Lockdown has done this to me — addled my brain, and created an urge for the Monthly Group Thing

Over an evening you play, dance, drink, sob, laugh and possibly discuss. Picture: iStock

There’s a grey hair emerging horizontally from an eyebrow. The shop assistants in the Apple Stores terrify me. My constant refrain in this family is now, “Can somebody please ring my phone”, closely followed by, “Who took the tweezers?” No glasses prescription now will ever fulfil my complete needs. Managing a period is a whole new ball game that has passed me by. It’s taking far too long to scroll down to find my birth year on the drop-down menu - and thank goodness Australia starts with A.

Why is it a triumph now to get through the night without a visit to the toot, and why does no one around me know that word toot? The last time I went to a restaurant we all got out our phone torches to read the menu then concluded we’d never come back because the place was too loud. I’m suddenly wincing as I bend to pick up the dog poo. And feel like I’m getting closer to the horror of being driven around the shopping mall’s carpark in the golf buggy to find the lost car.

Despite all these signs of accelerated ageing I point-blank refuse to dip my toes into the water of a rarefied community recently suggested by an old school mate – The Bridge Club. Do I look like a bridge player? What will it be next, bowls? And do those lovely aged people in white still do it, or have the developers, increasingly, won?

But I’m partial to the Book Group, another thing I’ve never done, which was suggested recently by a mate who does not understand. Alas, no time to read her kind of books. The books I like are far too obscure to inflict on the wine-and-cheese brigade – they never trouble a bestseller list, bookshops don’t usually stock them and they often don’t have punctuation in the regular places. Plus, there’s the stress of being the pariah who turns up repeatedly without having done the homework – and as I age the mantra is, increasingly, “Anything for a stress-free life”.

But recently I FaceTimed a book group in Perth. They were reading my latest novel and had requested my presence via the email at the bottom of this column. I said sure, because as a writer deep in lockdown, with so many talks and events cancelled, I’m not doing anything else. The session livened up my monotonous lockdown existence immensely to the point where I thought, you know, maybe I could actually do this. Join a Book Group. All those gorgeous, cackly, blunt and wise women of a certain age gave me a stab of nostalgia for what had been in my old life. A gathering. Together. To have a cack. Plus they have the best book group name ever: the Withering Frights.

Lockdown has done this to me – addled my brain. And this urge for the Monthly Group Thing is coming upon me despite being scared of Post-It Note person. And Proust snob. And the attendee who asks for a top-up at 11pm because they’ve got just one last anecdote to tell, then another. But lockdown is driving an insatiable desire to dive into all aspects of a life unlived and the Book Group should perhaps be one of them, thanks to the joy of the Withering Frights. Actually, only if we don’t have to read the books.

But then there is Song Club – also recently suggested and frankly, much more my thing. Seven to eight people. Each contributes a song or two. A tech-savvy host compiles them. Over an evening you play, dance, drink, sob, laugh and possibly discuss. Suggested theme: Your Song for 2021. Or Firsts – ie first concert, first song you loved. Or Song to Accompany a Big Experience – a wedding, a first sexual experience (Blister in the Sun is forever ruined for me). Or Breakup Song. The list is endless. And it requires much less work than a Book Group. Glorious.