Being Me

It's Saturday evening as I write. This time last week my body still comprised one-fifth woman and four-fifths pudding. I was so stiff with starch that I couldn't bend at the waist to take off my socks at bedtime. I felt as though all my internal organs had been re-upholstered.   Despite all this, non, je ne regrette rien.  I had gone with two friends to The Pudding Club. It was their 60th birthday treat to me and - well - what an experience!  I'm aiming to go again on my 70th, 80th, 90th and 100th or should I ever tire of life as it could do what Dignitas does but with added custard.    Have you heard of the Pudding Club? It was started by people who felt that the traditional British pudding should be saved from extinction and celebrated. Because of this, the evening is full of ceremony and ritual as guests make their way through seven puddings, all paraded in regally, applauded and cheered.  Seven puddings? Yes, you heard correctly.  Puddings are...

My week in photographs. Enjoy!  1. This is the view from my bedroom window. Our house overlooks a Victorian graveyard (or 'gravy yard' as my granddaughter dubbed it and as we now call it). How about this for illustrating the difference between evergreen and deciduous? I can't help thinking that the bright orange one looks smug and flaunty as though it knows it's more interesting than its green neighbour. All we need, though, is a windy day, and the smugness will be wiped from its face as it shivers, embarrassed by its nakedness, while the green tree revels in its warm coat.  2. This is Guys Cliffe House, an ancient ruin which I pass on my daily walk. 'Hello, ancient ruin!' I call to it and back comes the echo 'Hello, ancient ruin!' Rude! Thirteen years ago, when we were exploring the Warwick area with a view to moving here and renting a house, I took a similar picture and sent it to all my friends, saying something like, 'It might need an update but ...

The driver, a man in his fifties, was standing outside his bus today, having a sneaky fag in the sunshine before the next trip. I waited to board, slipping on my mask.  'It's a steaming hot day,' he said. 'But I'm not one of those people who moans about the heat.' One of the talking bus drivers, I realised. They don't all want conversation, and neither might this one, after today.  'That's the best way to be,' I said, glad he'd mentioned it first, because I'd been about to moan about the heat. 'I don't moan when it's cold either,' he said.  Ah. Here I could show more empathy. 'Cardigans all the way for me.' 'Can't stand people who moan,' he said. 'If it's hot, they moan. If it's cold, they moan. They're never happy.' He began to mimic someone complaining. 'Ooooh, it's too  hot . Oooh, it's too cold. Moaners, the lot of 'em. ' I shook my head slowly from side to si...

Yesterday I visited the dentist.  Let me tell you about some of the communication issues I met. Communication #1. The email from the dentist.  Amongst the other 347 instructions regarding my consultation with the dentist about a broken tooth was this: 'Please do not use our customer toilets while you are here.'  I understand why this has to be so in the current Covid situation. But my bladder is made from cheap market-stall cling film these days, not its previous reinforced rubber. I thought back to Adam and Eve and to God saying, 'Don't eat from one particular tree,' and remembered how things turned out. I knew that as soon as I stepped over the threshold of the dentists' surgery, my bladder would want to do the one thing that was forbidden. My only option was, therefore, to visit the public conveniences in the town square once I climbed off the bus.  Communication #2  The sign in the public conveniences I washed my hands in the public conveniences using the au...

My try-to-get-fitter walk in the fields today was a silent one. I usually listen to the radio through earphones but have lost one of the soft earbuds and nothing spoils a walk more than having hard plastic nudging up against your fragile tympanic membrane. The BBC's  'Woman's Hour' is a brilliant programme but loyalty has limits.  It was disconcerting, walking in silence. Listening to radio distracts from the disturbing reality that my legs are propelling me in forward motion because, if I think too hard about this, I frighten myself.  Today, while walking, I had to listen to my own thoughts.  And now I've listened to my own thoughts, I remember why I like radio better. The inside of my head is like a wastepaper basket.   Be grateful that I only offer you a brief excerpt.  Oh, look, that bird is - / Where did I put that mark scheme. I'll need it for - / My shoes are getting muddier./ Maybe mash with the fish tonight / really muddy / The trees are defin...

I think I have a lot to offer sheep. I leaned on the fence of a nearby field recently and gazed at the flock owned by a local farmer. I told them how cute they were, with their woolly coats and soft black noses, and how glad I was to be there, watching them nibble grass. I was sure the farmer didn't have time to pay them such close attention and I knew they'd be grateful. I explained how sheep were my favourite animals and how much I'd like to hug them, telling them about when I cuddled a fat woolly-woolly sheep once at a wildlife centre and would have married it had this been socially acceptable. I told them how sure I was that my visit to them and my obvious admiration would boost their self-esteem and make them feel proud to be part of the ovine community. One sheep wandered nearer the fence and I felt privileged that it had come closer, clearly uplifted by my presence and wanting to hear more. I fished my phone out to take its picture. Here it is, hanging on m...

