#58 Plan_C - What are you thinking about?
Nothing much has happened but my mind is still working overtime with thoughts.
I bought a small rectangular bar of garlic butter to make my morning bagel interesting. An old friend always had it in the fridge and I never understood the appeal. For the past few days I have added it to bagels and roasted tomatoes even though it is hard to melt. I remembered why I didn’t understand it and will not purchase it again. This was a pleasing diverting butter escapade all the same.
I have tried using pre-ground coffee in my French press for the first time in months. I have been grinding Columbian beans every morning in a John Lewis grinder that was gifted to me. The noise it makes is jarring and I don’t think I grind it for long enough to make it really small because the sustained noise is Too Much for 8.15am. I have a mid-sized press that claims to make 2 cups but it doesn’t it makes 1 large cup. So, I tried the pre-ground stuff again. It is stronger and this is a different kind of Too Much but so far none of the caffeine panic that sometimes happens has ruined my day therefore the coffee experiment has no consequences.
I sometimes walk to far away supermarkets for something to do and then I feel like I am permitted to buy something frivolous like I am on holiday. I walk away with turmeric drinks or artisanal bread or cereal that I won’t eat because it gets into my bones and makes me feel lethargic in a way like I attempted an exercise class and demanded something of my body that it does not want to give. Sometimes I pay and think that was a silly amount of cash to spend on 4 items but I appease myself by thinking of all of the Pret coffees I haven’t bought and justify having £10 olive oil that tastes no different to all of the olive oil I have ever eaten but has a nicer bottle and well designed label.
On Fridays I try to mark the end of the week with an alcohol-based treat. I research measures and ingredients and go to another far away supermarket and procure the items. I justify buying tequila with agave already in rather than a bottle of agave syrup but I know this is a cop out. Then I come home and salt the rims on glasses and make pale pink sour drinks to show my laptop I am still here and that I am fun enough despite everything. I remain steadfastly anti - fruit and cream based mixed drinks. I drink like Don Draper on one and I am fine with it. Give me your sour drinks in sturdy tumblers.
I listen to 6music and mark the day passing as we change hands over hosts throughout the day and I marvel that people ever text in to say, “loving the tunes, keep them coming.” I ponder these peoples lives and wonder if they haven’t got Spotify or Alexa and the world of songs that they can literally yell for at any point of the day. I continue to ponder if they are better or worse than me in this regard. I think people who choose the slow-lane are admirable and it makes me feel bad.
I buy books at a rate that is impossible to keep up with and then I get annoyed at myself for having a cumbersome pile of things that aren’t doing their purpose – to spread the beauty of their stories and insights into curious minds - instead of their real purpose which is to make me look clever and interesting to other people or in the background of calls. We need to drop the pretence but we can’t because then what would be on the shelves around me? DVDs? Come on.
I read the news online and skim read articles that seem proper and earnest about the economy, the coral reef, the poles flipping, the experience of migrants, the efficacy of a medical trial for an unsexy disease that I am not blighted with. I read with fervour and attention “articles” about slightly wider jeans and how Kim Kardashian is handling her divorce through toting some unattractive low slung leather pants. I used to have an attention span, I think I even used to be smart. Now I am a half-formed opinion that The Guardian said but a podcast disagreed with.
In the evenings I trade long message threads with friends discussing men that may or may not be dastardly and no conclusions are ever made. They are all Schrodinger’s dastardly bastards.
I re-watched all of Sex and The City because I can do that. I am the age they are in the show now and I have different feelings that when I watched in my teens and my twenties. Everyone wrings their hands about it all and concludes that it was ground-breaking. I agree it ushered in new ways of commercial story-telling and has seeped in to my brain against my conscious will. When I see Carrie do something neurotic and ill-advised and I inherently understand it - I don’t like that and what it means to be me. She makes me think I should wear all my slip dresses when I can go outside.
I am a Miranda, I think. Carrie is a brat, I think. Samantha is progressive and the wisest, I think. I do not think about Charlotte at all.
I now have indoor shoes and I am both happy and sad about that.
I read those money diaries they publish and they always make me feel weird but not because they are talking about money but because a 27 year old earns £90k and I do not know how people can think like that. I am disgusted and jealous all at once. This is what it means to be brought up as New Labour I think.
I give out encouraging advice but sometimes my brain says, “I don’t know what you should do. I visit your problems like the way I visit a theme park. It is something to do but I am always pleased when I can go home and nobody wants my inept advice on maintaining the rides.”
I was once so scared on top of a Ferris wheel and I have no idea what I was scared of, but I think it was the swaying and that awful feeling when you are high up and the air that was still on the ground is moving a lot when in the sky. I think that might be a metaphor for my life but I hope it isn’t.
The Ferris wheel on the quayside in Newcastle will be call the Whey Aye. This entertains my Dad a lot who appears to forget and be exactly the same amount of delighted every time he remembers.
I ordered a short gingham dress for a body and time that I am not currently in. I think this is real evidence that I am an optimist.
I will be one of the last people to be vaccinated because I am low risk and not even sure where my doctor surgery is located but, variants pending, I will drink cold white wine in a bar with samey grey painted walls, plant strewn tables and exposed light fittings and this could make me feel alive and relevant to my camera roll again.
I loved this article and wish this movement had been around when I was at university. I recall sitting in seminars while a stupid know-nothing but has dad was high up in some weird conglomerate that made pet food told me that “locals can’t get in to the bars I can.” Which was not only untrue and insulting to me (a local) but exactly how exclusive did he think Ikon nightclub with it’s £3 treble vodkas was?!
My entire experience at university was full of these micro-experiences of asshattery by spoiled young people with frankly, thick opinions they felt fine loudly asking in packed lecture halls because their 7-people-a class private school drummed in to them that they were special. Inevitably these souls are running the show all over the place now. Lord give me strength and let us hope that Bertie had a life-changing experience that made his less horrendous.
There are plenty of very privileged people who are kind and smart but accidently say condescending things, like congratulating you on getting out of your situation or tell you like it is a compliment that nobody can tell where you are from. Man, you can stop with that shit any time you want please.
The harshest lesson I learnt was that meritocracy is a myth and my hard work and dedication to change my circumstances meant jack shit. Eat the rich. I will have mine with chips and we can all have a slice of humble pie.
Some tackle this by disguising their accent or hiding their family circumstances, says Pender. “There’s a problem when people from working-class backgrounds start assimilating into professions and don’t talk about where they have come from. Because I work at a law firm I have been trying very hard to be honest about my background. Otherwise you are just perpetuating the perception that people from ordinary backgrounds can’t succeed.”
Excellent article on it here.
An excellent analysis of the 2000s and the treatment of young celebrity. Kale writes well on open season on young famous women and just how batshit it all appears to us now. It confirms my long-held belief that when people can make money off you - the corruptive darkness comes right behind it.
Excellent writing from Sirin Kale here.
I want this elegant black jumpsuit to weave through crowds in a European city in. This has the vibe of those 2000s make-over shows that fooled me in to believing that my adulthood would require a lot of transitional basics that would take me from the office to informal but elegant dinners with the addition of a large necklace. Basically, lies.
This has the most Kelly Kapowski vibes I have ever seen and I want it badly. I think a small part of my brain is dedicated to looking like a hybrid of Kelly and Jet from The Gladiators aka the most beautiful women on the telly when I was 6 years old. Old habits die hard I guess.
Poet and wordsmith of lyrical unspooling truths, Plath just nails my current feelings here.
