The £39.99 gadget that will transform how you work at home

Hours of googling have left me unable to find the essay on domestic horticulture, written by a Victorian aristocrat, which contains the legendary sentence: ‘Any garden, of whatever size, should contain at least three acres of mature woodland.’ And though that seems a high bar to set, in times like this, millions of Brits have suddenly discovered that nothing beats a bit of outdoor space. Indeed, unless you are Dennis Nilsen, there’s never been a worse time to buy a top-floor flat.

So to help remote workers restock your vitamin D, here’s some gadgetry which can get you out of the spare bedroom and into the sunshine.

Never, ever reveal that self-isolation is enjoyable. Always place your humidor out of range of your webcam

People born after 1985 can ignore this paragraph, since you can probably reach out and touch your wifi router from everywhere in your home. But those of you who, though possessed of no distinguishing talent, happened to be on the property ladder before 1983 may find it irritating that your wifi signal barely reaches as far as the stables or the ha-ha. In your case you need some form of wifi extender. Ideally this might mean a mesh network of some kind. However, as this is no time to make significant changes to your broadband set-up and risk complete disaster, a less ambitious way to extend your signal is via a simple range extender (aka a wifi repeater). Netgear, TP-Link and others make these at prices from £40 to £120. They aren’t great, to be honest, but if you dangle them out of a window on an extension cable, a tolerable signal should reach the croquet lawn.