Monday, 30th March
I decide to keep a journal detailing my thoughts, feelings and activities over the coming weeks. Who knows, in generations to come it may prove to be an invaluable document of the extraordinary times we're living in, perhaps even equal in importance to Samuel Pepys' diary or Casanova's memoirs.
Had an egg for breakfast. Went out for a run. Came home. Stared out the window for a bit. Went back to bed.
Tuesday, 31st March
I wake up to an email from work informing me I'm covered under the UK government's employee retention scheme. I call my accountant, who tells me my finances are in pretty good shape but I may want to reconsider investing in that hula-hoop factory in Seoul.
I make myself a cup of tea and seize the opportunity while my housemate's having a shower to watch some TV. Channel 4 are showing back-to-back episodes of Come Dine With Me, which is just taking the piss if you ask me. Elsewhere on what quaintly used to be referred to as the Palace of Varieties, Cagney and Lacey are close to cracking another case and a man starts shouting at me for paying too much for my car insurance. I try to tell him I don't have a car, but I'm not sure he heard me because another advert came on. I'll just have to catch him later.
I switch off the TV and decide to catch up with some reading. I've just finished Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, and now I'm torn between Evelyn Waugh's Scoop and Harry Hill's Tim the Tiny Horse. This is a bit of a conundrum because I like Evelyn Waugh's darkly satirical tone, but then I also like Harry Hill's blithe whimsy. But which is better? There's only one way to find out... Read both, obviously.
Wednesday, 1st April
In the middle of making lunch when I get a phone call from Buckingham Palace.
"Lizzy Baby!" I exclaim brightly, giving my spaghetti hoops a good stir. "How's things? You keeping okay?"
"Fuckin' hell, Rich," she says. "This year's turnin' into a right annus horribilis and no mistake."
I politely suggest she watches her language in case there are corgis listening, but, undeterred, she launches into a foul-mouthed tirade about Harry and Meghan "squatting" at Frogmore House, Andrew "knocking around with that fuckin' kiddie-fiddler" and Charles' recent brush with coronavirus.
"With all that coughin' we thought it was the fags at first," she says. "Well, you know Camilla's on sixty-a-day, don't you? Wills gets 'em for her from the duty-free."
I tell her we've all just got to hang in there and wait for this to blow over, but she starts going on about missing her bingo on a Sunday night and how the Duke of Edinburgh just sits around all day in front of the telly watching documentaries about Nazis and sharks. Mercifully my dinner comes to the boil, allowing me to cut the call short.
I empty the saucepan onto a plate, but as soon as I'm about to tuck in another call comes through, this time from a restricted number.
"Hello-?" I answer warily.
"Richard, it's Boris!" a cheerful but croaky voice replies. "Listen, I don't suppose you know anything about boiling eggs, at all? It's just I popped a couple in the microwave before and they've made a terrible mess..."
Thursday, 2nd April
I discover an old ouija board while cleaning out the attic. My housemate's apprehensive about using it, but I manage to convince him it'll make for a great evening's entertainment alongside a few bottles of Stella and a takeaway pizza.
We make contact with Henry VIII, who reveals he's going steady with Marilyn Monroe, and Michael Jackson, which gets awkward at one point when he mistakes us for a Channel 4 news team. Then another voice comes through the ether, one that refuses to identify itself but takes an immediate liking to my housemate.
"Trust in me," it says, making my housemate's hands tremble with every move of the planchette. "I've always relied on the kindness of strangers..."
I kick the ouija board away and hand my housemate a fresh beer to calm his nerves.
"You know what this means?" I ask him, a bead of sweat trailing down his ashen, panic-strewn face. "Either that was Kaa from The Jungle Book or Liz Taylor's on the prowl for a new husband..."
Friday, 3rd April
[Dialling tone, then-]
"Hello, NHS 111," the operator says. "Are you calling on behalf of yourself or someone else?"
"Someone else, actually," I reply awkwardly, lighting a cigarette. "I found this ouija board up in the attic, you see, and I thought it would be a bit of a laugh messing around with it. Now my housemate seems to be possessed by a malevolent spirit who insists on vomiting green bile, keeps making outrageous claims about my mother and violently moves bedroom furniture around by psychokinesis."
"Mm-hmm," she says, tapping at a keyboard. "And where's your housemate at the moment?"
"I've bound him up in his bedroom," I reply.
"Any other symptoms, like a cough or fever?"
"Nah, just the diabolism, really."
"Well, you were right to call the service," she assures me before detailing a series of easy to digest instructions on how to perform a home exorcism using only a clothes peg, a funnel and a cooked chicken. Since we don't have one until the weekly shop on Monday I'm forced to improvise.
When it gets dark I sneak into the garden with a bin bag and wait for next door's cat. Let's be having you, Mr Mackenzie, you little bastard.
Saturday, 4th April
My housemate's cured, thanks in no small part to my bravery and courage. (Hard to explain, and there doesn't seem much point since this is a first-person narrative and I was there, but suffice to say the next door neighbours didn't get much sleep with a demonic cat to contend with.) Just to be on the safe side, I keep my housemate tied up in his room for the rest of the day, allowing me access to Netflix for a change.
At 4pm I get a phone call from Trump asking if I want to join him, Boris, Putin, Xi Jinping, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, Narendra Modi and Kim Jong-un in a Skype-poker game later.
Bring it on!
Sunday, 5th April
I drag myself out of bed, bleary-eyed and sick to my stomach, and head downstairs for a rejuvenating cup of tea. Suddenly my mobile starts ringing, the aggressive thrum-thrum of the ringtone against the kitchen table cutting through my hungover brain like a chainsaw.
"What up, blud!" Putin says jovially, clearly trying to disguise his own delicate state. "That was some game last night. Just spoken to Donald: he's buzzing about discharging America's national debt onto you!"
"Shit, I forgot about that," I reply, taking one drag on a cigarette before queasily stubbing it out. "What the fuck am I going to do?"
"Don't sweat it, dog!" he says. "Just give your bank a call in the morning and ask if you can extend your overdraft by $22 trillion."
"That's not very likely, is it?"
"Okay, then, I'll buy the debt off you. For a small favour, naturally..."
"What kind of favour?"
"Oh, I dunno," he says disingenuously. "Maybe you could ask the Olympic Committee to reconsider St Petersburg's bid for the 2032 Games-? Like I say, it's no biggie..."
