unfashionablylost

Continuing on from my hatred of self-describing, I’d like to talk about hobbies. I am very wary both of hobbies and of people with them, being of the firm opinion that hobbies are an entirely invented phenomena, created by GCSE French oral exams. Recently, I have had the displeasure of meeting several people who seem to disagree.

There’s a new cat cafe in town.

I know this, because I made the mistake of having drinks with someone in a crowded bar. I sat next to him, and when he said something I didn’t hear, I did what everybody does, and smiled, hoping desperately that it wasn’t a question. Apparently, this politeness was misinterpreted as interest, because I spent the next 10 minutes being shown photos of random body parts (the odd leg, or discombobulated arm) next to cats. ‘What is the purpose of this?’ I asked finally, when it became clear that simply nodding wasn’t going to pass muster. ‘It’s a cat cafe,’ he explained. ‘It’s for people like me.’ There were several things I could think of to say in reply to this, but didn’t. Instead, I downed my drink and hoped he wasn’t going to tell me anything else about himself. (Sometimes my social prowess astounds even me). ‘So,’ he said eventually, while I tried desperately to catch the waitress’s eye. ‘What do you like to do?’ 

‘What do you like to do?’ ranks alongside ‘What music do you like?’ as one of the worst questions a person can ask you. A friend of mine was at a dinner party recently. ‘So what do you like to do,’ someone asked her. ‘When you’re not at work?’ My friend, who is as multi-talented and interesting as everyone I know, stared at this person in growing horror. ‘I felt as though I did absolutely nothing,’ she told me. ‘Apart from go to the office.’

At the time, I nodded sympathetically, and made the kinds of murmuring noises that are meant to convey empathy. (Writing this, I realise that a great deal of my time is spent making non-verbal sounds. It is possible that I could avoid a great deal of unnecessary confusion and upset by simply ‘using my words’). Now, however, I would be able to reassure her vigorously, simply by pointing out that saying nothing in this case was the best possible course of action. Followed swiftly by ‘avoiding cat cafes’, which is what I now tell everyone who asks me about my ‘hobbies’. 

My little sister and I have been spending some time together, because she’s had a week off, and I’ve been working from home. Although we live together, our busy schedules (me- popularity, her- some sort of doctor) mean that we don’t see each other that often.

Our week together started pleasantly enough, both of us working happily at opposite ends of our dining room table, until I noticed that my little sister is a mouth-breather, and asked her politely to ‘stop breathing’. Since then, a great deal of our time together has been punctuated by my little sister’s continued disbelief in the daily trauma that plagues me, and her repeated assertion that ‘you cannot have problems like these’. Thus far, my little sister has shown a concerted lack of care towards the following sources of unhappiness:

1. The time I walked into our living room, noticed the blinds were uneven, and asked her ‘how she could bear to still be in the room’.
2. The time we had to leave the chicken section of Waitrose because I was wearing flip-flops and we were standing too close to the fridge.
3. The time I woke her up because she had taken The New Yorker I was reading on the loo out of the loo, and I couldn’t finish finding out about a New York restaurant’s relocation to Brooklyn.
4. The time I was cross at myself because I told people I read, on average, a book a week, when in reality it’s more like two.
5. The time I was cross at my friend because she didn’t rush in to insist that I was being modest when I told people I read, on average, a book a week.
6. The time I was ‘disappointed’ because she bought cream-coloured toilet paper, and I think white looks better.
7. The time I yelled at her because she brought me a rocket ice lolly when I asked for a Fab.
8. The time I angrily recounted a story about a woman who stood too close to me during the weights section of a gym class.
9. The time I asked her to guess how old Nelly’s song ‘Ride wit me’ was and was furious when she mis-guessed 10 years old, rather than 15 years old.
10. The time I suggested that when she needed to sneeze, she could stand outside the flat, rather than in it, disturbing other people.

I will report back on how these changes have improved relations between us, but I overheard her on the phone recently mentioning my name several times in a highly impassioned manner, so I can only assume good things. Which brings me to 11. The time I was eavesdropping outside her bedroom and my little sister opened the door onto my foot.

