Gravity Sucks

by Alderson, Maggie

  But now I am told that my old food pals of the F-Plan years, when I thought it was a terrific idea to have a large, plain wholemeal roll for lunch – no butter! – and a brick-sized baked potato – no butter! – with baked beans for dinner, are equally ruinous to one’s figure. Along with the accompanying huge raw-vegetable salad – no dressing!

  I never thought the day would come when I would feel frightened of a celery stick. Mind you, I was already wary if it wasn’t organic. All kinds of salad – high water content – and particularly carrots (very prone to pests) are to be avoided if you can’t get the naturally farmed versions, because of the high levels of pesticides and fertilisers used to grow them against all odds. Potatoes make your arthritis worse, and so do tomatoes.

  So what does that leave?

  Of course, dairy has long been off-limits, by order of the naturopath push, who maintain that it is a food suitable only for baby cows, an argument I have always found specious, but which generalised food superstition made me take on board anyway.

  The same crowd warned me off anything containing yeasts, which include mushrooms and raisins, as well as the more obvious bread, wine, beer and dear old Vegemite.

  I’ve never actually been told I’ve got a wheat allergy, but being around those people makes you think you probably do, so that’s another thing for the no-no list.

  They reckon we should all eat a lot of quinoa, an ancient grain enjoyed by the Aztecs, or some such. Just trying it was enough for me to add that to my list of excluded foods all on my own. See also carob, an unusually nasty substance, redolent of freeze-dried dog turds.

  I was led to try that monstrous cack by a general fear of chocolate, brought on not only by its high levels of fat – and trans fats too if you eat the really cheap stuff – and death sugar, but also the dreaded caffeine in it. For the same reason, coffee is absolutely out and tea is under serious scrutiny.

  Did I mention shellfish? Shocking seabed scavengers of deadly polluting poisons, apparently. And tuna. Too much mercury. Got turned off that while I was pregnant and haven’t felt the same about it since. Smoked salmon? Don’t make me laugh. Antibiotics, pesticides and all the nightmare chemicals of intensive farming swilling around in a cage in the sea. Don’t go there. Any kind of fish, actually, unless you’ve caught it yourself in an Arctic icehole. I’ve heard horror stories about deep-sea trawlers packing your lovely, fresh, low-fat fish in antibiotics to bring it back to shore unrotted. It doesn’t matter if they were true or not, they’re lodged in my brain.

  Along with the idea that, unless it was raised organically, chicken is pumped with foul farm-eceuticals and hormones – and had a horrid life too. Eggs are full of salmonella and fat. And while BSE may not be a problem with the Aussie herd, the whole idea of it has made me wary of meat anyway. Even without the fat issue.

  And now, thanks to Dr Atkins, I no longer even have refuge in the brown rice and vegies of the Liver Cleansing Diet, because they are chock-full of horror carbs.

  I am deeply suspicious of a diet that won’t let me eat an organic rice cake, so I’m going on a revolutionary new one. I’m going to eat whatever I damn well like.

  Just say yes

  My best friend Jo once threatened to have a T-shirt printed with the slogan: ‘I’ve seen every knob in London.’ The joke was not a reference to her private life, but to her long quest to find the perfect door fittings – knobs – for her new kitchen.

  This decorating crusade took her to all compass points in that sprawling shopopolis in search of the überknob. And where did she find it in the end?

  Not in the ancient, cobweb-strewn warehouse in Shoreditch (east), the brushed-steel designer zone of Islington (north) or the twee yummy mummy establishments of Wandsworth Bridge Road (south-west), but in a shop just yards from her front door.

  She must have walked past that place about fifty times en route to far-flung knob Shangrilas, but just assumed they couldn’t possibly have what she needed – it couldn’t possibly be that easy. But it was.

  What my friend had discovered – the hard way – was the Just Do It school of home decorating.

