Double Decker Carousel at Winter Wonderland
December, 2020.


This year has felt in some ways like going round a Double Decker Carousel. At the scale of the nation, Brexit has been spinning in one direction and Coronavirus in the other. In my own home, breakfasts in the form of two pieces of marmite toast have stretched into the whole morning and dinner feels like the only time for a brief chat with my cereal siblings. Sleep is somewhere in between. Eat sleep rave repeat - now - eat sleep repeat. The thrill of spinning at high speed on the dancefloor or on the carousel has gone down several gears and now we’re stuck in first watching the world go by and come back again. The simple pleasure of buttered toast feels like a break in the day; these draw-out 20 minutes munching away are some of the moments in which the carousel manages to speed up a little. Distractions are something I take great pleasure in, the wind in my face as the plastic horse drags me into another space-time dimension.


I’m not sure what pleasure is useful for. What I do know is that in this stagnation, when pleasure does come it feels all the more refreshing. The evening we decided to use our essential travel restrictions to drive out and see the great alignment of Jupiter and Saturn. The packet of celebrations my brother bought yesterday. As the mindfulness teachers will tell you, scarcity opens up our appreciation for pleasure. Eat Pray Love eat your heart out. In Italy there is an expression “il dolce far niente”, or the sweetness of doing nothing. Many of us have been faced for the first time with the challenge of doing nothing. Life’s big uncertainties clang in the background. It doesn’t feel like a calm silence. Some have drawn new lines of desire, goals to fulfil, targets to meet, ways to make some cash. How’s yours going? What about that 1000 piece puzzle you’ve been doing? What level have you reached in rocket league? But many find their heads banging against this new space-time continuum and all its big questions.


The last time I was at Winter Wonderland I was working at a sausage stand. I’m not one to turn my nose up but saturation turns off your taste buds. It’s hard to know what will change after we come out of this cycle. What we will have left behind and what new growth we’ll see. Perhaps there are some silver linings to be had in slowing down from this dream-hazed pleasure machine, we’re just not quite sure what they will be yet. I take renewed delight in the old man playing the accordion at the corner of the park and the lady with purple hair sitting on her balcony of Christmas lights. I can’t wait for the carousel to start again, but for the moment, I’m stuck moving slowly and trying to notice all the things I missed.