When this first started, I decided to note down all the quotidian but significant moments. I figured we are living through important times, and someday it might prove useful. “Man in shop put two dozen bars of soap in his basket and everyone tutted” read one entry. “Heard someone shouting, ‘Stop spying on me!’ and related hard” read another.
Quickly, the notepad filled. That’s the nature of lockdown: simple things are suddenly imbued with a sense of profundity – the usual jog is now a sanity-saving act, recipes learned a product of a new (furloughed) normal.
Everything is, as my friends call it, D&M – Deep and Meaningful – our code on WhatsApp group chats to signpost when something’s being said seriously. (For example, when Clara says a sexy picture she sent in an Instagram private message was actually posted to Stories and viewed by her grandma, she’ll say “D&M” first, so we know not to laugh. Well, not immediately.)
Like that notepad, I, too, am at capacity. I have deep and meaningful fatigue. I am unusually tired. Sometimes my limbs ache with emotional heaviness. And if the thousands of similar reports on social media are anything to go by, I am not alone.
So I’ve started something new: an anti-D&M notepad. I jot down the joyful, daft and utterly stupid jokes, so often forgotten. Admittedly, at present it is just variations of the same joke my boyfriend and I have shared for years. We say mundane things in a breathy perfume advert voice, for example: “We’re out of eggs, Dior” or, whispered seductively, “My foot hurts, Armani”. But silliness is in short supply.
When the D&M notepad filled, I didn’t start another. Now, I’ve misplaced it. I can’t see myself searching for it anytime soon. There are more important things to remember.
