ANN WIDDECOMBE

FORMER BREXIT MEP

Alcohol consumption: 0 (it’s Lent)

Weight lost: 4lb Human contact: 1 (emergency plumber)

Friends called: 0 Brushes with mortality: 1

I’ve got it. I am living like a hermit and loving it. I haven’t been online once, even to watch a livestreamed Mass, though I think I am going to have to try to do that at Easter.

As a Catholic, every Lent I give up alcohol, and I am sticking to that in lockdown. This year I have added bread, so the four pounds I have lost can’t really be put down to being forced to stay at home.

I am part of a Whatsapp group with other former Brexit Party MEPS; but for the time being I am just sticking to my own company, sitting in my garden next to the pond in the sunshine, or going for my daily amble on

Dartmoor. At 72, I’m well beyond counting the miles covered.

I am filling my days very happily emptying out the attic and rereading the novels of Palma Harcourt. She was a diplomat turned thriller writer in another age, so there is no explicit sex or F-words in there to spoil them.

My local farm shop is supplying me with milk and fresh veg, and I stocked up my freezer. I am pretty self-sufficient, practically as well as emotionally. Except when the ballcock went in my bathroom and I had to call an emergency plumber. I kept the required distance from the man who came, but I did mention that I was planning to use my sit-on mower to cut the grass in my steeply sloping garden.

The plumber looked horrified, as if I was a feeble old lady with a death wish, and has volunteered to come and do it for me. Gallantry lives.