There’s no poetic justice as lockdown life goes from bad to verse

It happened once and I thought I could ignore it. But the next day I received another, then another: chain emails, almost exactly the same, asking me to find a piece of poetry and send it on to 20 friends. After the fourth email last week I felt a flash of guilt about my lack of enthusiasm. They were coming from fairly sensible friends, too, friends I thought might have known better than to take part in an online pyramid scheme. Apparently not. Please could I send on a poem or a quote or perhaps even a meditation?

Has the situation become so bad that we must take part in the chain email? I hate them, always have. I remember chain letters when I was young; you were supposed to forward them on or face some grisly consequence. It seemed a waste of stamps. Chain emails are not much better, especially because the most recent clutch have a nannying tone. “Seldom does anyone drop out because we all need new pleasures,” chivvies the poetry chain email. New pleasures? I’d rather do a four-hour Joe Wicks workout.

I’ve nothing against poetry. I love a bit of Robert Frost or John Masefield. But I don’t want my inbox to be clogged with other people’s idea of a poem and shamed if I don’t read them. We’re all dealing with enough at the moment. That’s why it’s perfectly acceptable to ignore such emails, I eventually decided, before burying myself back in Wolf Hall. No chain emails during the sweating sickness, I note with envy.

I can also detect creeping apathy towards those “funny” videos on WhatsApp. There’s been a tidal wave of these – dogs doing amusing things, small children doing amusing things, and have you seen the one where the bald man pretends his head is a boiled egg and he pops up from an egg cup? I don’t mean to be a grinch and I did laugh at the baldy, but there’s a lot of dross circulating and part of me longs to scream “ENOUGH!” Perhaps the rule should be we’re each allowed to send one meme a day, so we select the