The flipside is that it sucks to be cancelled on when you are looking forward to something. An afternoon with an old friend and a new exhibition. Or a football match or festival rained off. But oh, what a relief when a dull dinner party at which people talk about the colours of their school ties is taken off the table.
It’s a lovely thing, escape – even more so when it’s somebody else lifting the fence.
GOING TO THE CINEMA ALONE
When I was a kid, if I spotted someone alone at the cinema I would label them a sad sack. I am ashamed to admit this, but I would peg them as a loser; or I would feel sorry for them, because I assumed they had no friends.
I wonder if teenagers think this of me, now that I go to the cinema alone more frequently than with company. While I enjoy going with a pal, to dissect a film or performance afterwards, perhaps it is even more of a pleasure to assess it in one’s own head, in solitude – turning it over in the mind, forming an opinion untainted by conversation.
It also means that I am free to react like a weirdo as the end credits roll, should I need to. Did I cry uncontrollably at the end of Manchester by the Sea? No comment. Did I subtly air drum after seeing Whiplash? I simply couldn’t tell you. I distinctly remember, when resident at a non-secure mental health facility, popping to the nearest cinema one evening to see The Big Short, and feeling something for the first time in weeks, wheeling away in pleasure, thinking that maybe – just maybe – I was getting better.
I am entirely happy in my own company; this extends to eating alone or travelling by myself. I affectionately call a colleague and good friend Walk Me to Biology, because she won’t go to places alone, like the girls in school who seemed incapable of making their way to class without an escort.
Please don’t misunderstand me – I have no qualms whatsoever about bringing a friend or partner to the flicks. (Unless they are a talker, then – no. I am sure many friendships have been severed when someone frequently asks at the beginnings of films, ‘What is happening?’, when the point of a film is that one finds out.)
It is important to me, with all art (in fact, with everything) to form my own opinions before opening up to the input, potentially mind-changing, of others. I will never read reviews of films before watching them. I prefer to gain just a gist – usually by star ratings – of whether something is worth going to see.
Yes: better to go alone. Especially when I get the popcorn all to myself.
TRAINERS
Three years ago, I became sober for a year – despite the best efforts and influence of a good friend and esteemed colleague who shall remain nameless (Zoe Williams). There were a lot of things I noticed about going from someone who rocked into the office, mossy-tongued and permanently hungover, to booze-free. The most obvious three were: time; money; energy. All of these beneficial changes – I had more of all of them – contributed to two things I suddenly became enamoured with, having shown little interest in them before. Those things are techno music (previously my idea of please god, no) and trainers.
While friends spent their mornings under duvets in the foetal position, I was up if not quite with the larks, then early enough to plan my day, spread out ahead of me like a map. I started to walk around the city, discovering tiny side streets the width of a horse-drawn carriage. This satisfied my increased time and energy (as did the new love of techno music), and the money I previously directed to my liver found a new home on the soles of my feet.
I’m not quite into the territory of calling trainers ‘sneakers’ in the manner of a US pretender, but since my enlightenment I have been known to call them kicks. In the north and in Scotland, we call them trabs. Suddenly, I found myself filing copy about New Balance’s position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. New Balance is now one of my favourite brands, the more garish, I’m afraid, the better. I have a luminous turquoise-and-orange pair. Bright purple. Shocking pink. Neon green and grey. I see a lush pair of Nikes in a shop, consider buying them, then just do it. I now pronounce Nike with the ‘ee’ sound at the end, and Adidas with the stress on the first syllable. One learns the language.
People walk on air if they are in love, but also if they are wearing Nike Airs. Red Bull gives you wings; so do Jeremy Scott’s limited editions. Fresh white Converse hi-tops are as much a wardrobe staple as a crisp, white shirt. I pick up bargains in charity shops, discount outlets, online and in the stores that spend 52 weeks of the year apparently closing down, but never do. I smile at kids in flashing pumps and respect the office-allowable, semi-professionalism of the Dunlop tennis shoe.
