No! I Don't Want to Join a Book Club: Diary of a Sixtieth Year

by Virginia Ironside

  When I got back I found a huge bunch of flowers waiting with the neighbors. It was, oddly, from the now-widowed Archie.

  “Happy Birthday!” read the note. Then: “Lunch? Or dinner? Do ring. Much, much love, Archie.”

  Dinner? Much, much love? Surely not. It’s odd how, even at my great age, one reads so much into such things. Recently I found myself counting the number of “xx”s a girlfriend had written on an email. Why only one? Why not two? Had I done something wrong? But I must say it would be lovely to see Archie again. He’s always been a friend, along with Mrs. Archie, the poor dead Philippa, but I haven’t had a proper conversation with him à deux for a couple of years.

  In the evening I went round to Jack and Chrissie’s flat in Brixton for a sixtieth-birthday supper with Hughie and James. I gave James a lift but Hughie stayed behind because he wasn’t feeling well.

  In the car, I asked: “What’s up? A cold?”

  James looked worried. “He’s had this cough for ages now, and today he really feels terrible. I’ve told him to go to see the doctor, but he won’t. When I ask him to make an appointment just for my sake, he gets angry. I’ve begged him to take arnica and echinacea, but he says it’s all snake oil. I even turned the bed round the other way because I’m certain that facing north does us no good, but he got so angry he just put his pillow down at the bottom and slept the other way round, so I had his feet next to my face.”

  “I can’t imagine Hughie angry,” I said. “Or rather,” I added, having just imagined it and been unpleasantly surprised at what my brain came up with, “I can. It must be horrible. Cutting and sarcastic, I suppose.”

  “You have it,” said James. “His temper is like a nuclear bomb. Very, very rarely used, but when it is, it causes death and destruction all round.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “He wouldn’t get angry with me because I can do the mumsy old pal act.”

  “I wish you would,” said James, suddenly turning to me at the lights, with an expression of such relief and gratitude on his face that I resolved to tackle Hughie as quickly as possible. “Oh,” he added, “congratulations about being a grannie-to-be. Jack told me yesterday when he invited me, but I promise I won’t tell a soul.”

  When we arrived at the flat—well, actually, it’s more half a house—Chrissie was looking a little bit fatter, but the pregnancy’s not yet obvious. She isn’t giving up her job till the last minute—she’s one of these dynamic women who’s in charge of marketing some kind of spa therapy around the world and has been known—I’ve seen it—to conduct three conversations at once on different phones.

  Much to my astonishment, I found Jack, once king of grunge, sitting on the sofa, wearing a cardigan and reading the Guardian. The realization that one’s child is not only an adult, but a responsible adult who is about to become a father is quite astonishing. Phrases like “Don’t you think, darling, that you might polish your shoes now and again?” seem to dry up before their bony fingers even start plucking at the vocal chords.

  They had ordered an Indian take-away, with extra pappadams, which was delicious, Chrissie had baked a totally scrumptious chocolate cake and everyone sang “Happy Birthday.” They had all clubbed together to buy me a DVD player. Can’t quite think when I will use it, as I am never in, but I was incredibly touched. Perhaps they imagine that every night I curl up with a video and a crossword puzzle. I also got a whole pile of special soaps and bath gels, which Chrissie got from work, none of which I can use, unfortunately, because I am at an age when I am allergic to every single product with scent in it and have to stick with boring old Simple soap. But it was a nice thought.

  Nicest present of all was a pedometer, which I’d asked for. Since I’m now out of the bunion shoes, armed with this gadget I’ll be able to find out if I am remotely fit. Feel a bit nerdy wanting a machine to tell me whether I’m taking enough exercise or not, but after five minutes pottering around the flat and going to the loo once, I’d already clocked up about one hundred steps, so I felt delighted with myself. I think I’ll have to keep it on somehow in bed because these days I must go to the loo about three times a night, and it would be a shame to miss out on a few steps. Though it might be a bit uncomfortable trying to sleep with it under my nightie.

  “What do you want to be called, Mum?” Jack asked. “When the baby arrives.”

