CORDON SANITAIRE

The door to my home is not. The letting agency are waiting for me to sign another contract to agree paying them. I pay them so I am allowed to live here and in return they leave us alone. They will not make the repairs we ask for because they do not read their emails or they last too short a time in their jobs to have any meaningful knowledge of the state of the property. I live in a house which is slowly falling apart not because of malice or contempt but because we are too small an issue to pay attention to.

The plant on my desk is not. I worry simultaneously I am watering it too much and not enough. It stays green and upright and is slowly getting taller. I cannot remember how big it was when I got it and I consider taking photos to track its progress. I don’t do this because I regret not taking a picture when it was at its smallest because taking a picture now would not be the same thing.

The letters I write are not. I feel vulnerable when I write them and I get a kick out of this. I hope that my vulnerability does not feel like a responsibility or burden to the people I write to. It is also entirely possible that they enjoy the feeling of responsibility in the same way I do. I need other people to need me. I need to believe I am in some way a crutch beneath the arms of the people I love.

The basket of shopping is not. It is the first time I return to the corner shop since lockdown began and after each item is scanned I place it carefully into my rucksack. I go to leave and have forgotten to pay. I am called back to the plastic screen which separates me and the shop man. I am able to pay contactless.

The sunflowers in my garden are not. We are scattering coffee grounds daily on the patch where they are planted because we have been told they will prevent slugs. We have had no slugs before or since we began and I dare not stop scattering the grounds. I wonder what the soil tastes like now. I water my garden twice a day in this heat and the grounds in the soil turn every drop from the watering can into libations.

The bee on the flower is not. I use an illustrated .pdf from Friends of the Earth to attempt to learn the names of different species. Bees are small and move quickly and I often cannot identify them due a combination of this and that I am inexperienced. They have pollinated our raspberry bush and I do know this. I watch the pale green raspberries swell where the flowers used to be. Every day they are slightly larger. I once found a raspberry bush in public and returned to it days later but the weather had been hot and so each raspberry was a dried pebble which could not be eaten. I water my raspberry bush. It has also been pollinated by flies but they are less romantic and so I do not try to identify them.

My garden is not. We have been making it as nice as we can under the understanding our landlord could demand we reverse everything if he wants. I have deliberately planted a circular patch of wild flowers which is two metres squared in area. I dream of the growth of these deliberate and wild plants. I hope for their life and pollination. I hope they will fruit and die and their children will fruit and die and that the patch will grow and grow until it covers the crumbled ruin where my house which is not my house used to stand.

I am sorry I cannot begin to tell you how I am doing.

JAMES VARNEY