I’ve been ill all day today because last night I stayed over at my friend Emma’s new flat* and her new flat has a cat. I didn’t touch the cat, or even make eye contact with it, but such is the acuteness of my allergy (‘exquisite’ I believe it is called in allergist talk**) that just being in a catty house overnight has made my immune system go nuclear.
Anyway, as a treat for my snotty-nosed self, I decided to go to the cinema to see The Future, Miranda July’s new film. Which turned out to have a very poignant storyline about a cat. And in light of my crippled state, all I could think was: this cat storyline is meant to be very poignant, but this poignant cat would just poison me like the cat in the flat, so maybe I don’t feel so touched by the cat.
The rest of the film was quite moving, though***.
Also the woman sitting next to me physically moved to a different seat about 15 minutes in, I suspect because she did not like my heavy asthmatic breathing. Sorry, cinema woman.
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*It is a special London problem that if you are having fun at 23:30 you must make the difficult choice between continuing the fun and going home that night because shortly thereafter the trains stop running and you’re not going to spend £40 on a cab. This choice is especially hard because there is always a risk that the fun will stop at 23:51 and then it will be too late to escape! This was not the case last night, however.
**I worked at an allergist’s office for six weeks filing patient notes when I was 22, so I’m pretty much an expert.
***There was one moment in particular, when Miranda July’s character takes to her bed with her head under the covers in a state of abject creative frustration, that was very familiar. It might have made me do an extra wheeze.