  I discovered it myself recently by a simpler route. I had a plumber booked to put in my new shower on 5 January, which gave me a very limited time frame in which to order all the parts for it before the world shut down for two weeks on 24 December.

  So, time-poor, with a small child and a large book deadline to juggle, I had no choice but to adopt a severely pragmatic approach to assemble the components. Ergo, I chose my tiles in approximately seven minutes, in the first and only tile shop I went to.

  And that is another key rule of Just Do It Decorating: don’t dismiss the first shop.

  This is quite hard to take on for someone used to visiting, say, fifteen shoe emporia in pursuit of the perfect little flat sandal. But what you come to realise is that with interiors products, the choices available can be even greater than they are with fashion – which is saying something – and that the differences between items can be quite exquisitely subtle. So you have to decide just how much you are prepared to do your head in to achieve the effect you want.

  I seriously brained myself earlier this year looking for fabric to reupholster some junk-shop Louis Fooey chairs. My mistake was going to the soft furnishings department of Liberty & Co, in London, which houses what must be the fabric swatch equivalent of the Alexandria Library. I left that repository of all things opulent and glorious a gibbering loon. There was just too much to choose from. The chairs still aren’t covered.

  So when it came to the shower, I was tough on myself. I chose the tiles from the first shop, as described, and then for the actual shower fitting I asked my knobs friend which taps company she recommended (she’d done a similar research job in that area when doing up her bathroom) and just ordered from them. I didn’t even look at anything else.

  I had a slight wobble over the shower door. Who knew there was a whole galaxy of shower-door companies out there? But in the end I was swayed by the 30 per cent discount off one which looked fine enough – and which the shop had in stock. Likewise, the shower tray involved driving around local plumbers’ merchants for a morning, until I found one that was good enough, without having to order it from Sweden. The result is a sprauncy new shower which I totally love and which didn’t cost me weeks of brain-ache.

  So this is what I have learned: when making home improvements, the financial cost and stress of having tradesmen in the house is enough to deal with. You don’t have to settle for tawdry ‘it’ll do’ items, but you don’t need to torture yourself over a tap, either.

  And I mean that with knobs on.

  Plastic fantastic

  I had a moment of insight into the true depth of maternal love when I realised it had made me allow the foul pieces of plastic called My Little Ponies invade my generally tasteful home. They are bloody everywhere. But I have committed a much greater sin against taste for the occasion of my daughter’s fourth birthday.

  My original gift for her was a triumph of muted sensibilities. It is a vintage doll’s cot – complete with drop side – which I found at a garage sale.

  The nice old chap I bought it from said it was at least seventy years old, but I didn’t really care – I was already in love with its faded duck-egg-blue paint, just worn and chipped enough. And the fact that Cath Kidston would probably fight me to the death over it. I spirited it immediately to a friend who is an amazing seamstress and commissioned her to make bedding for it out of fabulous old pieces of vintage fabric.

  The result is unutterably divine. For me. That’s what I had to face up to when I got it down from the attic a few days before her birthday to wrap. The whole thing was really for me. Sure, it would look gorgeous in a magazine shoot of my home, but would my daughter like it? No!

  She doesn’t even relate to baby dolls particularly. The dolls she likes are Barbies, particularly Barbie Mermaidia with her lurid hair extensions, piercings and body art.

  So I put the
cot back in the attic and set out for the shops, where I bought my little girl an entire Disney Princess birthday.

  She’s getting a pop-up princess play castle; a Sleeping Beauty outfit, complete with tiara, necklace, shoes etc; and a Snow White doll (with her Woodland Friends). And I have wrapped it all in Disney Princess paper, with matching gift tags and birthday card. The big day isn’t until next week, but I am confident this sorry bundle of plastics and polyester will elicit the sharp intake of breath every parent hopes to hear when their child opens a birthday present.

  So why do I feel I have let her down in some way? I think it’s because I feel fundamentally uncomfortable with the entire Disney oeuvre and deeply regret exposing her to it from a very young age. The first logo she ever recognised was the Mickey Mouse ears. I could have sobbed.

