Lockdown in Paris : Day Forty-Nine
May the 4th be with you. (Shout out to all the Catholics whose brains just said, “And also with you.”)
10h15 : I got up with no illusions about what would be achieved today. My brain is setting a very low bar at the minute - if I manage to get dressed at some point or open the curtain (most people would have the luxury of a plural there, but I have no use for such an abundance of drapery) then I’m winning. I think there has been a psychological shift since Macron announced that we might be let out to see humans on May 11th, because now there’s a goal. Now you just have to sit and wait for May 11th to arrive and see what happens next. It makes entertaining yourself in edifying ways even more negotiable than it was before. After all, if I have not yet lost my marbles, how likely is it that I will lose them now, with one week to go? Which brings me neatly to my closing argument: why not watch the entire Marvel back catalogue? Why would you not? The defence rests.
11h : All weekend I’ve been telling people that my German Lederhosen (Gap dungarees) are arriving on Monday and how it’s going to be the highlight of my month, which it is. I’ve been banging on about them for days now - I’ve even sent people the link, so they can admire and approve of them in advance. I’ve brought them up again and again so that my poor long-suffering friends might remark upon the colour of the denim, the wide leg cut, or the way the back is somehow the best bit. (Where necessary, I am ready to help by prompting them on these features.) “Monday” I say, while clapping like a child. “I can’t wait for Monday.”
Then I woke up this morning and my first thought was, “Why do I think they’re coming today? How have I convinced myself of that?” And the answer is : I don’t know. Somewhere along the line I decided that Monday was D-Day (I’m not going to insult your intelligence by pointing out what the D stands for, but I am going to point out the D, so you don’t miss it.) But now I think about it, I don’t think today is D-Day at all. No email has told me to expect them on Monday. No text message has arrived to forewarn me of an imminent delivery. I’ve been kidding myself all along.
I have been guilty of this kind of thing before. There was the time I thought my Eurostar was one day but it was actually the next day at the same time and I only realised when I tried to scan my ticket and it said, roughly paraphrased, “You idiot.” Or the time Mouse and I arrived at the airport 12 hours early for our flight to Kos and we were so embarrassed that we didn’t tell anyone and just spent the entire day in the airport and then the flight was delayed by 3 hours and we actually had a hysterical kind of fit when they made the announcement. Or the time when I went to catch the train to Toulouse from Gare de l’Est and it was actually leaving Austerlitz in 22 minutes (I made it. I don’t know how I made it, but I made it). Sometimes I just get things in my head and forget to question how they got there. Now Monday is finally here and I’m realising that my dungarees aren’t on their way and it’s really taken the wind out of my sails because I’ve been dreaming of the perfect dungarees for years and now they’re so close I can’t concentrate on anything until they arrive. I’m not even contemplating what will happen if they don’t fit. It will not be pretty.
12h : I’ve been watching Season 5 of Friends, which might be one of the last ones before they all turn into really annoying parody versions of themselves, but I’ll have to keep watching to be sure. This turns it into research. I mean you just can’t go around with half-baked theories about Friends without being able to show examples of your working.
13h55 : I think you’ll get a clear impression of my day when I tell you that for episodes 13 through 15 I have been cleaning a hairbrush with a pair of tweezers.
14h30 : So on Saturday I got that Zara delivery I told you about - deliveries are actually going very well, so I feel fairly confident that the universe is holding disaster in reserve for the two things I really really really want: the fridge and the lederhosen. Thing is, included in this Zara delivery was a pair of trousers so intimidating that I had to rearrange my whole wardrobe to accommodate their airs and graces, because when I tried to hang them (they are the kind of trousers you wouldn’t insult by folding) I could really sense that they were disdainful of the whole arrangement.
They are what people call Cigarette Pants, and I don’t know what came over me when I bought them, but whatever it was it had ideas above its station. These are the pants of Grace Kelly, of Audrey Hepburn, of Marilyn Monroe - was I drunk (again) while buying? What possessed me to think I could pull these things off?
I tried them on when they arrived, and they are indeed very nice trousers, but to be honest I just think they will lead people to have ideas about me I can only disappoint. These trousers are for people who know what they’re doing - people whose job has a title that prompts people to make the face people make when the answer makes sense. (I think people nod and say something complimentary - I wouldn’t know, this has never happened to me personally.) Whenever anyone asks me what I do my head tilts and I look at the sky and say lots of half-formed sentences that don’t really add up to anything. Things like Sometimes, other times, part-time, not sure, a bit of, occasionally, I don’t really know. These are not the answers of someone who wears these pants.
A few years ago, Igor, my genius Serbian hairdresser, convinced me to shave half my head and leave the other side big and curly. This was one of the best haircuts I’ve ever had in my life, but we ran into similar problems. That ‘Do was writing cheques I couldn’t cash. I don’t know who he thought he was dealing with when he reached for the clippers, but the upshot was that he made my hair too cool for me. For who I am, as a person. For months, every time I spoke to new people I just knew they were getting increasingly confused about how a person like me had ended up with a haircut like that. I could see them trying to do the maths in their heads as my personality and life story directly contradicted the awesomeness of Igor’s hair wizardry. Not content with feeling it in my very marrow, I ended up wearing imposter syndrome on my head.
And now I have imposter syndrome hanging in my wardrobe. I put together a few test outfits and became increasingly alarmed by the implications. The outfits were fabulous - pair those pants-of-quiet-judgement with an elastic belt, a blouse and a pair of heels and you’ve got a killer outfit on your hands, but that’s just the problem. I am not a killer. I don’t even qualify as a viable threat. Let’s just remember that I am waiting with barely-contained excitement for a pair of glorified overalls. When I imagine going out in this get-up, it seems as incongruous a fashion statement as clanking onto the Metro in a full suit of armour or sashaying onto the bus in a floor-length backless gown. If I walk into the pub in these pants all I can see is people’s pints pausing halfway to their mouths while they say, “What the hell’s happened to you? Where are you going - 1952?” I just don’t think I’ve got the nerve for it.
And because of these terrifying trousers I had to re-house all the junk that had accumulated in the bottom of the wardrobe in the Cupboard of Failed Fitness, because it was keeping the (silently disdainful) cigarette-smoking pants from hanging perfectly straight (I couldn’t leave them like that, it was an affront). So they’re just hanging there, smoke drifting out from between the wardrobe doors, waiting for me to become the kind of woman who wears cigarette pants. I find this very stressful.
16h : I made cookies. I’m not sure now they’re baked if they can really be called cookies, however. If I had to rename them it would be a scary title like they used to give to medieval swords. Filling Maker. Tooth Breaker. Dentist’s Doom. They’re basically sugar held together by more sugar and a bit of chocolate. Something went wrong. I suppose after the scones I got cocky, and this was the rebalancing of the universe. The good thing is I’ve managed to make something sweet that I don’t really want to eat. Clever.
20h34 : In an educational twist, I ended up watching two French movies on Netflix with some wine that actually had wine in it. Take that, Monday. I can hear birds singing from my balcony as it gets dark. That’s a first.
