How TO Live Now - not really a guidebook

I have no idea what it is either

I’m going to go out on a limb here, a long slippery bamboo pole, and say that life all of a sudden feels like it needs a guidebook. Something simply titled:

“How TO Live Now”

Because one day we're all g, the next we're in some form of lockdown thinking everyone we pass on the street is exhaling Delta-positive vapours. And fucken hell, is white vinegar in a spritz bottle suitable as a hand sanitizer? And is there a way I can manufacture toilet paper out of dock leaves in a flower press because someone with a really big bum has overnight spurned a Purex pandemic at Pak n Save and they’ve no rolls left? None.

Our fragile minds, which could be focussed on important things like what to eat for lunch and how to become a mega-rich Influencer overnight, have become Covid-News-dependent. Uncle Ash has lost his bloom. He’s looking tired on it. He needs a new suit. While Chris is hip and steady at the helm. I like Chris. But sorry travellers the Trans-Tasman bubble was a helium balloon waiting for a drunk kid at 21^st to suck the gas clean out of it. We locked down Auckland city twice when there was a community transmission. I know, I was there, enjoying the home-time immensely at the Michael King Writers Centre. I felt so full of potential back then. I do worry for Mr NSW Deltaman though. Did he have to go undercover, head for the Blue Mountains, get pandemic-spreader-police-protection? He did singlehandedly shut down a city. That could weigh heavy on a bloke. That sort of culpability would eat me up like … like a virus.

I heard of a wonder-woman named Catherine who prepared the entire pudding section of the Edmonds cookbook for her family. She then rated those 24 duffs in all their boarding school rice pudding nightmare-inducing runny custard glory. It’s quite the most brilliant pudding parody you will ever read. It gave me flashbacks of my dear sweet gran packing crustless, cream cheese and crystalised ginger sandwiches in my lunchbox. Back when I tried to complete a 7^th form at Havelock North High but failed. I spent most of my time wagging class, zooming through HN on my 10-speed to smoke cigarettes and bag apples with my friend Julie at her fruit stall. We were both recently freed from four years at Nga Tawa, and filling time until we became old enough for our chosen tertiary pursuits. Both of us doing grown up things we weren’t old enough to be doing. Anxiously waiting to age. Just like we’re all anxiously waiting for Covid to mutate and eat itself.

I was at a come-as-your-favourite-movie-character party on Saturday night. I went as Estella-Cruella. My costume was a bit last minute. I could have been any old silver-haired dame. I really needed to blacken half my hair. There were about 500 Audrey Hepburn – Breakfast At Tiffany(s) in the room. One thirty-year-old Audrey really stood out. She was beautiful! Coolly sophisticated, understated. Dressed in a demure black vintage dress, a provocative slash of ivory skin exposed over delicate collar bones. The string of pearls. Her soft brown hair up in a chignon. A beaded headpiece in delicate silver filigree.

An Audrey in rabbit fur and middle-years rocked over, she was looking for a joint to suck through her long, plastic cigarette holder. The end looked chewed. Her pearls held firm. We couldn’t help her. Young Audrey had men, not marijuana on her mind. She wanted to play “Would – Shouldn’t”. A game I’d not played before; where you pick a movie star you’d go all the way with but really shouldn’t. It took me a while to catch on. I had so many “Woulds”! 

Help me out here, I asked. Who’s yours?

Kevin Spacey, she replied. You know in “American Beauty” … if I’d been a cheerleader, I totally would have.

That’s crazy. We watched that movie last night, I said, guiltily.

Your turn, Audrey insisted. Who’s yours?

I was still struggling because my ‘Shouldn’ts’ were really ‘Wouldn’ts’. Then I thought, who’s a bad boy then? Okay, I’ve got one. Nicolas Cage/Leaving Las Vegas.

A ‘Sandra Bullock’ in a fringed black wig joined in. She was hopeless, she only had ‘Woulds’. Her partner came over. Who are you? Audrey asked. He wore a plaid shirt. He casually pulled a stalk of dried grass from his pocket, placed it in the corner of his mouth and chewed it a bit.

Audrey and I looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders. Plaid shirt guy put us out of our misery. Mathew McConaughey, he beamed.

Would! I said, as I snuck out. You know. The real deal.

Britney Spears. The H piped up on the way home. His voice was a little high.

What? I asked.

Britney’s my Would/Shouldn’t.

I was shocked, conflicted. She’s hot.

However, it made me feel less guilty about my plan. I’ve got noise-cancelling headphones on order. My current insomnia is next level. Not because I’m worried about dying of Covid. Or never travelling internationally again. Or my unfinished book (lying.) Mostly, I just wake up at the slightest sound and cannot get back to sleep for two-hour lags. It must stop. I’m getting Calm App. I’m going to lie beside my intermittently, snoring man while listening to the dulcet tones of others. I’ve already taken the Calm App survey to customise my listening pleasure. Matthew. Idris. Harry. Cillian. I’m coming for ya. Pumped. And wide awake. Feel free to join me on this journey if you need some middle-of-the-night mindfulness. The first seven days are free! And hey, we're not exactly going anywhere else.

But we can travel across Ireland!

If sleepy time tours don’t work, I’ll be up baking my way through the cakes in The Australian Women’s Weekly Cookbook.

Stay well, y’all. Xo