Cocktails and cleaning? How to survive in lockdown 2.0

WElCoME to lockdown 2.0. This time you can still go to the pub, but heaven forfend a relative puts a foot over your doorstep.

Add freezing temperatures and long dark nights into the mix and it’s enough to make you long for the halcyon days when you could browse the frozen food aisle in Asda without a face mask and a nervous tic.

But since there’s nothing else for it I have compiled a few handy hints to help get you through the next few months.

God speed, and don’t forget the loo roll.

BOOZE, OBVIOUSLY

NOW is not to the time to hop on the wagon. That said, everything in moderation. lockdown is probably an inadvisable place to develop a dangerous new habit. In this house booze is banned during the week but come Friday night, when tools are downed, there’s nothing more enjoyable than sitting down with a G&T or a homemade cocktail and celebrating or commiserating over our respective weeks.

during the first lockdown we started experimenting on the cocktail front, with mixed results. I do not, for example, recommend the watery pina colada made with reduced fat coconut milk and a bottle of rum dating back to the Clinton administration. The al fresco negroni however, drunk in the garden with decent gin and just the right amount of Campari, was one of my summer highlights.

If you fancy making cocktails at home and don’t know where to start, I recommend investing in a small bottle of Angostura bitters. Add a dash to a G&T to make a pink gin, to whisky and sugar for an old fashioned, or to brandy and ginger ale for a horse’s neck. I promise you the winter nights will just whizz by, albeit a little blurrily.

HAVE A STAYCATION

I don’T mean a holiday elsewhere in Scotland, although if that’s what you fancy, the much beleaguered hospitality industry would no doubt be grateful for your business. no, I literally mean a staycation. Staying at home, but treating your surroundings like a vacation destination.

Get up early, head out, and do all the things you’d never think to do in your home town, city or village. Wander the streets, visit a museum, grab a coffee in a different cafe, and try to view it through the eyes of someone who’s never been before. You never know, you might just want to stay after all.

DRESS UP FOR DINNER

WHEN the first lockdown hit, my eternal optimist mother sent me one of her trademark upbeat, positive emails.

‘one day per week I shall dress up as if I were going out and make myself a really nice meal,’ she wrote. And so she has, every single week, laying the table for one as though she were in a fine city eatery, and whipping up the sort of dishes which would make even Gordon Ramsay blink.

We do it too, and find the dressing up part is key to making it feel special. And anyway, when else are you going to bung that ratty dressing gown in the wash?

DO WHAT YOU’VE BEEN PUTTING OFF

CLEAN out that airing cupboard, organise that sock drawer, pen that light operetta.

If there’s something you’ve been meaning to do for donkey’s, yet somehow never got round to, now is the time.

I’ve got my eye on our chaotically crowded pan cupboard. oh, the glamour.

DO NOTHING

THAT said, it’s also ok to do absolutely sod all. It’s cold, it’s dark and we’re in the middle of a global pandemic. Creativity, inspiration and motivation are in unsurprisingly short supply.

lying on the sofa all day munching your way through a packet of Jammie dodgers while watching reruns of Midsomer Murders is a perfectly acceptable way to pass the time.

TREAT YOURSELF

IF You’RE lucky enough to be financially stable, and still have that summer holiday cash burning a hole in your pocket, get yourself something nice.

All those meals out you didn’t have or shopping trips you didn’t make can be put towards a household treat instead. We’ve been contemplating a new oven, or possibly a hall carpet. didn’t I say life could still be glamorous?

DON’T WORRY ABOUT CHRISTMAS... YET

I KNOW it’s tempting. I know it doesn’t look good. And I know that for many of us, autumn is the time we start casting our minds forward to what size of turkey to get the family, and where to stash the sherry when Great Aunt Irene descends on Boxing day.

But if this year has taught us anything, it’s that things can change in the blink of an eye. I’m not saying this will all be over by Christmas, nobody is. But nicola Sturgeon did hint in her statement this week that part of the reason for tightening up restrictions in Scotland as much as she has was with the ambition that we could open up quicker, too.

So sit tight, browse online for pressies, and hold on to the hope that if we all do our bit Christmas might not be cancelled after all.