Online yoga? It’s too much of a stretch for me
YOU To expound WANT on every aspect of coronavirus listens to you while in respectful everyone silence. else
YOU’D Knowing SETTLE what FOR ‘R’ means.
YOU Into GET a heated argument with a 12-year-old you washed about your hands whether for or more not than 20 seconds.
YOU To do WANT the shopping for all your most vulnerable neighbours.
YOU’D SETTLE FOR
Keeping an eye on the elderly lady two doors down.
YOU GET
Annoyed by the sound of the elderly couple next door enjoying their online exercise classes and pop a note through their door asking them to pipe down.
YOU WANT
To nip up North without too much kerfuffle.
YOU’D SETTLE FOR
Being spotted by a friendly neighbour and exchanging knowing smiles.
YOU GET
Top slot on News At Ten, with film of 60 photographers outside your front door and protesters chanting ‘Hypocrite! Hypocrite!’ while you try to get to your car wearing your least flattering T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, with MPs and commentators all calling for your resignation.
YOU WANT
A civilised game of Scrabble.
YOU’D SETTLE FOR
A game of Scrabble that doesn’t end in tears.
YOU GET
Out the dictionary and say, ‘As I thought! There’s no such word as “EW”’, whereupon your daughter stomps out of the room saying, ‘That’s so unfair!’ and your son says, ‘Well if she’s not playing, nor am I’ and your wife says, ‘Why do you have to ruin everything?’
YOU WANT
To practise online Yoga With Adriene.
YOU’D SETTLE FOR
Practising online PE with Joe Wicks.
YOU GET
Waylaid into watching a video on YouTube of a goldfish who looks a bit like Alan Sugar.
YOU WANT
To Zoom six close friends and achieve a rare degree of intimacy by sharing your hopes and fears.
YOU’D SETTLE FOR
Zooming two acquaintances and reaching a consensus after 20 minutes that: ‘Yes, but it must be so much worse for large families stuck in high-rise blocks.’
YOU GET
Baffled by which buttons to press and end up failing to hear what they’re all saying because you don’t know how to unmute them.
YOU WANT
To do 25 jump squats in quick succession.
YOU’D SETTLE FOR
Doing five push-ups over a period of five minutes.
YOU GET
The butter out of the fridge, the jam out of the cupboard and the bread from the bread bin.
YOU WANT
To be serene.
YOU’D SETTLE FOR
Being pleasant.
YOU GET
Increasingly irritated by the way your mother-in-law keeps offering magisterial pronouncements on the spread of Covid-19 (‘Of course, everybody knows it’s largely spread through the ankles. I blame the Swedes.’) and end up flouncing out of the room with your hands over your ears screaming: ‘I can’t take much more of this!’
YOU WANT
To lose a stone.
YOU’D SETTLE FOR
Losing a pound.
YOU GET
A thick-crust pizza, six cans of Heineken, two bars of Galaxy and a 12-pack of Walkers crisps.
YOU WANT
To recite a long poem every day from memory.
YOU’D SETTLE FOR
Reciting a short poem every week from memory.
YOU GET
Out your old copy of The Oxford Book Of English Verse, find all the poems a bit too heavy-going, and end up watching old YouTube videos of Alan ‘Chatty Man’ Carr interviewing Sporty Spice.
YOU WANT
To grow sweet peas, petunias and six varieties of rose, as well as a vegetable patch with courgettes, runner beans, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes and cabbages.
YOU’D SETTLE FOR
Mowing the lawn.
YOU GET
A sun-lounger, and put it all off until next week.