The Great Pause

Lockdown – Day 43

I needed to cut my fringe, but did not want to do it myself. After 40 years you would think I’d have mastered it by now.  No matter how careful I am, how good the light or sharp the scissors, the fringe curls up on the first wash and looks like ski slope.  As for my roots, Ihave a box of home dye but I’m putting that off for as long as possible, especially after my last experience.  I was in Lanzarote, February 2018, for my mother's 80th birthday with my mother, brother Tommy and two sisters Louise and Catherine.  Our apartment came with a roof garden and a 180 degree view of the sea.   Every morning, I would take my cup of coffee. and head up the spiral staircase to the roof garden and lie out on a sunbed until noon.  My family would eventually join me, and we would laze around like slumbering pigs with towels over our heads – all of us bar Catherine have skin cancer.  I didn't have time to touch up my hair before the holidays sor I had brought the box of home dye with me.  After my shower the first morning, I put in the dye.  The instructions said to leave in for 25 minutes.  With an old towel around my shoulders, I headed up to the roof.    After 25 minutes, I couldn't bring myself to get up and thought. 'Ah sure I’m holiday I’ll leave it in for the hour.'  It was two hours before I rinsed it out.  My hair turned a shiny blonde green, it hung lifeless and as straight as a poker and was so brittle it broke off in my hands. 

On that same holiday, I was chatting to my brother Tommy on the beach.  He has five children and it is rare to have a conversation with him without one of his children hanging off him.  Being my older brother and a school teacher, he was giving me unsolicited advice on how to be nice to people when it occurred to me he held never held a grudge.  After 50+ years of knowing him it surprised that I had not noticed this before and I said it to him.  He laughed and said, “Why would I?  What’s the point?  Life is too short.”       

This has nothing to do with my hair but a few months later, I was in England visiting my Aunt Kathleen.  I was with my mother and we all took the train from London to Reading to visit my Uncle John.  On the train ride down, I told Aunt Kathleen about my recent discovery on the topic of anxiety.  She agreed and said anxiety comes in many forms.  I told her of my conversation with Tommy the previous February; he is a worrier but doesn’t hold grudges.  I don’t see myself as anxious but I do hold grudges.      We got to the pub.  It was a spectacularly beautiful day in May – it happened to be the same day as the Prince Harry-Meghan Markle wedding, and everyone seemed to inside watching it on TV.  The pub is next to a canal which has a road bridge crossing it.  When a barge appeared, the road would close and then the bridge section of the road would swivel 180 degrees and the barge would come through.  Once the barge had safely passed the road bridge would swivel back into place.  Victorian engineering.  I went into the book to try and secure a table for 16 but was told that lunch reservations was fully booked.   However, the day was so beautiful, who wanted to sit inside when there tons of empty picnics out in the garden.  My aunts and I surveyed the garden and with the help of the bar staff we pulled three tables together under the shade of a massive oak tree.

We were at least an hour early.  Mum was gasping for a cup of tea.  I needed one too and needing something to do, I went back into the pub to organise the tea.  Coming back outside I saw that my brother Tommy had just arrived.  He had his back to me and putting my finger to my lips to signal silence from the two women, I snuck up behind him to give him a fright.  Despite the signal, Mum couldn't contain herself and blurted out, “Tommy, Geraldine says you never hold a grudge.”  Tommy and I froze. Tommy looked confused.    I made my presence known.

Back to my hair.  I’m wearing a hairband to sweep my fringe off my forehead.  Petty, I know but my eyes are sensitive.  Once my hair starts irritating my eyes, they start to weep and my mood plummets.  The only answer is to get to the hairdressers for a fringe cut.  It’s free at my regular hairdresser or a fiver elsewhere.  Money well spent. It affects my mood and I cannot afford to let it drop in my delicate state.  I would love to grow my fringe and cut my hair into a one chin length bob, like an elegant Parisian.  I asked Hubbie what he thought of my bald forehead look.  He hesitated.  "You want to know the truth?" he said.
"Always."
"You look like a cross nun."     

I finally made the connection after going to the hairdresser or cutting it myself.  It's like someone pulls the curtain across and lets you see the world - the effect is that dramatic.  I can't afford to let me mood plummet at this delicate time.  So, this morning I bit the bullet. I had an appointment with my doctor at lunchtime. His clinic is in Wilton – outside my 2km zone – and I needed smarten up. Using my sewing scissors, I barely nipped the edges, just enough to be able to see and it doesn’t hover like an annoying insect around my eyes.   The roots will have to wait. I did consider letting my hair colour grow and adopting the funky chic silver look but when I put it to my colleagues one evening celebrating a birthday, I got a chorus of shocked, “No”. I backed down. The lockdown is changing how we do things. Maybe it will be bridge to embracing ageing.

