Monday
At the weekend, we went to the Big Apple Circus, and let me tell you those places have changed. Instead of a sad elephant chained up outside the Big Top – standard in my childhood, unthinkable today – there is “Diana Vedyashkina and her adorable dachshunds!” Creepy clowns are out; Jim Carrey-type stuntmen are in. The ringmaster is called Alan and delivers a long speech about realising one’s dreams and the tightrope artist brings on his 70-year-old mother, who, he informs us, has just had a hip replacement, and has her do a quick turn on the wire. It is an extremely satisfying night out.
What lingers into Monday is the power and purity of the imagery. As with a lot of modern entertainment, a self-help script has been bolted on in an effort to lift the evening from merely diverting to inspirational. It’s a needless tautology. If you can’t extract an analogy for your life or small business from a performer balancing on a pile of cylinders and cones on a platform 20 feet up with no safety net, or an escape artist submerged in a tank full of water, fighting desperately to unchain himself and break free, entertainment in general and the circus in particular probably isn’t for you.
It’s not the risk that thrills here, although I do wonder if the tumblers and trapeze artists hold the earth-bound jugglers in low esteem. (I bet the jugglers look down on the dog trainers, meanwhile, even though the performing dachshunds are actually quite cool). What lifts it is the experience of seeing one’s internal weather so precisely externalised. I must have a very basic psychology, because while I identify strongly with the wobbling man and the man in the death tank, it’s the juggler who eventually undoes me.
Katya Nikiforova juggles four, five, then six balls in the air, at which point the lights go out and adding a seventh ball, she juggles on, impossibly, in darkness. I have come with my two children and a friend and her five children, and together we watch as the balls rise and fall. To my amazement, I have a strong urge to cry. It could be a Covid thing, or a middle age thing, or a winter in New York thing – it is -12C outside and the snow is piled high – but as my friend jams her elbow into my ribs, I know she’s thinking exactly the same thing as I am: there it is, life, an endless exercise in juggling in the dark with balls you can’t see.
Tuesday
News reaches us that Elon Musk, continuing to charm his way across every demographic, has been DMing a 19-year-old student from Florida. There are, admittedly, worse types of DMs: Musk asked Jack Sweeney, a first-year student at the University of Central Florida, if he would take down @ElonJet, a Twitter feed created by Sweeney to track the passage of Musk’s private jet, using publicly available information. Musk offered him $5,000; Sweeney, cheekily, asked for $50,000 and an internship at Tesla.
A person with regular responses might have seen the potential PR in this. Musk, of course, promptly ghosted the teenager and proceeded to make the information less trackable using a data-blocking program. Sweeney neatly side-stepped the block and the feed remains active. “He probably will be mad now,” he said, showing, on top of his tech skills, advanced skills in public service.
Wednesday
I might not know what phrases like “data-blocking methods” actually mean, but I do know a scam when I hear one. “I’m calling from the Department of Social Security, where your account has been breached,” says a man from a blocked number.
“What?”
“This is the third time we’ve tried to call you, it’s your last chance to cooperate without serious consequences.”
I pause to consider this. “If I’m the victim of the crime, what are the consequences?”
There’s a long pause. “Do you see what I mean?” I say. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“This is your last chance,” repeats the man, “or you’ll be in trouble with the government.” I feel sorry for him, trying to push through an honest day’s scamming, tell him to contact me in writing and hang up.
A day later, another scam, this one by text and encouraged, almost certainly, by stories like the one about that guy who texted a wrong number and ended up being included in a stranger’s Thanksgiving for the next six years. “Heyy are you Jonah? It’s Olivia, we msged on OK Cupid before when I went to visit my grandmother. I’m back if you wanted 2 meet?”
I totally fall for this. Aw, poor girl, I think. “So sorry, you have the wrong number!” She replies, instantly. “Wow did I actually chat up some random dude? Oh my gosh I’m so sorry.” Still the penny doesn’t drop. “You really have the wrong number, I’m a 46-year-old of mom of two. Good luck!” She texts a generic-looking photo and says “What’s ur name? Want to txt?” Oh, now I see. Blocked and reported, though I have to hand it to the 50-year-old guy working his angles, this is next-level phishing. The grandmother was a particularly nice touch.
Thursday
David Beckham has recorded a podcast with Ruth Rogers of the River Cafe in which he reveals that his wife, Victoria, has “eaten the same meal every day for 25 years”. In a long, jolly anecdote the footballer recounts how, “she only eats grilled fish, steamed vegetables; she will very rarely deviate from that. The only time she’s probably ever shared something that’s been on my plate was actually when she was pregnant with Harper, and it was the most amazing thing … It was one of my favourite evenings. I can’t remember what it was but I know she’s not eaten it since!”
The tone of this revelation, and the publicity around it, was in the spirit of a man affectionately teasing his wife. In her own, earlier appearance on the same podcast, Victoria Beckham cheerfully talks about an eating regimen with no oil, butter, or sauce, and in which her idea of “comfort food” is brown toast with a smattering of salt. There are worse tragedies in the world than a rich, famous woman who can’t eat, but to present it as anything other than grimly fanatical really sticks in the throat.
Friday
A man from Home Depot comes to look at my kitchen. This is the circus working it’s magic: I can do this impossible thing I’ve been putting off forever. I can do a renovation.
My kitchen is from 1961, the appliances from the 1980s. I moved into the apartment eight years ago and haven’t done a single thing to it. The man sits at my table and asks about taps. I have no strong feelings about taps, something that, before this moment, has never felt like a deficit. He asks about tiles for the backsplash and I inch away from him like he pulled out a knife. “These handles, or these?” he says, pushing a ring binder in my direction. “Sounds fine,” I say. He looks confused. He starts muttering about counter tops – “I have samples in the car.” Oh, god, I’ve made a terrible mistake. I know it, he knows it. He could put a timeshare in Florida on the end of my invoice and I’d sign just to make this thing end.
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