The Secret Diary of a Grumpy Old Woman

by Judith Holder

  Naturally, when the order eventually comes everyone staggers home with a boot load of stuff. I get home and find I have a sack the size of a pillow of oats, 24 cans of mung beans in brine, 36 tins of organic mango chunks and six litres of organic cranberry juice. What seemed like such an economic and ecologically sound grocery order is now doing three (bad) things: it’s clogging up my kitchen cupboards, overspilling into the garage and spare room, and it’s nagging away at me like something else on the list all day and all night because I know that I have to use it all up. Otherwise it will – shock horror! – go to waste. I look at the size of the oats order and realise at a conservative estimate, even if I eat larger bowls of porridge than normal every day, that I will still be trying to use up this bag of porridge by February of next year, not even have one day off with a piece of toast or a boiled egg. Unless I do something mad which will increase the oat consumption like make some flapjacks or some granola bars. I like porridge naturally, but porridge every day between now and February is a little depressing. And the mango chunks. Yes, I like mango, but they’re a bit, well, tinny, and the cranberry juice is good for you, granted, but frankly I don’t like it. I serve up the first dish of Mexican bean soup, and everyone says they hate it. Don’t even like beans. So now I have 12 tins of the soup and 24 of mung beans and no one in the house much likes beans. And it all cost over £50

  August 3rd

  Mother-in-law visit imminent. To explain, the house gets dusted from top to bottom twice a year – once at Christmas and once in the summer when mother-in-law comes to stay. Christmas and birthday presents given by her have to be on show. Family heirlooms have to be checked, dusted and in some cases taken out of cupboards and put on display. Clothes are ironed, beds are made, floors are cleaned and polished. People are told not to swear, or watch Sky rubbish on TV, or use words like mingers or dodgy. She’s on my case, as ever, making a few catty comments about working mothers and how much her darling son has to do around the house. It’s hard not to answer back. But for once she has something cheery to say, something that speaks volumes to me. She says, ‘You know, you never really get over them leaving home, but it will get easier, and the longer she’s away from you the more she’ll realise how much she loves YOU.’ Feel guilty about making such a fuss about her coming for the extra night.

  August 5th

  It’s raining again. I find rain more annoying the older I get. Rain is not only obviously very disappointing if you are going to the races, or having a barbecue or getting married, but it’s also annoying if you are just going about your daily business. Holding an umbrella is irritating, and if you wear your cagoule you look like a total saddo. It makes your hair frizzy, and in the car the windscreen wipers need constant attention: either they’re on too fast or they’re on too slow. What is it with them? Maybe I need to chill out more.

  August 7th

  Have been browsing the Sunday supplements for bad-back aids for a while. There is a whole range to choose from. Now I am middle-aged I have the statutory bad back. I have to choose the height of my chair carefully, I can’t sit for too long and feel stiff when I stand up…So I ordered one of those ludicrous contraptions you dangle upside down on, apparently it works like traction, pulls your whole back out in a stretch and your back is good as new or refund guaranteed. In the photo is a man in a cardigan happily dangling backwards from the waist in the living room, cool as you like, and he’s reading a book…Mine arrived in a flat pack (naturally) and determined to get on it as soon as possible I made GRUMPY OLD MAN put it up immediately he got home. YOUNGEST and her friend and GOM dug in for the floor show and Yours Truly lies back and dangles, feeling very adventurous indeed. Sudden blood rush to head and stupid dizzy turn followed within a couple of seconds. Sniggers and told-you-sos all round. Now I have to put the whole thing back in the packaging and feel sick. Think I might have brought on a small stroke. Will stick to Pilates in future.

  August 9th

  Start my first serious pile of things in the spare room to take on holiday. Put my slippers in. I am actually taking my slippers on holiday. Scary.

