Stuff is amazing

I’ve been laid up sick recently - the kind of sick that makes you feel like a character in a Dickens novel, groaning and dabbing your forehead and passing out for days waking only to wonder why better healthcare hasn’t been invented yet. There really is nothing nice about it, and to all of you dealing with ailments and illnesses, long-standing or short-lived, all power to you at all. 

There is, therefore, nothing so miraculous as the feeling of awakening from an illness. It is not difficult to understand how in previous centuries people believed in evil spirits being exorcised from the body. It feels like magic. Merely walking through the world feels like something worth being evangelical about. Putting one step after the other! Being vertical! Eating a piece of toast! 

Waking from the heavy slumber of my recent virus, I was like a Disney princess prancing through a forest lightly touching things with my fingertips and exclaiming gleefully in bursts of song.

Back into my usual daily routine I wanted to embrace all the people who who play small parts in it. The local crossing supervisor, the hilarious barista, the grumpy corner shop lady. 

I loved the tiny ways in which I was able to dispense with the metaphor of illness, too. The fresh sheets! The tidied room! The hot shower!   

Once outside (outside!) I looked up at the clouds cantering across the ludicrous blue sky and thought: look! Clouds!

This is a Public Service Announcement: actually, stuff is amazing.

Yes, we elevate buffoons as kings. True, we are often fools and nincompoops. Some of us are dreadful. Some of us aren’t, but we still do stupid things like feel ourselves fighting the urge to smile while someone is telling us their shocking news, or calling someone’s partner their previous partner’s name several times to their face. There’s also war and halitosis and “this video will continue after this commercial” and the smell of burned rubber and people who give unsolicited advice. But also, stuff is amazing.  

Come with me, join the newly well, and experience with gobsmacked amazement the following things:

Clouds!

Hot drinks!

The feeling of having freezing feet and your trousers rolled up to your calves from standing in a river or the sea.

Trampolines!

That bit in live music where a pause is about to finish and the musicians all look at each other and do a “now!” face and then play the next note. Love that face!

Love those places - often restaurants or delis - where you walk in and all your decisions get taken from you. It’s the opposite of capitalism. They don’t care about the individual. It’s a community experience, whether you want your kid to be sat up on a counter and fed a chocolate ice cream or not. There’s an Italian deli near me like this. I head in with a quick trip in mind but suddenly I am tasting a chilli sauce, chatting to some locals and it’s all: ”Taste this salami. Is good salami. You like lemons?” It doesn’t matter if I like lemons.

Doing nothing! Amazing! Feet up on someone else’s chair. Doodling on a note pad while someone talks in an adjacent room. Little bit of bird action outside.

Knitting. Loops of actual lambs’ wool dyed and then connected using sticks and it keeps us warm? What a ridiculous series of steps to create a beautiful thing!

The way kangaroos scratch themselves. It’s hilarious and amazing and they all look like big blokes watching the cricket in the sun with a beer and I don’t care what anybody thinks.

Ever seen that thing that happens to birds when they’re flying like billy-o into a wind and then they just go “oooh, here’s a good bit” and they coast on a flat bit for a while? I love those bits. They seem like the sky equivalent of when you’re walking on a beach and you’re in slightly stinky sand and then you find a good, hard, solid bit of sand and you try and follow the fault lines of the solid sand all the way home and you feel like an explorer at one with nature.

Things that were made a long time ago that required enormous ambition and vision are astonishing. Giant structures that took decades. Beautiful maps where the edges just dribble away for a bit because those bits hadn’t been figured out yet.

Other people’s accents.

A glass of water after a big walk.

Cake! For heaven’s sake. Cake.

Public Service Announcement: you exist! Stuff is complex and difficult! Also though: stuff is amazing! Cake!

This was originally published in The Big Issue. Bless their cotton socks. Purchase from your local vendor.