Bread and Shoes

Bread

On Tuesday evening I began making a loaf of bread. I have had good success in raising the dough overnight on the first prove, and so I thought I would try it on the second prove. This is not too hard to do, even in the evening. The tricks are to warm the flour-and-salt in a bowl in the not-too-hot oven before mixing in the yeast and lukewarm liquid and then to cover the warm buttered bowl in which you prove the dough with plastic wrap or a warm pie plate (or both) for an hour or more before bed. Then you need to punch it and knead the dough for 3 minutes and put it back in the proving bowl, plastic wrap on top, on the kitchen counter. Then you can go to bed confident of having fresh bread by late morning. 

When you get up, you merely punch the very swollen dough, knead it for another 3 minutes, and then tuck it in a buttered bread tin. You put the piece of plastic wrap (maybe put a little butter or oil on it now) on the bread tin and put the whole in the warmest room until the dough has risen into a "bread shape" over the tin. Into a very hot oven (425 F)  it goes for 15 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 400F for another 15 minutes, then take the bread out of the oven, shake it out of the tin, and put it back in the oven on its side at 350 F for the last 15 minutes. Finally, you put it on a wire rack on the counter and let it cool completely before cutting it open. 

I have been making bread this way once a week for a month. I've been adjusting the recipe to make it lighter and fluffier on the inside. First I cut the amount of whole wheat flour I had been using. Then I cut it again. Then on Tuesday I enriched the warm water with milk. The result made B.A. very happy this Wednesday, so I will stick to that.

We still had a third of a loaf of bread from the previous week in our larger cookie tin, and I was very unwilling to either throw it away (an obscene act in many cultures, including the Polish) or feed it to the birds, since I am unconvinced bread is good for birds. I decided to cut it into cubes and make big croutons.  I put the cubes in a bowl, poured in some olive oil, scattered in a teaspoon of garlic powder and toasted them in the oven for 20 minutes. Half way through I threw in some salt (having thought of it rather late) and turned them over. They have an ear-deafening crunch, are quite delicious, and are a great substitute for   commercial snacks. 

The third bread of Wednesday was filo pastry, which came from a supermarket. Nobody ever suggests you make your own filo pastry from scratch, but obviously Greek women must have done it for centuries, so I'll look into the technique. But on Wednesday I just took the filo out of the fridge to make spanakopita, cheese and spinach pie. This is a lovely way to have a meatless Wednesday. Naturally pious Greeks have recipes for eggless, cheeseless spanakopita for Lent, which they are still observing. 

On Wednesday morning, while my bread was proving, I began once more to read The Holy Bread of Eternal Life: Restoring Eucharistic Reverence in an Age of Impiety by Dr. Peter Kwasniewski. I promised to write a review months ago, and I feel rather bad I haven't done it yet. The thing is, I got a bit depressed. My days are full of anger and dismay--both feeling it and invoking it in others with my reportage--and so the anger and dismay in the Preface were too much. If you live a flat, peaceable existence, the Preface will probably perk you up and make you giggle. 

Also, I really love the rich yet scholarly tone of Kwasniewski's liturgical works--he is a splendid writer, employing all kinds of gorgeous and inventive imagery--and so the move to polemics and exhortation was, at first, a disappointment. This is not his fault, of course. But I had to put the book aside for a bit and get used to the idea of Kwasniewski the Thundering Preacher.  

On Wednesday morning I felt ready to pick up the book again, and so I did. I discovered I had read up to page 21, but I began from the beginning so I will have the whole fresh in my mind when I finally write the review. The writing is still good and original: chapter one begins with an invitation to imagine eating the sun. 

Shoes

I wasted some time yesterday pondering good quality, made-in-England handbags and shoes. I also sinned against my budget by impulse-buying a pair of "only worn once" secondhand Elmdale ("Made in England") courts. The cost was only £16 including postage, thankfully, so I am not furious. Also, they arrived just now while I was writing about The Holy Bread of Eternal Life, which was amazingly quick. They are now on my feet and they will do for church. 

£16 is a fraction of the amount I was seriously considering spending on a pair of Joseph Cheaney Oxford brogues. I'm not sure if this would be a worthy investment or simply vanity. I had an image of myself striding through the countryside in country tweed and rubber-soled Cheaneys with a Labrador retriever and another of myself in town in city tweed and leather-soled Cheaneys with a pug. As I have never wanted a Labrador retriever, I began to doubt my motives.