  The reason I let her watch the films in the first place was because I remembered loving 101 Dalmatians so very much as a little girl. I still love it – the 1950s drawings, the cute dogs, the campness; what I had forgotten was how violent it is. It was only when my little tot, then just two, started shouting ‘Idiot!’ at people that I realised.

  I now see that the entire Disney canon contains either extreme violence or cruelty and that the bad people are usually post-menopausal older women: the wicked stepmother in Snow White, ditto in Cinderella, the wicked fairy in Sleeping Beauty, Madame Methuselah in The Rescuers, Ursula the Sea Witch in The Little Mermaid… I could go on.

  There is usually terrible fighting, the heroine is always – but always – in serious jeopardy and conflict is always resolved by someone dying a violent death. The more of the films I have seen, the more the general atmosphere of hysterical paranoia, fear of difference and over-aggressive response reminds me of American foreign policy.

  Consider instead, three of my favourite children’s TV shows: The Wiggles, The Koala Brothers and Charlie and Lola. The first lot spend their time singing, dancing, having parties, eating (‘Fruit salad, yummy yummy…’) and having fun with multi-species friends. The second crew sort out small problems in the community. The latter work through issues of sibling tension, boundaries and acceptable behaviour. All of them do it with style, verve and humour.

  So why is it the po-faced plastic princesses which all little girls seem to dote on?

  One-track mind

  I have been aware for a while of a behavioural tic that I have developed as a result of so many years’ exposure to high fashion – a tendency to comment automatically on details of people’s attire. It can be a remark about what someone is wearing on television, or it could be straight to their face.

  Now, this is fine when you’re at a wedding and you say to a friend ‘I love your hat’, or you’re watching a movie and you whisper to your friend ‘Isn’t that leather gladiator kilt a great look on a man?’

  It’s just not so great when it becomes your primary mode of communication, so that whereas, in a slightly awkward social moment, most people would probably say, ‘Hasn’t it been hot?’ I would tend to ask, ‘Are those Notify jeans?’

  It was my friend Wendy – a stand-up comedian – who nailed it for me, after I allowed it to tip over from the slightly eccentric to the seriously inappropriate. It was the day after I had been to see her husband’s new stage show. He’s a brilliant exponent of character comedy and his latest production is a series of monologues from seven characters. I was gushingly telling Wendy how much I had loved it, when out it popped: ‘I just had one little problem,’ my head heard my mouth saying, apparently on autopilot.

  ‘It was that first character – you know, the disappointed solicitor who has become best friends with his drug-dealer clients? – I thought his clothes were wrong. The blazer was too tight and it was clearly polyester and it really put me off and made me think he was some kind of travelling salesman type. I think he needs to reconsider that look.’

  I was so mortified after I put the phone down that I had to ring back and apologise. Who was I to make comments on Steve’s show? He doesn’t need my fashionista perspective on the production. Even while I was watching the show and obsessing on the jacket, I’d promised myself not to say anything about it, but then out it came, all on its own. It seemed completely involuntary.

  Wendy was charming about it, but the next time I saw her, we were watching Live 8 together and I gradually became aware that my first comment on every act was about what they were wearing.

  ‘Look at that dress!’ I cheeped, as Mariah Carey waddled on. ‘She looks like Miss Piggy at a Halloween party.’

  ‘I can see why Kate Moss loves Pete Doherty – he can really carry off a drainpipe jean.’

  ‘David Beckham’s jeans are way too baggy.’

  ‘Velvet Revolver define rock style.’

  Yadda yadda yadda. I just couldn’t stop, and I realised I had hit a low point towards the end of the show. ‘I wonder why Roger Waters wears his jeans belted so high?’ my fashionista tongue was asking the room, as Pink Floyd played one of the most extraordinary sets of live music I have ever heard. ‘He’s still a handsome man but that look really ages him.’

  I turned to Wendy.

