Lockdown in Paris : Day Fifteen
Tuesday 31 March
9h45 : Woke up and got sucked into Buzzfeed quizzes because obviously I couldn’t start April not knowing if they can indeed guess my age based on the pizza I build. Off now to see which Disney princess I am according to the brunch foods I enjoy.
10h15 : I feel like for some reason perhaps yesterday’s post didn’t get sent out to you all, so in case you missed it, you can find it here.
10h40 : And on the Fifteenth Day she descended the ladder and looked upon the “kitchen”, and found that it was Good. Rejoice, she saideth unto the fridge, I have repented of my beastly ignorance and stepped verily into the light. I am completely obsessed with porridge. Praise be the oats! And then she made the porridge, and did sprinkle it with the fruit of the earth (blueberries and raspberries) and was filled with oaty goodness. Amen.
11h05 : I promised Estelle that I would start organising the writing I have in my flat, which is a bit of a daunting task given that it’s everywhere - in piles of notebooks, on random bits of paper, in folders, on serviettes or ripped-up paper bags - all this stashed in boxes and on shelves. On the other hand it’s a good non-screen activity, so I’m hoping that today I can just spend a few hours organising physical things and listening to music instead of watching moving pictures. On the other hand I really have no notion of how this organisation is supposed to work.
12h14 : A few notebooks in and unsurprisingly one theme is recurring: lists, lists, lists. In some - bright ideas I’ve had over the years that swiftly fizzled. I can gauge my own enthusiasm for each by the level of scribble. Scanning them it usually takes me a good minute or two to figure out what the hell I am listing about - entries are harried and cryptic in their delirium: one entry just reads: Croissant! As if this was a true eureka moment. God knows what I was thinking at the time. This particular list runs to three pages, with other intriguing entries including: Hare - Mathematical equations and - Random. The meaning of all these are lost forever, and I can’t say the world is missing out.
12h30 : Oh I do love coming across the “Goals” lists, it gives me something splendid to snort over. “Be able to run 5 miles” : snort. “Drink gallons of water” snort, my internal organs must resemble sun-dried tomatoes. “Organise money” : snort. “Speak French” : sob.
13h : Books and books and books of failed French attempts. Verb conjugations written over and over, perhaps six months, a year or years apart depending which notebook I’m flicking through. Je ferai, j’irai, n’oublie pas de, je viendrai te chercher à la gare. On and on and on, all these blasted things that never stuck.
13h15 : Found this, which I probably wrote at least two years ago. Such things must be celebrated. The getting dressed, the presence of milk, in date. Food, cooked. I didn’t leave the house, of course, but I did leave the armchair. For a bit. Sat at the table, made a list. Made another one. And honestly I could’ve written that today.
13h50 : I found the notebook that my friend Chris gave me 8 years ago, when I had just decided to move to Paris. He gave it to me in Adam-who-is-now-in-Canada’s kitchen, and then proceeded to deliver my very first French lesson, which is detailed in the first pages of the notebook. The numbers one to twenty, the alphabet written out phonetically, the days of the week, the months of the year, how to tell the time. The first of the next three million times I would conjugate avoir and être.
15h : I find the notebook with paragraphs about key moments in my first weeks in Paris, which seems to me 5 minutes and 50 years ago. There’s the time I took the train out of Paris pretending I wanted to look after a demonic toddler who repeatedly threw sand in my face. The story of the first room I rented in Barbès, from a woman called Françoise who I refer to as “the Ghost of Singledom Yet to Come.” In another book I’m back in Berlin, where I went for a month because I had absolutely no money and no work. I revisited the nights I spent eating crackers and ketchup and - in an inspired moment - hunting down the back of the sofa for lost change. I read and remembered how I turned up a €2 coin, over which I crowed like Gollum with the Ring. And always the same thread running through all those notebooks, right up to the present day - I haven’t the faintest idea what I’m doing.
17h31 : Watched a Netflix movie and am very much enjoying the change of scene today - instead of pottering around in the flat down there I’ve spent the day up here, on the bed, surrounded by all these notebooks I’ve not looked at in years. I like the birds-eye view from up high. It feels like a tree-house, or a den. I don’t think you’re ever too old for a treehouse or a den to spark happiness. And as a kid the whole experience definitely didn’t come with gin, so that’s a bonus. A couple of years ago I asked my landlords to add two bookshelves into the alcove, and so most of my books are up here with me - I threw a bookshelf party to celebrate their installation. Any excuse.
18h20 : My mum video-called and took me on a walk around our neighbourhood as part of her daily exercise, stopping to show me the trees coming into bloom and her favourite gardens along the way.
19h05 : How do you lose a bulb of garlic in a flat this size? How does that happen? It was there yesterday, and now I can’t find it anywhere. This kind of conundrum really can throw you, when the options are so few. I mean. Where the hell have I put it if I can’t put my hand on it in 5 seconds flat?! It’s a mystery, but I have - I have lost a bulb of garlic.
19h15 : Luckily I have not lost the gin.
20h02 : Clapping seems to get louder and more varied every night, though I’m usually the only one on my courtyard. Laur texted last night saying that her local clap-session ended with a trombone rendition of A Whole New World, and frankly I don’t think I can top that.
21h : I just read that Italy has counted 837 deaths in the last 24 hours, and I had to take a minute to just let that land in my head. We all know there are a lot of parallel worlds going on at the moment - remembering this can bring me to a staring-stop several times a day and I’m sure I’m not the only one. But those Italy figures just made me appreciate again the inherent privilege of “not being responsible for doing anything about what’s going on outside.” All the people that are keeping us going and those trying to save as many lives as possible have just as much right to safety and seclusion as I do, but I’m in here cheerfully writing about gin and they’re out there dealing in realities. Add to that those trying to support their families without work, abuse victims confined with their abusers, or isolated elderly people and what I’m saying is, I feel very lucky, and I wanted to say that aloud, because it’s worth repeating “on the daily.” (Picked that up from a Jessica Alba make-up video last night so I’m just trying it out).
That now said, I can reaffirm that I am fully committed to being the light relief so many of you have kindly said this represents in your day, but I would just hate for anyone to think I was being doggedly, belligerently, even insultingly flippant. So that’s it - speech over.
Normal programming will now resume.
