This is a critical juncture in world history and all its citizens are stuck inside, more impotent than ever before.

Tinder has a big warning on it not to meet up which had the effect of reminding me how horny i was and how little I could do about it. To compound matters my hands are starting to get cracked and sore from all the hand sanitiser. Either that or it’s stigmata brought on by enforced celibacy.

I didn’t sleep well last night. The dog woke me up for real at 8.46. Right now he is proving to be a steadfast and badly needed tether to sanity.

My stomach is in knots this morning after my fitful slumber. The reality dawned that Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are forming a Government. This is after Leo saying he would let other parties have a chance.

In the current news climate, people are a little distracted. Not only will they be the heroes that beat Covid, but they now have the perfect excuse to impose more austerity. They are not the type of Government who will protect from rent hungry landlords looking for their pound of flesh after the three months Covid grace; they will they get it one way or another, and more to boot.

What else is happening? Remember that apocalyptic news story from the start of the year? The USA, I’m certain, is still quietly mobilising for war with Iran. Their population is more distracted by Covid than our own.

Even if Covid was an accident, our leaders are laying down foundations that will affect the world for years if not decades to come. This is a critical juncture in world history and all its citizens are stuck inside, more impotent than ever before.

Against all this I feel like a trapped rat. From the few conversations I’m having, people’s mental health is beginning to drop right about now. That presents problems for people in coercive relationships, among the mentally ill, single parents with multiple kids, addicts who can’t get to meetings, the old, the lonely, the fragile and the scared.

Maybe it is because of wartime grandparents, but I always thought I’d rather be dead than scared, yet I’m sitting here cowering in my flat because everyone tells me it’s the right thing to do. But what if it’s not? What if we rise from this hibernation to children traumatised by fighting parents, and a spike in self-harm in a world at war and a Government that doesn’t care?