“All you do is nag and drink wine.”
The need for both is linked. I had a mouth full of pins at the time, altering the curtains, so couldn’t squawk in outrage. I thought about it, but guessed that death might get in the way.
“You said you’d stop nagging.” This could only be a teenager speaking. Or maybe a recalcitrant footballer to a humiliated wife. Sue me.
“Nagging is only repetition,” I said tartly, momentarily pin-free, and taking the opportunity for a medicinal tot (me nerves, doctor, summat chronic) of the vino. “And repetition is only necessary when you don’t do what you’ve been asked to do a hundred times. I said I wouldn’t nag, if you just did. And you haven’t done.”
E strode by. He frowned. “There’s pins on the floor.” He has a mediaeval belief that pins will pierce his skin, take the boat, sail north and puncture his heart.
“Pick them up then,” I might have snapped.
T14 looked blank. “Anyway, I’m crap at exams.”
“You’re crap at exams because you don’t do enough work for them.”
“They’re not for ages.”
“They’re not for ages, until they’re suddenly tomorrow, and yours are in 4 weeks. However much you might dislike the idea, the day will come when you are on a chair and facing a paper you are quite capable of easily passing. If you’d just thought to glance at a textbook beforehand.”
The evenings are light and long and the urge – never strong – to brush up on diffusion and refraction and negative enlargement and irregular verbs, ebbs further as the wind drops and the park beckons.
His local chums, at the local school, phone endlessly, “’s T14 there?” they grunt as if I hadn’t known them a decade and fed them fish fingers in their tiny days. These boys’ exams were a fortnight ago. “Wanna go down the park, T14?”
The head boy at T14’s school went to look round Durham, or was it York? with a view to studying medicine there. He abandoned a 1st XV match to do so. And was despatched roundly, for “only” having 7 A*s and 3 As at GCSE. Apparently you won’t be considered without 8 A*s. Bye! Could try harder. A mother panics.
“Yeah,” says T14, “See ya.”
Fourteen is a bit of a rubbish age. I wasn’t allowed to be fourteen. I only realised what a teenager could and should do when I was about 35 and aghast at the feral offspring of eye-rolling, older friends, “What can you do? They’re teenagers!”
Too old (dammit) to be Mummy’s boy and too young to be anything useful. Still tied to the chemistry textbook while dreaming of a VW campervan laden with chums making its way across America.
“J14’s coming to America,” says T14.
“Is he,” I say, “Is he really.”
J14 chucks a cricket ball against the wall and grins vaguely. The funding of the trip is not broached.
“I’ll revise later. Promise.” He’s off, a head phone in one ear, cycling hands-free to the park, free from piano practice and valencies, from the nagging alkie, the pin-freak and the bossy professor:
“T14’s not wearing his helmet!!! Phone him, phone now. Tell him he’s got to put his helmet on!!!”
Somewhere in the past couple of years, I’ve seen him artlessly naked for the last time. I didn’t, of course, realise that it was the last time, just as I didn’t realise when it was that I closed the cover on my final goodnight story.
Progress brings backwards steps, a merging from the individual to the masses, to fitting in with the other honking poltroons. Soon he’ll be like all those others, you know the ones, the ones who won’t kiss their mothers in public and who go out leaving the hot tap on and the back door open, a loaf of bread in the sink; who turn up just to frown at the fridge’s content and expect mounds of laundry to transform into neatly piled clean items. He’s never been a taking for granted type of child, but it’s seeping in, edging out the charm and softness. Leaving himself behind. I hope he finds a good new him to inhabit.
The next day, such is the volatility of what the in-flight magazine called Those Hard To Please Teens, he is smiling again, and singing on the stairs.
On leaving me at my brutal breeze-block Halls of Residence, strip lit and lino-floored, my father patted my shoulder, “You don’t need to come back at Christmas,” he said. This was his version of reassurance, to spare me the horror of claustrophobic obligation. Bugger off and don’t look back. Ha. Way to prompt a major neediness… I’ve missed only one Christmas in the decades since. Trap them and they don’t come back. I sit on metaphorical hands and grind a zip across my mouth against the urge to smother and annoy.
