‘You are quite negative sometimes, you know.’
And the best I can do – in fact all I can do – is not deny it.
Planned Obsolescence
Lydia burns her hand draining a pan of pasta. So I say:
‘Put it under the cold tap.’
And she says:
‘I know. You don’t have to tell me: I know what to do!’
‘I know you know,’ I say. ‘It’s just a reflex. I’d say the same to Peter. It’s what you say when you care. It’s not a literal explanation of what to do.’
‘Well, whatever. I don’t need you to tell me.’
‘I’m just – connecting,’ I say, feebly.
‘Just leave me alone, OK?’
‘OK. So do you still want me to take you to Sainsbury’s, or what?’
She’s having some friends over for her nineteenth birthday, and we’ve arranged for us – Peter and me – to help with the food, then go over to Sarah B’s for supper.
This will work well. We can serve the food, say hello to her friends, then go to Sarah’s, where despite work and the number of children – four, with three still at home – there is always a proper meal to be had. Peter says the more children people have the more relaxed they become, which I’m sure is true, but I’d rather not pay such a high price to prove it.
At Sainsbury’s we pause for a short discussion before selecting each item. My idea to get My Little Pony napkins isn’t well received, even though I suggest buying them ironically.
When we get back I make a double lot of pizza dough, using the recipe from the back of the yeast packet, which works even when you’re two gins in, and set about arranging the room for her guests.
Lydia and I are preparing her party together – this is so nice!
‘And are you sure you don’t want me to do a cake?’
‘Viola’s doing one. Sorry.’
‘Great. I’m not looking for more things to do. Where would you like the glasses?’
‘It’s OK – we can manage.’
What?
I’ve barely got started.
She can’t even cook!
But the Boyfriend can. And he’s on his way.
‘So you don’t want me to do the mini pizzas?’
‘No.’
‘The ones I made last year.’
‘No.’
‘That your friends said they really liked.’
She looks at me. I feel like the last miner at the pit, trying to stop them closing the gates.
‘And I liked them too, just . . .’
‘OK! So, what about moving the table and all the chairs and – whatever.’
‘Viola’s coming to help with that.’
Whoa! Can we just slow down a minute here?
When Lawrence has his friends round he always lets us stay for a bit, at least till our bedtime. We were even invited to his New Year’s Eve drinks, as long as we didn’t tidy up while they were still there.
Should I quote this?
‘Your brother can vouch for us. Here’s a reference . . .’
The Boyfriend arrives. He’s made pizza for us before; he arranged the slices of mushroom, red pepper, etc. in neat concentric patterns all calmly, without Making a Thing of It.
Is he going to use my dough?
‘Hi,’ I say. ‘I made some dough for you. It’s in there, keeping warm.’
‘Great,’ he says. ‘Thanks.’
‘OK,’ says Lydia. ‘We can take it from here.’
‘What, you’re going to do all of it?’
‘Yeah. Just, you know, piss off. In a good way.’
I’m reminded of a not entirely pleasant sensation from my distant past. Ah yes: being outside the red rope in front of a club, and watching the cool people sweep past.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘I’ll just check you’ve got enough mozzarella . . .’
‘We just bought it, so obviously we’ve got enough.’
‘And – I’ll just put away all these bags; you don’t want it looking like the Mind shop.’
She glares at me: charity shops are to her as wayside shrines to Buddhists. And Mind is a favourite.
‘Thanks. You can go.’
‘Right. Have a lovely time. We will have to come back, though, later. But we won’t interrupt – we’ll just go quietly upstairs, and—’
‘Duh. Just – go. OK?’
As ever when I need backup, Peter has vanished. I go upstairs to find him on the bed, reading a biography of Enzo Ferrari.
‘OMG, that’s it,’ I say. ‘She’s down there, doing it all – with Him and Viola the Wonder Friend: all the food and everything. We’re redundant.’
‘You may be,’ he says.
‘Oh, ha ha.’
But it’s true.
