“Am I feeble-minded?” I once asked my brother, and he smiled at me approvingly, as if I had at last achieved some measure of self-awareness.
My late brother spoke thirteen languages — yes, I know, thirteen, but come on, even Sherlock Holmes had a smarter brother (just not that much smarter) — and he had signed the Official Secrets Act, need I say more? Oh, all right then: I have no idea what he did for a living.
Richard was probably not the most impressionable judge to whom to put such a question. “What has prompted this sudden realisation?” he replied, which I suppose was an answer of sorts.
The reason for my question was that I had received a promotional email offering me a variety of Pandemic Novelties to Pass the Time, and one of them puzzled and intrigued me. An ‘Adjustable Abdominal Fitness Hoop,’ have you got yours yet? If so, can you explain this: would needing to adjust it be a sign of success or failure, extra stomach muscles or too many pies? At least the price had been reduced, especially for me, I was pleased to note.
A novelty used to be an inexpensive ornament, a trinket, a bauble, a souvenir of a holiday we would rather forget. Something we might buy to prevent a doorstep traveller cursing us, perhaps, or as a gift for a friend we would rather not see again.
The email writer suggested the first 2 steps to novelty — ‘leaving home, leaving the country’ — will make ‘a routine experience like buying vegetables new all over again.’ Buying vegetables would certainly be a new experience for me. And leaving home has indeed become a novelty in the past year or so.
I sometimes adjust a chess piece without intending to move it (you have to say “J’adoube,” pardon my French) but I don’t easily adjust to novelty or innovation. Waiting in a socially-distanced queue of oldies to collect my statins, I scrutinise pharmacy shelves for a bottle labelled A Cure for Novelty, but see only novelty cures. Potato peel carried in your pocket cures toothache, are you kidding me?
I am aware that adopting new lifestyles or finding alternative hobbies has helped many people to pass the time during lockdown — a bit like convicts taking up weightlifting — but I have no desire to learn Esperanto or practise karate moves in the living room. Although I believe there is one called the roundhouse kick which might move me out from under my wife’s feet. And nearer to the fridge.
Perhaps I’m not as feeble-minded as I thought. I’m sending for that adjustable hula hoop. They’re offering it to me at a special price.