His face, his beautiful face, is changing. I thought all this would last forever. I was wrong. The bones beneath the skin are cranking and stretching, the hair's a little lanker. Sometimes his childish beauty is still there, or an echo of it, and sometimes the mix of growth is not that pleasing and the spots flare and the nostril flares and the lip curls and the eye no longer holds mine. Then he grows into himself a little more and edges a little older, another day away.
And the girls on his Facebook page call each other whore and slapper and bitch and fucker and say, “Oh Charl, you’re so pretty Charl, I hate you Charl, you bitch. Ellie tell Charl she’s a bitch.” And all the boys click Like. And the girls fly into a frenzy.
The door goes and in he comes, and he hugs me and he says, “Mummy,” and he says “Sorry,” and I say, “Darling,” and I don’t say, “Maths?” or “Geography?” though it nearly bloody kills me not to impart a wise word. He goes in to the kitchen and he fumbles on the window sill where all their school-books lie and he selects a textbook and neither of us says anything and he sits down and goes as if to read it.
“’t was boring down the park,” he said. He lies.
His eyes stray to the window, to the big sky beyond, and then, reluctantly, back to Henry VIII’s monastic reforms.
Showing posts with label wine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wine. Show all posts
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
Friday, 30 July 2010
Let's
Let it be known that any sentence beginning with an enthusiastic “Let’s …” plays host to an utterly idiotic idea which needs slaughtering right there and then. Kick it to the kerb and turn the TV up loud instead.
We’ll take – let’s take – the recent instance still raw in the flesh of the Milla household of “Let’s have a party.”
I suggested eagerly, E shuddered and went to lie down and I got busy with a list.
“You must be mad,” my mother said; a sentiment that’s come this way from that a few times now.
On the fridge was a yellowing invitation sent out by Mrs Efficient in November. Yes, November, to chime with the Christmas cards. Yes, the Christmas cards, in November. The mind boggles, an Escher unfolding of things which should not be. Still, this shiny rectangle is witness to the fact that even such grotesque planning can go tits up. Minutes after ripping open the envelope on that chilly day, long, long ago, came the breathy phone call. The venue (this was a party with a venue, and a ceillidh, and caterers, 3 things ours was going to go shy of) had double booked and the party had to be shunted on a week. Into July. I decided to forego invitations.
But just deciding who to have forced problems to bob to the surface. Friends aren’t that simple. It used to be that you knew people or didn’t know them. I have 200 names on my mobile phone but I scrolled through muttering, “no, no, maybe, no.”
To cull numbers further (the merry hostess admits) we ditched anyone long distance. They might want to stay. Can you imagine anything worse? Than friends staying? Sheets. Small talk over croissant served in the debris of day old dead brie and evil glasses sticky with the night before. All the hot water going. Besides they wouldn’t know anyone. It would be an unkindness.
We closed tired eyes to the notion of having anyone from school, to eager huddles discussing the 11+.
There was a quorum from the village beyond the ones we like whom we were obliged to have – and when you have X there’s always a Y and a Z too. So we set the party date in close sight and luckily lost a few to a wedding and some more to the summer holidays.
Around this time the weather started changing. The endless Enid Blyton summer got bored and the wind moved in.
I panicked, and thought, “Why don’t I...” (a close cousin of Let’s) “Why don’t I … make some bunting?” Within seconds, elderly knees were busy creaking up the attic ladder and years of dust and 7 bags of ancient fabric came crashing down with me a mere sneeze behind.
Do not be fooled. Bunting is not “a few triangles sewn together and put on a string.”
The West Wind woke up. The acceptances came flooding in. E said, “Have you thought about food?”
Bunting is, in fact, an hour’s ironing, a day’s cutting out and pinning – well, it is when suddenly you are a 101 triangles in through fabric choice paralysis … if I have just this and this … oh and this (calling for 202 backs and fronts). The kitchen disappeared under piles of material.