Shoes are symbolic of identity and wealth, and having too few shoes reminds me of myself at my very poorest, during my undergraduate days when I couldn't afford boots for some reason. My dear friend Trish surprised me a pair of second-hand police boots, which was lovely and I will be eternally grateful, for there had been holes in my current shoes and my feet were often damp and cold.   

The problem with women's shoes is similar to that of women's clothes: they are not good value for money and they do not last. This may be because women-in-the-world like to buy a variety of clothes, whereas men do not. It is almost a secondary sexual characteristic that men dress exactly the same for the most formal events whereas women are embarrassed at the event when they see another woman in the same dress. ("Who wore it better?) 

However, I think "fast fashion" is terrible for the environment--and enriches the Chinese Communist Party  at the expense of its sweatshop slaves--and I would rather have a few good quality clothes and shoes that last for years and years than a closet of stuff. The question is, would they really last for years and years?  And, given that age is warping my poor feet, would it not be better just to buy a £55 pair of Josef Seibel velcro-strapped shoes every year?

It's the Battle of the Josephs. Please vote:

Josef Seibel £55 x 6  = £330 (Made in Hungary)

or 

Joseph Cheaney £325 (Made in England)

?

By the way, aging-feet issues mean I can never walk in even mid-heeled shoes again, so I'm afraid it's a choice between the tweed-and-walking shoes, knee-length skirt-with ballerina flats, and maxiskirt-with-sandals versions of feminine dress for me from now on. No more amusing confections from Irregular Choice. 

It's a Journey

My brother Nulli called me up over Skype yesterday in response to my "Hours in the Day" post. He thought I was downhearted about my linguistic process. In reality, I was explaining to my most interested readers that I can't blog AND study languages every day. After all, I need to exercise and go out for fresh air, too. 

But that said, I can cut off quarter hours here and there, and I thought I'd write a few things about language learning that I have learned. 

1. Becoming fluent as an adult takes longer than you think. Really. Estimate how long it will take you  (unless you are one of those rare pick-it-up people) and multiply by two.

2. Backsliding erases gains in some areas. I am amazed today when I look at the feats of literature I attempted in Polish five years or more ago. Letters, short stories, translations of unusually popular essays or columns I wrote in English. Now banging out a request for comment to a Polish contact is a brain-crunching chore. But that said, my letters may have been rubbish, and my short stories and essays were usually corrected by a tutor before I wrote out the final draft. Also, I was underemployed then, so I had the time to laboriously tell Polish Pretend Son the parish news and write about Edith Stein po polsku. 

3. Reading. Writing. Listening. Speaking. They are four different languages on their own. Being able to read easily in Polish is most definitely not the same as being able to write fluently in Polish. And for me it is easier to speak Italian than to listen to it--which sounds like a moral failing, but is merely how my brain currently works. 

In a way, this is good news. If you're a graduate student in theology, and the task before you is to master enough German to read theological texts, you don't have to go to the trouble of learning to write, listen to, or speak German. You can just learn the grammar and the (limited) diction in a cold-blooded way. You don't need to go to Germany. You can study the grammar with a tutor (explaining that you're not interested in speaking right now--maybe later) and write down all the words you think you are going to know and memorise them on cue cards. Then you start reading short German theological texts, writing down the words you don't know, and memorising them, too. 

However, if you want to read, write, listen and speak fluently in German, you will have to dedicate four times as much time. If you are a woman or man of leisure--and you really want to become bilingual quickly--I recommend an hour of reading, an hour of writing, an hour of listening, and an hour of conversation every day. After your gruelling four hour session, have a nap. Maybe have this nap in the middle. 

4. Brains are lazy and do not want to study a foreign language for four hours a day. They don't see the point, especially if you don't need these languages to survive. Therefore, you have to train them. You have to remind them over and over that wówczas means "then" and invece means "instead." Brains like repetition. My brain likes Mulieris Dignitatem because St. JP2 keeps using the same words over and over.

5. The temptations to quit will be enormous. Your foreign friend will laugh because you used the wrong verb. Your tutor will laugh at your favourite foreign language band. Your classmates will burst into giggles at your terrible pronunciation. Most of your tutors will be beautifully fluent in English while in your target language you sound to yourself like a six-year-old. You will go back to a children's book you mastered over two years ago and understand only half. Welcome to my world of pain. 

