The Secret Diary of a Grumpy Old Woman

by Judith Holder

  You are addicted, destined for a life of catalogues in the foreseeable future, on the slippery slope that leads to a personalised doormat or a bird table tidy, and you can do nothing about it, your days are now well and truly clogged up with it all. You’re either ordering, receiving, picking up from the post office because you were out when the van came, querying your order in the telephone queue, or taking it back to the post office and standing in the queue. Your life is now catalogue led.

  Once the companies all start to syndicate postcodes and names you are sunk – the postman has so many catalogues for you, he has to make a special trip to your house full of beige easy-care fabrics, with elasticated waists and apricot tops with appliqued puppies or horses and an orgy of slip-on shoes, slip-on trousers, slip-on slips and tops that drop from the bust, which means you are officially dressed to run a bring-and-buy sale, not for getting off with anyone. You’re doomed.

  My mother – being that bit ahead of me in the age stakes and having had a Freeman catalogue habit most of her life – now has dozens of catalogue return packs by her front door at any one time. She is cheerfully spending my inheritance to boot.

  October 15th

  The food allergist writes to me with her official findings having done her scientific(l) analysis on my hair and lists what I should and shouldn’t eat from now on. Apparently the scientific(!) tests show that I am allergic to both wheat and dairy, which is going to make my life a bit tricky to say the least. So now I am into specialist breads and milk – I need to buy something called spelt flour bread, wheat-free pasta, goat’s milk or cheese, and soya milk. Yum. No wonder everyone loses weight.

  October 16th

  After driving 40 minutes out of my way on the way to work I find the specialist shop with spelt bread loaves. I stock up and buy four of the loaves, three to freeze and one to eat now. They are each of them heavier than house bricks, heavy enough to actually put your back out.

  I might sue her.

  October 17th

  YOUNGEST announces at 9.45pm – just as she is going to bed – that she is making a swiss roll in domestic science, sorry I should say food technology, tomorrow. She needs all the ingredients weighed out and bagged up and in the basket for tomorrow morning otherwise Miss will be furious. Strikes me that weighing it all out is part of Miss’s job description not mine, but she knows as well as I do that teenagers don’t do anything as fiddly and time- consuming as that – and so she knows full well that their mothers will do it for them. I don’t know why they can’t weigh the wretched stuff out at school. But no, it’s all designed to make our lives, my life, more difficult and more stressful, and make everyone else’s easier and run smoother. Hence I hit Tesco’s at 9.45pm, which is just when I really want to be sitting down, or lolling with a glass of wine, but now I’m here I might as well do the weekend shop despite the fact that I am in bad-tempered, horrible, spitty-type mood, because joy of joys, it will save me going tomorrow…In other words I shall be able to cross something off tomorrow’s list which is officially fantastic.

  I do the weekend shop and the domestic shop in record time, skim my trolley round the top of the aisles, taking the corners off, skidding up to raisins and baking and then back over to eggs and smoked salmon. It is blissfully empty, and since I know my way around the place so tragically well, I actually think I might do all my shopping on Thursdays at this time from now on. Yes, this is fantastic! Get to the counter and realise I have left my credit card at home because I left in such a huffy bad-tempered rush, and so only have £5 cash; once we have got it all halfway through the till, stupid gormless assistant has to get the supervisor over and they say they are about to close, and in the end I have to put everything else back other than for swiss roll recipe but come away with everything but the raisins. Have to call three of YOUNGEST friends’ mothers to check if they can bring in enough raisins for us too. Two of them know nothing about the lesson and say that their darling must have already packed it all up. Model daughters evidently. It all takes until 10.30pm. To top it all Clarissa’s mother (who does have spare raisins) takes the opportunity to rope me in for the Christmas Fayre at school running the bric-a-brac, which is code for a load of old junk no one wants that will need to be labelled up and lugged in and out of school and eventually just taken down to Oxfam. If I didn’t have a life I would write in to the Head and complain.

