Forgetting how to big wide world

I have forgotten how to big wide world.

In my absence from the fray, Londoners seem to have learned to queue at bus stops, rather than it be the survival of the fittest and sharpest of elbows getting on to the 19 bus from Sloane Square. And the noise I was expecting on the Tube was actually a muffled silence – perhaps it always was, but after months locked down I had sort of assumed that everywhere would be cacophony. That there would be bruit and clamour with this excited press of humanity suddenly freed from its captivity. But instead there was a spooked eeriness in the masked faces and mute voices.

I really have forgotten how to big wide world. I’d forgotten that shoes must be tried out first before venturing out of the house. The Wrong Shoes (which inexplicably grew after purchase), are still the Wrong Shoes months later, and still make one walk duck-like down what I had forgotten were the miles and miles of tube corridor between tube lines. And that travel is expensive. I may have balked at the hiked up £15 congestion charge (even though I am single handedly saving the planet with my lovely hybrid car) but tube, bus, and then another bus (because someone spiteful in Planning has decided that our exit from lockdown should not all be gaiety and spontaneous outbreaks of polkas as we commuters express through the medium of dance our joy at the convenience of public transportation out of isolation towards our destinations, and that instead, the Piccadilly Line is not going to stop at South Ken until next year – should we live so long) and the costs mount up considerably.

I have forgotten how to big wide world.

And the wearing of smart things to do work outside of the house. Completely forgotten how to do that. Forgotten, for instance, that wearing two different kinds of shapewear is not only unnecessary but can also be foolhardy. As I flapped in my too-big shoes up the King’s Road like a latterday Olive Oyl, wheezing brachiocephalically with organs that were squeezed up towards my neck due to the constriction of my compression underwear, I became over excited in Peter Jones and bought three lipsticks, all three in what turned out to be unwearable colours.

A special offer also lured me into an eyebrow pencil-buying frenzy, as I forgot that I don’t wear makeup really, and have certainly never got to grips with eyes. And attending to my brows in the reflection of my phone, like an untalented toddler let loose on a bag of crayons, I created the startling effect that was more Animal from the Muppets, rather than the urban sophisticate look I was hoping for. Then I just wanted to go home and hide, safe and warm again in my lockdown duck down. I decided too that every shop person hated me particularly, and viewed each of their customers generally as a potential Typhoid Mary; and not being able to Do Smiling, I tried a lot of cheery waggling of my eyebrows, those bible-black caterpillars hovering above my mask, to convey a diseases-free friendliness. All I wanted, really, was coffee in a takeaway cup that someone else had made for me, not a gauntlet of suspicion and new etiquette of where to stand, how to queue in a confined space, how to choose a sandwich without going near the actual foodstuffs.

Actually, though, whether galumphing Muppet or professional urban woman, I had things to do, people to see and music to perform. So I hitched up my Spanx, clawed my toes to keep my shoes on, and went and did what I do – smile and sing.

I think I remember now, how to big wide world. I may try it again tomorrow. It isn’t as tricky as I thought.