Our fairy

Feel sorry for our fairy.

She has languished in a box for years and years, as it is years and years since we had a real tree. When we got her out, we found that most of her hair had fallen off, so now she has an Arthur Scargill-type combover.

And she is lashed to the tree with an extra-long wire garden tie round her knees. That'll keep her legs together. No fun for her over Christmas.

But it's nice to have her back!

Dust

It was a few years ago now, that someone was genuinely surprised to learn that I still hang my washing out to dry on a washing line in the garden. She gave the impression that this was the sort of quaint custom that you would only see in an artfully reconstructed medieval village - and what kind of sad sack was I, anyway, that I didn't have a tumble dryer?

The kind of sad sack that has a large garden and an eye on her electricity bills, that's who. And someone who would rather her clean clothes smelled of fresh air and garden than "Hint of gardenia".

It struck me today that I am a throwback in another respect as well - I still shake my dusters out of the window. When I was a girl (and yes, it was quite a long time ago, but not that long) it wasn't at all unusual to see a window opened and a hand emerge to vigorously shake a duster, then the window close again. But I can't remember the last time I saw it.

What do people do nowadays? Don't they have dust in their homes? I have thick layers of velvety dust in all sorts of places and occasionally (not very often, I admit) I actually want to get rid of it. Does a social stigma attach to people whose homes are dusty? Is it actually shameful to admit to wielding a duster? What do people do with their dust?

Don't they shake their mats either? (That's something else I haven't seen for a long time).

Does everyone else wipe their surfaces with speciual cloths that they throw away afterwards? Are these the same people who have their rooms "fragranced" with a ghastly plug-in artificial scent rather than ever open the windows?

What's the world coming to?

Crooked

How can Morrisons have spent thousands - tens of thousands, probably - on a major store upgrade and refurbishment and still put their logo on the front crooked?

I thought perhaps it was meant to be crooked - a design feature - but it isn't crooked on the petrol station sign.

It annoys me every time I go past on the bus.

Someone Else

Someone Else lives in our house. I've never seen him, but he's a busy boy, because every time something gets broken, or lost, or used up and not replaced, it always turns out that Someone Else did it. And he needs all the time and energy he can find, because whenever a job needs doing that noone wants to do, it is always left for Someone Else - not that it usually gets done, even so.

I wondered if Someone Else would leave home with Son or Daughter, but no, he's still living at home. I think he is taking things slightly easier - he hasn't made as much mess recently as he used to do - but it must be Someone Else who lets the neighbourhood cats in, and feeds them, because I expressly forbid it and Husband denies all knowledge.

I am beginning to feel haunted by Someone Else - he has started to come to work with me. He must be quite well-known (perhaps I should pay him more respect) because a colleague referred to him when alluding to something as being SEP, which apparently means Someone Else's Problem. Perhaps he is a management consultant, to have a Problem named after him (a bit like Fermat's Theorem, perhaps, or Sod's Law).

I wish he would do a bit more to help me, because I quite often end up doing jobs that were left for him. The really annoying thing about that is, that Someone Else always gets the credit.

Holiday reading - before

It has got much harder to find holiday reading since the second-hand bookshop closed - at least, it is much harder to find cheap holiday reading. So this year I am taking a careful selection of old and new, to wit:

• Life, by Keith Richards. It's had good reviews, and I don't often read non-fiction, and this will, I hope, remind me of my youth.
• The Radleys, by Matt Haig. This is the light one, the (hopefully) amusing one, for days when I don't feel like anything too taxing.
• Candide, by Voltaire. This is the joker in the pack - I've no idea whether I'll like it or not. I decided to take it after reading a review by Julian Barnes (and I think Julian Barnes is probably God) in the Saturday Guardian, admittedly of a very expensive (£185!) Folio Society edition. The one on my shelf, which I don't remember ever buying, but it must have been there for at least 30 years, unread, is a Penguin paperback, very fragile, dated 1947.

Daughter is taking:

• Moby Dick - my favourite novel ever, so I could always read it again if I don't like, or finish, everything else
• Starter for Ten, by David Nicholls. I've only just read One Day, which was good, but I'm not really tempted to read anything else by him just yet.
• Her fearful symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger. This I might try, especially after our trip to Highgate Cemetery last year.
  

Husband will be on sci-fi and/or violent crime. Son won't be reading anything at all.

27

Jimi Hendrix was 27 when he died. So was Janis Joplin. So was Jim Morrison.

Now Amy Winehouse has died at the same age.

Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison all seem like tragic figures to me. All I can feel about Amy Winehouse is a weary, "Well, we could all see it coming."

Is that because I am a whole lot older and less innocent now, or is it that the world is a more cynical place?

And you ask why I'm tired?

Take this morning. Remember that Husband who, being the kind of chap who leaps out of bed with a gay laugh to salute the new day, is therefore responsible for making breakfast and my packed lunch while I grope around wishing I were dead and being kept away from sharp knives and boiling water for my own safety - remember that he is visiting Grandma this week. For that reason I got out of bed half an hour earlier than usual and zombie-like made myself a fried egg sandwich and a cup of tea. I even managed to leave the house more or less on time.

