THE Green Goddess is back on the telly. There are footballers with mullet hair running around the pitch. Families are going for walks - together. Jigsaws are sprawled across dining-tables. There’s a bread queue at the Co-op. Mums and dads are cutting their kids’ hair.

And Government-commissioned public information films are telling us what to do, while quietly putting the fear of God into us.

Are we back in 1983?

Less than two weeks into COVID-19 lockdown and it’s all gone a bit retro. Turn on the telly - let’s face it, there’s not much else to do - and there’s Mr Motivator in a fluorescent blue leotard trying to get us off the sofa and join him doing squats to Technotronic. Match of the Day has been replaced with vintage footie highlights from the 1980s. There’s talk of schools programmes returning to daytime television. Are the children of 2020 ready for How We Used To Live and science shows presented by beady-eyed men in brown corduroy blazers with Roy Wood beards?

What’s next - Crown Court in the afternoons? Mad Lizzie in the mornings? Bet Lynch behind the bar at the Rover’s?

Football on BBC1. Black and white films on BBC2. It’s like Saturday afternoon at my grandparents’ house in the Seventies. All that’s missing is the wrestling followed by sticking stamps into Grandma’s Co-op Dividend book.

I bought some Club biscuits yesterday, they were next to the Blue Ribands on the sparse supermarket shelf. I haven’t had a Club since I was about nine, but I’m working from home so I need biscuits. I’ll probably return from my next essential shopping trip with Crispy Pancakes and butterscotch Angel Delight.

“Every day is like Sunday, Every day is silent and grey,” sang Morrissey, back when Sunday trading was a thing of the future and it was last orders in the pub at 10.30pm.

And, with nowhere to go and not much to do, every day is once again a Sunday - if, like me, you remember Sundays of the 1970s and 80s.

For younger generations, who’ve never been without phones and PCs, endless leisure choices, 24-hour shopping, on demand TV and nightlife that goes on until morning, the idea of being bored at home because nothing is open must take some getting used to.

But, like other folks my age who spent a large chunk of their youth with not much to do, I can do boredom till the cows come home.

They trained me well, those long days of the six-week school holiday, knocking on the doors of other kids, all of us bored stiff, kicking our heels in parks and cul-de-sacs. Sundays and Wednesday afternoons when all the shops were closed. Three channels on the telly, closing down to a white dot at midnight. Sunday afternoons being forced to to go for a family drive in the countryside, bickering on the back seat, drinking lukewarm tea from a flask in a car park, finally getting home to watch Sale of the Century, ‘live from Norwich’. I didn’t know what Norwich was, but it sounded exotic.

Maybe, because we grew up with boredom, we are well equipped to dealing with the monotony of being confined to the home. And maybe being a bit bored is no bad thing.

l SPEAKING of home confinement - enough with the One More Day spoofs! The Les Mis anthem has been re-worked online by everyone from over-dramatic drama students to the admittedly likeable Marsh family, all trying to go viral (in a good way) with their lockdown high jinks. Try a little boredom, people.