Monday
My husband and child stood on the front step waving me off. White handkerchiefs aloft and fluttering in the breeze, faces sombre, they wished me well.
“It is a far, far better thing you do,” said my husband, “than you have ever done. Apart from that Italian roast chicken thing you did a couple of weeks ago. That was great.”
“That was from Waitrose,” I said morosely, as I made my unwilling way towards the train station. I was heading for my parents’ house, where they had recently taken delivery of an iPad, a new television and a Fire stick. My sister and I had drawn lots over who was to install the necessary and then embark on a tuition programme. Well, not quite drawn lots. “It could take weeks, and I’ve got a proper job,” said my sister. “You’ll do it. Especially as I’ll punch your lights out if you don’t.” Maybe other families work as a democracy. That must be nice.
I arrived. I was shown various boxes. My dad gave me a sandwich. I unpacked, plugged in, installed and then embarked on the teaching. Once we were all bleeding from the ears, I called it a day. “You have email and Netflix,” I said. “That’ll get you to the weekend. Then,” – I turned away so they would not see me begin to weep – “I’ll be back.” Dad did me another sandwich for the train.
Tuesday
Bartram Trail high school has hit the headlines after digitally altering the yearbook photos of 80 female students to add more modest necklines and so on to pictures showing a hint of cleavage or bare shoulders.
It took me back to my own schooldays and many happy memories of the teachers’ efforts to render 500 girls’ interpretations of our navy and white uniform acceptable and … well, uniform. The overt stuff was easy. Anyone with a skirt waistband rolled up so far her knickers were on semi-public view or whose shirt was deliberately unbuttoned so that new boobs could be proudly displayed was abruptly told to sort herself out. It was the grey areas that we used to delight in watching the teachers mentally wrestle with. What could they say to Claire B, who had a massive bust but was a tomboy and refused to wear a bra? What should they do about the poorer girls who weren’t “making a show of themselves” but simply growing out of their uniforms and were unable to afford replacements. And what could they do about the girls who were wearing everything absolutely correctly but still somehow, inescapably, irremediably looked like sex bombs?
The difference between then and now, of course, is that attempts to alter or police what girls are wearing must be able to refute claims of body-shaming and victim-blaming. Beyond the most extreme knicker-flashing examples (done purely to annoy), all the changes demanded did spring from the unspoken belief, so universally accepted that it amounted to natural law, that it was girls’ job not to inflame the men and boys around us with our ways, our clothes, our bodies. It is lovely to look back and know that at least now the invisible has been made visible enough to challenge, loudly. Even when there’s still a long way to go, measurable progress is a heartening thing.
Wednesday
I have stayed determinedly away from the coverage of Dominic Cummings’ appearance before the select committee. Of course, in this day and age, bits and pieces have pierced my consciousness – if the Likely Lads couldn’t do it with football scores in 1973, what hope have we with the hobgoblin of chaos in the social media age? – but fortunately it seems to be mostly just people’s satirical spins on his evidence. Stuff like him saying Boris Johnson wanted to be injected with Covid on live TV to prove that a novel zoonotic virus was nothing to be scared of; that he’s giving great lists of things that the health secretary should have been fired for; that it was completely crazy that Cummings himself should have been in such a senior position in government, and trying to illustrate the illimitable clusterfuckedness of the handling of the pandemic that resulted in 128,000 deaths by describing the Spider-Man meme and likening Johnson’s approach to a shopping trolley smashing its way from one side of the aisle to another.
People are good at these acid takes, really this country an absolute mine of untapped comic … What? What’s that you say? “The unbearable reality”? No. No, that can’t be right. No. No.
Thursday
Eric Carle, the artist, children’s book writer-illustrator and creator, most famously, of that paint and collaged-tissue-paper account of magical metamorphosis The Very Hungry Caterpillar, has died at the age of 91.
The book’s life began when Carle was using a hole punch on a stack of papers at his home. The little circles made him think of a bookworm and he created a story, using different-sized pages – a familiar device in Germany, where he had lived as a child and young man – called A Week With Willi Worm. His editor Ann Beneduce suggested a caterpillar might be more likeable than a worm. Carle shouted “Butterfly!” and got cracking on a rewrite that took full narrative advantage of his new hero’s transformative properties. The rest, as they say, is history. Mostly a history of uncountable numbers of happy hours spent by generations of children not just reading but poking, playing, feeling, and genuinely immersing themselves in a book. Love for it beats like a butterfly’s wings in a million hearts. What a legacy.
Friday
We have (another) obdurate leak in the house. Which means that I am (again) losing my mind. My emotional equilibrium, it turns out, depends almost entirely on my domestic environment remaining physically sound. Anything going wrong with the plumbing, the electrics, the roof, anything, anything at all undoes me. It is pathetic. I am pathetic. I know this. I feel so guilty about being unable to handle these minor, unavoidable vicissitudes of life – and vicissitudes you only get to experience if you’re lucky enough to have a house, plumbing and electricity in the first place! I know! I know! – that it makes me even more despondent about everything and allows a quick spiral into absolute despair. Going to get this latest leaky nonsense fixed then start calling electricians to see who’s willing to have a go at rewiring my brain.
