A year ago today, 18th March 2020, I bought a picnic table. I bought a picnic table because it was the largest (cheapest) table I could find for my then 17yo to use as a desk for her A Level revision. I set it up, she spread out her work. A history essay. Then Boris spoke.
‘I can announce today…that after schools shut their gates from Friday afternoon, they will remain closed for most pupils until further notice…exams will not take place as planned in May and June.’
The picnic table was cleared, but not for a few days, and only after the 17yo had finished that essay, because she didn’t know what else to do. The following week it was commandeered by Mr S when we started working from home.
An interesting fact became quickly apparent. My work requires Quiet for Concentration. And with the picnic table in the room next to my office, I learnt that for his work, Mr S talks Loudly and A Lot. Unlike Jack Spratt and his missus, whose contrasting idiosyncrasies complemented each other beautifully, the only clean thing between the two of us was the picnic table after Mr S cleared his papers and rearranged them in the furthermost room in the house.
I think back to this time a year ago and also recall how my ability to escape into the imaginative world of my writing, completely disappeared. Not just for a few days or a few weeks, but for 10 months, until January of this year. Not altogether surprising I guess, since the sum total of my abilities, in the face of a pandemic, was doing the household chores, cooking a daily meal and getting to grips with Zoom.
It was unsettling nonetheless.
A year later, the writing has come back – hello blog posts – but I look at my world now and I do wonder if those first fear-numbing lock-downed weeks weren’t actually something of a respite from ‘real life’ and all the crud that accompanies it.
From International Women’s Day, to the slating of Meghan Markle and the very existence of Piers Morgan, that week, the week before last, deteriorated beyond repair with the tragic death of a young woman who gave a stranger, a man, a policeman, a reason to kill her because she dared to walk home alone from her friend’s house at 9pm.
The start of the pandemic was frightening enough, but this – this was chilling. I, along with many women, was horrified – there but for the grace (of a greater power) go I, my daughters, my friends. And heartbroken – for her, her family and all who knew her. And sickened – by those men, young and old, who have catcalled, brushed up against, felt up, manhandled, flashed, threatened, abused, assaulted, raped … me, my daughters, my friends, most women.
Over and over and over again.
Off the top of my head, I can instantly recall (in far too much detail) a dozen occasions – before I met Mr S, before I was 25 – when every one of those experiences has happened to me. And don’t get me started on the three years I lived in Bahrain, long after I turned 25, when it was more like a dozen a fortnight. Where, as a female, you always had to be on your guard. Where our daughters were given talks at their schools by the embassies, reminding them that however they dressed, whatever they did, if anything happened to them, if men did anything inappropriate to them, they’d have no grounds for complaint. They’d be judged as guilty.
And we have, I have, from the first time it happened, accepted it as just one of those things, felt guilty it was probably my fault, been traumatised but made out it was nothing. There has been no change from one decade to the next. From one generation of parenting to the next. So what are we to do? I do not hate men. Far from it. But it disturbs me that there are so many, so often, Piers Morgan – just one in a long line – included, who do what they do and continue to get away with it. With the luxury of being born into a patriarchal society, they are rarely called out and they really don’t care.
So, upon reflection, despite the shock of a world besieged by a virus, this time last year was less painful, less emotional, less traumatic. And this time last year, as the seasons did their moving-swiftly-on thing, I was grateful for the early hot summer that developed down my way. We could spread into the garden and gradually further afield. But it wasn’t until the autumn, with conkers to look forward to, that I stopped beating myself up about my lack of productivity and gave myself a break.
FYI, I’m a real conker fan. I think they are lovely and I like them a lot. If I see a conker, I’ll pick it up and keep it in my pocket all winter. Or, since one is generally never enough, I’ll gather up handfuls and arrange them in a bowl. I’ve done this most of my life, except for the seven years I lived in the Middle East where I was surrounded by date palms. Dates are lovely too, but not for putting in your pocket and copping a soothing feel. Conkers were one of the things I really missed about the UK, and on my return, the conker habit was quick to resume.
