Blue Teapot by Clarence Major
Lockdown 3 has removed any urge to rise above circumstances and instead really lean into a life from the duvet. Have sympathy for the kettle because of the countless cups of tea and decaff tea and coffee and decaff coffee it makes daily, the stress of which has literally turned it white. I feel a sense of something social accomplished when i descale it weekly, of something practical achieved that affects the outside world.
Given how much time i have to think about what i could wear everyday and putting an outfit together, i find myself defaulting to the comfort of a uniform.Wearing jeans feels deeply cruel when i can just set a 30 minute wash everyday to primp my fleece hoody and Somerville sweatpants. 30 minute gentle wash i mean - we’re not animals after all.
My smart phone has recently begun some disturbing image pop-ups in the photo library. ‘Look what you were doing 4 years ago!’ “Look what you were doing a year ago!’ with pictures of a life that feels ten years removed - of friends captured in the light of warmly lit dinners in the midst of three different conversations, their faces framed behind looming plates and wine glasses in a table level shot. And these pictures show up now when i am hunching to take yet another picture of an infinitesimal movement made by the petal of a lily in the vase. The smart phone is smart like that kid in school who tells you that your favourite teacher died in a knock knock joke. Struggling to get the timing and message to align.
Last week i was wrapping the blingy green sequin dress I bought for E.’s now postponed wedding, in mulmul and storing it and I could not imagine when i’d be able to get that dressed up again. All the chat about keep the calm, carry on, the roaring twenties of hedonism will be here soon seem deeply unrealistic. I worry about the atrophying social skills that will make every single daytime encounter feel like one of those hungover mornings where you get up and want to text an apology to everyone for what you said in throes of mass uninhibition. Except this time it’s about texting everyone about all you said out of excruciating inhibition and lack of social practice. Bambi brains - freshly birthed from the doorway of houses under pandemic lockdowns and tottering and careering around innocuous seeming social landmarks.
But then in the middle of hammering out a report, i thought to how much i loved my writing appointments with my postcode cafes and had an image of myself dressed up in finery for a morning cup. So i told E. that whenever her wedding happens i hope she doesn’t mind if, vaccine willing, i inaugurate my bridesmaid dress with outrageously coloured shoes and a velvet blazer at 10am in a morning in a coffee shop.
A silver lining though is being able to consistently work from bed or couch. The newfound glorification of the act by the Beeb on a call in show and on the whatnots news makes me hope that people will normalise it and thus as always be late to but at least present in that room in the party where discussion has been going on for quite a while on how ridiculously fetishized the 9-5, morning = productivity culture is.