I'm still here.
Six and a half weeks from retirement. But to be perfectly honest, this is not quite how I envisaged it.
I am halfway through week 5 of the corona virus lockdown. It is 10:40 on Wednesday and I am still in my pyjamas.
This is how it is. This is how I suspect it will remain, in retirement.
All those plans and dreams of bursting free of the chains of indentured servitude at Spart Towers, finally liberated to write, sing, dance naked through the daffodils, were nothing more than fantasy.
I am a lazy bitch. I am kind of enjoying the lockdown. It takes all the responsibility off me.
So much for establishing a routine for my retirement: get up, shower, get dressed. Get out of the house every day. Do a museum a week. Get to know Belgium better. Learn Dutch. Pick up where I was so rudely interrupted with Portuguese. Get a decent camera and do a photography course. Write at least one day a week. Work on that epic novel about my Irish grandad in America. Walk 4 km every day.
None of it. NONE OF IT. It is 10:40 and I am still in my pyjamas.
Me and Gorbals before the lockdown.
My hair is growing longer and thicker. I have taken to enturbanning my head with a scarf. I made a half hearted attempt to reconnect with my sewing machine to fashion a face mask, but I am to sewing machine as Gorbals is to hoover. Never going to form that magical human-machine bond. I am still working on my fabric prototype, now using knicker elastic cut from old holey knickers that I am now saving. In the meantime I use my collection of under-hijabs as face masks. I bought them for 1 euro apiece from an Arab shop behind the Gare du Nord. I keep one in every coat pocket in case of rain. If I pull it down around my neck and back up again, hey presto, call me Fatima. Who's laughing now, eh?
Not much has changed for Gorbals, in truth. He didn't go out much anyway, dresses in rags, sleeps most of the day and bathes once a week. He's got more conspiracies to read about on Reddit. He learned many street survival skills when he was channelling George Orwell on the streets of Brussels (except he hadn't got the gumption to get a washing up job). He once showed me how you could clean silver using fag ash and spit, and I always said, when the Apocalypse comes, I'm sticking with him. At least my best cutlery will look nice.
