Another national lockdown? Easy – you just need my personal survival kit

So here we are, beginning the new year with a weary sense of déjà vu. But as we head for what could be months of tier 4 restrictions, at least I feel more prepared, because this time I’ve sorted out my very own personal survival kit.

When I was a little girl, and my father went on army manoeuvres in Berlin, he took with him a “kit”, which as far as I can remember consisted of a bivouac, a regulation sleeping bag and tins of food without labels, some of which sat on our pantry shelves for years – custard or sardines? He also had a canteen of pans and cutlery and a selection of tools – lighter, tin opener, knives. Boy’s Own kind of stuff.

My dad’s military training stood him in good stead when he spent the last three years of his life in a nursing home. It was a hard decision to make, as it is for so many families. He was fully compos mentis but physically incapable of doing very much for himself. As he was unable to walk, residential care was the only solution.

I have no doubt that my father coped with this situation, not only because my mother was able to visit daily, but because he equipped himself with the things that he needed: a daily paper with a crossword puzzle, which he never failed to finish; a fully loaded kindle; a drawing book and coloured pencils. Like me, my father was a terrible amateur artist with a penchant for copying portraits of boxers or footballers from the sports pages of the papers. Oh and the other, possibly most important, piece of kit was a back scratcher.

While we wait for our vaccines, anyone whose work has been decimated by the pandemic needs to find their individual coping mechanisms and this includes kitting yourself out for the weeks ahead.

My own personal pandemic kit has just expanded to include jigsaw puzzles. I know, right? And to think I used to stay out all night and come home with my clothes on inside out.

My daughter bought us a thousand-piece puzzle of a Matisse painting. Think “still life of flowers plus woman in a purple robe” and you’ve got the picture. Now I love Matisse, but after five days of staring at that bit of grey vase with the bulging bit and trying to find that flower stalk with a bit of pink on it, I am starting to go off him.

Jigsaws are the biggest thief of time. The other night I came downstairs to check I’d set the burglar alarm and found myself doing “just 10 minutes” of puzzling. Ninety minutes later, I went back to bed.

Sadly neither myself nor the man did any training before we embarked on this mammoth venture and a couple of days after we managed to “get all the edges in”, Geoff literally couldn’t walk. He’d fallen victim to that old codger ailment, “jigsaw back”, a rookie mistake and one we are now trying to avoid by setting alarms on the oven timer, so that we break off at regular intervals for some stretching and “walking round the sitting room” exercise.

Another vital piece of our “new year, new lockdown” kit is a fire pit, a Christmas treat, which will hopefully allow for tiny back-garden gatherings in the future, depending on government guidelines and all that. I think half of south London has been kitted out with fire pits, because I tell you, there isn’t a chestnut to roast for miles around. The fire pit is this season’s sourdough starter kit, insomuch as it requires hours of faffing about and smells great.

And then there are books. Books are possibly the most essential part of any pandemic tool kit. I’m a big fan of audiobooks because I like being read to when the 3am horrors keep me awake. Some people are funny about audiobooks. Apparently it’s not “real” reading. No, often it’s better and I speak as a book lover. I’ve listened to books over the past year that have been performed so brilliantly, they have been part literature, part theatre, but mostly they have also been part sleep therapy.  

Talking of which, for some people a weighted blanket has been an essential part of their night-time Covid survival kit. Apparently these work by putting your autonomic nervous system into “rest” mode, thereby alleviating feelings of anxiety. Listen, whatever gets you through the night. I certainly wouldn’t dismiss the idea, having noticed this winter that the weight of an extra blanket has felt incredibly reassuring.

My essential “getting through these tricky times” kit also includes Netflix, obviously, art stuff, an embroidery kit and a blender for making soup, because making utterly tasteless soup is part of my weekly coronavirus therapy. Oh yes, and a hat, otherwise I make excuses not to go out for a walk because it’s too cold.

To be honest, I’ve never been busier in all my life. Survival can be very time consuming.