Clodagh Finn: Gardening and DIY are the true opium of the people

They are the perfect antidote to quarantine fatigue. They are, at once, stimulating and numbing; the ideal combination to keep people happily employed (but docile) while staying home, writes Clodagh Finn

Gardening and DIY are the perfect antidote to quarantine fatigue. You might even say that they are the coronavirus’s opiate of the masses to quote the oft-misquoted Karl Marx on religion.

Clodagh Finn marvelled this week at how the Irish can be patient and compliant in a queue in times of crisis.

It strikes me as a little odd that garden centres and hardware shops reopened this week ahead of, say, Breast Check, but the decision just goes to show that gardening and DIY, not bread and circuses, are the best way to distract and appease the masses in a pandemic.