  August 10th

  I’m getting really fed up with GOM’s snoring. I mean I’m not sure what’s happened here. Is it because I am now total saddo insomniac and I wake up and hear the appalling trumpeting sound and then can’t get back to sleep, or does the trumpet solo wake me up in the first place, or is it just that he is annoying me more during daylight hours and therefore I now feel like poking him with that sharp meat fork by the oven that we use for picking up the Sunday roast. Which might be a marketing opportunity for a domestic tool of torture. A simple electric shock system whereby if he does start snoring then there’s a short electric shock that wakes him up momentarily and trains his brain not to do it any more. Last night I was going to bed about ten minutes after him, except, guess what, he went straight up to bed after announcing he was going to bed – but I stopped to get some chops out of the freezer, filled the dog’s water bowl, put cereal bowls out for breakfast, put some washing away and cleaned and flossed my teeth. My dreary tasks don’t finish until my head hits the pillow, it seems, whereas his do…Got upstairs on to the landing and I could hear him from the top of the stairs, so I go in and say ‘For God’s sake you’re snoring already and he says, ‘What…I’m not even asleep.’ I’m sending him to the dentist to have one of those contraptions I saw a poster of in the waiting room to cure snoring; they wire up your jaws. Might ask for a key. Keep it. Like a modern-day chastity belt. Only release him when his mother comes round.

  August 11th

  The sun is shining. It is a gorgeous day. And YOUNGEST and her friend are watching satellite TV again. Another make-over show…hundreds of gay men and stupid women who look like Britney or Paris Hilton in silly short skirts and sounding the end of every sentence up like a question. Flicking their hair back and showing off. My mother used to complain about me watching TV when it was nice weather. I remember her doing that. I also remember not getting it. Truly not understanding it. At least I was only watching Rolf Harris and Animal Magic; these days children are watching extreme make-over and hideous American shows about blonde bimbos with liposuction.

  August 12th

  Keep thinking I can smell gas in the downstairs loo. Other people have mentioned it too. But this morning it was horrendous. So rang the number at the front of the telephone book for emergency gas leaks. Satisfyingly fast pick-up, urgent and diligent answer, if only everyone answered the phone like this. Especially to me. Described symptoms and they said they’d be round within the hour. Turn everything off! Go into emergency mode! Put the radio on! Huddle in pairs! Get all your stocks of baked beans out, blankets, everything. No, well, not that then…But that was the tone of it. I’m ashamed to say that it feels quite nice – if I was prone to hoaxing, which I’m not, I can see the attraction, the ultimate attention-seeking ploy, and they were here in 20 minutes, obviously expecting some major explosion.

  They arrive in wonderfully important-looking van. Baffled engineers after about an hour lift a manhole cover by the downstairs loo. The foreman tells me we have sewer gas. I look puzzled. He has to explain in simple terms. Which is code for smelly and I imagine big poos down our drains. No more Suma orders for us!

  August 14th

  Leave house at 4.30am – why is it that every holiday I have ever gone on involves a ghastly in-the-middle-of-the-night early start? Living at the end of runway of Terminal 4 at Heathrow airport would be only way of avoiding this it seems, since airlines are so determined to get you to the airport hours before strictly necessary. We are off on a very unusual holiday: with ELDEST being away and YOUNGEST wanting adventure, decided to book a canoeing holiday in the Dordogne. In the brochure it looks wonderful. The Dordogne is obviously a very wide calm river, and the canoes we will be driving are big canoes that look more like punts than canoes; I know all this because I studied the photos in the brochure very carefully indeed before booking it.

  We shall be
able to meander down the river all morning, take a lazy lunch, meander some more, then stroll to our nice hotel for an overnight stay. Life jackets are optional, so they can’t be expecting rough Whitewater, and YOUNGEST is a little bit excited. Job done. Says all you need is an instruction hour on Day One with group leader, then off you all go, small children can take their own canoe out on their own, with Mum and Dad following. In other words it’s child’s play, anyone can do it.

