Culture shock while adrift in my bubble
There are times when one needs to inject a bit of high brow culture into one’s dayto-day-existence. For us, that time arrived on Sunday afternoon when life in the bubble in which we presently reside became a bit, well, boring.
We’d spent the last few weeks picking off all those odd jobs we’d left ‘till we had time, Binged on numerous telly series and visited the fridge so often I swear the last time I visited it said, “What do you want now?” So what new could we do?
I toyed with the idea of throwing a work boot from my porch at the mountain biker I saw riding past my place but figured the steel toecap could hit him in the head and, rather than knock some common sense into him, do some serious damage.
Worse still, it could cause him to crash and require an ambulance which, in a roundabout way, is why I’d contemplated throwing my boot at him in the first place — to get him to realise he was being irresponsible, could have a crash, require help from a health professional who is a bit busy right now and/ or put us all at risk.
To be honest, I wasn’t confident my message would get through anyway. I’d had a similar discussion with this bloke a week ago — from a safe distance, of course — and he had assured me he knew what he was doing and never, ever, ever crashes.
I was left wondering why this guy thinks mountain biking isn’t a risky pursuit to be avoided at the moment, like the recently deemed unlawful surfing.
Anyway, bashing my head against the brick wall of an idiot aside, what could we do to while away the afternoon?
Simple. We’d go to the ballet. Not physically, of course. Online.
Mrs P, on one of her regular net surfing expeditions — those are allowed — discovered a performance to be shown online around midday. As a former dancer herself, she was keen to watch it. I felt a strong desire to accompany her.
I said we should get dressed up for the occasion and, what the hell, push the boat out and go for a wine first.
The latter bit of that suggestion was easy. We sat with a cuppa and watched an online virtual tour of a winery which was as close as we will get to a bottle of the real stuff at the moment.
Then we went off to get changed.
Now, for me, this was simple. I threw on a tie over the attire I seem to have lived in for the past few weeks, T-shirt and shorts. Mrs P, in an effort to keep it real as possible, stood in front of her wardrobe and said, as I gather all women do: “I haven’t got a thing to wear”.
An hour later — one has to dress just right for the ballet don’t you know, even if it is on the telly in your front room in the middle of a nationwide lockdown — we sat and watched the performance.
Now ballet isn’t necessarily my thing but, as I say, occasionally there is a need to inject a bit of culture into your life. It helps, too, if your beloved can explain what’s going on.
When it was finished, I wouldn’t say I was a changed man but, as I stood on the porch stuffing poo bags into my pocket while preparing to walk George The Dog, I figured our cul-de-sac could also benefit from a bit of culture.
The ballet had finished but maybe the neighbours would appreciate a bit of opera. I’d seen a bloke on the news in Italy belting out a classic from his balcony. I’d give it a bash. Nothing ventured and all that.
So I did. For about 20 seconds. George The Dog took exactly that long to figure out he needed to participate — or maybe his ears were hurting — and before long he was wolf-howling alongside me.
And just as we reached the climax of our joint performance, my friend the mountain biker came riding back up the road, shaking his head and presumably wondering whether the lockdown had finally driven that miserable old sod in the house on the corner round the bend.