I mean, do I look particularly suspicious? Judging by recent events which I'll tell you about, I must do. Here's a picture of me, to remind you. Oh, sorry. Wrong picture. Here I am. See? Butter wouldn't melt! A friend says she always judges people on the basis of 'Would I let them look after my cat?' It's surprisingly reliable. Try it. You'd let me look after yours, wouldn't you? I know for sure that the headteacher of my grandson's primary school wouldn't. Even though I've waited in the school playground once a week for two years now, he didn't recognise me last Thursday when I arrived to pick up Elijah from his after-school club. I was under suspicion. I'll say here that this headteacher is a lovely man and I can't blame him for making sure I was the real deal if he didn't recognise me. I'd much rather know that he checked people out than let any Tom, Dick or Hattie in to collect children. ...

They've taken away my bus. Or, as my 5 year old granddaughter might put it, 'They've tooken away my bus.' I'll get back to the bus in a moment. You've got to love junior grammar. It's not until they're about 7 or 8 that they've fully grasped irregular verb endings. So, she's still saying things like 'I talkid to the man' or 'I rided my bike and wented to the park where I eated my icecream.' Who can blame her? It's an unjust world of irregular verbs. You emerge from the womb. You learn the verb 'to eat'. You hear someone say, 'I wouldn't have minded. You think, 'Hey, so, mind becomes minded in the past tense. This means that, on the end of verbs, if you want the past tense, you use -ed. I'm going to have a go. Hey, Ma. I eated my dinner.' 'No, dear. It's not eated. It's ate.' You WHAT? Okay, try this one, Ma. I heard someone say they walked in the garden. So, sometimes t...

I went to a writers' day recently and stopped in a nearby Costa at 9.30am as I was early arriving. I ordered a coffee, then spotted in the fridge some impressive chicken salad baguettes. That's when I remembered I was meant to be taking a packed lunch with me to the writers' day. Serendipitous!! The assistant gave me the wrapped baguette on a plate, which I didn't need, but, hey, no worries. When I got to my table, I slid the baguette into my rucksack alongside my notebook and pens, and began to sip the coffee. Barely 30 seconds later, the same assistant came past my table, looked down at my empty plate, back at my face, and said, 'Have you finished with this, Madam?' I didn't realise the implication at first or I'd have said, 'Oh, the baguette was for lunch. It's in my bag.' Instead, I realise, I let him think that I had necked that baguette in half a minute in the same way a sword-swallower appears to: all in one, and without it to...

I had my first pedicure recently. I went with my daughter-in-law as I'd bought her a salon voucher for her birthday and she said it would be more fun if we went together. I wasn't sure about it. I'm not fussed about being pampered and handled. For instance, I'm in and out of hairdressers as quick as I can be. If I can get away with a dry trim and just enough time to say hello, goodbye and 'You want HOW much?' I will. I'm not at my happiest sitting in front of a mirror, gawping at my own image for an hour. It distorts my perspective of myself. It's like when you write out the same sentence many times, as if doing lines at school. Write it once: 'I must not run in school corridors.' It looks normal the first time. By the time you've written it fifty times, the words seem surreal, unfamiliar. 'Are they real words? Is corridors really spelled that way?' In the same way, if I stare at my own face for longer than necessary, what start...

Many of us look like this in bed (bless our cotton socks). The mouth hanging open. The complete oblivion to the fact that the mouth is open. And, perhaps, the string of dribble ... But, it's not exactly a PUBLIC face, is it? Nevertheless, after two long train journeys in the last week I've realised that sleeping with one's mouth hanging open is only one of the things we're prepared to do on public transport that we probably wouldn't do elsewhere. I always get on the train determined not to sleep, especially if I'm travelling alone. But after three hours on a hot train, eyes too tired to read, and hundreds of miles of the field-field-field-field-field-one-bored-sheep variety, my eyelids droop. Half an hour later, I'm jolted awake, hoping I didn't snore like a drain, have my mouth hanging open like a dead fish, or drool. I also hope I haven't talked in my sleep about ginger biscuits, something I was once accused of doing when I stayed wi...

A crossword book travels with me everywhere now. It's a hobby that's developed into an addiction over the past couple of years. If I'm stuck at a bus stop, waiting - a daily occurrence, and sometimes twice or thrice-daily - I'll whip my crossword book out, turn to a new puzzle, and while the time away filling in the clues. I've nearly missed my bus many times. Buses sneak up on people with their heads buried in books, then hurtle past to punish you for not staying alert. There are some bus drivers around here who probably keep a joyful tally of the number of people they've outwitted this way. Never mind missing buses, though. My bigger problem, currently, is that the book I'm carrying around is filled with general knowledge crosswords. My husband bought me this for Christmas, forgetting that I do not possess General Knowledge. I possess only Generally Forgotten Knowledge and it's so far down, at the very ends of my brain neurons, or wherever knowle...

1. There is always another supermarket queue shorter than yours. However, should you join it, you'll find the person at the front of it has lost her bank card, has a box of broken eggs that need replacing, and has just remembered that she left a small child in the crisps aisle. 2. Everyone beetling up and down the main street is radiant with Christmas cheer and goodwill, but only on the inside, deep down. On the outside, they look as though they'd like to batter Santa senseless with a box set of Game of Thrones. 3. It is only once you have hurled yourself through the crowds into Baby Gap, up a long flight of stairs with all your shopping, navigated your way through hoodies, pyjamas, teeshirts and pinafore dresses, and asked three people where you'll find the socks, that you will remember you have no idea what size your grandchildren's feet are. 4. It is best not to be honest, so when the lady at the bank says, 'You do realise you could have paid in all th...

