Lucy Vickery

How famous writers do social isolation

Rudyard Kipling: ‘If you can wash your hands ten times an hour…’ Credit: Topical Press Agency / Stringer

In Competition No. 3147 you were invited to submit tips on social isolation in the style of a well-known writer. It was a terrific entry, in which famously retiring souls such Emily Dickinson loomed uncharacteristically large. I loved Nicholas Stone’s twist on Louis Macneice’s ‘Bagpipe Music’ (‘It’s no go the bog roll, it’s no go the office,/ All we want is a conference call and a bag of Werther’s toffees…’) and J.G. Ballard’s suggestion, via Adrian Fry: ‘Exercise in liminal spaces: abandoned office complexes, rewilding traffic islands, Shepperton’. Commendations, too, to Hamish Wilson’s Philip Larkin (‘Man hands on unwashed misery to man,/ Keep people distant. Stay in while you can.’), Phillip Sheahan, Liz Aram and Amar Singh Bhandal. The winners take £25.

If you can wash your hands ten times an hour Without becoming overly obsessed; If you can hold back tears when there’s no flour Nor make an online search your daily quest; If you can keep at least two metres’ distance From everyone (that’s those you love as well) And not despair at your confined existence But strive to make a Heaven from this Hell.   If you can work from home without succumbing To living in pyjamas, munching Twix If daily updates have become brain-numbing And you can’t swallow yet more politics; If you can live within each indoor minute, Not lust for travel plans you can’t contrive, But cherish each small hope and how to spin it Then you might — but, no promises! — survive. D.A. Prince/Rudyard Kipling

Go wander lonely far from crowds But not as far as vale and hills; Go meditate on sky and clouds; Gaze on your neighbour’s daffodils. Down empty byways take your stroll; Think safety first where e’er you roam And when fresh air has filled your soul Go back content to muse at home.   Earth may for you not look so fair When happy friends are far away And deadly germs are in the air But safe at home it’s wise to stay.

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