The North Wind thought, “Might as well …” and bashed at the newly planted borders and E said, “Where are we going to put all the drink?”
Bunting is several hours on the sewing machine cursing and kicking as the wretched thing prats about with self-important tension issues and needle snapping; anyone would think I should run to a service after 30 years of ownership.
E was not impressed. But what he failed to understand is that 80 people’s not that many people to feed, not really, not when the bunting was assuming a life of its own. Displacement activity he called it. Can you believe?
To keep the peace I had to make bad tempered forays into the kitchen to cook. We didn’t want anything approaching plates and knives and forks. Mouthfuls only, there was to be no post-party broaching of teetering piles, separating gummy plates, fags in the butter, fingering abandoned cutlery stiff with smeary somethings. So I chopped and whirred and 100 little mini quiches (mushroom duxelley stuff; asparagus and parmesan) emerged and baby toads in the hole and weeny pizza-ettes and tiny goats’ cheese and cranberry soufflés. The best bit was a pleasing hour in Lakeland resulting in a happy shopper bent double under 3-for-2 baking trays. A friend lent a fridge. Everyone needs a friend with a spare fridge.
And then the stringing.
The East Wind moved a little nearer.
I dyed the stringing tape bright zinging pink. Foolishly, I didn’t wear gloves. And then ironed the tape, all 150 feet of it, down the long skinny middle, edging mountains of cheese straws out of the greasy way. E fretted about the effect of the sun (ha!) on the beer. I pinned and pinned.
The day came, my shoulders ached through being hunched over the machine, my lobster hands throbbed through a bain marie incident and a run in with the iron, and I eyed the sky in pain and nervous defiance.
With six hours to go on the Saturday, we decided we needed an iPod player to play our ancient, but never used (couldn’t face learning how) iPod. We found a real bargain within ten minutes but it seemed a good idea to go and check out 3 other shops before returning to the first place; the only surprise being that there was actually one last one left, rather than missing it by dumb moments. How often is one treated to such serendipity?
Back home, the oil cloth flapped on the trestle table, the bunting strained and tugged at the guttering, the platters I’d thought were under the hob were actually inaccessibly behind the borrowed fridge.
The weather was behaving like a child at a wedding: OK, just about, sort of getting away with it, but pissing you off at the same time. 2 friends called, along the lines of, “Do you want to borrow a gazebo, it’s a bit dusty but …” I resisted, without screaming. It was all a massive strain on the patience just as the rain itself strained at the leash of the glowering clouds.
Was fast all hummus and olive’d out and headachey from eyeing the sky with such grave concern. It mocked me with sudden gusts of wind and flurries of clouds but no actual wet stuff. “Four hours,” said E shunting crap off a sideboard and into an open drawer.
We set off for Tesco for the glasses (free hire!) with misplaced confidence, a sign the rain took to prompt gently the windscreen wipers into play. In the queue, a troublesome neighbour, a duty invite, who mercifully couldn’t come – interminable unnecessary explanation involving a lesbian niece – sidled up to me, “What are you going to do if it rains, Milla?” he wheedled, a delighted smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
Fuck off you old fuck, I thought, “Nothing,” I said, desperate for a random, aerial source of intravenous gin, that and a sledgehammer.
A party gains its own impetus. Plates were dropped off. Mini everything, Hunca Munca but yumtastic, no shards of plaster. My chums came up trumps. A dozen or so of them came bearing offerings. I started to worry that there was going to be far too much food and foresaw myself flung face first in a bowl of salsa sucking desperately to show that it was wanted.
The dog walkers en masse revealed a worrying inclination to bosomy puddings – delicious tiny meringues with splodges of raspberry atop wobbles of cream a favourite. There were dips and canapés and fudge and focaccio, and spicy popcorn. Mrs Very Rich got the gold star for lending magazine-esque levels of goodies: glass bottles with flip lids for water, pails for pinks, baskets lined in Glass towels for casual loveliness and staggering in laden with Michelin standard lovelies and champers and a present. Ditch fridge owning friends; everyone needs a Mrs Very Rich as their friend.
