I have to be kind to myself today, cook some nice food, curl up on a couch and read a book or watch a movie, or practise some yoga. That’s what my stars said.
I’m a Libra — or as I like to say, I used to be Virgo, but that was decades ago.
Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if I read my horoscopes every day and blindly follow them, but I do occasionally cast my eye over the stars charts in newspapers and online, just out of curiosity and to see what’s celestial happenings might befall me.
Mercury, it turns out, is in retrograde, and I’m not supposed to buy any electronic gadgets or make online purchases.
That’s good news because the bank balances are a bit low right now and I’m not dipping into my savings, my two Android phones are still working, and thankfully the laptop is still functioning. I did have my eyes on one of those air fryers for the kitchen but the stars say I have to hang off on that.
When I’m told to cook nice food, clearly the stars know better that I don’t need the air fryer. Oh the conundrums posed by the universe! I have no problem either with the part where it says curling up on the couch with a good book or watching a movie either — but I might have to give the cat a shunt when she sprawls out and takes possession and won’t let me sit down without giving one of those looks that says “watch it, mate, you’re about to get mauled”.
But I know that won’t happen because it didn’t say so in the daily horrors’ scope.
I met Nancy Reagan once, in Ireland, a long time ago. That was when I was just starting out in my career in journalism.
Notion of star power
She, it turns out, was a big believer in stars — so much so that it’s said President Ronald wouldn’t make any big decision without having Nancy check it over and see what the universe was saying. Whether that’s true or not, I have no idea, but it does bring a whole new dimension to the notion of star power.
What worries me is that the stars have told me that I need to practice yoga.
As I write this, I am in a cold sweat, fretting about where on Earth I can get a yoga mat in the middle of lockdown.
All the non-essential stores are closed and, on the one hand the stars are telling me that I need to bend myself into all sorts of funny shapes for the sake of physical and mental relaxation — that does seem like a bit of an oxymoron right now — and on the other hand I’m told not to but anything online at the moment. See my dilemma?
Why would the universe tell me all of a sudden that I need to turn myself inside out, cause hernias and all sorts of muscle strains and the like in pursuit of relaxation.
I need to find a quiet corner and slowly inhale, hold my breath, and exhale to calm myself down at the very prospect of downward dogging it.
Calm down, I tell myself. And then I remember back many years ago, in my first job in journalism. It was an old press agency called Copy Write, where we would supply court reporting and other features to the newspapers all across Ireland.
One of the first jobs any new reporter had to do was write the horoscopes. There was a big pile of old newspapers in one corner. You took a dozen off the bottom and rewrote Virgo into Libra and the like. That’s what was written in the stars ….