And all the so-called time-saving devices that are so not saving you time, have to be charged, the laptop, the iPod, the whole house is a mass of cables and rechargers and batteries, all of them needing more attention than a naughty toddler. All of them have different chargers and attachments you might know – more things to lose, or change or replace. And of course you lug so much around, by the time you’ve got your laptop, your mobile, your cables and your personal organiser, you are well and truly weighed down. Might as well just plug yourself into the mains and be done with it.
One of the occupational hazards of being of a certain age is that your boss will inevitably be younger and probably sillier than you are. Which is true in my case. Jocasta has her own glass-walled office, and wears silly impractical high heels, some absurdly low-cut tops, and does a lot of showing off. Not sure what it is she actually does all day in terms of work, as most of it seems to get delegated down – she’s one of the new breed of women who is married to a house husband, and since they have no kids I assume she returns home to stunning clean house, candlelit dinner and a lot of ‘me’ time, which means she doesn’t have any of the millions of other things to think about that I do; she can concentrate on booking her manicurist, or her life coach or her weekend in Italy. People ask me how I manage to fit everything in with two kids and a full-time job and I say I manage it because my bikini line needs waxing, my hair looks a mess and the ironing needs doing. Jocasta has no such problems.
January 8th
Saw gorgeous recipe for polenta with red peppers, mixed it and rolled it and honestly couldn’t see the difference between it and wallpaper paste. Bloody Domestic Goddesses.
January 10th
ELDEST announces that she will no longer be coming on family holidays with us. Am distraught. Go to Lunn Poly and gather up all the most expensive long-haul brochures and put them on her bed. Later drop in and say, ‘Is there anything that takes your fancy, darling?’ Which is tantamount to saying ‘OK, anything, we’ll do anything, we’ll spend anything to get you to come with us, for us to try and extend your childhood in any way at all’. She looks interested. I feel a sense of relief, then she says she might be interested but would want to bring boyfriend. What boyfriend?
January 12th
Boyfriend coming to Sunday lunch. Must mean she has been seeing boyfriend for weeks, months, or, God forbid, is pregnant by him, since the Sunday-lunch slot is to meeting the parents what the Saturday-night slot is to dating. GRUMPY OLD MAN and I don’t say anything to one another, but clearly we are both making more of an effort than usual. He’s not in his old gardening jeans and I put some lipstick and a skirt on. I get the nice china out, since if he turns out to be major catch as in his father is hugely wealthy property developer or Sir Macalpine or Mr Tesco’s then obviously he will need to be persuaded that ELDEST will turn into sophisticated, slim and still gorgeous middle-aged domestic goddess. Since he will be looking at me to establish above, this is a worry…in fact it is not really going to be possible given the scale of the problem, but I plan on being very very amusing, very very young at heart.
Tragically forgot to take drying washing down off rack over Aga and a pair of my very large knickers was perilously close to brushing the top of his hair as he came in. He is taller than any of us, and while making gravy in kitchen alone I quickly swapped them with a pair of ELDEST’s teeny-weeny ones, so he thinks he might be marrying into a family of sex minxes who stay that way well into middle age. I liked him. GRUMPY OLD MAN asked him where he lives in great detail, and what his parents do, not exactly subtle I thought, but I listened very carefully to the answers. He wants to go into textiles. I pretended I knew what that meant, but these days being a plumber is so lucrative that it’s as good as being a banker, but with less hassle – so you don’t really know where you are. How old and middle-aged do I sound?
January 15th
Jocasta calls stupid ‘interface’ meeting at 5pm. She has nothing else to do obviously…So I come home from work late to find place a tip, the girls eating out of ice-cream tubs, watching completely banal programme called America’s Next Top Model, and I do my usual lecture about the fact that they should be watching Planet Earth or a landmark History series. They give me that look which means ‘you sad old cow get a life’. They’re forever glued to hideous programmes with Paris Hilton, or gay fashion designers in LA or shocking rubbish about the latest anal-bleaching craze. It has to be stopped. I decide to take immediate action, so off I skip upstairs to cancel the satellite subscription, knowing that a rota or house rule will be impossible to police; time it right and get the cancellation done now and the TV might even go black in the middle of America’s Top Model. Which would be a triumph. Get on the phone queue, first option is are you an existing customer or a new customer, I know that the new customer is going to get through in a nanosecond and existing customers are going to be in a holding pattern for 20 minutes, so I try to buck the system and pretend I am a new customer and want a new or additional satellite dish. I tried this and they just put me back to the start of the queue again so nothing gained at all. Am deflated. Will sort tomorrow.
Only been back at work for a few days after Christmas ‘break’ and already I get to 9.30pm and I am desperate to sit down with a glass of wine. No, really need to sit down. By the time I have got my bags by the door for the next morning, sorted packed lunches out for the girls, got chops out of the freezer and ironed three shirts, having done a day’s work-work, I am officially bad-tempered. What I want to do now is loll on the sofa and chill out. What I don’t want to do is chat on the phone.