  Having been brought up by two people who tried to insist I call them by their Christian names, I long for everyone to be called by their proper family names—from Daddy and Mummy to Auntie and Uncle. Then, when a friend at school refers to their own grannie, they can join in the conversation with chat about their gran, too. Not their own “Annabel” or “Chris.”

  So, naturally, I replied that I wanted, if at all possible, to be called “Grannie.” Obviously if the baby couldn’t manage it, I’d be happy with “‘Moo Moo” or “Grandy” or whatever it came up with. I wouldn’t even mind being called “Grungy” or “Grumpy.” When Philippa was alive I remember she couldn’t bear the word “grannie” and even balked at the word “grandchild,” insisting that hers was always referred to as her “daughter’s baby.”

  “I think you ought to be called ‘Glammy,’” said James. “You’ll be the most glamorous grannie I know.”

  “Glammy!” said Jack and Chrissie in horror, together. “How naff!”

  “Well, it’s better than ‘Gaga,’” I said, not that I’d like to be “Glammy,” of course.

  “The five ages of man,” said James. “Lager, Aga, Saga, Viagra, Gaga.”

  It was my first night of being sixty and I slept like a baby.

  February 4

  Went to a “cozy birthday supper” with Marion and Tim, which was much jollier than the last time. Just us, and not a therapist in sight. Tim had written me a beautiful poem, which he read out, rather drunkenly, over pudding.

  Oh, how you do defy the years

  You’re half the age of all your peers

  In fact you’re only twenty-five

  Compared to you, we’re half-alive

  So clinging to your skirts we go

  While you disdain Time’s stupid flow!

  Very flattering and sweet, of course, but that preoccupation with being young unnerves me.

  I’d have been very happy with a poem that went:

  At last you’re free of youth’s cruel chains

  With time to sit and count your gains—

  Experience, peace and lack of fear

  Are gifts of this, your sixtieth year.

  So celebrate the past unroll’d

  And cheer the fact that now you’re OLD!

  Or something like that. I would never have made a poet, clearly.

  Slightly worried to find that, driving back, I couldn’t see a thing, I stopped and cleaned my glasses but still everything seemed incredibly fuzzy.

  Feb 5

  Rang up Penny and asked if she could see. She said yes, she could. I then asked her if she could see in the dark and she said no, only vampires, owls and moles can see in the dark, and I said but seriously, I can’t see when driving and I can’t see to read in bed at night. So she looked the problem up in her book Eyes: Problems Of and it turns out that after sixty, people need two-thirds more light to read by than they did when they were twenty. Made a date with the optician’s at once.

  Penny has booked a jaunt to Nice for us in June.

  Feb 6

  Is there actually something wrong these days with the word “old”? I wonder. I was in Waterstones today and saw a book that was a compilation of quotes from people over sixty with the unbelievable title Late Youth. What are all these euphemisms? I’ve even heard people talk of the “autumn of life.” I’m starting to think that “old” is becoming a dirty word. While I quite understand why we should avoid using certain words, not using the word “old” seems as coy and ludicrous as Victorians putting skirts on their piano legs because they felt so uncomfortable at the sight of them.

  Though I was rather
touched by Hughie who the other day described James’s aunt of ninety-five as “very grown up indeed.”

  Feb 7

  Had lunch with Lucy in her London pied-à-terre. She gave me a lovely pot of hyacinths. She does yoga and showed me the Sun Salutation on her carpet. Luckily, I managed to do it, too, though I didn’t like it when your leg has to be stretched out behind you.

  “We’ve got to stay fit,” she said, worriedly, “or we’ll fall to pieces.” She dreads becoming sixty because she thinks that something terrible will happen to her.

  “You know when teenagers reach fourteen they go to bed the night before their birthday perfectly sweet and amiable, and wake up on their fourteenth birthday sulky, slamming doors, spotty and telling you they wished they’d never been born,” she said. “Well, I believe that the day before I’m sixty I’ll go to bed perfectly normal, and wake up on my sixtieth birthday ranting about the state of the world, shouting that teenagers have no respect, and complaining about the amount of rubbish left on my street.”