  October 20th

  What is it with compost heaps? Everyone else manages to get theirs to mulch down into black soil, like proper bought bagged-up compost, and mine just remains a big pile of leaves and potato peelings and weeds that smells in the corner of the garden and annoys me. It doesn’t seem to decompose at all, just is basically an extension of the dustbins but smellier. Ring my mother and ask her advice – since she does gardening – and she says you have to turn it all over every few weeks, get a big fork at it and turn the whole thing over; also putting tea leaves on is supposed to help. Suddenly having a compost heap is another task, another job. I thought gardening was for retired people or was supposed to be relaxing. I think I shall go back to just binning it all up in bin bags with some household rubbish to fool the dustbin men again.

  October 31st

  Hallowe’en. What a stupid idea that is. The shops are full of Hallowe’en merchandise. Even the local baker has got some Hallowe’en spider-topped cakes and orange and black biscuits. John Lewis has a full-on display of Hallowe’en-themed serviettes, hats and recipes mostly involving pumpkins. Sainsbury’s staff are all dressed up in orange and black capes and horns, and suddenly Hallowe’en seems to have taken hold, like a bad computer virus. The shops are selling actual pumpkins, things the size of a lawnmower and as heavy that presumably we are all supposed to lug home, haul on to the kitchen work surface, peel, somehow, hollow out and make a spooky thing you put candles in, and then with all the hollowed-out flesh we are supposed to make more pumpkin pie, soup and stew than most families would eat in the whole year. It’s just so stupidly American, and so obviously a way of getting us to spend more money. We British have Bonfire Night. We like Bonfire Night, it’s nice and simple with bangers and baked potatoes and some sparklers and some fresh air and the smell of gunpowder, so why do we always have to copy the Americans?

  YOUNGEST naturally watches so much American telly on Sky that she is much more into Hallowe’en than Bonfire Night, and her mates want to do trick or treat. I don’t get trick or treat nor do I want to get it. I don’t want my children going round to the local white trash knocking on their doors and running away, and I don’t want them to come back with a load of old pick and mix that someone else has had their filthy hands on.

  All this and having to eat five pieces of fruit and veg a day.

  ∨ The Secret Diary of a Grumpy Old Woman ∧

  November

  November 1st

  This year I am going to make Christmas really magical. ELDEST will be coming home, and our family will be complete once more. For once I shall make my own cake, pudding and mince pies. I might make my own mince meat too, how hard can it be? I browse through the Delia Christmas book and look at her luscious photos. Perhaps I should also crystallise some fruit, or preserve some plums in Kilner jars with tartan bows on? They’d make lovely presents for neighbours and aunts, and Mother-in-law would think I was a model wife.

  November 3rd

  On the train to London I am in same section as annoying man on mobile who has incredibly long conversation with his wife. When I say a long conversation I mean it goes on for a good 40 minutes. Naturally everyone in the carriage is treated to being able to hear every word – like any of us are in the least bit interested – on and on he drones…despite all my frowning and tutting and staring, he is oblivious. For a man of his age, and considering he is talking to his wife, the conversation is surprisingly racy; he’s holding the phone like he’s snogging it, he giggles, gets really animated. I am impressed, if I’m honest I’m a little bit jealous.

  Conversations with GOM are by cont
rast rather matter of fact. Like ‘Will you leave the milkman some money?’, ‘I’m on the one that gets in at 5.30’, or ‘Have you remembered to put the dustbin out because it’s Thursday?’ But by contrast, this is remarkably intimate. As in ‘Are you still in bed, darling, how are the girls, what are you wearing to work today?’, ‘Are they still being horrid to you, my kitten?’ I am irritated beyond measure a) because I’m a busy woman and have got a stack of things to do on my laptop and am finding it hard to concentrate, and b) because the gist of it is so in your face and oh how wonderful my marriage is. So I go up a gear and do a lot of huffing and puffing, slapping my book on the table and looking fed up. Not that he notices one bit.