Which is why when the phone rings and it’s a cold caller selling me some double glazing that’s bad, but not as bad as a friend calling up for a chat. ‘Are you all right to chat?’ they say. No I’m not, but do I say that? No…’How are you anyway?’ I say. ‘How’s it all going?’ My heart sinks. It’s not that I don’t love my friends, but I have been on the phone all day, on the go all day, and frankly I just want to keep it brief – to something like ‘see you Friday, 6.30, and what does Keith want for his birthday?’ That’s it. And then a nice glass of wine and a real chat when we meet. Worst thing is if you ring someone and hope to get the answer machine, pre-empt the chat…call during the day, and they’re at home having a day off and have even more time to chat than normal. Answer machines are glorious for talk avoidance. But texting even more glorious.
January 18th
Was planning on jogging but pavement looked icy.
Worried about having a fall. Because at my age I wouldn’t fall over, I would have a fall and for some reason that’s much more serious.
January 19th
Jog for 15 minutes. Have to stop at lamp-posts for panting. Am so bad at running, never mind jogging, I look just like I am in a bit of a hurry. Need to get home to-let-the-electrician-in-sort-of-run…Will have to forget jogging. Might try swimming in lunch hours instead.
Get back on the cancelling satellite TV case – and get through to a woman who interrogates me as to why I am cancelling, which seems both pointless and impertinent. Takes a good 20 minutes and I still have to tell the bank to cancel the direct debit. Which will take another 40 minutes.
Come downstairs in a triumph and tell girls that I have done something with their best interests at heart – cancelled satellite as of now. YOUNGEST bursts into tears, says she will be a nothing, a nonentity at school if she can’t watch The Simpsons and My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss. ELDEST says she was going to use the History channel for revision, which was her trump card. So yours truly feels an utter noo na and has to reverse whole thing. Triumph and moral high ground completely backfired. I am back on the satellite TV customer services (so-called) menu, this time have to key in new customer, which I thought would get me to the top of the queue and sure enough they answer within five minutes, but as I am renewing an old subscription I need to call another number and I have to cancel the direct debit before they will fill out a new membership. If I had a cric
ket bat I would lob it into the screen and smash it.
January 26th
Burns Night. And the post-Christmas corporate hospitality machine gets going. I go because I feel I should. The evening always starts with such promise. You know you should be enjoying it, everyone else does seem to be enjoying it. You feel a freak. You’re trapped in the seating plan from hell, sitting for three hours next to someone who bores you almost literally to death. They tell you in minute detail about their job because they are big in cardboard packaging, tell you so much about their dreary lives you know about the sandwich fillings that they take in on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays and on Thursdays in leap years, they talk about themselves non-stop until you think there is nothing else to tell you and then they tell you about the sandwich filling they are having tomorrow. More depressing even than that, they say they are going to tell you a really funny story. Yes, well I’ll be the judge of that. My heart sinks when someone tells me that. I know it’s not going to be funny, think I am turning into a miserable old cow.
January 29th
Am officially suffering from SAD syndrome, spend all my waking hours in darkness, and am so cold at night I am sleeping in my fleece and track-suit bottoms. It’s called living up north.
Look pasty, feel fat and forty Maddeningly the OLD MAN is wearing better than I am; his grey hair is looking a bit distinguished, he looks good in his suit for work. Stare at myself in bathroom mirror, flip over to shaving side that magnifies…dreadful shock. I have the start of some six o’clock shadow. Could do with shaving every other day. Feel overwhelmingly fed up about state of neck, chin and face. Do something really mad. Spot YOUNGEST’s purple hair dye – the one she got from the hippy shop in town – in cabinet and go for it. Paste it on and hey presto, now I have purple streaks in my hair. I think it says something very definite about me…Says I may be pushing 50 but I’m still fun, still cool, still in the land of the living.
ELDEST sees my hair and says that she will never ever be able to bring anyone home again.
January 30th
See first Easter eggs in the shops. Could kill.
∨ The Secret Diary of a Grumpy Old Woman ∧
February
February 5th
In comes my mother – doing her ‘yoo hoo’ from the front door, carrying her signature wicker basket for her pinny and some shoes she can work in. She’s had her hair permed again, which I told her not to, and the moment she steps into my house she sets off an alarm, an alarm which means she’s in my space and in my face. I simultaneously detest the intrusion and welcome the help and her company – which is exactly how I felt when I first left home to go to university and she came to visit. Spookily nothing has changed.
Curiously she doesn’t notice my purple hair. Was expecting a BIG reaction. She talks to me non-stop – endless friendly harmless questions – how are the girls? Have we sorted out a holiday yet? Did I read about the new vitamins for the change? Would I like her to get me some? Did I remember Aunty Brenda’s birthday? I have no right to be niggled by it all (mind you she does keep putting the washing-up liquid away under the sink despite me telling her not to every time she comes round – which is enough to niggle anyone) – but I get all curt and short with her, move rooms, leave her in the kitchen, and generally feel bad about it all. She gets stuck into the ironing, and I snatch something out of the basket saying it must be ironed inside out, or I’ll do that one it’s a bit precious or something really catty and ungrateful, then when she gets out the apple crumble she’s made for us with her own apples I say I’ll put it in the freezer, which of course is like saying I don’t want it at all. I can’t help it. It’s like I’m programmed to be niggled by her.
