For those readers that have not met our dear friend, Lady Peacock, well, you’ve missed a treat. A little something about her for the uninitiated. As we meander through life, one meets characters that loom large, simply begging that their stories be told. Sometimes, these people are famous, having achieved a degree of notoriety for an event, deed, or made contributions to society and culture. In the case of Lady Peacock, as she’s known to her friends, it’s her manner that provides endless hours of entertainment.
Lady P gives high priority to the better things in life, in fact a significant edge to form over function in almost everything, be it apparel, home furnishing, or dining out. In the buying of clothes, and her wardrobe is under constant review and renewal. Lady P subscribes not to the “quality versus quantity” debate, because she generally indulges in splurges of both. To paraphrase, she can resist anything but temptation.
The pandemic has therefore been truly cruel to Lady Peacock. Her three areas of interest are travel, selecting from a restaurant menu, and shopping. Giving only passing glances of disapproval to willpower, she’s not been weathering captivity with aplomb. Much of this is fully understandable when one lives alone. Her Ladyship and I have each other to amuse. Prior to Herself being in the hospital, Lady Peacock would pop in regularly to share news and chat, show us her latest clothing purchases, or she’s just on a Starbuck’s run. In fact, the working title of her biography that I add bits to from time to time, is “Skim Milk with Extra Whipped Cream”, drawn from an overheard order placed in the drive-up. I texted her the other day to let her know an eating establishment in the coastal city of Portsmouth had reported an uptake of coronavirus and she should avoid it. The hilarious part is that the restaurant is called, “Fish Café”. Lady Peacock is not a fish or seafood person. One of her favorite recommendations for a coastal trip is a burger place, which of course we usually reject. The funny part, however, is that after I sent her the text, she mentioned how tightly restricted she’s become, although she was in Portsmouth for lunch last week. Her idea of quarantine is not visiting restaurants quite as regularly. She’d also visited one of her favorite “haunts” a very pleasing and upscale spot in Merrimack with a friend.
Many older gravestones have fitting tributes – a few carved words of tribute that sum up the dearly departed for posterity. The one that’s most fittingly and that I’ve recommended a number of times to adorn Lady P’s final resting place someday will be, “I told you I was sick”, or perhaps, “Wait, I didn’t approve that dress.” She does tend to revel in details of ill health, reflecting back of past medical problems, building them up to epic tales of survival, and if she’s not actually sick, she is on the lookout for the next great plague. To her, a visit to a doctor’s office is like visiting an art gallery or a favorite concert hall – she just soaks up the atmosphere, as long as the ventilation system has sufficient purifiers and there are no sick people in the waiting room. When assisting with her taxes this past year, I noticed that she gave me an astronomical amount to deduct for “medical expenses”. I casually inquired what they were (as she has the same coverage we do), and she pulled out a notebook that detailed her mileage to and from doctor’s appointments. A pandemic naturally creates an ideal opportunity for medical triumph. I’m not sure if there is a full Covid-19 testing team set up at the entrance to Teale Cottage, her official residence, but I certainly wouldn’t bet against it.
My guess is that a large part of the quarantine process for Lady Peacock is that she’s now preparing a significant number of her own meals. By that, and this is pure speculation from me, that there is a bit of a decline in the numbers of take-away containers in the fridge. A word about Lady P’s kitchen: her kitchen is only skin-deep. In fairness, Lady Peacock is a very fine cook when she sets to it. However, beneath the pristine granite and gleaming appliances lies a dark underbelly of a truly sad collection of kitchen utensils. A hammer for chopping nuts, for example and a hand mixer from WWII. It’s rather like opening the closet door after a child has said he or she has cleaned their room. One other thing to remember is Lady P only handles one task at a time, and that task will be done in slow motion. There are several rules that she has for determining which recipes are worthy of consideration and which should be avoided. The perfect recipe requires few steps and no “stirring”. Anything that requires Lady P to stand at the stove, large spoon in hand, well, that’s just chunks of her life that she’ll never get back. She has an absolutely wonderful recipe for cream of mushroom soup. However, it does require some stirring, slicing mushrooms, etc., etc., so she’s only made it for us once or possibly twice in the forty plus years we’ve known her. Similarly, anything with a long sequence of “steps” is to be avoided because, well, see above – time lost forever. The preferred meal items would be put together in one fell swoop and then left to their own devices in the oven or on the stove. Even more preferred would be a chef appearing at the door to do it for her, but that never seems to happen, nor will it during this period of isolation. Therefore, she is left to get a running start – some items made a day or two ahead, others having to cut into her time allotments for personal grooming and periods of rest.
Also taking a decided hit are shopping trips. Everything Lady Peacock does carries her signature sense of style and taste, which she possesses in abundance. Shopping expeditions are, in every sense, pilgrimages to the god, Retail. As such, they carry the full weight of her decision-making, and it’s a multifaceted process that is much more than one visit to a store. It is infrequent that purchases are made of a single item. Buying in quantity is a part of the shopping protocol, even if most or all will go back. Merchant inventories springboard about if they’re on her “preferred store” list. There, to all outward appearances, is an unwritten directive that nobody is ever to see her publicly in the same outfit more than once. This, in normal times, would require constantly refreshing and updating the wardrobe. Weekly, new items would typically be added or replaced. A quick trip, in and out in just a few hours, will usually mean three or four new “tops”, sweaters, slacks, perhaps a dress that was on sale but remarkably similar to the dozens she already owns. There are overriding justifications – the sale price was too good to pass up and the garment was literally calling to her, the fabric is slightly different and the sleeves a full half inch longer than the three she already owns. In the second phase of the process, she would try on the above items before a select jury either in person or by sending pictures. This is the “feedback” period, which would in normal non-pandemic times, extend days or possibly weeks. Finally, consensus may have been reached to “keep or return”. News releases from major chain stores that they are restructuring, closing stores, and corporate shake-ups, it’s often right after Lady P has made a return, and corporate quarterly earnings have taken a major hit. In recent times, we have to hold Lady Peacock blameless for the numbers of bankruptcies and store closures, but only because she hasn’t been fully able to get out and about. Lord and Taylor might not have gone under had they been able to send their inventory to Teale Cottage.
Yes, indeed. Wonder no more about the extensive and pervasive effects of the coronavirus on the economy – from restaurants and cafes to the recent spate of large box store closures. Lady Peacock is in confinement.
I'm Thinking...No! 