Lockdown in Paris : Day Forty-Four
9h25 : There’s no milk : second thought when I woke up. First thought : coffee. Since a morning without coffee is not to be contemplated, milk must be hunted and gathered. This simple fact gives the morning purpose, direction - two things a morning has not had these forty days past. Today, I have goals, yes goals, in the plural! For not only will I venture out for milk, I will go in search of - wait for it - a cookie cutter. What a day this will be! Cookie cutters! What whimsy, what extravagance! And they’re not even for cookies! You rebel.
10h25 : Triumphant I return, bearing cookie cutters of assorted sizes and colours, and milk. I found them in the “Everything Shop”, which I don’t think really needs further description. I love the Everything Shops. Not only do they sell everything, they’re everywhere. There are two on one street round the corner from me, and they really do have everything. You need a bag of compost? Done. A hairdryer? Yep. How about a replacement bit of pipe for your sink? Got it. Mousetraps. Paint sets. Lunchboxes. Toilet seats. Frying pans. A lamp. How do people go about stocking one of these shops to begin with? How do they know what to buy? Do they just ring up the Everything Warehouse and say “I’m setting up this week, send me three of Everything.” This always puzzle me. To recover from all the excitement I’m going to have a coffee and catch up with the dastardly Nazis for a bit.
11h45 : Decided to wash those jeans I’ve been wearing for more than a month in the sink, lest they walk there themselves and climb in. The water in the taps comes out so hot I reckon it’s the equivalent of a 90° wash, so I whack them in with a purple pod of detergent and poke them with the end of a wooden spoon for a bit. That should do it.
14h : Facetime with Estelle-of-the-UHT-milk to catch up. I tell her about my plan for the cookie cutter - the result of my having finally found flour in the supermarket the other day. I explained that while I had planned to make choc-chip cookies, this was no longer possible because I had eaten all the choc- before even looking up a recipe.
16h15 : Rinse out the jeans and squeeze them out as best I can but then get exhausted (it’s been a long time since I exerted myself) and put them to dry on the balcony. Then remembered it’s supposed to rain for the next ten days. Five minutes later it’s pouring down. I calculate that my jeans will be drying on the balcony for 13 days.
17h : For the aforementioned reasons, we are not making cookies today. We’re making SCONES. My whole day thus far has revolved around this endeavour and the anxiety as to whether or not I would succeed in it. (My money was on not). Still, I found myself standing in the “kitchen,” contemplating the task ahead, and suddenly I was reaching for the flour and the sugar and finding a recipe on my phone in cups because cups is all I have to measure with even though I fundamentally disagree with cups. Within 60 seconds flour has avalanched out of its bag and chaos reigns, but I’m doing it! It’s hard to read a recipe on your phone while covered in scone guts, but I’m doing it! I should have taken the cookie cutters out of their packaging before getting covered in dough, but I’m doing it! Once they go in the oven I feel like I’ve achieved miracles and wonders. I sit down, exhausted.
Romain-the-Baker you had better be proud of my efforts here!
17h20 : I’m not being funny right but the scones are SPLENDID. They’re all fat and golden and convincing looking!! Afternoon tea with scones - I can’t quite bend my head around this decadence. I keep saying “Wow!” outloud because I can’t really reconcile what I know of myself and these scones that I seem to have made. The two don’t quite add up. But I’m going with it. I send pictures of them to everyone I know. I am proud.
18h : I find that recently when I sneeze I pull a muscle somewhere in my back. I can only conclude that I have never been this unfit in my life, and I haven’t ever actually been fit since I was about 17.
20h30 : Get a text from Colissimo telling me my delivery will arrive tomorrow between 8am and 1pm. Daren’t believe it’s my mini fridge. Daren’t believe they’ll call me when they get here with the fridge. Daren’t think about where my mini-fridge will end up. Whatever I made SCONES TODAY.
21h39 : It’s still raining.