6. The gains involve astonishing jumps. It's like losing weight. One day the scale suddenly says you have lost 5 pounds after being stuck on the same sad number for weeks. One day the wax falls out of your  ears and you understand that your tutor took his daughter to the beach. One day your tongue gets up and tells Catholic Poland via television that the Synod involved a cynical attempt to change the doctrine of the priesthood. It's an overnight success---after years of hard slog (and bouts of the inevitable goofing off).   

7. Watch out for rivals. This is a weird and sad one. There are people who, for whatever nefarious reasons of their own, will deliberately undermine your confidence in your linguistic abilities. Admiring the talents of your fellow learner, you may have asked them for advice or shown them a piece of writing you need perfected. You do this confidently, thinking everyone is as nice as your tutor, and this person tells you that you are completely incomprehensible and your work irredeemable. Well, some people torture cats, too. They slap babies. So don't quit. 

8. "You have to live there," said French-and-German-speaking Nulli, who is wondering why he is learning Japanese. Our sisters speak Spanish fluently because they lived "there" while teaching ESL--and they keep it up through Spanish-speaking social activities. I very reluctantly believe that, yes, to reach the heights of fluency, e.g. to pass the European Union C2 exam, does depend on a long stay in a country where everyone around you speaks your target language. But that said, you can get very far at home. 

9. A tutor with highly quirky English who is obsessed by the beauties of his own language is a treasure to be cherished. You can speak to such people in their own home countries--where they don't speak English every day--by Skype. The joy of speaking to someone who struggles to speak English as you struggle to speak his language is immense. You don't mind his mistakes, so you don't mind your mistakes, either.

10. It's a never-ending journey, but I think it's worth it. 

The Hours in a Day

I have full schedule of things I would like to do every morning, but I discovered that if I do them all, I am exhausted by noon, which is when I begin actual work. Some mornings it's blog or read Polish, and most mornings it's Polish or Italian as you can see here:   

I attempted to explain to my therapist how important becoming trilingual is to me but seem to fail. I described conversing (reasonably) fluently in another language like moving into another world, into breaking through to another dimension, and like flying. I don't actually know what flying is like, mind you, so it would be more authentic to say it is like sledding down a snowy hill, hoping to make it to the bottom and not hit the fence at the end. 

The work at becoming a polyglot can be very gruelling, though, because I am simply not a language-absorber like the more linguistically-talented members of my family. So if I don't become very fluent--

"... It doesn't matter," said my (bilingual) therapist comfortably. 

Okay, one the one hand, yes. But on the other strony, nie.

50%

Well, I learned this rather late in life, but it is a very good thing to bank/invest 50% of what you make and learn to live on the other 50%. 

I wish I had made this connection when I was, you know, 14. However, it's not too late even for me (though still a work in project thanks to lockdown), and now I try to tell this to the younger generation. Unfortunately, they so far look dubious or--apparently--even laugh. Tact and timing is needed--and also understanding because the young have little dreamy dreams, and it is sometimes hard for them to understand that although life should be a bed of roses (shouldn't it?), it so rarely is. 

Young People are also averse to the idea of working a difficult job for 10 - 12 years, investing as much of their pay as possible and then retiring at (or before) 34 to do a super-fun, potentially ill-paid job--or start a risky dream-business--as their investments merrily pay their way.  

And, having looked at this from their point of view, I get it. If the teenager is female, she doesn't want to work a difficult job ever, but do something interesting and worthy of her precious youth--like get married and have children ASAP, or go to graduate school and become the next Edith Stein, or write short stories and then novels and become celebrated ...  

I'm sympathetic to this because, let's face it, the years between 20 and 30 (or, post Bachelor's degree, 22 - 32) are way more golden and interesting than the years between, e.g. 40 and 50---are certainly seem so when you are 18, and 40 is SO OLD!

If the teenager enjoys worldly stuff, the idea of living on only 50% of his salary (whatever it is, and it is always smaller than you think, thanks to taxes and other deductions) is going to be terrible. I am less sympathetic to this unless the teenager expects to be very poorly paid indeed. 

If so, why? When I was a teenager (so forgive me), I thought that only the dumb girls would leave school at 16 and study hairdressing, or some other trade. Then in my 20s I met a young salon owner, and she was not dumb at all. She was a good businesswoman, having taken management, etc., classes when her fellow beauticians were partying and saved money towards her own shop. These days I am not as interested in how much cache a job obtained by a young person has but how much they are able to save without becoming unhappy. 