  I assured her that I’d been complaining about the rubbish left on my street from about the age of forty. But, of course, living in Shepherds Bush it’s difficult not to complain about the rubbish because often it is hard to get out of one’s front door for the piles of old fast-food cartons, chicken bones, half-drunk Special Brew cans, broken television sets, mattresses, bags of what look like dead babies, oozing car batteries and old sofas that clog up the pavements.

  Feb 8

  I am plagued with spam. I think it’s because someone once sent me an all-singing, all-dancing birthday card via some company in the States and now I am deluged with ads for Viagra and penis enhancement, not to mention desperate requests for money from Nigerians. This is the latest, which I rather liked:

  Minister Charles Simpson has the power to make you a

  LEGALLY ORDAINED MINISTER within forty-eight hours!

  WEDDINGS

  MARRY your BROTHER, SISTER, or your BEST FRIEND!

  Don’t settle for being the BEST MAN OR BRIDESMAID

  FUNERALS

  A very hard time for you and your family

  Don’t settle for a minister you don’t know!

  BAPTISMS

  You can say “WELCOME TO THE WORLD! I AM YOUR

  MINISTER AND YOUR UNCLE!”

  What a special way to welcome a child of God

  WANT TO START YOUR OWN CHURCH??

  After your LEGAL ORDINATION, you may start your own

  congregation!

  Since I know how much you want to help others, you’re going to receive your Minister Certification for under $100.00…Not even $50.00…You are going to receive the entire life-changing course for only $29.95.

  For this you will receive:

  8-inch by 10-inch certificate in color, with gold seal (Certificate professionally printed by an ink press)

  Proof of Minister Certification in your name

  Shipping is free

  How about getting a certificate and then, during the christening of this little person, suddenly bursting out with: “Welcome to the world! I am your minister and your grandmother!”

  Perhaps not.

  Feb 19

  Went to optician’s. At sixty, I now have free eye tests—brilliant!—but rather irritatingly, being sixty, my sight barely changes (except at night and in front of the computer). So just at the time you don’t need them, you get them for nothing. Typical. When I arrived, the man behind the counter, the nephew of Mr. Ahmed, who runs the shop, was complaining about the smell of drains. As far as I could make out, the manhole for the drains for the entire block of flats above opens in the basement of the optician’s. Mr. Ahmed himself came up looking very peeved, rubbing his hand as if he’d had a nasty encounter with a piece of slime, or worse, down there.

  He tested my eyes and told me that my sight hadn’t changed at all—but, he revealed gleefully, he could see cataracts growing already. He gave me the news as if he’d spotted the first crocuses coming up in spring. I felt a bit depressed. Then I got cross, because if my sight hasn’t changed, why can’t I see?

  I’ve never been really able to see with my present glasses. I can’t see the words on my computer screen unless I crane my neck right back. I have tried sitting on piles of cushions, so the computer is lower than me. I have tried putting dozens of ancient Victorian volumes of Punch underneath the monitor to raise it, but nothing makes any difference. Mr. Ahmed says the problem could be one of two things. First, it could be floaters. Certainly, so many dark floaty shapes pass my eyes I sometimes feel as if I am walking through an autumn forest in a storm. Or, more likely, it could be that the line of midvision is bad because of the fashionably tiny glasses I have.

  Mr. Ahmed and his nephew stared at my line of vision, made marks with a special pen on my glasses, garbled optical jargon to each other and finally said that if I were to pay £575 for a new pair I would be able to see perfectly well. I gulped. No reaction. Then I gulped again, more loudly. Nothing. Finally I said: “Golly, that’s frightfully expensive!” and got a result.

  “For you, £500,” said Mr. Ahmed’s nephew.

  It is still “Cripes!”, however much money they take off.

  When I left I had a sudden thought: Could the smell in the drains be due to all the old cataracts they flush down them? Yuk.

  I then went to Sainsbury’s to buy some fish, and some special food they do that Pouncer likes. At least, he liked it last week. It’s funny with cats. They’ll refuse to eat anything but Whiskas Turkey in Gravy for about three months and then, just as you buy a whole crate of it wholesale, they’ll suddenly turn up their nose at it and eat nothing but Sainsbury’s Select Cuts of Chicken and Tuna.

  A fat man in front of me in the queue was wearing a T-shirt on which was written the word: WHATEVER.

