Getting a bit meta here, but uh, mild visual diary consistency stress. Usually when I'm down to a fortnight or so left, I'd happily stroll over to my local purveyor of moleskine sketchbooks, the same kind I've been using since (almost) the beginning of this project. I'm certainly not going to change now. However, said stroll now rendered impossible, I had to turn to the internet. I ordered one, it was the wrong size. I ordered a second, it just DIDN'T COME. Am I going to run out of pages?!?! (Reader, it arrived just in time)
On May 2nd, S came over. They live in a single, tiny room in North London. They'd already been getting a bit fragile from spending 23+ hours a day in that one tiny space, but then their landlord chose now of all times to start doing work on the roof of the house. Scaffolding went up outside their one window, with builders looking directly into their room all day, so they barely felt able to have the curtains open. They're also someone who needs the window open almost all the time for fresh air, but the builders kept abruptly slamming it shut, and when they did have it open their room would get full of dust. Plus the obvious noise of the building work, builders chatting, radios and cigarette smoke coming in...
They went from being confined to one room alone, to being confined to one dark, airless, hot, noisy room alone. They tolerated it for nearly two weeks, despite my repeated requests for them to leave, but eventually what made them cave was being unable to sleep at night due to the drip drip drip of rain and flap flap flap of tarpaulin outside overnight.
Prior to this we'd never spent more than about 36 hours together. They're very particular about their personal space and habits and ways of doing things, and had always skirted spending any more time with me than that. Which was fine, it's a new (6 month ish) relationship, I don't need more commitment than that.
But anyway, they came over on the 2nd and... they have not left. And... it's wonderful?
Both of us are imperfect, flawed, particular, pernickety humans, but somehow (rose-tinted glasses most likely), we have managed to fit together in this one room very comfortably, and, fast though it may be, will hopefully make the move more permanent (assuming we still like each other at the end of this whole thing) down the line.
Obviously I checked with my housemates that they were okay with S joining us first, and staying for a more prolonged period. Beatrice had originally been reticient about them visiting during lockdown, which I was concerned came from disliking S, but I think actually was more to do with concern about breaking the rules. Having them here more permanently is less of an issue. Both of them have been very sweet and happy to have an additional household member, not least because it has opened up opportunities for four-player boardgames, and more people to share baking with (because the sooner baked goods get eaten, the sooner you can bake again...)
Work is still weird. I have a big absence where my main role used to sit each morning (being still furloughed), and for the most part I'm filling that time with Animal Crossing, cuddling the dog, cuddling Spen, and staring into the middle distance... But I've been lucky to still have a decent amount of freelance work coming in. Most of my main clients have all but stopped sending work (this is kind of scary), but I've been fortunate to land a couple of big one-off projects, which keep me safe for the next month or so, at least.
May 6th: "Emma is full of romance and longing"
May 31st: "Oh, S? Yeah we've been married for... I dunno, ten years now I think?"
LOCKDOWN IS A WEIRD TIME TO DO NEW LOVE
Last month I talked a bit about my long walks. My daily routine was to take a two hour walk to new places in the morning to tire the boy out. It was nice, but wearing, and time consuming. S’s presence has made life easier in that respect too. They are someone who likes to have a very precise daily routine, and they also have a ludicrously early body clock... But it's working well. They get up at 5am, take the (delighted) boy for a run, come home and do yoga for 45 minutes or so, come back up to the room at around 7 and read/work for an hour or two, then bring me breakfast in bed when I eventually wake up at around 8.30. This is EVERY DAY, can you even comprehend what a fucking dream it is for me to not have to deal with the boy or go to work and just sleep until whenever I want and have food bought to me?!?! Honestly I could weep, it's too good to be true.
But anyway, my original point. I'm still walking, but don't have to go quite so far any more to tire Charlie out. I really like walking through this estate, just north of the river, I think it's called Churchill Gardens. I decided to try and paint it, and while it's not perfect, it was a fun exercise.
Like CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE WHAT A DREAMBOAT THIS PERSON IS?!!?
In the interests of balance here, it's worth noting that S is obsessively tidy, needs everything to have a place, and needs everything to be clean. Like, to a heightened degree. It's been quite a strange and at times uncomfortable transition to be 'the messy/dirty' one in a relationship (those of you who know Ava will know how things were there...) but honestly, I am already pretty clean/tidy, and I want to be better, so having someone around who holds both me and themself to high standards has been pretty amazing. I feel so peaceful living in a house where everything is always clean and tidy, and seems to stay that way with comparatively little effort on my part. S does an equal (and in some areas greater) quantity of the domestic work, which is THE DREAM (I mean, should be a bare minimum requirement tbh, but yknow)
One thing they were concerned about were their many, much-loved plants. So a friend of theirs (who had also been telling them they desperately needed to get out of their flat), very helpfully drove their plants down from North London, and left them in our hallway in the most socially distanced manner we could possibly manage.
And now, I have a house full of plants!! I've always loved plants, but am extremely un-green-fingered myself, so it's a joy to have all this greenery and not need to think too much about whether it's happy or not.
Like many people in lockdown, things were starting to get desperate hair-wise for S. So I plugged in the clippers and 'had a go', and dare I say it, did an actually quite competent fade and trim, which I think surprised both of us.
Just spitballing here, but...
I wear a mask almost every time I leave the house now (and so should you). On hot days (of which there are many just now), it can be hard, but I persist. Occasionally though when I'm walking past scented blossom and there's no one around I pull it down and take a big huff of beautiful air, and it feels like an extra special treat to be alive.
I cannot overstate how important Animal Crossing has been during this difficult time.
