Jessica Rea

 Someone recently gave us the board game of Junior Monopoly which my five year old was very keen to play.  Having played Monopoly as a child, I was broadly familiar with the rules but needed to refresh by reading the instructions. The opening line of the instructions read like this: "Have the most money when any other player goes bankrupt (hasn't got the cash to pay rent, buy a property they land on, or pay a Chance card fee)." it continues with stating the object of the game "Zoom around the board, buy every property you land on, collect money and pick up Chance cards. When one player runs out of money, the others count their cash. The player with the most money wins!" Having spent the last 15 years volunteering in homeless shelters and researching the experiences and related psychological impacts of homelessness and socioeconomic inequality, the objective of driving others to the point of bankruptcy and winning as a result of accumulating the most wealth did n

While it isn't necessarily the greatest puzzle of 2020, one of the strangest must be the global panic buying of toilet paper during the coronavirus pandemic. While the mass purchase of toilet paper, rehydration sachets and bottled water would make sense during a cholera pandemic; it flew in the face of reason for something largely understood as a respiratory infection.  I remember grimacing at the peculiarity of offering someone a couple of rolls as a thank you for some second hand toys donated to my three and four year old children during the early days of lockdown. It was walking through the empty aisles of our local Sainsburys, in a slightly vain attempt to get supplies, that I realised a connection that made psychological sense. When people are faced with threatening or uncertain life-events, it can often lead to changes in their personal values.   You may now sensibly find yourself wondering what on earth personal values have to do with toilet paper... Well, values articulate