Diary Of A Stay At Home, I

Self-Quarantine Day 5: Wednesday, 18th March, 2020

The overriding feelings, even at this early stage of our months-long pandemic self-quarantine, are ones of panic. 'What if that last student that came here before the doors closed was infectious?' 'What if we pick something up off the post?' 'How is this food delivery regime going to help when people are going crazy?' 'What if we suffer a tragedy anyway?' You see, to do this right, you have to be righteously paranoid, and then there is no end to the worries. Are passing cars dangerous when out walking the dog and avoiding people? How long does this hideous thing lurk after it has been dropped somewhere? The list is virtually endless.

I had hoped that my favourite time-waster and brain-burner, the website BoardGameArena, would be a welcome diversion but it is becoming often overloaded with people playing so intently and constantly that it now has to turn people away when it reaches capacity. This is a blow indeed! I suppose the best thing to do is to relearn how to write. You'll be in this with me. Be afraid, very afraid.

So, here is the Quirky Muffin incarnate, self-quarantined with a lung condition and two older parents with problems of their own, while a pandemic crashes its mighty fist down up on the planet Earth. How did we end up in a dystopian future so quickly, you might ask? Well, reader of the future, it is mostly due to people not doing anything. Thus, the elderly population, the sickly, and anyone who lives with them, are voluntarily locked down, with supermarkets unable to deliver all they need due to panic buying. The deliveries are also sold out for weeks ahead, so everything becomes very difficult indeed.

In the weeks and months ahead, assuming a bad thing does not occur, I will try to describe the mental travails involved in not going completely nutty, staying alive, and finding ways to deal with both the boredom and the fear. Things are going to get rough...

O.