In the future, our children will call on him to fix their babies’ cots – if we’re still alive by then – and to adjust their stairgates so they can open and close them without taking a finger off. He’ll be building Wendy houses and making flyovers out of Meccano for the Brio train set we’re keeping. And when the whole social order goes tits up because we’ve run out of coal and oil and can’t make enough electricity because that needs coal as well, he’ll be one of the lynchpins of the new order along with the blacksmiths and game poachers, while the useless, artistic Calmans will be the first to be hunted down and eaten.
Actually, he has already begun to upload parts of his brain to Lydia. She’s learning painting and decorating, how to use a Rawlplug, how to make a template to fit sheet flooring, how to use plywood offcuts to box off an exposed gas pipe and how to get half a plastic plug pin out of a socket where it’s snapped off, using a drill bit not much thicker than a pin. Actually, that last one she came up with herself. So it’s clear that with her knitting and sewing as well, she’ll always be able to support herself and probably a family too. Not that I’m saying she should have children, obviously.
So we can die pretty much anytime from now on, and she’ll be fine. Come to think of it, she’s so handy maybe we can avoid the whole Student Loan Interest Extortion Experience and send her to straight out to work. Of all my mother’s friends – and they were an intellectual bunch – the handiest was the one the Nazis stopped from going to university, whose parents got her apprenticed to a joiner. Contrary to popular belief, Jews can do DIY; it just takes extreme circumstances to make them.
As for me, all I know how to do is make orange cake with ground almonds and never to take out an interest-only mortgage if you can avoid it. And since he’s doing a Maths degree, and has already far outpaced me in the kitchen, Lawrence has those covered.
It’s strange to think that Lydia resembles my mother, but also Peter’s father – whom she never met. He and Peter’s mother married during rationing, and he made all their furniture: bookcases, bureau, drop-leaf dining table, wardrobe and chairs. He could also pull over into a layby and make tea on one of those little wobbly gas burners without setting fire to his sleeves. My father, by contrast, was not at all handy round the house, and even less so out of it. Where Lydia has already made an actual bed, he couldn’t even tuck in a sheet properly. Or wouldn’t. And I take after him – i.e. the wrong parent.
It was my mother who would have been indispensable after the apocalypse. With her recall of pretty much every bird, berry and root, she would have been able to help the survivors – survive.
‘That’s potato and that’s deadly nightshade,’ I can hear her saying. ‘Same family, but don’t put the wrong one in your shepherd’s pie.’
It’s the botanical equivalent of knowing which wire to cut when defusing a bomb. She could also distinguish a harmless, non-stinging hoverfly from a wasp. Unfortunately, whenever she tried to pass on any of this invaluable knowledge, I was never paying attention.
The only skills I can deploy from her repertoire are how to put your hair up so it doesn’t fall down, how to make a crêpe paper flower, and how to make a little house out of a cardboard box. None of which will be much use post-apocalyptically �
� except possibly the last one.
On our way out to Sarah’s I answer the door to two boys I’ve never seen before.
Smile. Be welcoming. Do not turn into your father.
My friends were quite nervous around him, and he was even fiercer with males. However, when I ask them who they are, the flicker of nervousness that passes across their faces is quite satisfying.
When we come back the party’s in full swing and we tiptoe upstairs.
At 1.45 a.m. I wake up. The kitchen door is wide open, allowing us full benefit of the music and quite a bit of shrieking. I get up and go and ask them to keep it down a bit, again trying not to transform, Hulk style, into my dad and ensuring Lydia never invites me to any future birthday of hers, ever.
In the morning we get up extra late to leave them time to clear up, and find a note propped against the kettle:
We are very sorry about the noise last night. We have cleared up (washing up, mopping floor, dustpan crumbs etc.). Let me know if I missed anything. Help yourselves to some of Viola’s delicious cake.
Love from
Lydia + Friends XOXOXO
‘My God,’ says Peter. ‘What did you say to them?’
‘Great. They clear up and I get the blame. You’re welcome.’