  Later

  When I got back James rang to tell me that his aunt Jane—yes, the “very grown-up” one—has gone into a home, kicking and screaming at first but not for long because apparently the place is stuffed with what he calls “wingcos,” slang for “Wing Commanders.” Even if the blokes in question have lost every single marble they ever had, Jane, who retains only about half a marble, is still galvanized and rejuvenated simply by the presence of a man. Exactly, in fact, like me. Funny that. I have no interest in men at all these days on the sexual front, thank God, but I can still get flattered out of my tree by a man, any old man, turning his eyes onto me and twinkling and flirting.

  Asked Hughie round for a drink to help me with the DVD—not that he knows anything about such things but I thought he could read the instructions out to me while I followed them. More important, I wanted to tackle his cough. He dropped by but, instead of looking five years older than me, which he is, he looked pretty washed-up, more like someone of my father’s age in his final days.

  “Are you losing weight, Hughie?” I asked, when I let him in. “You’re not looking quite as…er…well-covered as you were the last time I saw you.”

  “Well-covered! What a word,” said Hughie. As he came in he coughed, which was lucky because if for some reason he hadn’t coughed I would have been up a gum tree. “Doesn’t everything look lovely?” he said, admiring the room as he sat down. “You’re so lucky to have Maciej. He’s so good-looking, too. James and I have to put up with a terrible old duck called Lilian who does nothing but call in sick.”

  We tried to work the DVD but drew a blank. It involves something called a scart plug, and whenever I hear those words my brain goes kind of dead. I don’t know what a scart plug is and I never will. When I rang Jack, he told me it was a fat thing full of prickles, so I then had a vague idea of what it looks like and he told me that we had stored several of these in his old room upstairs.

  “Mum, you’ve got dozens of scart plugs,” he said. “In that chest. In my old room.”

  I thought about it. Jack’s old room was now lived in by Michelle. I could just imagine the daunting piles of CDs, beauty products, DVDs, plastic bags
and castoff handbags that Michelle would have stuffed on top of my assorted collection of wires. So I thought that enough was enough for that evening. I’d got the DVD player out of its box, and that was scary enough. I will tackle the scart situation tomorrow.

  In the meantime, it was easy to tackle Hughie about the doctor, since he coughed all the time.

  “Hughie, what are you going to do about that cough?” I said. “It’s terrible. Have you seen the doctor?”

  “No,” he said, “but you’re right. I must. James keeps nagging me. I’ll make an appointment tomorrow. I swear on my mother’s grave.”

  “Your mother was cremated. She doesn’t have a grave,” I said, Sherlock Holmes–like in my eagerness to stop up all the loopholes that Hughie might use to avoid seeing the doctor.

  “So she was,” said Hughie. “But I will. I’ve got to get it sorted out.”

  But I had a very strong feeling that he wouldn’t do anything about it at all. He looked like a man who was deceiving himself. However, I couldn’t press him any further, so I left it at that.

  March 4

  A late birthday lunch with Archie at a restaurant called Pulli in fashionable Clerkenwell. It was very nice of him to organize it, because he must still be feeling pretty grim after Philippa’s death. It was only six months ago, too. I imagined him thinking: “Why should I be celebrating Marie’s birthday when poor old Philippa never even got to sixty?” That’s how my mind would work, anyway. But Archie’s probably too nice to think like that.

  He is wonderfully self-effacing. The message on my answering machine to invite me for lunch, went: “Could you bear to give me a ring if the idea of having lunch with me isn’t absolute anathema to you?” When he rang to make the date, he’d said: “Let’s meet on Thursday—if we live that long…”

  God knows how Archie booked a table, because Pulli is a restaurant in which you have to kill to get one, but no doubt he tips like a trooper. (Do troopers tip? Or do they swear?)

  I must say that catching sight of him waiting outside the restaurant did rather make my heart lurch. I know lots of people adore chunky blokes in vests or simmering young Italians with tumbling black curly hair, but for me the sight of a tall, svelte, middle-aged Englishman wearing a long, well-cut tailored coat open down the front, standing in a London street, is something to capture my heart—if my heart were capturable, that is.