Judith Holder
The Secret Diary of a Grumpy Old Woman
2006, EN
aka A Year in Big Knickers
‘It feels like only yesterday I was the youngest person in the room, I had my whole life in front of me. I had time to burn, I spent my whole day snogging boys and backcombing my hair. I was a young thing, with a lovely body, life was fun, and I hadn’t a care in the world. Now – it feels like two minutes later – I’m a little bit old. OK, I’m not in elasticated stockings or on Meals on Wheels whizzing down the stairs on my stairlift, but my life is more than half over. I’ve been there, done that, got the packamac. I’m so old that I remember dances with drum solos, the arrival of unisex hairdressers and had a crush on Ilya Kuryakin. I am up at the top of the hill, and over the other side again. What all this means, is that I am grumpy. But I’ve earnt it…I lived through Boney M and leg warmers and the Crossroads Motel. Obviously in a book this size I wouldn’t be able to share with you ALL of my grumps. But I’ve decided to write down some of the secret thoughts that beset a woman of a certain age, some of the wicked things that occur to a woman who takes a lot of things to the dry cleaners, has to have her roots done every four weeks and finds it hard to wear high heels. And guess what: they still fancy people, still have silly little crushes on people at work, still – shock horror – have sex. You will discover that women of a certain age are just as provocative and turned on as women in their twenties. Probably more so. So get over it. Middle-aged women are sexy, funny and infinitely lovable. They are also taking over the world.’
Table of contents
December
February
March
April
May
June
July
September
October
November
December
Coda
Acknowledgements
∨ The Secret Diary of a Grumpy Old Woman ∧
December
December 27th
Just when I thought I couldn’t get any grumpier, that I was off the scale of grumpy, Christmas came along and made me grumpier than ever, which is saying something. As usual I worked myself up into a task-driven frenzy in an attempt to make it as perfect as Delia’s, got into the annual panic about making sure that the lounge cushions were clean, the turkey was organic and Aunty Doreen got her Stilton by post on time. And boom – it’s all over in a jiffy – and frankly with not that much to show for it except a house that looks like a bomb’s hit it, Christmas tree needles (non-shed ones obviously) all over the hall, more clutter than I can hormonally tolerate and my mother-in-law still staying with us (6 days, 3 hrs and 12 mins and counting). The beds all need changing, the kitchen floor needs scrubbing, and the kitchen looks so bad Kim and Aggie might consider putting it on telly. I long to get all the cards off the mantelpiece and give the shelf a good clean, I long to get the Hoover into the corners behind the tree, long to get the tree down and into the skip; in short, I long to get what my mother would call…straight.
Thankfully, normality will soon be back. Trouble is Christmas occupied me for at least 100 hours, and that’s a conservative estimate. That’s the number of hours I reckon I spent on it. I haven’t counted the July sales because I forgot which ‘safe place’ I decided to hide the Christmas presents…so it was utterly pointless. I haven’t included making the Christmas cake because that was fun with ELDEST DAUGHTER. It made me feel like when she was at play school and we used to make cakes and have cuddles after lunch. I haven’t included thinking time, time I would otherwise have spent thinking about something more constructive like work, or getting to the gym, which in my case means at all – and all this effort was for one day. And I daren’t begin to think about how much money I spent…It’s all exactly the same madness as last year and I’m an intelligent woman.
The telly was rubbish, I fell asleep in the Queen’s Speech – in fact I think the Queen did too, it was so dull – and I lost the list of which relative gave what to which child, so yet again there will be the embarrassment of having to write thank you letters with the giveaway phrase, ‘thank you for the Christmas gift’ which means either you have written a standard letter to everyone, or you have forgotten what Uncle Fred gave you, or both. Other people seem to manage to have such organised lives in comparison.