  The rep meets us in the airport, carrying a sign saying Canoeing Adventures. I feel very adventurous indeed. ELDEST is off in Ghana and we are having our own adventure Enid Blyton or Swallows and Amazons fashion. YOUNGEST will chum up with other teenagers and I will feel sense of achievement and enough fresh air to last me until next Easter. There is another family gathering with the rep, but they’re carrying all sorts of equipment, as in waterproof holders, caskets, picnic bags, and have brought their own safety helmets and oars. Panic number one; are we supposed to bring our own gear? No, the Bronningtons have done it before, they are master canoeists, will be doing our week to warm up then some Whitewater stuff after. They seem nice enough, they’re from Cardiff, luckily they have two teenage daughters so it is all seeming to fall into place nicely.

  We get to the hotel and there are maps and an induction leaflet to read, and the inevitable risk assessment form, the one that says Canoeing Adventures are not liable if you canoe yourself into a rock and die, or are permanently disfigured by canoe or paralysed by both; the one that says in fact it’s all your fault anyway. A flutter of nerves. Then I read the descriptions of each day’s canoeing, with a key to what the levels of difficulty mean…Day 1 is easy canoeing, just some gentle rapids. Day 2 is gentle, some interesting rapids to ‘keep you awake’, and includes on the map some serious instructions not to take certain branches of river because they do actually go to some really quite dangerous rapids. Already I am worrying about taking the wrong turn because I am quite capable of taking the wrong turn and almost certainly will. Day 3, it says, OK you’ve had two days of fun, now for the hard stuff, four hours’ hard canoeing, partly upstream, with some really exciting rapids and Whitewater; Day 5, now you are an expert it will seem like a doddle but this one takes in part of the Olympic training ground for canoeing; watch out for some really challenging rock avoidance work. You wanted an adventure holiday, well you got one!

  Find it hard to sleep that night with worry.

  August 15th

  Day 1 of canoeing holiday. After an early breakfast the bus takes three groups – including the expert Bronningtons – to start of route, while our luggage is taken on to first hotel. On the way in the bus we go parallel to the river, and I ask if we are going to be canoeing on the bits we can see. The answer is yes. The road swings over on bridges here and there, everyone else looks at the river, and the canoeists already on it, with excitement. I look at it in horror, they are not paddling along like it looked in the photo in the brochure, as if they are in a paddling pool in Sutton Park or on a municipal boating lake, they are paddling hard, going round rocks, racing down speedy lanes that go round corners and suchlike. Crikey, this looks infinitely more difficult than I thought! Out we get and Charles our teacher shows us the canoes that are going to be ours for the next week. And the barrels we are to put all our daily valuables in, which are watertight containers. Helmets are handed round – hold on, I thought this was just a jolly cruise. – life jackets are issued and signed for. More legal documents to sign. Charles says they’ve tightened the rules since the brochure went to print. I am afraid to ask why. Still, at least Charles our teacher is coming with us, I shall just have to be teacher’s pet for the week, follow him, watch the way he paddles his paddle and do the same, become teacher’s twin. Alas, Charles informs me he is just here to give us an hour’s lesson and then bog off to sort out the Cycling for Softies lot who have just arrived too.

  Cycling for Softies suddenly seems like an infinitely better alternative and to think I discounted it on the basis that it might be a bit too hot for cycling – what was I thinking of? A bit hot feels like easy-peasy by comparison. The Bronningtons get out all their annoying canoe gear, like they think they are in the Olympic team, waterproof map containers, compasses, lightweight holdalls and wetsuits with brilliantly clever waterproof shoes. We look like the amateurs that we are: shorts, sandals and sleeveless tops. Not that sunburn is top of my list of worries at the moment. First Charles gives us a dry land lesson. Dos and don’ts, how to get in and how to get out, how to make sure you keep hold of your oars, and how to strap down your waterproof barrel with your passport, camera and money in. OK I might be all right, for goodness’ sake there are four-year-olds doing it. We get a canoe each off the rack, and it weighs a ton, YOUNGEST and GOM have decided to share a canoe and I am on my own, which is probably just as well since I can see that I am going to be a bit of a handful. Have to get Charles to help me down with mine, and establish myself as Miss Needy. He tells us to all get in the water and start getting used to it, and he’ll help us with steering and run through the safety stuff. Everyone else is in the water in a jiffy, having fun, zipping in and out, and to my dismay the Bronningtons get in their canoes and whizz straight off…say they know the safety briefing off by heart, so there isn’t even going to be anyone else to follow, and so much for YOUNGEST palling up with their kids…I will have to follow GOM and YOUNGEST and they will soon get fed up with me. Charles takes us through how to steer right and left, for some reason it seems like the opposite way to the way I would logically expect to do it, and the more I think about it the worse I get. GOM and YOUNGEST are larking about in their boat, doing twirls one-handed, and I am getting myself into a top-of-the-range flap.