  We hear all about the business dinner he had last night, whom he was sat next to and that he got ‘nicely merry’. Then, curiously, he asks her if there is any news on selling her house. Odd. At last he does the stupid love you love you thing as he hangs up. Good. But then, would you credit it – oh my God – he picks up the phone again almost immediately. So much for my huffing and puffing to shame him – I will have to go and get the guard and make huge fuss, but this time he gets an answer machine. ‘Hi darling. Just to remind you I’m on the way back to London today. Must fix up something for our anniversary. Love you.’ I think my mouth dropped open. So the first call was not to wife at all, but to lover, and this one is the poor wife unaware of the situation. If I was a real urban vigilante I would intervene. Do something. Make a citizen’s arrest. Snatch his phone and dial his wife and tell her. Poor woman. No idea at all. I hate his silly little finger signature ring and posh accent. Probably so does his wife. She’ll be well shot of him. Things are never what they seem.

  November 4th

  YOUNGEST’s birthday. There is no big sister as big sister has flown the nest, but we do what we always do and put balloons down the staircase and the big Happy Birthday poster in the kitchen and the presents on the sofa, but it’s not quite the same without her big sister. GOM triumphantly presents her with The Rat Race DVD. At least he’s managed that! She opens it and looks dismayed…’What’s Rat Pack?7 she says. ‘I asked for Rat Race not Rat Pack. And anyway who are Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra?’ Honestly, you’d think that some alarm bells would have gone off. Why on earth would a fourteen-year-old want a DVD with Dean Martin? Dur. Usual story, if you want something doing, do it yourself.

  November 5th

  I decide to make Bonfire Night extra special, to show YOUNGEST how much better it is than stupid Hallowe’en. I throw a bit of a party with some of the neighbours and old friends, tell her she can ask as many friends as she likes and organise some games. In short, I try to recreate my own childhood Bonfire Night parties. I couldn’t find a toffee apple recipe, so had to ring my mother (got involved in who is going where at Christmas conversation – always tricky). She had lost hers but says it is dead easy. You put about two bags of sugar to a quarter of a pint of water, cook it till it bubbles for about half an hour and then dip your apples in. Easy. Let them dry on racks and marvellous fun had by all.

  Spend most of my lunch hour finding stick things to put apples on, none of the shops sell them, but have plenty of Hallowe’en trash still on knock-down offer, so I have to buy thin barbecue spikes and cut them in half, then rope them together like a little splint to hold the weight. All maddeningly time-consuming, but they are going to be very good indeed. Might make enough for next day as well as I imagine they are going to be very popular. Put in four bags of sugar and double the water and leave to heat up very hot on a high jet while I busy myself with baked potatoes, sausages, toad in the hole and organising the apple-bobbing bucket.

  Clarissa rings about the bric-a-brac stall and her silly wretched Christmas Fayre, and has a long list of things I need to do, and some dates for my diary (has she got nothing else to do?) but have to break off when the smoke alarms go off, and rush into the kitchen full of thick dark black smoke like the ones they show you in those scary public health films telling you that Smoke Can Kill…which having witnessed some of it at first hand I can now believe. Open all the windows, manage to get pan outside the back door still bubbling and smoking like a volcano and begin cleaning up the mess. Takes me a good 30 minutes to clear the smoke, deactivate the smoke alarms and see the full scale of the damage. Bubbling ‘toffee’ has boiled all over the cooker hob and dripped down front of cooker itself, a trail of solidified toffee indicates exact path of burning pan’s exit, and then outside on back doorstep the thing is still smouldering, still steaming and hissing like a pressure cooker. Imagine singe mark on step will be something that remains for several generations.

  The remaining hour before guests arrive is spent whizzing round the kitchen making up for lost time with rest of cooking and party prep. GOM comes home with dismal selection of fireworks. I accuse him of leaving it as usual to the last minute but he says he had major trouble even finding a newsagent’s that sells them. YOUNGEST and her friends were ever so slightly interested in my indoor sparklers and cascading fountain. I had a lovely time standing at the window looking at fireworks going off in other people’s gardens and standing at the back door taking in the smell of it all. I bore the kids rigid with my memories of Bonfire Nights. YOUNGEST looks at me pityingly. I’m on my way to being so old I like coach trips, a run out or a walk around the garden centre. On my way to being so old people applaud me for knowing my own age.

