March 3rd
ELDEST is applying for universities. The prospectuses are arriving daily. She favours Aberdeen. We were allowed to drive her up for Open Day. The place was so far north I thought we’d drive off the end of the country and fall into the sea. Hours and hours and hours of driving even beyond Edinburgh. So this is how much she wants to get away from us. We get there and it is perishingly cold, with a bitter gale blowing off the sea and a constant drizzle. Despite all this, the place is absolutely charming. That’s to say what I was allowed to see of it was, because obviously we were forbidden from getting out of the car unless strictly necessary. As a teenager you suddenly become aware that the one thing that gives away your identity, says more about you than the clothes you wear, the posters you hang in your room or the music you play…is your parents.
The whole day whisks me back to my own student days – the little identical windows in hall, with the same curtains, the study bays in the library, the refectory, the union bar…University was where I decided who I was, decided who I was going to be in adulthood, and she will do the same, without us, without me, and that of course is the point. This will be her home. This will be where I will need to imagine her, laughing, throwing her first dinner parties, chatting, having coffees with all those new people she is going to meet from all over the world, swapping life stories. Soon she will have a life of her own away from us. Could sob…sob that I didn’t drop everything when she was little, when we snuggled up in bed, when we sang ‘Wheels on the Bus’, when she loved to sit on my lap, when her little hand held mine and we did fairy kisses and she fell asleep in my arms and went all floppy in her little lemon-coloured Babygro, the one with the ducks on that I loved. What was I thinking of carrying on with my stupid career, missing out on time I could have had with her then, before it was too late? It feels hard to be a working mother when your nest is emptying. But I can’t imagine that mothers who stayed at home find it any easier. The truth is your main purpose in life – your children – eventually leave home. You knew that at the beginning, but it is still going to take a lot of getting used to.
March 5th
ELDEST is now learning to drive but taking her out with the L plates is challenging on the nerves. It all seems to be going so well and then we come down a hill and she slightly misjudges how near we are to the kerb, then overcompensates and just misses an oncoming vehicle by a fraction of an inch. She does this just about every time. And she goes so fast. Young people seem to be so overconfident about everything. I spend the whole time telling her to slow down. Something has rewired in my brain – I find everything, absolutely everything terrifying. Even the car wash gives me the heebie-jeebies, last time I stood at the side rather than stay in the car, dashed out at the last minute once I’d got the money in and slammed the door quick as quick and jumped out of the way – which was infinitely more dangerous than sitting inside and risking fatal crushing by brushes. I should retrain as a Health and Safety officer, would be top of the class.
My father taught me to drive and I think about him a lot. It’s a year almost to the day that he died; we’ve done the round of the seasons, the birthday, Christmas, and naturally it still hurts like hell. He loved his car. With his Roy Orbison cassettes, his Elaine Paige tapes, and most important it was a refuge to smoke in. Years and years after he was not allowed to smoke in the house, he smoked in the car. Secretly of course, except the Nissan Micra always smelled of Benson and Hedges and so it was obvious where my father did his smoking. Which probably explained why he was so amenable to running errands for my mother. I loved my father. He blew me kisses – I wish he could still.
March 8th
My trusty Psion Organiser that has all my contacts on has been playing up for a while. Every time I turn it on it tells me refer to back-up batteries, and I changed the batteries twice but it still sends me the silly message. Obviously I am always too busy to take any notice. But this morning I turned it on and it didn’t do anything. I mean it didn’t give me the tragic little reminder, or anything, just a blank screen.
I run out to get yet more AA batteries and change them, and then I turn it on and there is the familiar grid. Phew. Thank goodness for that. I think, well really what I should do is go and buy a Blackberry or whatever it is that everyone has, or I should go and try to download all the information on to my computer as I tried to do about four times while I still knew where the manual was and vaguely remembered where the connection lead was, but it failed because it sent me a stupid message. That was irritating and incomprehensible in equal measures. Yes I could do that, and then I would never have to worry about losing all my contacts again…except this time when I try to open my first contact a new message comes up that says: NO ITEMS IN FOLDER. Not seen that one before. Try a few other names, the diary, the jotter, nothing. Nyet. Nothing. No addresses at all.