How am I going to stand it here, just with him?
A Sense of Direction
Lydia’s applying to art school and needs a portfolio to carry her pictures, which are currently spread all over the dining table and surrounding floor like a gallery after a tornado.
It’s exciting: something is happening on the Further Education Front! With lots and lots of paper! And taxidermy and hand-made bras! But it’s slightly tricky getting round the room.
‘We love having them here,’ I say. ‘It’s just . . .’
‘Don’t worry, it will all be cleared away soon,’ she says.
‘No, no: we don’t want them to be gone. We just want to be able to get to the washing machine, and – maybe have people round to dinner again one day. Joking!’
Neither of us is feeling at all jokey at the moment. She feels under huge pressure to get in, and I feel under huge pressure to keep encouraging her to fill the portfolio, while not micro-managing. Because while in a marriage asking equals nagging, in a parent–child relationship encouraging is nagging, and helping is micro-managing.
And saying:
‘If you don’t get on with it instead of watching another fifteen bloody episodes of Friends you’ll never get in, will you?’ is counterproductive.
Who knew?
She doesn’t have a portfolio large enough. So we have to get one. And this is good, because we can carry out a really simple task and come back with a sense of achievement.
‘You don’t have to come with me, but I’d quite like the company,’ she says.
‘Of course, I’d love to.’
I’m needed!
You can get portfolios in A4, A3, A2 and A1 – which is almost the size of my desk. She needs A1.
‘Do we really need this size?’ I say.
‘You don’t: I do.’
She’s right. She’s got enough work here to fill a wardrobe.
Luckily, there’s a superb art supplies shop only a short bus ride away.
‘It’s opposite the hospital,’ I say.
‘That doesn’t mean anything to me,’ she says.
‘Of course it does. It’s a huge, well-known local landmark. It’s been on 24 Hours in A&E.’
I have an innately Good Sense of Direction and Excellent Spatial Memory, so when I say the art shop is opposite the hospital, I know I’m right.
She looks down at her phone.
‘It’s opposite Nando’s.’
Injury, deterioration and death versus peri-peri chicken: the disparate priorities of the generations.
‘It’s opposite the hospital,’ I say. ‘Plus it’s the name of the bus stop that they announce in the annoyingly cheery voice.’
The Voice – who sounds as though she’s been directed to give ‘More, darling! More!’ – is at best irritating, and, in the area we’re going to, grotesquely incongruous.
‘The next stop is Grimy Towers!’ she gushes, like Mary Poppins on ecstasy, as you pass the enormous psychiatric hospital and the block of flats where three women and three children died eight years before Grenfell in a similarly preventable fire. But High Mary Poppins sails past as if she’s just seen that rainbow merry-go-round, but loaded with naked men holding cream cakes. Maybe going through really rich areas they should do the opposite, and get Ken Loach:
‘Park Lane: alight here for unearned wealth and privilege, and property owned by non-tax-paying offshore corporations and violently repressive Wahhabist monarchies.’
‘The map says it’s opposite Nando’s,’ she says again. ‘And I believe the map. OK?’
So why don’t I just shut up and get on the bloody bus?
Is it because in the modern world, with a nineteen- and a twenty-year-old, I feel increasingly less relevant and useful, and ever more eager to deploy the few traditional skills I still have, like my Sense of Direction? I fear it is.
‘See?’ I say, when Ecstatic Mary Poppins announces the stop. We get off and cross over, and discover the shop is not quite where I thought.
‘It’s a bit hard to find,’ I say, as we get nearer to the next bus stop, the one for Nando’s. ‘Being hidden behind the main road.’
It’s a pleasing quirk of London that moments from Grimy Towers there exists a haven bursting with every size and colour of paper, infinite colours of paint, easels, stickers, drawing books and paper unicorns to fold.
Once you find it.
So we peer round the back of the next three blocks, but no art shop.
