HOME used to be a nice change from the mundane grind of the office, but under lockdown we’ve lost that feeling. Do this from nine to five and bring it back:
Make your own lanyard
Improvise a little lightweight shackle with a shoelace and a rectangle of paper, and say ‘beep!’ to yourself when going through your living room door. Or if you’ve lost yours, wait for a family member to go through and sneak in behind her.
Be mysteriously out of mugs
One morning, move all the mugs in the kitchen cupboard somewhere random, like the far corner of the cupboard under the stairs. Leave behind one giant, indestructible Sports Direct mug, chipped and irrevocably stained.
Get an annoying colleague
Ask a housemate or the dog to keep interrupting you until you have to smile vaguely and put on big chunky headphones.
Give yourself fag breaks
Go outside for a miserable cigarette in the rain, standing under a shelter looking at the bike racks opposite, neither wanting to be out here or go back in there, shivering with cold.
Make your own prawn mayo sandwich
Recreate a Tesco prawn mayo sandwich by cutting triangles of limp brown bread, salty mayo and tiny prawns, putting it in a sweaty cardboard packet and then chucking £2.30 out of the window. Dial into a miserable conference call and put in on mute. An authentic office lunch.
Get a security guard
Pretend there’s an overweight man downstairs with an over-inflated sense of importance who treats you like dirt even though you’ve seen them every morning for eight years. Realise with dismay that your partner already is that man, then get back to f**king work.
