Such things don't always come naturally

I’ve just heard about someone – a twenty-year-old university student, actually – who didn’t know how to use a paperclip. And so it dawned on me not only that a paperclip might be a generational thing, but also that a paperclip actually ‘works’ in some way (or, if in the hands of the wrong generation, doesn’t).

And this alarming anecdote of twenty-first-century life – and accompanying minor epiphany – came to me soon after I’d been pondering the fact that these days, just when you need a paperclip, there’s none to be found. The recesses of any respectable desk drawer used to be teeming with the things, but now that I found myself reaching for one (I confess that my intentions were not entirely modern – I was posting a cheque), those recesses were empty. Had the paperclip’s obsolescence come too soon, before our need was gone but after we’d finished restocking, and all this time supplies had been running dangerously low? Whether or not this was a correct interpretation of the situation, it was obviously time to improvise (and to think about how if the paperclip hadn’t been invented it would be time to do so).

So paperclips should definitely exist, I feel, and it should be incumbent upon twenty-year-old university students to be versed in their workings. By the same token, I’ve been grappling with the complexities of an altogether newer contraption, and there’s been a great deal incumbent upon me since I took ownership of it. For the truly interesting thing about this new iPhone of mine is this: its workings are apparently intuitive, but I’m having to learn them. As I now know, such things don’t always come naturally.

Issues of mine

We don’t often have bananas in our house these days. They’re just too fickle a proposition: either too yellow and too firm, or too black and too soft. Obviously somewhere inbetween was the perfect moment, but it must have been when we were out. So there they’d lie (which might, I suppose, be the problem – I see sensible people hang them up these days) in our fruit bowl, until they become an insult – and, more importantly, a danger – to the fruit around them. Then they’d be discreetly transferred across to the tub of perishables destined for the compost. And then a few days later out they’d go, to continue their miserable life-cycle out of doors and out of sight and mind.

I struggle with other food, too, but nothing’s quite as tricky as a banana. And, in fact, nothing on the domestic front is quite as tricky as the kitchen. Washing seems to come naturally enough, and tidying and cleaning are just about doable – and can always wait – but the constant demands of the stomach on the one hand and food on the other still catch me out.

It’s been, I imagine, half a lifetime or so of grappling with the problem. But there are other things which have preoccupied me just as much and which, happily, have now been mastered. In the very best cases, it’s been but a slight adjustment: the toaster shifting sideways and suddenly finding its rightful resting place, the new kitchen roll holder performing its function admirably… Even after many years of life, then, I still have within my grasp the pleasure of bettering what’s gone before.

And thank god life contains enough complexity that there’ll always be room for such improvement, and unpredictable enough that our own expiry dates don’t announce themselves ahead of time. It all gives me hope that there’s still a good chance of a breakthrough in those other kitchen issues of mine.

Creature of habit

It might just be a harking back to schooldays – or even earlier – but, to all intents and purposes, I have two pairs of shoes: an outdoor pair and an indoor pair. But today, a special day for reasons I won’t go into, I remembered another pair of shoes. I dusted them down and put them on.

And immediately I began to wonder what it must be like to have different shoes for different days, to be one of those women who love shoes for themselves (the shoeness of them, I mean) rather than as functional things. How their feet must struggle with the relentless unfamiliarity which regularly assaults them.

But my thinking was interrupted – driven off course even – by the need to attend to where this couple of impostors were taking me and by my attempts to educate them in my ways and routines. Until it dawned on me: this was perhaps the point. With every strange pair of shoes comes easy reinvention and a chance to refresh the so-called daily grind.

Perhaps I should don this alien pair on a more regular basis, I thought to myself, clutching at the idea of a carefree, unpredictable me. Damn. That would defeat my purpose. It seems I’ll always be a creature of habit.

Not a bank holiday in sight

The opening and closing of banks rarely impinges on my line of sight these days, but I do like bank holidays – those rare Mondays that are happily out of step with the passing of time and thereby unite us in a communal, civic kind of a way. Oh, except of course for our parking wardens, who go about wrongfooting anyone who assumes Sunday rules still apply. Humph.

But, parking wardens and their awkward rules apart, for those of us who struggle to find even a chink of time between the opposing tugs of flighty weekends and demanding weeks, here – at last – is a day that is mercifully free of the usual strains and agendas. And what greater satisfaction on a day such as this than to forgo ambition and any remotely long-lasting achievement, and turn instead to righting the creeping imbalance that is waiting to topple us right here at home.

Which means, of course, a trip to Ham Lane with a car full of cardboard followed by a trip to Waitrose to restock. Just briefly everything is right with the world. It’s catharsis and satiation all at once. And it’s both domestic duty and civic duty fulfilled. Before the spread starts again with not a bank holiday in sight.

There could be more

I may be wedded to the 7.42 in more ways than one, but there’s always the possibility that I might reassert my independence by deciding – on a whim – on a later train. And so it was this morning that I changed my rhythms, eschewed the 7.42 and boarded the 7.55. And how enlightening this proved to be. Between getting up and out of the door – usually a highly calibrated sliver or time – I mused on the minutes at my disposal, and how different life could be. It was a useful reminder that the path I take through my days is just one of many possibilities.

And perhaps my delinquent morning was a good way of clawing back a little control and evading the hold that Southern has over us all. For with every tweak of a number – probably decided on, like so much these days, by the flick of an algorithm – Southern reaffirms its presence, and we find ourselves shifting our rhythms to its own. But I’ve been lucky with the 7.42. So far it’s been steadfast enough, and we’ve suited each other well.

Now, though, my capricious morning has given me a taste for freedom, and perhaps, I realise, the odd departure from my usual comings and goings – my usual themes, my usual parameters – is no bad thing. There could be more.