Evening Standard - ES Magazine
Laura Craik is UPFRONT about body language and spenny sanitisers
Laura Craik on the countdown to seeing friends’ faces again, bedroom education and the height of hand sanitiser capitalism
“Unless you WALK sideways like a CRAB, THE pleasure of seeing friends’ FACES will have ELUDED you in RECENT months”
On the downside, 21 June feels far away. On the upside, it’s less far away than infinity. On the WTF side, it’s two days after Boris Johnson’s birthday. Lucky Boris. By my calculations, the worst time to have been born is within that 10-day window of 18-28 March. Those poor bastards have had two birthdays wrecked by Covid.
However much I’m looking forward to pubs, clubs, festivals, cinema, theatre and the end of desultorily plopping three cherry tomatoes and a handful of cucumber sticks on to a plate, the thing I’m most looking forward to is being able to see my friends’ faces. Unless you walk sideways like a crab, this basic pleasure will have eluded you in recent months, since you’ve been forced to conduct each meeting facing front while marching through the park in search of a toilet.
Psychologists will tell you one of the best ways to have an awkward conversation is by walking side by side: take eye contact out of the equation and it’s easier to speak of delicate things. This may be true, but I’m not meeting my friends to fire them/ground them/confess my secret double life as a dogger. I don’t want to avoid intimacy, I want to embrace it. I want to drown in it.
I recently had cause to leave the house for work, for the first time in months. From the minute I got into the Uber, I couldn’t shut up. ‘How’s your day? Have you been busy? What’s your favourite route from Heathrow to NW5?’ I spraffed while the poor driver (Anguelin; lives in Southgate; two kids) tried to listen to Heart FM. Once I arrived at my destination I was told my interviewee was running late. Nae bother: this gave me time to chat to the stylist, the videographer and the Winnebago owner. However late my interviewee was, he was a darned sight later by the time I’d switched off my tape. The shame of telling him about the time I played second sheep in my school nativity! Starved of social interaction, maybe we’ll all have to relearn how to talk, listen and when to shut up. Bring it on.