Dear LPG,

I wrote to you recently about one of the side effects of our need to stay at home but another has just occurred to me.  It has only been three weeks and I feel the need to spend most of my days on the telephone because of the loneliness I feel all the time, and now I look back it appears that I do nothing else while the days go by apart from eating and avoiding the very depressing television news reports while I spend time watching repeated gameshows and old films.

I remember that when I first retired, my days merged to the point that I was not aware which day of the week it was quite often and this is happening all over again.  I get up each morning with a resolve to attack some tasks that have needed doing for so long and at the end of the day I have not achieved what I set out to do.  It is so bad that I did not even realise that it was Good Friday until someone called and mentioned it to me.

I have also realised that I have missed some birthdays of family and friends and, although some people think nothing of it, it is another reminder of how lost I am with time in general. 

Perhaps part of the problem is that popping down to the shops for an appropriate birthday card is not an option these days, but I have now found my list of birthdays and although I am not clever enough to send those electronic birthday cards, emailing and telephoning those people whose celebrations I have missed, and checking on the ones soon to come, is giving me a reason to work out which day I am living through.

So I just wanted to remind other readers, whose relationship with time is getting more and more distant as self-isolation drags on, that focussing on this aspect of life may be a way of keeping up to date.

NI, Crofton Park