I’m wearing those clothes in my wardrobe that I wouldn’t normally be seen dead in but in my many purges I cannot bring myself to get rid of them. Having gained 9lbs since the lockdown started, my options are shrinking.  I bought this skirt for a family wedding in 2007.    It’s rather stunning.  As I detest clothes shopping, I of course left it until the last minute to get something.  At a wedding you have a licence to wear the extraordinary.  It’s black with a layer of black netting underneath and two ribbon sashes at the waist which tie at the back to create a slight rump effect.   It’s full skirt with an underlay of black netting that peaks out below the hem.  It goes spectacularly with a knee length black velvet coat.  On the big day I wore with scarlet red tights and ankle high laced black boots, I thought I looked like gypsy royalty.   Because I left it so late before the wedding, both the boots and skirt were one size too big.  Using inserts and thick socks I wore the boots to death.  The skirt however being too outlandish for everyday wear languished at the back of the wardrobe until four days ago.   I’m grateful for extra waist room.  However, wearing it with runners, multi coloured socks – not always matching – my rapidly greying hair under my son’s beanie hat, fear of catching the virus might be the reason fellow pedestrians are giving me wide berth on the pavement.  all those I meet on my walks I look like one of those cranky old women that live alone and have a huge collections plastic bags at home.  Oh wait, I am one of those women…..

Son (22) also tells me that I am sitting in the kitchen chair too long - he thinks its sewn to my ass - and that I should move more.  He takes off cycling/jogging for hours every day and comes back sweaty, happy and smelling of fresh air.  On Tuesday, he ran to Harty’s Quay on the Rochestown Road and said he saw the Guards taking photographs of the number plates of the cars parked there.  If they actually do anything is a mystery but their strategy might be to raise awareness and if people see them doing, the word might get round and this makes people 'honest.'  

People continue to give me wide berth on the footpath, which forces them to step out on the road to avoid me. This is insane. There's very few cars but social distancing doesn't mean you have to take a wide circle around a stranger. I'm only walking.  I don't have my mouth open; I'm not coughing or sneezing or spraying particles of germs in their direction.  We are two passing strangers on the street, why the extremes.  So, I say on the footpath and let them work around me. 

Son (22) continues to educate me. In the first week it was Abstract – the Art of Design. Then it was Flying Solo with Alex Honnold who climbed a 3,000-foot-high vertical rock face in Yosemite Park with his bare hands and no safety ropes. Last week’s documentary Icarus who set out to research doping in amateur cycling tournaments and inadvertently stumbled upon and exposed Russia’s doping of their athletes. His findings threatened to exclude Russian from the Rio Olympics. This week it’s Michael Jordan and The Last Dance. It’s a 10-part series on Netflix and we’re only allowed two episodes a week.  How could you fill 10 hours about one man, but the series also explores the people around Jordon at the time and the politics of sports.  And podcasts. Son listens to them all the time and recommended I listen to Cal Newport on Digital Minimalism.        

I’ve gained 9lbs since lockdown started and so on Sunday, even though it was raining, I went for a two hour walk to listen to the podcast from start to finish.  Cal reckons up to 10 years, boredom was part of our lives.  We didn’t like it but according to Cal, our brain needs boredom in order to have downtime.  With event of smartphone, and the need to work on laptops, and the advantages of rapid communication via email, we are never not communicating or listening to something.    With all the opportunities to fill every waking moment with distractions, the effect is you never switch off.  Every time you are listening or watching the news your brain is in process mode.  The brain also needs time to absorb the information you have just taken in.    The result is that your brain because is being perpetually stimulated, this causes a constant mild anxiety. Cal also talked about how Facebook reengineered the algorithms on their apps to produce the same effect of slot machines in Vegas.  The ‘Likes’ on Facebook are timed to exploit you’re the human weakness in their psychology the need for reassurance of approval. How cruel and manipulative is that? Cal suggest a 30-day detox or less drastically, to deliberately limit your time on your phone and only use your laptop to check emails/Facebook.    The phone is lethal because it is available all the time whereas the laptop being larger and less portable is slower.  Facebook makes money every single time you check it.  Constantly checking social media affects your concentration and your ability to focus.  Cal then refers to Alex Honnold the climber in Free Solo.  Alex uses social media to draw attention to his achievements but before his most famous climb up El Capitaine in Yosemite Park he abstained from social media completely for one month so that it would not impair his ability to focus.  One slip of concentration and he would have plummeted to his death. Cal advises us to be discerning and talked about the Amish community in America.  They have a reputation for shunning all technology but that’s not the case.  They review all technology and new innovations and weigh it up – does this thing benefit the community and if it is deemed to potentially isolate within the community then it is rejected.  They use electricity and use disposable nappies, but they reject cars because that would encourage people to go outside and spend their leisure time away from the community.  They have the same approach to mobile phones.  The Amish have a single land line phone available to the community if needed but since mobile phones are deemed to create isolation within the community, they reject them.  I found that argument the most convincing of all. 

