Mar 27

Mar 27 Lockdown in Paris : Day Eleven

Friday 27th March

10h15 : Right. The egg hunt is on. I also need wine - it’s pub quiz night again tonight. Reckon I’ll go for a longer walk than usual, see if my legs still work when I ask more than three steps of them. It’s another beautiful day - spring is fan-faring all over the shop, pretty much unseen. Blossom is going tadaaaa!! And we can’t even ooooh at it. I thought about the cherry blossoms over by Notre Dame and whether they’ve sprung yet, then remembered that the whole park around the cathedral is closed off because of the fire anyway. It’s been a marvellous few years full of rare treats hasn’t it - just tip top. While everyone’s busy fending off Coronavirus a gigantic asteroid is probably hurtling this way unnoticed just in time for 2021.

11h30 : A picture says a thousand words. Here’s mine.

I think finding eggs made me giddy because I ended up buying just about everything else I fancied along the way. Except biscuits for aforementioned reasons. At the market shop there was a queue outside, everybody standing a good two metres apart and being let in one by one. At Franprix they’d put tape on the floor to mark where everyone should be standing. I managed to stand next to an entire display of M&Ms (peanut, my favourite) AND Maltesers (my other favourite) and by some kind of miracle they didn’t go in the basket. I’ve promised myself that if the quarantine gets extended I will treat myself to a bottle of gin.

12h15 : Determined to finish my book before the end of March because then it can go on my Books I Read in March list. I have a page in my bullet journal dedicated to books for the year and if I’m honest my favourite bit is writing in the latest title. Lists are the love of my life. So I sat on the balcony for ages drinking coffee and ploughing on with Maggy Atwood.

12h42 : Boris has got it. Let’s say no more about it, however sorely we are tempted.

13h45 : I’ve got all these clever things for lunch but my brain just keeps chanting, eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs. So I guess that’s what we’re having.

13h58 : Message from my lovely landlady to warn me that there ‘seem to be some cases’ on my floor of the building. The shadowy siege draws ever closer. If I’d known before I went shopping I’d have bought less food and more wine. Think back quickly and remember that I definitely did wash my hands with soap the moment I got in, and I haven’t touched anything public in the building for about two weeks anyway - not even the buttons on the two digicode boxes - I prod them through my jumper. I then freak myself out because I’m still wearing the same jumper, so I change into something else. Then I just sit there in My Chair (you know the one I mean) listening to Monsieur Coronavirus scraping his long fingernails down the outside of my front door.

15h15 : Sorry, that got dark real quick. Let’s make dhal. Remember how I said I was going to do that last night? Yeah that didn’t happen. I think I’m currently at risk of having too much food. I’m used to opening my fridge and having it rattle. Suddenly I’m opening it and closing it again because it’s got too many decisions in it. The thing is, what else can you do when you’re confined to one room? You make food. You eat. Occasionally you wait until you’re hungry before eating again. Then you make something else. But storage for me is a problem. My “freezer” is what most people would call their icebox - that little postbox at the top of your fridge that you use for empty ice cube trays you wish you’d filled up. For me, that’s all I have to work with. My shopping spree this morning is not helping things. So I don’t need to make dhal, but then what do I do with the increasingly sad green chillies that are waiting to be put to work? Honestly these are the kind of dull cyclical thoughts I’m finding just swimming round and round in my brain recently. So, having started out this paragraph with “Let’s make dhal” all confident and yeah! I’ve now gotten confused. Let’s not make dhal.

16h09 : Finished some more work because at least that was a puzzle I could solve.

17h24 : Sar sends us a message saying Macron has just locked us down until 15th April and I’ll be honest my first thought was of the gin I am now allowed to buy. I hope you’re not sick of this blog yet because there are now two extra weeks in the tank. What the hell am I going to be writing about on 10th April? Fair warning - by that point it’s possible I’ll be typing out The Collected Works of Shakespeare. Make your requests in the comments section below.

18h34 : My preferred activity today seems to be staring holes in things. My brain appears to have slowed to a laboured plod. To give myself something to do I offered to organise the quiz teams for tonight and tried to make it as complicated as humanly possible just to pass the time. Bear in mind that I was dividing a group of 12 people in two. Contented myself with singing along to The Score Fugees album from start to finish and dancing in my chair. Honestly this is what it’s coming to.

19h10 : I’ve been noticing that my horoscope’s tongue is firmly in its cheek at the moment. Laur and I have Susan Miller’s app on our phones and we like to screenshot the daily horoscopes and send them to each other when they allow us to text-yell things like THANKS A BUNCH, SUSAN or FAT CHANCE MILLER when she talks about how much money we’re about to suddenly come into. Today, for instance, Susan declares with a totally straight face that With Jupiter journeying through the most hidden area of your chart, you could find the most bounty in moments of retreat or contemplation. Well Susan, thanks for that insight. I’ll be sure to retreat and conteplate OH WAIT THAT’S ALL THE GOVERNMENT WILL LET ME DO. Even better, for tomorrow’s entry I feel like she’s suppressing a giggle when she reassures me that The level of contentment you’ll likely feel at home will be beautiful. I mean we can’t test the theory as to whether I’d feel content anywhere else can we, so she’s on to a sure thing there. What’s the bet she’s been up all the hours god sends re-writing these to accommodate the fact that we’re ALL IN THE HIDDEN AREA OF OUR CHARTS, SUSAN.

20h02 : The 8pm clap in the building was much healthier tonight. The guy across the courtyard who plays loud music at around 2pm every single day and drives me to distraction was already out clapping for the first time when I rushed to open my windows, and it pains me to thus upgrade my opinion of him. The fact that he never clapped helped me to fully commit to disliking him. And now he has to go and pull a stunt like this.

20h30 : Our team name is “The Dream Quaranteam.” I did not think of it.