The sun edged out of hiding and the wind buggered off.
Shame was that guests had to come along and ruin it all, really. The pleasure, such as it was, I now realised, had lain in the planning and the anticipation and to be stilled in aspic in a moment of never quite arriving would be a pleasant state of affairs.
At ten to 8 I rushed upstairs and donned some odd thing I’d bought in an All Saints sale at Gatwick airport at 6 in the morning in January and spent all night shedding tiny sequins, and E wore his running shorts and dinner jacket. He has good legs. Strong men carried out the good-looking but crap sofa and everyone arrived at once bringing on an attack of quite extraordinary nerves. A glass of wine did nothing to quell the anxiety and I thought, what a shame. Were I to go to a party and see this lot I would be thrilled but, somehow, in my own house it did nothing but occasion extreme dread.
What’s to say? It went really well. Apparently. Good noise levels. Packed.
No spats, no sulks, no sobs and no-one threw up in a plant pot. Making it sound rather dull really; all I can offer in the disaster stakes is a woman (wearing white) a victim of a mobile glass of red wine.
I started enjoying it at about 1 in the morning.
The food was snaffled up and pronounced delicious; there was a long session of shame at the bottle bank next day. The thank yous have been touching. Lots of nice people brought presents.
But, say it slowly, and clearly, and loudly: Never Again. Ever. Let’s Just Not.
We’ll take – let’s take – the recent instance still raw in the flesh of the Milla household of “Let’s have a party.”
I suggested eagerly, E shuddered and went to lie down and I got busy with a list.
“You must be mad,” my mother said; a sentiment that’s come this way from that a few times now.
On the fridge was a yellowing invitation sent out by Mrs Efficient in November. Yes, November, to chime with the Christmas cards. Yes, the Christmas cards, in November. The mind boggles, an Escher unfolding of things which should not be. Still, this shiny rectangle is witness to the fact that even such grotesque planning can go tits up. Minutes after ripping open the envelope on that chilly day, long, long ago, came the breathy phone call. The venue (this was a party with a venue, and a ceillidh, and caterers, 3 things ours was going to go shy of) had double booked and the party had to be shunted on a week. Into July. I decided to forego invitations.
But just deciding who to have forced problems to bob to the surface. Friends aren’t that simple. It used to be that you knew people or didn’t know them. I have 200 names on my mobile phone but I scrolled through muttering, “no, no, maybe, no.”
To cull numbers further (the merry hostess admits) we ditched anyone long distance. They might want to stay. Can you imagine anything worse? Than friends staying? Sheets. Small talk over croissant served in the debris of day old dead brie and evil glasses sticky with the night before. All the hot water going. Besides they wouldn’t know anyone. It would be an unkindness.
We closed tired eyes to the notion of having anyone from school, to eager huddles discussing the 11+.
There was a quorum from the village beyond the ones we like whom we were obliged to have – and when you have X there’s always a Y and a Z too. So we set the party date in close sight and luckily lost a few to a wedding and some more to the summer holidays.
Around this time the weather started changing. The endless Enid Blyton summer got bored and the wind moved in.
I panicked, and thought, “Why don’t I...” (a close cousin of Let’s) “Why don’t I … make some bunting?” Within seconds, elderly knees were busy creaking up the attic ladder and years of dust and 7 bags of ancient fabric came crashing down with me a mere sneeze behind.
Do not be fooled. Bunting is not “a few triangles sewn together and put on a string.”
The West Wind woke up. The acceptances came flooding in. E said, “Have you thought about food?”
Bunting is, in fact, an hour’s ironing, a day’s cutting out and pinning – well, it is when suddenly you are a 101 triangles in through fabric choice paralysis … if I have just this and this … oh and this (calling for 202 backs and fronts). The kitchen disappeared under piles of material.