As I passed the side of the house I saw the heap of foliage on the ground. The Old Bastard who lives next door had been flailing away at my beloved climber with a blunt object and smashed it down where a tendril had delicately slipped over his boundary line, taking no care but doing as much damage as his withered arm could manage. This is a man who is too weak to do any work in his own garden but can find the energy to interfere in mine. So I went off up the road in a fine old temper.

The usual wait for the bus. On the train, looking out for the foxes (there had been three on the track the day before), a fast train pulls past at the only place I can see them, so I couldn't see anything.

Got out at City Thameslink and remembered that it was Wednesday and therefore to pick up the free magazine for Daughter. Well done me.

As it was my turn to buy the milk, I had thoughtfully decided not to bother making myself a sandwich for lunch, as I could buy them both together in Tesco, thus saving lots of time and trouble. Remembered to go to Tesco. Well done me again. Except that Tesco had a rotten selection of sandwiches and no milk.

So I had to go to the little kiosk and pay over the odds.

And all of this before I even got to work. No wonder I'm tired.

Looking for foxes

I watch people on the train - I watch people on the train a lot. Almost everyone is absorbed in something, a book, a newspaper or, more and more often, an electronic gadget. These are getting smaller all the time, but offering more and more to look at, and sometime soon I expect we'll reach the point where we can "see a world in a grain of sand". But it takes a lot of concentration and while people are staring at their tiny screens they are completely unaware of the real world passing by outside the train windows.

I read on the train sometimes - quite often, in fact - and of course I watch the people, but I also look out of the windows. I know where the rabbits are, and the pond where the heron used to stand, and when I'm on a slow train I look to see if I can see the family of foxes. They are usually there on sunny mornings. The cubs are quite big now.

I think people would enjoy their journeys much more if sometimes they looked up and out of the windows.

Long legs

It must be awful to have long legs, and especially on trains, where there is nowhere to put them and nothing you can do but spread those legs to their fullest extent and ram them into the person sitting next to you. It must be so uncomfortable to have your hot sweaty thighs pressed against someone else.

It's the sort of thing that would make you embarrassed so that you open up your big broadsheet newspaper and try to cover up your legs, even if that does mean intruding right over your neighbour's lap and jabbing them in the ribs with your elbows every time you turn a page.

And imagine how awkward it is when someone insists on trying to get off the train and wants you to move your legs out of their way.

I'm so glad that I don't have long legs.

I wish I didn't have to sit next to people who do.

Old ladies' feet

That's what I've got now - old ladies' feet.

I noticed it when I put my sandalled feet up on the coffee table. They're knobbly. It isn't just rough skin that could be rubbed and moisturised away. My feet actually look like a collection of odd bones stuffed into a skin bag. They stick out in odd places and at odd angles. And the toenails are going thick and scaly.

It's been difficult buying sandals for a while, having to be careful that the most sticky-out bones are hidden and not protruding through between the straps. Does this mean that I have to start buying old ladies' sandals - cream and solid with lacing up the front? And thick nearly-flesh-coloured tights?

Or would some of those lovely gladiator or wrapped sandals (there's a lovely pair in Clarks) do the trick?

Invisible me

I have got used to those people standing on the street handing out fliers for clubs and bars not trying to hand one to me. I know that their target audience is the young and wild, those who go out at night rather than slumping on the sofa in front of mindless cookery/gardening/wildlife television programmes.

I have almost got used to those people handing out fliers for gym membership not trying to hand one to me. They want the young, too, or at least the middle-aged, not the tubby old bag hobbling along out of breath and wheezing.

But I was a bit put out when the young girls handing out make-up samples at the station looked at me and didn't try to hand me one. I didn't think I looked that rough.

Mindless violence

I went on the demonstration yesterday - with a quarter of a million other people. There were five of us together, and none of us had ever done such a thing before. It won't make any difference - already the press and politicians (can you spot the difference?) are saying that it can be ignored, because it was just public sector workers trying to save their own skins. But you see, that's the way the private sector thinks - the private sector thinks, it's all about me. In the public sector, we think about other people, we help other people. We believe in communities, we believe in society. The government believes in shareholders, in how much money they can make from other people (or "suckers", as they think of us).

It was a peaceful, friendly, tolerant, cheerful march which brought together all sorts of people. We ended up marching behind the RMT and their brass band. There were lots of bands (it is the first time I have ever heard a pipe band playing the Internationale), lots of inventive placards, it was fun.

Long after most of us had left, there was an outbreak of more direct action along Oxford Street. This is beng described by everyone this morning as, "Mindless violence". It's an easy phrase, trite and dismissive. But it wasn't mindless - it was carefully targetted, it was planned, it was managed. I don't condone it, but I'm not going to dismiss it either. If the peaceful protests are ignored, what's the alternative?

Or are we all happy to agree that as long as you've got the money, you can buy a health service, education, a nice house in a safe area, and if you haven't got the money, well, that's your problem, isn't it?

Friday night in Morrisons

I hadn't realised how many people there were who had never managed a supermarket trolley before, but of course there's a first time for all of us.

