Quarantine Day 12/13

Waiting

Unusually writing this in a post lunch torpor. Also listening to Indie Sage to get the most detail and best discussions around the issue of Covid-19. Recommended.

I am also slightly miffed that it’s quite hard to remember yesterday, in particular. Oh yes, Chitra and Tom brought our /their car back. So we got to see actual human beings on our front path, and had an actual conversation with people other than each other. Very welcome.

Today:

Always easier to write this in the morning!

Yesterday was VHS tapes and finishing clothes. I know, you are asking ‘why keep VHS tapes, are they crazy?’ Well, maybe. The hard thing to reconcile is how happy I have felt in Crete, without the baggage of my past, my overstuffed wardrobe, the books I don’t have time to read, but can’t quite manage to leave them behind. But it doesn’t seem right to shake off the past so thoroughly on a more permanent basis.

Back to the VHS problem.

These tapes represent the best part of 3 decades work in the TV industry for me, and many of these overlap with Al’s scores. Of course he also has his own stack, larger than mine. So why? One of the attractions that factual TV had for me was that it offered constant opportunities to move on from topic to topic. I stated with space (Is Anybody There? 1976), went through a re-evaluation of current affairs programming, (The Friday Alternative, Diverse Reports) finishing up with big sharks (Beyond the Jaws etc). Lots of other rent-paying stuff in between and a Horizon about Chimps and Language – the film I always wanted to make. Generally, I have avoided watching any of the programmes after they went to air. A couple of times I went to the BFI archive in London to view a couple of films made at Diverse Productions. So why now? Maybe I feel that this very rich part of my life needs some processing. I am really not sure. Oh no! Am I heading for a memoir?

Clothes: I am supposed to value my clothes for insurance purposes. That lead me to reflect on how many I have. Too many for sure. I have lived with a restricted wardrobe in Crete, but never lacked an outfit. OK I bought a couple of T shirts and one or two other items from the UK but there will be an end to that. A few years ago I decided not to buy anything new for a year, and that worked well, encouraging me to investigate what I already have. Part of the problem is that clothes encourage a kind of fantasy life. I could be a dominatrix, a vicar’s wife, I could sail around the world. You get the idea. My current wardrobe mostly reflects things I will actually wear, apart from a dark fuschia ‘cocktail dress’ that belongs in a 1960s B feature. So I have my lifetime supply of T-shirts and probably more than a lifetime’s supply

of yoga kit. A decade’s worth of jeans. Enough black merinos to get me through any number of Cretan winters so long as the moths don’t follow us.

Al is easy with a good collection of mainly second hand red label Levis culled from eBay, and a pretty good supply of seemingly indestructible black T shirts.

How are we feeling? Thanks to Tove Jansson for this thought:

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