Even the children have gone off Christmas. Now that the kids are teenagers I can spot their disenchantment, I can spot it because I remember my own disappointment, which started to set in the moment I discovered that Father Christmas was the biggest practical joke imaginable. In my case this was distressingly late – as an only child with no older siblings to tip you off you are rather vulnerable – and I was evidently impressionable: for several years I boasted that I saw the reindeer running around in Sutton Coldfield, ‘saw them with my own eyes’. I was 12 when I discovered a piece of material in my mother’s dressing-table drawer which was the same material as the crib cover for my baby doll and suddenly it all clicked into place – she, not Father Christmas and his elves, had made the crib. From that realisation the tables generally turn and you humour your parents because you think they find Christmas magical, when in fact they think you still do.
What’s happened to my life since I got to be middle-aged? I seem to have more to do in any one day than I used to do in a whole month. But funnily enough at this exact time each year there is a little bit of calm, a little bit of peace and quiet when the festive season proper is over, and I can settle down to some serious lolling about in my dressing gown, and best of all lolling while filling in my brand-new diary, shiny and pristine in its bright red gorgeousness.
There’s something about getting a new diary that reminds me of the first day of term at school. You wrote your name and class and timetable out in your neatest writing, planned your homework timetable, colour-coded your period due dates, underlined your birthday, or the boy you fancied’s birthday, or Valentine’s Day, and put a lot of exclamation marks round the anniversary of your first snog. January was beautifully neat, but by the time you got into February it was scrawled with ‘I love Noddy Holder’ (or the Bay City Rollers), or notes and puzzling drawings from Jane Smith in Chemistry about what the missionary position means, or some spirobiro patterns you did when you were really really bored in Scripture. Which was most of the time. Thirty years or so on, the same will happen with my shiny new red diary – by February whatever system I adopt now of underlining my ‘to do’ lists, it’ll have gone to pot – because my life is now one long long ‘to do’ list – it’s called being a middle-aged woman, with a lot of errands to run, a saggy bottom and a need to tidy the airing cupboard.
I fill in all the bits at the front, well OK not the blood group bits – I’m not an anorak – and I put the family birthdays in, I put all my special encrypted codes to remember my pin numbers and passwords – cunningly clever charts of numbers with circled bits and crossings out that look like the Enigma code and look accidental but are brilliantly intentional, because remembering them all in my head is now a scientific impossibility since my memory banks are full – one new code, such as a new door code at work, goes in and something has to go out – like my mother’s birthday or the next date to worm the dog.
There is only so much of this stupid information a woman can retain. The encrypted codes I make up seem like the simplest thing to remember when I invent them – like the year I had my first pet hamster or the ballet school I went to in Weston-super-Mare or the year my father was born minus 10…they all seem so fantastically easy to remember, until the time comes when I have to remember them and then I forget or I forget where I wrote do
wn the secret code. Last year I was foolish enough to make one or two new codes up, keep the potential identity thieves on their toes…Naturally I instantly forgot how I had decided to remember it all, and so there were tears and sick on the pavement at a cashpoint when the machine swallowed my card…and even more tears and sick when I tried to get the bank to believe it was me trying to get a new card not someone else pretending to be me. Makes me feel hot and angry just thinking about it.
I can do all this diary filling in now because of this little gap of relative calm, of relative inertia, with some proper slobbing about in my slippers and dressing gown, after the hell that was Christmas, and before we all get back into the school run and the nine to five. It’s the time when I convince myself that next year is going to be infinitely more organised, infinitely more serene, sunnier and generally sorted than the one just gone. I really am going to go jogging, going to use the public library more, I’m going to delegate more jobs around the house and not let work get to me, especially my boss, Jocasta.
