The monotony of lockdown has given me no choice but to get away from it all – at least in my imagination

The only thing we can look forward to with any certainty is uncertainty. So why not fantasise instead, asks Jenny Eclair

There won’t be any holidays abroad this year (Getty)

More than anything at the moment, I long for a change of scene. I’d like to wake up in a different bedroom, in crisper, cleaner, better-ironed sheets than my own; I’d also like to get in a different bath, preferably one I don’t have to scoop dead flying ants out of (we’ve had an invasion, long boring story).

I would like to wear some nice clothes, instead of the 10 casual, easy-wash, minimum-iron, top-and-bottom combos that I’ve had on rotation since March – and I’d like to look out of the window and see something else.

Normally, my view doesn’t bother me, I’ve got a choice of three: main road and flats opposite; bins; or back garden – but after eight weeks, I’m fed up with them all. I want to look out on something else and ideally this would be the sea.

In fact, I know exactly what I want: I want to be staying in a fabulous hotel overlooking the Med. Even if I had to stay in the suite with occasional walks down the promenade and room service only, I still fancy it, because everything I own, everything I see, is so familiar now, I’m starting to feel a bit insane.

Every day I sit in the same chair and my partner sits in his chair and apart from our limitless exercise (a phrase that fills me with horror) and my weekly supermarket shop, we exist within the same four walls day in day out, surrounded by the same pictures, that lamp and those vases, and we endlessly drink coffee from the same mugs.

Now, I like my pictures, lamps, vases and mugs and I’m really not moaning. It’s just when this is all over and I can begin to top up my income with all the jobs I can’t do while the entertainment industry is deep-frozen, I cannot wait to make some small changes.

For starters, I want my chair and sofa re-covered: I’m thinking moss green velvet or maybe baby pink corduroy? I want new cushions, brand new bed linen and fresh towels; I want shiny new wine glasses and different plates. Hell, I even fancy a change of cutlery and definitely some new salad servers. Call me shallow, but right now, goddammit, I want to mooch round The Conran Shop very badly indeed. In fact, I’d far rather queue to get into The Conran Shop than my local supermarket. Grateful though I am to the place, I’m bored of it, bored of the empty flour shelves and the anxious eyes peeking over homemade masks.

Of course, since Boris Johnson declared “lockdown lite”, a few more shops have opened up. It made my mate Judith just as excited about going to Homebase as she would be about a pre-Corona weekend trip to Venice.

As she told me all about her unsuccessful quest for new hedge-trimmer blades, I got a desperate craving for a trip to Liberty. I imagined myself browsing every department floor by floor. I would try all the lipsticks on the back of my hand, spray every perfume and drape myself in exorbitantly priced scarves. I would make them unlock the cabinets containing the posh jewellery and festoon my fingers and wrists; check out all the sunglasses; sniff the fancy leather handbags and paw the material in the fabrics department before breaking all the zips on anything I tried on in clothing.

I know you can get more or less anything you need or want online, but I’ve made some terrible mistakes and wasted more money than I have to spare by pressing that PayPal button during lockdown. And anyway, online shopping isn’t the same. Just as looking at pictures of doggies isn’t the same as having a real living, breathing thing dribbling and farting on your lap, which is probably why the demand for lockdown puppies has gone through the roof. And who can blame anyone for wanting something to break the same old, same old? We’ve been good for so long; when are the treats coming?

There certainly won’t be any holidays abroad this year and even if there were, who would be able to afford them? Can you imagine what the cost of flights will be in the near future?

While all we can look forward to with any certainty is uncertainty, the only thing many of us can do is fantasise. We might not be able to travel very far physically but with a bit of help, our imaginations can take us anywhere. So, every day when I choose my YouTube yoga class, I pick one where the teacher is practising somewhere exotic, like Bali or Mexico, preferably right on the edge of the ocean. Because just for a moment – if I’m upside down and the underfloor heating is on, I can imagine just for a second that I’m somewhere hot and the sea is nearby... and then I turn myself the right way round and I’m back in the same place with the same chairs, same sofa, same cushions. Oh sod it, I’m going online to buy some new mugs.