Lockdown in Paris : Day Forty-Two
Monday 27th April
Me at 9h20 : So much to do today. Monday is a new week and all things are going to be better. I have got to do some yoga because the other day I walked to the shop and put my hip out. Then I’ve got that work to do, and I really want to get back to ancient Rome for a bit, and do some French - yes - such a good learning day ahead! Must also wash up and tidy up because that would be good. Then on any “breaks” from wholesome reading and learning things I can watch that documentary on the Nazis I started at the weekend on Netflix. Yes. Today is going to be a good lockdown day.
Me at 19h50 : I have drunk seven cups of tea and coffee and watched an entire series of Medici.
In Other News
This is day forty two. My fingers couldn’t believe that even when they were typing it. Jesus spent forty days in the desert. I wonder if he started losing his marbles by around day forty, because I am totally there. Maybe that’s why he did forty days. Maybe at Lockdown in the Desert : Day 38 he thought, “I think I’m losing it man, time to head back to Jerusalem.” Bonus being, Jerusalem was open, and he could see his twelve mates and share some bread and wine. Jesus was one lucky son-of-a-god.
I’m not saying I’m losing it, but I just watched a full 12 hours of a historical drama that is pretty flipping ropey and it never even occurred to me to even attempt doing something else. I was flatly refusing to look lockdown in the eye today, so I just had to consistently look somewhere else. It sat on the other chair - the yellow one - staring at me, unblinking, and I just REFUSED to look at it. I just played Candy Crush saga (downloading that was probably the worst of the two ideas I had today) and remained completely uninvested in any of the plot-lines playing out on the screen and then, at the end of each episode, began another.
It’s like when the fridge broke down, I did too. When those whirring mechanisms in that cool box ground to a permanent halt, I followed suit. For a while my primary concern was just eating everything that was slowly warming in there, which I suppose was an achievement in and of itself. I practically poured a pizza into the oven and left it in there first to dry out and then to incinerate to something approximating edibility. I still had to eat around the soggiest bits. I drank seven Snickers Ice creams. I cooked a chicken curry and ate it in passing, forkfuls taken from the slow cooker every time I got up to replenish my wine glass (so, often). I drank warm beer. I noticed as the dead-fridge-smell got steadily worse.
On the upside, I found the perfect replacement fridge and got the go-ahead from the landlady to order it. On the downside, they’re not starting deliveries again until the 19th May. I looked at that date uncomprehending for a full minute. More than three weeks. I quickly realised that the fridge was one of the only things I really had going for me. The fridge and the balcony were a tag-team of goodness. Now the balcony was going it alone - and it’s supposed to rain for a week from today.
All these happy realisations were made on Saturday morning at about 9am, and the whole weekend kind of went off the rails from there. A month without a fridge? I just refused to believe anyone could go a month in lockdown without a means by which to keep things not-tepid. The situation suddenly seemed unbelievably, absurdly unfortunate in a way I hadn’t allowed myself to compute before that moment. On a dreadful hangover. In a daze I ordered the fridge I wanted, because nothing was changing there. Then, in a purchase that seemed surreal in its weirdness, I bought another fridge. A mini fridge, from Amazon, that will supposedly arrive at the back end of this week. But will it? Will it. I mean. (If you just take a second to imagine that I have grabbed you by the lapels of whatever it is you’re wearing and am screaming WILL IT?! in your face like a woman possessed, you will have some idea of where I was at at 9.30am on Saturday morning).
Knowing I was at risk of a serious mood plunge for the forseeable, I decided to take matters into my own hands and watch The Pianist. If you’re thinking “Wait isn’t that the really harrowing movie about the Warsaw ghetto?” then yes, it is. I know this may seem contradictory if not self-destructive - I should state for the record that when I need a bit of a lift I do not usually reach for the Holocaust. In fact, The Pianist is a film I have deliberately avoided; somehow I’m never quite in the mood to watch humans do inhumane things to other humans. It just never feels like the time. Well - The Pianist was exactly what my brain needed to watch on Saturday at 10am. I challenge you to watch it and come out thinking you’re having an unfairly bad day. Good luck feeling you’re in some way cosmically hard-done-by when you’re leaking your way through the credits. By the end, and with considerably less salt-water in my body than I had had at the beginning, not a vestige of self-pity remained in me anywhere. I don’t have a fridge. That’s all. It’s a pain in the neck, but that’s the full extent of the situation. That’s literally it. It’s inconvenient. It is not the end of my or anyone else’s world. Fridge(s) will arrive. Whenever they arrive. That’ll be great. Until then I will live on weirder food than usual and drink red wine instead of white. Boo-bloody-hoo.
I think that’s basically what happened in the space of three days. I think that’s two things. Lost the quiz, obviously. Oh I did use the no shampoo shampoo on hair wash day! And it actually washed my hair. Miraculously. Who knew? I like to think this revelation is going to change my hair life forever, but I don’t want to get carried away so let’s not get ahead of ourselves IT’S GOING TO CHANGE MY LIFE FOREVER THIS IS IT OMG. (Too late.) Also I got drunk and ordered some dungarees from Gap. The confirmation email I got was in German. How drunk was I that I ordered dungarees from the German Gap? You just watch they’ll be lederhosen.
