I'm with Shark today. Everyone else has gone.
We go on this walk and I tell her about the young woman I saw in Tesco on Christmas Eve. She was wearing a flawless drawn face with perfect coiffured hair, dressed in boots and unwrinkled pyjamas. Held in smooth hand with tapering fingernails before her, was a phone, picture-perfecting her steady walk through the harassed crowds. Her face, expressionless. The rest of us, exhausted and spent, making way, clutching our grubby last minute parsnips and cheap brandy sauce.
I say to Shark I find it dispiriting that our cultural life seems to be no more aspirational than to be an influencer with a marketing plan. Then we're all running along, threatened with the miserable lives we are destined to have, if we should fail to 'live our best lives' and 'curate our authentic selves'.
I ask Shark, 'What will you do when you get back today?' She answers after a slight, thoughtful pause, 'Draw a goldfish.'
There's hope for humanity, yet.
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