I drive straight to John Lewis, virtually sobbing, and nice man on Electrical who is the oracle of all technical knowledge turns it over and asks, ‘When was the last time you changed the back-up battery?’
‘You mean the batteries…I keep changing them, they don’t make any difference.’
‘No, the back-up one – this one, that looks like a ten-pence piece.’ And he opens an entirely different compartment. ‘Oh never.’
‘And you’ve had it for two years? Well, you’ve been lucky. Usually it sends you messages saying you have to refer to the back-up battery.’ To warn you that this might happen.
Oh God!
I log on to the website at home for help. Of any sort whatsoever. And it is worse than bad, worse than annoying or irritating or the sort of website I have to get teenage daughter to sort out for me. It is a Dead website. Dead because it says, Psion Organisers are no longer manufactured, this helpline is no longer live, there follows a list of frequently asked questions with some answers. In other words it says, ‘Tough luck, sonny, you have goofed up and now we are selling much more efficient, and for that read more expensive, PDAs – whatever that means – so wise up and buy one and chuck your Psion in the bin.’
I do what everyone does in this situation and throw myself at the only person I know who understands all this stuff, Paul from IT at work, the man who has many women throwing themselves at him for help (but only in the office). He says he’ll have a go, a little flicker of hope opens up in my mind, he presses some of the buttons, uses the pointy thing, then says, ‘Have you tried switching it on and off again?’ OK, so he doesn’t know any more than I do really. ‘Have you changed the batteries?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s dead then.’ At least with a Filofax you had the clear tangible bits of paper that you could photocopy, that you could keep in your drawer at home. Now I am sunk. Well and truly stuffed. Never mind all the work contacts – what about the woman who does the bit of ironing for me, the man who does all that cheap reupholstery and the window cleaner? So now I am back to square one. It’s all very well inventing all these sophisticated little computer things for you to copy all your life into, but when they die on you, you are stuffed. Why can’t someone invent something useful, like one-size tights that fit anyone at all, chocolate that takes your wrinkles away or some calorie-free Kettle chips?
March 10th
Library books are due back. I know that because I put more notes to myself all over the house than were strictly necessary or normal. Trouble is I failed to make a note of what I had done with the books themselves, and can only find four out of the five. Teach Yourself Italian is missing. I wouldn’t mind if I had read it cover to cover and had mastered beginner’s Italian – I haven’t opened it. Can’t even remember seeing it lying anywhere. Ransack study, ransack kitchen and resort to (pointlessly) looking in laundry room, like someone might have taken it in there to put it on to wash. Look again in living room.
The other four books sit on the hall table and scream self-loathing and disappointment, because guess what? I didn’t trace my family tree, and I didn’t start quilting. Well, that’s no
t true, I did start quilting, I went to the sewing shop (what a haven of tranquillity that is, in my next life I’m going to run a nice sewing shop with a lot of gingham and felt squares – I think I must have been their first customer in three weeks) and bought £40 worth of silks, £10 of needles and £5 worth of patterns with the intention of making a gorgeous family-heirloom-type quilt for ELDEST to take away to university to remind her how much I love her. Except it was all much harder than I had anticipated, and the squares didn’t come out quite square and I threw it all in the corner in a fit of temper like a four-year-old. No one had explained that quilting, like most hobbies, requires time and patience – neither of which I have, but which is I suppose the point of them.
I get to the library and there’s a spread of books on local history which looks so dull I might usefully think about them when I wake up with racing overactive brain in the night with a hot flush and can’t get back off again. She puts the ones I bring back through her electronic beeper thing. Sure enough she knows the Teach Yourself Italian one is missing. In the old days I might have got away with it, blagged my way out of it with a lot of stuck-up huffing and puffing, but not any more; everything is computerised. Probably got me on CCTV carrying the blooming thing out a month ago.