  Charles takes me off for some individual tuition, which is what I had hoped, tells me I’ll be fine, the water is only about 6 foot deep max, been doing the holidays for years, never been a mishap. Enjoy it.

  Off he goes, the others go on ahead and I say not to leave me behind…But they do anyway. I start to get the hang of it, the scenery is fantastic, and the trees go by, the water is fab. We all stop and we have a swim, this is a true adventure – gosh, I feel wonderful, it’s exactly what we needed to do, the three of us together. Get back in feeling on top of the world, we are halfway to the next stopping point and a third of the way to the hotel stop. I can hear a bit of rushing water, the others glance back and look excited, I suddenly realise there isn’t a brake, as in there is no way of stopping.

  I can feel the water pulling me towards the rushing water, feel it making me go a bit faster. There are no trees to hang on to, so I start practising which way to do the oar to make me turn the corner or steer me round to the right bit of the river to go in the easy stream. The others go on the left-hand one, and they point at it for me to see, like, hey, you take the left one and turn round and carry on, the right-hand one doesn’t look like it leads to Niagara Falls or anything but it does have some rocks sticking out. Suddenly rocks sticking out feel a bit scary since the water is pulling me faster and faster now. No choice, it will be fun, other people in the river ahead have obviously done it and survived – carried on chatting in fact, so off I go. Bit of adrenalin, a bit scared and you might know I put the oar in the wrong way, go down the right-hand side and one minute I am in boat, next I am under water, with all my belongings rushing down the river, nothing hurt, nothing seriously to worry about, but I am suddenly aware of how dangerous this whole thing is, narrowly miss. I catch one oar somehow, get to the side and hope that someone will pick up boat, oar and the rest of my belongings downstream. Get to the side and am very frightened. Other people glide past, some of them eating ice creams and one reading a magazine making it look very easy. I am not finding it easy.

  It’s very humiliating walking along a French dual carriageway sopping wet in your bathing costume carrying one oar. People stop and ask if you’re OK, but this was the only choice. Charles said he was fine about finding canoe downstream and bringing it to the hotel. That’s wha
t he said but I could tell he thinks I am high-maintenance guest from hell.

  August 16th

  Everyone tells me it’s easy, I will get the hang of it, but since I capsized I have lost whatever nerve I had. But still there are six more canoeing days to go, so I have to get back in. First couple of hours of canoeing goes well, nice wide bits of the river, some beautiful scenery and lots of stretches where I practise which way to put the oar in to go right and left. I’ll be fine. Then a stretch of fast water comes towards me, and this time there is an overhanging tree on the bend, I miss it by about half an inch, and this is a bit of a setback. There’s no time to think, then straight into another couple of bends and I put the oar in the wrong side again but this time overcompensate for the mistake and end up – joy of joys – going round next bend backwards. I don’t capsize, I bang into the side really badly, and get stuck with my boat sticking out and suddenly about 30 teenagers in canoes come at me and have to steer round my boat, causing mayhem and shouts and more scary near misses. That’s it. I drag the boat out and wait for help. Which takes about three hours, when they finally notice I am missing at lunch stop.

  Hand canoe in to Charles who looks relieved and I effectively become coat holder and person who spends the day at the hotel. Perhaps not such a bad outcome. My adventure holiday days are over.

  August 17 th

  Lolled by pool all day worrying about GOM and YOUNGEST canoeing some tricky bits. They came back beaming – had a lovely day. Why do I find physical things so difficult when others clearly do not?

  August 20th