It might seem silly – frivolous, even – to have taken up trainers as a hobby. But as I would say to my mother when she chastises me for anything: at least it’s not hard drugs. I am yet to reach the dizzy heights of an MTV Cribs walk-in-wardrobe. There’s also this key advantage: now that I am drinking again (in moderation, guys!), trainer-shod, I am much less likely to fall over after one too many. The walk home is a doddle.
CHANGING YOUR MIND
We crucify politicians for their U-turns and often it is justified. Flipflops, however, are rather different from the utter chaos we’ve seen in the last few years, where it would be more accurate to say government policy is under the influence of centrifugal force. Not so much about-turns but a general vortex of mess.
As easy as it is to slag off politicians and public figures (and I do my fair share), it is a mark of intelligence and good character to be able to have one’s mind changed. I don’t mean shifting opinions for individual gain; watching for whichever way the wind blows, then reneging on a previous position for self-preservation or popularity. I am talking about listening to a cogent argument, and sincerely adjusting one’s outlook.
In school and universities, students practise this art through mooting competitions in borrowed courtrooms and debating clubs, but in the outside world we increasingly seem to have lost the ability to communicate our disagreements in good faith. Social media is a huge part of this. It is easier to rant and rave behind a screen than it is to behave similarly face to face. In lockdown, one of the things I missed most was sitting with friends in the pub and sharing our takes on current affairs or, say, the pattern of one of our shirts.
One of the buzz phrases with most traction in our current times is ‘culture wars’. I dislike this term for a number of reasons. The first is that much of this ‘war’ is quite simply people fighting against bigotry versus bigots. Black Lives Matter isn’t a debate. The second is that many of these ‘wars’ are concocted by agents who seek to benefit from keeping people engaged and divided. Our outrage is being monetised.
All of this is grim, which is why sensible discussion is such a pleasure. A change in conviction isn’t necessarily indicative of fair-weather flimsiness. If a government department realises, ‘Oh, actually, that might be better’, then I’m all for it, as long as it is done in a way that is honest, not hypocritical. If I read a book and it alters my view of things, or educates me about other perspectives, that is time well spent. I have come to enjoy TV shows friends told me not to give up on; I like being dragged to an exhibition of an artist I didn’t care for and later having to admit it was good. Being able to change one’s mind, then, is a positive. But I am happy to consider dissent.
BROWSING PROPERTY WEBSITES
According to Alexa, the most visited websites are those you would expect: Google, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon. But I know I am part of a dedicated group of people who spend a significant amount of time on the internet browsing property websites. This is not because I am an investor (cue hysterical laughter), or that I am buying a house. This is pure escapism.
Sites such as Rightmove, Modern House and Purple Bricks are my weakness; I’m afraid I have a passionate dislike of estate agents – because fool me once, shame on you; fool me ninety times and I will despise you for life – and a key bonus of escapist browsing is not having to deal with them. The properties I am looking at are £4-million townhouses in London, or vast open-plan warehouses
in Glasgow, or cute bungalows in Pembrokeshire. I can also pass hours on WowHaus, which advertises places to stay. Recently, I have branched out into stalking lofts in New York and Berlin walk-ups on Google Street View.
My obsession pre-dates the internet. Whenever I was in a doctor’s waiting room, I would dive into the dog-eared copies of Country Life, and even though I was sixteen with less than £100 in an ISA, would take in the Knight Frank manor houses for sale (two tennis courts, stables, a lake). Despite my later realisation that agents are essentially awful, I wanted to be one as a kid. I even made promotional brochures for my nonexistent agency. I played life-simulation videogame The Sims just to build the houses and I worked out a way to game it, so that I could add basements and double-height ceilings.
A significant factor when it comes to the homes that make me swoon is tiles. But so are chunky beams, and stained-glass windows in church conversions. I refuse to be shamed for spotting online that one of the pastel-coloured houses on my dream street has come on to the market, and then altering my route to work to walk by it, like a pining lover.
