“You absolute moron.” I scrawled this across the newspaper, threw the pen across the kitchen table and walked to the other side of the kitchen. The cat was used to this, sighed and gave me a look of “dial down the draaaaammmmaaa”.
She knew this reaction. It happened every three or four nights a week. It was when I had made a mistake on the “simple” Sudoku, and that was that. No more boxes to be filled in. It was ruined. Game over. Good night.
Playing Sudoku has become a nightly event for me. At about 6.45pm, after my dinner, I take out this paper’s Sudoku, and begin to write down numbers. I’m good now. Most evenings I can get through the simple, the medium and the hard.
After completing a puzzle, I will write a comment. Like the ones my teacher in primary school would write. VG. Well done. Excellent. And I place a tick at the side.
If I don't complete the puzzle, well it's a Ted Hastings reaction all the way. "Mother of God..." And I will write a comment that no teacher in their right mind would construct, though they may think it.
“You have GOT to be joking.” “You’re bloody useless.” “THIS WAS THE SIMPLE ONE, YOU THICK.”
Sudoku pages
At one stage, my kitchen table was like something from the film Memento, all these Sudoku pages with terrible things written on them, from me to me.
But that moment of sitting down every evening, taking the pen in my hand and beginning to place one number in one box, has been a wonderful, calming (mostly) experience.
I love a ritual. A good ol’ repetitive action, that takes my mind from thinking this world is going to self implode, that I am going to die in the next year, that I am desperate to have a picnic with my family…to a place of beautiful, numbness.
I recognise now that I have created several rituals during my day, which give me respite at the strangest of times.
In the morning, it involves pouring coffee, feeding a cat, taking a Lipitor tablet, wondering if these Lipitor tablets will save my life or will choke me (a slight over reaction, I know), shower and a walk.
Routine is one thing. Routine slips into ritual when one feels the action is more meaningful. I don’t care if I take my tablet before or after my coffee.
But I care about the route I am taking on my walk.
Ahh, there he is
Right out of the house, left and over the bridge that goes over the train tracks. Will I see that young boy looking at the train with his dad this morning? Ahhh, there he is… “HOLD ON TO HIM FOR JAYSSIS SAKE.”
Across the road, to the Memorial Gardens. Will I see the man who says hello to me some mornings? He has a kind face. And his pace has picked up over the last few months. There he is… wonderful.
Turn left, down to the river. Turn left, walk along the river path. The willow tree looks fuller. There’s the woman and her rescue greyhounds. Can’t believe she’s wearing a dry robe. Gas!
Sense of comfort
This route is exactly the same – bringing a sense of comfort with each step.
The other ritual I have, is at night. I stopped drinking a year ago and so my night time tipple is decaf tea, accompanied by seven Wispa bites. Seven exactly. I count them out, put them into a small bowl, head into the sitting room.
The slurps of tea to Wispa bite ratio is approximately two to one. So the mug can’t be too big, just medium size.
When I compare my rituals to the ones we are all familiar with, well, its laughable.
When I was in Japan two years ago, I spent time at a Buddhist monastery. One morning, I heard a wonderful, repetitive scratchy sound in the distance. I walked around the corridors trying to find the noise.
I eventually spotted one of the monks raking the sand in their meditation garden. Going over and back with the rake, making lines in the sand. Now THAT’S what you call a ritual. Seven bits of mouldy Cadburys Wispa, flung into a bowl, is hardly the most spiritual of experiences.
Mixed messages
These recent weeks of ever-changing news of vaccines, of reports opening up, of information of the horror that is happening in India, of springtime weather giving my heart a lift, has given my poor brain so many mixed messages that I feel I want to go inside a cave for one final personal lockdown, until I know those I love and are close to me are vaccinated.
My rituals may make me sound like some Red Head by the Side of the Road meets Olive Kitteridge character, and at this stage, I'd say many of us are. We have carved out rituals, routines, habits that make certain times of the day safe, regular, controllable, bearable.
As George Hamilton said last weekend on Lyric FM, we are living in "this strange new atmosphere that we will never forget".
Perhaps our personalised rituals will help us live with this new atmosphere, both working off the other to help survive this new way of living.