CHEWING THE BARS
I am fed up, bored, pee-ed off, irritated, grumpy. How can I bear weeks more of this lockdown! I am chewing the figurative bars of this metaphorical cage.
Things must be bad because I have been cleaning. The other day I emptied the cupboard under the stairs, tidied and cleaned it. In the process I found 19 dusters of varying sizes, a portable picnic set, 2 beach rolls, several half-empty paint cans, a real feather duster, numerous candles, and assorted cleaning machines, two of which I have never used.
I was on a roll so I tidied the cupboards under the window seat. Right at the bottom I found a piece of canvas, embroidered in tiny cross stitch, so old that I could not remember how I came by it or when I stitched it. I sewed the canvas on to a piece of material and made a cushion cover in the spirit of Grayson Perry’s Art Club. I did not imagine, design, and stitch it in the spirit of creativity induced by weeks of staring inwards, thinking beautiful thoughts but it would have to do.
I’d have preferred to do something more in the spirit of Banksie; graffiti would suit my mood much better, and I liked to imagine me, spray cans in hand, climbing ladders and painting political art work on walls in the dead of night.
I have started two novels, given up on each, and then gone back to the first only to find both unsatisfactory – they were dull because I feel dull. Knowing how fortunate I am compared to thousands of people stuck in flats with small children or demented partners makes me feel worse. I know I should become like Katy in What Katy Did and become a better person through this but I can’t see it happening. I shan’t be honed, refined, purified like some sort of metal and become a shining, bright person. It’s not going to happen. I feel more as if I’m getting dulled and rusty, bored and boring.
Then I remembered another Victorian novel and how Polyanna found gladness in tiny things. I should give it a go; I’ve got to start somewhere.
