Monday
Well, that’s it then. The final horseman of the apocalypse is here, riding in on a toughened plastic horse with an opaque bendy saddle that was a nightmare to get on but is now going to keep that equine fresh for weeks.
This tortured metaphor is my way of bringing you the terrible news that Tupperware is on the brink of collapse. It’s on its (T)uppers. If it can’t find an emergency injection of cash, the storage solution of storage solutions will be no more.
You have to suspect it is partly a victim of its own success. I can lead you right now to my parents’ fridge and show you the stackable pots and cubes that once contained my school packed lunches still doing stalwart service 40 years on, housing soup without seepage and preserving leftovers as handsomely as ever. If my mother didn’t run such a tight ship, I would say that they could be the leftovers of my childhood packed lunches and likely still edible.
But otherwise, it is the old-fashioned image of the company that has been blamed and its failure to keep up with consumer demand. To which one can only reply: how stupid are people? What demand? The demand that food be kept less fresh, for a shorter time? Were people calling for newer, prettier packaging but more rotting veg, please? They are, of course, because a lot are young and still think form is greater than function. No! Function is KING, you fools. KING.
The more I think about it, the more I reckon this is the first, faint rumble of distant hooves heralding climate catastrophe. If we could fit an airtight lid on our imbecility we might have a chance. But as things stand? Not so much.
Tuesday
Good news! Or possibly bad news! Or actually barely news at all but – word reaches us that Prince Harry WILL attend the coronation but WITHOUT Meghan. I assume she will send him loaded with antioxidant crystals and sage-cleansed in order to survive proximity to his evil family, but I am more preoccupied now with the question of whether I will be attending the coronation.
By which I mean – am I going to watch? Are you? I feel I have a duty to watch history being made but when it’s such meaningless history I also feel a duty to go and scrub the wheelie bin out instead or do a big shop while the supermarket’s quiet.
My dad went on holiday abroad for the week of Charles and Diana’s wedding. I didn’t understand it then – I was seven, and she was so beeyootiful! – but man, do I understand it now. The fuss. The waste. The unutterable pointlessness of it all. And now the world has shrunk so much I won’t be able to get away from it anywhere. My mind drifts to thoughts of a small-woman-sized Tupperware and some oxygen tanks. It could work. It could work.
Wednesday
Sometimes there is a story so bleak you find yourself just staring out of the window for hours after you’ve read it, trying to get used to a world in which it now exists. Such is that of MS sufferer Carly Burd, a woman who transformed her garden into an allotment to provide free food for those affected by the cost of living crisis. She had done so for over 1,600 people when this week someone poured ten pounds of salt over her seeded ground and ruined the potential crop and made the ground unusable for more. That’s right – someone literally salted the earth to prevent an individual voluntarily working to provide free food to others.
Yes, donations have been pouring in to a Crowdfunder since to help her because, yes, of course the majority of people are good and appalled and want to undo the bad thing. But I just … I dunno. I’m just going to have to sit here a bit longer first, that’s all.
Thursday
How fortunate. My existential crisis has been postponed by a sudden domestic crisis. We have a rat in the compost bin. Possibly more than one. I don’t know. When I saw the first one poking his nightmarish nose out of the top layer of weeds, I slammed the lid down and lit out for the horizon. I took to Twitter to share my trauma, after calling every pest control service in the greater London area until I found one that promised to nuke the site, and was absolutely astonished to find how sanguine I am in fact supposed to be about rats in my compost bin, ten feet from my house, where I live, where I actually live. I am supposed to treat them as part of life’s great tapestry, apparently, and thank them for aerating the soil and tie pretty bows around their little tails.
All confirmation that people are mad and we are all better off alone. Especially when it comes to rats.
Friday
Maybe this is a bit weird, but I’ve been writing for the Guardian for 20 years now and often it’s been about my family, so I feel we all know each other a bit, don’t we? So I want to mention that my dad died at the end of January. I played him for laughs in columns, often, but I hope readers could tell that it was done with love. That it was only possible precisely because we loved him so much, and he loved us so much. He was the best of fathers – patient, funny, gentle, kind – the best of husbands – patient, funny, gentle, kind, fair-minded and egalitarian to his bones – and the best of men. We miss him so much it’s ridiculous. But we know we and he were lucky. He was 81, he was ready to go and he went peacefully. We’re left with nothing but good memories and we are so grateful.
To everyone who is grieving worse, more complicated losses, my heart goes out to you and I wish you every comfort you can possibly find. Much love.
