Seriously, the last few months have felt like a lifetime; nothing to do but eat and watch TV, do a site review and with no end in sight for some, one day goes into the next but I’m here to give you some great tips to stop boredom and stimulate your creativity.
Here are the best ways to stay entertained during the lockdown.
Be a Virtual Traveller
If you can’t go far don’t worry, the entire world is available to view. Take an online tou. Now with museums and art galleries closed, many of the exhibits have been taken online. So, you can peruse through the Louvre in Paris, or walk through the ruins at the Temple of Bacchus online, led by guides who know every inch of the paintings and monuments on display.
Art, not your thing? Visit the Great Barrier Reef with Readers’ Digest and their specialist 360-degree online tour. You can’t visit the reef without the online version of the Blue Planet by David Attenborough. You will weep at the amount of plastic in our oceans, but you will also marvel at whales and dolphins. Each episode is available free of charge.
Staying by the sea is about a visit to the Mary Rose, a ship that sank in 1545 at the time of Henry VIII. What about the 3D trip around the Titanic before it sank? Not a seafaring person? The how about Machu Picchu, Peru?
This world heritage site is one of the most visited tourist destinations to date, but now you can visit it from the comfort of your armchair. The 360-degree views of ruins and lush green landscape can be seen with the aid of a guide. The guide will tell you things that you may never have found out at the real-life tour because you would have been too busy fighting off the mosquitos.
It doesn’t even have to be in this world – calling all Trekkies or Marvel fans. Visit Sector 001 with Scotty or Thanos with the Avengers. How about Tatooine, Alderaan, Hoth, Bespin, and Yavin with Princess Leia? I would! How about you?
Online Gaming gets a 2020 Spin
Any moment now the new PS5 will be released and, for anyone uninitiated, it’s the latest update from Sony. The original PlayStation was given to the gaming world in 1994 and the PS5 will be the 10th edition of the console.
Along with that, there are loads of new games available: from the traditional fighting and war type games to games like Maquette, a first-person puzzle game that takes you into the world where you must find the pieces of the puzzle to save the world. Not the most original task, but the graphics are amazing and interaction fun.
Minecraft has had an upgrade – this 2009 game that encourages the player to learn to code, to build the game as they go along: this can be multiplayer. In 2020 Minecraft is a cult game that looks the same in its old-school style layout but updated with lots more gameplay features.
The Pub Quiz
That sort of gaming not for you? Then let’s try an online pub quiz. Some of these are actually held in and run by, pub landlords. Facebook is usually the place to find a quiz. Most are free to join and some have prizes.
It was reported recently that a landlord from Lancashire has become a star quiz master, hosting a pub quiz for locals that turned into a worldwide phenomenon with, at some point during the last few months, 100,000 participants. That’s a lot of packs of pork scratchings
Join online communities
Take the time to write that novel you’ve been talking about for years. As they say, everyone has a book in them bursting to come out. Free online courses are available to those budding authors out there. These courses encourage interaction and feedback from other writers; they even have their own hashtag on Instagram and Twitter #writers community. So get stuck in.
If all of the above is not for you don’t be stuck for ideas. By joining an online community, whether it’s baking, cycling, opera, or gardening, other like-minded folks are always up for an in-depth discussion about the latest fad; always ready to pass on tips about your roses or mock your baking efforts.
So while you may not be able to go very far right now at least you’ve got fun options, remember you don’t have to actually achieve anything, just joining in and staying in touch with friends and family is good enough, or go old school and re-watch all 10 series of Friends.
Looking back on these days in years to come make sure you have some good memories because just like everything else this too will pass and we will enter a new phase in your lives. See you at the pub quiz.
