I love every single thing about polling day, even amidst the potential of crushing disappointment. And if the result is the one I long for? Well, that is no small joy. That is a thing of enormous satisfaction indeed.
ANTIQUE SHOPPING
On the one hand, I am the world’s least organised person. On the other, I was buying furniture for my future first home aged thirteen. I am not sure where my love of design and homeware originated. All I know is that while pals were reading Sugar and watching EastEnders, I was purchasing Yellow Pages-sized interiors quarterlies and refusing to miss an episode of Grand Designs.
Mostly, this obsession took (and takes) the form of shopping for secondhand, vintage and antique pieces. My earliest ‘get’ was a huge Guinness pub mirror – somewhat sought after nowadays – that I picked up for £7 in the local charity shop. I bought my first record player at fifteen, a restored number. In beautiful synchronicity, it was a 1960s Fidelity targeted at the teen market.
True contentment is browsing antique shops, flea markets, car boot sales and charity shops. All the better when I stumble across a place I never knew existed in an incongruous location. I used to live in an area mostly populated by chicken shops, old-style internet cafes and drug dealers. But, randomly, in the middle of all this was a wonderful antiques place. Velvet cocktail chairs; opaque-use kitchen appliances; Parker Knoll two-seaters. Tucked-away places and those outside big cities are less expensive and have far more curios. Some sellers scout the same pieces and objects over and over again, which is no fun.
My treasure hunting doesn’t merely encompass furniture. I will also excitedly pick up first editions of books; obscure records by artists I have never heard of; things I don’t even understand the point of, but that steal my heart.
The internet has changed this habit. One can now browse online marketplaces and end up in a 5 a.m. bidding war for a lightly scratched G-Plan bureau. I’d say the dedicated investigative work that takes place online to seek out something long desired equals that of happening across a wonder in real life.
As we know, however, there is rarely pleasure without pain. As someone who does not drive, I find myself straining muscles I didn’t know I had heaving footstools home. Or undermining a bargain by paying through the nose for delivery. But that I can take a stroll and pick up five old Penguin paperbacks for a quid each? Or step out of a shop, door chiming sweetly as I leave, in a long-neglected, ridiculously patterned knitted jumper? That’s a vintage pleasure.
SCRATCHING AN ITCH
First of all, let’s get this straight: the itch is the thing you scratch. Itch, to me, is not the verb. Some people think itch is the verb, and I find this almost as uncomfortable as an itch itself. An itch, as we know, is very distressing. But there is nothing more rewarding than a problem solved, and it is my deeply felt belief that one of the finest examples of this is a satisfactorily scratched itch.
I don’t mean more pervasive itching: nobody lusts after scabies, painful psoriasis or the kind of eczema that makes life as unbearable as tinnitus; but hitting the spot of that niggling sensation is a moment of pure bliss. Scrabbling up and down the stubbly regrowth of shins; the momentary relief from scalping the heads of holiday midge bites; pressuring your partner into giving you a back rub and making them work a very specific spot between the shoulder blades (left a bit, right a bit), for way longer than they are happy with, resulting in shudders of delight.
Itching is a little like yawning and sneezing, in that it is tied up in the mirror neurone effect. You may even have had a little scratch while reading this article. One study found that people listening to a lecture on itching began to scratch themselves. Everyone appreciates this orgasm of the epidermis (so sorry). If you want to show off, by the way, you can call an itch by its medical name: pruritus.
It isn’t just humans who are affected by the urge to scratch, and thank god, because then we would be denied the pleasure of watching pets, fresh from the vet’s, walk into walls wearing anti-scratch cones. Then reversing and trying again.
Some enjoy the sensation of scratching not related to the body. But (appropriately named) scratchcards have the opposite effect for me. The sensation of scraping off that silver residue goes through me like nails on a chalkboard. It’s dry, rough – and it will only end in disappointment.
The scientific reason why scratching our itches feels so good is because it releases serotonin, the neurotransmitter involved in mood-boosting. It foxes the brain by replacing the itch signals with pain signals (that kind of pleasure-pain). It is pure distraction. And my god, with the world today, don’t we need that right now.
