'We’re on a road to nowhere / Come on inside / Taking that ride to nowhere / We’ll take that ride,’ sang Talking Heads back in 1985, a whole 35 years before the world went to shit, which leads one to wonder if David Byrne is psychic.
Battening down the hatches a second time we are older but also wiser. We’ve done this before and we can do it again, especially if we remember the following improvements:
1. Exercise is now unlimited. Like an all-you-can-eat buffet, minus the food, the comfort and the warmth. True, all-you-can-exercise has little appeal in the rain and wind, but look on the bright side. Your partner isn’t there, doing that thing they do to annoy you. You can listen to Frankie Knuckles on repeat, as loud as you like because they’re your ear drums, not anyone else’s. I mean basically, you’re clubbing.
2. Schools are open, which means we don’t have to bulk-buy Pot Noodles and spaghetti hoops, and can still lunch on raw fish, spicy chilli, pungent cheese, kimchi and any vegetable of our choosing without a chorus of ‘Eeeew, don’t like it won’t eat it’ ringing in our ears.
3. ...which also means no homeschooling. Repeat: NO HOMESCHOOLING.
4. Thanks to campaigning from the brilliant @pregnant_then_screwed, parents can take any kids under school age out with them to meet that all-important friend without being persecuted, a modification of the original lockdown that will stop all new mothers from slowly going insane.
5. Coffee. Delicious, strong, comforting, not made in a Nespresso machine coffee is still widely available to take away from all good coffee outlets throughout the city.
6. Tequila. The advantage tequila has over everything else is that you can drink a fair amount of it without appearing to be drunk, or cop much of a hangover — useful when you’re a responsible adult locked up with impressionable kids.
7. Telly. Somehow, there are still things to watch. Documentaries. Nail-biting dramas. Schitt’s Creek, again. So long as I can watch season 5, episode 14 on repeat, I will survive.
Let them burn candles
Luxury means different things to different people. To some people, it means a scented candle shaped like a bust of Marie Antoinette. There can be nothing more ‘let them eat cake’ than spending £110 on a waxen effigy of France’s notorious queen during a global pandemic, yet the candle, by Cire Trudon, is sold out on Net A Porter. Candle nerds (yes, they exist) will attest that the French-owned Cire Trudon is the zenith of scented candles — it was founded in 1643, making it older than Trump and Biden combined. With a starting price of £75, call it the ultimate lockdown status symbol.
Funnel trouble
Much has been said about the incompatibility of masks with glasses. Plenty has been pontificated about the incompatibility of masks with skin. And now there’s a new seasonal irritant in the mix: masks with knitwear. To the indignities of fogged-up glasses and mascne we can add temporary blindness: donning my trusty winter funnel-neck jumper for the first time this year, imagine the hilarity when I realised it had pushed my mask right up over my eyes. A winter without funnel-necks is an inconvenience too far, yet here we are, and we must make the best of it. In cardigans.
