I wore my pillowcase mask today.
It would save me a fortune on hairdressing products and make up if only I ever used them, what an opportunity missed.
It would even make the whole shopping process of trying on clothes a waste of time. I think that even when looking in a changing room mirror at the overall dispiriting effect of a dress that didn’t quite seem to fit even though I had been quite sure I was a size sixteen, I would not be able properly to decide what it looked like unless I could see my face.
I do not know why this might be, because it is not as if my face ever looks different or improved in a new dress. It is still as crumpled and bloodshot as ever, even if the dress in question costs two hundred pounds. This is just as well because it means that I might as well get the one on the Sale rack for a tenner.
Anyway, the new pillowcase mask made the staff in Sainsbury’s laugh.
I smiled back at them, in a wry, joke sharing sort of way, but they couldn’t see me, so it didn’t matter.
It is very peculiar indeed. It is like being invisible.
Obviously it is nothing at all like being invisible. It is not as if people are bumping into me next to the spring onions and celery, and looking around in surprise whilst they wonder what has happened. Of course everybody can see me perfectly well. We know this because they all laughed.
What I mean is that nobody can see my face, and so they do not know what I am thinking.
I think the thing is that nobody can see any thoughts passing across my face. I had not realised how important that is, or how much effort that usually I have to put into holding an appropriate expression.
It is a bit liberating. Nobody can tell if I think they are an idiot. I have found that my face often betrays me on this topic, which does not make for good customer relations in a taxi.
The difficulty is that nobody can see if I am smiling, either. Like the children looking at Mark’s bucket mask yesterday, it is a bit scary and uncomfortable.
People laughed, but they are just the smallest bit frightened as well. I could see it in their eyes.
You can’t predict what a mask-wearer is about to do next.
This might not matter much in shops, but I think we will give them a miss in the taxi.
Mark has plumbed in the new washing machine.
He has built a concrete plinth for it to stand on so that it would be a better height. This meant that we could not put it into place straight away in case it just sank. A washing machine which is half-sunk in concrete in a conservatory is not an especially saleable asset for any home, so we left it for a day or two to set, and I carried on abusing the Peppers’ generosity with their washing machine.
I brought the washing downstairs today, but was suddenly consumed with washing machine related anxiety, and did not put it into the machine, even when Mark had finished drilling holes in the shelves for the waste pipe, and banging his head and swearing.
By the time he had finished I was busy getting ready for work, and it was all just too difficult. It had unfamiliar instructions, including some complicated ones to do with drying things if it is raining in the garden, and since we don’t currently have any water heating anywhere, it will need filling up with kettles of boiling water, just like the last one. I looked at it for ages, but in the end it was all just too new and worrying.
I did not put anything in it at all. I left the washing in a big pile and thought that perhaps I would do it when we came home from work.
Once I was at work I thought that this had been just too ridiculous for words, and of course I should have tried it, but of course it was too late then. I will have to do the anxious washing-loading tonight.
Maybe I should have a glass of wine first.