I’m ashamed to admit that even the Christmas presents given to me were the usual disappointment – not quite the jumper I had in mind, not quite the right perfume and not quite the right book – which makes the whole thing feel even more futile and maddeningly stupid. As usual the present that was the most disappointing was the one from the GRUMPY OLD MAN – not because he hasn’t made an effort, not because he hasn’t tried to please, but because deep down I always hope he will buy me a stunning diamond, a fabulous necklace or an absurdly romantic piece of jewellery with a little note in it telling me how completely gorgeous and irresistible I am, which clearly would be fibbing, but would make me feel like number one top sex kitten. This year he bought me a bright neon green padded outdoor coat – which is about as far away from a romantic diamond or jewellery gift as you can get – but he cannot be held responsible for this badly judged present since, guess what – I chose it myself, circled it in the catalogue and put it on his side of the bed. As outdoor coats go it is spot on – dreamy toasty warm for walking the dog or going to the market, although flattering it is not. In fact it makes me look like a lagged boiler and is such a bright green it is no doubt visible from outer space…Which means it would be very handy in an emergency. I could wave the helicopter down. Save the day. But it’s emphatically not sexy, so despite the fact that I asked for it for Christmas, I am starting to blame him – which is ridiculously unfair. That’s the kind of person I am to live with. Full of contradictions. You’d think by my age I’d have got myself a bit more sorted, but I feel a little like my daughters, a bit like a teenager, a bit pulled in different directions – do I still want to be a little bit sexy, a little bit minxy, or am I ready to get into a round of golf and a life of table-top sales at the WI and be done with it? I don’t know.
Dodgiest present was a cut-glass decanter (are there any other sort?) that had been taken out of its box and rewrapped. You can tell that because it’s lost its little sticky label and anyway what would anyone sensible do with a decanter except wrap it up, hope you kept the presentation box and send it to someone else? If you’re really smart and you have the time you can find out where they sell them and try to change them for credit vouchers. That would be a triumph. A sort of punching-the-air-type triumph. But that would require a great deal of time and effort so have done the next best thing…have put in my ‘recycled present’ cupboard.
As a family, we’ve all had an overdose of quality time with one another, played charades and Monopoly and Knock-out Whist until we can no more, and now Boxing Day is over the bets are off, and we all spend the day in our own rooms, on our beds, reading the paper or MSN messaging our friends. Well, we would do except the mother-in-law doesn’t seem to have booked a train ticket till Saturday. Which is a worry.
She’s everywhere. I come down in the morning and she’s already in the kitchen, dressed, lipstick on, hair done, wanting to talk. She makes me feel lazy and a bit common, as my mother would say, slobbing around still in my dressing gown at 7.30. Normally I like the hour before everyone gets up, I get myself into a bit of pottering about, but when someone’s talking non-stop to you, like she does, it proves impossible. She asks ‘Can I do anything to help?’ in the way guests do – without actually doing anything at all – and starts asking endless questions about the OLD MAN, her beloved only son, about ELDEST DAUGHTER – what have we done about her student loan? Is she taking her laptop away with her and if so is it on the household insurance? – and about YOUNGEST DAUGHTER – have I checked whether the sub-aqua teacher at the pool is CRB cleared? Am I sure that she is not already into boys? Shouldn’t I be forbidding her to go out without tights? I listen, but after 18 years of marriage frankly there’s not the attention to detail on my part that there was.
She frightened me to death when I was still just ‘the girlfriend’, when I was on my best behaviour, dressing to impress and making out I was going to be her new best friend. Now I’m counting the days until Saturday, and we can all stop using the teapot and a tablecloth for supper. The moment she’s gone we’ll be eating in front of the telly, out of tins probably, in an involuntary and unspoken act of rebellion. Can’t wait.
December 28th
It feels like only yesterday I was the youngest person in the room, I had my whole life in front of me, I had time to burn, I spent my whole day snogging boys and backcombing my hair. I was a young thing, with a lovely body, life was fun, and I hadn’t a care in the world, and now – it feels like two minutes later – I’m a little bit old. OK I’m not in elasticated stockings or on Meals on Wheels or whizzing down the stairs on my stairlift, but my life is more than half over.