But, autumn 2020, when, really, I could have done with a boatload of conkers – for morale, for comfort, as little protective talismans against Contagion – the Reality (and my lack of creativity), I didn’t find one. Not on all the walks. Not in all my usual places. Not even a squashed, cracked, runty one. Acorns in abundance – if you’re a squirrel woo-flipping-hoo – but not a single conker. Where had they gone? What was the meaning of this? Should I even have been surprised?
With no satisfactory answers, I pondered upon another fine autumnal landmark – Mental Health Day. (Mental Health Day, International Women’s Day – what is it with all these Days?)
So good to have a Mental Health Day, I thought. Especially with how we’re all feeling… But also, not so good. Because – well – mental health (like lockdown puppies) is for life, not just Mental Health Day. Convenient to slot it neatly into one day of the year, and then put it away and not think about it for the other 364. But, like the Grand Old Duke of York, when we’re up, we’re up, and when we’re down, we’re down, and when we’re only halfway up, we’re neither up nor down.
A month later, Mental Health Day done and dusted and tidied away till next year, now eight months since the purchase of the picnic table and Boris’s announcement, my (now) 18-year-old, uncertain about what the future would hold, or where her life would take her, challenged me on the meaning of life, as we sat in the car after returning from a friend’s.
Prone to introspection at the best of times (me and her), she initiated the most random of chats.
‘Isn’t it boring meeting one person and staying with them the rest of your life? Isn’t it depressing being stuck in a job you don’t enjoy? Capitalism sucks. I don’t know what I want to do with my life. But I want it to be worthwhile and extraordinary and to make a difference.’
In my weary, unproductive, probably more-down-than-up frame of mind, I was not as creative with my answers as I coulda/shoulda been. Conker-less and jaded, I replied in no particular order that capitalism in all its forms had existed since the dawn of time. It can be boring, yes, being with one person for a lot of your life so it helps if you find them interesting some of the time. And yes, it can be depressing being in a job you don’t enjoy, but everything you do will give you skills, and with the world as it is, the chances of being in a job for life are quite remote and…
But – like the How Are Babies Made chat I’d had with her brother (quite some years before) – I’d gone on too long. Her eyes had glazed over and she was getting out the car.
Alone, in the silence, I reflected on the fact that I’d nearly laughed at her idealism but, in the nick of time, I hadn’t, remembering another 18-year-old with similar ideals and no clue about where her life would take her. So easy to be cynical, but as I sat there in the car, the pandemic, a lack of conkers, problems with writing, all faded away, and I considered my own meandering journey from ‘Girl Without a Clue’ to ‘Woman of Great Wisdom’; the soaring highs, the dismal lows, the thrilling adventures, the dreary mundane. How when it seemed to be going right, things would go tits up and prove me wrong.
With little else to do and nowhere I needed to be, I hopped on the Memory Express and buckled up for trip through my past.
Far back.
A long way back.
Even further back than that!
The years whizzed past to Way Back When.
To acne and frizzy hair, heartache and taping the Top 40 on a Sunday night. When all I wanted was a life less ordinary. My ambition – only to be an actress.
‘That’s fine,’ said the parents, ‘but Drama’s not a real subject. Find a real subject and study that too.’ (So I could get a real job when my hopes ended up in the Graveyard of Improbable Dreams). I opted for French – more ‘real’ than Drama, and one of the few subjects I didn’t find hard – then, to everyone’s surprise, I passed every Drama audition.
But my that’ll show you moment was short-lived. I didn’t get the A Level grades needed to study French and Drama at my first choice of university and Thank goodness for that! ricocheted silently off the walls in my home.
‘Retake,’ said that first choice. ‘And you can study French and Drama next year. If you get the grades.’
‘Don’t retake,’ said the second choice. ‘And study French just French next year with the grades you already have.’
So, the summer I turned 18, I had to choose:
Option A: A year cramming, retake, and (if I didn’t fuck up again) follow my heart.
or
Option B: Cut my losses, reduce all stress, and do French. Just French.
Really it was a no brainer. I loved acting, but I hated exams more. My very own Sliding Doors moment; I faced the unknown and chose Option B.
*
Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody’s looking for something
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused
Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) by Eurythmics
To be continued…
daniellesimpson 