Look I'm being REALLY GROSS, sorry.
Like I say, it's a weird time to navigate being in a new-ish relationship. We've built this little bubble together, and while both of us are longing for a return to some of our old things, we've also become very tied together, very fast. We spend almost every hour of the day together. We follow each other around the house. (We both want and encourage this from each other). But how will we come out the other side? It feels like a love that has grown from a shared affection for routine and orderliness and shared schedules — what will that look like when we return to variety and mess and different days? I hope we'll be able to persist, even once the rose-tinted glasses eventually come off. I like this one.
This isn't very good but it's something I've been musing on a lot — it's so weird to see ads just freeze in time. I briefly chatted with an old uni friend Claude about it — he did the ad campaign for the V&A's kimono exhibition, which was due to open in March. He shared a picture of one of his ads on a billboard, faded, corners flapping, unreplaced by anything new, as it would usually be. On the sides of buses are ads for movies we'll never see, which came out in March/April. Posters for albums released months ago, and cancelled festivals, flap, faded from shop fronts. Some sides of buses are empty. It's a very strange thing.
It was around this time that the government announced you were allowed to sit in parks, not just walk through them. Battersea Park, already extremely busy, became RIDICULOUS. But we managed to find a quiet corner under a tree to share a tray of chips and it felt strange to relish something so normal so much.
I was just walking down the street on one of me and Charlie's daily outings when out of nowhere a CROW SWOOPED DOWN AND GRABBED AT THE BACK OF MY HEAD! Can you imagine how horrifying that is, out of nowhere?! And then it came round for another go! NO THANK YOU.
I looked it up and it was probably just protecting its young, but there is a chance it also might have a longstanding grudge against someone who looks a bit like me. Huh. Won't go down that street again.
S has BRIGHT BLUE/PURPLE hair, though by this point it was looking decidedly pale yellowy blue. Return to Emma's salon! And once again, to my great surprise, I did not fuck it up.
As discussed at great length in previous blogs... I love the sunshine. (Or perhaps more pertinantly, I hate the rain). One thing that has kept my spirits up over this period has been the consistently glorious weather. S, on the other hand, HATES the heat and really struggles to deal with it, which kind of sucks, but I'm going to continue to enjoy it while attempting to sympathise with their grumbles and put up with having windows open (I am a windows closed person, but oh well!)
Since the start of lockdown we have a shared house ritual that we order takeaway every Thursday, taking it in turns to choose what we get. It's a wonderful treat, even though we usually cycle through the same few favourites. S pushed us out of our comfort zone with the enchantingly named 'I cook u eat' Lebanese spot in Lavender hill. It was bangin'.
On a perhaps related note...
I wish I didn't care so much about my body, but... I do. I also, relatedly, wish I didn't love food so much. But... I really do. I've been slowly putting on weight ever since I got to London — all that Yorkshire hill climbing was keeping me pretty fit before — but since lockdown, I've been eating more and doing less, and... it shows. I tried running again (late at night) for a while, but I really hate it. Before S moved in I was doing home workouts, which I quite enjoyed but feel very undignified doing in front of another human (I even felt like the dog was laughing at me tbh)... Gonna try and get back into it though. And maybe less ice cream...
As mentioned, I had worried that I was being a bit cheeky moving my partner in, but in the event, I think (hope!) it's been really positive for all of us, we all hang out together a lot more now (and Charlie is delighted)
And here's the lovely plant situation in our living room...
I didn't draw it, but May 25th was the first time since March 19th that I saw a person who wasn't one of my housemates or S.
First thing, my dad drove up from Chichester and placed in armchair in the street, which I then picked up. And we waved at each other. And that was nice.
(We wanted a second armchair, and my parents had been struggling to get rid of my Gran's old one while they're selling her flat, bc no charities will collect furniture at the moment)
And then I walked for nearly an hour to Vauxhall from Battersea, and Fran walked nearly an hour to Vauxhall from their home in Elephant and Castle, and we had a little distanced stroll round the park together, and it was sweet and nice and weird and good.
I don't really have many friends who live within any kind of walking distance from me here in Battersea, which didn't seem like that big a deal in the good old days of public transport, but in this new world we live in, does start to feel somewhat limiting. (Too soon to be meeting people at all really, but we're in this for the long haul I guess)
No YOU'VE been spending all the money you saved by not going out on extravagant internet shopping 👀
In all seriousness, this beautiful dress from Toast is one of the more expensive garments I've ever bought, but I had a couple of birthdays worth of John Lewis vouchers from my aunt, which got it down to a slightly less unreasonable amount... and I'm trying to be more mindful about my shopping these days. Buying fewer high quality pieces that will last for longer. This is a perfect everyday dress and I have loved wearing it so far.
It's strange to drift so.
I write to you at the end of May much happier than I was at the end of April, for obvious reasons, but it all still feels a bit unreal. I feel really lucky to be in this strange bubble of contentment, but it is not real life, and it will not be forever. I'm kind of scared of re-entering the real world at some point.
S loves the boy and the boy loves S. Am I being usurped as favourite?!
More musings on that theme / sustaining a visual diary at the moment is sometimes hard I guess, not that I'm going to stop, obviously.
And outside my little bubble of contentment... Everything's burning. I've been looking at social media much less over this period, but the one time I do tend to look is first thing in the morning, which means I particularly see events unfolding in the US over the previous hours. My heart hurts. I throw money at whatever places it seems to make sense. I try and read widely. I don't feel ready to go out in the world right now but I stand in solidarity for those who feel able or compelled to head out on the streets at the moment, here or overseas.
What will June be? I guess we're about to find out.
I miss you all.