The North Wind thought, “Might as well …” and bashed at the newly planted borders and E said, “Where are we going to put all the drink?”
Bunting is several hours on the sewing machine cursing and kicking as the wretched thing prats about with self-important tension issues and needle snapping; anyone would think I should run to a service after 30 years of ownership.
E was not impressed. But what he failed to understand is that 80 people’s not that many people to feed, not really, not when the bunting was assuming a life of its own. Displacement activity he called it. Can you believe?
To keep the peace I had to make bad tempered forays into the kitchen to cook. We didn’t want anything approaching plates and knives and forks. Mouthfuls only, there was to be no post-party broaching of teetering piles, separating gummy plates, fags in the butter, fingering abandoned cutlery stiff with smeary somethings. So I chopped and whirred and 100 little mini quiches (mushroom duxelley stuff; asparagus and parmesan) emerged and baby toads in the hole and weeny pizza-ettes and tiny goats’ cheese and cranberry soufflés. The best bit was a pleasing hour in Lakeland resulting in a happy shopper bent double under 3-for-2 baking trays. A friend lent a fridge. Everyone needs a friend with a spare fridge.
And then the stringing.
The East Wind moved a little nearer.
I dyed the stringing tape bright zinging pink. Foolishly, I didn’t wear gloves. And then ironed the tape, all 150 feet of it, down the long skinny middle, edging mountains of cheese straws out of the greasy way. E fretted about the effect of the sun (ha!) on the beer. I pinned and pinned.
The day came, my shoulders ached through being hunched over the machine, my lobster hands throbbed through a bain marie incident and a run in with the iron, and I eyed the sky in pain and nervous defiance.
With six hours to go on the Saturday, we decided we needed an iPod player to play our ancient, but never used (couldn’t face learning how) iPod. We found a real bargain within ten minutes but it seemed a good idea to go and check out 3 other shops before returning to the first place; the only surprise being that there was actually one last one left, rather than missing it by dumb moments. How often is one treated to such serendipity?
Back home, the oil cloth flapped on the trestle table, the bunting strained and tugged at the guttering, the platters I’d thought were under the hob were actually inaccessibly behind the borrowed fridge.
The weather was behaving like a child at a wedding: OK, just about, sort of getting away with it, but pissing you off at the same time. 2 friends called, along the lines of, “Do you want to borrow a gazebo, it’s a bit dusty but …” I resisted, without screaming. It was all a massive strain on the patience just as the rain itself strained at the leash of the glowering clouds.
Was fast all hummus and olive’d out and headachey from eyeing the sky with such grave concern. It mocked me with sudden gusts of wind and flurries of clouds but no actual wet stuff. “Four hours,” said E shunting crap off a sideboard and into an open drawer.
We set off for Tesco for the glasses (free hire!) with misplaced confidence, a sign the rain took to prompt gently the windscreen wipers into play. In the queue, a troublesome neighbour, a duty invite, who mercifully couldn’t come – interminable unnecessary explanation involving a lesbian niece – sidled up to me, “What are you going to do if it rains, Milla?” he wheedled, a delighted smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
Fuck off you old fuck, I thought, “Nothing,” I said, desperate for a random, aerial source of intravenous gin, that and a sledgehammer.
A party gains its own impetus. Plates were dropped off. Mini everything, Hunca Munca but yumtastic, no shards of plaster. My chums came up trumps. A dozen or so of them came bearing offerings. I started to worry that there was going to be far too much food and foresaw myself flung face first in a bowl of salsa sucking desperately to show that it was wanted.
The dog walkers en masse revealed a worrying inclination to bosomy puddings – delicious tiny meringues with splodges of raspberry atop wobbles of cream a favourite. There were dips and canapés and fudge and focaccio, and spicy popcorn. Mrs Very Rich got the gold star for lending magazine-esque levels of goodies: glass bottles with flip lids for water, pails for pinks, baskets lined in Glass towels for casual loveliness and staggering in laden with Michelin standard lovelies and champers and a present. Ditch fridge owning friends; everyone needs a Mrs Very Rich as their friend.
