SANDY LLOYD IS READING JUST ONE MORE CHAPTER
When the world has gone mad, sometimes our best source of comfort can be found in the familiar and the ordinary.
As we struggle to keep our physical and emotional sanity in our locked-down, self-isolated and socially-distanced lives, many people are turning to new and novel activities.
Learning a language, reading a new book, binge-watching a new Netflix series, cooking a new recipe with all those pantry staples you’ve hoarded, taking up sewing or finding ways to stay in touch online that no-one could have imagined just a few weeks ago.
New and challenging is great — but what about old and simple?
Like those daggy slippers and not-for-public-consumption trackie daks you’re wearing while WFH (working from home, remember I do lingo now).
Why not translate comfy clothes at home into comfy life at home?
Why not take advantage of this enforced slowdown in our usually frantic lives, to actually slow down our lives?
I have been reading about a book that’s all about rereading books.
It’s a memoir by American essayist and critic Vivian Gornick called Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader.
It sounds far too complex and highbrow to make me want to read the actual book, but I’ve enjoyed reading reviews and articles about it.
Now in her 80s, Vivian has reread books she loved or hated as a younger woman and then analysed how her understanding and enjoyment of the texts have changed with age.
The reason I’m fascinated by this idea is because I’m also a chronic re-reader.
Not because I’m scared of a new book or new ideas, but because I find incredible comfort between the worn pages of a favourite novel.
And I’ve enjoyed how my grasp of concepts and subtleties in the text have altered as my life has changed over the years.
Reading Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as a woman in my 50s is a very different prospect from reading it as a 17-year-old girl at school. Beloved at both ends of my life but observed through a completely different lens of experience.
Or discovering more clever nuances in The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, my little paperback held together by a rubber band because the yellowing pages are falling out from so many rereads.
Then there’s The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. I own 16 of her historical novels, but this is the one I feel compelled to revisit often, for the sheer pleasure reading it gives me.
But I might give The Stand by Stephen King a rest this year — I reread it every 12 months or so. The story about a super-flu killing nearly everyone in the world is a bit too prophetic at the moment.
As a child, I read over and over again the stories of Enid Blyton, losing myself in the magic of the Faraway Tree and the Wishing Chair, and going on adventures with the Famous Five.
Those familiar stories were like a best friend who was always there and ready to have fun.
So instead of frantically filling our enforced time indoors with new activities, why not slow down and pull an old friend off the bookshelf and while away some time in their company.
Or turn off the high-speed action on the PlayStation and dust off the family board games like Monopoly or Scrabble (but not Pandemic — we are leaving that one where it is on our bookshelf) or better yet, the ultimate in slowing down therapy, a jigsaw puzzle.
The same goes for television and movies.
Instead of rushing to binge the latest offerings on our streaming services, how about watching something old and familiar.
To paraphrase ScoMo again: “How good are re-runs?”
From Friends to The X-Files, Seinfeld to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dawson’s Creek to Star Trek, Breaking Bad to Charmed — there are ‘boxed sets’ of old faithfuls everywhere.
Cosy up on the couch once more at Central Perk with Monica, Chandler and the gang; catch up again with Jerry, Elaine and George at the diner; or boldly go where no-one has gone before (except you have gone there before) with the crew of the starship Enterprise.
Jason Sternberg, a senior lecturer in the school of communication at the Queensland University of Technology, told the ABC he expected Australians to be turning to re-runs during this crisis, calling them an “emotional blanket comforter”.
“We are gravitating towards sitcoms and that makes perfect sense,” he said.
“They are short, the emphasis is on laughter. Something is wrong at the start and within 25 minutes it’s resolved.
“If only the world could be like that at the moment.”
And so say all of us.
I AM COOKING...
More than I have for ages. That’s both more often and in greater volume.
My son has returned from Melbourne after his university studies moved online and he craved the comforts of home.
So I’m back to preparing ‘family’ meals in quantities to satisfy his 20-year-old stomach. And I’m not alone, judging by my inbox.
Taste.com and SBS Food are on the lockdown bandwagon, with ideas like: One chicken, three meals; Fifty basic recipes using whatever’s in your pantry; One hundred ways with rice that will never get boring; and Cooking to fight boredom and bring joy.
Keep calm in the kitchen!
I AM LISTENING...
To the new song by Ball Park Music, Spark Up!, and Is Everybody Going Crazy? by Nothing But Thieves.
That’s because my son is home after uni changed to online studies, so we’re back to sharing our music discoveries with each other.
He’s given me these new tracks, and I’ve offered him a banging collaboration between Foo Fighters and John Fogerty on the latter’s Creedence Clearwater Revival anti-war anthem Fortunate Son (yes, I know it’s from 2013 — sometimes treasure takes a while to be dug up).
All genuine dance-around-the-kitchen tunes, which is my yardstick for success.
I AM GOBSMACKED...
By the craziness that’s spreading as fast as COVID-19.
In Malaysia, the government apologised after releasing lockdown advice for women, which included not nagging their husbands and that they should get dressed-up and wear make-up to work from home.
At a time when there is a heightened risk of domestic abuse with women trapped at home with their abusers, that’s just madness.
But for madness of a so-terrible-it’s-funny kind, check out the Belarus president who says saunas, sport (they’re still playing soccer and he’s playing ice hockey), driving tractors and vodka will save us.
I AM DELIGHTED...
Bluey, Australia’s favourite kids’ show, has won an International Emmy Kids Award. My kids are a long way past Bluey, but I know they would have been obsessed if it was around when they were littlies.
And plenty of parents will be thanking the TV gods that they have Bluey to distract their offspring right now.
The cartoon blue heeler won the pre-school category in the prestigious awards and was the only Aussie show nominated in the contest.
Bluey is the most-watched program in the history of ABC iview.
And all that goodness is neatly packaged up in seven-minute-long episodes.