Lockdown in Paris : Day Twenty-Nine
Tuesday 14th April
6h40: For the record, I did not get up at 6h40. Uncharacteristically though, I was awake. What I really wanted to do was sleep in, because at 1.45am I was still watching YouTube videos about people renovating Chateaux. Monday is a blur of moving pictures. My eyeballs just didn’t belong to me yesterday - they went along with my soul to YouTube, lock and stock. So at 6h40 I wanted to be sleeping but instead my brain decided it would be a really good time to get mad about the last season of Game of Thrones again. Don’t ask me why, I just suddenly realised I was fuming, picking over the many deep wounds Season 8 had inflicted on my poor devoted heart. Instead of sleeping I was remembering how Scottish-Sar and I sat yelling at the TV during The Battle of Winterfell:
“Who’s that?”
“I don’t know. I can’t SEE anything. Are they joking? I think that’s Iain Glen - I can tell by the light on his forehead.” This is how we had to identify characters - from the rare gleam of light on their foreheads; the silhouettes of their fur cloaks; the whites of their eyes.
At one point Sar yelled, “Sam’s riding a dragon!!” He wasn’t, but he could have been for all we could see of what was going on. And then That Throne Decision. Let’s not even get started on that, lest I sleep not a wink tonight. Livid I was. Livid before daybreak.
9h15 : Luckily my incandescent rage about a fantastical TV drama burned itself out, and I was able to sleep until a more reasonable hour. It’s surprisingly exhausting, doing absolutely nothing. Yesterday I didn’t even manage to get dressed, so the fact that I’m already up with a cup of tea in one hand and my Kindle in another is a major step forward. My pro-active energy on Monday was at such a low ebb I didn’t even bother watching Macron do his thing at 8pm, relying on the magic of the grapevine to give me the highlights in due course. The highlights came in via video-call shortly after his address - 11th May he says, what’s another month between (not seeing your) friends? So on we go. The social experiment continues. Divorce lawyers the world over must have pound signs in their eyes.
12h : Having spent at least 48 hours doing tap-all, I’m slowly building back up to actually doing things during the day, so for the last three hours all I’ve done is hang out with Cromwell and Henry VIII and drink coffee and tea on rotation so as not to rush it. Yesterday my sole achievement was crocheting an entire ball of wool, twice. This is because I realised I had made a mistake about three rows in. Unfortunately I realised this after completing perhaps 35 more rows. Figuring I had the time, I unravelled the whole lot and began again. Purgatory has arrived on earth.
13h10 : I’m going outside! I need to post some vintage torchons to Brooklyn. There is not a tick box for this on the form we have to fill in.
14h15 : It’s cold again. Bright blue skies but a keen wind. I was underdressed and moving felt weird. I found myself watching my legs go by in the reflections of windows, two lines with shoes on them striding out, moving much more quickly and for much longer than I am used to moving. Give it another month and I’ll be staring down at my legs in confusion.
15h30 : Watched the latest episode of Belgravia. Surprise surprise, it’s still the worst shade of beige. They did a “shock revelation” at the end that I’d called halfway through the second episode, which gave me the opportunity to feign astonishment and say, “NO WAY. You’re JOKING!” in my most facetious tone, which was honestly the highlight of the whole experience.
16h05 : In case you are in need of a smile - this little guy is sure to oblige.
17h10 : Decide to watch The Mummy for the thousandth time while pottering about, because I never do get tired of Brendan Fraser’s enormous face. I spend much of the time saving the actors the trouble of saying their own lines, which is reason #678 that it’s best I quarantine alone. My friend Mouse and I used to watch it in her parents’ lounge, the surround-sound of which used to scare us witless when we watched Gladiator. You always expected an axe to come whizzing past your ear or a painted Gaul to appear from behind the sofa. When we weren’t watching Gladiator or The Mummy, we ate microwave Balti curries and then drank shots of Bacardi and danced to Smashmouth’s All Star. Twenty years later I still video our favourite bits of the film and send her clips, which I have done every single time I’ve watched it since 1999.
19h45 : Sometimes it’s a relief when a series you’ve been bingeing is finally over and you’re released from its clutches. My Luther Fest ended yesterday afternoon and by then I was more than ready to escape the world of murder and stress. I had already realised that in the moments before falling asleep, the weird goings-on in my brain were all fraught with some kind of menace. I found it impossible to think of something nice and benign - I would suddenly find the characters in my mind had turned into masked murderers, or were sliding out from behind doors wielding screwdrivers. Just as I was about to drift off, my conscious mind would resurface to protest when my subconscious sent another clown-mask with a six-inch knife wandering by. At this, poor Subconscious would turn back to the prop-room of my mind and find only three-days’ worth of knives, ropes, blood and dread. Poor thing had nothing else to work with.
20h03 : Plan to end the day reading and listening to my favourite French-chilling-out playlist, which in case you are in need of the same can be found here on Spotify.