As it’s raining, Lydia has put her phone away, with its omniscient map. I have maps on mine too, of course, but I don’t need it because I Know Where Everything Is.
Each step we take away from the hospital makes me feel more of an idiot. Pathetically, I try to distract her with trivial observations like: ‘Oh look, there’s that really cool-looking charity shop that’s always closed!’
On we tread, in the rain, till we’re almost two whole stops away from where we got off, all the way from Grimy Towers to Crazy Junction, with its many criss-crossing lanes.
To my amazement, Lydia does not say: I told you so, you pig-headed, incredibly annoying woman! But though I have been let off the recriminations it’s noon and I can feel my blood sugar falling: a dangerous portent.
‘Why don’t I nip into Morrisons,’ I say, ‘and get a snack, and you can browse?’
But that will defeat the point of going together. On the other hand, I am crashing and need to eat something really soon, before I turn into my father and end up screaming at the sales assistant for not providing a wide enough selection of A5 magenta envelopes.
Inevitably we start arguing, even though there are only two A1 folios to choose from, and she examines them both and says she prefers the cheaper one, even though it has a small scuff mark on the front.
‘Maybe we should both go to Morrisons now, and get something to eat, so we don’t have to drag the folio with us?’ she says.
An inspired idea.
So we go into Morrisons, where she finds two large Pizza Express pizzas for £8 and I get a box of their deliciously crisp breadsticks to hold myself together until we get back, plus a jar of Bonne Maman jam as it’s on special offer, a bag of sugar as we’ve run out and a tray of pink primulas for £2. Lydia observes this entirely superfluous – but such good value – acquisition without a murmur.
Then we go back and buy the enormous portfolio, and get a discount for the tiny scuff mark, and manoeuvre it onto the bus, which is crammed with about thirty quite noisy seven-year-olds on a school outing. We roll our eyes at each other and smile; as a common adversary even mildly raucous children are quite bonding.
When we get in we put one of the pizzas in the oven and watch three episodes of The End of the F-ing W
orld, a bleakly funny Channel 4 show about two teenagers, a nihilistic girl and a wannabe psychopath, who go on the run after stealing his dad’s car and robbing a man who molests the boy in a gents’ lavatory.
‘I’ve always wanted to punch my dad in the face,’ says the boy in a voiceover; his dad is a complete arse.
And we both shout:
‘Well, do it then!’
(He does.)
Later on, after supper, I say:
‘I’m really sorry I said the art shop was opposite the hospital. You were right: it is opposite Nando’s. I feel awful.’
And she says:
‘It’s all right: nobody’s perfect. I still love you.’
The Long Goodbye
Georgie, Lydia’s oldest friend, is coming over: her final visit before going off to university. All the others have gone. She’s the last.
Lydia isn’t going anywhere yet, thank God. That I’m just about managing without Lawrence is partly due to her. With a bit of effort she can annoy me enough for two, and the house certainly looks as if it has several teenagers living in it; with the clothing rail she’s put beside her sewing table, the look in the living room is now Sweat Shop Chic, the cold teas left behind at night suggestive of previous workers who’ve died at their machines and been removed.
They’re going to watch the video of their Duke of Edinburgh Silver expedition: fifteen minutes of their team of four trudging along with their huge, fifteen-kilo packs, laughing, singing, accidentally jumping into streams and daring each other to step in cowpats. The denouement is the lid coming off someone’s peanut butter in their backpack. Who brings a jar of peanut butter on a twelve-mile hike across wet fields? On the other hand, Shackleton took over two and a half thousand jars of jam to the Antarctic, and a load of bottled fruit, so it is in the great British exploring tradition.
It’s a world away from anxiety about hair, selfie-ready skin, thigh gaps and what porn has done to the expectations of some of their male peers. When I was their age society was more sexist, but in some ways we were freer, which makes the sight of their carefree faces all the more poignant. Yet their muddy camaraderie leaves me optimistic; I feel their daughters will be off to a good start.
Confessions of a Bad Mother: The Teenage Years Page 22