Marooned On An Island Of My Own House: More Important Questions
/Hello everyone,
Today I am sitting in my home office, which you can’t have a picture of because it is messy and there is a beer on my desk despite it being slightly early in the day.
Does anyone else find their friends & relations fall neatly into two lockdown types: those who immediately learn Spanish and relish the extra time en casa, and those who sit there and think “Would anybody on this Zoom call really mind if I was having a beer?”
“What if I subtly moved the laptop so you couldn’t see the beer?”
I’m the second type, and today I am working cheerfully away to the sound of Stardew Valley’s background music, which SJ is playing in the lounge.
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Stardew Valley’s Steam page says it is “a simulation role-playing video game” but from what I can tell it is the name for when a grown-ass man spends many, many hours planting and watering virtual parsnips and then tells you with great excitement how many virtual parsnips he has sold .
GIVE A MAN A FISH AND YOU FEED HIM FOR A DAY. GIVE A MAN STARDEW VALLEY AND HE VIRTUAL FISHES FOR SIX HOURS, WHEN HE ISN’T HARVESTING HIS PARSNIPS (NOT A EUPHEMISM)
Personally I prefer Terraria which is very different and far more sophisticated sort of a game.
IT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE I AM FISHING IN MY FANCY ARMOUR.
Steam is an online game shop and also what comes out of a kettle, but that isn’t what we’re talking about right now.
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Did you know they did a survey in the US and 30% of people are drinking-from-home during work hours? I don’t know if that seems low or high. I also don’t know if work hours are even a thing anymore. Why is the weekend so very like the week? What even are hours? Is it Tuesday?
Yesterday I received a very apologetic email from a very nice client who had ‘lost track of time and missed our meeting’ and I had to politely reply and say well actually, Rupert, you haven’t missed anything because the meeting is tomorrow and I think you will find it is you who scheduled it.
Anyway - I mentioned yesterday that there would be more Lockdown Questions. Here they are!
This is a list of Questions About Standards.
Which is the right week to start cutting your hair yourself?
I keep thinking about it, but I feel like we’re still a little early in the piece. Perhaps I should drink-from-home and then cut my hair on a video call.
During a lockdown, how fat is one allowed to get?
I’m just kidding. You can get as fat as you want and so can I! There’s a pandemic on, there are no rules.
Cut your own fringe! Wear the same jeans for a month! Set your Zoom background to something crazy, like outer space! (That one is for all of my colleagues, but apparently they read it weeks ago.) Get day drunk and make an instagram for your dog! Accidentally put your laptop on flight mode while excitedly typing about all the things you can do in lockdown! I didn’t even know this thing had flight mode.
Get day drunk and follow your friend’s dog’s Instagram! Go on, chuck him a follow. It’s @rollslabradorable.
Anyway, to get back to the question: I don’t care about anybody’s fat-getting, I just want to brag about all the baking we have been doing.
I MADE THESE WITH MY OWN HANDS AND AN OVEN
SJ MAKES BREAD NOW. I DON’T KNOW WHERE THIS BREAD KNOWLEDGE CAME FROM BUT WHERE HAS IT BEEN FOR THE LAST THREE YEARS OF OUR BREADLESS RELATIONSHIP
I did mean to increase my lockdown exercise a bit because we really have been eating quite a lot of bread. Unfortunately the only exercise I like is weights and apart from lifting the dog up and putting him down again, which is difficult because he does not like it even though it would be great for his instagram, I can’t think of much to do. (SJ is too heavy for me to lift. Potentially on account of all the bread.)
I almost bought a mini trampoline, but they are significantly more expensive than you would think.
Also what if I came off it at a weird angle and bounced into the wall.
How far and how quickly should one’s presentation standards slip?
It’s amazing how quickly the nice, professional people you vaguely remember from the office turn into frizzy-headed hobos, only one rough morning away from showing up on a conference call in their dressing gown. How are we maintaining any semblance of professionalism? And how long should we be expected to maintain it for?
I’m sorry there are so many more questions than answers in this post. The other day one of my colleagues missed a morning meeting then unapologetically admitted they had been asleep.
Also, is it OK for colleagues to comment on one’s work-from-home attire? I was in a meeting this week and I had to stand up and show everyone that I was in fact wearing a shawl.
SEE NICK, IT’S NOT A FUCKING DRESSING GOWN
Speaking of standards slipping, are we back to the online dating of the early 2000s?
Apparently after this all blows over we can expect two things:
An increase in the divorce rate, as people who are in lockdown with their significant other finally realise just how much they absolutely do not relish the time spent together;
An increase in BABIES as people who are in lockdown without anyone at all just burst out of their homes and jump onto the first person they see post-lockdown, protection be damned! I heard someone on the radio say ‘coronaboomers’ and… yes, but also… no.
It seems we’ve returned to a simpler time where instead of Tindering we are doing the MSN Messenger thing where you start talking to someone, get a bit flirty, progress to a frankly quite ridiculous level of emotional intimacy, completely exhaust your conversation, then endure long periods of awkward silence before eventually meeting in person and going “yuck, I don’t like his beard.”
Why are clip-top containers not outlawed?
This isn’t specifically Covid-related but our dishwasher broke on like, day three of lockdown, and so now we must do our dishes by hand, like peasants.
SJ takes his lunch to work in clip-top containers and I wish he did not. What’s wrong with putting your sandwich in a plastic bag? Or making your noodles in a plastic bag? Why does the clip-top container always go orange, no matter what food you put in it? Why is it so hard to dry? Why is it always so greasy?
I hate these clip-top containers and you should too.
Has everyone forgotten how to drive, or just me?
I went to the supermarket the other day, which was the first time I’d driven in about three weeks, and found myself farting about like an 85-year-old in a Mazda Demio.
You know how they do: Indicating when you aren’t going anywhere, coming to a complete stop at empty roundabouts, panic braking for a particularly large leaf. Thankfully there was nobody else on the road because I do my supermarket shopping in the beautiful mid-line lulls, but is this happening to anyone else? How did I become so bad at this so fast?
Maybe I should just stay home and harvest my parsnips and update my dog’s instagram.
@ROLLSLABRADORABLE CHUCK HIM A FOLLOW