Obviously the best thing of all would be for the Young Person (or the Young Person's Future Husband--although depending on the Young Person's Future Husband is a risk rivalling Bitcoin) to train for/be educated for a field that they will truly enjoy and will actually earn them good money--that is, enough for them to invest 50% without living like Uncle Ebeneezer in Kidnapped.

Sadly I grew up with a lot of expectations that everything would be magically handed to me on a plate (why?) and that I would never need to worry about money, really, because I would marry someone with a job as solid as my Dad's and I could just focus on developing my lovely brain and my precious art. It could actually have happened that way, but as history unfolded, it did not. But I think this "save and invest 50% of everything you ever make" is future-proof, and the difficulty is convincing the very young that this  really will pay off.  

Update: By the way, I too still have little dreamy dreams. The biggest difference between the dreamy dreams of my teenage years and of my middle years is that I now know exactly what steps to make them come true. Well, that is, some of them. Some of my little dreamy dreams involve being able to play with my Godling in Poland and my other Godling and her brothers in Canada and seeing my family in person. These, sadly, depend on various governmental fiats.  However, the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns and restrictions, police beatings and proposed vaccine passports can be used as a Teaching Moment to the young that you never know what is going to happen, and therefore, save 50%. 

A Walk in the Country

My Papier wellness journal which I love--hence the plug--has a series of frowny and smiley faces in the top right corner of each day's journaling. This is useful for tracking depression or sorting out what really makes you happy. Well, I am happy to report I circled the smiliest smile yesterday for the first time, thanks to a really splendid walk in the countryside. Photos will follow.

It was all splendid--the sun shone, the sky blued, the birds chirped, the bunnies scampered, the cold wind blew but rarely--and one particularly memorable and brilliant moment was when B.A. and I sat on a bench in a suntrap by an old mill and had a snack. B.A. had brought coffee in a thermos, and when we alighted from the bus, we bought from a top patisserie* a slice of pecan tart (B.A.) and a hazelnut pain au chocolat that was the very height of gustatory decadence (I). Drinking the coffee and eating that pain au chocolat in that sun-trap, while looking at the greening fields, the old stone walls and the mill pond, was earthly heaven. 

Afterwards we continued our journey along the John Muir Way, reminiscing about the crops we had seen along that stretch before, and going off-piste along a river and through a flower-strewn forest to look at a grand country house B.A. had been told was now flats. There was a sign discouraging going the way we wanted to go, but B.A. called upon the name of the Scottish Countryside Access Code and ignored it. We saw a walled garden, sheep of many colours, gardeners' cottages and, in the distance, the red sandstone great house itself. The grounds were so well maintained, the sheep so striking, and the signs so frosty that we began to doubt the place had been sold and divvied up into flats. (B.A. looked it up when we got home, however, and it had been.)

This grand house had been our destination, so we turned back down the drive and headed for the town in which we could catch the bus, going through a pretty village whose for-sale houses we could not afford when we checked. We had planned to catch the 17:42, but it was already 17:30 when we turned around. Happily, this meant we had 70 minutes to get to the bus stop for the next one. We strode right along---well, I strode right along. B.A.'s rubber wells, so handy for marching through fields, are not suited to paved roads and so he hirpled along. 

We got off the country bus at a supermarket and bought the week's groceries. Very tuckered out, we returned home. B.A. shucked his boots and heroically made oven chips (fries) to go with our breaded cod, and so we had quite a delicious supper (after 21:00!) before we collapsed into bed.

The mill and world's worst haiku.

Flowers of the forest

Also in pale yellow and mauve

 A glamorous garden

 

 

*Yes, it is a bit odd that a top patisserie is just there in the countryside, but it has a carpark and people come from miles. 

Small Note Marking the Passing of the Duke of Edinburgh

American readers with any familiarity with Britain may now be somewhat startled by the effect the death of the Duke of Edinburgh has had on British media, if not on British life. However, the first important thing to realise is that, just as women are not men, and men are not women, Britain is not the United States. Having been drawn into a brief Twitter spat with a fellow Catholic journalist (American), I have been trying to imagine who, in the USA, has played the role of Prince Philip of Greece in public life. 

