Lockdown in Paris : Day Thirty-Eight
Thursday 23rd April
7h40 : I know! Getting up at a time with a seven at the beginning? Unheard of. But up I am, making the first cup of tea of the day (always the best one), and ready to conquer day 38 of this madness. Got my notification from the government that my application for financial help has been approved and will be paid, and felt an upsurge of love for France and its brilliance. To be able to get through this without hyperventilating about rent or accumulating debt is a miracle to me that surpasses even my little balcony. Vive la France I say.
8h15 : Texted Time-Team-Gabs to catch up, since I knew she would be up drinking coffee and probably watching Time Team. She loves Time Team. She is American and one day over a third Negroni she said “Oh my god I’ve discovered this ancient programme on YouTube and I’m absolutely addicted to it, it’s called Time Team. I’m on series four,” and I nearly spat my Negroni all over her. Time Team? As in - Baldrick Tony Robinson stuck in a wet field finding a bit of pot and going into raptures over it Time Team? She was thrilled to hear I knew of it, and spent the next five minutes doing really (really) bad English accents while saying things like “Well oi don’t know Toneee shall we go and ask geophys’ to have a look COME ON! This is terribly exoitinggg,” and I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard since. I mean Time Team of all things. Who’d’ve thunk it? Another favourite of hers (and latterly mine) is Alien Theory on Netflix. We watched an episode once over a second bottle of wine way-back-when and I got absolutely addicted to listening to people explain to me that there was definitely a temple on the Moon. I love hearing the super-dramatic narrator ask seemingly acceptable questions like, “But what if...the Greek and Roman gods….” (dramatic montage of Greek and Roman gods) “...weren’t so mythical, AFTERALL.” I just straight-up love it. I love watching these batshit people in tweed suits with mental hair say with absolute conviction things like, “...extraterrestrials would be more inclined to come to these energetic places not just because it would make their technology work better but because their bodies are going to vibrate at a frequency that’s more appropriate to the world they inhabit.”
11h15 : I am going out to try and rescue my wandering parcel and stock up on supplies.
12h30 : Success!!! My parcel and I have finally found one another. It was not at the first post office I tried, I should’ve known - it being the nearest one to my flat French postal rules dictate that I would not find it there. (Too easy.) I gave the little postal slip (or the clue, I like to call it) to the postal-man behind the counter and he scanned it and announced, “Bonnes Nouvelles!” This means “Good News!” so I looked happy and I waited for the good news and he looked at me and I looked at him and I wondered why we both appeared to be waiting. “Bonnes Nouvelles.” He said again, but this time more like a question. “Good news?” Well, I thought, this little postal game gets more mysterious by the minute! I am in a veritable Agatha Christie here! But then I twigged that he meant “Bonne Nouvelle” which is a Metro station nearby where there is also a post office. Poirot - step aside. And off I trundled to Bonne Nouvelle and there, I found my parcel. Victory is mine! I played the game and won. Take that, La Poste! Then I went supply shopping and what treats did I get? What treats didn’t I get? Snickers ice creams! Win. Lager and lemonade to make panaché, which gives ‘lager shandy’ a lot more, dare I say, panache, guffaw. Mozzarella cheese and Tyrell’s crisps and Coke Zero and ALL the good things. I even got a fancy cake from the bakery yes FROM THE BAKERY. Things are looking up.
13h : Ate my first fresh baguette of lockdown. It was just as magnificent as I remembered. Next couple of hours is sunbathing and reading and that’s that.
15h10 : It was a bit suspiciously quiet in the flat when I went back in to transition to the Late Afternoon portion of the day and it soon became terrifyingly clear why that was. “Oh, God.” I said, as I approached the fridge, ear-first. I stood there, completely still for a very long, very silent amount of time, waiting, hoping, not breathing. Nada. Rien.
My fridge is dead.
Le frigo est mort.
Can you actually believe this? I’m just curious because I absolutely CANNOT. I mean I’m out here on the balcony, on my third beer, (they’re going to get so warm so quickly, what else can I do but drink them all in quick succession? There are seven of them) and I can’t believe that I’m writing down that on the hottest day of the year, six weeks into a quarantine situation, my fridge has just - QUIT. Just. Left me to face this alone with lukewarm everything. What a betrayal. Who on god’s green earth is going to bring me a fridge in the world’s current state? Are fridges even a thing one can get one’s hands on, at the minute? I started googling things about fridges in the hope that I could fix it (by something more ingenious than unplugging it and plugging it in again, which I tried five times). I’m quite good at fixing things, and am more than happy to take things apart on the understanding that when I put them back together again they have to work. Unfortunately, symptomatically speaking, my fridge is apparently suffering from a “broken compressor start relay” (I know - the things you can learn in desperation ey?) and funnily enough I don’t think they sell “compressor start relays” at Monoprix. I texted my landlady all this marvellous news while I ate my third Snickers ice cream (they’re melting as I type - they were supposed to be the biggest treat of April and now they’re little hand-grenades of anxiety sitting inside the belly of a bomb of anxiety in the middle of my bloody kitchen! It’s like - anxiety Russian dolls!) Yes, my fridge is just sitting there, a corpse in white. Rendered inert. A glorified airtight cupboard. Brilliant. Oh fate, you sly bugger. What a curve ball. And it’s set to be 26°C tomorrow. GOOD-O!
18h56 : Going to have a shower and then cook something and ignore the silence of the fridge. And probably have another beer let’s be honest. Bless it, that fridge has served me well. Right up to this very, very, inconvenient moment.
20h49 : Decided the only way I could win back the day was to tidy up everything I could get my hands on. I washed up like my sanity depended on it, which it might’ve. I hoovered - it must be said - a little frantically. I feel like I did a lot of standing still while staring at a fixed point with my hands on my hips, which is never a good sign. But whateverrrrr, people went for centuries without cold beer didn’t they, what have I to really complain about? The lukewarm milk will be going straight into a cup of coffee anyway! The chicken…will…be eaten tomorrow! Cheese is….better at room temperature! Frozen pizza? Conveniently defrosted. Ice cubes? Well who wants hard water anyway? And at least I get to wash my hair with the new-shampoo-with-no-shampoo in it tomorrow, right? RIGHT! (She screamed). And just in case we needed another shining glittering mesmerising bright side to this whole affair, it’s just one more lovely thing that’s joined the ranks of quotation-mark features in my flat. Waheyyy! I’m now the proud owner of a “fridge!” It’s over there just beneath its pal the “oven” in the “kitchen” in my “flat”.
If anyone needs me I’ll be in “bed.”
