If you loved me, you would bring me tea.

It has been seventy-three hours and twenty-four minutes since I have been trapped in solitary confinement. The snow is piling up against my windows, higher with each passing hour. The cupboard still holds pasta, grains and pulses, mostly within their sell-by dates, but how long can they last? In my desperation, I’ve turned to My Bird Garden, which offers practical advice on setting up bird feeders and how to catch and cook a sparrow.

I fear I may lose a few fingers and a sliver of my immortal soul if it should come to this, but these are desperate times.

My entertainment is limited to just a few hundred books on my e-reader and ten years of games purchased during Steam sales.

The fruit bowl is empty. It is the stuff of nightmares. Not a single lemon, which means that if I wanted a gin and tonic (which I do not, I would rather dunk my head in fish oil), I would not be able to have a lemon wedge with it. I never believed that I might fall so far.

By the way, I’ve also run out of ginger and fresh chiles, so if someone were to leave a care-package on the doorstep, like some curry-adjacent fairy, then fresh ginger would be greatly appreciated. And maybe some prosecco; I’m down to the last three bottles.

I should admit that friends have courteously offered to risk their own safety in order to bring canned goods and hope. I have bravely turned them away, for fear that they will discover me playing video games and eating ice cream straight from the tub suffering piteously, cold and alone and feverish.

In a moment of dark chocolate desperation, I even sacrificed the Christmas gift I had purchased for my beloved mother. I can only hope she has enough maternal instincts left to forgive me.

Of course, I will persevere. And once this unholy tribulation has ended, I make you one promise.

As God is my witness, I will never, ever, buy the cheap one-ply tissues again.