Lustily daydreaming after design works as a pressure release, a plaster of aesthetics on the wound of news. I suppose one might argue that downloading PDFs of the properties – as if I were actually going to put in an offer on Toddington Manor before Damien Hirst bought it (shut up) – might be taking it too far. But you must excuse me: I have a video tour of a Barbican penthouse to enjoy.
CEMETERIES
It sounds a little strange, I know, to say that cemeteries can be pleasurable places. You wouldn’t think so, what with all the signposted mortality; everywhere you turn, a grey and mossy reminder of death; the shadow of the scythe. But it’s the stillness, the respectful hush that I appreciate.
It’s not a lofty silence. The sort found in a museum, predicated on intellect (or a performance of). It’s not the tense, taut silence of an exam. The silence in a cemetery is a carefully weighted amalgam of love and reflection, and many more emotions besides. Not all easy, obviously, but part of the human experience.
My favourite cemetery is Highgate in London. People tend to focus on the famous and notable buried there. There is an entrance fee and a map. There is a tour. If you’re interested in seeing a giant sculpted Karl Marx head, then Highgate is the one to visit. It is the final resting place of George Eliot and George Michael. It’s fascinating to see the end points of such luminous lives, which is why the equally star-studded Père Lachaise in Paris seems to cameo in every film shot in the city.
It’s the denser part of Highgate I like best, where the green grows thick and the stones are partly obscured. There is no death without life, and cemeteries are a rich source of tiny biographies: unheard-of occupations and conditions; an eyebrow-raising number of wives, or children, or both. The tragedy in dates too close together, evoking Hemingway’s baby shoes, never worn. At Thiepval War Memorial to the Missing of the Somme a few years ago, I stood among row upon row of graves of boys the same age as I was then.
My favourite grave in Highgate? A tiny, unimposing stone belonging to one Fanny Toy. There is scant information about Fanny Toy’s life, but her name is enough.
Often, the landscaping in cemeteries equals that of the best parks, and there is aesthetic joy to be found in certain memorials. In Highgate, the artist Patrick Caulfield has a wonderful, pop art inspired headstone. Some inscriptions make me laugh. The sassiest I’ve heard is Jesse James’s (on the wish of his mother): ‘Murdered by a traitor and coward whose name is not worthy to appear here.’
There is one other reason I can happily sit quietly in a cemetery on a sunny day at the end of a walk. And that is gratitude: I will admit that I have come close to death, and it is because I have sought it out. Cemeteries are not just the residencies of the dead, but places that reiterate the gift in living.
TILES
There is an Instagram account called @IHaveThisThingWithFloors. I also have a thing with floors and so, apparently, do more than 830,000 other people. This account is the antidote to the snaps that smug holidayers take of their feet on beaches, sand spilling over their toes. Smug feet all look the same and sand is beige. But: I have this thing with floors. Specifically, with tiles and flagstones.
Some of my recent favourites that fellow floor enthusiasts have posted on the app include a fuchsia baroque floor; a multi-coloured ikat design; a tiled seascape decorating an indoor pool. In my flat, which is on the ground floor of a converted Victorian terrace, the traditional brown, blue, white mosaic diamond tiles of that period seep under the door from the main hallway. Every time I come home, I admire them. Well, I feed my cat, make a cup of tea and then I admire them.
Public loos – the few remaining – might not come top of most people’s list of admiration, but oh my god: the tiles! Floors and walls. The riches! Not far from where I live, there are well-maintained public toilets where the monochrome check floor is offset by deep green, sheening walls. There is a grade II-listed pub down the road. Formerly a hotel that opened in 1899 and cost a then-extravagant £30,000, it is in the French renaissance style and has a treat of a bathroom: white tiled floors with splashes of red, yellow, and blue – like Mondrian, but if Mondrian had gone a bit Jackson Pollock. Mondrian if Mondrian had been drinking in the pub.
