Knit one, Bowl one

We’ll be lording it up at Lords, ho ho, my best beloved and me.
“You’ll need a hat,” said E, “or you’ll burn.”
So dodging the showers I took me into Town to look for a hat and purchase some shoes, the last having been squelched into horse shit cum quickmud in vain pursuit of that ghastly dog dancing with ponies. Nice they were too, my new shoes, barely three years old.

I look dreadful in hats, forlorn and flowerpotted, fit only to be cast as a vicar’s wife in “Rosemary and Thyme.” The sort with 3 sad scenes and no part in the denouement while the vicar humps a young lovely. Whatever I selected and dumped dolefully on my head made a sad frump appear in the mirror. Sun burn it is. That or a burqa.

The shoe hunt – I hate shoes – was a disappointment too, the ones I bought will have to go back. They will not do in the cold light of a home inspection. So it’s either the painful ballet-type things or my grim sandals.
Although I did bump into a friend who has been in the news a bit recently for having been swindled to the tune of £600,000 by what is called a Love Rat. It had been her children’s future and she squandered it on hope and lies and misplaced trust. She claimed to feel “empowered” by having just returned from New York where a paper had paid her to go to witness his deportation. She told of his many, many grubby liaisons, with other fallen fools most, like her, single mothers, now older and sadder. And poorer still. How when she thought he returned home "tired," it was exhaustion from hard work, so off she'd go to make him supper, while he recovered in a chair knackered in fact from spending her money and shagging other women.
Her sad tale combined with her chipper confidence forced me to realise that woeful lesbian sandals were not a bad cross to bear.

My mother meanwhile is blessed with the children during our absence.
“Wouldn’t T11 prefer to go to W11?” she bleated bravely.
Possibly, I thought
“No,” I said firmly, “he’s coming to you; they both are.”

When T11 was born, my father asked me what I now wonder were telling questions regarding grandparents and their importance in my childhood. While my life’s blood ebbed away (surgeon hit an artery: I was very ill) I was yet well-mannered and mindful to spare their feelings on the doling out of affection front. I didn’t want to appear too loved-up with my grandparents, and thereby exclude my parents, so I hedged my bets and answered in true slippery, evasive form.
He took me at my word.
They are busy people, ridiculously busy and tend not to see their grandchildren much.
“But you’d hate it if I were a Nan in a Mac at the school gates, forever up and down the motorway, pushing in,” my mother said in one of her conversation-stopping ways.
Try me I thought.
I’d asked if they wanted to stay in our house rather than have the children at theirs, a monument to expensive good taste and beautiful things.
“No, darling,” said my mother. The 'darling' chilled, and the no was the no to end all nos.
At the best of times my mother is given to umbrella-ish nos, the sort to stamp on a lot of what she would think of as my peripheral nonsense. This No rivalled the Dome in negative potential, and was slightly insulting. I sensed Lolly might be well and truly under this marquee of a No.
Lolly is currently residing at Dog Prison, aka the kennels, which is very much Her Sort Of Place. Full of barks and stinking of dog she is rampant to be within its portals. Our goodbyes are swift. Both of us feeling the better.

But even my mother’s nos are no rival for the sort handed out to my friend P by her father in law.
Mr D had been a vet, and when P and her family went away recently, Mr and Mrs D offered to stay in their grand Cheltenham house “to look after it.” How kind.
“Sure,” said P (thinking of the spring clean this would occasion to keep at bay cries of “my sluttish daughter-in-law, P.”) “I’ll leave instructions about the rabbit on the side.”
“NO! NO! NOOOO! Young lady,” bellowed Mr D, “You will do no such thing.”
P, used to recalcitrance from this quarter, raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow in query.
“We can’t possibly be expected to look after a RABBIT!” he continued. “A rabbit!” A handbag!
“Why not,” P asked, reasonably, of the erstwhile vet.
“It might escape and be killed.”
“It’s in its run, it’ll be fine.”
“NO, no no! it’s out of the question.”
He trumpeted some more excuses and then trumped them all with the fact that they might not come and stay at all, they might not make it down the motorway, indeed that they might die.
“Die?” said P, mentally reaching for a gun.
“Die,” agreed Mr D, spookily echoing her intentions. “Someone might shoot us.”
P drove 25 miles to leave the rabbit with her mother.
The rabbit survived.

And when my mother comes to collect the nippers, we will be ensconced in good seats, slurping on something delicious, while it is she who has to listen to bewildering tales involving lost furry gloves and “it” having been Luke’s fault and something unfathomable having been left in the rain.

Furthermore, what’s not to like about cricket?
I mean what's nicer than a game in which you can turn up for 2 days out of 5 (any 2 will do);
at which no-one looks at you askance for opening a bottle at 11 because, hey, if you've haven't by 12 then they are ALL looking at you thusly;
where you are allowed glass to drink from rather than brittle plastic, for they know that you have no intention of doing with it anything other than supping on champers;
where the absolute expectation is of good sportsmanship and manners, yours as well as the boys in white;
a game for which the result may be a draw, despite taking those 5 days, but does it matter, well, not really (unless we was robbed, obviously);
where you can be one woman to 1000 men, all of whom will behave impeccably, chat to you randomly, and none of whom will openly sport a tattoo or wear greasy nylon;
With or without a hat, whether ill-clad or not, can’t wait. Knitting is packed (large bag, chic-poor, capacity-rich) and I’m ready to go.

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.