For everyone reading this in England, welcome to Lockdown no 2. If you’re in Wales, welcome to the end of your “firebreak", and in Ireland we hope level 5 is going OK. If you’re in Denmark then stay there, and what’s with all the mink?
At the beginning of the first lockdown we were full of optimism about all of the things we were going to get done while being asked to stay inside. As well as becoming perfect physical specimens we reckoned that we would have polished off several novels by now (written, rather than just read), redecorated, possibly even rebuilt the whole house, learned another language or two and still had time to ponder and probably solve some of the greater philosophical problems of our age. As it is, we’ve baked 2 very average loaves, bought some paint intended for the skirting boards, which has now gone missing, and just about managed to keep up with our emails. We have genuinely had the script for next year’s summer production, Love’s Labour's Lost, sitting on our shared drive for a good six months waiting for one of us to start editing it. At this rate it could well be a long show next year.
If you’re not careful you could get upset by this perceived underachievement. But instead of feeling downhearted we are going to celebrate our new-found joy and admirable skills. Yes, we are declaring November, Procrastination Month. (Or maybe it could be December.)
It has been a great start to Procrastination Month made very easy with events in America. It has seemed quite appropriate to spend every five minutes checking back to a news channel just to see which way Arizona is moving or if they’ve managed to count any more votes in Georgia yet. (Seriously Georgia, you’ve been on 99% of votes counted for three days – just add the last few up would you). But as the month moves on, things are going to get harder so we’ve put together a short list of our favourite time-wasting websites which can help you procrastinate to your heart’s content. Please help us by adding to the list either on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and by the end of the month we can all happily be doing nothing. And we can all promise to start the redecorating when the weather cheers up a bit!
Obviously you should start with our Past Production pages which are now almost complete with new videos and pics being added every day (we’ve been digitising lots of old videos – a great procrastination exercise!)
If the day’s a bit stressful try googling Sea Otter webcams – there’s plenty of these to work through.
Dan’s personal favourite – this is how he plans holidays. https://www.world-of-waterfalls.com
It’s a bit windy out – somewhere. https://earth.nullschool.net
DJ reminded us that you can’t really beat a bit of https://stumbleupon.com/
This is what we could be doing if we weren’t, you know, not doing it. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIJ0lLcABPdYGp7pRMGccAQ
This is a must watch. This is OTG original and writer of several shows (including Alice in Wonderland, Around the World in 80 Days and King Arthur) Jim Foggin’s German gardening channel. Here you can watch some of the gardening you should be doing while not understanding it because you didn’t get round to learning German yet. Perfect. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_CaYyfHq56eZTCsDuf1zWw
Liss reccommends this - http://pcottle.github.io/MSOutlookit/ She says, “MSOutlookit is just Reddit but it's made to look like outlook mail so you can look busy whilst procrastinating and no one is the wiser!”
Clive, in spite of his artsy ways, likes to waste time imagining he was scientist instead. Check out https://scaleofuniverse.com/ if you want to feel enormous, and simultaneously really small. Just scroll in or out (flash player required).
Continuing in his science-y tendencies, he also recommends https://thetruesize.com/ Prepare to be astonished at how wrong you are about how big you think things are (see Brazil compared to all of Europe, for example).
Linked to decorating houses, Ciara likes to look at houses she will never be able to afford on rightmove.co.uk Find a £10 million house on there and just ogle at the pictures for a while.
If you're looking for a new skill that might make a tangible difference, why not check out british-sign.co.uk and their current, incredible offer of a 'pay what you can' introduction to BSL (British Sign Language) course.
If you're more philosophically minded, you might enjoy a game of https://ncase.me/trust/
Remember the heady days of Microsoft Paint? Relive them at https://jspaint.app/
A whole set of whacky and weird games/activities at https://neal.fun/
Speaking of games, if you want to relive some of your favourites from the days of the Nintendo systems, try out https://www.playemulator.com/
Now please start adding your own... Just let us know your favourites!