TIPSINESS
‘Too much of a good thing’ is a proverb that I generally disagree with. Alcohol is an exception – for many people and for different reasons, any alcohol is too much. When I went without it for a year, the most radical change was having much more time. The days expanded. Why? Because I was no longer spending half my weekends in bed wishing for a quick death. There are headaches, and then there are hangovers.
I will level with you: ‘drinking in moderation’ sounds incredibly dull; or strained, when said in the voiceover of booze adverts. You can almost envisage the gun to the head. Not that I am saying there isn’t a time and a place for getting wasted. (I do not know the etymology of the British term ‘rat-arsed’, but I am fond of it – despite the fact that rats are not known to be drunks, and I do not understand what their bottoms would have to do with it if they were.)
The sweet spot is that wonderful word: tipsy. Tipsy captures the brightening of spirits and loosening of the tongue. The easy laughs, the growth in tactility. The bonhomie of good company lubricated by favourite beverages. The backslaps at the bar, or the gathering orders for rounds. Good wine being poured across a dining table. Easily-struck-up rapport with strangers or mutual friends. Pints of beer being cheers’d, or cocktail glasses clinking. Shots as a team sport.
Tipsy is the golden hour. What lies ahead, sometimes, is the danger zone of unwise decision-making; the losing of personal effects; the blurring of eyesight; and, oh god, the potential lurching of the gut and vomiting into a loo bowl. Once we’re at that point, the sun has truly set. Dignity is nowhere to be found.
There are times when these unfortunate consequences are worth it for the bacchanalia preceding (my birthday springs to mind), but more often – and especially as one grows older – the true joy is cashing in on the evening at just the right time. This is a difficult skill to acquire because, as with all gambling, the lure of just one more is a strong one.
It is almost never just one more, and ending the night in disarray can bin the recollection of that wonderful warm feeling, two drinks in. Tipsy is what to aim for. Tipsy is the convivial character of an evening perfectly played. Tipsy is your friend. I will drink to Tipsy.
BEING INSIDE WHEN IT’S RAINING
It’s a memory from many of our childhoods: tucked up cosily in sleeping bags, safely inside tents, the patter of rain against canvas overhead. I think it remains one of my favourite sounds. That, along with trees rustling in the wind; the thwacks and clinks and clonks of sports; a wide, flat brush making its way crisply through freshly washed hair; the crackle of flames.
But one doesn’t have to be in a tent to appreciate the sound of rain (or under a gazebo; or, as I seem to remember vividly when a toddler, under a plastic pram cover). Or even under an umbrella. The sound of rain pelting a car window, along with the squeak of the windscreen wipers, will do it for me. The bouncing of hailstones off sitting-room windowpanes, muffled slightly by curtains drawn against the winter dark. I especially love the sound of hail pinging off the inside of a chimney chute and hitting the hearth.
Our senses crave juxtaposition. That’s why sitting in a sauna and then rolling around in snow is so popular in Russia and elsewhere. It’s why a howl of laughter can slip into a sombre reflection before our eyes have fully uncreased. It’s why sweet-and-sour chicken exists. And it is why there is nothing better than b
eing ensconced in the warm, comfortable environs of one’s home, when outside the roads are wet and the gutters streaming. Who doesn’t love turning up the television volume over the rumblings of thunder?
Shaking the water from a brolly and leaving it in the hallway propped up like a satellite dish, jammed in between radiator and skirting board; kicking off boots to slide into slippers – it’s all part of the evening nesting routine. Sure, it’s still nice to be at home when the weather outside is fine, but the snugness is that little bit extra when it is tipping it down.
You’d be surprised how much great writing about rain there is (a deluge, you might say) but my favourite line is this stunningly sardonic number by Mark Twain: ‘The rain is famous for falling on the just and unjust alike, but if I had the management of such affairs I would rain softly and sweetly on the just, but if I caught a sample of the unjust out doors I would drown him.’ Either way, my ears are pricked.
