Lockdown in Paris : Day Twenty-Four
Thursday 9th April
8h25 : Got up at a time with an eight at the beginning!! I am very proud. Nothing on my agenda today except read and sit on the balcony - not that there’s much else clamouring for my attention.
10h46 : Each chapter of The Cider House Rules is like a short novel, but I’ve finished one of them before 11am because apparently that’s what can happen when you get up at a time with an 8 at the beginning. There are four chapters left, and I aim to read at least one more of them today. Hold on to the edge of your seats folks, this kind of update might be as thrilling as today gets.
11h Laur and I are planning an undercover operation. Her hot plates have blown (twice) and are now unfixable, meaning she only has an “oven” to cook with - which when you’re stuck at home for god-knows how long is just asking a bit much. As you may remember, I discovered a single electric hot-plate back in the early days of lockdown when I still had something resembling constructive energy. So this evening at 19-hundred-hours, we will rendezvous at an unspecified location (I mean, it’s specified for us. Obviously.) and I will throw the hotplate at her from 1.5 metres away. Slightly concerned that the sight of a familiar real-life face I haven’t seen for almost a month could lead to a complete emotional breakdown that sees me throwing my arms around her knees and begging her not to leave me come what may. Will try and channel the steely determination of the French Resistance instead. Might wear a beret.
12h30 : Do you know what, some foods are just stressful to have around. Take the two avocados I bought earlier this week. They’ve been sitting there on the table for days invoking such gastronomic tension that today it was a relief to actually rid myself of one by smashing it onto toast. It didn’t matter whether I wanted to eat it or not, whether I felt like eating avocado toast, I was compelled to do it - the question of whether or not I would miss the perfect window of peak-avocado-ripeness and ruin everything simply got to be too much for me. I think I ate it in triple time just to have done with the whole stress of it and I felt such a rush of relief after. One avocado I can handle but two is just too much pressure at a time like this.
13h15 : Two chapters of Cider House Rules left. I don’t know who’s going to follow Irving but I don’t envy them.
15h25 : Today I did something that I hardly ever, ever do - despite my deep affinity with the sleepless realm. I had a nap. Naps are a dangerous pastime for me, because usually I wake up completely discombobulated and also ravenous. So not only am I useless for the rest of the day but I annihilate anything edible before I’ve even reached full consciousness. Luckily this nap didn’t run on too long. This is because I was woken by a woman apparently in the process of parting with her last nerve. Taking into account the volume, pitch and incoherence of her blood-curdling tirade, I can only assume she has spent the last three weeks in close-quarters with someone indescribably trying. She screamed like a woman possessed - words at first, and then once words failed her, just one long and really quite incredible rage-filled scream, drawn straight from the fiery pits of hell. Very much awake by this point, all I could do was marvel at the glorious abandon of it. I mean she was screaming, right from her toenails. I didn’t fear for the woman herself - this was a guttural banshee scream, the kind of sound someone makes perhaps once in a lifetime, having been pushed to the very brink of sanity - but I certainly did fear for whoever she was screaming at. You wouldn’t have seen me for dust. So that was my alarm clock. “Good lord, woman.” I said aloud to my pillow. Then I got up, descended the ladder and ate all the remaining cake.
16h : Well, an ambulance / the police have not arrived, so either - against all the odds - the person at whom the scream was directed does not have a knife protruding from their ribs, or the screamer is otherwise occupied chopping them into tiny pieces. Either way the authorities have not been called, though honestly from that scream I really can’t imagine how someone didn’t end up meeting their maker.
18h35 : Start pacing around my flat as if I really am about to go on a covert mission, even though I don’t have to leave for another half an hour. Put my shoes on, even though I don’t have to leave for another half an hour. Do my online attestation form half an hour early and consider ticking the box about helping vulnerable people, because Laur is very vulnerable to not being able to fry potatoes at the weekend. Remember to get the bin ready to take out because yesterday I forgot and very nearly punched myself in the face when I realised (obviously only when my heel hit the ground floor - ALWAYS then, and never a step before). Take out the recycling too, to cultivate an air of normality for the spies I imagine lurking around every corner ready to leap out and say, “Aha! Zis attestation eet sayz ‘exersize’ and yett, I see you ‘av a big bag - why eez ziz?” Obviously I am in an episode of ‘Allo ‘Allo.
20h46 : Mission accomplished I repeat : mission accomplished. We met at the Canal Saint Martin, which is just on the outer fringes of the 1km-from-home we’re allowed, with some heavy artistic license. Laur gave me a bottle of wine and a Kinder Egg and so now I can Do Easter and I didn’t think about how nice that was in case it was a slippery slope to uncontrollable sobbing. I think I yelled the whole conversation because I am now accustomed to screaming into Zoom or Whatsapp Video and have forgotten how to conduct myself in real-life. The canal is obviously a big favourite with The Runners, and I’ll be honest my eyes were a bit freaked out by so many moving objects. It was a bit stressful - everyone was on the move. For three weeks I’ve been in a room in which the only thing that moves is me - and as I watch this from the inside I don’t really notice it all that much. But suddenly I couldn’t keep track of all the moving parts. Are we all going to lose our minds when we’re let out? I can too easily imagine just sliding along streets with my back to the wall, wild-eyed and sweating.
21h14 : I think I’ve earned a gin and tonic. Oh at least one. Decide to finish up the blog on the balcony, so I light a couple of candles and wonder why I don’t do that more often.
