They are so conscious of equality in this land I was horrified to see an advertisement on television for one of the January sales. It was for a women’s dress shop called Katie’s. And the ad was a male voice over scenes of empty office desks saying that no female employees could be expected to show up for work until Katie’s sale was over.
It was so uncharacteristically sexist in a land which is making great strides against the old macho Ocker image of beer-swilling Australian men liking women to be in the kitchen, the bed or at the filing cabinet, I wondered whether to ring up and complain; but then I decided that was being tiresome. It’s not my country. It was late at night. I didn’t know the number of the television station.
But enough people did ring up. The very next day there was an announcement saying that the advertisement had been withdrawn because it had unconsciously given offence.
The managing director of the company bleated a bit and said that there had been women involved in the advertising agency which dreamed up the account – which was a bit of a last-ditch flail I thought – and he kept referring to the ladies who had phoned in telling the store that they wouldn’t shop there unless the ad was removed. He said that of course he hadn’t intended to imply that ladies would put shopping before work. He realised that it might have been unwise to have had a male voice, implying that employers were male and employees were all ladies. I know nothing about the shop, but everyone says that it’s not a question of any publicity being good publicity; the whole thing did it nothing but harm.
And now for the clear-up. How can seven weeks have gone in this little house when it only feels as if we had just arrived? Where did all the stuff come from? It was lean and spare when we came into it.
There are going to be endless trips to various recycling areas before we leave. I hated throwing out the cards that came the whole way from the other side of the earth, but to carry them back again? That way madness lies.
And now everything has a sense of being the last time. The last lunch out in Bondi on the balcony of Ravesi’s watching the world go by. The last sneaking into a five o’clock movie on a wet afternoon, with a choice of maybe 20 in the huge George Street cinemas. The last breakfast in the garden watched by three solemn cats wondering why we like mangoes so much. The last drive out to Long Nose Point to see the ferries cross the harbour. The last night out with friends.
And this morning we will be moving backwards out of the little house, cleaning as we go – just as I remember doing so many years ago in Ballybunion when it was a matter of honour to leave the lodge in just as good shape as you found it.
And then it will be time to go to the airport, with yet another bag added to the luggage, faces rounder and redder than when we arrived here, and check-in at Departures.
I’m not expecting the destination to give you any great sense of pleasure as the winds blow and the rains fall, but the ticket actually says Bali.
Someone’s got to do it.
They’ll Never Let Her Go
4 December 1993
Of course it won’t be goodbye. The public will never let her go, the girl who lived her whole adult life in front of their eyes; the awkward, blushing, stammering Sloane whose main and possibly only qualification for marrying the prince was that she was a virgin.
Daughter of a broken marriage, step-daughter of Raine who could have been sent down by Central Casting to play the wicked stepmother, step-granddaughter of the marvellous, batty old Barbara Cartland, who could out-hat and out-pink the Queen Mother any day and who had written nine million novels about gels keeping their virginity and landing nice princes as a result. And daughter of the burbling, confused old Earl of Spencer, who barely made it up the aisle with her, who was seen taking photographs of the crowds who were taking photographs of his daughter.
In addition to her purity, she had all the right credentials, including her Julie Andrewsesque job as sort of nanny-like teacher to lovely little posh children …. She was awkward, shruggy and young when she was introduced to the cameras and the horrific lifestyle that was to follow.
Then the world watched her change. She lost her puppy fat, she stopped wearing woolly cardigans, she showed her bosom and her legs. She smiled at people because she realised that they liked it rather than thinking they might sometimes deserve it, as her mother-in-law and sister-in-law had always done.
And when she saw how much they liked it, she did it more and more. She smiled upwards at photographers, laughed and threw back her head, and it wasn’t long before she was on the cover of every magazine that wanted to increase its sales by a minimum of 40 per cent.
Diana sold papers, magazines and books. So many that the market couldn’t keep up with the demand. There is no way they are going to let her go now, no matter how many messages, coded or otherwise, come from Buckingham Palace.
For years people have followed the Diana story. They went through her eating disorders with her. Mothers whose daughters had anorexia or bulimia watched her anxiously, willing her to get better, to become happier, so that their daughter would too, thinking that it was all more understandable somehow if a lovely princess could endure such an illness.
Diana made motherhood fashionable too. They waited out on the streets for news of her babies. They stood cheering as she left hospital with the little boys. Nobody could say you were just a breeding machine if you looked at the youthful Diana running with her sons held by the hand.
Then they saw her marriage grow cold and sad. And everyone who had a bad marriage, or even a row within a good marriage, felt better somehow when they saw that such problems and sorrows could even befall the charming princess.
They suffered with her over the humiliation of the Camilla tapes. Whether she loved Charles or not, it was degrading to have the intimate conversation of a husband and mistress broadcast and published all over the world …. And the evidence of previous cover-ups, of friends who had been false friends, made ordinary British people feel weak with sympathy for Diana – for Diana who had done nobody any harm, but who had brought warmth and charm to the endless round of royal duties, for Diana who had picked up children and cuddled them instead of waving at them royally, for Diana who had sat on the beds of dying AIDS patients and held their hands. She was pilloried in the gutter press and called an associate of sodomites when she did this, but she had taken no notice and altered her schedule not at all.
