Seven lockdown habits to break before FREEDOM DAY

Here are seven habits to break – one for each day of the next week – so you’re fully ready to be free.

What better day to ditch perky Joe Wicks and his enormous fucking living room? When the world re-opens again, let’s agree to take taxis to air-conditioned office buildings. Ignore those obese fuckheads who claim to be government health experts with their warnings of how not walking up stairs will kill you. Take the lift. Spend eight full hours sitting and two full minutes ramming a three-pound Tesco meal deal into your mouth. At 5pm, summon an Uber and demand the driver take you to the nearest all-you-can-eat buffet. 90 minutes later, stricken with meat sweats, stumble to the nearest pub for more sitting. That’s how to do Monday.

For over a year, when not wearing a mask you’ve grinned inanely at neighbours, at people walking their dogs on desolate waste ground, at the postman, at anyone you see in the hope they’ll join your ‘we’re all in this together’ campaign. Even if you secretly suspect the serial killer next door of inviting relatives round to breathe COVID all over your clean washing. It’s freedom day. Who cares if the old man at number six dies alone because there’s nobody to do his shopping? He’s no longer your problem. You’re free. You’re mask-less and you get to spend time with people you actually like.

You bought a box in 1983 after waking up in A&E and vowing to give up drink, drugs and crisps. After ten minutes of Anne Diamond’s ‘How I lost 4 stone‘ DVD, you lost the will to live and ate an entire trifle. In lockdown, with everyone raving about how they’ve rediscovered green tea, you gave it another go and remembered at once why you never bought it again – it tastes like dishwasher slurry. It’s time to re-embrace light brown tea and leave the folksy herbal shite to people who have sex in public toilets. Stop lying to yourself and have a custard cream.

It was only ever meant to be a trim at the back and a tidy at the sides, but your hair looked like a hat worn at a jaunty angle. You’ve sat through Zoom calls wearing a beanie, and looking like something the dog slept on. Now your Turkish barber is once again open and ready to set fire to your ears and crack your finger joints (in a way you’re almost sure will increase the chance of arthritis). Hurry to their shops and sit through an hour of Kiss FM. Over tip, then worry they’ll expect the same next time. Life is shit and then you die.

From freedom day onwards, it’s no longer allowed to walk the dog looking like you’ve escaped from a nursing home. The golden days are over. Jump up and down in front of the mirror. See what jiggles. If it’s the floor, you need to make changes. The main issue with healthy eating is it requires effort. You’ll find yourself getting up two hours earlier than any sane human being to turn a head of cauliflower into couscous for an imaginative weekday supper. You need to do this. You have a year of abuse to put right. Stick with the plan until you’re two dry heaves and a dizzy turn away from your target weight.

Nobody bought banana bread before lockdown for a reason. It’s like the world’s most disappointing cake crossed with the world’s worst bread. And don’t get me started on sourdough. You’ve watched a Kilner jar of flour and water bubble and turn rancid green over the course of a month, and now you’re expected to eat something that contains the sludge? Why not go the whole hog and make raw chicken sandwiches?

The voice in your head said, “It’s my best mate having a go at stand-up. I have to watch. It’ll look bad if I don’t.” Zoom shows always start way too early, and everyone runs out of booze within half an hour. The comics deliver the same tired five minute set they used to do on a sticky carpet in Brighton but without supportive laughter. They’re clearly reading from the screen and spend two of their five minutes on mute. It’s even worse if everyone is encouraged to keep their cameras on. You and six other people try to look like you’re having the best of times, when all you really want to do is watch porn, have a wank, order pizza and sob at old photos taken when you had a life.