I’ve been trying to escape the gym for some time now. There are several reasons for this, all of which are laudable, and which I offer up, unasked, to anyone I happen to talk to. None of them are true. I did not leave the gym because I ‘am trying to save money’, or because ‘I believe in fresh air’ or because ‘I couldn’t stomach the irony of getting the tube to the gym, working out and then getting the tube home’. To be perfectly honest, I’m not even sure that isn’t just stupidity, masquerading as irony. There are more examples of this than one would imagine- most famously in Morrisette’s hit song of the 1990s: if there is a black fly (flies famously, like Fords, only coming in black) in your Chardonnay, may I suggest simply removing it before drinking? Or re-locating to a less infested drinking area?

Anyway, supposed ironies and stupidities aside, I’ve decided to leave the gym. I’ve left the gym because of the following, less socially acceptable but entirely pressing reasons, all of which can be summed up as ‘other people’. Here are the three most irritating habits of other gym-goers:

1. They wear clothes

Not just appropriate black running kit (nike kit is so expensive because it conveniently doubles as ninja uniform), but ostentatious, attention-seeking garments that proclaim all the charitable and impressive things they have spent their non-gym time doing.

2. They breathe

I used to think that it was only my little sister who was a mouth-breather, but now I see that her particular talents to irritate pale in comparison to the arduously infuriating panting of gym-goers.

3. They have bodies

And yet, seemingly no sense of where these bodies end, or the possibility that my own body has no desire to be so close to theirs. I had a t-shirt printed up saying: I hate camaraderie but this only exacerbated the problem, as people stepped closer to peer at my chest. 

So, nowadays I am running about a bit outside, which is tremendous, except for the fact that there are clothed, breathing, bodied people out here, too. 

My little sister is constantly signing me up for things I don’t want to do. Last year she sent over a set of policemen to give me a safety talk (I failed the first test, which was allowing them into my flat when I was home alone); arranged for a fireman to talk me through the installation of our fire alarm (It kept beeping when I left pans unattended, so I ripped it down within the week) and tried to convince me to buy a set of personal training sessions.

She also signed me up for a school networking event. (Let me clarify: we were invited back to our old school to network with other former pupils. Neither of us have the CRB clearance to go to actual schools for ‘networking’). I didn’t want to go at all (I had a very exciting new popcorn recipe I wanted to try, now that I was free from the tyranny of the fire alarm), but as it turns out I had a very good time at the event: there were plenty of canapés and lots of opportunities to watch my friends make excruciating small talk with women they had nothing in common with, except for the fact of repeated physical proximity, several years ago.

There was a photographer, and my little sister convinced him that all our alumnae magazine needed was a ‘sister cover’, which, rather insultingly, she repeatedly referred to as ‘spanning the generations.’ (I am precisely 19 months older than my sister). Nevertheless, we spent several happy minutes posing for photos which have never seen the light of day.

There was a talk, which I rather liked although other people were slightly disappointed by, and free-flowing booze. ‘Free-flowing’ might not be strictly accurate- there was a great deal of booze, which was stemmed rigorously by a group of my friends fairly close to the point at which it flowed into the room.

There was the chance to show off (by other people) and obfuscate (by me) and gossip wildly (by me about other people). ‘It was a good night, wasn’t it?’ I asked my sister as we made our way home. My little sister looked unhappy. ‘Someone tried to network with me,’ she complained. ‘What are you talking about?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Someone from your year (I can’t reproduce the tone, but my sister implied that anyone from my year who was still alive was doing exceptionally well, and probably only holding on for a telegram from the queen).

She came up to me and asked me what I did, but before I replied she told me all about her job, and how she was looking to build her network. She was terribly disappointed when I explained I was a doctor.’ ‘Well, yes,’ I said reasonably. ‘Doctors are pretty useless.’ My little sister stared at me, and I suddenly realized that networking, possibly the only moment when my job is more vital than my sister’s, is my new favourite thing.