Making It Up As I Go Along (37 page)

A
much
better month than last month. To
start with, my writer’s block has lifted and I was able to write a fair bit of the new
book, which is v. v. heartening because I always feel worthless when I’m not being
productive.

I’ve been writing about a character called
Lola Daly and I’ve come to a natural stopping point with her and now have to get into the
mindset of a new character who was to be called Sive but is no longer called Sive because
non-Irish people don’t know how to pronounce her name (when I tested subjects, some were
calling her ‘Siv-ee’ and others were calling her ‘Sieve’ (small round
things with many holes, used in cooking), when the actual pronunciation is Syve, sort of like
Scythe (Grim Reaper’s tool) but with a
v
instead of a
th
.

And let me tell you something funny, if I gave
Sive her Irish spelling, she would be spelt Sadhbh, which would REALLY pose problems).

The thing is, I find when I’m reading that
if I don’t know how to pronounce a character’s name, I can’t really bond with
her. Clearly Sive will not do. So now I am experimenting with Kate and Grace to see if either of
those names will ‘take’.

So what else? Went to England early July because
my parents-in-law John and Shirley were celebrating their fiftieth wedding
anniversary. Fifty years! Fair play. Cousins and old friends and the original best man and
bridesmaids descended in droves upon Warwickshire, and Himself was the person in charge of
organizing the celebratory lunch, which was for eighty people, and he was a nervous wreck.

At one stage I turned and asked him how he was,
and he was sitting bolt upright, his food untouched, a sheen of perspiration on his pale
forehead, and he muttered through bloodless lips, ‘I just want it to be all over and for
it to have gone smoothly.’ (Which instantly became our catchphrase – we are now
saying on the slightest of pretexts, ‘I just want it to be all over and for it to have
gone smoothly.’)

For the most part, the anniversary party DID go
smoothly, despite the shadow hanging over all of us (which I’ll get to).

The day after the knees-up, we went with John and
Shirley to Glyndebourne (place in south of England where opera goes on). Now, I will openly
admit to not being an opera person. I’m just not. I just don’t get it. And at least
I’m being honest about it and not faking being cultured and at the end I don’t lepp
to my feet and bellow, ‘Oh bravo, Diva most fair, bravo, bravo! Tour de force!’
Instead I clap politely and eye the exit.

This particular opera was
Così fan
tutte
and it has the most stupid plot ever – two blokes decide (egged on by a friend
who is a definite bad influence) to check if their girls were faithful/unfaithful, so they
announce they are going off to war (as you do) and come back wearing very bad moustaches and
pretending to be Albanians. Duped by the moustaches, the two girls don’t recognize their
old boyfriends, and after a fair amount of shilly-shallying get off with the
‘Albanians’. Moral: women are stupid and duplicitous.

Frankly, I was annoyed. No wonder the world is so
weighted
against women if this sort of propaganda is doing the rounds. And
yes, I know, it’s all about the singing really and I shouldn’t get caught up in the
plot, because all opera plots are shit, but still, I was annoyed!

The day after the sexist opera, lovely Shirley
went into hospital and had a mastectomy. She’d been diagnosed with breast cancer in June
and the doctors allowed her to have her party before the operation.

She was a superstar about it all. She came out of
hospital thirty-six hours later and her only painkillers were paracetamol! If it was me,
I’d have been on a morphine drip. Then the wait started for the results, to see if the
cancer had spread. Two full weeks of a wait. A very tense, anxious time.

Meanwhile, the war in Lebanon started and her
doctor managed to get trapped there and it seemed she wouldn’t be able to get the results
on the appointed day and things got even tenser. Anyway, we’ve just heard the news and
it’s all pretty hopeful, so thank Christ. But she’s been totally, totally amazing.
It’s incredible to me that she was so calm about it all and that there was no
song-and-dance, no post-operation infections, no allergy to the hospital food, no catching of
MRSA, no reaction to the painkillers, no demanding of strong opiates – all of which would
happen to any member of my family who had an operation. She is a complete trooper and an example
to us all.

Himself and myself went to London for a day and a
half that week and managed to get bridesmaids’ boots – with me and Caitríona
being bridesmaids at Rita-Anne’s wedding and wearing coats instead of meringuey dresses?
Yes, well, we needed brown suede knee boots to go with the coats. And it was a real boon to
track down the only size 35 brown suede knee boots in London (just in!), and my cup overfloweth
when I managed to drag them
up to my knees! Joy abounded! A second pair was
bought for Caitríona and despatched to New York and yes – hers fitted her too!

