At least I can’t now spend money on clothes I don’t need

THANKS to this self-isolation malarkey it’s now three weeks since I’ve been to my Pilates class. I need Pilates like a 60-year-old car needs regular fine tuning.Without it, I literally seize up.You can turn the engine on and nothing moves and if it does it makes terrible noises.

I started Pilates three years ago after an op to replace my right hip.Three days after the op, when I could barely stand up, my surgeon told me the best thing to strengthen all the muscles in my legs and back and get me walking properly was Pilates.

I’d heard of it, obviously, but at that time it was all I could do to haul my body out of a chair and walk a few yards up the street – so I forgot about it.Three months later however I signed up with Fran, who not only has the patience of a saint (it’s not easy getting my hulking great body to do things it’s never done before and that are completely alien to it).And she devised a whole programme for my particular problems.

Three years on, everything works and is stronger. That said, if I don’t have a class every week, I start to get creaky. So Fran rang this week and said that although we can no longer do face-to-face lessons, she’s doing sessions on something called Zoom.

I had no idea what she was talking about until she explained – it’s a bit like Skype and we can do a class together – just not in the same room. So I’m having my first one on the kitchen floor this afternoon. I’ve told The Husband he has to get Murphy, our Tibetan terrier, left, out of the house because he thinks it’s a great game to jump on me when I’m doing my exercises at home. I’ll let you know how it goes. So the weekend felt like any other weekend apart from the fact I couldn’t indulge in my favourite pastime

– spending hours rootling through the rails in TX Maxx searching out designer bargains.

GOD, I MISS SHOPPING. I love the mindlessness of it. I love browsing and coming across something which in that moment I believe will change my life (all right, so I’m vain and shallow).

I love the fact that when I buy something new, I think about all the things I’m going to do in this fantastic new dress/coat/trousers/ shirt.

I imagine going to all sorts of glitzy places where whatever it is I’m buying will look

divine.The Husband reckons I’m a shopaholic and I think, in this, he might be right. I have endless wardrobes filled with clothes that have never been worn and have never been to the places I imagined in my mind.

Still, one of the few good things about isolation means I can’t spend money I don’t have on clothes I don’t need.

I was telling The Husband that this enforced break might be just what I need to break my TK Maxx addiction but even as I was saying it, I knew it was a lie.The minute coronavirus restrictions are lifted – I’m straight back there.

And speaking of the virus – am I the only person who wakes up every day panicking, thinking: “OK, I’ve got it. I know I’ve got it.”

I have at least one of the symptoms I’ve read about. I THINK I’ve got a sore throat, or a headache, pains behind my eyes, I’m weary. I cough a bit. But then they all go away when I stop thinking about them.

So as well as being a shopaholic, I think I’m also a bit of a hypochondriac. I spoke to my friend Peter about it and he says he’s going through the same thing.We’re all so stressed, so scared about getting this virus that our minds are playing tricks. If we imagine the symptoms hard enough, we start thinking we’ve got them.

Anyway, I’m off to watch something mindless on the telly. I’m currently hooked on re-runs of Death In Paradise because it’s set on a Caribbean island and people (apart from the few getting murdered) are all happy and sun-kissed and drinking cocktails.

Please God, I want to do that again…