Then the accusations came that she was running a rival court.
Almost all the press and most of the public thought ‘good luck to her’ … but there was a fear that the monarchy might not survive such antics. So, bit by bit, heavy pressure was put on Charles to get involved and to get on with things and to make his voice heard.
Charles couldn’t compete with Diana in looks, which was not his fault and it was very unfair of the Diana supporters to mock his appearance. He couldn’t compete in terms of charm either, because he was literally brought up to believe that he was special, important and different, and descended from lines of that stuff, and couldn’t just behave ordinarily. It’s a nightmare for him to try to be ordinary.
But what he did was to have an affair – and then did nothing about it when it became public knowledge. He should have apologised to everyone involved and tried to make a go of his marriage instead of being aloof and glum. Or else he should have apologised to everyone, abdicated in advance, married Camilla and got a divorce as everyone else of his nationality, religion and class would have done.
Instead he has played a wounded nobleman whose camp is trying desperately to build him up into some kind of king material.
Diana hasn’t put an elegant foot wrong in most people’s opinion. If she has to cut down on her public duties, there are many who will see this as part of a bad-tempered, weaselish palace conspiracy.
They will all regret that there’s a possibility we may be seeing less of her and more of the other. The other hasn’t nearly as much to recommend him.
They are sorry they won’t see he
r crowned queen. But they are not going to say goodbye to a girl who seemed to do everything according to the dream. Ordinary people are still going to want Diana on the cover for a long time to come.
There Is No Excuse
26 March 1994
I regard people who say they’ll meet you at eight p.m. and then turn up at eight-thirty as liars. I had a colleague years ago in my teaching days who used to smile and say that she was always late, as if it were something outside her control, like having freckles or a Gemini star sign. At first I went through agonies thinking she had been mown down by a bus. After that I would arrange to meet her, not on the corner of a street or at the cinema, but in a café where at least I could sit down while waiting. After that I stopped meeting her. There were too many main features beginning at five-twenty missed, too many buses gone, too many houses where I had to be part of an apology for an unpunctuality that was none of my making.
She lives in another country now and I met someone who had been to see her. Just as nice as ever, apparently, just as good company. Much loved by her children but treated as a dotty old lady who can’t be relied on. She would never turn up to pick them up from school, so they just adapted to doing their homework in the school yard. So she is still at it, thinking she can say one thing and do another, and everyone will forgive her because she is unpunctual the way other people are left-handed or colour-blind.
Of course she got away with it because people are so astounded by the unpunctual that they forgive them and allow them to roam the world as ordinary people instead of as the liars they are. It’s our fault for putting up with it in every walk of life and I advise people to declare war on the unpunctual. It’s no longer acceptable to consider it an attractive, laid-back, national characteristic. It is in fact a lazy, self-indulgent, discourteous way of going on. Already there are a lot of signs that people do not accept it as charming.
I remember a time when the curtain never went up on time in a Dublin theatre because, as the theory went, the Irish were all so busy being witty and wonderful and entertaining in bars they couldn’t do anything as pen-pushing, meticulous and prosaic as coming in and being seated before eight o’clock. But enough protests from those who objected to people shuffling in late to performances has led to their not being admitted until the first interval, and it’s very interesting to see how that has concentrated the ability to get to the place before the lights go out.
Staff of Aer Lingus don’t think it’s charming and witty to leave late because their wonderful free-spirited clients can’t be hurried, and likewise with trains, the DART and the buses. Religious services don’t take account of some quirk in the national psyche by having Mass at around eleven or Matins at approximately ten. Races, football matches, television programmes start on time. Why should business appointments and social engagements be let off this hook? And yet this week I was talking to an American publisher on the phone who said that she was expecting an Irish author in her office but he was 40 minutes late. She laughed good-naturedly and even though she was 3,000 miles away I could see her shrug forgivingly. ‘Oh well, that’s the Irish for you!’ she said, as if somehow it explained something. To me it explained nothing.
As a race we are not naturally discourteous. In fact, if anything, we wish to please a bit too much. That’s part of our national image. So where does this unpunctuality come into the stereotype? Has it something to do with being feckless and free and not seeing ourselves ever as a slave to any time-servers or time-keepers? It’s a bit fancy and I don’t think that it’s at all part of what we are.
Not turning up at the time you promised seems quite out of character and if we do it, it must be because it has been considered acceptable for too long. If nobody were to wait for the latecomer, then things would surely change. If the unpunctual were to be left looking forlorn and foolish when they had ratted on their promise, then people would keep better time. We shouldn’t go on saying that it’s perfectly all right and, nonsense, they mustn’t worry, and really it was quite pleasant waiting here alone wondering was it the right day, the right place, or the right time. We should never again say to latecomers that they’re in perfect time when the meal is stuck to the roof of the oven and the other guests are legless with pre-dinner drinks.
