I’ve been reading Jane Eyre of late. Here’s how I’d write about my day if I were Charlotte Brontë (or perhaps more accurately, were Charlotte Brontë me).
I awoke in an excess of cold which had snuck in from without and climbed into bed with me, freezing my feet and turning them to frigid stone. Though the electric blanket endeavoured, through its noble toil, to heat me, my extremities exceeded its reach and were thus beyond its help. The moment I woke I grumbled, and by this grumbling I seemed to summon (though it was not my intention) the noble fellow who lives with me. He scarpered in on all fours and climbed onto the bed, shouting loudly that I might get up and put on a breakfast for him. Once I had risen, he preceded me out of the room with his tail erect. He sat down politely on the kitchen floor and supervised as I put out first his ceramic bowl and then a pouch of Whiskas made of chicken.
My friend taken care of, my subsequent task was one of self-care. I elected to brew myself a cup of hot coffee. I boiled the kettle and employed the coffee grinder, and in doing so created a sensory environment that was most distressing both to myself and the cat. Distracted in my overwhelm I clumsily poured water into the aeropress, tipping it momentarily but long enough to spill hot coffee all across the countertop. In language most unparliamentary and in contrast to the design of the Lord above, I did shout “ah fuck”. I did not have the maid come to clean it up, for though my prose is modelled after Jane Eyre I am not, in truth, Jane Eyre and I thus do not have a maid. I cleaned it up myself, scrubbing it away armed with simply of a fat wad of kitchen roll, and managed to salvage in the mug I had chosen for myself a passable volume of espresso, with barely any sedimentary grind polluting the mug.
I took the coffee as I bathed. Once dressed and ready for the day, with hair still damp from the warm shower, I moved throughout the many (read: three) rooms of the flat, transforming through great effort the dusty furniture to gleaming teak and the unclean floors to sparkling hardwood. By my work I expended a great amount of physical effort, so much so that I did perspire greatly from my pits and forehead, and became breathless carrying a small bag of litter and cat turds to the outside bins. I found at once the chill of winter air cooled me, which was most welcome in my exerted state.
Following a brief lunch (having of course washed my hands) I sat upon the sofa to play a video game, which consumed several hours of my attention and which I devoured gratefully. Then I read a couple of chapters of Jane Eyre, a novel novel which tells the tale of Jane as she progresses from precocious youth to… well, I do not yet know, as I am but one hundred pages in. Presumably she becomes an equally precocious adult, but perhaps Ms Brontë has imagined for us an altogether less predictable tale and my suspicions will be proven embarrassingly erroneous. Possibly there will be aliens, or a bank heist. That, only time may tell.
Matthew Weldon's Dangerous Thoughts 