Oh golly. It has just hit me that it might have been Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Surely not? American Royalty is just not very royal, for there is usually too much party politics involved, which is why "senior statesmen" like the grubby Edward Kennedy (may he rest in peace) don't fit this bill. Also, the Royal Family is about continuity from one century to another, providing reassuring tradition and stability in a crazy, rapidly changing world.

Anyway, after the Duke's death was announced, the BBC newscasters (at very least) changed into black, and so did I, just in case anyone wanted me to opine onscreen on his passing. (So far, nobody has.) During work prayers, I asked for prayers for the repose of the Duke's soul and the sparking of a "national conversation about the truths of the Resurrection." As a matter of fact, the Archbishop of Canterbury has been very good in this regard, as the Duke of Edinburgh was a committed  or at least a believing Christian.

Meanwhile, the British (or BBC) TV and radio schedules were wiped clean of anything non-Philip. It was non-stop news bulletins about the passing of the Duke of Edinburgh all day, and I shall certainly take a photo of the newspapers at Tesco this morning, for they will certainly have "RIP PRINCE PHILIP"or "DUKE DEAD AT 99" all over them. The Queen has gone into mourning for eight days, and possibly government offices will, too.  The thing is, bewildered American readers, the Royal Family are not (or not just) celebrities but part of the historic fabric of British life.  

A Senior Royal has not died since 2002, so I have never been around to witness/participate in the national mourning from the ground, so this is very interesting. Of course, it is also sad because I first became acquainted, as it were, with the Duke of Edinburgh as a very small child waiting in the school entrance for the school bus to take me home: there were two portraits on the walls for me to look at: the Queen (circa 1953) looking very pretty, and her husband, looking very handsome indeed. At home we had a softcover book of all the Kings and Queens of England, right down to a photo of the Queen's third child, Prince Andrew's christening (1961). Not having much of a sense of time, I was under the impression that the Royal children were all still children, like me. This illusion was, naturally, dispelled by the hoopla around the Prince of Wales' engagement to Lady Diana Spencer. 

Speaking of the late Princess of Wales, one thing nobody ever tells you is that by the night of her sad and sudden death, she was a bit of a national laughing stock. Her numerous affairs and overly-painted eyelashes had made her a tabloid joke by 1996, as I witnessed, having been in England that summer. But then she died, and suddenly she was Saint Diana. Britain cried, and in the small Canadian city where I was then living, flowers were heaped around the statue of Queen Victoria as the most logical place to put them.  The inscription on Queen V's monument was "A model wife and mother," which I thought very funny, having emerged my deep sorrow the day the news broke. 

Ten years ago, people disapproved of the Duke of Edinburgh for his "outdated" remarks and certainly the worst 1 or 2 of the approximate 1 billion jokes he has made over the years have been repeated over and over again and sound rather worse as the years go on. However, yesterday was (and today and tomorrow and the rest of the week will be) rather different, for his antiquity was seen as a rather good thing: married to the Queen for 73 years, a war hero, a naval officer, a last link with the Greatest Generation, a manly man of the old school, a Stoic who just got on with it, et alia. 

I rather like the last identity, for the "celebrity" type of fame implies comfort and luxury, whereas the Royal Family sort implies pulling on rubber boots and going outdoors to be cold and wet in the pursuit of fish, fowl or game, or to ride horses or walk dogs, or to survey gardens and perhaps do some digging, and that's just when on holiday. Normally it's up at 6 to go out and be interested in what strangers have to say all day long, and write and give speeches, and spread comfort and cheer at hospitals. It is not looking fetching in a headscarf with your yoga-toned arms full of orphans, a la Angelina Jolie. 

My small note has become long, so I'll stop and cram some Polish in my head so I can speak reasonably fluently to my tutor in an hour. I'll just note that I will always associated the Duke of Edinburgh with my "practise" Duke of Edinburgh Award hike, and so I will forever associate him with gruelling (thus heroic) adventures in the outdoors, as well as  with the handsome man in uniform smiling down from the school wall.

"Genuine objectivity is the fruit of authentic subjectivity"

That, my friends, is the kind of thing that was drilled into me at Canadian theology school before I (and shortly thereafter my academic career) went South. It's a teaching of the late, great Fr. Bernard Lonergan, S.J. (1904 - 1984), and it contains an argument that things can really be known and there really is such a thing as THE truth. (By the mid-20th century, people were casting great doubt on this, and of course today there are ideologies presenting outright lies as "my truth.") 

