I haven’t written anything for a little while because I’ve been moving house, which was really exciting, and then kind of stressful, and then overwhelming, and then I just melted. Being an adult is hard, and I hate it.
I was vaguely aware, while travelling with rucksacks of books on trains, or drifting with a completely vacant brain through the pretend bedrooms of IKEA, or reading and re-reading instructions for a very small flat-pack cabinet, that it was actually magnificently hot and sunny outside. The sun peeped through the tall windows of my empty new home. Delicious. Glorious. How I love that big yellow ball flaming away in the sky. How much I’ve missed it.
I hope you were outside, lying in a park, munching on watermelon, for at least most of the week. In celebration of my attempts to be a grown-up, and in honour of the splash of summer we got this week, here is a happy list about handling life as an adult:
News: A Screwdriver Will Actually Change Your Life
I have found the key to unlock the World of All Our Parents, and it’s a screwdriver. Obviously, life is really one giant mysterious game (pfft, we knew that already) but I now suspect that once I’ve fixed a certain number of things using a screwdriver I will open up a whole new secret extra level of adulting. A screwdriver can do anything. Change locks, remove and replace curtain rails, build things. A screwdriver could (probably) fix your ennui. It could (definitely) stir the ice and lemon into that triple gin you just poured yourself.
Hot Weather Books
This Friday a little flurry of clouds has appeared in my corner of the world. What to do to stretch out those good summery vibes a bit longer? Run away! Escape. Pack it all in. No wait, you have a job, and a treadmill, and financial dependents. Instead, read a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and feel the sun on the pages. Spend several centuries, a few generations, and one hundred years, in the company of the Buendía family. ‘Time was not passing… it was turning in a circle’. Hot light, damp earth, begonias infiltrating a falling-down family home, and mad people who do things like crash landing their plane so they can take the opportunity to ‘make love in a field of violets’. It’s a holiday. It’s a hoot.
Get Involved in Politics
If you’re not yet overly involved with politics, but you dabble, how about making more of a commitment? There is no better place to start than this: If you see any slightly harassed, 70-something man with a fluff of cottony white hair and spectacles, stop dead in the street and then run at him: ‘Bernie Sanders? Oh my god WELCOME TO THE UK! Bernie Sanders 2016 woo woo!’ Most of the time they like it. Then you can tick that box – you just did some politics.
Current Affairs
What is both current, in that it took place last year, and ‘an affair’, in that it was something that happened in the world, is this scintillating news: Some Swedish people launched a doughnut into space!
Swedish people. Launched a doughnut. Into space.
I just love these guys.
For me, I think the funniest bit of that is the word ‘launched’. It carries such gravitas. Although I would like to suggest ‘Swedish people flung a doughnut into space’ as marginally better, overall, and more accurate.
DIY, reading, politics, current affairs – that’s basically what being an adult is about. Ah no, just kidding. In this day and age, in this particular cultural milieu, being an adult is basically whatever you want it to be.
I chose from the following list this week:
Wrapping myself up in a furry blanket and falling asleep on the floor half-way through doing some DIY; eating noodles from a dinky little paper box (it’s what I want, ok. Leave me alone); marvelling at the energy and enthusiasm of members of the Green party, while remaining on the sidelines and not doing anything, just marvelling unhelpfully; getting very close to tears with the nice man who works in IKEA while we talked about sofas (sorry Stephen); and binge-reading comics on the internet, like this and this . I did not say I was proud of this list.
I hope your sunny week was full of silly things, adventures and endeavours, marvels and watermelon, and, if you care for it, perhaps even a spontaneous crash-landing in a violet field. Happy Friday!
Amy Jardine 
Congratulations on your new home. We’re in the process of doing ours up to sell, it was feeling too adult until we dismantled our bed to paint the bedroom and have been camping in the living room for over a week, pleasingly un-adult!
Thanks! Camping in the living room does actually sound like a lot of fun 🙂 good luck with the selling, hope it’s a smooth and speedy process.