How to stay sane at home

I am so pleased we have a dog, she is nearly and a collie cross lab with lots of love, lots of energy and lots of fun. When you have a dog u you have to take regular exercise and that has helped keep us healthy with regular exercise.

We are lucky that one of the 4 of us in lock down together is a great cook specialising in vegetarian and vegan food and has spent a lot of time reading cookers advice and then applying the advice in very interesting ways - with dishes from China, India, Thai, Italian, Spanish and France. We have cut down on red meat, in fact any meat and are eating lots of veg, fruits, salads, beans topped up with fish and vegan / vegetarian alternatives.

Only watch an hour of coronavirus news - we prefer Channel 4 as it always has the news, the real whistleblowing feedback and scientific advice and debate. This minimises the level of angst and anger when faced with the official news from the govt and BBC . However sticking to this is one of the most difficult rules to stick to when some new story hits the TV - like Dominic Cummings hypocrisy and his ongoing mendacity

Keep active - and stay involved with colleagues through zoom or microsoft office or whatsapp. As chair of Positive Ageing in london and Age Platform (uk) and chief exec of Wise Age I am always in touch with colleagues to try to both inform our members and visitors and to try to build awareness and involvement in our campaigns. Meeting up with like minded and caring decent people always gives me a lift and reduces the sense of isolation and exclusion

Allow your fellow lock downers the space to be on their own, do their own work and leisure activities so when we are together it becomes an enjoyable event, someal times and collective TV viewing becomes a real treat

Keep up to date with your interests and work, not just work related but also campaigns and maybe even start to learn new things. Iam now trying to take my conversational french to the next level with a free Duolingo learning tool.

So far this approach , while going up and down has helped keep us all comparatively sane and well, active and engaged