Notes to my Mother-in-Law and How Many Camels Are There in Holland?: Two-book Bundle

Notes to my Mother-in-Law and How Many Camels Are There in Holland?: Two-book Bundle Phyllida Law The charming, funny successor to the hugely popular ‘Notes to my Mother-in-Law’, from the inimitable Phyllida Law.Following Phyllida Law’s wonderful and acclaimed ‘Notes to my Mother-in-Law’ – which comically and tenderly documented the author’s relationship with her husband’s mother who lived with the family for 17 years – we now have a chronicle of Phyllida’s relationship with her own mother who suffered from dementia. Recently widowed, bringing up her own two daughters (actresses Emma and Sophie Thompson) and working as a successful actress herself, Phyllida went up and down to Scotland to spend as much time with her ailing mother as she could manage. During the period she kept a lively and frank journal noting many of the sad yet funny examples of her mother’s faltering grip on reality. The journal includes reminiscences of her own childhood and the tragic death of her only brother.This book promises to be just as warm and moving as her first and will also be beautifully enhanced by the author’s illustrations. Notes to my Mother-in-Law and How Many Camels Are There in Holland? Phyllida Law Contents Cover (#uebf7694d-83b8-5b6c-82b0-c9eb6c551f4e) Title page (#u4fa69394-e1c9-558d-89e8-38fc377ac700) Epigraph (#uc5524563-f0df-5416-8b5b-5437380aaeb5) Introduction (#u938d6a21-7f39-543f-9ab7-d97115262243) Notes to my Mother-in-Law (#u498ee62f-73ad-5dd7-9564-89b795b576b2) How Many Camels Are There in Holland? (#litres_trial_promo) Copyright (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) I feel very strongly about my children, that I owe everything to them but they owe nothing to me. I don’t think it’s right to be proud of one’s children. You can be pleased for them, but I don’t consider that something my son does goes down to my credit. I mind passionately that my children should be thought of as being themselves and it’s nothing to do with me. Quentin Crewe Introduction (#ulink_985617f7-0e02-51c1-9995-afada182fe2d) Mrs Thompson The Jesuits say, ‘Give me a boy for his first seven years and I’ll give you the man.’ What if you gave them a girl? Discuss. My mother Meg was given me till the age of seven, at which point war broke out. The second one. I can remember where she sat to tell me I was to be an ‘evacuee’. I was to leave home and stay in the country away from something called ‘Air Raid’. ‘Life is made up of moments’, and that was one of them. My evacuee school was a dozen pupils in a dining room. It was made clear that I did not belong. I was a wee Glasgow ‘keelie’ who caught fleas, lost her gas mask and thought Adam and Eve lived in Kirkintilloch. I responded by becoming shy, secretive and anxious to please – and a telltale too. I was moved to another school as the only boarder. Looking back I feel bereft, seeing an isolated little person. But I loved it. I loved the school room. It was entirely mine of an evening, a large room lined with bookshelves amongst which I found an ancient medical dictionary. Reading avidly I discovered that, amongst other things, I was suffering from a sexually transmitted disease. My friend Isobel Hebblethwaite said I had caught it from a loo seat and would probably die young. I thought I’d better not tell my mother, who in any case wasn’t there, and I wouldn’t tell Miss Jenny, my teacher, as I didn’t think sex was one of her subjects. I decided simply to devote my life to the healing of the human race. A Scottish Mother Teresa. With a stethoscope. After my book-lined classroom I was sent to a fully-furnished boarding school with 40-minute lessons, dinner bells, hockey, lacrosse and ‘don’t run in the corridors’. Mother became a treat. She was like Christmas, turning up at half term bringing gifts: treacle toffee, sox and my first bra (a Kestos, all buttons and elastic, which she waved at me amongst a cloud of classmates). Such embarrassments aside, the agony of her going was difficult to endure with dignity. I’m not sure boarding school was brilliant preparation for motherhood. I have even envied baby chimpanzees hooked so conveniently on their mother’s hip. We all learn from example, don’t we? What’s more, they get a comprehensive sex education. My mother, daughter of the Manse, had none. Grannie first advised her daughters that on marrying they should buy nighties that buttoned down the front. I fared better with my medical dictionary, snogging at the back of a touring bus, and the Jean Anouilh play about Orpheus and Eurydice (Point of Departure). Flying in the face of reason, we got married on the morning of a matin?e day when we were both in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We thought we’d better practise birth control for a bit, so we bought an odd little swivelling metallic calendar from an advert in The Spectator. It didn’t work. So we had Emma. I told my mother I couldn’t bring up this tiny creature as I had no opinions or convictions of any sort. She said I had. She said I’d soon find out. I was a weather vane in a gale-force wind. What was a mother? What was a father? We made it up as we went along, cherry-picking from our past. Emma was an elegant, independent baby with a gift for getting out of her cot. Sophie the Second didn’t bother. She studied us from a distance with her enormous black eyes and now and again let out a deep, drunken giggle. We used to bribe Em to make her laugh. She took her duties as the eldest very seriously. I still feel guilty about saying to her, unthinkingly, ‘We are going to have another baby.’ Another? Instead of me? The English language is a minefield. So is parenthood, isn’t it? I soothed Em as a baby with Rose Hip Syrup, endlessly advertised for babies, and vitamin C. It’s the syrup that’s the culprit. It produced brown dots of decay on Em’s front teeth and the dentist said he would give her implants when she was seventeen. I remember shaking helplessly for days, cleaning, wiping and weeping. It was fine. And no one advertises Rose Hip Syrup any more. Sophie got eczema and a vicious diet. We would take fruit and small brown sandwiches for any celebration instead of sweeties. Other children were impressed. Bringing up children was in some way easier when the world was younger and you could leave your baby in its pram outside the butcher’s. Outside. You could keep an eye on it through the window whilst it ate lumps of the bread you had just bought next door, and offered it to passersby. There was nothing electronic anywhere, although I think the butcher had a calculator. My husband was apprenticed to the village butcher when he was a little lad. Indeed he was brought up by his village, and it became a very vivid strand in our lives. Tea with Grannie Annie meant washing your hands, sitting up straight at the table, being handed bread and butter first, and speaking only when spoken to. Then, after cake, you said, ‘Please may I be excused?’ and went wild in her cottage garden. My mother Meg was another country. She was a loch and hills, fishing, splashing and ‘Spag Bol’. That’s the easy bit over, isn’t it? Then you come to school. I don’t ever want to go through that again, though I distantly do with my grand- children. It would have been easier for me to understand my daughters’ lives if they could have followed in my footsteps. There were two objections. How could you send your children away? Evacuate them aged seven? My poor mother. And then there was the money. We had none. That put the tin lid on it and made our path simpler, I suppose. They went to the wonderfully walkable local, which looked like a detention centre for the criminally insane. It was brilliant. And there were boys. Bliss. It wasn’t long before we came up against what Alan Bennett calls, in his play Forty Years On, ‘the problem of your body’. A schoolmaster instructing his pupils on ‘down there’ says, ‘It isn’t pretty but it’s there for a purpose.’ I think I drew pictures. My husband was blunt and I did the diagrams. I think we laughed. I hope we laughed. I mean, sex is ridiculous behaviour from adults who tell you not to pick your nose. And it has to be repeated endlessly, doesn’t it? Emma, aged eight, once asked Alec Guinness about the details and he gave her a calm and accurate response. Very helpful, though I felt a bit faint. Sophie, then aged five, listened gravely, fixing him with her headlamp eyes. Unblinking. We never knew she had whites to them until we took her up in an aeroplane. My grandson Walter, whilst at school, did a picture of a lighthouse which his teacher took to be quite another thing. She was not amused. Such a pity. A good laugh with a teacher on this difficult subject would be very valuable. I think she missed a trick. Love – that over-used four-letter word – was another stumbler. My ma always said your heart had to be broken ten times before it was any use to you as a heart. I think that’s a bit severe. Five times? Sophie was once ditched by her beloved in a letter sent to her on holiday. Her grief was terrible to behold. He wrote that it was impossible to continue with their relationship as she was far too young. She was eleven. He was fourteen. I thought she would never recover. Emma, in hopeless love, drank a whole bottle of sherry and took a flight to New York. I must say the sherry was a bit of a surprise. It became an emotional telephone exchange, and ‘children’ just go, with little or no warning, and the house is left silent and littered with ‘unconsidered trifles’. And then, of course, people die. They will do it. In clumps sometimes. I don’t think I ever managed my daughters’ grief when their father died very well at all. I was too busy with mine, keeping it to myself. Trying not to impose it on others. I must have seemed cold and distant. And my past has been rather a disappointment. I’ve never had an affair. I probably thought about it, but I failed. I made the girls promise not to tell me if their father ever admitted to any such thing. I have an uneasy feeling that I am quite boring. I think that’s why I took to acting. I enjoy being somebody else. I remember an unexpected visit from the Canadian branch of my husband’s family. We all sat down to a large, hastily assembled afternoon tea. The visitors questioned me closely about my hobbies. They were anxious to know, reasonably enough, what sort of girl their relative had acquired. Did I play bridge? Chess? Golf? Did I watch any sport? No. No. And no. My husband finally asked, ‘What are your interests, Phylli?’ I threw a meringue at him. And another thing. I can’t make choices. It’s very irritating. My husband used to say it. The girls now say it. ‘Do what you want, Ma.’ I have no idea what that is. I have simply forgotten how to access it, if I ever knew. I think I can source the problem to my adored elder brother. I just wanted to be where he was, do what he did. So did my daughters, who shared his last hours with him in intensive care. I was on stage. Their dad died young too, of course. There was no growing old with either of them. I feel to blame. Like Orpheus. I must have turned to look back. They are not there. Just having your life’s love sitting at peace in the same room is the best of life. I’d even let him do the Times crossword. But I can’t forgive him for leaving before his grandchildren arrived. I find that particularly painful. Like four knives in the heart. He was such great casting for a granddad. He would have taught them all fishing and how to skin a rabbit. They would learn how to make bacon and tomato ‘sclunge’ and fry cheese on a tin plate. They’d learn long words like obdurate and antimacassar. Monty Python would be required viewing and they’d know where he hid the chocolate. He had an original mind and he looked for it in other people, especially his daughters. I envied them, as I improvised my form of motherhood. I seemed to have very little to go on. I only hope it was enough. I’ll ask … Sophie The lady said, ‘Write something about your mum. A couple of “funny anecdotes”…’ Oh dear, I thought, where do I begin? A mum is a whole world if you’re lucky, not just a single landmass. How many words? How rude can they be? It was becoming a mum that made me begin to see that Mum hadn’t been born a mum. She was just like me – a woman who had brought two curious creatures into this world, literally squeezed them out shrieking and groaning after having sexual relations with that fellow who was my dad … Let’s not go there. There she is. There we all are, us mums, making it up as we go along, responding as wisely as we can to these individuals who have struggled out of our bodies just slightly less alarmingly than the alien in that film. So what is she like, my spaceship woman, who landed me here like a wet fish on the shore? Well. My mum was a very steady girl. Golly. Well done, Mum. How did you do that? She was never shouty. Except twice, I remember, and crikey was I scared. Mum set the scene with visuals and smells. She’d wrap our presents in brown paper and paint beautiful pictures on them. She’d always make sure there was a cooking smell when we came in from school. She’d leave on all the lights on purpose. Our god- father Ron would say the house looked like a boat in a dark sea when you walked up the road at night. She was a working mum and she was a wonderful mess. I liked to be in her dressing room at nights with the play feeding in on the tannoy, hearing her out there. I’d clear her chaotic make-up space, line up her lipsticks and blow the sweet face powder about. So she was very there and then sometimes she wasn’t. But you knew she was somewhere doing her thing. And she’d leave little presents if she was away on tour or something. My favourite was a tiny jar of Pond’s Cold Cream. It was like having a little piece of her. Mum wasn’t very physical and then out of the blue she would grab you and squidge you sooo hard, chanting ‘Passion! Passion!’ through gritted teeth like a lunatic. You could feel her tight with love. I don’t remember ever really clashing with Mum. She didn’t like confrontation, I learnt later. I think I sensed her tiller in the water doing its mum thing, shifting kindly in all the currents that make a family. Keeping things steady for Dad, we found out later too. Sometimes I struggled to explain myself to Mum and worried I was an utter loon. And sometimes I think I scared her when I wanted to show her my feelings. It felt like an oblique challenge to her own very hidden depths. She was an evacuee. Now I see all those feelings packed tightly in her gas-mask bag, or deep in the pockets that went with her to strange ‘aunties’ and then boarding school. I wish I could have been that little girl’s friend. Mum’s a great laugher. That’s her way through. She flings her head back and just laughs. Mum walked me down the aisle when I got married, her head so high and laughing. Mum loves to lower the tone and will always find her way through the really sore bits by finding the absurd. Mum pretends she doesn’t like lots of things – like Shakespeare, just because it’s anarchic to say that in our profession. (I know she likes him a little bit.) Mum says she’s a snob, and she is! Mum looked after my dad’s mum and then her mum, which makes her an almighty mum in my book. Mum pretends she doesn’t have opinions but I know she does, very strong ones. She says when she is Queen she will ban Starbucks and leisure clothing. Mum is from a generation that was engendered with extraordinary stoicism. She never complains, not even in the height of grief. She is so brave. She just gets on with it. She is so brave. Mum is a great beauty. Mum is great fun to drink with. Eat with. Be with. Drink with. My boys adore my mum; she is their ‘Fifi’. Mum looks most herself in Scotland amongst the hills of her home. She looks like a piece of the hillside that’s fallen off in a high wind and loves wearing the same clothes until they stand up on their own. Mum says she is a martyr to her wind. Mum