Lola came over last night. We go back a long way. We know each other’s histories. I took her skiing after her mother died and she came to my father’s funeral. When we climbed Mount Sinai she took the piss out of my Burberry plimsoles and then when I subsequently lost my big toe nail a week later (they were lovely but too tight), I sent it to her in the post. She saved me from drowning in Egypt.
It was a glorious summer evening and we sat in the garden.
“Why did you marry Milo?”
“I loved him. At least I did up until the day of our wedding. I can remember quite clearly I was doing the washing up and I had this sudden realization that the love was no longer there.”
It happens.
She needed a drink desperately and so did I.
“Why didn’t you marry Richard?”
“I didn’t like his willy.”
“…What was wrong with it?”
“Nothing per se but it just didn’t work between us.”
That happens too.
I’m playing smug marrieds this week as Mr. J. is here, which is nice, sort of. We had one of those lulls at the breakfast table this morning over our poached eggs and apple and leek sausages from Waitrose. (Since moving to London sausages are our dirty little secret). We both looked at each other and found ourselves lost for words. It has come to this. Twenty-five years of chat and then we grind suddenly to a halt.
A friend of ours has started dating again. She’s lost weight and has a permanent tan and wears a lot of tight clothing. We were both in a reverie of what it would be like to be “out” there again. It is indeed a horrifying prospect to get back into the shark infested waters.
“The problem is that I don’t DO what it says on the tin,” I said feeling clever.
Mr. Jules’ brow furrows.
“You see,” I explain patiently, knowing that if I was having this conversation with a girlfriend it would all be so much easier as women can talk to each other in shorthand. “I look quite innocent and nice, well okay, and feminin on the outside but I’m quite complex really with my books and my esoteric beliefs and my airiness and my strange humour and my love of solitude…
“Oh yes.”
“And then there’s all the other things: my wobbly bits and flossing in bed and oh god, the shame of reading glasses.
“And watching Made in Chelsea.”
“It’s research! What about your addiction to the golf channel?”
“It’s research.”
“The fact that you cannot read a book with more than two characters otherwise you get confused.”
“Putting your sticky fingers on MY computer screen”
“Falling asleep in theatres.”
“Overfilling the dishwasher.”
“Underfilling the dishwasher.”
“Trying to get stoned without inhaling.”
“It’s not my fault I can’t inhale. Eating out of the fridge.”
“The constant commentary on life.”
“I thought you liked that. Getting out of bed in the middle of the night to work.”
“Losing things.”
“I didn’t lose the bike key yesterday. Constant sniffing from your congenitally defect adenoids”
“Watching Madmen.”
“You LOVE Madmen
“That’s true.”
“Your back pain.”
“YOUR back pain.”
“That’s so weird that we mirror each other.”
I am being stalked by someone called Ed who thinks I am an alcoholic and really would benefit by spending lots of money on his programme. He sends me threatening emails entitled Warning 2nd Notice. Ed has sneakily disguised the unsubscribe link – the equivalent of hiding it under the rug – in a mass of code so that you and him will forever be joined. But I found it and then, cheeky sod, just as I was racing away from the stink of his exhalations, he tried to keep me in his web by selling me a programme on how to manage money. He has no shame. Just a long dirty knife with which he digs deeper into the wound of your shame.
“Just before you go how about you empty your bank account here.“
Ed is a particularly depraved perverse spider preying on you, the fly, and all your human weakness and gullibility. It is rather sickening to think that someone has made a business out of another person’s illness. He probably has one on eating disorders too. I hate Ed. And if you are reading this and you work for Ed or a company such as Ed’s then you would be doing us all a favour by resigning. We all need to stick to our values more and these practices are vile.
I need a drink.
Mr. Jules and Lexi have gone hunting for a pony out in Sussex. There’s a whole new lexicon that you have to learn when talking about ponies and I know I would only embarrass myself by saying foot instead of hoof and boy horse instead of gelding so I declined to join their gang for this trip – which Lexi looked relieved about. Anyway I’m busy working on my mini dissertation: Yoga and its role in the ageing process. Can yoga reverse ageing? Of course not, silly. But it can make the outside look pretty (while your insides rot merrily away) and your tea won’t go cold waiting for you to get up from a chair and drink it. (I really hope my yoga teacher does not read this blog). Those last two sentences are a joke BTW and if you really are interested I will send you the document. So I’ve a very busy morning of cutting and pasting from the internet and then, the really complicated bit starts, where you have to make it sound like your own.
As no-one is counting, least of all you lot, disloyal readers, sadists gleefully delighting in my misery, I’ll digress and write of something imminently more interesting than the waiting detox game. In moments of boredom I fantasize that come 4 June – THE WEDDING DAY and as my sister says, THE REAL WEDDING DAY as this is a three day bash in a country house and not a sorry one day affair albeit in an Abbey and with a golden coach – I will be so pure on the inside that in the wedding photos there will be a golden aura around me like the smug Ready Brek Kid walking to school in his orange glow.
I’ll have to go easy on the alcohol of course as being slightly smaller than the average person I can get drunk on a wine gum and a glass of water. I proposed to my sister to include a few bacon butties amongst the canapés to help soak up the champagne but she gave me a death look which I took for no. She perfected “the look” at around the age of 7 years (Madre can confirm this) and it still leaves me quaking. (I don’t think I was in her good books as I overheard her complain to fiancé Mike that she had to pull in twice to allow me to catch up on the way back from the bridal shop. I’m only used to London roads not the madness of country lanes with blind corners, overhanging hedgerows and Dorset farmers). Ah well it will be her fault if I slur my words during The Reading.
We were going through the disco list on her ipod doing a dummy run and practicing our moves. Sophie G. walked into the kitchen took one look at my gyrations around the cat bowl, and pronounced,
“How on earth did YOU produce a dancer?”
which I thought was rather cruel especially as she hasn’t seen her father dance in a while. She has a point but she is also to blame; one third to be precise. (I thought I’d throw in a semi-colon there as a)it’s fancy and b) to check if you were paying attention. Here’s the thing: Having kids ruins your dance moves. You spend years dancing like an idiot around the house so that your little cherubs feel free to express themselves and not, god forbid, suffer the anguish of being a disco wall flower later in life and ultimately those lunatic thrashings to the Jive Bunny CD remain for good.
I can’t divulge the opening dance that the newly married couple will dance to, but we had great delight in playing around with the shuffle option. My favourite was I will Survive as the opening dance.
I almost forgot about the pony! Lexi-Lu wants a pony. In fact I think she was born wanting a pony. Every birthday and Christmas I can see her little eyes light up and even if the gift is small and box-like and obviously nowhere near the size large enough to contain a 16 hand animal with four legs and a tail, she still clings to the dream. She’s a third child, she deserves it.
P.S. It’s Day 16.
