Quiz: Should you act on your lockdown broodiness?
Keeping a sourdough starter alive is one thing. But are you truly ready to embrace your inner parent?
By Maddalena Vatti. Illustrations by Noemi Ponzoni
We’ve all had a lot of time during this lockdown to learn new skills, read more books and make irreparable changes to our hair. Many of us have eagerly picked up new hobbies along the way – but are these pursuits just harmless solutions to boredom or hyperactivity, or is there an ulterior motive at play?
Whether it’s growing a sourdough culture, nurturing plants or practicing yoga, our close observation of human behaviour around us suggests there’s more to the performance of these routines than just wanting to “try something new.” In fact, we would suggest that these lockdown hobbies – if performed in specific, ritualistic ways – are a warning that you might be sublimating your very first feelings of broodiness.
Because we’d hate to leave you lost and guessing, take our quiz to find out whether you should act on those feelings or leave them behind in lockdown.
Who doesn’t like the smell of freshly baked bread? But all LOAVES are not created equal, so you picked up a sourdough hobby, duh. What does your life look like now?
A. You have an alarm on your phone reminding you to “Feed the Mother.”
B. You’ve called yourself the Bread Baron. When your housemate asked for some of your starter, you handed the holy jar over to the disciple, saying, “Here you go, young Pain-dawan.”
C. Your favourite step of the bread-making process is shaping the dough. Can’t get over how much it feels like a boob.
You and your housemate decide to go halves on a keg of beer. What’s next?
A. The keg requires a lot of attention and you’re proud to shoulder that responsibility. Every 15 minutes you get up from your desk to spray it with water. You’ve also placed a wet cloth over its surface, all to regulate temperature levels. You don’t trust anyone else with the keg. Sometimes you speak to the keg to check that it’s okay before you pour a pint.
B. The first sip of that “homegrown” beer after a month of lockdown made you emotional.
C. Two words: keg stands.
At the start of lockdown, you vowed to commit to a yoga practice in the name of mindfulness – or at least that’s what you told everyone. How into it are you really?
A. Genuinely enthusiastic. Who knows when you’ll next have time for an eight-week Yin yoga course?
B. You want to get a dog and call it Benji to be one step closer to becoming Adrienne.
C. When the possibility of confrontation arises, you go directly into child’s pose to avoid it .
You found it impossible to resist the lure of plants – how very millennial of you. What kind of gardener are you?
A. You don’t have friends. You have a set of trustworthy people you can leave your plants with when you go away.
B. People calling plants by their vulgar names offend you. (It’s Epipremnum aureum, not Devil’s Ivy, ffs!)
C. You traded the house cat for a handful of magic beans.
They say that a dog is man’s best friend. But how good a friend are you to your new pet?
A. Your dog has a middle name, and it’s the same as your grandfather’s.
B. You’ve never cooked for your flatmates, but feed your dog prime cuts three times a day.
C. You’re just happy to have an excuse to dodge any human conversation: “Sit down, drop that, good boy, give daddy a kiss…”
RESULTS
Mostly As: You want to feed, grow, love and nurture. You want something to selflessly care for on a daily basis. You also believe you’re uniquely capable of prolonging the lifespan of said thing, and, when no-one’s around, you might find yourself conversing with it in funny voices.
Our verdict: It doesn’t get much broodier than this. Go ahead and reproduce. Yes, everyone’s broke and the world’s crashing down around us, but what could possibly go wrong?
Mostly Bs: You loved going to the garden centre and learning plant names until you realised they’d actually die if you didn’t water them properly. Growing your sourdough culture was cool until you found out that between the stretching, folding, shaping, scoring and resting (possibly not in this order) you had to book a whole day off work to make a single loaf. Fine, we get that you gave in to the peer pressure. Everyone else is doing it so why shouldn’t you? But we all know this isn’t a good reason to do literally anything.
Our verdict: Pubs have reopened, enjoy it while it lasts.
Mostly Cs: The only reason you tolerate having dogs around is because it means there’ll be someone louder, messier and more inappropriate than you. (You’re slightly less likely to urinate where you’re not supposed to – unless you’re very drunk.) The closest you’ve come to plant care was the time you tried to grow those shrooms next to your housemate’s tomato plant. She didn’t appreciate that, and even then you tried to blame the dog.
Our verdict: Start looking for a mother, and not for your sourdough.