Lockdown in Paris : Day Sixteen
Wednesday 1 April
10h10 : Watched Ragnarok over porridge and coffee, because I feel like the Marvel universe just has a bit more going for it at the moment. Decided to go for Ragnarok because the whole Thanos-disappearing-a-whole-bunch-of-people just seemed a bit bloody close to the bone at the minute.
11h : While watching, decided to put on a full face of make-up just for the sheer hell of it. Found this process quite therapeutic, although it does mean I’ll have to actually wash my face tonight - a pretty rare event of late. I like to think of it as getting back to nature or giving my skin a break from chemicals but really I’m just very, very lazy. Putting on my jeans this morning, realised I’ve been wearing them for two weeks straight.
11h40 : It’s my parents’ wedding anniversary today, 45 years. Imagine that. I texted them to say it’s nice to know that even after four decades of marriage you can still find new things to do together. Like celebrate your anniversary in a global lockdown.
13h20 : Stuck my head out onto the balcony to gauge wind speed and ambient temperature. Pleased to find I could put my chair back outside after a couple of days of arctic winds. Going to finish Maggie Atwood today and don’t tell anyone but I’m sneaking it onto my March Books list even though I’m fully aware it’s 1st April. Call it my April fool’s joke. A really unfunny one.
14h : Tea time and back to the notebooks, but first, finished the book. It was weird.
16h39 : Unexpected upside of lockdown : not having to ignore the daily calls of the Student Loans Company.
17h26 : Spent a bored twenty minutes flicking through online dating apps, which is a really efficient way of realising just how many people in the world you’re not attracted to (roughly 96%). 2% goes to the men who are too attractive and are therefore briefly admired and swiftly rejected. Of the remaining 2%, 1% are a “bit of a stretch” (the ones where you revisit their profile after getting a match notification the next day and think, “that’s either a technical glitch or I was swiping while drunk.”) The other 1% do not match with you. It’s a fun game and by fun what I mean is baffling and depressing. It’s also quite boring, as it seems all the men got together and decided to level the playing field by agreeing to take the same photos. Apparently the visual equation for being “An Interesting Man” is: Man on various hillsides, Man halfway up a cliff-face, Skiing Man, Man in Japan, Man shirtless in own bathroom mirror, Man in some form of musical endeavour. Strangely, Man smiling rarely makes the cut.
18h : For as long as I can remember when I’m particularly bored I have turned to the community sections of websites like Craigslist for entertainment. I thought you might enjoy a couple of my favourites from today. All typos and interesting language choices are verbatim, and just really add a certain something, I find.
The Plague IS back , in middle âges it killed a lot ,now it s ourTime , it came from china by boat , this one came from china also funny ISn t it WE will fail
I am only interested in feet and you must reply with a picture of your feet Thanks
Does anyone know a lady called Sarah who returned from Las Vegas last week. She was with a friend called Karen
Hey there, im looking for lady who can walk and stomp on me, it is very easy activity and good chance for making some extra$, experience is not needed weight requirement is max 135 lb
Looking to ski. If you have snow lemmy know :)
18h40 : Played the ukulele for a while. Can’t get over how time seems to be melding, becoming just one long stretchy cycle of breakfasts and lunches and dinners and getting up and going to bed. It’s very weird. I feel like there are somehow fewer hours in the day, that they’ve all been squdged together - where I would have thought they’d go on and on interminably, instead I blink and the day has gone.
20h05 : Watched an episode of Star Trek : The Next Generation for a hit of nostalgia. I used to watch it on Tuesday nights with my dad, and he would always get me to do the speech at the beginning - Space, the final frontier - because it made him laugh to hear me try and do Patrick Stewart’s voice.
20h17 : Was just getting the image ready to accompany this post and when I found it on my phone I realised that there’s a man waving at me from inside the Tabac and I totally missed it at the time! Now I feel absolutely dreadful. I would’ve loved to wave at someone!! I even tried waving at a woman walking up and down on her balcony but she didn’t see me, (or at least she pretended she didn’t). I missed out on distanced human contact! My heart is broken. Look, can you see him with his mask on?
21h : Time for a G&T with Laur. She told us all last week the good news that your brain doesn’t actually react differently to seeing a video face or a real face, so basically all this video calling is definitely logged as “social time” in your psyche and so consequently we’ll all go a bit less mad than we might otherwise. I mean in a bit of a Good News wasteland I’ll take that.