I’ve been there, done that, got the packamac, I’m so old that I remember dances with drum solos, the arrival of unisex hairdressers and had a crush on Illya Kuryakin. Which if you’re too young and you don’t remember The Man from U.N.C.L.E just looks like a bad Scrabble hand. Never mind over the hill, I am over the other side and nearly down at the bottom. And the view is slightly different. What all this adds up to is that I am grumpy. For a start I have a bad hair life, my teenager daughter has a better sex life than I do, and skip plucking the beard for a couple of days and I have the start of some five o’ clock shadow. So why wouldn’t I be grumpy?
I’m allowed to be grumpy, I’ve earned it…I lived through Boney M and Bucks Fizz, leg warmers and the Crossroads Motel, I deserve to be grumpy.
And as your self-appointed form captain, I think I can safely say that we all feel that none of this is our fault. Left to our own devices we are naturally peachy, cheery people, but everything and everyone else lets us down. It’s a day-in day-out sort of thing. Being full-on grumpy is a full-time job. Sometimes I wonder how I have time to go to work.
December 30th
The first credit card bill arrives with Christmas shopping transactions on. It is so bad I think there must be a mistake, someone must be shopping on my card, because something has gone hideously wrong. Of course something has gone hideously wrong, I have spent too much money. Again. So the taking back routine has to begin because, whether I like it or not, I have to try to claw back some money. Hence I throw myself into taking things back and since no one else bothered to keep the receipts, the whole wretched experience is going to be very, very annoying indeed.
Shopping makes me very grumpy indeed. People assume that women love shopping, but no woman I know does. These days when I am shopping I am so grumpy I feel drawn to using a stick. It would be useful for everyday life, to flick people with who are annoying me, holding me up, dawdling, knocking into me, getting in the queue before me. Maybe a little cane, or one of those rambler’s poles, something to flick at people’s ankles, stop them putting their feet up on train seats, stopping them leaving their rubbish or spitting on the pavement. There would be a hundred and one uses. Or I’d like one of those huge clompy prams young mothers have now, with huge wheels and chassis the size of a small car. I could accidentally on purpose snag people’s ankl
es with it, or use it as a ram raider on young people who are throwing litter on the ground or being objectionable. Except if I did have such a pram I would look like a mad old bat who should be in a mental institution or a tramp, since there would be no baby in it.
Other people are becoming a serious source of grump for me. Shopping would be fine if there were no other people involved. I’d like my own little pedestrian lane, my own check-out queue, I might even share it with other nice grumpy old women, and my own parking bays. Because we are in a hurry, we are hormonally challenged and our lives are made up of dreary little jobs no one else can be bothered to do.
I start the taking-back task and plot a time-efficient route round the city centre. At least the Christmas shoppers won’t be there; I’ll be able to park on the top floor of the multi-storey, just nip straight into the big stores, be home in time to have a sit-down and watch an episode of Desperate Housewives…But it’s strangely busy on the way into town. Actually, nearly as busy as it was the week before Christmas. Why? How could I have forgotten? The sales have started. That is just so very cruel. You get the Christmas shopping out of the way, you go in to take it all back and you get the crowds and the hassle and the queues all over again. Except this time there is an additional queue at Exchanges and Refunds. A queue so long that they rope it off like at Disney. They obviously staff it with the newest, youngest of their assistants; better still, they stick up a sign saying PLEASE BEAR WITH US, STAFF TRAINING IN PROGRESS, which means that every single pair of knickers, every single travel clock that is being taken back because it was loathed and detested by its recipient is having to be cross-referenced on a big long list.
Because they’ve reduced it now. And if you don’t have the receipt, your nice friend who queued up to buy it in the first place paid £29.99 for it and they are offering you £10.99 for it, in vouchers, not even in real cash. Which all takes about half an hour per customer, so you give up, or you run out of time, and you could simply run up and down in the shop and scream and scream and scream until you’re sick. Or you could run amok among ladies separates and throw everything on the floor so they have to pick it all up again. You give up and lug some of it back home, which is a low point, especially knowing it is not even nice enough to go into the recycled-presents cupboard.
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