The fine is 54p per day. I say I think she’s got it wrong. Must be 54p a week. No it’s not wrong, it is 54p per day. How else do they deter people from losing books? In a mere 13 days I will probably have clocked up the equivalent of buying it new. And judging by the illustrations it was published in the seventies. So now I have to ransack the whole house.
March 13th
Back to the doctor’s for the results of the blood tests. She’s got my bulging notes out and she asks me how I am, which seems a bit pointless since she’s my doctor and if she really wants to know the answer I can give her a long list of niggles, concerns and intermittent problems to keep her occupied all day…I get my mood diary out. She looks at it like it’s about to burst into flames. As if she’s reluctant to handle it or touch it at all. I’d gone a bit over the top here and there with all the capital letters saying IN A FILTHY MOOD ALL DAY, and WENT INTO TOWN AND OLD GIRL COUNTING CHANGE OUT IN A QUEUE GOT IN MY WAY AND COULD HAVE CHEERFULLY SHOT HER IF GUNS WERE LEGAL. She looks a bit shocked. A bit frightened of me…and gets the results on screen. ‘Yes, well, your oestrogen levels are slightly lower than average; I wouldn’t say you were in the change yet, but you might be heading towards it.’
‘Do you mean to say that this is just the beginning? How long does the change usually take?’
‘It depends. Can be anything from two to ten years.’ I think my mouth dropped open.
‘I think we’ll try you on some low-dosage HRT shall we?’
Why do doctors talk to you like you’re a four-year-old? Anyone would think I behave childishly.
Go to the chemist and pitifully feel like saying they are for a friend, not for me, I am still in the land of the living, still ovulating. It’s pathetic. I get them home and open them up. They look remarkably like the pill, as far as I can remember that is, in a one-per-day-type package. Exactly like the pill. Decide to leave them in the bathroom for ELDEST to see. I’d have preferred a pregnancy testing kit, really give her a fright, but this will have to do. She will have to reconsider me as a woman, as a woman with womanly needs and a healthy sex drive.
March 18th
Am beginning to wonder whether the HRT is female Viagra by mistake. Sudden rush of female hormones. Feel so horny I can hardly sit down. And the jeans! They mean I am almost permanently on heat. GOM getting a bit tired of it all. Well a bit tired full stop. If only I could show off a few carpet burns, a few love bites, that’d really make the people at work sit up and look. I fancy just about everyone. Builders have stopped noticing me but I’ve started to notice builders, men in uniform, men on the side of the road in vesty-type things, men with tattoos, men covered in dust from construction work – it’s all a bit of a worry. I’ve started watching Top Gear. Got a bit of a crush on Jeremy Clarkson, quite a lot of a crush in fact. More worrying – I have a crush on the other one with the funny long ex-hippy frizzy hair and appalling dress sense. That has to be chemically induced.
March 20th
Something happened today that I had absolutely no control over. I was at the vegetable shop and I bought a big bag of birdseed. We’ve had a bird table for years, the people before us left it behind and I have only ever used it to put the peg basket on. GOM occasionally puts a few crusts out on it and jabbers on about seeing a yellowhammer but I have never really seen the point of it before. Got home and put the seed out. I will draw the line at watching Bill Oddie though.
March 21st
Found Teach Yourself Italian in the neat pile next to bed by other books I keep meaning to finish…or start. Someone has either sneaked it on the pile because they had secretly stolen it, or I forgot to look there and since it is the most obvious place to keep a book I am planning to read, and don’t get round to, this is a worry. Brain falling apart or springing holes like a colander.
