A Saturday in 1932, Late October

For the year 1932 in my historical experiment I didn't do much, as I felt a little exhausted after a fortunately mellower week at work.

The week before I'd actually finished reading the lists of the year's events in a certain online encyclopaedia. The news revolved around the Great Depression, 37% for the Nazis in the German parliament, and the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby. It is weird to think how things change and remain the same: for example, May Day in Berlin is still tense in the 2020s (I think I mentioned in this blog in the past how the grocery chain store underneath my employer's office would have its windows boarded up the day before). But! fascists and Communists aren't killing each other at such events any more.

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I was woken up at 10:45 a.m.ish today because of a telephone call for my mother. It was a good enough time to start having breakfast, so Ge. bought croissants and J. brewed coffee, and we all stayed awake.

It was a lovely, sunny day, although the leaves of oak trees standing in the east wind outside our apartment have gone quite uniformly brown and were drifting poetically through the air today — truly the cusp of November. But as mentioned I felt exhausted and didn't go out at all.

The programme was basically just to avoid doing things that people wouldn't have done in the 1930s.

I tidied my desk e.g. replaced dried-out ink with new ink in the ballpoint pens, put new felt stickers beneath the legs of my chair and attempted to freshen up the leather of the seat with a mixture of whipped egg white and sugar (do not really recommend except if there's a knack to that and you have it).

In terms of books and magazines, I read The Tale of Pigling Bland by Beatrix Potter as well as an educational environmental supplement (about bicycle vs. car traffic, electric batteries vs. hydrogen fuel cells, and the future of ecologically-friendly aviation) to a German fashion magazine. Reading more of Bertrand Russell's autobiography was another idea, because I realized yet again that I am fairly ignorant of the UK after 1910ish — my obsession for Victorian and Edwardian literature did not carry me far past this year. But, after failing to make it through a letter to Russell from Norbert Wiener about geometry because my brain wasn't up to it, I left that alone fairly soon.

On the piano I played the toccata from Bach's Partita No. 6 and tried to sightread passages from Maurice Ravel's Miroirs, and played another page and a half of Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata, wondering ungratefully when the hell it would end.

Besides I refilled the batteries for my mother's digital radio, after giving up on making any of our analogue radios work. It should come in handy for the later 1930s.

Lastly, I mended clothes.

It all felt somewhat virtuous.

But I'm struggling with both the obvious fact that being realistic at this stage of the historical experiment is both impossible and undesirable, and the less obvious fact that it is hard to find good social history sources online for the UK post-WWI, likely due to European copyright laws.

Tomorrow, at least, is Halloween.

I suppose the last thing to mention is that more Covid-19 disappointment is setting in. Because only ~66% of Berlin's residents have two vaccinations, and incidences are rising to over 100 new cases daily per 100,000 people, the percentage of ICU patients who have Covid has risen above 10% again (even after March 2019, it's been under 3% at times) and breakthrough infections of vaccinated people keep being reported, I don't feel inclined to meet people in person any more. And I am not sure whether my social skills will survive the pandemic, or whether I will start grunting instead of talking, finding a nice cave to live in, and shunning humanity. An early symptom perhaps is 'email depression' — for the past few years I think I've been reasonably good about responding promptly, and now it takes ~5 times the usual interval for me to check my inbox, read the emails, and reply. On the other hand, I can highly recommend having 1-to-1 video calls; talking regularly with my teammates is really bringing a scrap of happiness back into my work life.

I am beginning to conclude that this really is the usual 'it'll be over by Christmas' fake-out. Judging by WWI, therefore, it might actually be over in 1923. Judging by WWII, it might even only be over in 1925.