  ‘I’ve got a problem, haven’t I?’ I said. ‘I can’t judge anything in terms other than what people are wearing.’

  ‘It’s OK, Maggie,’ said Wendy. ‘You’ve just got Fashion Tourette’s.’

  She’s right. And like the sufferers of that awful affliction, I really can’t help myself. Which is fine when you are in a room of fashionistas, as I so often am, but really not on when you are with civilians.

  But I felt better about it later, when our friend Hilary turned up to watch with us. Hilary styles interiors for magazine shoots. ‘Oh look,’ she said, as the coverage crossed to Jonathan Ross in a lavishly decorated interview room. ‘It’s all Designer’s Guild…’

  Clothes horse power

  Proust had his madeleines and that wretched bloody doorknob which I have never been able to get past in À la Recherche du… zzzzz. I had my red wellington boots, my red raincoat and my red sou’wester. One whiff of a certain kind of PVC and I can completely recall the delicious plastic smell of that raincoat and the crackly sound it made when I moved. I can remember what the hat felt like (a bit scratchy round the forehead) and the plastic ties under the chin (sticky against the skin and always in the wrong place). Smell that kind of soft plastic and I have the total physical sensation of being rather hot and of socks coming astray inside wellingtons, the rubber a bit abrasive against fat little legs.

  I can also remember the feeling of finding life a bit bewildering, but knowing that Mummy and bread and jam were safe bets and brothers were dangerous. I was three.

  That ensemble is my first fashion memory. What seared it on my mind was that my big sister, seven years older, worship worship, had a larger version of the same outfit. I had something the same as her!

  The first day it rained, she took me on an expedition in the garden, jumping into puddles, standing under drips, luxuriating in the thrill of being dry in the wet, until I ruined it by getting rather a lot of water inside my wellies and had to be taken inside.

  But while it lasted, it was a lot of attention from a ten-year-old to a pesky three-year-old (who was more used to being left out of games) and I knew straightaway it was the outfit that had got it for me.

  The next key garment I can remember was the psychedelic-print, flared hipster pants from Stafford’s premier department store in 1967. I spotted them first. They were so groovy. They looked like something Micky Dolenz would wear and I had to have them. Then I told my best friend about the pants – and her mother bought them for her! I was so furious I picked on her for a week at school, leaving her out of games (I knew exactly how to do that) and telling her that I thought pink and yellow and green and turquoise (my favourite colour) looked hideous together.

  Then I went home and drew pictures of the trousers obsessively and was so miserable that in the end my mother gave in and bought them for me. Everything was sweet again i
n the playground at St Dominic’s. That was how I found out that liking the same clothes confirms friendships.

  Then I discovered the fashion page in The Sunday Times. Oh, sweet revelation! Every week there were pictures of clothes and interesting things written about them. I devoured every word, thrilled there were people who said things like: ‘When I find something I like, I buy it in several colours’ and ‘Una loves to pick up interesting pieces of clothing on film shoots in Morocco and Kashmir, and wears lingerie from her grandmother’s trousseau.’

  One week they did an article about a boutique especially for swinging kids on the Kings Road, Chelsea. It was called Kids in Gear. I had to have the exact outfit in the picture. More hipster flares, a body shirt with a large collar, an Indian waistcoat embroidered with mirrors, and a stetson. I cut the picture out and looked at it every day until my ninth birthday came around and we went to London to get my outfit.

  Out I came, resplendent in a lime-green shirt, chocolate-brown elephant-cord pants and my waistcoat. I wore it to an Italian restaurant that night and when I couldn’t choose between three puddings the waiter chucked me on the cheek and brought me all of them with a big wink.

  That was how I discovered that having groovy clothes gets you all kinds of good stuff. I still can’t decide whether that was a good thing to learn.

  Hideous kinky

  Sometimes I like trying clothes on just to see how hideous they will look on me. It’s not some kind of self-esteem-destroying masochist’s game – I just find it very amusing.