We’re going gangbusters on the wedding!
Great progress is being made. Ema is flower girl and her dress has been bought, and Luka is
ring-bearer and he’s getting kitted out for his morning suit etc. when he arrives in
Ireland on 3 August! I CAN’T WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!

Then, on the Friday of that week, me, Himself and
Suzanne went to the
Big Brother
eviction. It was so great, despite the fact that Nikki
(my favourite) was evicted. And you should see Davina (McCall) in real life – she’s
even more beautiful, if you can possibly imagine such a thing. Her skin and her hair and her
eyes GLOW, and although she is pregnant she still looks really chic (that is, of course, because
she is half-French).

Suzanne is very, very funny and even though it is
puerile, every time an unattractive man walked past, she would nudge me or I would nudge her and
say, ‘You gave him a blowjob in a hedge’ and ‘You had anal sex with him, then
he broke it off with you and you called round to his house in the middle of the night, begging
him to take you back’ just like we used to do in our twenties.

Oh yes! The garden is finished!! It’s very
nice and it hasn’t got a blade of grass (Himself’s stipulation, that mossy grass was
killing him). It’s all gravelly and decky and granitey and that sort of thing. Plants
though, also, just not grass. Pleased, yes, extremely pleased. Definitely worth all the mud and
upset.

What else? I made vegetarian moussaka –
Christ alive, what a song-and-dance! I made it because Shirley (beloved mother-in-law) made it
for us the night before the big party and it was delicious. (Even though it includes lentils.
Mind you, I’m a big fan of lentils, I’m prepared to defend them because I think they
get a very bad press.) I asked (like a lick-arsey daughter-in-law) for the
recipe and although she warned me it was ‘a bit fiddly’, nothing prepared me for the
hour-and-three-quarter marathon in the kitchen. Aubergines – yes, aubergines! Putting salt
on them, them draining them and whatnot. Then the lentils – two different types –
took ages. And when all that stuff was done, I had to make a topping with flour and eggs and
ricotta cheese. Came out nice though.

Mam and Dad went to Canada on their holiers, and
Dad was in mortal fear of losing his luggage, and in fairness he is right to be afraid because
he is related to me, who has the worst luggage karma in the world. I lose my bags so often that
I don’t bother going to the belt any more (honest to God). I go straight to the desk and
start filling in the forms.

Part of their trip included a cruise to Alaska.
(When they got back they complained to me about the cold – it’s Alaska, for the love
of God! What were they expecting? Balmy sunshine?) However, when they got on the ship,
Dad’s bag had gone missing! Yes, Mam’s two bags turned up but Dad’s was in the
wind. He created ‘merry hell’ (good phrase) by all accounts, kicking up a right fuss
at reception, demanding to see the captain, no less, and threatening to get an injunction to
stop the ship from sailing until his bag was located.

Sadly, the bag turned up before he got a chance
to put his words into actions, but in fairness, is it any wonder
I’m
anxious,
considering what my parents are like?

Meanwhile, my rude good health continues. Apart
from a small spell of cystitis I’m in top-notch condition, which is as it should be
considering the ENORMOUS AMOUNT of supplements I take every day – so many I’m
actually ashamed to list them, but anyway: magnesium (to stave off sugar cravings); spirulina
(TONS of it, on
Vilma’s advice); vitamin B6; vitamin B5; calcium (to
guard against osteoporosis); omega 3s (because you have to, you are no one if you don’t,
all the fashionable people will laugh at you); acidophilus (to keep digestion in tip-top
condition).

And there’s more, but I don’t want to
seem neurotic, which of course I am, but no one wants to look it.

Previously unpublished.

As I write, I’m just after breaking my
laptop and I am typing this at Himself’s office computer. I’d just switched off the
laptop after a morning’s work and accidentally dropped it on the floor. Now, I am always
dropping things, I am clumsy and careless, but I didn’t expect it to be BROKEN, because if
I broke everything I dropped I would have nothing left at all! But yes, I DID break the fecker.
A lump fell off it and the battery fell out and even Himself, who can fix everything,
couldn’t fix it.

