Last month, for my sister’s birthday, I organised a Zoom party with family and friends and dropped off baked goods.

I’ve been given this book multiple times. By my friend Becca as a speedy read on the train home from visiting her in Canterbury (I still have your copy by the way Becca).

A couple of years ago I was talking to a colleague and friend about anxiety on the BBC Ouch Podcast. We both have and were working on a project about OCD and how we often felt wracked with worry even when nothing was happening.

I haven’t written one of these for a few days as I inevitably fell into the black hole of being at home almost 24/7.

I haven’t written here for a few days while I try to keep up to speed with this whole new way of living. In the meantime I was craving a bit of escapism through reading and when this one popped up on Netgalley I was immediately keen.

If there’s something I’m wary of it’s a book being built up a lot before I read it because I suffer from this combination of extreme excitement and very high expectations.

At the moment emotions are running high. From talking to my loved ones and casting an eye over twitter I’ve noticed that from one day to another any one person can feel either calm and contented or panicked and scared.

Ah, I’ve had my first blog cock up. Amazing it took so long to happen. I spent an hour drafting a post yesterday only for it to have completely vanished into the ether today.

Guys this book! Whew. OK so, backstory. I’ve read no Joseph Heller at all before this but my husband has read Good as Gold, Closing Time and Catch-22, all of which he enjoyed. So he bought this during our mega pre-Honeymoon Waterstones shopping trip.

Repost of my article on OCD and COVID-19 written for the Huffington Post.

A couple of weeks ago, before we could officially no longer leave our houses but when things were already starting to ramp up, I decided to honour one final appointment. I met with Nick and Ace at UCL where we recorded an episode of their podcast In Our Heads.

One thing I stockpiled long before we ever thought we’d end up in this situation were books. Still though I’m not immune to the lure of the shiny new title and spend an embarrassingly vast number of hours scrolling through bookstagram gazing at all the new releases.

I’m kind of ashamed to admit that some of this has felt like a holiday to me. Hear me out. I have taken it seriously from the start, currently self-isolating after my husband fell ill, reaching out to neighbours and following the government’s daily briefings closely.

I’ve long loved Jodi Picoult’s novels. She generally takes a thorny ethical issue, researches it thoroughly and brings it to life with a well defined group of characters.

While Spain is on military shut down and Macron has given all French citizens a financial safety net, the advice in the UK is a little less clear cut

Well here we are, finding ourselves in the middle of an unprecedented quarantine period not even three months into 2020.