can’t ever say she is proud of my sister and me because she feels that’s a bit big-headed on her behalf. Well, I can say I’m proud of her cos she’s my mum. Oh, I am proud of her. Rattlingly proud. Emma It’s rather difficult to write about one’s mother while she’s still alive. There could be consequences. But the first thing that pops into my head is that she’s a tough act to follow. Long ago I remember deciding that I could never be as good, kind, wise, loving and generally brilliant and gorgeous as her. It’s taken me over half a century to stop trying. Stepping back, I see her more clearly. I remember her giving me a birthday tea when I was about five or six – she baked scones and fairy cakes, dressed up as a waitress and served us as if we were in a Lyon’s Corner House. I think her hat was made from a doily. When we were ill or hurt she always soothed us in Gaelic. She sang us lullabies and rubbed hot oil on our chests in winter. The only time she has ever evinced pride in something I’ve done was when I told her, backstage at a Footlights gig, that I had received a good result in my degree. She screeched for joy and I felt ten miles high. She expresses pride in her grandchildren, though, which prompted my sister to suggest, with benevolent tartness, that perhaps it (pride) skipped a generation. We’ve worked together many times, and I once wrote a very long monologue for a TV programme back in the day when autocue didn’t exist. I’d learnt it but it was full of repetition and proved rather difficult. Mum, who was in the show as well, watched every take and when I got it wrong for the umpteenth time, she marched over the stage with her skirts pulled up over her bum to cheer me up. She’d forgotten that she wasn’t wearing knickers under her tights though. It got me through, I can tell you. And the crew. She’s a stoic but her stoicism is rooted in humour. I have never witnessed her grieving in a life dotted with rich opportunities for grief. But I have seen her laughing a lot. I have profound respect for her brain and as we have, one way or the other, been very much together since my father died, I credit her with the development of my own writing. I used to do a bit of stand-up and I would rehearse every set in front of her, cold, in the kitchen, and she was startlingly accurate about what worked and what didn’t. It’s difficult for people who know her now to imagine but, like her mother before her, she could be fierce. Once, when I was seven or so, I picked a bluebell from a garden as we were walking down the road. Mum marched me, sobbing with fear (me, not her), to the door of the house and made me confess and give it back. Guilt’s big in our family. Dad once said to me, ‘You’re a taker, Em, and I’m a taker, but your mother is a giver.’ That wasn’t much of a help, I have to tell you. When we moved from our flat into a house which was only round the corner she did a lot of the removals herself. I can see her walking up the hill wearing a lot of khaki and a saucepan on her head. When we were little she was always stripping something made of old pine. I did witness her, on occasion, sacrificing her own pleasure for the sake of my grandmothers or her ailing brother or her sick husband or her two demanding daughters and, as she says, it could be construed as a fine way to avoid living your own life. But it doesn’t quite wash. She has always worked, with hiatuses of course, but she has always gone back to work – as an actor and now as an author. I do concede, however, that it may have helped her to avoid another relationship. Some years ago she went on a date with a friend’s father. I think he tried to kiss her in the cab. She’s never recovered. Maybe the qualities in her writing describe her better than I can: it’s spare, full of curious and telling detail and mysterious ellipses, very funny, touching without trying to be, connected to every little action of every little day, and in character quite unlike anything else I have ever read. Except perhaps Montaigne, who was equally intrigued by the quotidian business of being human. The best bit of the day is around about 6pm when one of us rings her, says, ‘The bar’s open,’ and hangs up. By the time I’ve poured a slug of decent red wine, she’s putting her key in the door. I’ll hand over the glass and she will invariably say, ‘Ooh. I’ve been looking forward to that all day.’ Then we share the news. Notes to my Mother-in-Law (#ulink_246d64a7-1b75-5c1e-b0d4-8a1598dd74ed) For my daughters PROLOGUE Annie, my mother-in-law, lived with us for seventeen years and was picture-book perfect. She washed on Monday, ironed on Tuesday. Wednesday was bedrooms, Thursday baking, Friday fish and floors, Saturday polishing, particularly the brass if it was ‘looking red’ at her. Sunday was God and sewing. She had a framed print of The Light of the World on her bedroom wall and her drawers were full of crochet hooks and knitting needles. She could turn the heel of a sock and the collar of a shirt. She made rock cakes, bread pudding and breast of lamb with barley, and she would open a tin of condensed milk and hide it at the back of the fridge with a spoon in it if things were going badly in our world. She came to us when things had stopped going well in hers. The rented cottage she left had the rose ‘New Dawn’ curling over and around a front door she never used. All of life flowed towards the back door and led into the kitchen and her cupboards full of jams and bottled fruit. Her little parlour was all table and dresser, with a fireplace full of wild flowers in a cracked china soup tureen. She wall-papered the front room every spring. Three walls with one pattern and the fourth to contrast. But what she loved most was her wood pile and her long, narrow garden where the hedges were full of old toys and rusty tricycles. Here, my children used to hide on fine summer nights, sitting straight-backed in their flannel pyjamas between rows of beans to eat furry red and gold gooseberries, rasps that weren’t ripe and rhubarb dipped into an egg cup of sugar. All she managed to bring with her to London were two white china oven dishes, half a dozen pocket editions of Shakespeare, her button box, her silver thimble, a wooden darning mushroom, a large bundle of knitting needles tied with tape and a tiny pewter pepper pot, which became a vital prop at our midday planning meetings. LUNCH. I have never been able to take lunch seriously, but for Gran it was crucial. She never took anything more than two Rich Tea biscuits and one mug of tea for breakfast, so around noon, depending on her chores, she would say her stomach thought her throat had been cut and come downstairs. When I heard the tap of her wide wedding ring on the banister rail I would strain the potatoes. The menu was a challenge. I’d learnt from her son that lettuce was ‘rabbit food’. (Gran could skin a rabbit as if she was removing its cardigan.) Favourites were fried cheese, Yorkshire pudding, onion gravy, dumplings, stuffed heart and kidneys cooked pink—don’t make the plates too hot. I was nervous. I had discovered garlic. I called baby marrows ‘courgettes’ and pea pods ‘mangetout’. I ate salad with French dressing, spread marmalade on toasted cheese, and there was no Bisto in the house. I often feel that food can be as big a stumbler as politics and thought Gran and I might be incompatible in the kitchen—but when lunch was up to scratch her appreciation was so utterly delightful that the meal became a game I loved to win. I planned sudden treats of stale cake—kept cake was more digestible—winkles eaten with a pin or fresh-boiled crab. Curious about the pretty little pewter pepper pot, I discovered it had come from the Blue Coat School where her father had been a cobbler. Gran had been one of four children, and life couldn’t have been easy for she learnt when she was very young how to pawn the candlesticks and bring her mother jugs of beer from the pub. Her country life began when there was an epidemic of scarlet fever and the Blue Coat School