It was 20 years ago today

AKA – The shoes I wish, I had worn.

Spoiler: It wasn’t the day Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play. It was the day I said, “I do”.

“Hi! Um… are you the bride?” asked a rather breathless and obsequious young lady with a very serious clipboard.

Ladies with clipboards are very rarely the bringers of good news.

I watched this one approach with curiousity and dread.

“Yes.”

“Oh. Well. Um. You seem very calm?”

“Should I not be calm?”

“Oh. No. That wasn’t what… It’s just that most brides are quite panicky about things… Um.”

“Hang on. I’m paying a very large amount of money not to panic. Please God tell me that there is nothing to panic about?”

“Oh, no! No! There’s nothing. I didn’t mean to… It’s all under control.”

My father and I looked at each other, shrugged and continued to make a rather sizeable dent in a bottle of Jack Daniels whilst admiring my very pretty delicate shoes.

That’s pretty much the way I’ve handled my marriage for the last 20 years.

Although the Jack Daniels has been replaced with tea and the pretty little (blister inducing, serial killing, demons from hell) shoes with fuzzy socks and fluffy slippers.

I have to acknowledge that my idea of sexy lingerie has also changed.

When once a skimpy little negligée was the ticket, these days Spanx are as sexy as it gets.

That way we can pretend that I have curves as opposed to just the one – curve, that is.

I was looking forward to this anniversary.

I had taken a day off and laid the seeds for a little weekend getaway. I had my eye on a little platinum sparkly number at the jewelers.  

Well, the best laid plans of pangolins and coronavirus and all that.

Instead, the only thing sparkly is my breath crystallizing in the frigid Arctic wind that has beset my home.

When I go to bed, I shall imagine that we’re spending the night in an ice hotel on some Scandinavian iceberg.

The sounds of my loved one‘s snores reminiscent of a growling polar bear.

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The Pandemic and the Pangolin

“Mummy, how did the world end?”

“Well darling. Some idiot ate a pangolin.”

Why on God’s green earth would you want to eat an animal as inedible looking as a pangolin? Is there even meat on a pangolin? Enough for a meal?

In short, some covidiot went to lunch and set off a pandemic that has wrecked the world. Well, that’s what they say. When the conspiracy theories sound far more credible than the actual story I’m tempted to go with the official story. Who on earth would make up a tale so bizarre?

What it has brought into stark reality for me (like the world in the morning when I put on glasses and see my sleep-mussed face in the mirror – horrifying clarity) – is just how little actual life skills I possess. Basically, I’m a bit of a dud in a global crisis. I’m not even a good gardener. I suppose I could write the spin? Not very helpful.

Now that my job has been torpedoed by a single-celled organism, I find myself having to look at my old world with new eyes. It’s at turns exhilarating and abjectly terrifying. I’m still in the free fall hoping to land on a bed of feathers but concerned that it may actually be very sharp rocks.

I can’t really tell because I’m too scared to put on my glasses and a blurry world seems less intimidating than the cold hard truth.

If only I knew who that pangolin-eating mofo was, I’d steal the TARDIS, go back a few months and sic a Dalek on him. (That’s a Doctor Who reference. My daughter kindly suggested that I add this note for those who don’t know the Doctor. So sad.)

It befuddles my brain that the world (and my world) has been brought to its knees by a takeaway lunch.