He has just ferried it off to the people in
Cabinteely, who fixed the main computer when it pure crashed a couple of months ago. He thinks
it will be at least a week before it’s fixed, and to be quite honest, I’m upset.
Clearly I regard the computer as an extension of myself and the work has been going well –
slow but well – and I am really getting into my new character Marnie and now is not a good
time to have to stop. Really, it’s not.

Some might take the view that perhaps the
universe is telling me it’s time to take a break, but no, the universe is
wrong
.

Ontra noo, I suspect the universe hasn’t a
clue. Everyone thinks the universe is this wise old yoke, who knows everything, but I reckon it
is a con job. The universe probably has Alzheimer’s, because this is not a good time for
me to stop work,
at all
.

Then I went upstairs to do my meditation, in the
hope that I
might ‘centre’ myself (I’m not sure if
I’m making fun of myself or not. In a way I am, but in another way I take it all quite
seriously).

I went to set my Shaunie the Sheep kitchen timer
– I’ve stuck with him even after he let me down that other time – but to my
alarm his head was on back to front. (How?!) I set it, but held out little hope, and sure
enough, Shaunie didn’t brrringg in twenty-five minutes but clicked to sixty and stared at
me in shame, his head once more back to front. I’ll have to get another timer, but I
can’t bring myself to throw Shaunie out. I will put him on a shelf with some other broken
things, as a reward for long service.

So what else has been happening? Well, it’s
been a busy time – months can be long things, can they not? – and I have much to
report, which I’ll try to do as quickly as possible before Himself comes back and ousts me
from his chair.

(Speaking of Himself, the football season has
started, and as you know at the end of last season Himself’s team (Watford) got promoted
to the Premeer Division and I wasn’t happy, suspecting that they were in over their heads.
They’ve played three matches since the season began, they have lost two and drawn one, and
I have a knot in my stomach every time they play. Himself is being quite bullish and gung-ho,
but I’m not enjoying it one bit.)

We’ve been awash – yes, AWASH –
with visitors. Ljiljana arrived from Prague, with Ema (six), Luka (four) and Zaga (sixty-five).
(Zaga is Ljiljana’s mother. When I was at the Belgrade book fair she fed me so much on two
successive nights that I nearly wept from fullness. This was my chance to get revenge.)

God, how weird! Ljiljana has just rung. And me
just writing about her! It is funny being in Himself’s office, in the hub, with phones
ringing, etc. Normally I wouldn’t know about anything until I came downstairs at the end
of the day. I told her the sorry story of my smithereened laptop and how upset I was, and she
said the next stage would be denial, then anger, then I would say,
‘Feck this for a game of soldiers, I’m going shopping!’ (Acceptance, I believe
that stage is called.)

So, in instalments, we went to Lahinch. First
Tadhg, Susan, Lilers and Luka. Then Rita-Anne, Jimmy, Ema and Zaga, then, bringing up the rear,
Himself and me. Lovely, lovely time, except a consignment of them went out in the boat to see
the Cliffs of Moher and nearly drowned. Honest to God! I stayed back in the house, working, and
the next thing I heard a helicopter clattering overhead, which I just thought was some smug, fat
golfer in a visor and hideous clothes, getting choppered into the Lahinch golf course. But no!
It was the Air and Sea Rescue Helicopter, and it flew so close to the window that myself and a
rescue man in a red jumpsuit made
actual eye-contact
, then he winked – yes,
WINKED, at my age! – at me.

It eventually transpired that it wasn’t
Lilers/Zaga/Himself et al who needed rescuing, but it was bad enough. Huge waves had their boat
almost on its side. Zaga puked, Lilers, Ema and Luka went to bed as soon as they got back, and
even Himself, who has a cast-iron constitution, needed a pint of stout and a plate of chips to
settle his stomach.

There had been bold talk of going to Inisheer the
following day, but these plans were abruptly abandoned with Zaga stating she was never again
getting on a boat for as long as she lived.

After a week we came back to Dublin and there
wasn’t enough room for me in the car so I had to get the train, which I was v. excited
about, as I was hoping for ‘local colour’, entertaining anecdotes, etc. Sadly, the
only thing that happened was that I and another woman were sitting on a bench at Ennis station,
eating a scone (me), and the next thing a man in a hat emerged from the stationmaster’s
office (possibly the stationmaster) with a yellow
measuring tape (one of
the ones that can stand by themselves, fyi). ‘Girls,’ he said, ‘would you mind
getting up. I want to measure the bench.’ We duly got up and he duly measured the bench
(four foot six) and I would love, love,
love
to pretend that this was just his hobby,
something to do to pass the time when he’d finished the sudoku in the paper, but then he
said, ‘We’re getting more benches for the platform, I needed to see how long it
was.’

