offer a cod elbow to a passer-by from a safe distance. If you bump into either the Prince of Wales or Joanna Lumley, of course, a namaskar is preferred. (A namaskar is the traditional Indian greeting made by bringing the palms together before the face or chest and bowing. As you make the gesture, you murmur ‘Namaste’ which means ‘I bow to the divine in you’.)
5. Work your mind
Watching TV can be fun – and distracting. But watching it hour after hour can be mind-numbing. Choose what you want to watch and make it an ‘event’. In recent months we have been introducing our grandchildren to the Carry On films. (There are thirty-one in all: we’re hoping the grandchildren will all have left home before we get to Carry On, Emanuelle.). Curate your own season of movies – the complete works of Shakespeare (all 37 plays in a variety of productions are available as DVDs or online), the complete works of Fred Astaire or Cary Grant or Tom Hanks (good to show solidarity with a Covid19 survivor). Absurdist, sci-fi, kung-fu, pick your genre – create your season. Read up on it before the screening: make sure the freezer is stocked with mini-Magnums so you can have an ice cream in the interval. Watching TV can be entertaining, instructive and stimulating – but TV viewing (and radio listening) are essentially passive activities. Every day you need to make sure your mind is working; keep those synapses supple; remember that the brain is a muscle: if you don’t use it, you lose it. Choose how you want to work your mind – and follow it through. Learning poems is one of the things I’m doing – my last blog and my most recent book are all about that. And I’m trying to increase my vocabulary. I love words. I know a lot of them. I’d love to learn more. I have the complete Oxford English Dictionary – in twelve volumes. I’m thinking of trying to read it ... not much of a story, I know, but it does explain everything as it goes along. But, seriously, as well as setting aside time every day to work your body, set aside time to work your mind.
6. Live your dream
There’s never been a better time to do what you’ve always wanted to do . . . learn the piano (there are online courses to teach you from scratch), write a novel (at a thousand words a day, which is what most authors manage, you can complete a standard-length novel in exactly three months: go for it), write the family memoir you’ve been talking about for all these years, sort out the family photographs (at last), learn a language, build the Eiffel Tower with matches (designs available on line), redesign your garden, replant your window box, make gin from baking potatoes (apparently, it can be done), read War and Peace, clear out the attic, plan the trip you’re going to take the moment this nightmare is over . . . dream the impossible dream! (That’s a song from Man of La Mancha, of course. You could star in your own production of the musical and put it out there. Perform the numbers in your kitchen to the music you’ll find online. Yes, you, too, can be a YouTube sensation.)
7. Have a laugh
Laughter really is the best medicine. Read P G Wodehouse. Watch old episodes of Frasier. Download The Goons and when they’ve failed to make you laugh, find something that does. Five minutes with Billy Connolly or Kenneth Williams on YouTube should set you nicely. Try to give at least as much time each day to stuff that makes you smile as you do to watching the news.
Good luck!