VAUCLUSE DIARY: Café Zoom
Sunday 26 April 2020
In this privileged confinement it is really quite lovely to have one day melt into the next until one has to look up the day and the date, should one need it—for example to order provisions the day before we go to collect them, from the sidewalk in front of the produce shop, where the butcher and the baker will also deposit our orders, making a single transaction (3 cheques), a single outing a week. Last week I thought it was Wednesday when it was Thursday and I almost forgot to order the food. I feel relieved of most obligations—to visit museums, say, or see the film everyone is talking about, utterly guiltless about my unsociability…bliss is an empty calendar?
Last evening, however, for the second week, I went to a Café Zoom, by invitation of a UK friend, who seems to have an endless supply of fascinating friends and friends of friends, who write, compose music, sing, play giant music boxes, harmoniums, translate, send messages in bottles from (a sampling) Mexico City, New Zealand, and closer to home, Brittany. Next Saturday night will be moderated by Charles Boyle, the one-of-a-kind editor and publisher of CB Editions (and himself a poet and author of un-pin-downable books, available via the London-based CBeditions, where readers can order from a Confinement selection.
Charles has invited his authors to appear, read, juggle at next week’s edition of David Collard’s Zoom café, which is how I (a proud CBe author) first turned up at the café last weekend. I may be becoming addicted…first it was the fun of trying something new, after listening to children talk about their staff meetings on Zoom, now I wonder whether this is a small part of coming transformations, whether as participant or ‘audience’ member, discreetly waving to friends from around the world whose faces (and kitchens and bookshelves) pop up on your screen at 8pm, Greenwich time, on Saturday night.
Yesterday we climbed a mountain, one that is right next door, on foot. But my ‘baskets’ (tennis shoes), which didn’t expect such intense use and no shoe shops open, have smooth treads, and coming down I kept slipping on scree. I was afraid I’d twist a leg and have to be rescued, by—horrors—a helicopter or a team of firefighters who, obviously, have better things to do at the moment, not to mention the expense to public services whose pockets are worse than empty. I saw a front-page story in the local papers about this unlocal person who took it upon herself to take a forbidden hike and…Oi!