Reading of the world events of 1962 and, in preparation for next week, 1963, has been endlessly fascinating; and so has watching YouTube videos of the music and reading about all the books, films, etc. that came out.
This morning my family had the usual Saturday breakfast of baguette, croissants, and coffee, while disputing political questions.
In addition, however, I was determined to perform the 7 to 9 hours of average daily housework that British women apparently still did in 1960. (In the end I managed at least 5 hours, if one counts shopping and other errands.) So I hand-washed dishes before the breakfast, and took out the compost and paper recycling to the bins in the courtyard.
After breakfast I set out through the sunny weather to the street market. I was one of three people whom I saw in the great masses of people who bothered to wear a face mask. I bought red beets, white-green chicory, new potatoes, an onion, celery stalks, strawberries, blueberries, beefsteak tomatoes, and a bunch of parsley. On the way home, I asked in a winery for a French white wine that would go well with a soup of ham, onion, and potatoes ("Soupe Catalane" in Elizabeth David's Book of Mediterranean Food). And I finally bought 50 grams of cooked ham in an Italian import store.
The market stall owners and every cashier or shopkeeper in a store whom I spoke with today were tremendously enthusiastic about the upcoming long weekend — Monday is Whit Monday — and their 'Schönes Wochenende' were especially emphatic and cheery.
In the market, summer flowers throve: lobelias and a pink oleander plant amongst them. There were as always artificially distressed wooden furnishings, woven baskets and carved bowls, incense sticks and holders, jars of honey, skeins of knitting wool, necklaces and bracelets, eggs, Turkish flatbreads, Mediterranean dips, big blocks of Gruyère and other cheeses, vast arrays of spices in plastic baggies and vast arrays of licorice and roasted nuts in plastic baggies, cherry tomatoes, squat dark green marrows, papayas, apricots, peaches regular and donut, nectarines, green grapes, artichokes, lettuces, ginger root, lemons with and without leaves attached, cucumbers, etc.
After eating the blueberries and vanilla ice cream and a chocolate-covered popsicle, I set off again to buy and drop off donations for refugees: as requested, soap, men's shower gel, milk powder for babies, and shampoo for babies. On the way home, still cycling, I detoured to the Gedenkbibliothek in Kreuzberg for a quick reconnaissance, as I want to familiarize myself over time with which books they have in which aisle — not by section, but by title, author, and country.
After drinking a refreshing coffee and cold cocoa, I launched into housekeeping in my orange apron. For that, I deep-cleaned part of the kitchen, lamenting however the patent fact that the kitchen walls and the window frames and doors need another layer of whitewash. The window frames, Mama insists with evident justice, need to be professionally done.
Fortunately I didn't need to cook anything, as the other three concocted an enormous dish of lasagne.
In the evening I broke my ban on computer access and looked online for real-time requirements lists. Then I purchased apples, mandarin oranges, bananas, baby shower lotion, wet wipes, and a package of diapers, to donate to a Ukrainian welcome centre. The Berliner Stadtmission has also asked for more volunteers at the Hauptbahnhof; let's see if I muster the energy and the anti-covid test.
*
On Tuesday there will be a work onsite meeting. While it ends up being nice to see people face-to-face, I can hardly stress enough how much dread it inspires beforehand in a few other colleagues and me to be asked to an onsite meeting.
It means we wake up an hour or more earlier than we usually would.
And to submit to having a corona testing swab stuck up my nose, because I'm still relatively conscientious about Covid & not infecting people with it. But because the onsite meeting will begin earlier (I just innocently arrived late last time) the testing centre I use might not be open in time. The most reputable one, which I've also gone to, is a few minutes in the opposite direction, requires registration in advance and is awkwardly tucked away in a courtyard. A self-test seems less reliable but likely the best option.
Then I'll be cycling for 9 kilometres.
Then I'll be reaching the office and performing about 10 different ceremonies to secure the bicycle and let myself into the building and then let myself into the floor and then check if the internet works and see which room is free and also make sure my hands are washed, because the new building is so sprawling that walking along the central office corridor feels like walking on a treadmill.
Then for 6-ish hours I will be totally unavailable to any colleague who is not in the room and will have no idea what is going on elsewhere in the company. The colleagues who have put together the meeting will face these same disadvantages and will, in addition, have had to plan the agenda and in one case I think commute all the way over from another North German city. (When I compliment the effort and thought they put into it, I do so sincerely; but it's kind of praising the suppleness of the organic fibres that they have interwoven to hang themselves and all the rest of us with.) Many team leads who should be there if we want a decent consensus will be on holiday or unavailable.
Last time we also did a warm-up exercise that forced me to stick my arms in the air even though my t-shirt sleeves were short and I hadn't shaved my arm pits. This is too much information, but so was this situation; so the form of my telling will follow the function. That morning I had asked myself: 'Should I wear a longer-sleeved t-shirt?' and answered myself 'No, there's no possible reason why in a professional context I should be forced to raise my arms high enough for it to matter.' I'm too old and battle-hardened and feminist to be easily embarrassed by this and just did my best to stick my arms up discreetly, and my colleagues are good at minding their own business; but I was peeved.
[Not to mention that we did lots of 'icebreakers' in school and I have mostly only liked the ones we do in my own little work team since then. The school icebreakers implicitly emphasized that some of us had friends who'd twin with and support us whereas others didn't, some of us were cool and could offer great answers and ideas while some of us were not and could not, that our classmates were always secretly judging us, and that teachers didn't see or mind a social hierarchy so rigid that I barely dared to talk to any classmates for years even about things like whether to turn off or on a light switch for fear that I (as a bit of a loner) would seem needy and clingy. What was the most offensive and gaslighting was that something that made me feel uncomfortable and lonely and worse about myself was packaged as light social entertainment. Fortunately work is not high school, but I'm just not very happy to be reminded of those times.]
Then I will cycle partly back home, but not all the way yet because I also have a voice coaching session that day.
Then I will arrive home after 9 p.m.. Then I will catch up on all of the email and Slack messages and meeting notes that I've missed, coming to terms with not having worked on any of my assigned tasks.
The next day I will awaken exhausted to a double workload of accumulated tasks and new ones.
Fun, fun, fun.
***
But first, tomorrow and the day after: no work!
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