London
Wed Sep 1
The first thing I do is sit down at my desk, look through the Word document once more and then send it to Marigold, my editor. Then I just sort of sit there, staring at the yellow post-its on the wall in front of me.
I knew that immediately after submitting the book, I would need to relax and do something genuinely enjoyable. The need for decompression, coming up for air gently. The problem is that I have already set up my life so that I am effectively microdosing pleasure and comfort at all times. So when a mandated period of true leisure like this comes up, I have either built up too high a tolerance for enjoyment, or else I simply don’t feel as in need of it as I should. Consider my cat, who spends her day moving from one comfortable seat to another, stopping only for food or a little human attention. How would she go about this?
I mull over a few options: going to the pub with a book, the British Museum, a haircut, going out in the evening to some event at a new wine bar. In the end nothing really appeals. Most of these things are not relaxing to me. Instead I go out to run five miles on an out-and-back route. Near the turnaround, I pass through a corner of Hampstead Heath that I used to run often, though not in the last year. The dirt path curves steeply downhill, and it’s rough and bumpy from the dry weather. I stumble three times - once spectacularly, my right leg sailing through the air like I’m kicking a penalty - and it is wild to me that I ever knew how to do this with confidence, how to run fast on uneven ground without falling once. But I suppose that’s how it works. You forget how to do something, and then gradually, if you want to, you make yourself do it until you learn how again.
On the way home I stop to buy a can of beer and a donut the size of my head. In the evening, I meet Karl in the Southampton Arms for a celebratory pint.
Thurs Sep 2
Another day of noodling. I slowly clean the house, listening to the last three hours of The Overstory on audiobook. Then I make stracciatella ice cream, per Isabelle’s request. By the afternoon I am so bored and desperate for activity that I go out to the shops on a series of silly errands. On the way home, the sun comes out and I have a sudden, intense urge to sit outside a pub, reading a book - true leisure. I have no book with me, so I stop into the charity shop and try to pick something from their shelves. There isn’t much I want to read, so I leave with Underworld by Don DeLillo. I sit outside the Wrestlers and read the first fifty pages. It’s really very good! When I leave, I stop by the wine shop and chat with Jarlath, the Irish sommelier who works there. Under his advice I buy some orange wine for Saturday’s lunch.
Fri Sep 3
This time last year I bought one of those five-year diaries, where you write a line (or so) for each day. After a year you move down a row on each page, so you can read back the previous year’s entry for each date, and I’m now greatly anticipating moving down in a couple of days. I kept a proper diary throughout my childhood and into my early 20s; this time I enjoyed the challenge of condensing the day into a couple of short sentences. Usually I try to include the events of the day, whether what I ate for dinner, who I saw, what I read or just the main news headlines. But I find that what happens is the feeling of the day inevitably creeps in and occludes everything. I feel happy, I feel sad. It’s very hard today. Or actually it’s all very nice. Blah blah blah.
Today, I think I am happy.
When I get up and dressed, I go to the running track. Here I do 10 laps, trying to ensure that each is a little faster than the last. It’s difficult work, mentally, managing how your body moves like that, and if I had any thoughts in my brain before I started, they have all evaporated by the time I finish. It’s like a dry eraser on my brain. Afterwards I sit on a bench and look at my stats while dumbly eating a banana. I love it.
Back at home, I potter around, making slow-cooked beans, frying myself an egg, reading more of Underworld. In the evening, Lucy and Isabelle come over. I make quesadillas with the beans and we eat the stracciatella for dessert. We chat with a loose freedom that not even the most intimate group text can quite get to, and I realise how much I missed it, and them, in person. I think I am beginning to make sense of it, this week’s pace of life.
Sat Sep 4
Rebecca and Sam are coming from Essex for lunch, and Eliot too, who cycles a much shorter distance from elsewhere in north London. Karl is cooking an Afghan-inspired chicken, with dal and cucumber salad, and I have some errands to do in the morning. I make yogurt-lime sorbet and run down to the charity shop to find a salad bowl. Wandering around the neighbourhood I realise Jenny has moved nearby, and we make plans via text to meet next week. I look forward to this kind of gentle socialising, without fuss.
Rebecca and I have not seen each other in a long time, and we talk a lot about our books and writing generally, the mental trickery one needs to do just to get to the end. Before I know it, it is 7pm and all the wine is gone. Once everyone has gone, Karl and I go for a walk around Highgate in the dusk. We end up bumping into Jenny and so we have a drink with her and her boyfriend. The slow, easy pleasure of chatting with someone you’ve known for 20 years. We leave at about 11, when I can feel the day’s drinking catching up with me. In bed I drink a lot of water and try to read more of Underworld, reading aloud where I need to, since I am definitely drunk. The last thing I do before I fall asleep is text Karl, who is in the next room playing chess, saying I need to talk to him about Don DeLillo.
Sun Sep 5
At 5am I’m woken up by the cat gaining access to some forbidden wardrobe, and that’s it for me. The logical endpoint of so much microdosing: my headache and I lie awake in the lightening dark, waiting for the day to begin. I think about making tea. I have no real plans for the day, which is good news. I’m thinking about granola and yoghurt, soft music on the radio. Later on, I’ll get out of bed and take some ibuprofen, sit on the couch in the Sunday morning quiet, read another fifty pages of Underworld. After that, I might sit down at my desk, crack open another Word document.
Ana Kinsella is a writer and her book Look Here is forthcoming from Daunt Books in 2022.