The sun edged out of hiding and the wind buggered off.
Shame was that guests had to come along and ruin it all, really. The pleasure, such as it was, I now realised, had lain in the planning and the anticipation and to be stilled in aspic in a moment of never quite arriving would be a pleasant state of affairs.
At ten to 8 I rushed upstairs and donned some odd thing I’d bought in an All Saints sale at Gatwick airport at 6 in the morning in January and spent all night shedding tiny sequins, and E wore his running shorts and dinner jacket. He has good legs. Strong men carried out the good-looking but crap sofa and everyone arrived at once bringing on an attack of quite extraordinary nerves. A glass of wine did nothing to quell the anxiety and I thought, what a shame. Were I to go to a party and see this lot I would be thrilled but, somehow, in my own house it did nothing but occasion extreme dread.
What’s to say? It went really well. Apparently. Good noise levels. Packed.
No spats, no sulks, no sobs and no-one threw up in a plant pot. Making it sound rather dull really; all I can offer in the disaster stakes is a woman (wearing white) a victim of a mobile glass of red wine.
I started enjoying it at about 1 in the morning.
The food was snaffled up and pronounced delicious; there was a long session of shame at the bottle bank next day. The thank yous have been touching. Lots of nice people brought presents.
But, say it slowly, and clearly, and loudly: Never Again. Ever. Let’s Just Not.
Saturday, 12 April 2008
Another One!
Knew that couldn't be it.
Realise that in my original 8, when tagged to do this last June, I had mentioned the road accidents. And then I bring them up again. Durr, obsessed or what.
Anyway, instead of the repeat of the road accidents, what I meant to say is:
We were bombed on the beach once, my beloved and me. Well, not us, exactly. Or at all. Our presence was purely incidental. A load of lesbians down the other end were the target. This was on Lesbos and the poor lesbians were bombed, which seems a bit of a cheek. We up on the straight bit merely got boomed a bit and felt all juddery through our towels, and surprised, and then tromped off to get another glass of wine and rolled over and scowled at the ghastly family nearby letting their kids kick sand at everyone.
Realise that in my original 8, when tagged to do this last June, I had mentioned the road accidents. And then I bring them up again. Durr, obsessed or what.
Anyway, instead of the repeat of the road accidents, what I meant to say is:
We were bombed on the beach once, my beloved and me. Well, not us, exactly. Or at all. Our presence was purely incidental. A load of lesbians down the other end were the target. This was on Lesbos and the poor lesbians were bombed, which seems a bit of a cheek. We up on the straight bit merely got boomed a bit and felt all juddery through our towels, and surprised, and then tromped off to get another glass of wine and rolled over and scowled at the ghastly family nearby letting their kids kick sand at everyone.
Thursday, 20 March 2008
Illa Milla
I was ill and feeling wretched and so was Lolly. We felt sorry for ourselves but deserved no pity.
Lolly, because her sickness was down to a lusty session with a rabbit, fur and claws and all with a side order of horse poo; me, because I had to have consumed half my body weight in wine.
Plus, I’m deeply unsympathetic towards illness such as this, I have no truck with it, I am harsh and unforgiving. It is boring and self-indulgent, and I don’t like being bored and I don't indulge. Not when there are real people out there with real things wrong with them. So now that it was my turn, and self-induced, I deserved no more than being ignored, despised slightly, maybe. But shown no favour or concern. A maelstrom of crossness and misery was I.
I was so bad that I had to go to bed, shaking, sobbing, throwing up. I never do that. Ever. Indeed, I’m horrid and superior about lightweights that take to their bed by day. Added to which was the self-loathing and high embarrassment factor. Cringing at my own inability to grow up, lamenting the loss of my liver, promising any bored God who might lend an ear that Never Ever Again etc.
I went all day without turning on the computer: this just does not happen in a well-ordered universe.