According to Fr. Lonergan, the way to get to the truth is to examine your own mental processes. It's not navel gazing as much as stepping outside of your brain, for a moment, and asking yourself what you are experiencing, and what you think it is, and if you might be wrong about that. It's an incredibly useful exercise if you are prone to catastrophizing--as I currently am. 

Here is a sadly common train of thought for your poor cooped up correspondent:

"OMG, Revenue Canada has sent me another letter, and they think I owe them money, and I don't understand, and I pay taxes in the UK, and I'm going to end up in jail and lose EVERYTHIIIIING!"

or

"OMG, the investment platform doesn't like that I signed up with my maiden name when my married name is on the bank account. I'm going to lose EVERYTHIIIIIIIIING!"

or

"OMG, I didn't remember to cancel my free trial of Amazon Prime in time, and now I have lost almost NINE POUNNNNDS! HATE SELF! HATE SELF!"*

or

"OMG, I only got one article done today. I don't remember when I last got three done in a day. I'm going to be FIRRRRRED!"

This is obviously not unique to me, and I would not be surprised to find out that there is a genetic component, since in her last year at home my grandmother used to lie awake at night worrying. 

"What are you worrying about?" I asked.

"Everything!" said Grandma with a small sad giggle. 

Happily, Benedict Ambrose--who does not come from a "call a therapist" background--told me to call  a therapist. So I got a [Catholic, naturally] therapist, and he is very helpful, for he tells me that tax stuff and financial platforms sort themselves out and also that I probably have PTSD and need a long vacation. 

(Incidentally, there is also an accountant in Canada to whom I sent all the Revenue Canada paperwork who said what every frightened woman wants a man to say, i.e., "Don't worry about this. Leave this to me.")

Sometimes authentic subjectivity means you accept the view of people who really do care about you (either professionally or personally) that your reasoning process is sometimes (or often) quite faulty. And this is a good reason why you should, occasionally, ask proven-to-be-very-trustworthy people questions about yourself. It is just possible that they may know better than you do, since they see you from the other side of your eyeballs, if that makes sense. They are also more familiar with the up-to-date you than with the teenage you, which is when you may have taken onboard a lot of negative remarks (possibly justified but possibly not), which sank into your very marrow.

"Am I too hard on myself or too easy on myself?" I asked Benedict Ambrose, whose eyes bulged with concern at the naiveté of such a question. 

Recently I asked "What really makes me happy?", and I was surprised to hear that B.A. thinks I like being a guest better than being a hostess because when I am a hostess I get very distressed if the smallest thing goes wrong in the kitchen. (HATE SELF! HATE SELF!) 

I first learned the secret of asking the trusted person 14 years ago or so when I asked my dear friend Lily why I was still Single. Lily went away to think about it and then told me that it was because I wanted to marry someone more intelligent than me, and there were not actually a lot of men like that, so I was stuck. 

"Are you mad?" she quavered.

Naturally I was not at all cross, for that struck me as a highly flattering reason to still be Single. (And subsequent research has led me to understand even highly intelligent men are not as supremely interested in marrying highly intelligent women as vice versa.) I deeply intuited that she was quite right and subsequently married a fellow impractical, impecunious PhD-dropout. We lived happily ever after, despite brain tumours, PTSD, a catastrophic flood and other such recent disasters. 

However, you must be careful to limit these heavy questions about your precious self because otherwise you will bore and exasperate your loved ones. Asking someone to drop a truth bomb on you is rather a big deal for the truth bomber, who naturally doesn't want to blow up along with your faulty self-image. 

Here's another bit of advice about men, incidentally. Although men are definitely men, and should not be thought of as bigger, stronger, emotionally dumber women, men of your generation are not necessarily like men of your father's generation. In fact--astonishing thought--in some ways (if only one or two) YOU might be more like your dad than your husband is. When you figure this out and accept it, you may cut your husband more slack for not doing stuff you (however secretly) think is men's business, e.g. business.

"Look at you reading money blogs," said B.A.

"Arr," quoth I. 

*Happy ending to that story: I swiftly cancelled Amazon Prime and got back the almost £9.

UPDATE: Speaking of men, have you checked up on yours recently? I mean the brothers, nephews, grandsons, friends and colleagues. Whereas lockdowns are unpleasant for almost everyone, they seem to be particularly bad for the mental health of boys and men, young and old, and I saw one Facebook post--from a friend--that alerted me to the fact that some feminine sympathy was in order.