Hilary Fannin: Even procrastibaking can’t stop the days disappearing

I bumped into an acquaintance when I was leaving the supermarket the other day, a breezy septuagenarian who enjoys pushing her Pekingese home in a doggy stroller with her messages hanging from the handles. She looked, on that cold morning, a little tired, a little flat.

“How are you doing?” I asked.

She took a moment to consider her reply.

“I’ve aged,” she replied practically. “I miss the buzz.”

I was homeschooled by paper dolls and an amber-eyed dog

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‘I’m thinking of leaving him, as soon as I can get beyond the 5km limit’

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‘My life has been wonderful. I want it back’

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I don’t want a lot for Christmas – and maybe that’s a good thing

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I went home, horsed another sacfkful of mung beans into the cupboard, made the cat a sandwich, considered again the resilient smear of seagull shit on the outside of the kitchen window. I ate a lump of bread, felt guilty about eating a lump of bread (I toy with the idea of flattening my own curve), got over myself, ate another lump of bread (with jam on it), and thought yes, yes, that is exactly what I feel: I’ve aged – with alacrity.

Something has happened to time, don’t you think? The days disappear down the plughole like a bucket of caustic soda; yet last March, when this fandango began, feels, in my bones, like a decade ago.

Lived experience

Apparently it’s all to do with the quality of one’s lived experience. If you’re having an awfully stimulating time – you know, wandering the backstreets of Naples in a pair of bicycle shorts with a deeply tanned (if pungent) lover, determined to ferret out a perfect ragu for your meatballs – time will slow down and become memorable.

Unfortunately, when the highlight of your day is almost managing to fix the toaster, there’s not much for the synapses to get their snaky little synapse teeth into. (I spent a significant proportion of last week, for example, thinking it was one continuous Tuesday.)

Anyway, speaking of the cat (hold on, were we?), she has a perfectly good and comfortable bed, more a little hut really, a gift from a cheerful neighbour with whom she has an extremely cordial relationship. (I posit that this may be because the mangy moggie has never actually thrown up on my neighbour’s remote control.) Recently, however, she has decided to eschew her cosy berth in favour of nesting in the vegetable box. The other day, she laid five carrots.

Carrot cake

This was, as it happens, the same day that I decided to abandon my wiser instincts and attempt to make a carrot cake. Baking is not something I’ve embraced during previous lockdowns, or indeed ever. My putative baking prowess bit the dust in the domestic science room of my convent school, circa 1972, with an apple dumpling leaden enough to fell a fully grown human. (That I’d produced a missile capable of killing a man, rather than endearing one to me, did not make me half as unhappy as it did Sr Annunciata.)

Procrastibaking – a Covid phenomenon that is, apparently, what we’re really doing when we mix our red velvet muffins, flip our flapjacks and drizzle our hopes over our lemon sponges – is, to paraphrase Canadian professor of psychology Tim Pychyl (who clearly found the right job for his name) an unconscious strategy that makes us feel skilled, nurturing and virtuous in the present while distracting us from the future.

Well, maybe in most cases. In mine though, the unconscious effort at distraction was about as successful and reassuring as the gluey, slightly furry confection I finally dragged kicking and screaming out of the oven. Maybe I should try procrastiknitting or procrastiflowerpressing because the future still feels extremely procrastiprecarious.

Spare a thought for Jody Thompson, who won one of Gwyneth Paltrow's olfactorily fascinating This Smells Like My Vagina candles in a work quiz

In truth, what I really fear, as this current lockdown crawls across the calendar towards yet another month, is becoming afraid. Afraid of the new old normal, whenever it emerges. Afraid of the big, lonely, unpredictable world out there. Afraid of the unknown, afraid of the unfamiliar. Afraid of cities I’ve never seen and landscapes I’ve never encountered and people I’ve yet to embrace.

You can become alarmingly locked into your own reduced routines, even when they include scraping your gelatinous baking off the tin with a spoon.

Exploded

On a brighter note, before I toddle off to ice the cat, spare a thought for Jody Thompson, a 50-year-old Londoner who won one of Gwyneth Paltrow’s olfactorily fascinating This Smells Like My Vagina candles in a work quiz. At first Jody was happy with her prize, as Gwynnie’s yoni-centric scented lights usually retail at almost 70 quid – which is certainly not to be sniffed at. Unfortunately, however, upon lighting, Jody’s candle emitted a huge flame and then exploded, leaving waxy traces of Gwynnie’s vag all over the livingroom.

That must have required some elbow grease, eh? Makes scraping furballs off the remote control sound like a piece of cake.