But isn't it thoughtful of Morrisons to designate Friday night as an opportunity for novices to turn up and try the trolleys out for the first time, and feel free to experiment with emergency stops, blind reversing and all the other manouevres that they are uncertain about.

After all, it isn't as if the rest of us might be trying to grab our supper and get home as quickly as possible.

Achingly hip

When a woman of my years uses "aching" and "hip" in the same sense, it is usually to describe physical discomfort. But today we went to the Whitechapel Art Gallery and the experience was unsettling. I have never seen so many achingly hip people under one roof.

Where do they get their haircuts?

Where do they get their clothes from (not from M&S and John Lewis, that's for sure)?

How did they get to Whitechapel (there was noone like them in the streets outside)?

For a start, there was almost noone under 30 - the few older people were unusual (and in that I include the elderly bald geezer in shorts - yes, shorts - and baseball boots with a copy of Fighting fit under his arm).

We saw an exhibit that consisted of balls of string.

And another that was a raised section of the gallery floor. That's all, just a raised section of floor. We spent a while admiring the stark but witty message about our perceptions of space.

In the next room was a metal staircase and we admired its simple elegance too - until the attendant told us that it was the fire escape.

"There's nothing wrong with the one we've got"

I am not an extravagant woman - no, really, I'm not. I was brought up in a household whose habits had been shaped by rationing and hard times and I simply wouldn't understand a way of life that didn't involve saving bits of string or picking up the postman's red rubber bands from the pavement (we have a drawer full of them. They'll come in handy one day). For goodness' sake, even my best new raincoat was got from the charity shop. Glorious though it is, I wouldn't have paid for it new.

But even I want new things sometimes. Take our fridge (I wish you would take our fridge). I hate it with a passion that is entirely disporportionate. We've had it for twenty years, and on the day it was delivered - when it finally was delivered, late at night, after many many phonecalls and a huge amount of vituperation, Husband asked me as they were lugging it up the drive if I was fed up enough that I wanted to tell them to take it away again, we didn't want it any more. I said no, now it was finally here we'd stick with it - and I've regretted that decision ever since. (Mind you, I've never been back into the shop that sold it to us and I never will).

It is half fridge and half freezer, neither half being very large. It was the first freezer we ever had, and as we outgrew it, we bought another freezer in addition and it works very well, having the little one in the kitchen and the big one in the shed. But we are still stuck with the little fridge. There were only two of us when we bought it - now there are four and I can't fit into it the things that need to go in. I want a new one and a bigger one.

After twenty years of hard knocks, it isn't in the best shape - bits of trim are missing, one of the salad drawers is broken, and the handle regularly falls off, plus if you push the butter to the back it freezes solid to the back wall. But it does still work. So what does Husband say when I make the case for a new fridge? "There's nothing wrong with the one we've got."

Sages and poets say that the saddest phrase in the language is, "If only". Sages and poets don't have Husbands and knackered (but alas still functioning) fridges.

Going home

There is something about going to Tunbridge Wells that always feels like going home. Come out of the station and there it all is, in the same place it always was, Mount Pleasant and the High Street and Grove Road and - OK, it's another store now where it used to be Weekes, and there's a pizza place where the Cadena should be - but it is still home. I haven't lived there for forty years, not full time - there were a lot of years when I went home to visit or stay with parents, but even that is long ago now and I've lived in my present house longer than ever I lived in Tunbridge Wells. But it is still familiar, I know what people are going to say (and what they mean when they do, which isn't always the same thing, especially in Tunbridge Wells) and there is a great sense of relief and relaxation in being back.

Lots of people feel like that about the towns where they were born, it isn't unusual.

But what I am starting to feel is beginning to worry me, because it isn't just the place I was brought up that feels familiar, but the time. I am starting to look at bits of old film, old newsreels, archive film in documentaries on the television, and I am thinking, yes, that looks like where I'd feel comfortable. Men in hats, and those long raincoats with belts (long before trench coats), and women with wide skirts and duster coats. That looks like where I would feel comfortable and at home.

Now, I hated Tunbridge Wells when I was growing up there, it was dull and boring and suburban and bourgeois and I couldn't wait to get away to that other place somewhere else where all the clever and funny people were. Not only do I want to go back to that place again now, but to the time that it was when I lived there. I don't want to be the person I was then, I don't want to be seventeen again, but oh, wouldn't it be nice just to go home, really home, to home like it used to be?

Now, that was embarrassing

A few weeks ago, walking home from work in the dark, a hunched teenage figure came up the road towards me, hoodie up, and made no attempt to avoid me, coming straight for me - and I thought, ho hum, I'm going to be challenged, or maybe even mugged... Turned out it was Son. Well, they all look the same at that age, don't they?

Needless to say, he thought this hugely funny.

One night last week, the same thing happened. Same teenage figure, same hoodie, same dark road. I wasn't going to be fooled a second time, so I went right up to him and glared at him.

Only it wasn't Son. Just some frightened kid who thought he was about to be mugged by a mad granny.

Frustration

Why does the washing machine always hit its spin cycle at 10 past 11 on a Sunday morning, so I miss the climax of The Archers?