MEMES
Social media has a bad reputation, and for good reason: white supremacy left unchecked; revenge porn; livestreaming of mass murder; the spread of fake news, possibly undermining world democracy. It isn’t the greatest list.
I quit Facebook long ago. Well, in 2013, which in the internet age counts as long ago. Most social media I keep up with solely for work. But there are times when, for me, despite all its true horror, social media – and memes in particular – induce tears of laughter. What has made me laugh the hardest over the past few years have not been the sold-out Edinburgh fringe shows or the Bafta-winning television comedies, but strangers on the internet.
In the greatest of ironies, it is the mostly unhumorous Richard Dawkins who gave us the word ‘meme’, which he coined in his 1976 work The Selfish Gene. He defined a meme as: ‘a unit of cultural transmission’, encompassing ideas, symbols and practices. The derivation is the ancient Greek word ‘mimeme’: imitated thing. It’s probable that neither the Greeks nor Richard Dawkins foresaw the internet’s Distracted Boyfriend, in which a stock photograph of a man walking hand-in-hand with his partner while checking out another woman – much to his girlfriend’s annoyance – has been used as an analogy for everything, from eyeing up new titles in a bookshop while unread ones are neglected at home, to millennials turning their backs on capitalism for socialism.
For a meme to really take off, it has to be relatable; it has to contain a truth universally acknowledged, as Jane Austen would put it. That is basically how all jokes work. What I love about memes is the way they bring out the best in people: their wit, their absurdist thinking, their quick turns of phrase. I love that a seventeen-year-old girl in a Minnesota bedroom can reduce me to belly laughs as much as a father in Norwich or Jakarta. I adore the twists and turns of a meme’s journey. It doesn’t matter what form they take: TikTok; video clips; Vines (RIP); Snapchat stories; Twitter threads; old-school image macros.
The greatest ones often have a central juxtaposition or an imaginative leap. An old favourite is Unhelpful Teacher, a stock image of a woman in front of a blackboard whose jaunty expression is entirely unrelated to the quotes people make up for her: ‘Oh, you don’t understand? Let me explain it again in the exact same way.’
Yes, the internet is in many ways driving us apart. But memes are bringing us together.
FREE UPGRADES
They say fortune favours the brave. But what if it favours those who are nice to check-in staff, happen to encounter a hospitality worker in a good mood or are canny enough to hit a market just before it closes?
Sometimes good things do, in fact, come for free. And if there is one thing better than a treat, it is an unexpected one. Finding a fiver in an old jacket pocket feels like winning the lottery. Being the recipient of random human kindness somehow makes one feel shiny, special. Now, I don’t wish to sully the wholesome tone by bringing commerce into this, but … isn’t it the best to get a free upgrade, discount or no-strings-attached offer?
These things can happen purely out of luck. An algorithm plucks you from an electronic list of subscribers to get a year’s worth of magazines free. Other times, our behaviour has a role. Staff at Pret are told to give away a certain number of items to customers every week as part of official policy and I have been the beneficiary on many occasions. Free flat whites, free cookies – once even encouragement to take a cookie I hadn’t ordered but must have been looking at longingly. Bananas waved away. An extra croissant popped into the bag.
I would like to think that my sparkly, charming personality has had a hand in this; my engaging repartee. But it may possibly be just to stop me talking and get me out of the shop as quickly as possible.
One of the greatest gifts in life is a sea view. I do not understand, therefore, how hotel receptionists keep their egos in control. I would be drunk with power if I had this ability; to bestow something that undoubtedly makes a holiday circa 37 per cent better than if the room you happened to be lumped with faced the hotel’s laundry-room, for instance.
I have never had the holy grail of a flight upgrade. I have, however, often been switched to seats with extra leg room on planes and in posh cinemas. I have a jumper that a vintage clothes stallholder once, with a shrug of the shoulders, gave me for free when I was buying another item. It turned out I liked the freebie better than the purchase.
