The language of lockdown
“basic necessities”, but everyone else says essential supplies. Now, as King Lear so famously complained: “O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars/ Are in the poorest thing superfluous./ Allow not nature more than nature needs,/Man’s life is cheap as beast’s.”
It’s a defining characteristic of being human – to want more than our basic needs – so your “essentials” might include, say, cigarettes, which I might think is crazy, while you might consider my “essential” extra virgin olive oil ridiculous when any oil would do the job.
In our household, we accept that it would be wrong to make a trip to the shops specifically for inessentials but if we actually need proper food, then it is surely acceptable to buy a couple of treats while at the shop. That is actually my husband’s logic. My own is that wine and chocolate are so obviously essentials that it’s inarguable. I wouldn’t say that I’m addicted but if you deprive me of either or – god help you - both, then you will soon scurry into quarantine to protect yourself not from the virus but from me.
For our son, “essential” supplies includes buffalo mozzarella. Yes, he really is spoilt.
Useful tip: I have taken to hiding the chocolate at the bottom of the salad drawer in the fridge in the certain knowledge that neither husband nor son would ever open that compartment.
Self-isolation (1): Voluntary measure undertaken by an individual or household to protect others or themselves from the risk of infection. Self-isolation (2): Confining oneself to a single room for the consumption of alcohol and/or chocolate to preempt excessive use of limited supply of same by other household members.
For some of us, 2m is equivalent to just over 6½ ft. If you’re a young, healthy jogger, however, 2m = approximately 1½ feet. No-one is quite sure why this should be. One theory suggests that perhaps it’s to do with the perceived refraction of light during motion, which makes a runner unable to judge distance accurately and therefore run past you with no attempt to leave a gap. Or it could be something to do with being a selfish tosser. Teams of scientists are working on these rival hypotheses as I write.