Yoga, telly, cleaning – how I’m staying sane during these crazy times

I can handle the coronavirus crisis, Jenny Eclair tells herself, if I take it one day at a time, and don’t look beyond tonight’s telly

Take your mind off things with the best programmes the small screen has to offer (Getty/iStock)

Odd what makes you cry, isn’t it? Things that have thrown me off balance this week have included a clip of the recently-departed Kenny Rogers singing a duet with Dolly Parton in 1985.

In this clip, Dolly makes a “surprise” appearance at one of Kenny’s concerts, walking through a huge, delighted audience with a phalanx of minders to join her delighted pal onstage to belt out “We Got Tonight” – sob.

More oddly, because I’ve never been a fan of people playing the piano, I lost it over a tweet posted a couple of days ago by a self-isolating Andrew Lloyd Webber. There was Andrew on his Joanna, thrashing out “All I Ask of You” from Phantom of the Opera. This left me crying almost as hard as the sight of a completely empty red London bus trundling past my house.

Isn’t it typical that the week I turn sixty and consequently get a shiny new over-60s Oyster card, entitling me to free off-peak public transport, I daren’t step on a bus, and certainly not a tube.

My birthday was on 16 March, the day before the dominos really started falling. Donning our surgical masks, we took an Uber into town and visited the Picasso and Paper exhibition at the Royal Academy. Twenty-four hours later, along with all the other galleries and theatres, it closed its doors. Our visit was eerily quiet; there were possibly fifty people in the entire building. Social distancing really wasn’t a problem. In the shop, I bought some handmade paper, perhaps inspired by Picasso, perhaps because I suspected a lockdown was imminent, and I was going to need something to do.

Like all freelance performers, I’ve lost every gig for the foreseeable future, including a lovely telly job that’s been put on ice – but I’m lucky, I still have my writing, and I have some savings.

In fact, this is one of the few times in my selfish sixty years that I genuinely feel less sorry for myself than others. I have a house (mortgaged, yes, but not excessively); I can stand the man I live with; and I’m very familiar with hours spent at home trying to work. My sympathy is with the younger generation of creative freelancers facing months of lost opportunities and dire financial straits. We all know a career in the arts is a risky thing, it’s what everyone tells you. But then, creatives have always been able to rely on the hospitality industry to fill in the gaps during lean times. Not any more.

Sometimes, when I think about the sheer scale of this, I begin to panic, and have to remind myself that I have it easier than so many. I’m not dealing with small children who are bored and can’t understand why they can’t go to soft play; I don’t have to fight with teenage kids who think coronavirus is quite funny and want to go snogging in the park and smoking weed in bus shelters. Seriously, some kids walked down my road yesterday rubbing their hands in each other’s faces, screaming “now you’ve got it” like it was the most hilarious thing in the world.

I’m just another middle-aged woman and as such, it’s my duty to be stoic, an unwelcome baton handed down to me from my 90-year-old mother living independently in the north who is my template for bravery.

I can handle this, I tell myself, if I take it one day at a time, and don’t look beyond tonight’s telly.

So this is what I’m doing to try and get myself through the day (I’m sorry if any of the following annoys you, but at the moment getting on each other’s tits is kind of inevitable).

I’m doing yoga online – well, I have done once. There are loads of YouTube tutorials for all abilities. Best you get yourself a non-slip mat, though; the last thing the NHS needs is you putting your foot through your flat screen.

I’m painting something or making something every day – so far, I’ve done a few still lifes and made a jar of rocket pesto (not as nice as basil pesto, but I had a bag of rocket turning into seaweed in the fridge and considering my local supermarket was fruit and veg-less this week, I’m not wasting anything any more).

Oh, and I’ve done some ironing, because my cleaning lady, like most of the country, will be working from home from now on, so I’m reintroducing myself to the joys of elbow grease.

Do you know what? If a wand could be waved in a couple of week’s time, when we’ve all learnt a mighty lesson and realised what our true values are, then this terrible virus could be seen as having a silver lining. Sadly, I don’t think it’s going to be as simple as that – and with no knowing what our future holds, our happy ending could be a very long way off.