The Internet Personified: Variety show

Miscellaneous contortions

Sep 03, 2024

Pre-show notes:We’re off to the UK in less than ten days, and we’re staying till the 24th, mostly in London, so if you live there and would like to hang out/show me some cool shit in your city, reach out and let me know!

I’m also speaking at the Agatha Christie Festival in Torquay, Devon on the 14th so, likewise. My talk is on jewellery and its historical context in Christie’s novels, a subject I didn’t know very much about till I started researching the talk and now? Now I can talk your ear off about it. Maybe I’ll reproduce it in this newsletter, but it’s very long, so you’ll need a nice chunk of time to read it all.

I actually went to a variety show this weekend at a place called the Wintergarten, which is the German word for a glassed in balcony. Our flat actually has a wintergarten which I’ve turned into a study but this end of summer has been so blazingly hot that despite the thick curtain I just installed, it’s too greenhouse-y in there to do any work except in the morning and late evening, so here I am writing this on my sofa. It is great for plants though, my karipatta has sprung back to life (again, very late for it, since fall starts any minute now) and things grow beautifully there even in the cold gloom of winter. But my variety show had nothing to do with plants, it was a 1920s themed show with little acts coming on every five minutes: your jugglers and dancers and singers and contortionists. It had a Roman circus feel, you there at your dining table, a waitress bringing you food and drink and on the stage this man basically turning himself inside out. Odd, but compelling. Here is what I wore.
I was pleased with my outfit because I rarely get to wear gowns in Berlin, and this one was cheap, off the streets of the Madhu Vihar weekly market near my mum’s house in Delhi. Not only was it v cheap (think <Rs 500) it also travels very well, being of a wrinkle resistant fabric and it’s draped beautifully, which you can see by the fancy hemline of the skirt. I have no “fancy” shoes and didn’t want to wear sneakers so I teamed it here with my silver Doc Martens, and added a belt I found in a free box. I don’t know if the frugal elegance of this whole LOOK did something for me or whether it was the bright colours but for the first time since I moved here, walking to the U Bahn with two girlfriends on either side, all of us dressed nicely, a man actually stopped in his unloading of boxes, whistled and shouted in English, “Nice dresses, ladies!” Wow. My neighbourhood is very grungy and young, and so this was a complete and total surprise, not to mention v flattering for all three of us. Of course now I will spend all my time hoping for the same reaction even when I go out in a t-shirt and jeans and invariably be disappointed. Please shout out a compliment next time you see someone cool (but, like, not in a creepy way.)
At this variety show there was a couple seated in front of us and the woman was shooting everything on her phone. I mean everything. Like as soon as a new act came on, she’d hold up her camera, zoom in to the stage, record it faithfully and right before it ended, she’d bend down towards her phone and tap the video and rewatch it. It was driving me insane. Especially because her phone was totally blocking my view but also I couldn’t stop watching her, she didn’t even look up from her phone for applause. You are missing all of it I wanted to shout, like a boomer, but I settled for tapping her on the shoulder and telling her to please stop blocking my view, which she sort of did and then post intermission they vanished, never to return. I was relieved but also I’d worked myself up into a nice moral indignation snit by this point and having no one to yell at kind of felt like blue balls.
Do you know what parents have been gatekeeping from all of the rest of us childfree folk? DIAPER BAGS. I mean, I was still associating them with the ones we had in the 80s and 90s, all pastel colours and really ugly and easily identifiable as a diaper bag, but NOW? Now they’re actually kind of stylish and they have like a zillion compartments for all your little things: lipbalm and tissues and in my case hot sauce and chilli flakes and tissues and a strip of paracetamol (what? I get aches and pains sometimes) and my book and phone AND EVEN, should I decide to go outside and write: my laptop. I was looking for a cool and large travel totebag and had settled on the Longchamp La Pliage which looks like this
I mean, it’s okay, it looks like a nice capacious bag and it’s pretty light and it folds up but it had three flaws in my view: a) nowhere to put a shoulder strap in case your arm wants a break b) no inner pockets and c) the design isn’t super appealing to me, I mean it’s nice, but is it worth the money nice? There’s also secret flaw d: no one wanted to sell me one. See, for things like this, I go online to either Vinted or eBay and see if anyone has one for sale for cheaper and I found loads, but on Vinted literally no one answered my question about what size it was, and on eBay I was like, “Yes I will meet you and buy this!” and the seller just disappeared. Maybe I don’t seem like the Longchamp type but I suddenly identified with everyone who was rejected by an animal shelter for not having a garden.
So back I went online to find a nice big bag, I already have many nice medium bags and nice small bags and I wanted a large one that wasn’t a backpack and you know what someone on Reddit said? BUY A DIAPER BAG. Huh, I thought, and went to check it out, and I found a brand new one selling for way less (on Vinted) than the second hand Longchamp (not designer though but a sustainable company using only cotton) and I finally purchased one which is large and—I like to think—stylish as well. My kind of style anyway.
Just look at all those pockets! It’s a woman’s dream come true! (And it has a removable shoulder strap for easy carrying and something to strap on to a stroller which I assume I can also use for wheeling it around the airport.)
So then I did some Googling and so many people are using diaper bags for travel purposes, especially photographers because apparently they’re a great way to keep all your equipment separate and padded. Diaper bags! Who knew? (I mean, you probably did if you have a kid, but the rest of us are wonderstruck.)
Speaking of diaper bags and therefore: babies, one sad change has happened in our neighbourhood. See, we have an organic supermarket underneath our flat and early this summer, they removed the wooden benches from around the two trees outside their shop. These benches were a sort of wooden cage, and every summer you’d know it was summer by the drunks lying there and shouting at the top of their voices at three in the morning. Very irritating, but when the drunks left it was couples soaking in the sun, babies running around while their mothers sat down, dog walkers meeting each other, you know, that kind of thing. For a few years, we even had a regular busker who set up with her guitar and sang right there at the entry way and the toddlers would dance to her music and their parents would tip generously, which was very smart of the busker, I always thought. With the benches removal, the corner is now dead. The vibe is gone. Oh sure, the supermarket sells coffee and you can sit on one of their metal folding chairs and drink it but people don’t just sit there any more, they walk past. No loitering, in short. I miss the loitering.

Not a lot of news, but I’ve had a slow summer, which is also the best kind, I think. Some swimming, some sitting-in-the-park-ing. More importantly, I’ve had my fill and I can go into the colder weather with slightly less dread. That’s a true sign of German integration: complaining about the winter in Berlin!

Lucky for us, this week is going to be blazing, lucky for me I won two tickets for a dress rehearsal of Hamlet in Berlin’s Globe this week (I did not realise we had one until I saw the giveaway listed in a magazine). I never win things so I feel like I’m going to enjoy myself extra just because of the thrill of it. Maybe my new bag will have arrived by then and I can tell you how great/actually not so great it is. But let’s be optimistic on the great side.

What are you looking forward to?

The Internet: Personified

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