moved out of London. There wasn’t enough work so her father was made redundant and Gran went into service at the age of fourteen. She had a scar on one hand from when an irate employer had biffed her with the handle of a broom she had left standing on its bristles. I loved her stories of cruel cooks and horrid housekeepers. It was like having lunch with Catherine Cookson. Between the juicy bits we organized our days, and it was some while before I realized she was just a bit, as she would say, ‘Mutt and Jeff’. It was quite a few years before we all grasped that shouting wasn’t enough. After some hilarious misunderstandings, and to avoid confusion, I stuck comprehensive lists on the fridge door beside a large calendar marked with coloured crayons. It still wasn’t enough. Gran always said she’d rather be blind than deaf, and aware at last that she was becoming increasingly isolated, I began to write out the day’s gossip at the kitchen table, putting my notes by her bed before I went to mine. One night my husband wandered off to his, muttering darkly that I spent so much time each evening writing to Gran that I could have written a book—‘And illustrated it!’ he shouted from the stairs. Here it is. Your suspenders were 50p. John Barnes only had pink ones. Got these up Post Office. Change on kitchen table. The chiropodist is calling at 1.30 p.m. tomorrow (Tuesday). Inconvenient creature. We will have to lunch early and you can have a snooze when he’s gone. Dad is golfing tomorrow. Emma is going to spend the day at the library. I think Sophie and I should be home about teatime. Lamb stew on stove. Kettle on about quarter to five? Ta. Dear, I honestly don’t think they would make a mistake like that. They only took a wax impression of the deaf ear, and that must be the one you are meant to put it in I think. Why not try Vaseline? I don’t think licking it is a good idea. I’ll get some pearl-barley tomorrow, Gran. Sorry about that, the kids hate it, you see. It’s a bit slimy. I suppose it is very good for you. There was a woman in Ardentinny who used to boil it and strain it and drink the water from it every day. I think she had something wrong with her kidneys. The piano tuner is coming tomorrow at 3 p.m. so when you are dusting don’t bother to put back the photos as such. He usually moves everything himself but I’m not sure if he can see terribly well. He seems never to look me straight in the eye and there is something odd about his glasses. It would be awful if he dropped Churchill. Let’s give him the last of the rock-cakes. I’ll be home so there is no need to stay downstairs for the bell. Dusters aren’t all that expensive. Perhaps we could use that stockingette stuff the butcher sells? Don’t sacrifice your bloomers in this rash manner. Heaven knows where we’ll get interlocking cotton now Pontings is closed. I might try that haberdasher’s next to Woolworths in Hampstead. She still keeps those skeins of plaited darning wool. Last time I was in she told me she was one of the first sales ladies in John Lewis. Apparently they lived over the shop in those days in some sort of hostel, which was very strictly run. She got something like 17/6 per week, I think. You probably got that for a year. Listen, we must practise. That Mr Parnes said we must. Ten minutes every day in a carpeted room, he said. Preferably with curtains. So I will come upstairs with your tea tomorrow and we will have ten minutes’ practice in your room. The kitchen is far too noisy. I have to sit directly opposite you and speak slowly. As soon as you get used to my voice I’ll send someone else up with tea and we’ll do a few minutes longer each day. It is essential that we go about this sensibly. You may have to hold it in your ear for the moment and I’ll ring Mr Parnes about other fitting arrangements. He agrees that the main disadvantage is the tiny switch. The tips of one’s fingers do go dead after a certain age and how one is supposed to adjust the beastly thing when there is no feeling in one’s fingers I can’t think. I’ll mark the little wheel thing with a biro when you feel it’s about right and we can adjust it before you put it in. That’s settled. Practice will commence at 5 p.m. precisely tomorrow, Wednesday 9th inst., 1978. Thank you very much, Gran. I will go round to Kingston’s tomorrow as they close Thursday afternoon. Is it collar you want? Or is it slipper? Green or smoked? Middle gammon is something like 84p per lb. It’ll be a great help to have something to cut cold on Saturday. I found your splint in the hall drawer. I tell you what I suggest. Just give up knitting for a while and see if that doesn’t help. The physiother-apist I went to for my shoulders thought knitting was really bad for you. Especially with aluminium needles. Aluminium gets a very bad press these days. Mother has changed to enamel because she thinks Uncle Arthur is going potty. She says if you put cold water in a hot aluminium pan it pits the metal and you are swallowing chemicals with every mouthful. She says Aunt Avril used to put bicarbonate in with rhubarb and cabbage and an evil green slime used to rise to the top, which was poisonous. And that’s what’s the matter with Uncle Arthur. I could suggest a few other things. I didn’t know Aunt Min was deaf. I thought she just had diabetes. You must ask her how she gets on with the NHS box model. Maybe the knobs are bigger. Let me put a new battery in for you. They are such wretched fiddly little things and apparently it’s only too easy to leave them switched on when not in use. Mr Parnes says one should last you six weeks, but you could have left it on overnight, and that would explain the difficulty. I had a deaf landlady when I was a student and she was forever leaving her apparatus on, when it would give piercing shrieks and she couldn’t hear and we would all have to look for the box. It was nearly as big as a wireless. If there was a thunderstorm she used to unplug herself, cover all the mirrors with dishcloths and shut herself in the larder under the stairs. Nice woman. Now, don’t forget to make a list of worries for Mr Parnes and we will sort them all out on Friday morning. I’m afraid your routine will be very much disturbed. Let’s do the floors on Saturday and the brass before we go on Friday. Variety is the slice of life, as Aunt Avril used to say. We used the wooden knitting needles for propping up the house-plants. Remember? Nothing much of note to report. This weather will kill us all. Take an extra pill. Be a devil. Called on Mrs Wilson as I passed to check on her wrist. She broke it on Tuesday, did I tell you? She tripped on one of those proud paving stones opposite number 48, and in order to stop herself from falling she put out her hand to steady herself against one of the lime trees. ‘It just snapped like a twig,’ she said. Being Mrs Wilson, she clattered on up the road and did the shopping before stumbling back home with a wrist like a whoopee cushion. The doctor showed her the X-ray. She says it looked like a crushed digestive biscuit. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you, Mrs Wilson,’ he said, ‘that you will never have a normal wrist again.’ ‘My dear,’ said Mrs Wilson, clutching my arm, ‘I’m deformed.’ Boot has been sick under the hall table. All set for tomorrow, then? We should leave by 10.30 a.m. so we’ll have to forget the brass this week. It seems very early to leave for a twelve o’clock appointment but I’m worried about the parking. Gloucester Place is one way and tremendously long as streets go, which means we’ll have to go right down Baker Street to turn into it and cruise along trying to find the right number. Let’s hope it’s not raining but the forecast is frightful. I think the brolly is in the car. I’ll try to park as close to the house as possible, of course, but what we will have to do is to stop the car by the door and see you inside. Then, while you sit in the waiting room for a bit, I’ll park the car comfortably and come back to go in with you. We should have hankies in handbags and some wine gums. Also a biro for the Daily Mail crossword in case we are kept waiting. Most importantly, do not forget the box with deaf-aid, batteries old and new, and the grotty earpiece. Any change you have in your purse will likely come in handy. I think we’ll need two-bob bits for the meter. Lots of them. I plan to make a slight detour on the way home to pick up fish and chips. Apparently if I fill in the bit on the back with all the extenuating circumstances I may not have to pay so hang on to your pension for now, darling. The wee warden was very stricken. He would never have given us one if we’d got there in time but he was writing it out when I arrived, and once they’ve started they can’t stop. They have to complete the beastly thing, you see, because it’s numbered and in triplicate or whatever and he can’t destroy it, or the Authorities would run him over or something. He’s written our story on the back of this piece and I’m to do the same with mine and they will review the situation. He says we might get away with it and we are to apply for one of those orange disabled badges. This means a visit to the doctor and the town hall where apparently they look at you in case you’re a fraud. We’ll do it. Then we’ll park on yellow lines and block bus lanes. Our Mr Parnes is ex-RAF, did you know? Could you hear him or were you just pretending? You said, ‘Yes,’ a lot. I suspect him of speaking quietly to test your apparatus. He says you mustn’t wash it, darling. No harm done apparently but the battery had to be replaced again. Do you remember when I washed the coffee-grinder and wrecked the engine? We’ll start the Waxol treatment tonight. He says we should use it for a week each month and I will check the earpiece with cotton-wool and a toothpick. Mr P put a biro mark on the earpiece and it’s miles further up the wheel so it’s nearly at full blast and I am going to fix it with some sticky tape as I think it is liable to slip. There is just a possibility that we may have to pad one leg of your specs. Maybe it was a bit silly of us to leave it on in the car. It was Mr P’s idea but then he probably doesn’t drive a Volkswagen. The plan is to train your ears again to accept different levels of sound. We’ll start in the garden with the birds and progress to washing-machines and Hoovers. I notice that when he plays selected noises on his machine you seem to nod more often at the treble end of the scale, which accounts for the fact that you can still hear me calling you for lunch. Also, I thought he was reassuring and sensible on the subject of nerves. Apparently that’s why you hear the first words of a sentence and then everything fades. You have always said it was fright that stops you hearing Fred on the phone. ‘Hello’ is fine and then it’s pure panic. It’s the ability to relax and concentrate at the same time, which is needed here. Good training for tight-rope walking. I always do deep-breathing when I’m nervous. It was a terrific help in my driving test but God knows what it would do to a telephone conversation. Everything is easier in a familiar place with a familiar face. Then you can sit and relax and we must sit directly in front of you and in a good light. If you can’t see someone it’s very difficult to hear them. Mrs Wilson says that’s why the minister is difficult to hear, and he will put his hand over his mouth. Mind you, he is a bit deaf himself, the church echoes and his microphone is faulty. Mrs Wilson says Mr Wilson is getting deaf and she is trying to keep it from him. You are not alone. Beethoven was deaf. Did you know that? Stoners. Deaf and German. What a disaster. Quite a lot of musicians go deaf. Perhaps you think that’s not so surprising. I’m sorry the drops hurt but I think we must persevere. I’m sure the crackling noise is the wax dissolving and moving about. I’ll warm the bottle tonight. Then you can put a little bit of cottonwool in your ear to hold it in. Mother rang to say that Mrs Lees is laid up. She was painting the ceiling in the bathroom and she got on to a chair in the bath to do it. Makes me dizzy to think about it. Paint everywhere and severe bruising. No, not gardening. I was burying the contents of the Hoover. Eleanor said I was to dig a trench for the sweet-peas very early on and fill it with anything I could find. Sweet-peas are gross feeders, she said. I hope they like carpet fluff, hair and bits of old Boot. The gunge was everywhere. I took the Hoover into the yard, plugged it in with the bag off and gave some sparrows a very violent dustbath. I remember Aunt Ella once used her Hoover like that to dry her hair. Unfortunately she used egg whites as a conditioner. She used to rinse them off with vinegar or camomile tea to bring up the colour. (She had glorious auburn curls.) Anyway she still had the egg whites on when she bent over to switch the Hoover on and test the air-flow so she ended up with what looked like a grey fur bathing cap. We were enchanted. Her beauty tips were legion. She used to wrap bits of lint soaked in witch-hazel and iced water round old shoe trees—the kind with a wooden toe at one end, a knob at the other and waggly metal in between—and then she would sit biffing her double chins with the padded toe and saying, ‘QX, QX, QX.’ Wonderful woman. So, anyway, I’ve buried it all. I expect the minister’s cats will dig it all up. No sooner do I turn fresh earth up than they all waltz in and pee. He has four, you know, and I saw the big ginger one with feathers sticking out of its mouth. There’s a fiendish wall-eyed tom from the flats who dug up all my hyacinths and the banana skins under our roses. Mother’s neighbour at Ardentinny went all round the coast to pick up a dead rat found on the beach so that she could bury it under her rosebed. They’ll eat anything, she says. Roses, that is. I tipped your button box on to the Times to search for curtain hooks. Found plastic and brass. You know, it’s an historic collection. There’s that big green button which belonged to the first coat we bought you at C & A’s. You were horrified by the price but it was a great success. Where the hell is it? Did we leave it in Scotland? Soph came in and started a personal treasure hunt. She has chosen eight different coloured buttons and is presently cutting off the ones on her pink cardigan to replace them with this rainbow set. Good grief. Don’t, whatever you do, put your hands into the water in the sink in the washroom. I’ve got pieces off the stove soaking in a strong solution of Flash. It would play hell with your psoriasis. I will do the fridge and oven in the morning and clean under the bath. Must get bulk buy of bicarb. I gave Eleanor our last packet for her cystitis so I’ll use the box for your teeth and replace it, if you don’t mind? I couldn’t get Garibaldi biscuits up at Flax’s and I couldn’t get Min cream. Mrs Venning says it seems to have disappeared off the shelves. Met Mr Wilson up the hill today and stopped to ask after Mrs Wilson’s wrist. She is doing very well but of course he has to do the shopping for her and it hurts his poor feet. Anyway, we were happily passing the time of day when I noticed he had a little flower petal stuck to his cheek. So, without thinking, I put my hand up and picked it off. My dear, it was only a piece of pink toilet paper he’d stuck on a shaving cut. I was mortified. Talking of toilet paper, I got much the cheapest buy at the International. Quite pleased with myself, and then I had to pay a fine on the library books. They won’t let you off if you are an OAP. They say they might if there were ‘special circumstances’. They say they are human. Which reminds me, I’ve had to pay that parking fine after all. Don’t you think that’s MEAN? Got Garibaldis at the International. I know what it is, Gran. It’s Boot. She will eat spiders. Every so often she has an overdose and throws up on your bedcovers. It’s all arms and legs. I think she eats daddy-long-legs as well. It’ll be easy to wash out and we can freshen it up outside on the first fine