I don’t think it is saving money that makes these freebies so happy-making, but the warm feeling you get knowing that someone cares enough, or is generous enough, to want to make your day a little better. Though, obviously, a 70 per cent discount on a laptop is also not to be sniffed at, I’ll tell you that for free.
SILENCE
Not many people have heard of misophonia – which is ironic, because it has everything to do with hearing. It describes extreme reactions – in my case, mostly rage, but in the case of others it may be anxiety or disgust – to certain sounds. I don’t actually know whether I have misophonia. It seems low on the list of conditions I have to worry about, or potentially worry about, but there is no doubt I get disproportionately irritated by certain sounds, all of them human-made.
The issue is that while some sounds are inconsiderate (leaking music from headphones, for instance, which I think most people can’t stand), others are socially acceptable. Kids constantly shrieking are just expressing themselves; someone can’t help it if they need to clear their throat repeatedly. The man nonstop clicking his lighter during a bus ride wasn’t harming anyone, but I had to politely and apologetically ask him if he would mind stopping, because otherwise I wasn’t sure I would end the journey with my nerves intact. I have a two-stage strategy with continuous whisperers in the cinema: a dagger stare, then going over and asking them to shut up.
It will come as no surprise, then, that I find absolute silence almost a divine state. Lying on my back in a cyan sea, both ears underwater, staring up into a sky uninterrupted by clouds, I feel as though every problem I have could sink into the sand and bury itself. Total silence: the world on mute; the chatter of Twitter buttoned as it leaves opinionated mouths.
I don’t hate all noise. I even adore some sounds. I enjoy the clack of a keyboard. But being awake during the night, when sound sometimes stops, as though a needle is lifted from a record player, is stunning.
A physicist will say there is no such thing as absolute silence. The lowest sound level in the natural world is that of particles moving through gas or liquid, known as Brownian motion. But tech companies have tried to top this, creating sound-sealed rooms known as anechoic chambers. Apparently, spending forty-five minutes or so in one will make you go a bit mad – it is that quiet. I would still like to know if there are any in the UK that will let me visit.
OVERHEARING
There’s a reason why magazines run ‘overheard’ columns and you find social media accounts dedicated to the same. That humans are capable of saying things so unexpected, bizarre, idiotic, hilarious or filthy is one of the great, simple joys in life.
Strip such remarks from their context and they can indeed b
e elevated into art. Or perhaps you know the context, but marvel at the opinion or observation. You might let your nostrils flare in mirth or catch the eye of the speaker to signal agreement. Then there is the jaw-drop of something utterly moronic said behind you on public transport. Messaging it to a pal to share the goods. Barking with laughter when remembering it, months later.
Children are great value when it comes to overheards. The New York toddler who waved to a pigeon and said: ‘Bye, street chicken!’ Or the mother I heard saying to (presumably) her daughter: ‘No, betting isn’t a job, darling.’
But there are gems in every category, as a website called BoredPanda attests. Sex exchanges: ‘Have you ever been handcuffed?’ ‘Sexually or by law enforcement?’ Witty back-and-forths: ‘How drunk were you last night?’ ‘I bought miniature furniture on eBay.’ Snarky ones: ‘Doesn’t she have a tattoo that says “relevant”?’ ‘Yeah, but it’s fading, so that’s fitting.’ There-but-for-the-grace-of-god ones: ‘I was wearing that new camo jacket and someone thanked me for my service.’ The tears-inducing, like a woman asking where to find the frozen vegetables and a cashier replying: ‘The freezer.’ And the woman responding: ‘Thank you.’
A Twitter account popular among journalists is @OHnewsroom, for Overheard in the Newsroom. Things I heard in the Guardian newsroom and shared with this account include: a colleague remarking they had spent New Year’s Eve at L. Ron Hubbard’s house; a mix-up between PJ Harvey and Brian Harvey from East 17; and someone saying: ‘Just Google “cat, parasite, depression”.’ I can only imagine.
The Joy of Small Things Page 8