The Isolation Diary

Monday March 23^rd

Light entertainer Boris Johnson put on a sad face and told the nation we have to stay in. To not to go out. To essentially have no contact with anyone, other than the people you live with. My wife looked ashen. Her face seemed to say, ‘For inside, For outside, was not in the wedding vows.' Despondent, she took to her bed.

Tuesday March 24^th

I set some school work and did the marking. The system ran seamlessly. Maybe I can work from home from now on and get the parents to administer the detentions. After the work was done, I sat with The Girl to watch Mindhorn on iPlayer; a film written by and starring Mighty Boosh’s Julian Barratt. Barratt is Richard Thorncroft, a washed up actor in need of a wash. His heyday was in the 80’s where he appeared as the titular in a successful cop show. Now in the present he is called in by the police to help with a murder investigation: the suspect, believing the character to be real, will only talk to him. The film is a lovely bit of silliness. I can’t watch the news at the moment. Jeremy Vine might as well be doing the mortalitymeter, running up a live total of what people have fallen to coronavirus in what constituencies. The best way to cope is to watch things that make you laugh.

Later, we finished watching Mae Martin’s All4 sitcom, Feeling Good. It’s Roxy Music’s ‘Love is a Drug’ put to punchlines. A story about an addict trying to have a healthy relationship with love and life shows how comedy has become more dramatic. It’s hardly Hi-De-Hi! is what I’m saying. 

Caught Boris on the news before bed. He’s looking a bit peaky. I guess having to be concise and clear is getting to him. The withdrawal from long words is starting to show on his face.

Wednesday March 25^th

The kids are still doing their work. Online work means I get to type my comments. It’s probably why they’re doing so well. In normal life I respond in red pen with a level of handwriting a doctor would deem illegible – this is maybe why they’re succeeding: it’s the first time they’ve ever been able to interpret my feedback.

The afternoon film today is Man Up on iPlayer, a romcom featuring Lake Bell and Simon Pegg. The premise? Lake Bell is a Bridget Jones type: a beauty in schlubby clothing. She hasn’t been on a date in years. Through a series of circumstances she ends up - accidentally - stealing someone else’s date. Her suitor: Simon Pegg. The date tracks them in real time across London. It’s a bit like Linklater’s Before Sunset, only written by someone whose got the book ‘Romcom cliches’ by their side. It was fun though and Lake Bell is a great lead.

Later we watched quiz shows: Tenable, The Chase and House of Games. (These are three separate quiz shows. Not one: that title would never get commissioned.) Warwick Davis hosts the first with competitors having to get ten answers relating to a topic. One of the rounds was ‘First ten words of five letters or longer in Bohemian Rhapsody.’ Even if there was a phone a friend option and you could contact Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon, there still would be no hope in hell of getting that answer right. Better is Richard Osman’s House of Games that takes the Taskmaster approach of having reoccurring guests and building lovely competition between them. I’m quite something on the Answersmash round.

Boris is still looking a bit pale. Why doesn’t he just say the word ‘magniloquent’? Going cold turkey from bombastic language isn’t doing him any good.

Thursday 26^th March

Get up. Turn the computer on. Mark. Set work. Have lunch. I’m getting into quite a routine here. If things go on for much longer, I’m going to be institutionalised like Brooks from Shawshank Redemption.

Today we don’t watch an afternoon movie. It’s Netflix and Babies instead. We’re expecting a child soon. (That sentence sounds like we're expecting a parcel to come through the letterbox. On second thoughts maybe that is an apt simile for the birthing process. Hopefully my wife doesn’t read this; she’ll only wince.)

Later, we watch Tenable, The Chase and House of Games. My wife is mad about quiz shows. If she ever left me - which she can’t do at the moment because she would be told to go home by the police, failing that she would have to pay a £30 fine; refusing that she would be forcibly returned, but if she ever left me - it would definitely be for a quiz show host. He could ask her General Knowledge questions all day, which would satisfy her in a way I never could.

In the evening we finished watching The Trip to Greece. Although I finished This Country this week, which in my eyes is the best sitcom in the past few years, I felt the final ever episode of The Trip was one of the great moments of tele. All the tiny assaults between Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan were suspended as the comedy collapsed into poignant, beautiful pathos. The direction of Michael Winterbottom was sublime. The show from beginning to end has been a delicious melange of comedy, literature, food and scenery.

Still no colour in Boris’ cheeks. Someone at least should let him look at a thesaurus. He can’t go on with this clear language for much longer.

Friday 27^th March

Woke at 7 and did the whole school thing up until lunchtime.

Watched Breeders with a bowl of soup. (That’s not a nickname for my wife. It’s what I was eating.) Like The Trip, it’s on Sky One. Again, such a shame more people can’t see it. Martin Freeman and Daisy Haggard are the parents that would die for their children, but would quite like to kill them too. It’s a bit like Outnumbered, but instead of Hugh Dennis raising his eyebrows, it’s Freeman telling his kids to ‘fuck off.’ The outbursts recede over time and it becomes more rewarding- perhaps like a child?

Watched quiz shows with pizza and a beer. It was my first beer of the week. I always have a beer on a Friday. So I had one today to remind me what day it is. I never have caffeine in the week. Only ever have it on the weekends. So I must remember to do that tomorrow. It’s important to have some kind of calendar to our lives isn’t it? Otherwise we’re no more evolved than cavemen looking at the sun – or whatever they did to tell the time.

Today’s movie is Thelma and Louise on Netflix. We’ve had it on our list for a long time. Man, it’s good. It’s #metoo thirty years before it began. Two female leads. Sarandon and Davis. Both beautiful. But never once does director Ridley Scott linger on their bodies. It’s the female gaze from a male director. A feminist re-working of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where the women run from the law because they can’t trust it to protect them. A classic, important, influential movie.

Turns out Boris has coronavirus. That explains the paleness.