Sixty-something years ago, in a communist state in Europe, a friend's father was imprisoned as a young man. For a few years he was held in solitary confinement, alone in a room where the lights were never switched off, rescued only by a game. In his head, he played chess.

It's a sobering and necessary image I carry with me for two weeks in room 204 in the Park Regis hotel. I have twin beds, an exercise mat and fine whisky. Nope, quarantine is anything but jail. Isolation is not necessarily imprisonment.