At some stage I staggered into the kitchen, which I hadn’t been able to focus on at breakfast, to assess the full horror of the trashed pub scene which would correspond with the way I felt. But lo, what odd sight is this, but a perfectly tidy and respectable-looking room bearing no Bacchanalian scars, no signs of dancing on tables or smashed glass. All clean and polished and thoroughly grown up. Just 3 neat empty bottles lined up ready for recycling. There had been 5 of us drinking so 3 is no shocking tally. Almost admirable, indeed, taken over several hours.
I went to collect T11 from a rugby tournament which had coincided, by some strange serendipity, with the nicest day of the year so far, a mile from the Arctic conditions promised for this weekend.
And bumped into M who had been with me the night before. She looked evil, pale and spacey, clammy and leprous. My twin.
"Where you alright today?" she said.
"No," I said, and nearly cried.
She had been sick. In the car. Had sobbed as she cleared it up. Had gone to bed, and been sick some more. We sort of nodded heads in agreement with each other, not too much, it would have hurt. M is a person who is certain about things, very high-achieving, so I listen to what she says. She is always right.
“It was a bad bottle of wine,” she said.
“Not too much wine?” I said.
“Oh, no,” she said, surprised, “we weren’t drunk at all.”
“You’ve got that bug that’s going round,” someone else remarked. Some fit, hale, hearty person with rosy cheeks, who segued then into a robust and unnecessary chat about her weekend. M and I needed something to clutch. Hunched we stood, as the presentation went on and on and on, the requirement to clap being almost more than I could manage.
Then M2 staggered over. “Fragile” was the word she used. We all wore sunglasses. I always do (think F9, think Lolly: disguise is necessary) but M and M2 don’t.
The relief was huge; to be able to blame a proper bug and not just assume the worst of my own behaviour was a new position to be in. I tend to absorb blame. There had been a note home from school about it which I had tossed in the bin, but a note home from school suddenly seemed something very important. It pointed to the validation of a legitimate illness, and not just vile self-damage and how nicely smug is that.
Am still cold and shivery now and feeling a bit dull. Starvation-induced dizziness. I have even cancelled a night out tonight which I was looking forward to, thinking: what’s nicer than a date with the rug on the sofa in front of crap telly. I plan to be in my jim-jams by eight and can barely wait.
Normal service will be resumed. I hope.
Lolly, because her sickness was down to a lusty session with a rabbit, fur and claws and all with a side order of horse poo; me, because I had to have consumed half my body weight in wine.
Plus, I’m deeply unsympathetic towards illness such as this, I have no truck with it, I am harsh and unforgiving. It is boring and self-indulgent, and I don’t like being bored and I don't indulge. Not when there are real people out there with real things wrong with them. So now that it was my turn, and self-induced, I deserved no more than being ignored, despised slightly, maybe. But shown no favour or concern. A maelstrom of crossness and misery was I.
I was so bad that I had to go to bed, shaking, sobbing, throwing up. I never do that. Ever. Indeed, I’m horrid and superior about lightweights that take to their bed by day. Added to which was the self-loathing and high embarrassment factor. Cringing at my own inability to grow up, lamenting the loss of my liver, promising any bored God who might lend an ear that Never Ever Again etc.
I went all day without turning on the computer: this just does not happen in a well-ordered universe.
At some stage I staggered into the kitchen, which I hadn’t been able to focus on at breakfast, to assess the full horror of the trashed pub scene which would correspond with the way I felt. But lo, what odd sight is this, but a perfectly tidy and respectable-looking room bearing no Bacchanalian scars, no signs of dancing on tables or smashed glass. All clean and polished and thoroughly grown up. Just 3 neat empty bottles lined up ready for recycling. There had been 5 of us drinking so 3 is no shocking tally. Almost admirable, indeed, taken over several hours.
I went to collect T11 from a rugby tournament which had coincided, by some strange serendipity, with the nicest day of the year so far, a mile from the Arctic conditions promised for this weekend.
