Coronavirus lockdown means no excuses for not redecorating! – Susan Morrison

If the UK follows France and orders people to stay at home to help stop the spread of coronavirus, there are a lot of little jobs around the house that need doing, writes Susan Morrison.

If you're stuck at home, there's no excuse not to do the redecorating you've been meaning to do for ages

SO, our hatches are battened down and our drawbridges raised. We have a little ways to go before we’re into French territory with police wandering about handing out fines, but I rather suspect that’s around the corner. Draconian, our Gallic cousins. The gendarmerie have always struck me as a bunch of lads and lassies keen on a water cannon showdown. God knows what a face-off would look like between them and some of the al fresco denizens of the Kirkgate.

The whole country is turning into a giant reality TV show. A sort of DIY Big Brother, only without the hope of being voted out.

Last week I watched women planning for the Big Hunker Down. I was in B&Q. My sisters were clearly getting ready for having the time to finally get that bedroom done.

Woman after woman passed me with rolls of wallpaper, pots of paint and handfuls of brushes, whilst increasingly grim-looking men realised the full impact of Covid-19. It’s not exposure to the virus they feared, but overdoses of Maine Sunset Blue and something mildly floral for the kitchen.

I know this, because I was towing my husband in my wake whilst I explained my interior design vision. He was carrying a massive can of Magnolia silk and a selection of samples.

We’ve emptied the freezer for emergency supplies. I found a bag of frozen soup. I must have made it. It was green. There was a smudgy date on the front. I must have written it. Not like me at all. It was probaby a year or two ago, when I was watching a lot of TV after surgery and got a touch of the housewives. Might have been broccoli. Tasted OK. I figure if I can survive my own cookery, I can survive some pesky virus.