Lockdown in Paris : Day Forty-Seven

I don’t even know where to start. Today’s entry will be brief for reasons that will soon become clear. There I was, just minding my own business, getting through Day Forty-Seven as best I could. I didn’t even have a Saturday hangover, and I did successfully receive a Zara order. Things were looking pretty good. I went for milk, I called my mum for her birthday. Everything was going fine. I mean sure, I didn’t do anything after that - I sat down and I watched Endgame, and I accumulated washing up on every available surface, and I ate anything I could find. But it was ok. Everything was going ok.

Then I started watching Derry Girls and things went from ok to quite enjoyable actually. Derry Girls makes me cackle, so I started to feel quite upbeat, all things considered, like I might actually have the capacity to wash a mug, or fold some of the clothes that at this point concealed every bit of yellow that makes up the yellow chair. I started dreaming big. Then I thought of how clever I was to have purchased enough wine not only for last night’s quiz, but tonight’s family quiz too! Things were going to be ok. Soon, there would be wine.

I turned around to spot the bottle I had cleverly bought, which was waiting directly behind my head, on the desk in the Hobbit Hole. Waiting there like a benevolent beacon of hope. My eyes focused upon it, and that’s when it happened.

Thinking back on it now - once I stopped sobbing and climbed down off the balcony railing - I would love to be able to see my face at the precise nanosecond that my brain understood those two little words. Sans alcool. I think it would’ve been entertaining, one day. It’s still a bit raw now. The expletives that burst like fireworks in my mind, before I grabbed the bottle, as if getting a closer look at it would change the chemical nature of its contents. As if I could frighten that 0 all the way up to 12.5%. But the dreadful fact remained. There’s no wine in my wine.

Of all the wine bottles in all the supermarkets in all of France, I picked up this one. Now, of course, I realise the Fates of the Universe have been waiting to deliver this punchline since yesterday afternoon, having guided my hand to this very bottle in the wall - the WALL - of wine bottles available to me. They stifled their laughter as I reached for it, they snorted with mirth as I paid for it. PAID FOR IT. I parted with money for this bottle of grape juice! And then, once I lugged the thing up five flights of stairs and placed it smugly on the table, they bided their sweet time. They must have been beside themselves as they waited for me to turn around and see their hilarious joke, their little prank. Sans Alcool. 0% Alcool. None of the words or numbers you want to see in sequence on a Saturday night. That bottle of wine has been staring a hole in the back of my head all day while I went on, oblivious. Oh yes, the Fates were holding their sides, weeping and rolling around when I finally turned my head.

So that’s it. That’s when I gave up on today. I think we’ll just leave it there, shall we.