Box of Delights

The last time I wrote (September! yikes!) I had just started on SSRIs for my anxiety and I was hating them…

…and then I forgot to update you. Oops.

So before we go any further, let me just say: the side effects wore off, the SSRIs are fantastic, I feel immeasurably better and immeasurably grateful, and I would recommend trying them to anyone who is struggling; but be aware that the first few weeks or even couple of months might make you feel worse before you feel better. Apologies to anybody who doesn’t know me in person and who may have been worried about me. I’m doing great.

Onwards. Earlier today I was having my lunch listening to This American Life, the fantastic podcast to which I am fortunate to be an occasional contributor, a repeat episode called ‘The Show of Delights’. Originally broadcast in 2020, the theme of the show was inspired by a poet called Ross Gay, who spent a year chronicling everything that brought him delight, for a book called - yes - ‘The Book of Delights’. Accordingly, everything in the show is delightful, from the story of a five-year-old child catching the school bus for the first time to a night in the life of the night zookeeper at Denver Zoo. You can listen to this lovely episode, guest hosted by the irrepressible Bim Adewumni, here. Anyway it brought me so much pleasure listening to all that joy that I thought: I’m nicking that. I’m sure they won’t mind. So, for the forthcoming time, all my newsletters are going to be about things that bring me delight.

I’m going to begin with SLEEPING WITH PETS. One of the things that I have been doing since I last wrote is falling in love with and moving in with a wonderful man and his three pets - two cats and a dog. These pets bring me delight in innumerable ways (as does this man, but I may write about him less, because unlike the animals, he can read), but possibly the most surprising to me is how much I love sharing a bedroom with them.

This was not the case the first time I stayed over. I can admit now that I was horrified that my boyfriend sleeps with the bedroom door open. There are, by my count, at least five designated pet beds in the rest of the house (one of which is a cat tree with multiple baskets), not to mention various comfy sofas, armchairs, and a whole spare room - plenty of space for three animals to bed down for the night. But no: all five of us piled into my boyfriend’s standard-sized double bed. Did I mention that the dog is a golden retriever? That is not a small breed. Even so, maybe - MAYBE - I might have been able to get a bit of kip had those pets not been so excited by having a new bedmate, this excitement to be expressed by climbing all over me, sniffing me, trying out places to sit on me (my face, for example) - the kinds of things that one might more commonly associate with interactions with the new boyfriend, who alas was trapped on the far side of the animal Rubicon, and eventually had to resort to feeding them at 3am in the hope that they might briefly leave us alone. I don’t want to go into too much detail about what happened next - my parents subscribe to this newsletter - suffice to say that an enjoyable interlude came to an abrupt end when I noticed that my foot was resting on what seemed to be a soft, furry pillow, and I looked down to see that one of the cats had finished his breakfast and climbed back into bed with us.

It’s all right, I thought in the queasy light of the following day. I will have a chat with him about closing the bedroom door and getting the pets to sleep elsewhere.

Cut to present: the pets do not sleep elsewhere.

(Or at least not at night. As far as I can tell from living with them, the main business of the pets’ lives is to find a perfect spot for a snooze, sleep there for a bit, wake up, request some food, then find a new spot and resume their mission to squeeze as much shut-eye as possible into one short life. I often wonder whether animals live wild dream lives, and if so, if they know that they are dreams, or if the fantastical inner world of baroque meals and impossible walks blends seamlessly with the outer world of a bowlful of kibble and a circuit round the Rec. It might explain why being awake holds relatively few attractions.)

I can’t recreate how my feelings about the pets sleeping with us went from horror to tolerance to outright delight, but I do know that it happened fast. One night I was wondering whether a lifetime addiction to sleeping pills was in my future, and seemingly the next I was consumed with distress because one of the cats chose to sleep on the living room sofa. I think the truly transformative experience was discovering how much one of the cats - a burly rescue cat, six years a stray, resembling in personality Thomas Cromwell as characterised by Hilary Mantel - loves story time. I hope it’s not too sickly to mention that every night before we go to sleep, my boyfriend and I read to one another a chapter of The Three Musketeers - and the rescue cat, who by day generally eschews such over-the-top public displays of affection as curling up on a lap or allowing himself to be stroked, cannot get enough of it. As soon as he hears the word “D’Artagnan” he leaps up onto the bed and snuggles down on my chest - not ideal when it’s my turn to read - hanging on every word and only retreating to the foot of the bed once the bookmark has been replaced and the volume set on the floor. Some nights when I am brushing my teeth he waits impatiently by the bathroom door for me to come to bed so that he can hear the next instalment. How can I possibly resist this? I am not made of stone.

Ultimately it comes down to the question of why have pets at all. Why invite these inscrutable little creatures into your home? There are many, many reasons - some of which I may detail in future musings on delight - but at base, surely it is because they make you happy, and because you want to make them happy. There is no greater joy than a satisfied pet. I often reflect on the fact that our former stray, who spends much of his time in the garden and who is quite capable of living alone, still chooses to come home to us, not only for meals but for companionship (and Dumas). The garden door is open and he is free to leave. The bedroom door is open too. The pets choose to sleep with us. They are at their most content when we are all curled up together. They love it, and so I love it too.

I’d like to say that the animals, having grown accustomed to my presence, now let me sleep in peace. Mostly they do. After the initial heady nights of getting to know me the dog generally sleeps on her couch in the corner of the bedroom, and, latterly, the strategic purchase of a cat cushion for beside the bed often tempts one of the felines to curl up alone, leaving me to revel in possibly my favourite of all sounds: tiny little cat snores (you can keep your birdsong and your Beethoven, those rhythmic miniature snuffles cannot be beat.) But animals are animals. Sometimes the dog gets lonely and wants a midnight cuddle. Sometimes the cats get fractious and decide to have a fight, right in the middle of the bed. Or one of the cats feels cold, and seeks out the warmest spot in the house: under the duvet, between my legs. (Pyjama bottoms are essential wear.) Or an inexplicable fancy takes him to sleep on my shoulder, or on top of my head. One morning, when my boyfriend was away in Devon, I was awoken at 5am by one cat having wrapped itself around my throat like a boa constrictor while the other stared into my face from a distance of two inches. Reader, I fed them.

I used to think that what I needed for a good night’s sleep was total darkness, silence, and either solitude or a bed partner - ONE bed partner - who makes no movement or sound. That’s probably still true. But it turns out that what I need has been trumped by what I want, what brings me delight: multiple happy bedmates of different species, snores both micro and macro, a little bit of chaos, and a lot of love.

*****

If you would like to see me performing live, I will be telling a spooky tale accompanied by improvised music from Joris Beets, Tom Fox and Tim Yates at the Hackoustic All Day Festival, taking place at Iklektic, Old Paradise Yard, London SE1 on June 17th. My performance is at 7.30pm, but there will be live music, workshops and interactive installations all day, indoors and out. More details and tickets from hackoustic.org.