Once I got on the train, no one addressed a
single word to me for the three and a half hours it took to get to Dublin. I was quite bitter
about this because Anne Marie once got a bus to Donegal and sat beside a woman who opened the
conversation by saying loudly, ‘Suck my dick! Yes! Suck my dick! That’s what they
sprayed on my fence, the local gurriers. Suck my dick!’

However, I did have a TREMENJUSSLY chatty taxi
driver from the station, and we complained at length about the Irish Government and the
Gardaí and their swizziness in extracting millions in speeding fines from the poor people
of Ireland for doing 43ks in a 40k zone. We were in firm agreement that there are only seven
roads in Ireland where it is ever possible to do above 40, because the rest of the time we are
stuck in gridlock and crawling along at 8ks an hour, and that the coppers position themselves
with their cruel little machines on these seven roads. Then the taxi driver changed the
conversation to mackerel fishing, which I did not enjoy half as much.

Now, if I may talk a little about Ema and Luka
– I love them hugely, they’re very beautiful, inside and also outside, with gorgeous
skin and eyes and hair and everything, legs and all, that sort of stuff. Ema is a girl’s
girl and I had a lovely time with her. I had a lovely time with Luka too, but every time I tried
to kiss him he made a face and ran away, whereas Ema hung around with me and made me put down
the roof on the car and drive around
listening to Sister Sledge and wearing
pink sunglasses. She said frequently, ‘We have the same taste, Mariana.’
(That’s what she calls me – Mariana. Is that not gorgeous?) Then, when we were
washing our hands in the loo in Roly’s, the soap was pink and she said, ‘Pink!
It’s our colour!’

I missed Ema very much when she went back. I
would love to share a flat with her and I’ve decided that if Himself leaves me, that is
precisely what I will do. She’s brilliant company, and we could sit around all day long,
watching
Bounding
(seminal line: ‘Pink, pink, what’s wrong with
pink?’) and swapping pink lip gloss and trying on pink shoes. Now and again, we would don
our pink fairy wings and put lovely spells on each other with our lovely pink wands. (I think
the child has a gift: she put a spell on Susan so that she would pass her driving test –
and she did!) We would eat only pink foods – cranberries (and thereby keep cystitis at bay
– mind you, she is only six, she mightn’t be in as much danger as I am), ham, smoked
salmon and strawberry-flavoured Starbursts. (I don’t like strawberries, but I like things
with fake strawberry flavouring.)

Speaking of cystitis and thereby moving the
conversation to matters gynaecological, my monthly visitor was very late, so late that I
wondered if I was pregnant and actually did a test (there were a couple in the drawer left over
from more hopeful days), but I wasn’t, then I decided I must be starting the menopause.
Then I discovered that I had my dates wrong by a week.

No sooner had the Praguers returned home than
Himself’s parents arrived. Shirley is doing very well, she says she feels better than she
has in years, which is a massive relief to hear.

Then I gammied my back. I tried on my new
baggy-sleeved top that I got in London, and it’s sort of Russiany looking, and I was so
overcome with its lovely newness and Russianness that I
decided to try a
little Cossacky dancing, as you do. Inevitably it ended in tears with me falling over and
damaging my back. I have pulled a muscle, which keeps spasming like a jack-in-the-box.

Culinary news this month: I did an Introduction
to Vietnamese cookery class and an Introduction to Indian cooking one. And I made a risotto, the
first one I ever made, and it turned out very well – God, it’s scary though,
isn’t it. I read Alastair Little’s cookbook and it said for risotto you must adopt
‘a rigid and unwavering methodology’ or some such and I thought, ‘For
God’s sake, it’s only a bit of rice!’ However, I DID adopt the rigid and
unwavering methodology and it was v. nice – Himself said it was ‘a triumph’.
He is a tremendously easy man to please, thank Christ.

Oh God, he’s back and he wants his
computer, he needs it to do the tax return. I have to go. I’m going to France on 10 Sept
for a walking holiday – this time in the Loire Valley. I will report. Also, on 10 Sept I
will be forty-three and I love, love,
love
getting older. My only regret is that I am
not fifty-seven. Or ninety-two.

Previously unpublished.