Once in a while I’ll tell her some news spontaneously – like that YOUNGEST has got her Grade 3 piano, or I had some triumph at work, and she looks proud. As if that was what she was waiting for, that was the point of it all. All the insolence and the bad temper she takes from me day in, day out are worth it, fuels her motherly love until the next time I decide I can let out a bit of news, or tell her about something on my mind. Until then she has to put up with all the huffing and puffing and generally not being appreciated. So this is how motherhood ends up – with a huffy daughter with her own life and her own family and little thought or thanks for the years of slog and hard work she put in for me.
And of course it doesn’t take me long to work out that this is how my own daughters are going to be with me. Already are. And how I am going to be with them. I already speak her language. I say something like ‘mind how you go’, or ‘wrap up warm’. I am her. I even quite like lavender talc. It just happens – there is nothing you can do about it. Sometimes motherhood really stinks.
Since my father died she has become more needy, despite the newfound social life, so now she is not only irritating but demanding too. Widowhood is one of those things that people are simply not very sympathetic about. It’s statistically so likely, so predictable, that when it happens the world is sympathetic for about a month, then expects women to get on with it. As she leaves she says, ‘By the way your purple hair looks ridiculous.’ I feel small. Cut down to size. Like I would have done at 13. Job done.
February 7th
People at work pretend to like my hair, saying it makes me look cool, or funky; that’s what they say, those are the words that are coming out of their mouths, but I can tell they think otherwise. Imagine there are one or two emails with ‘get her’ or ‘you’d think at her age she’d know better’ type messages that are a bit of a giggle. They think I look a bit dysfunctional, am wondering whether in fact I am a bit dysfunctional, but if I am, maybe I can blame it on the change and no one will be in the least surprised, hurrah. Stupid all-day meeting at work with a lot of talk about ‘synergy’ and ‘team building’ and ‘cascading of responsibility’. Something about having to send out a new message. Jocasta used the word ‘Zeitgeist’ and I think even she has no idea what it means.
Found myself in meeting thinking about all the little jobs I have to do at home like sorting out the freezer, buying loo rolls and the mould on the shower tiles that need scrubbing, then got even more bored and daydreamed about getting home and sorting my wardrobe out into colours like in the article in Prima magazine I read at the dentist’s. It feels like if my sock drawer was sorted, if the airing cupboard was all folded up like a Benetton shop and the glasses were sorted into sizes and nice neat lines, then the rest of my life would fall into place, and I would be entirely happy, calm and sorted. And the busier I get and the more work-type work I am given, the more obsessed with getting home organised military fashion I become. It is a cruel combination and can only lead to dusting at 3am or writing a shopping list on the loo. Both of which I am entirely capable of doing.
The meeting seems to go on for hours and hours and hours. That’s because it does go on for hours and hours and hours, with virtually nothing achieved it seems to me; and still the Danish pastries sit in the middle of the table, untouched, since to take one would be to admit to the assembled company that you want a Danish pastry more than you want to say anything in the meeting, which obviously is the case for all of us, but none of us dares be the first. Apparently, according to wonder boss Jocasta, you have to ‘harness the energy and deflect it creatively into company core’. Going to be tricky to write that lot down on a flip chart without laughing out loud.
February 8th
ELDEST is learning to drive. GRUMPY OLD MAN and I go to buy cheap-as-chips second-hand car. All I really want to know from the irritating salesman is how many seats does it have? Has it got those nice things that you put your drinks in to stop them spilling on the motorway? Has it got central locking? And how much is it?
You can see they’ve had nothing to do for hours. The showroom has been empty all morning. You can see they’ve been looking up in the Daily Mail what to watch on telly tonight and reading about hot totty. And so you are a captive audience. And they think a grumpy old couple, nothing better t
o do, probably only a nearly new sale to organise, or some grouting to do, nothing important, and so they make a meal of it. Take their time, bore you rigid.
‘Yes, I see,’ I say, hoping he realises that I want him to shut up, but he sees this as a cue to tell me more. On and on and on about it all, and the price and the book price and the road holding and the previous owners and you know it’s all lies anyway. At least he’s not trying to flog you the apricot-coloured one outside on the forecourt. You’d have to be really stupid to drive that one home.
Buying a car still feels like it’s the kind of thing your dad should be doing. The car was definitely my father’s area. In the old days, when my mother and father were young, the male and female roles were extremely well defined: washing and ironing was my mother’s job, along with cooking and cleaning, whereas putting up shelves, paying the bills, and driving and keeping a nice car was my father’s. You could argue that the delineation was unfair, but it was clear-cut. Now in our house what seems to have happened is that I’ve gone out to work full time, but I’ve retained responsibility for all the things my mother was in charge of as well. OK my husband knows how to cook, and is entirely amenable to putting the wash on…but he has to be reminded. And the old traditional male areas such as filling up the car and washing it, now that we drive too, have come into the female area of responsibility on top of everything else. Which accounts for why I am in a big filthy mood so much. That’s my excuse.
The Secret Diary of a Grumpy Old Woman Page 3