And bumped into M who had been with me the night before. She looked evil, pale and spacey, clammy and leprous. My twin.
"Where you alright today?" she said.
"No," I said, and nearly cried.
She had been sick. In the car. Had sobbed as she cleared it up. Had gone to bed, and been sick some more. We sort of nodded heads in agreement with each other, not too much, it would have hurt. M is a person who is certain about things, very high-achieving, so I listen to what she says. She is always right.
“It was a bad bottle of wine,” she said.
“Not too much wine?” I said.
“Oh, no,” she said, surprised, “we weren’t drunk at all.”
“You’ve got that bug that’s going round,” someone else remarked. Some fit, hale, hearty person with rosy cheeks, who segued then into a robust and unnecessary chat about her weekend. M and I needed something to clutch. Hunched we stood, as the presentation went on and on and on, the requirement to clap being almost more than I could manage.
Then M2 staggered over. “Fragile” was the word she used. We all wore sunglasses. I always do (think F9, think Lolly: disguise is necessary) but M and M2 don’t.
The relief was huge; to be able to blame a proper bug and not just assume the worst of my own behaviour was a new position to be in. I tend to absorb blame. There had been a note home from school about it which I had tossed in the bin, but a note home from school suddenly seemed something very important. It pointed to the validation of a legitimate illness, and not just vile self-damage and how nicely smug is that.
Am still cold and shivery now and feeling a bit dull. Starvation-induced dizziness. I have even cancelled a night out tonight which I was looking forward to, thinking: what’s nicer than a date with the rug on the sofa in front of crap telly. I plan to be in my jim-jams by eight and can barely wait.
Normal service will be resumed. I hope.
Monday, 23 July 2007
Water water everywhere, nor any ... you know the rest
A one-minute wonder of a blog, this, just to say thanks so much to those who’ve e-mailed.
Yes, Gloucestershire is bad: we are 10 minutes from Cheltenham who were meant to lose "amenities" after us (but greedily queue jumped) and 10 minutes from Tewkesbury (wellington-boot and dingy-led hogger of current news’ footage on TV) and are awaiting the loss of water and power any minute, conserving like mad (eeek, how our hair squeaks) and hoping that everyone else is doing likewise – though going by stories that fisticuffs have broken out in Tesco over bottles of water, maybe not.
Waitrose, earlier, was thoroughly more civilised, and where T10 and I bought a modest 15 litres, at a very modest £3.27, the bottles handed over by gorgeous male-type people in stripey shirt and Behaving Really Frightfully Well and wishing that all females were worthy recipients, aka: Celia Johnson. As did I, I fancied a little breathy moment amid the stress and latent trolley rage.
Really, it’s one thing a) being a rubbish summer and b) living in a *loody building site with c) a rampant mental bag of fur on 4 legs, but quite another being a dangerous rubbish summer in a *loody building site with ... Lolly (you guessed c)).
More later.
Yes, Gloucestershire is bad: we are 10 minutes from Cheltenham who were meant to lose "amenities" after us (but greedily queue jumped) and 10 minutes from Tewkesbury (wellington-boot and dingy-led hogger of current news’ footage on TV) and are awaiting the loss of water and power any minute, conserving like mad (eeek, how our hair squeaks) and hoping that everyone else is doing likewise – though going by stories that fisticuffs have broken out in Tesco over bottles of water, maybe not.
Waitrose, earlier, was thoroughly more civilised, and where T10 and I bought a modest 15 litres, at a very modest £3.27, the bottles handed over by gorgeous male-type people in stripey shirt and Behaving Really Frightfully Well and wishing that all females were worthy recipients, aka: Celia Johnson. As did I, I fancied a little breathy moment amid the stress and latent trolley rage.
Really, it’s one thing a) being a rubbish summer and b) living in a *loody building site with c) a rampant mental bag of fur on 4 legs, but quite another being a dangerous rubbish summer in a *loody building site with ... Lolly (you guessed c)).
More later.
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