  November 6th

  What is it with cleaners? You pay them to clean your house and then they fail to clean it PROPERLY. How many times have I asked her to do the bathroom mirror with the glass cleaner product, and to please remember to put Hoover back in cupboard under the stairs. Over the years I have written endless nice notes with kisses at the end saying, would she mind awfully or sorry to be so picky but could she possibly remember – if she has time – to clean the bathroom mirror etc. etc., then I come back home and nine times out often – guess what – the Hoover is still in hall, and bathroom mirror spattered!!!! I am getting to the stage where I intentionally put a mark on the bathroom mirror on a Friday morning and rush upstairs when I come home from work to check whether it’s gone. For some reason it’s impossible to talk to cleaners like you talk to anyone else, impossible to say ‘look, when you clean the house you must do the bathroom mirror please’. There should be a contract with a clause in it, as in a job description, that way no one could quibble with it. I want to say ‘look here, lady, pull your socks up or you’re out’, But no, I pussyfoot around the problem, which kind of makes it worse.

  More wiry hairs have appeared under my nose, a couple of them poking out of my nose. I am turning into GOM with grey hair and a beard, and he is turning into me with big bum and the start of boobs. The tweezers have become all-important daily weapon against this tendency of mine to turn into a man. Tweezing them out is murder and hurts like hell. I complain about YOUNGEST spending all her time in the bathroom but am frankly nearly as bad. Stare at myself in the bathroom mirror for a good five minutes. The double chin is horrendous. Wish I could do a Jeremy Beadle and grow one of those silly trompe l’oeil beards that go round your jawline, don’t amount to much but trick the eye and disguise your three chins. Actually looking at the growth under my chin I could get lucky. It’s simply so much easier for men, to lose their looks, get fat and old and hairy and bald simultaneously. For us it is really and truly hard.

  November 8th

  Christmas is simply not going to go away. They have been playing the Slade ‘Do You Know It’s Christmas’ in Boots and Safeway’s for weeks, everyone is in Operation Christmas mode. There are some people at work who have already done their shopping! Done it! Only got to wrap it up. Other people pretend they haven’t done anything but they have, like students who pretend they have not done any revision for the exam when in fact they’ve been revising for weeks, so have all the women at work. I’ve seen the carriers by their desks. They have so started. I have not. Because the moment I start is the moment I get a whole new ‘to do’ list, the on
e that is the biggest of the year. The one that dwarfs all other ‘to do’ lists. But try as I might to ignore it, I am going to have to face it. It is going to be my life sentence for the next seven weeks, and is going to cost me an obscene amount of money. I am doomed.

  November 12th

  Another funeral. Inevitably the older you are, the more funerals there are to go to; I guess once you are in your seventies they become one of your main social activities, meeting up with your ever decreasing circle of mates. It’s a nice day out – unless of course you were incredibly close to the newly dead, in which case it is somewhat different, but with a neighbour or a distant uncle it’s a celebration, a party with real camaraderie, some sandwiches and some uplifting thoughts. I like the speeches, the dedications, the lovely things people say about their friends and family, the feeling of getting a good sob out of your system. I like a nice rousing hymn like ‘Abide with Me’ or ‘Jerusalem’. It’s good for the soul. Today’s was a Quaker funeral which, if you can have a favourite sort, is mine. Think I might go for a Quaker funeral myself…then again not sure. Big decision. Love the way everyone who wants to can stand up and say what they want, dedicate a poem, retell an anecdote, say what they will always remember of the person. Lovely way to do it.

  We stream out of the church into the winter sunshine, and go to Mary’s for some vol-au-vents and a glass of sherry, with some Van Morrison playing as that was his favourite music. A lovely day.