Lockdown in Paris : Day Ten
Thursday 26th March
9h20 : We’ve hit the double figures people! Let’s dance like no-one’s watching! Trust me when I say you should definitely hit play on this before proceeding at your leisure.
10h43 : Celebrated the 10th day of lockdown by doing ten push-ups. That doesn’t mean I’ll be doing 11 tomorrow and so-on, don’t get any crazy ideas. Most of you will have gathered that fitness is not my forte. Ironically, before lockdown I was doing better on that score than ever before in my life. I was a Classpass addict: three cardio classes a week, a pink water bottle with a built-in straw, an almost shudderless side-plank. One night I went to two consecutive classes in two different studios: that was my peak. You now find me in a very, very comfortable trough. I know now that for me, exercising in a group is the only way I exercise. I need to be surrounded by fellow sufferers and make awkward eye contact with the instructor to stop me from giving up. Giving up is my default setting, so a grinning leotard on YouTube just isn’t going to cut it. There’s nothing to stop me just lying on the floor breathing while she says, “Great work guys!” She doesn’t know I’m giving her a thumbs up from the carpet.
11h39 : Took my first antihistamine today - my eyes have been itching like mad but I have no idea why, given that it’s not pollen season yet. When I was about 24 my body decided that what it had really been missing for the first quarter of its life was a raging allergy to the natural world. Year after year it went about correcting this oversight, diligently getting better at it every spring and summer, until I became a snivelling, puffy eyed, wheezing mess from March to September. It’s grass, apparently, that my clever body decided to take against. Nature’s carpet. The most abundant bloody surface on planet earth after salt water. (Probably?) I’m not going to carp on about this because obviously hayfever is the least of anyone’s problems for the forseeable but I will just say this: hayfever is an affliction I never truly appreciated until my body decided to humble me by getting it. So if I was flippant about it as a child (as I slo-mo frolicked through long grass with nary a care in the world), I apologise, and if you suffer from it I hope that like me you have by now curated the ultimate defence system : Drugs. Lots and lots and lots and lots of drugs.
14h39 : Another load of work done, a bit of Vitamin D snatched out of the sky and about five cups of tea drunk. I even got together the most boring of all the world’s documents to apply for financial help, which you can do from the 1st April. Bank statements, tax returns, invoices, letters of ok nevermind that’s quite enough of that.
14h51 : I have had a request, and thank goodness too since it gives me something else to do. Anna - hello Anna! - has, so I’m told, been puzzling over how exactly my flat is arranged, and so obviously I decided to draw a map. To scale. Everything is going to be to scale. I’m going to measure everything. With a dressmaking tape-measure, so. This might take a bit. Anna - this is for you! Bear with me.
17h11 : Well, 2 hours and 20 minutes later and I’ve done it! That’s the most fun I’ve had in a week. Not to mention the most exercise. And maths. The guy in the flat opposite saw me measuring the window and waved, laughing his head right off. So. Drum roll please.
Voilà!
Looks pretty manageable right? Not bad for 15m2? On a side note, in France you can’t count any space under a slanted roof in the total square metre-age, which is why this flat is technically 12m2, because all the stuff in the last third of the flat near the window is under the curved rooftops overhead. Paris studio trivia for you there. Anyway now you have a clear idea of my tiny flat. But do you really? I mean, even when I’m looking at that diagram above I’m thinking - ach, that’s plenty of space - look at all that space! So I thought - I know what will help. A crucial missing ingredient : me.
And yes, I am to scale. I measured my arms and my legs and everything, though I was wobbling a lot because I was crying laughing at the time. Anyway I feel that helps immeasurably. As you can see, nothing in my flat is ever more than three steps away from me. I can be in the Kitchen one second and in bed five seconds later. I mean if nothing else it’s efficient.
18h15 : Sweet potato wedges are in the oven. Going to make dhal in the slow-cooker tonight. I think I’m eating better during lockdown than I have in the last three months.
17h49 : My best mate Gary-in-Liverpool texts to say that the Guardian have ranked Tom Hanks’s films and do I think we can guess their top ten? We try. We fail. But to be fair how can Captain Philips be on there and The Money Pit not even make the top 25?! I’m not buying. Tom Hanks is our favourite. Let’s be honest he’s the world’s favourite. We always go for him in the Movie Game (instructions to follow) and our record so far is 43. That was a golden day.
The Movie Game
You can play the movie game with two or more people. Work as a team, it’s much more fun. Pick an actor or actress. Then, “bid” for how many films they appear in that you think you can name as a group. You CANNOT think about this for very long at all before you say a number - some rotter will start counting on their fingers before even making a bid (get new friends). At the very least they should immediately have to buy the next round. Just say a number. The rule is, the highest number said aloud HAS to be the one you all aim for, so don’t get silly. Once there are no more bids - begin. NO SEQUELS.
Here’s a top tip from Gaz and me - if you get stuck, start dressing your chosen film star in costumes - did they ever wear a spacesuit? Were they a cowboy? How about a soldier’s uniform? Big poofy dress? Stick ‘em in a tux and see what happens. You’d be amazed where this technique can get you. Movie buffs will happily spend hours playing this game. I know we have.
20h02 : I was a lone clapper! Yusssss. Then someone must have heard me and come out because I heard a second clapper. Thanks for not leaving me hanging, second clapper. G-in-Manchester tells me that lots of people turned out round her way for the First Clap tonight, so that’s good to hear!
20h49 : I’m supposed to be getting up to go to the shops tomorrow morning - eggs? Please? - so we’ll soon see how that pans out. When it comes to my particular ‘road to hell’ we got past paving it with good intentions years ago. The bugger’s got underfloor heating, Swarovski chandeliers and a red carpet, so I’m not holding my breath.
On a technical note, some lovely people were struggling with commenting on posts, which should now be fixed. All nice comments are welcome. Not nice ones are best kept inside one’s head, I find. Words to live by.