When I was about nine, I was invited to a fancy dress party. My mother, with little time or inclination for making or buying costumes, sent me as a domino. Method. 1. Take one naive, unsuspecting small child. 2. Take one old grey-white cotton pillowcase. 3. Take one indelible black pen. 4. Draw a horizontal line half-way down the pillowcase on both sides. 5. Draw large dots in the blank squares. 6. Undo half of the seam at the top of the pillowcase so that it can fit over the child's head. 7. Encase the child in the pillowcase. 8. Say 'Darling, you're bound to impress everyone. Have a super time.' 9. Send child to party. 10. Enjoy a quiet afternoon alone while your child learns that other parents make angel costumes or buy Superman outfits for their children and that sometimes life is the pits. A quick Google search tells me that, should I wish to repeat the experience forty-six years later, I could. I won't. The only other time I've ag...

I was out for a walk this morning and saw a man bring a vacuum cleaner out of his house and park it at the top of his drive. I have no idea why. Perhaps he was taking it to be mended and was about to load it into his car. Anyway, he parked it, and went back into the house. As I walked past the house, the vacuum cleaner, which was on tiny wheels, began to take on a life of its own, as though it had waited all this time for freedom, and made its way down the path which had a slight incline. It started slowly and picked up speed. I swear it took a sneaky look behind it, like a wayward child would. What would you have done if you'd seen this happening? I stood there watching it. It was halfway down the path when the man came back out, saw what was happening, raced down and grabbed it before it got on a bus to Stratford and had a day out or left the country for a new life in Bolivia. The man looked my way, but pretended not to see me. He looked sheepish, as though it were a ...

We walked into Warwick town today from our Leamington home. It's about two miles. I had to return some shoes to a shop. I thought they'd fitted me when I bought them last week but somehow by the time I got them home my feet had decided to become puffer fish. Stuffing them into the shoes was like trying to wrestle a baby back into the womb the way it came out. Had I had a bout of body dysmorphic syndrome? Why had I bought shoes to fit a pixie? I'd never felt more like an ugly sister, with a shoe dangling from my toes uselessly. Back to the walk. My husband said, 'Let's not walk to the shop down the main road. Let's take the scenic route by the river. It'll take about ten more minutes.' I checked my watch and started timing him. 'If this takes hours,' I said, 'I will have no mercy.' I am still smarting from a 'brief' walk he took me on when I was heavily pregnant thirty years ago and I thought I would have to give bi...

My husband had his first ever cocktail today when we were in a Caribbean restaurant in Birmingham called Turtle Bay. He's left that rite of passage late, being 61 next birthday. But he's always said cocktails were too sweet and more of a woman's drink. 'Go on,' I said today. 'Try it. They're 2 for 1.' If it's 2 for 1, he'll fall for it. He's Bargain Man. He'll buy fourteen pounds of broccoli from a market stall just because he can and for the next week it's broccoli in everything. Take it from me, one can have too much broccoli jam and I've little good to say about the homemade icecream. But, cocktails a woman's drink, huh? So, how come, after one concoction of rum, lime juice and ginger beer called a Jamaican Mule, did he grab the waiter by his apron strings and demand an immediate refill within thirty seconds or he'd want to see the manager? I was a tad worried. He gets chatty after even one beer and, being a g...

I've been thinking about tone. Windows 10 just said to me, 'Your battery is nearly out of power. You might want to plug in your laptop.' Sarcasm? From a computer program? Do I have to take this? It reminded me that, in London, on South West Train services, there's a sneery woman's voice on the tannoy which admonishes the passengers thus: ' Please remember to take all your personal items with you.' The 'please' comes out as a sigh, as though what she really wants to say is, 'You are basically uneducated, irresponsible scum, all you passengers, and if it were up to me, we'd lock all the doors from the outside and let you rot amidst your scabby rucksacks, laptop cases and handbags.' Another thing. I was standing at a bus stop one morning recently, awaiting a bus into Leamington. The bus stop is right by someone's garden wall and it was a humid day. My ankles were swelling up as though wanting to occupy the whole of Warwickshire b...

I'm sorry I've been absent for a month or so. Did anyone notice? Did you wonder what that unusual quiet was, or why you could suddenly hear birdsong and butterflies whispering? The reason is, I've been writing the first second third fourth seventy-ninth draft of a novel all summer, grabbing the opportunity afforded by a long teacher holiday, or should that be 'long holiday for teachers' in case you think it's only for teachers who are unusually lanky with limbs like string. What fun syntax is, readers!! Here are some other things I have done this summer. Thing I did #1 I came within a few inches of snogging a llama at a farm. Is it just me, or is that llama looking sideways at my daughter-in-law taking the photo as if to say, 'Please get this llady away from me as soon as possible.' Thing I did #2 I stayed in a holiday cottage in the Cotswolds where all the mirrors were so high up on the walls you had to be six feet tall to see more tha...