{"id":7359,"date":"2020-04-13T09:21:50","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T09:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=7359"},"modified":"2020-04-14T11:00:55","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T11:00:55","slug":"riveting-routines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=7359","title":{"rendered":"Riveting Routines"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
The persistence of memory\/Salvador Dali<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Having a routine is apparently what will get us through\nlockdown, and the Beeb has come up with some entertaining clips to persuade us of\nthis, including Alan Partridge setting out his schedule for a day of viewing Bond\nfilms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, they\u2019re preaching to the converted here. I\u2019m an ardent fan of routines and always have been, even when I was a student. My tutor was greatly surprised to find that underneath the Moroccan djellaba was not some stoner who never rose before noon, but one who (once she\u2019d discovered how much you were expected to know to pass your first year exams) made it into the library by nine each day. This was in fact a pleasant routine, since the study was punctuated at regular intervals with trips to the cafeteria for cups of tea and an orange Club biscuit mid-morning and afternoon, and more tea, a sponge pudding and a No. 6 for lunch. (I must have had the constitution of an ox.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My fear of ending up as Woman in a Dressing Gown<\/a> made me cling even more fiercely to routine once the children came along. Only once I\u2019m showered, dressed and mascara-ed (just so people can see where my eyes are) can I really function. It\u2019s no accident that the stuff of bad dreams, if not actual nightmares, is finding yourself wandering around unwashed in an evil assortment of garments while all around you are people expecting things of you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My view, perhaps counterintuitive, is that there is\nsomething wonderfully liberating about routines. Far from being a straitjacket\nthat confines you, they set you free. Once you are rolling along in the grooves\nof a well-oiled routine, you don\u2019t have to think about what comes next. Your\nmind can wander off down all sorts of highways and byways, from pondering the\nminutiae of scientific questions such as the mobility of the coronavirus: if I\nkneel down in the supermarket to fossick for some flour, will the germs that\nmight cling to the knees of my trousers migrate to the seat of my pants and\nthence to the sofa if I sit on it in the next 72 hours? Or should I have\nchanged my trousers the second I came home and washed them immediately, as our\nItalian cousins have been advised to do? Alternatively, you can just drift off\ninto a favourite reverie, such as my Oscar acceptance speech \u2026 In the meantime,\neverything you need to do is getting done. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The downside is that it\u2019s very hard to introduce anything new into a well-established routine. (I think it\u2019s called being set in one\u2019s ways.) This is why it takes me months to get round to handwashing jumpers. It\u2019s not something I need to do every week so it just doesn\u2019t happen. Then the jumpers get eaten by moths \u2013 because I\u2019ve never managed to incorporate into my routine moving all the furniture into the centre of the room and hoovering the skirting boards at regular intervals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week it occurred to me that staying at home might open\nup opportunities for adding some improving activities to my routine: triceps\ndips on the stairs, rediscovering long-forgotten CDs, and reading a page a day\nof an art book. The scores so far? Triceps dips: 0, CDs listened to: 1.5, pages\nof art books read: 0. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I\u2019ll let Charlotte Bronte have the last word on the\nbenefits of routine. She knew all too well what sort of lifetime lockdown\nawaited the unmarried daughter of slender means. This is how Eliza Reed in Jane Eyre<\/em> gives meaning to her existence:\n\u2018Take one day; share it into sections; to each section apportion its task:\nleave no stray unemployed quarters of an hour , ten minutes, five minutes \u2013\ninclude all; do each piece of business in its turn with method, with rigid\nregularity. The day will close almost before you are aware it has begun\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you find yourself wandering around in an evil assortment of garments?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,270,67,55,53,269],"tags":[280,279,278],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7359"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7359"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7374,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7359\/revisions\/7374"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}