MY SPLENDID ISOLATION
The British star is getting reeled in by ‘Les Liaisons dangereuses’ – and discovering the joys of Tiktok
What I’m watching
Brooklyn Nine-nine. It reminds me of US sitcoms
Taxi and Cheers. It’s set in a rundown New York police department, and each character has a small but unique set of eccentricities that make me laugh out loud. My favourite character is the car thief The Pontiac Bandit whose real name is Doug Judy. Favourite quote: “I sold a guy a fake Pekinese. ’Twas a cat.”
“You will not win me over with your use of ’twas.”
“’Twasn’t trying to…”
What I’m listening to
In order to get the washing-up done, the kids have been given control of the music, so there is a lot of Nineties hip hop, which I managed to miss the first time around: the late lamented 2Pac and The Notorious B.I.G. I have the radio playing as a constant in my life. I need to have voices in my head to drown out the voices in my head. I switch between Radio 4, the World Service and podcasts, The Moth Radio Hour, The Week, The Allusionist, The Life Scientific, In Our Time, Soul Music, More or Less. The BBC archive is such an astounding resource, which needs to be replenished by the historymakers, philosophers and scientists of today. I hope the present toxic combination of isolation and fake news will prove the value of independent, informed expertise.
What I’m reading
I have a really short attention span, and the answer to this is the epistolary novel. Les
Liaisons dangereuses reels you in letter by letter, and, unlike when I first read it 35 years ago, I have John Malkovich, Uma Thurman, Glenn Close and Michelle Pfeiffer in my head as I read.
The hobby I’ve taken up
I’ve started drawing again. Weirdly I went to Cornelissen’s the week before lockdown and bought watercolour paper (in quantities most people bought loo paper) and
caput mortuum brown ink; but the best thing about drawing is that most of us still have a piece of paper and a pencil or a dried-up felt tip lying around.
The thing that made me laugh this week
My daughters trying to teach me a Tiktok dance. Many, many games of Heads Up, which is essentially a charades app which films your attempts to act out words on your phone. Try it. What I can’t wait to do when this is over
Hug and kiss those I love without fear of becoming an Enemy of the People. Go to a theatre and sit with a bunch of strangers and respond collectively to something funny or moving or cathartic being performed live.