When I was at school, ‘It’ was obviously a stock game in the playground repertoire. I have a million memories of me running around and, upon sighting ‘the enemy’ catching up (AKA probably a boy I didn’t like), calling out ‘Homie’, ‘Time-Out’, or simply vigorously making a ‘T’ with both hands. Yeah, I wasn’t exactly a sore loser but I wasn’t an admirable one either. 

Now, I thought the days of Homie or Time-Outs (as anyone outside of southern England would better understand it) were over. Like, so over. 

Since then, I haven’t given it a thought until I started wondering why in the hell I keep visiting my local delicatessen, when I full well know that a) it’s obscenely expensive; b) I can buy cheaper versions of the products elsewhere (if I’m happy to sacrifice their bio, considered, or supposedly authentically-sourced status); c) I don’t even know how to cook half the things it sells. 

But yet, at least once a fortnight, I’m there, staring at all the things I don’t know, need, or can afford, briefly inhabiting a version of me that’s impossible to sustain. A calmer me, a mindful me, a me that takes her time to be intentional about how she spends her day, the things she cooks, and what she chooses to care about. A me with taste, class, culture, and lofty ambitions. A me who Knows Things. She’s also a more pretentious and downright unbearable me, but who’s watching.

And it came to me: the delicatessen, the land of food for the Better People, is a Homie, a Time-Out. Nothing can catch up with me there: work, obligations, anxieties, all of my many shortcomings. I’m safe from prying eyes, from the outside world, from the laws of cause and effect. I’m immune from all the bad, serious things. I can be anyone I want to be and I can immerse myself in the simple things that feel like they elevate my life, and my character, even though they actually don’t.

Am I straying from the Time-Out analogy? Absolutely. I assume no child actually philosophises about a concept that essentially allows them to cheat the game, catch a breath or, like me, be a coward. 

But maybe that’s what my local deli is, to me, in the game of Life. 

So yeah, it turns out I haven't learnt to play with grace yet.