It’s good practice to write handover notes
when you leave for a more or less significant period of time, even when flying eight
hours behind and then back feels like you’ll only be gone for the night, and
when the state of you in the limbo of the pre-departure is not too
dissimilar to when you pour a cheesecake mixture into the tin before going to bed and think, duck
knows if this will ever set.
To those who are left to spend the night time
all by themselves in my absence (and to stare at the fridge like lunatics), I
wish to pass on the following words of wisdom.
:
:
- If the thing doesn’t set, you can always have
fig soup. Or just accept it’s a disaster (there’s beauty in every stumble), and
start a baking blog about cheesecake disasters. It might take off, James says.
- Write stuff. If you’re too shy,
invisible-write stuff.
- Masquerades are a necessary evil, but
that doesn’t justify dressing up for the best part of twenty-five years just
because it so happened that you forgot to take your costume off (you got there
eventually).
- Royal Mail may also be a necessary evil,
but even when they get confused and send your Italian dad’s parcel off to India
(I’m known for not holding grudges), it doesn’t mean you are authorised to
disrupt the continuum of space and time on the entire office floor shrieking like
a banshee at customer service employees.
- Escape as and when deemed needed, but
make sure you reserve every bit of your anxiety for what you’re escaping to.
- Foxes are underrated. Walk with them.
- Sit in cafes with the most serious expression
in your repertoire and type on your laptop with the solemnity of manner you’d
have when applying for a programme manager job. No one needs to know you are secretly
creating cute animations out of hand-drawn badgers, photos of Birmingham and
vintage trumpets.
- Five-storey buildings with a sinking-ship
feel are not suitable for the emotionally unstable. Stick to orphanages, cafes
in art galleries, edit suites and coffee shops that sell custard tarts whenever
possible.
- Winter is cold. Summer can also be cold.
Sometimes there is no summer. Wear jumpers; allow yourself to be hugged. This
will keep you warm.
- Eat fried plantain, appreciate double
entendres, and try not to demolish Persian cafes with your outstanding
gracefulness, as this may result in getting banned from Peckham and sent back the
other side of the river in eternal exile.
- Work is a sentence.
- Things fall from the sky onto your head.
Most times you wish they didn’t. But they can make for nice stories. Have your
notebook ready.
- Things fall from the sky onto your head.
And right into place after that. Be astounded, smile.
:
It would be nice if this was finally my
journey to the end of the night; and if that’s the case for you, and
someone’s enlightened notes help you make it through to the morning (even if
it’s the darkest, rainiest Monday morning and your eyes are all puffy), you may
also wake up to find that the cheesecake you made has set during the night.
That officially gives you the right to this
wonderful thing known as, cake for breakfast; and it’s a sign that not all is
lost.
I may be back in time for a slice, but bye
for now.
