A hymn to domestic partnership

Today’s topic is unimportant. If you are looking for matters of substance, an analysis, say, of Trump’s mendacity, or the rise of fascism and sea-levels and machines that think, then turn the page. Here is only triviality. Here is a hymn to domestic partnership.

I spent the first 30 years of my adult life as a singleton, and it suited me just fine. But for the last 10 years I have been half of two and that has suited me just fine as well. I will be surprising nobody to say that being half of two is different from being all of one. It has its ups and it has its downs but for me the former have outweighed the latter, and I have just discovered a fine new up to tilt the scales yet further. It is toenails.

Last month a correspondent wondered why it was easier to cut the nails on the left foot than the right. Here, it seemed to me, was matter worthy of research. It was the work of seconds to hie me to the low-slung coffee table where I have never taken coffee but have often cut my nails. I put the left foot up, I put the right foot up, I did the leaning over and I clipped a bit and then I sat down again. And when my breath had returned I was able to confirm that for the right-handed person the left foot is fractionally more accessible. The reason, as with much else in this curious little life of ours, lies in the belly.

When one bends to address the right foot the belly becomes compressed against the thigh. You have to reach around it with the clippers. And since the belly tends to swell with age while the arms correspondingly shrink, it becomes a long way to the nail.

With the left foot, however, the righthanded clipper attacks at an angle and thus is able to spill a portion of the belly to one side of the thigh which eases the pressure a little. But not a lot. For even on the left leg it is only a matter of time before the compressed belly insists on resuming its shape and forces its owner upright.

The greater truth then is that the older one gets the more cutting toenails resembles swimming underwater: there’s only a certain amount of time you can stay down. And that of course is the sort of irony that life loves to serve up, because the older one gets the more time one needs down there. For our toenails, like just about everything else, betray us.

In youth they are as thin as skin, as supple as grass and as pink and white as fairy cakes. To trim them is the work of a few thoughtless seconds. But in age they change nature. They harden and thicken and distort. My little toe nails would not look out of place on the nose of a tiny rhino. And my big toe nails could grace the back of a tortoise. When clipped the shards are a threat to passing birds.

How wonderful then to hand over the care of these traitors. How wonderful to sit on the sofa while someone else addresses without qualm or cost the nails I struggle to reach. It is a luxury, an indulgence, an unexpected new tick in the pleasure column. I sit like a groomed baboon, stupefied with pampering. And all the noise of Trump and thugs and bots and dripping glaciers recedes to a background murmur. I recommend it. Now turn the page.