How to survive election fever: From 100-day diets to watching a solar eclipse

Election fever has begun, but there's still 100 days to go. Priya Elan looks at ways to escape Nigel Farage and fill your time

Big Bang: the Large Hadron Collider is being switched back on (AP)

Here’s a thought that’ll make you want to curl up into a corner: there are 100 days until the general election.

Think about it. Until 7 May, you’ll have to avoid more than three months of twisted rhetoric, over-analysis in a 24-hour news cycle, several thousand Twitter storms, endless silly pie charts and wall to wall Nigel Farage and Kay Burley.

Now you could spend that time wondering how many new bitchy resting faces George Osborne could do in the event of a coalition. But there are plenty of other things to focus your attention on. Watching paint dry, for example. That should be relatively good fun – particularly in different colourways. Or if you really want a life full of rainbows, you could sign up online to 100 Days of Color, and for a mere $27 (£18), have an image or message sent on every one of them, chosen by designer Jessica Swift, to "wake up your heart, help you sit in a moment of gratitude [and] to carry through your day".

Having set yourself up for the morning, you’ll be able to embark on the 100 Days of Real Food diet, no doubt combining that with the 100 Days of Fitness plan, or its more energetic cousin, the 100 Days of Running. And with all those endorphins coursing round, you should be in the perfect frame of mind to quit your gambling addiction. (There’s no time like now to borrow Australia’s 100-day Fight For You programme.)

But the best route to happiness is helping others, right? So join the 100 Days of Happiness online community, and post a daily picture of something that’s cheered you up, pour encourager les autres. Or enlist with giveit100.com, where people document their challenges: learning to sweep-pick on the guitar, for example, or "telling my wife I love her".

Even then, though, there are media lurking, waiting to ambush you with the latest poll. Down time must be filled. So if you find yourself thinking, "Shall I just check Newsnight?", remember that, instead, you could always:

1) Catch the end of Mad Men. When the dust settles, one wonders what the impact of the series will have been. Did it help usher in a new age of narrative TV? Did it fly in the face of long standing rules and show how it was possible to make a long-running TV drama populated by unlikeable characters? Did it undo years of ASH’s work? All up for discussion when it returns for one last time in April.

2) Witness the total solar eclipse on 20 March. The last total event – where the moon obscures the sun and things go a bit "2001" – happened a few years ago, so this is big news. Just remember to not look directly at it , unless you’re really sick of the upcoming election.

3) Worry about the re-start of the Large Hadron Collider. Since it was switched off in 2013 it’s had some work done – £97m is quite the dry cleaning bill – and now its two vital but teeny-tiny proton beams will be working at double the power. Come switch-on time in spring, it’s hoped that the LHC can further uncover the mysteries of the great beyond – such as dark matter – without causing the universe to implode.

4) Tune into the World Men’s Curling Championships. David Cameron banging on about benefits or watching some guys attempt to clean the ice with a complicated piece of equipment from Dyson’s wireless range? No contest.

5) Review Back To The Future Part II. The sequel was set in 2015, so it’s time to check what they got right and wrong. (Hang on, I’m just going to hop off my hover board, change out of my double-tie and self-drying jacket and I’ll be right with you...)

And finally, if you really can’t resist some political rough-housing, you’ll be in safe hands with 100 Days Of Ukip. a C4 mockumentary that posits a future with Nigel in power. We’ll be watching with fingers over our eyes. And maybe even thinking about voting...