Don’t really know how it happened. Maybe when the light of our old bulbs went out and we replaced them with the dull glow of low-energy warm globes.
They’re part of a global conspiracy to keep things like food ingredients, medicine inserts, cooking instructions and “War and Peace” top secret. May as well print them in lemon juice. A good high-beam torch works, but only if you can put the items to be read on flat surfaces because you need your other hand to wield the magnifying glass. What you don’t know won’t hurt you, unless of course it’s too much salt, sugar or preservatives. And batteries won’t last through “War and Peace”.
Even when the yellow no-glow-in-the-dark bulbs popped and were replaced by cold bright white, it was too late: the habit had been broken and things had moved on. Lots of tension-busting mindlessness of online Solitaire and colouring-in-by-numbers. And a huge journey of learning, going on couch-comfortable live safaris on TV without the bugs and heat or cold. Or, to keep the hands occupied, some of both. Considered knitting, but a) I can’t knit and b) who needs a scarf?
Covid played a part too. When the world came to a deadly silent halt, and people were dying in their thousands, what use was fiction? How could it occupy the spaces filled with fear, uncertainty and doomscrolling? Couch people had to worry about getting bread, illegal smokes (and asthma pumps to cope with those disgusting “zols”) and queuing for hours to get toilet rolls.
However, in the last few weeks, a great love has returned, sneakily and unheralded. Books and reading.
They used to dominate on the couch. Four or five a week.
The first sparks of renewal were lit by a few books on nature and wildlife, stuff you could learn from. Specially bird books as the twitching began. Then a couple of guide stories.
The dam broke suddenly: it was one of those books you grimace at, pick it up anyway to make sure the type is big enough and to see (ja, intended) what it is about. Then you find you’ve squished out a spot on the couch, the dogs are cuddling, the peace is something you can hear, and you’re on page 238. And can’t wait to see what happens but also dread the end and wish it could go on forever.
Once it’s done, you scrabble for another, and another. Three last weekend. When I finally dragged myself off the couch and went to bed, my eyes hurt. Not the front, the muscles behind them, and the headache was still fierce on Tuesday. But as everyone knows, the third day of stiffness after unpractised exercise is the worst. The trick is to keep limber and push through, even at a slower pace.
So Number 4 is sitting on the coffee table with a clothes peg marking the page. On a side note and from long experience, that’s the best bookmark ever invented: it holds the book open and you can read it while you eat or in the bath without fighting the finished pages.
The joy and comfort of pages and words are back. Have to go now, lots of catching up to do.
- Lindsay Slogrove is the news editor
The Independent on Saturday