Monday
Oh ok. I see. So now not only is there no electricity, gas or petrol (by any reasonable affordable standard), no farm workers, no wheat, no viable prime minister or working government, no NHS beds, no rape convictions, no opposition (although Britain thanks you for your work, Martin Lewis and Mick Lynch, and hopes to see the day you stage a joint coup), also no water. Which has the merit of consistency at least. The drought – which we’re told could last until October – is very 2022, you know?
As well as the fact that there are still practically no hose bans. Because it would reduce the profits of the water companies, and because the only wet spots left in the country are the nuts and spines of the ministers who should be demanding that the companies prevent the waste of what we can rightly call the most precious resource on Earth.
Oh well. At least I was able to form an almost closed system in this household. Flushing water straight into the garden (I think there’s some way to use it in the toilets but I haven’t YouTubed it fully yet), no tubs, plastic crates for collecting and butts leaning against everything in case it rains resume. It’s almost fun once you have the right mindset. But of course, we don’t work for the shareholders here.
Tuesday
I went to my first yoga class today. I’ve been deeply opposed to this practice since I came to the realization at 30 that women didn’t look like that in leggings because they went to yoga—they went to yoga because they looked like that in leggings. It was very liberating. But now all my perimenopausal friends swear by it and I gave in.
“I haven’t moved in 45 years,” I tell my teacher. She is laughing. I do not know why.
We’re getting started. She looks worried. “No, bend over,” she says. “Here.”
“I’m not bending over there,” I say.
“Everybody does,” she says.
“No-uh,” I say.
She maneuvered me into the gentlest position in her bending book. The air fills with crunching sounds and bone dust. She steps back to inspect her work and I topple over like Del Boy falling over the bar.
We agree I’ll be back after six months of swimming loosened my joints. We both know I’m lying.
“Truth serum, Liz? Imagine!’ Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Wednesday
Dad’s birthday. We were going to go out, but a) it’s too hot and b) he’s not stable enough on the leg he recently had removed and reattached with a new hip, which has to be trusted. So the grandson and I are going to Mom and Dad’s for the day.
“I like it at Grandma and Grandpa’s,” my son says wistfully. “It’s so peaceful there.”
“Quiet?” I say, thinking of my mother, who hasn’t sat down since 1977 and is known as Noisemaker 2000.
“Yes,” he says. “Grandma is always busy, but you can just join or leave her. And grandpa is always silent and will cook sausages for me.
“I see,” I say, though my experience with Grandma’s busyness is a little different. I was molded into the crucible of shouted commands to bring in hammers, levels, two-by-fours, light armored divisions, or whatever else she urgently needed to complete an unexpectedly unruly project/annexation. He has only known her since her mid-70s, when she has only the energy and ambition of a 30-year-old.
“And the house is tidy, and you know when it’s mealtime, and they never have a writing deadline, and I get pudding,” he says.
“And that’s enough of you,” I say.
Thursday
I met someone. Someone new. We haven’t had much in common yet, but there’s just something between us, you know? She makes me laugh, she makes my day when our paths cross – there’s just something between us. yes I want to make a move. I would like to become friends.
How, I wonder, does this happen? I’ve never actively made friends before. Go with a goal, I mean, to befriend someone. Hitherto it had always been a semi-forced result of circumstances. At school you just hang out with anyone who doesn’t beat you too often. University – bookshelf contents and drinking habits most closely match yours. At work you bond with anyone you find crying in the toilet and vice versa. And if you have children, all local mothers become, if not friends, your companions in trouble. I’ll see your war buddies and raise you two women with fourth degree tears any day of the week.
But now I want to make this new woman my friend, with whom I have none of these relationships. What to do? Ask her out for coffee? I don’t know if we’ll get along well enough one-on-one to make it worth cleaning house. Suggest a visit to the cinema or theatre? If she agrees, I’ll know we’re not meant to be. Just keep enjoying our occasional crossing paths and hope she comes up with something? Overall, this seems to be the best way to go.
“How am I – how am I, THE POPE – already in hell?” Photo: Vatican Media/Ansa/ZumaPress/Rex/Shutterstock
Friday
I finally got around to listening to The Silent Mind, presented by psychologist and author Charles Fernihoe on Radio 4, which was inspired by a recent viral tweet that read: “I realized today that not everyone has an internal monologue and it ruined my day. “
I discovered this phenomenon at university. There were a lot of us lined up in the hallway outside the bar late one night, pretty tired, a little drunk, and one of us sighed and said, “Don’t you just want the voice in your head to shut up for a lonely minute?” Half the congregation murmured hearty agreement. .The other half looked on in utter bewilderment.I have never seen an abyss of understanding split a group in two so quickly or so deeply.
I was probably obviously in the group that is constantly harassed by an inner voice. My best friend was in the other. When he wasn’t talking or thinking deliberately (“Thinking, thinking, you bloody idiot! You should become a writer. Do better! Why are you like that? No, I won’t shut up. Who are you to tell me what to do?”) – there is silence.
We thought “Them” were crude, primitive creatures doomed to a life of pointless, inconvenient labor. In fact, they became successful, well-balanced and even better-rewarded individuals, while “We” fell into depression, neuroses and freelancing. Truly the unexplored life is worth much more.
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