A great time to reflect….

Whether you are aged in your 90s, 60s, 40s, a millennial born between 1983 and 2000, or younger, we all are experiencing something that we haven’t experienced before: confinement to our houses amidst the high likelihood of a mass shutdown of the movement of people.

Several sectors of the business community have closed with more to come, other than Essential Services.

The extraordinary times we are experiencing have a silver lining…we’re being forced to get back to basics, to be a whole lot more resourceful, enjoy that book(s) you’ve been wanting read, play some family games, cook up a storm with your family with your favourite recipes, start that vegie plot, clean out the shed, go through that pile of random papers every house seems to have, throw out or give away anything you don’t need.

Here are some ISO ideas for those at home:

Games… Monopoly, UNO, Jenga, Scrabble, Cluedo, Pictionary, Charades, Risk, Snakes & Ladders, Googly Eyes, LIFE, Catan, Dominoes, Chess, Card Games, Jigsaw Puzzles, Trivial Pursuit, Boggle – just to name some.

Books…Suite Francaise  by Irene Nemirovsky. You will recognise similar traits of the bad behaviour we have seen in the great toilet paper wars to those of a group of Parisians escaping to the French countryside during WWII. A brilliant and classic book.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles is an elegant tale of the dignity and inner strength of a Russian aristocrat imprisoned in a small hotel room following the Russian Revolution. His physical world has shrunk (as ours has), but the world of his imagination, memories, emotions and spirituality expands as he is compelled to rely upon his inner resources more than ever before (as we are all doing in the current global crisis).

Let us know how you are surviving this freakish time in our lives.

Look out for fabulous recipes all members of the family can do in next week’s Adviser.