Out and about

20 Sep Out and about

It was a Friday morning. I had appointments, places to be, people to see. It felt almost illicit to have an outing that wasn’t a walk to the park or along the river, a flask stashed in the rucksack, a rendez-vous on a familiar bench pre-arranged with a friend. 

Friday was different. 

An optician’s appointment at 10 o’clock to collect new reading glasses. Local; walkable. But I decided to take the car and go from there to a lunch date with a friend, perhaps with some other activities en route if time allowed. I haven’t seen this friend in the flesh since February 2020. We’ve zoomed but increasingly seldom as both of us became jaded with zoom. A piece in the Guardian that very day about the mental health crisis triggered by zooming and written by a cosmetic surgeon who’s seen her patient numbers grow (you might say zoom up!) as people feel a creeping sense of anxiety and self-doubt resulting, she hypothesises, from having to confront themselves on screen daily or several times a day for months. The picture they see of themselves is often distorted (camera angle, small screen) and it’s impossible to not look at oneself and perhaps compare to the other thumbnail people in the gallery a couple of feet in front of you. Made me think. I know on zoom I play with my hair – up, down, up again – like a nervous tic, and with my glasses – on, off, on again. The camera angle may be the culprit, but sometimes the person I see is a stranger with some familiar features – the long face, laughter lines (the ‘laughter’ increasingly euphemistic) and blemishes that mostly, as someone living on the inside of them, I don’t notice. I’ve been seeing all this gradually unfold in the mirror for a while now but only in brief glimpses, not for an hour or more at a time. So, I can see how the ‘zoom face’ might be unsettling.

Anyway, back to my Friday. My lunch date lives in another part of southwest London, about 10 miles from me and a good 45 minutes by road depending on traffic (Yep, that’s London). So, between my 10 o’clock and my 1 o’clock, I had to allow for the journey, but otherwise plenty of time to do something else. A coffee somewhere, for instance. Check out the garden centre and pick up a new digging fork. Pop into a chemist for essentials for a short trip the following week to an Airbnb cottage where none of the usual stuff like soap or shampoo will be provided in order to be ‘COVID secure’. Or would I just go back home and wait until I had to leave for my lunch date? These options flitted across my mind creating a sort of chaos. I’m not used to options these days. I wanted to try myself out on ‘being out’ so I decided against scurrying back home.

The optician’s door was locked. You have to ring and wait to be admitted and then only if you have an appointment. Last time I was there I had to wait around for a long time so I’d allowed a good 45 minutes for the appointment. I was out in just under 15. Plenty of time. I picked up the car and as I drove along wondering what to do I realised I needed fuel for the forthcoming Airbnb trip so I drove to a garage to fill up. Then back again the way I had come remembering a café with outside seating that I’ve used in the past. I parked, paid the parking charge and wandered up to the door, puzzled that there was nobody sitting outside on a mild, sunny day, to find it now doesn’t open until midday and no longer sells coffee and pastries every morning. With the taste of Danish pastry already teasing my saliva glands, the disappointment was hard to take. And the frustration at precious coins fed futilely into the meter.  A quick U-turn and back up the road to the garden centre. It was very quiet so I masked up, sanitised and marched in, newly determined. An array of garden forks but none of the light-weight ones that make life so much easier for the slightly-built but nonetheless eager gardener. Another abortive mission – at least the parking was free.

It was a strange experience, not so much the fruitless pursuit of coffee or a garden tool, but more the sense of discomposure I felt. I hadn’t realised how out of practice I am at being out in the world (even the relatively small local world on the streets around home). Out of practice at having time away from the house when I can improvise, ad-lib with what I do and where I go. I’ve never been much of a window-shopper or browser. I get bored too quickly. Anyway, it’s much more difficult to browse in a time-filling, desultory way now you have to weigh up the risks of every step. How long could I linger in a bookshop, for example? Should I slip into the shoe shop and try on those gorgeous boots even though I don’t need them and have no intention of buying them? After the irritation at being so indecisive had ebbed away and I stopped feeling vexed that this bit of free time ‘at large’ that had felt like a gift in anticipation turned out to be a trial, I could laugh at myself for having completely forgotten that basic life skill of being able to wander about and be completely un-purposeful!