Sit in any restaurant, bar or hotel foyer and listen while people greet each other. ‘I’m very sorry. The traffic was terrible.’ ‘I’m sorry for being late. I couldn’t get parking ….’ ‘I’m sorry. Are you here long? I wasn’t sure whether you said one or half past ….’ ‘I’m sorry, but better late than never.’ I wouldn’t forgive any of these things. In a city, people with eyes in their heads know that the traffic is terrible; they can see it. Unless they have been living for a while on the planet Mars, they’re aware that it’s impossible to park. If they couldn’t remember whether you said one or half past, that shows great interest in the meeting in the first place. And as for better late than never, I’m not convinced.
Fear of Falling Off the Wagon
23 April 1994
A very agreeable, social sort of man, he says he won’t come to Ireland for this particular gathering because he couldn’t bear all the flak he will get about not taking a drink. He remembers Ireland in the old days, he says, when you brailled your way from the early Bloody Mary to the lunchtime pints and everyone was defined by the amount they could put away, while abstainers were mocked as Holy Joes, Cute Hoors or possibly Not Real Men.
Not the place for a man four years into a different way of life, he says. Why draw it on himself? He’s not afraid that he’ll weaken or anything; it’s just that he couldn’t take all the explanations, the defensive attitude he will have to adopt, the rationalising, the assuring people that he doesn’t object to their lifestyle, it’s just that his own is not the same. He’s been here before, he says; he knows of what he speaks. No, life is too short to take on that hassle. He’s going to miss the reunion.
I advise him to think again and ask a few people, as well as myself, before he pleads an excuse not to meet classmates who were great pals in the years gone by. He may be very pleasantly surprised. The Ireland of his student days, 20 odd years ago, which he revisited 10 years ago, is not today’s Ireland, regarding attitudes to drink.
He will not find people calling him Matt Talbot or Father Mathew if he asks for mineral water. They will not ask for an explanation, nor will they want one. And best of all, they will not turn red, watery eyes on him and sob into their own drinks about how they wished they had his strength. There are lots of nice pink livers in Ireland.
Ah, but Maeve was always one to see what she wanted to see, he says. I would like him to come and meet his fellow students so I could be expected to create a rose-tinted world for him, where people are mature and wise and tolerant. This is not what he hears.
Right, I tell him, this is what I hear and see and notice. I notice that pubs, which love selling soft drinks anyway and always thrived on the mixers because they constitute almost pure profit, not attracting any tax, now have a whole rake of alcohol-free beers and low-alcohol lagers, and they are being wooed senseless by the various mineral-water manufacturers, dying to get their particular shade of bottle and label in.
Publicans, who used to collapse like a Bateman cartoon if anyone asked for coffee, now want to know if you want decaf or cappuccino. In recent years, I cannot have heard a barman make a joke about serving a Real Man a non-alcoholic drink. I haven’t seen a sigh, or heard a groan. I have never heard an explanation about someone being a Pioneer, it being Lent, or the breathalyser, or the price of gargle being offered. Maybe I don’t go to enough macho bars but I do go to a reasonable cross-section and in recent times I have never heard anyone being challenged after ordering the drink of his or her choice.
I agree that years ago the order would go, ‘Four pints, two gin-and-tonics, three large Paddies and a Cidona for your man!’ Your man was thereby marked as being outside the tribe. Nowadays it’s just as often the reverse; it could be a round of whi
te wine and soda and many varieties of non or low-alcohol drinks and someone saying apologetically, ‘Do you mind if I have a short, it has been a bad day?’
Like smoking. People don’t say they’ve given up apologetically. The apology is from the one who asks for the ashtray. I told the man who thinks that attitudes are frozen that when I gave up smoking I was afraid to answer the telephone in case I had to have a cigarette before I spoke; I was so unused to the experience of one without the other. Not a good example, he says. The phone wouldn’t take me by the throat and say I was no fun without a cigarette – go on, have just one.
But I told him that he was guilty of over-dramatising himself. Everyone he will meet at his reunion will have read the bad news about how many units are safe per week. Some of them, admittedly, may have decided to take no notice, but they will know about them, they will not think he is wearing a hair shirt and chains around his middle if he doesn’t lower a bottle of sherry at the reception. Some of his colleagues and friends will have read the tests under the heading ‘Are you an alcoholic?’ and by question three realised that they should be in treatment. Some will have done something; some will have said these questionnaires are run by some backlash pressure group. But they will have read them. There will be colleagues who have had friends die of drink-related illnesses, or passed over for promotion because of being a bit unreliable in that department.
He will discover that the liquid lunch is no longer a permanent feature of Irish middle-class life in the mainstream, as it might have been when he left. Not an eyebrow is raised if a captain of industry or a politician or even a successful journalist asks for a glass of water; heads will not wag. They will not say that’s what has him where he is, either for good or evil. It’s just one more choice people make. Like having no car and walking to work can be as high in the pecking order as having a car the size of a house. I advise him to give it a lash.
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