day. I hoovered under our bed this morning by the way. Found the following: one sock, seven pence, a dod of makeup-covered cotton-wool, two golf tees, one biro and a cardboard box of curtain rings. Well, I don’t understand it. She seems all right generally, doesn’t she? When she howls like that I can’t bear it. I’ve put a bundle of old Daily Mails in the broom cupboard so if she starts yelling try to get one under her. She’s taken all the polish off the parquet in the hall and there is an ugly stain on the tiles under the kitchen table, which I just can’t shift. I dread her throwing up on the carpet. We will never get the smell out. Every time the car gets hot there it is again. The unmistakable Boot pong. Actually I apologised to Mrs Wilson when I gave her a lift the other day and the smell turned out to be some Charentais melon she had in her shopping bag. Drops for the last time tomorrow morning. We mustn’t forget to ask the doctor about the form for a disabled badge. He has to sign it. Appointment 5.20 p.m. We’ll leave on the hour. Actually, before we leave let’s write down anything you want to ask the doctor. We mustn’t waste our visit. All my symptoms fly out of the window as soon as I’m in the door. Have you enough ointment? Have you enough pills? Are you still worried about your eyes? Do you need any sweeties? We can pass the sweet shop as we come home. Mrs Estherson says we won’t get coconut logs any more because the Scottish firm of Ferguson’s in Glasgow has closed down. She says she thinks she can get us Richmond Assorted. Mother sends love. She says the ferry was off last week because a jellyfish got stuck in the works. Well done, darling. Thank Heaven that’s over, and I expect you’ll feel the benefit tomorrow. He says there is no infection whatsoever and just a tiny bit of inflammation from the wax. Keep a wee bit of warm cotton-wool in it overnight. He says it won’t affect your aid, and you can go on using it safely. Apparently the wax has absolutely nothing to do with it. Also, it’s natural for syringing to make you feel dizzy and a bit seedy. And it’s natural to be scared. He wondered if you ought to have a blood test you looked so pale but I knew it was terror. Also I don’t think the water was warm and he was so enthusiastic that he squirted it all over his suit. Serves him right, I say. Never mind, it needed doing. I held the kidney bowl under your ear and it was spectacular. Reminded me we ought to get the chimney swept this year. While you were recovering there I asked him about deaf-aids and he agreed immediately to an appointment for you at the Royal Free. He says the box models are much easier for elderly people to manage because the controls are larger. It’s just circulation, I think. He thought we could stitch a pocket to your pinny on the bodice somewhere so the box wasn’t under the table when you sat down, but I think that would muffle the microphone. He said he would certainly sign a form for our disabled badge. He doesn’t keep them. You can pick them up at the town hall, he says. We are getting one! When we get one I can drive you to the doctor’s and we can park in the Finchley Road, which means we won’t have to gallop across the road like that. Those traffic lights don’t give us half enough time to cross, do they? I remember I used to find that with the pram. Oh, and by the way, he has had a very good wheeze about your pills. You can get the same medicine in liquid form, and he says he has an idea it works quicker. It must take ages for those depth-charges to dissolve in your stomach. No more choking them down or struggling to halve them. The doctor said those large pills should be easier to swallow but Mother says Uncle Arthur keeps a hammer in his bedroom to smash his into little bits. He has trouble with his oesophagus, though. Not sure I’ve spelt that correctly. The vet says it’s fur ball. Why should she suddenly get fur ball? I didn’t know ordinary black bring-you-luck type cats ever got fur ball. I thought it was only those fluffy Persian people. In fact, Dad and I paid ?3 for a tiny bad-tempered Persian kitten from that pet shop in Parkway when something about the lecture we had on fur ball made us go back for a refund and buy Ms Boot, who was only thirty bob. Oh, well. Change of life, I suppose. Apparently we have to brush her regularly. She is to be given a dose of liquid paraffin every day for a week, and then once a week as a general rule. Good grief. She seems quite to enjoy the brushing if it’s not too near her old scar but I don’t know how to get her to take the paraffin. I put one lot in her milk and she stepped in it. I rang the vet and he says to squeeze her jaws at the corner when she will be forced to grin and then someone can fling it down on a teaspoon. Not much success so far. We’ve put the liquid paraffin in the cupboard above the fireplace by the way in case we get into a muddle—tho’, mind you, Mother used to use it for cooking during the war. She made a wonderful orange sponge with it when we were short of fat. Everyone loved it and it was beautifully light and airy so her cousin Joan ordered one for her baby’s christening, and all the baby guests loved it too, with very unfortunate results. Funny to think of those days. It was 2 oz butter per person per week, wasn’t it? When we were staying at Granny’s Flora, the maid, would put our butter ration on little dishes by our places so as to be strictly fair, but Granny used to steal bits and give it to Major Reddick, an officer who was billeted on her, and whom she adored. Us kids loathed him. He used to take his teeth out before a meal, wrap them in his khaki hanky and keep them in his pocket till he was finished, when he would replace the teeth and dry his hanky before the fire. Frightful creature. Flora said he wore a corset. Every morning after breakfast he would rise from the table and say, without fail, ‘Let’s see what the King has got for us to do today.’ Mother says he attacked her in the morning room and she told him she would scream for Mama. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he said. ‘Don’t you like men?’ I think uniforms are bad for people. Darling, we are all terribly sorry. Truly. I absolutely promise we were not laughing at you, and it was all my fault. Well, it was my fault originally but then Dad started making cheeky remarks and we all got hysterical. What happened was this: everyone was discussing the merits of bran for constipation. Dad said he knew you hadn’t been, but I wasn’t constipated, was I, so why did I take it? So I said, ‘Piles.’ Well, you know I get piles sometimes, don’t you? They started with Emma. Haven’t had them for ages but I take bran every day in case. It’s quite fashionable. So then I told them a dreadful story I have never told anyone before. Last summer, when you and I were visiting Mother, I was suddenly painfully afflicted, and there was no bran in the house. Uncle Arthur won’t tolerate it. Mother has tried to give him All Bran for breakfast but he just sits there with bits sticking out of his mouth like a bad-tempered bird building a nest. So, anyway, I had read somewhere that a very good remedy was to put a clove of garlic up your bum. So I did. For about a week—well, every night for about a week. The trick is to get rid of it in the morning, but on the day we drove back south I didn’t have time to go to the loo properly and the garlic was still up there, if you see what I mean. Well, we left very early to catch the first ferry and round about the Lake District with no windows open I’m afraid I was forced to fart and the smell was simply frightful. You were very alarmed and thought there was something wrong with the car. I told you we were passing through farmland and it was probably chemical fertiliser. Of course, when I was telling this disgusting tale, everyone looked at you and fell about. Do you see? I know you thought we were laughing at you, but really we were laughing at me and I somehow couldn’t get you to hear and Dad was being very wicked