I have been experimenting with waking up at different times.
Every day begins with the small joy of asking myself ‘and what time shall it be today?’ a joy that lasts approximately as long as it takes to open my eyes. Once that happens, it’s back to being the stroke-of-whenever, in the month of who-cares.
Time is now an arbitrary construct, as I find myself with little of pressing urgency. As I clamber downstairs I begin devising ways to fill my day.
Ultimately, the penultimate question of every day is ‘when is it acceptable to begin drinking?’. In this world-without-time, do we cling to an arbitrary number on the clock dial, or do we take the more utilitarian approach of ‘complete this list of chores, then you may indulge’?
A lack of gainful employment and my current immurement have left me, like many, with oodles of spare time and a vague sense that somewhere in my thirty-odd years I should have developed hobbies outside of eating/drinking/frequenting places of non-essential activity.
Whereas in my past working life I would fanny about tables – hydrating, liberating, and generally making a nuisance of myself – these days my social excursions involve a daily watering/rearranging of the various forms of greenery around the house, mumbling disjointed conversations. This generally takes around forty-five minutes.
My housemate watches occasionally with a bemused smile. This is a far more healthy coping mechanism on both our parts; she has her idiosyncrasies, and I have mine.
The conversations I have with our various succulents go without comment, and I have ceased teasing her for using a ruler to set the table with napkins so thoroughly starched they stand up on their own, just for breakfast cereal.
I find myself humming a tune. It’s no masterpiece, but it is a welcome relief from the very tangible silence that sits over our street, broken only occasionally by our neighbours having what sounds to be some very satisfactory sex.
The same energetic inertia that has not only seen me discover three hereto-unknown combinations for cheese toasties, and single-handedly beat every level of PornHub, has also translated to habits of productivity that would have seen me climbing the walls long ago had I not scrubbed them first.
The house is almost acerbically clean. I would like to claim that the long-ingrained habits of cleanliness have left the kitchen in a similarly divine state of order, but it has not. I wince, as I pass the aftermath of last nights culinary adventures, placing the unholy mess firmly in the ‘problem for future me’ pile.
Instead, I look to the shower, as a sanctuary and decide for no good reason that I am going to have a shower martini. I wisely keep martinis batched in the freezer at all times, in case of emergencies.
I prep them by ratio and weight. I also add a bump of saline solution and a drop of orange bitters – because I am a lawless heathen and I like flavour. Now people will claim that gin is heavier than vermouth, is heavier than water, and those people are technically correct.
However, if the worst thing to happen in your isolation is due to this disproportionate weight your martini is slightly wetter than its 5:2:2 ratio would suggest, then I would counter that you do not need that sort of negativity in your life and drink your martini, however, the hell you like it.
An advantage to this method is that you are not limited by the size of your measuring vessel. Not that I advocate, but hypothetically you could (if so desired) trade out kitchen scales for the bathrooms and make yourself a literal bathtub-worth of martini.
Numerous mishaps which saw the shower being turned into a glass specked OHS nightmare has seen a cessation of glassware where shower-drinking is concerned. The sight of a grown man refilling a sippy cup with a batched martini in the midday kitchen sunlight may be a slightly ridiculous one, but honestly, it is on par with the absurdity of what of my ‘new normal’.
Of course, the moment I am done cleaning, a new days food prep will commence – tune in to the next exciting chapter ‘Conversations with my SCOBY’ – but for the time being, although there is plenty left to do, I sit on the floor and watch the dusty sunlight.
Soon the grumbling coffee pot will begin the first of its daily labour, filling the space with delicious smells – the house doesn’t clean itself after all – but for the time I sit, the martini gone, and think to myself that today (whichever day it is) might just be a good one.
