This is the worst example of people not social-distancing | Alun Newman

I have tried to approach the whole thing like I’m under house arrest at a 2 star hotel. No pool. Average food. Small rooms but pleasant service for the money.

At the end of this, I’ll leave a mediocre review on Tripadviser.

As my job is basically speaking on the radio, I didn’t want to be on-air saying one thing, ‘stay at home’, then be out and about looking for potted plants and storage boxes.

However, after several weeks consuming supplies, a supermarket shop was required. Besides, Boris says we can still go out for food – so that’s what we did.

We would have booked an online delivery but apparently one new slot appears every three years and you have to be awake at 3am with your hand already on the reserve button. It’s now easier to photograph a snow leopard.

Myself and my daughter ventured to a local and massive Asda.

We thought that if we went late and large, the social distancing would be easier and queues smaller.

And there were barely any queues and a very ordered system with plenty of wipes, spays and cloths.

As a side note, I wonder if we’re ever going to hug or shake hands again but we’ll save that for another time.

The store like many others has arrows for directional routes around. These soon become impossible to follow as they constantly steer you to the tills where there’s a queue.

You try and reverse and the people following are now thrown into reversing confusion.

On several occasions, we were gripping the shelves like free climbers. Most people were doing their bit. Then the ‘tap’ came.

I’m facing down the aisle and a lady ‘taps’ my shoulder.

She asks if I could reach a bottle of cleaner for her.

Yes I know. She touched me. My shoulder. She touched me!

I turned in shock to see a short lady who had made a mask out of a bra cup. Why go to all that trouble and then touch someone?

Anyway, through the muffled padding of a 36C (I’m guessing) she explained that she’s too short.

Then get my attention by coughing – actually, no don’t do that...

I ask her to back away like a policeman about to produce his taser. Sure I’m kind but, I can’t stress this enough, she touched me!

After the trauma of that and other exclusion-zone breaches, that included a builder running with a pasty, we made it to the self-service checkout. The big one with your own conveyor belt. We thought this would be easier for distancing.

It wasn’t.

Every third item, the red light kept going off accusing us of a checkout crime.

When the assistant got near, we backed off and that caused the whole cue to perform a human concertina.

There would have been audible sounds of puffing but that’s not as popular as it was.

We made it. Supplies gathered. Social distancing taken seriously and we hunker down like the rest of the nation for as long as it takes.

I’m off to cut up my wife’s underwear to see if I can fashion my own protective equipment.

If I had the courage, I’d do a joke about there being plenty of material to experiment with but that would be childish.

I nearly painted my wall with tumeric

Regular readers of this column will know I like to be busy.

I have torn through jobs in isolation and I have saved painting the kitchen for my holiday treat.

However, I was poorly prepared and have only a selection of nearly finished tins of paint that would work. Essentially ones used to paint other rooms.

I just can’t see getting paint as an essential journey and online ordering has proved fruitless.

I have toyed with the idea of creating the colour I want using tumeric and white paint.

The guy on YouTube said it’s easy and looks great (they always do).

However, I’m worried that the dog will start licking the walls as he has a penchant for spicy food.

In fact he has a penchant for anything barely edible.

After much deliberation we have now got; one white wall, one grey wall, one not as grey wall.

Yellow window surrounds, no herbs or spices used.

It has taken this extraordinary event to force a bit of creativity.

Thinking outside the box.

In many ways a need to recycle and reuse.

It’s rewarding to see under a bit of pressure I can adapt and find a solution.

But when this terrible situation is all over, I’ll go and get the paint I really wanted so my kitchen doesn't look as ridiculous as it does now.