and making matters worse. Please forgive me. I hope you believe we would never talk about you to your face and laugh like that. It’s just so impossible when there are a lot of people at table to persuade everyone to talk one at a time and of course your box picks up all the cutlery noise. It must be horrible for you. I am so sorry. We’d all hate it if you didn’t come down to meals, darling. Please don’t do that. Mrs Wilson is fine now, but a bit stiff. Mr Wilson drove to Glastonbury last week and brought her back some Holy Water in a petrol can. She is keen to stick her wrist in that shrine somewhere near Sidmouth. There’s a sort of hole in a bit of stone and you put the injured limb through it and pray to some saint. Saint Monica or somebody, it could be. Anyway, it’s a woman. Gran, have you seen a set of keys anywhere? Not this Tuesday, darling. Next Tuesday. Sorry, sorry, sorry. It was Sunday when I said it and I meant not this Tuesday coming but next Tuesday, i.e. the Tuesday in the week following next Sunday. Oh, curses, it’s one of those misunderstandings like the pronunciation of ‘scone’, and whether a crumpet is a big flat dark thing with holes in it or a wee fat white thing with holes in it, or whether treacle is syrup or the other way round or neither. How long were you sitting with your feet in a bowl? Mother is in a frantic state. You know the stray cat I told you about? Well, not only did it give Uncle Arthur asthma but it started to get some sort of discharge from its ears so she took it to the vet and he advised her to have it put down. He said it would be kinder to do it at once so she left it with him and came home. Now, of course, Ada tells her that the doctor has lost his tabby and is searching the coast. My dear, she may have murdered the doctor’s cat. Nothing to report. Dad used some of your psoriasis cream on that rough patch on his shin and it’s gone. Brilliant. The minister’s wife came home from a late Thursday bulk shopping trip and dropped a bottle of whisky and six eggs while unloading. No, nobody was hurt. It’s just that whisky costs ?6.98. Hi, Gran! The doorbell will ring between 2 and 2.30 p.m. Don’t be alarmed, it’s only Mr Venning come to change the lock. If you have your nap in the chair in the kitchen after lunch you will hear the bell and no bother. I’ve told Syd he must wait awhile for you to answer so don’t rush to the door whatever you do. Absolutely no need. I’ve told Gerry just to leave my order on the window-sill, well wrapped against Boot, but she never uses the letter-box now. Not since that day she got stuck. (I remember one holiday in Skye Mother put a Queen of Puddings on the window ledge and a sheep ate the lot!) Talking of which, lunch is on the stove. Plus lots of rice pudding with a dod of jam (yours). I shall be home by 4.30 at the very latest, which gives us ample time to get to the doctor at 5 p.m. Your raincoat is on the hallstand. Looks like we’ll need it. The kids will have tea mashed by the time we get back. So it was Mr Venning who finished the rock-cakes! You’ll have to make more as I’m hoping against hope that the window-cleaner will come next week. Nice that Syd had some tea. That was a very good move. Mrs Venning told me about the rock-cakes when I was in to get Brillo Clearaway for the bath. She says Syd has a very sweet tooth. He gave her 50p to go to Alexis for a piece of cheesecake and two Bath buns for his lunch. Well, my dear, she only got a small piece of cheesecake for the money. ‘Where are the buns?’ cried Syd. ‘He lives in the past,’ says Mrs V. She tells me old Mr Samuel’s grocery is opening shortly as a centre for water beds. I ask you. I expect kids will go in and wreck the place with a packet of pins. Mrs V is highly amused. Syd says the crack above your door is because all the houses are slipping downhill. And, of course, so is the roof, and the plumbing is original. ‘Never mind,’ said Mrs Venning. ‘You’re sitting on a fortune, Mrs T.’ Escott’s are coming to turn the stair carpet on Wednesday week. That’s a week this coming Wednesday. Dad has nailed down that waggly stairrod for safety and they will do it properly when they come. Mr E says we could never do it ourselves and there are three steps which are dangerously threadbare so take care just now. You will be pleased to hear that I have found bits of carpet in the stair cupboard. How apt. They were behind the boxes of Carnation milk and sugar that Dad bought against famine. Do you remember when things were short in the shops a year or so ago? There was a spate of panic buying. Someone in Japan got crushed to death queuing for toilet rolls, and sugar was rationed for a spell here. Someone punched the manager at Cullen’s. Wash day again. Time flies. I will do fridge and disgusting oven in the morning. Must get another packet of bicarb. Sophie has gone out to meet Beattie and was so late leaving she asked me to tell you she was sorry not to see you. I was rather relieved. On her top half she was wearing a T-shirt in blotchy eau-de-nil and her denim pea jacket with the badges. Bottom half was sandals and a white cotton petticoat. She looked as if something frightful had happened when she was half dressed and she’d dropped everything and rushed out. I told her she might be a bit chilly from the waist down and she said she got an A in Art. She has left three gnawed spare ribs on the kitchen table, which she had put in her bag at the restaurant last night to give to somebody’s dog. I don’t know whose dog. They weren’t even her spare ribs. Herewith: bottle of Gee’s Linctus some Shield tablets wine gums Bourbon biscuits Of course you can’t hear anything—you’ve got cotton-wool in your ears. Bit worried about Boot. Does she still meet you in the morning as usual? That strange third eyelid seems to be a bit stuck on her left eye. Eleanor is much better. She rang me today. She is consumed with guilt about Mother’s birthday. She sent a letter, and a parcel was to follow but her local PO was broken into the afternoon of the day she posted it. Men with guns. And it’s a tiny place, she says. The sort that keeps dog biscuits in the window. The owner has shut up for a few days to recover. Eleanor says he looks awfully ill. Meanwhile the parcel is either still sitting there and the gunmen have got away with lavender talcum powder, some after-dinner mints and a tin of truffles. I’ve found the keys. They were in the bottom of my wardrobe. Can you beat it? I had to sit down for a minute. What I think must have happened is that I hung up my cleaning holding the bunch of keys and let them go as all the hangers were put in place. Of course, the bottom of our wardrobe is full of shoes and scarves and old plastic bags and aprons so I didn’t hear them fall. I might never have found them. But they’re no use now and X pounds down the drain. I am a dizzy tart. It runs in the family. Mother lost a pair of tights she’d bought in Dunoon and rang the shop fussing and furious only to find them in the fridge. There was one wet winter when she put her shoes to dry in the bottom oven of the Rayburn and forgot for weeks. Dinky little stone shoes they were. No, I won’t tell you how much. Put your pension to better use. No, darling, I don’t think there is any question of your having a cataract. I think that some of those library books have very small print, and the doctor feels the mistiness is to do with your general health, but we’ll check at the op-thingummy. You can see a cataract. My granny’s was very noticeable. I don’t know why Aunt Min can’t get hers done. Perhaps it’s because of her diabetes? It’s as simple nowadays as a tonsillectomy but I remember Granny’s was a grand affair when you lay bandaged in a darkened room for ages. Of course, Granny refused. She got up immediately and wandered about the ward in her flannel nightie removing everyone’s bandages as well as her own. In the end they sent her home for bad behaviour. Mother always says she got into an old gentleman’s bed, but I don’t think the old gentleman was there at the time. We had to ban Granny as a subject of conversation because she was so appalling everyone wanted to know about her latest iniquity and other concerns were elbowed. Do you know, she used to turn the electricity off at the mains if she felt people had overstayed their welcome. And when we had a visitor I would be sent upstairs to light the gas fire in their bedroom (the house was always freezing). When I’d done it I’d slide under the bed until I saw Granny’s little black shoes tip-tapping to the fire to switch it off. Satisfied and breathing heavily, she would trot away to her room and I would emerge to relight the fire. She must have been ninety. My brother said she would live for ever because she ate all the mould off the top of the jam pots. My other job was to hide behind the curtains in the dining room to collect the dirty plates she carefully put away. She called it ‘clean dirt’ as she wiped them with a licked finger. She put great faith in spit. I was about six when I fell heavily on a cinder path and a little cinder embedded itself in my forehead. Granny cleaned it up and spat on the wound. ‘There now,’ she said. ‘That’ll heal over nicely.’ And it did. I had to go to the doctor’s to have the cinder dug out. You can see the dent in my forehead to this day. Around this time Gran had the first of her many falls. I found her on the loo floor with one little foot in its size-three shoe wedged around the lavatory pedestal. I couldn’t pick her up because she was laughing so much. Eventually I managed to pull her into a sitting position and give her a cup of sweet tea. ‘Oh, thank heaven I’ve been,’ she said, hiccuping. When I finally had her upright I walked her to her bedroom by placing her feet on my size fives, like you do with kids, and we swayed shrieking across the landing, counting loudly at each uncertain step. This was when I learnt that severe bruising is more painful than a break, or so the doctor said. Bed rest was prescribed. We rigged up a commode on a dining chair with a Wedgewood tureen shaped like a cabbage beneath it. It sold at auction for quite a lot some time later. Mother sends acres of healing love. She says she fell down the manse stairs with her portable wireless in one hand and her tea in the other so she knows how you feel. Uncle Arthur is pretty well, considering. Ma got up the other morning very early and feeling chilly, only to find him kneeling at his open window and just wearing his pyjama jacket. She thought he was dead or praying but he was taking aim at a rabbit. He keeps a shotgun under his wardrobe. Mill’s pet rabbit used to eat the sitting-room carpet. It had to have a hysterectomy and, appalled by its pain, she fed it port and Veganin. Killed it. She couldn’t understand it because her monkey was an alcoholic. They all are, I’m told. When she took him to the pub, folk would ask what her little friend fancied. Port-and-brandy was his favourite. The girls will serve tea in your boudoir at 4 p.m. or thereabouts. You are getting better, I can tell. Matron I got the Baby Bio. It’s underneath the sink. Treated myself to a can of Leaf Shine (very expensive). The flipping tobacco plant I got from Molly gets me down. Can I rip off that yellow leaf now? I’ve washed the fanlight at the front door and emptied the bluebottles out of the lampshade. What’s more, I’ve given the door itself a coat of linseed oil because I found half a bottle in the hall cupboard. Used the paintbrush Dad ruined creosoting the deckchairs. Very successful. The linseed oil has softened the bristles. Also, which is good news, the holes in the panelling are not woodworm but marks from the drawing pins we used to put up the wreath at Christmas. Ha! Mrs Wilson sends love. Her arthritis is being kept at bay with some injection or other. Do you fancy a go? Mr Wilson fell down the tube-station stairs at Trafalgar Square last week and ‘came to’ in the Middlesex. He has a lump on his head the size of a cricket ball and the bruise is slipping down his face. Mrs W says he may have to have it lanced. Dr P says you might think about getting up and sitting in your chair tomorrow afternoon. The girls will re-open lessons with ‘the Box’. Normal service should resume on Monday. Coming down the hill from the cleaners I saw Larry T on his front steps with a dustpan and brush, wearing yellow rubber Marigold gloves. He was about to clear up the corpse of a rat that had walked up the stairs, looked at him piteously and died on his doormat. I had a friend who was having a bath when a rat came out of the loo, collected a bar of soap and went back down. She keeps the complete works of Shakespeare and a huge family Bible on the loo lid in between times. The rat apparently lived in the flat below where it ate a cardboard carton full of tampons, and built a brilliantly comfortable nest with the contents. They are clever creatures. Mr Richardson used to keep pet rats. They used to sit on his chest and nibble sugar off his moustache. Shall I leave Boot in your room tonight? Darling, do try not to worry about it. I’m sure that’s part of the problem. Any sort of tension or trauma seems to seize one up. I can never go when I’m visiting. Think of Dad. He comes home from New Zealand to go to the loo. Release of tension, you see. Some people don’t go for days together and it’s quite normal. Queen Victoria was always writing to her children about constipation and fresh air. Then Albert died from bad drains. Ironic. They did a lot of research on it during the war because of lifeboats. I mean people didn’t go for three weeks or more. When you come to think of it, just a bucket on a boat. Maybe not even a bucket. I think the Navy is an authority on constipation. It was a naval doctor who wrote that book on bran. Let’s have another try. If I put it in soup it wouldn’t make you cough. Or if I squidged it up with All-Bran, cream and sugar? I don’t want you to get like Uncle Arthur wandering about in his pyjama jacket eating Ex-Lax. An Indian with a strong Welsh accent has just come to read the gas meter. I put the bed mat on the lawn because I felt it couldn’t stand being on the line while still wet. Some of the stitching is very rotten. It’ll be an enormous task mending it, darling, but I’ll bring the bag of bits and it’ll be something to do while you are sitting. Boot was sick again, but very neatly, and there was a little patch of fur in the middle so maybe the vet was right after all. Sorry I didn’t tell you about the dentist. I thought you looked a bit bleak when I got home. Forgot. Sorry. Of course, I was late leaving and I couldn’t find my keys. (They were on top of the fridge.) Then I lost my handbag. (I’d put it down by the front door.) I didn’t have time to come up. I was running down Fawley Road when I noticed something odd about my left leg. A certain stiffness about the knee. I slowed down a bit and walked briskly on, thinking bleakly about old age. It wasn’t till I was sitting on the tube that I noticed a dingy clump of cotton sticking out of my left trouser leg. I tried to pretend it was perfectly normal to pull a pair of knickers out of my trouser leg and push them into my handbag. I once dropped my handbag on the tube whereupon it burst open and scattered a packet of Tampax all over the floor in front of a large class of small boys from that posh prep school in Hampstead. Do you think we should manufacture a pocket on your pinny a little higher up? For the aid, I mean. When you sat down at lunch it was under the table. You’ll have to bring it out and lay it down, trying always to have the little round speaker bit facing upwards—or outwards if it is clipped on to your pinny, and I think above waist level. (‘Where is that?’ you cry.) Up the ’orspital they said you might hear swishing noises from some materials you wear, and some fabrics crackle. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/phyllida-law/notes-to-my-mother-in-law-and-how-many-camels-are-there-in-ho/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.