March 22nd
Huge hold-up on the motorway on the way to work. Everyone is so fed up they start to make calls, pick arguments with their fellow passengers, ring Radio 2 to report the hold-up (so they must be bored), make lists, send emails, call people they haven’t spoken to for years, or (in my case) start plucking their whiskery beard in the rear-view mirror. The whole thing takes nearly an hour. Got to the hold-up to discover it was just road works. I won’t be the only one who was disappointed. I mean when you’ve had the top end of your day capped by one hour you want to see some paramedics at least. Better still some helicopters and air-sea rescue. At least that would have made it sort of worthwhile. Shameful thoughts. No wonder I never win the Lottery, or the Premium Bonds, or even the raffle at school or even anything nicer than the bath salts at a tombola. I simply don’t deserve to.
March 23rd
Jocasta wants me to do a presentation at monthly away day. Called ‘Managing Chaos’. Good job we’re not talking about real life since my life is – well – chaotic. Says she’s calling me on Sunday night with her thoughts about the ground it should cover. Great. Will have to be ready with notes and silly pretentious-sounding ideas for Sunday night. Might put some smart Mozart on in the background, impress her, make my life sound calm and zen and very very sophisticated.
March 26th
My presentation looms. Most preoccupied with what I will wear and if I can manage to shift some weight in time. Might have to buy one of those all-in-one corsets. Double chin very very big problem, will have to push my chin up as in very very haughty stuck-up woman with shouty voice. Might frighten people.
March 27th
The away day looms. Go to Marks to investigate all-in-one corsets and pull-me-ins, and there they are – the beauties – racks and racks of them (so they must be pretty popular which is a comfort), but obviously they’re tucked away at the back, far away from the little gorgeous pink-and-lime-green-fru-fru things, far far away from the eyes of men who might stray there by accident. Which suits me fine, I mean you wouldn’t frankly want to meet anyone much you know in this neck of the woods. The bra sizes are all up in the telephone numbers…DD, FF, GG even…and all marvellously scientific – a hundred different functions and designs, pull you in, push you out, push you up, push you all about. All in white, black or a really horrid flesh colour that reminds me of the torso on the side of the pool that they use for lifeguard training. I take one corset to try at home.
Get it home and the trouble begins. They don’t tell you whether to step into it and pull it up, or put it over your head and pull the whole thing down over your body, and for once some instructions would be useful. That’s spiteful of them. So I go for over the head. The fabric doesn’t give, which I suppose is the point…so I have trouble getting it over my boobs and get stuck halfway over and what I really need is help. Someone to come in and yank the bottom down over the remaining half of my bust and pu
ll it towards the floor. But a) finding someone willing to get involved in such a scary scene would be problematic, and b) actually venturing out of a locked room in this state would be mad to dangerous. So I yank some more, yank more and more, jumping up and down; the effort of each yank and the whole thing gets me into a top-of-the-range mither. Phone goes a couple of times and I have to leave it, am utterly indisposed, give myself hot flush, and eventually get it over the boobs and down and then attempt to do it up under the crutch which I assume is the way it stays on.
By definition, this thing is going to have to be tight to do its job, in other words to pull the whole flabby mess of my body in and hold it down and under control. But instead of being made of stainless steel or instead of being the sewing equivalent of flying buttresses, there are three silly little press-studs designed to be done up under the crotch to keep it in place. It’s also incredibly difficult to see what you’re doing, because it’s a sort of up and under manoeuvre, so I have to put my reading glasses on…but then when you’ve got a bit of a midriff you can’t really get round to the undercarriage bit as well as you used to be able to do, get one half in place, in a bending your knees sort of semi-pornographic pose and you can’t get all three of the press-studs done up, have to make do with two. But of course every time you go to the loo this is going to happen. I could be in the loo for half an hour every time, easy.
Of course it does pull me in quite satisfyingly. In an all-over sort of way, not in a push-all-the-blubby-bits-to-another-area way – but it makes me walk in a slightly different way, like someone just told me some bad financial news or I’d done my back in, or I’d sat down on something that looked like a bit of spit on a chair.
The Secret Diary of a Grumpy Old Woman Page 5