There are the tiles that look like Magic Eye paintings or the bright, geometric tiling in bars with overpriced cocktails and dim light. The fan designs of hotel lobbies and old theatres. The burgundy tiles of the Marrakech souks. The ornate teal-and-gold tiling in Turkish bathhouses. The cold, crumbling floors of Russian dachas that babushkas pad across to make evening chai. The country kitchens with an Aga and a perfect terracotta floor. The basic designs of monasteries. Or the ostentatious 1920s art deco designs underfoot in California, bursting with extravagant shapes and the promise of parties. Salvage yards and eBay listings feed my passion.
Tiled floors, the ceramic sort at least, have been a thing for thousands of years. The Egyptians enjoyed a glass tile. But it’s the Industrial Revolution I have to thank for the boom in the type I have in my flat, when the potters of Victorian England were widespread and inexpensive. (Wealthier households went for the handpainted Arts and Crafts option: think William Morris.) The mark of respect for a truly great tile is to walk all over it. Yes, I most definitely have a thing with floors.
A TRIP TO THE HAIRDRESSER’S
There was a time when I went years without visiting a hairdresser. I know. But I found sitting bang in front of a starkly lit mirror faintly terrifying and so did my best to avoid it. Nobody enjoys confronting cavernous pores or realising that while you may think you are Galadriel, up close the vibe is more Gollum. There is also no silence I can leave unfilled; the stress of coming up with something witty or interesting to say left me in danger of losing hair, rather than having it improved.
I wish I could be one of those people who nails going to the hairdresser: saying nothing for four hours; flicking through Vogue, drooling over unaffordable clothes; relaxing into a head massage. Incidentally, who are the people who say no to the head massage? Would they refuse an oxygen mask on a plane?
It didn’t help that as a child I was a committed tomboy and found anywhere with bottles of nail varnish overwhelming. My idea of dressing ‘fancy’ was wearing a darker shade of tracksuit. By the time that changed, I was firmly into home-dyes and cuts. I didn’t think I was ‘good’ at going to the hairdresser’s and so, like maths and cooking, I avoided it.
But then my sister gave me a haircut. Have you seen I Know What You Did Last Summer? Remember that bit where Sarah Michelle Gellar wakes up to find her hair has been hacked off overnight with a fishhook? I do. I lived it. Except I was awake throughout.
I was forced back to a salon and, in truth, my sister did me a favour, because this was my first meeting with my now regular hairdresser and colourist. While not qualified counsellors, they could legitimately whack an approximation of those skills on to their CVs. They also do a great line in bitching ab
out Brexit.
I still do not appreciate the ridiculous amount of time it takes to colour a head of hair. It is still eye-wateringly expensive, but a cut and colour can perform miracles for mood. It’s the aftermath: the unfathomable silkiness and the divine smell, the closeness to the temples, or the jaw, or the shoulder. But it’s also the hypnotic snip-snip-snipping and the somnolent buzz of the razor. It’s stepping back on to the street like a refurbished version of yourself. Not quite new, but newer. You, plus.
THE SEA
Give me all of the seas. The still teal around silver-beached islands, where the far-out horizon is a thin line of barely perceptible colour change. A Rothko. Give me the choppy waters of a Turner, peaks of spittle-white masquerading as icebergs. I want the deep navy with the surface wobble of jelly; or the entirely transparent water that laps at the shore, transforming my normal-sized feet into milky giants.
Give me all of the seas and let me swim in them. Cold water under December clouds that turns me Christmas-red when wading back out, feeling as though I could take on the world – and have just taken on a part of it, in fact. Floating on my back, in warm water, in a hot country, dunking my head to wash away sweat. Swivelling gently around for the fun of it, like a kebab.
For swimmers, each opportunity has its draw. I rather like the chlorine smell of indoor pools, the sounds echoing off the walls. The bored-looking parents sitting with their phones on the benches, half-returning the waves of kids with blue-and-white sponge floats. I enjoy the community spirit of outdoor lidos, seeing the same old faces. I have given the ducks in swimmable ponds names.
The Joy of Small Things Page 14