This quarantine suits my general propensity towards modularity. Pre-crisis and not liking coagulous sauce,s I espoused modulariry in cooking: a raw carrot followed by a piece of fish followed by cheese and crackers followed by a pudding. Now modularity is universal. We separate our shopping from our run in the park; we have a segment on the computer before we have to hand it over to the next person and we have an hour of reading. I have even broken my books down into units. I have a night book and a day book. The night book I read in bed. It is Thomas Bernhard’s autobiography in five small volumes, much of the action aptly taking place in quarantine hospitals. My day book is ‘Les Meteores’by Michel Tournier. My plan is to move onto ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ as the next night book in (I estimate) ten days time. Not sure about my next day book. When you break your marathon down into periods of time, or laps, it becomes manageable. If you want to write a novel start by breaking it up into twenty chapters. Yesterday we acquired a new set of four toilet rolls, which we will move onto in about five days time. Each new toilet roll will last two weeks. So will we count the quarantine away. When our final toilet roll dribbles out we hope the hard days will be past. We are all measuring our life out in toilet roll sheets now.

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