With my fall from gypsy royalty to serfdom, maybe the social distancing has as much to do with my appearance as with avoiding germs.  

Communication with work continues via email and phone calls.  I make every work call last as long as possible.  I ignore their, "I’ll let you go now," and "I won’t keep you."  My work colleague and friend, returned my calls after several texts.  Her mother and herself love watching RTE's Home School Hub.  It's designed to help primary school children keep up to date with their school work.  Maria pleaded to be let off the phone because Home School Hub was about to start. My mother raves about programme that too.  She told us in one of our Zoom calls that she learned how to remember the counties in Northern Ireland – FATDAD and that Leinster has 12 counties = 3 Ls, 3 Ws, 2K, and then the three awkward ones around Dublin, Meath Carlow Offaly and Meath.    

I’m on week 2 of the Happy Pear cooking course.  Hubbie’s Aunt Ka has wild garlic growing rampant in her garden and despite her best efforts to dig it up, it comes back in spades every year.  I’ve asked her to get some the next time he is over.  I once did a charity walk in Kinsale in aid of breast cancer and there was wild garlic growing in the ditches.  The aroma of crushed garlic filled the air as us women briskly walked for charity/cancer.  smell in the air was divine.  The challenge is to make a different dinner out of this week’s recipes. With garlic on my mind, I made the low-fat pesto with pesto with almonds and basil and spinach. I went a bit heavy with the garlic, I think.  It was bitter.  I’ve been repeating garlic all evening.  Another reason why people might want to social distance themselves from me.

After the doctor, I stopped in Dunnes near the Bandon Road roundabout for milk. I met my sister-in-law Jemma getting rid of beer bottles in the recycling bins. Beer parties she explains her son has remote parties and this is the evidence. New government manifest that where possible people will be required to work one day a week from home. Amen to that. She also told me that her son Jack is planning to move out of home at the first opportunity and rent a house with eight friends on College Road. We expressed pity for their soon-to-be neighbours, but it seems they’re not the only ones with the same idea because everytime they think they've secured a house, the landlord gets a better offer.  My son in Dublin has had to break his lease as his two flatmates – who are working from home – in Cork have been told to continue working from home until September -. He cannot afford the rent by himself.  However, since the lockdown started rents are coming down and so he’s on the lookout. Son (22) said he’s planning to move too.  Maybe this lockdown has shaken up the housing market and made it affordable for people to move or being trapped with their families suddenly makes independence attractive.

Wednesday night, Son (22) introduced us to Beer Pong. We cleared the kitchen table. At opposite ends of the table we have four cups each. It’s supposed to be glasses of different sizes and heights but since we were using capsules instead of ping pong ball it would have shattered the glasses.  So, we used teacups instead. Each cup half filled with beer or cider for me. And the aim is to land the capsule in your opponent’s cup, and he drinks it. Hygiene how are you these capsules rolled onto the floor, landed in flowerpots, rolled behind cupboards with dust, I washed mine, but my drink still had floating bits I couldn’t identify. I didn’t whinge and drank up. You’re supposed to do it in one shot, but Cider is too gassy to swill down in one go. I was fantastic. Without thinking, I landed the first three without effort but could not land the last cup. I came last. The boys called me a choker. In one round, Hubbie suggested reinstating the last three cups and I nailed it. We were all drunk. Neil took a video of Son (20) nailing the last cup to win the championship. Even slowed down the shot to slow motion. Unfortunately, I unaware he was filming walked through the shot and I saw in slow motion the 9lbs I’ve gained. He then put it up on the family’s WhatsApp. The diet starts today.

I’m noticing my home more. I’m cleaning it more and buying eco friendly products.  In Wilton on Wednesday I bought Ecover Floor Soap with oil of orange. Oil. I think I followed the instructions, but I was drunk; it was right after Beer Pong and the floor was a lake of beer and it had to be done. My fellow contestants had disappeared into the living room to watch Star Wars with corn dogs, so I took the opportunity to clean. I must of have put too much product or too little water because the result was lethal. I got carried away and washed the tiled floors in the hall and downstairs too. I nearly broke my neck as I slithered in the hall. Luckily, it’s not a wide hall and the wall broke my fall. I immediately got a towel and trudged up and down drying to dry the excess. I opened windows. I told the menfolk not to leave the room and trudged up and down the length of the hall draining the excess and speed up the drying process. This morning floor is gleaming in the early morning sun and it smells of oranges. I love my home.

And even better, summer is here. Driving to Wilton on Wednesday, I didn’t need the heater in the car. The horse chestnut trees lining the Link are in full leaf. The grass is long and dense with thousands of dandelions poised to release their seeds. I saw children sitting in their front gardens wearing t-shirts and sandals. It’s like summer exploded overnight.