With my awareness alerted, you can imagine my concern this month when I found myself at the beach wearing all of my additional pale COVID-19 kilos and reading none other than 'Moby Dick' - the story of a great white whale.

Shaking off that impoliteness, and the strange coincidence that we were actually camping-out in a bona fide historic whaling town, I faced the confronting reality of my three teenage daughters, my husband and I being suddenly thrown together in our caravan, forced to survive in close quarters.

This immediately felt like a treacherous voyage and a situation which required that I urgently take a long solitary walk to absorb the seaside serenity.

Unfortunately, I was so distracted that I tripped on a tree root and heard frightening crunching noises inside my ankle joint as it collapsed.

Obviously, this was a direct result of my recent 'Les Misérables' reading, and although not forced to crawl through the Parisian sewage system dragging the dead weight of an unconscious male to get home, my limping trip back to the annex was on a par for pleasantness.

Remaining stuck in my deck chair for some hours, I was forced to face my family, who were ill-adjusting to survival in close proximity.

Mutiny threatened, with selfish disputes including the topic of late-night reading lights and the stealing of other's belongings.

I hung my head in shame at the horrors of this 'War and Peace' enveloping our family unit and hoped my temptation to dissert like 'Anna Karenina' could be overcome lest I destroy the lives of my loved ones before total annihilation of my own life.

Luckily, with a badly sprained ankle, I could not hope to get close enough to the train tracks without assistance. I settled for an unexpected breakdown and ugly cry in front of the family who were sufficiently shocked into using their manners again... at least for a while.