A weird synchronicity happened but now I realise that if I write it down it leads rather closely back to me. Is it interesting with the names removed?

It is nine months now since I was sitting here sadly on a rainy afternoon and paused from writing my son's French homework to do one little thing 'for me'. I typed in the name of one of my favourite children's books to see if the author was still alive. Practically nothing came up except a reference in a 'blog' (?) called 'Badgerbag' (?). I had never heard of these things and had no idea what it was or what they were for or what ....? After I started to read I couldn't believe it - here was a real person who thought about life in the same way as me and then wrote about it brilliantly. Since then my life has been transformed.

Two nights ago we had some people to dinner. I had set this up because a friend came to do woodwork repairs just before Christmas and his assistant was a boy of 19, like my son, and had my son's name which is almost unheard of at that age. Then he said his middle name which is what I had always intended calling any son until I married my husband and found the name sounds odd with our surname, so I couldn't. I was keen for them to meet and asked him and his parents and the wood person and others to dinner. (I don't often do this).

I was talking to the assistant's mother about why we chose the unusual name and then I said, 'Well I like the children to be called things that are unlike anyone else and I chose his middle name because I always had a romantic feeling about this man I read about who died in the First World War. He had a name that I thought would never be used again but it is appearing now in under-fives.' 'What is it?', she said. '...', I replied. 'But that man was my great-uncle', she said. ...... We moved on to other topics and I told her the story above of how I found the world of blog, (NOT mentioning 'Badger' obviously), and she was interested in the book I had been looking for as it is set near here but she had not heard of it. The wood person's wife came up and had also not heard of it; so I got it and was pointing out the author and how I had been searching to see if she was alive. 'She isn't', said the wood person's wife. 'But you said you had never heard of this book?'. 'I haven't but the author was my niece A... 's, (who I too know perfectly well), mother-in-law. They often said that she wrote books when she was young but I didn't really take it in'. When we looked inside it was dedicated to various members of the wood person's family but as they had different surnames I hadn't realised. And now I can just go and talk to some of them and find out all about her after all.

I thought that was a nice big set of synchronicity, although it obviously lost a little in translation.
- posted by Iris @ 12/31/2003 09:51:00 PM (0) comments comment

 
Ha! - Everyone has gone back to London and I am alone on New Year's Eve. How very sad and lonely. But it is not. It is my own choice and I hope will bode well for the coming year. True, if we had been asked to anything down here I would have gone but there are no parties and I have seen most people over Christmas anyway. My husband offerred an enticing evening which involved driving up to London yesterday in a car packed with people and a thousand presents: then arriving at a flat so cold that my daughter's boyfriend had had to move out and with no food and shops closed and quickly washing lots of my son's clothes and packing for him to leave again this morning. Then, to night, going to a dinner party in Soho to which we have not actually been asked but he was going to 'see what he could do', consisting of people that I have either not seen for many years for various good reasons or I don't know. The combination of boredom, terrorist threat and mad impossibility of getting home from West End at 2.00 am on this night, made the choice a simple one. We would also have been driving straight back here the day after.

I did have a moment of guilt as I answered the phone for the tenth time this morning and talked my son through yet another domestic mystery as he got himself ready to leave for a New Year's Eve BALL in the country. (Another part, far from us). He has a rich friend who he has known for years but didn't realise was rich until a couple of years ago, sweetly. This is because the friend had a massive London house but his father is a property developer so we thought it was from clever deals. He was always asking M.., (my son), down to the country but as M.., said 'When I have any time I like to go to my own house'. He finally gave in and as the car rounded a bend in what had seemed a pretty long private drive he said he literally gasped. In front of him was the twin to Buckingham Palace. (I have seen photographs). The word 'vast' is an understatement. The lake in front is big enough for professional water skiing and they have their own quad bike and motor bike scrambling tracks.

Naturally there is a drawback. Charming and hospitable as they are; they have a passion for 'extreme sports' of the most ludicrously dangerous kind and a deep distrust of poncy interests in 'art' or 'literature'. The father has a slightly aggressive attitude towards M.., especially since he revealed that not only was he hoping to go to university but was studying History of Art. This time M.., appeared in my room a few days ago and said he wasn't sure he wanted to go as he had had a phone call from his friend describing excitedly how they were setting up the New Year's Eve midnight quadbike course. This year to be run over a BRIDGE OF FIRE. 'Just say 'No'', I said, obviously. 'You don't understand. His father gets this face and then they all do and everything is just shit'. To show further the nervous undercurrent of these visits, M.., is taking two evening shirts and two pairs of evening trousers, as last year's Ball was ruined for another friend when he was thrown into the indoor swimming pool in full evening dress while talking on his mobile. This was at the start of the party and he then had to sit down to a formal dinner in a dirty T-shirt. 'Why does F..'s mother let this kind of thing happen?', I said. 'She was the one who suggested pushing him. She thinks it's funny'. ... Anyway, I last heard from him as he left the house this morning on his way to, I assume, the right station.

My daughter is about to have a fairly crap evening as her half-Italian boyfriend of many years now has to spend to night with a mass of Italian relatives, many of whom are small, who have just arrived in London for a reunion. He was evasive about this and let her set up a fun dinner party in a restaurant for all their friends before revealing the truth to day. She rang me up tight-lipped to tell me this with him listening in the background sheepishly. I shouted 'What a cunt ' and 'How could he?' loud enough for him to hear and she was glad.

Her first choice of restaurant was another example of the circularity of Life. It is Austrian and I used to go there so many years ago that I had no idea it still existed. I had a musician friend who made money on the side by dressing up in leder hosen and playing the cow bells there. Once he left we obviously didn't bother to go any more but now it has apparently become the epitome of naff-chic for my daughter and her friends. Sadly fully booked to night but she soon bounced back and reappeared from the phone saying, 'Cool. We're going Turkish instead'.

Christmas without my older daughter who is in India was quite depressing but now over luckily. We haven't had New Year's Eve together for years as the children always do stuff with their own friends so this is just normal.

This night seems to be fun only about one year in five. Last year I was here alone with my husband because I had hurt my back and was lying flat in bed. So I did that all evening while he watched crap television, drinking, and then lurched up at about 11.30 saying 'Well, do you want champagne or not?'. 'Oh God, I don't know. Oh, all right'. He was gone for ages and then just as the midnight bells began to ring out on the TV he appeared in the doorway, holding out a foot. 'What f@cking cat has had diarrhoea all over the f@cking landing?' he shrieked, 'And here's your f@cking champagne'. And Auld Lang Syne to you too.

So, this is my perfect evening. And may it be the first of many. For all of us.


- posted by Iris @ 12/31/2003 06:36:00 PM comment

 
I can't write much while my children are here because they live on the computer. As the time flies by I don't realise that even stream of conciousness writing takes at least an hour usually. An odd moment tonight when my daughter and I were filling in an hour of boredom and I put on 'The Mountain Goats' which I have to say I rather sadly bought after reading one of Joshua's pieces. She said 'Funny, this sounds very like Nick Drake'. I said 'WHAT did you say?'. I had never heard of him until I was reading a series of detective stories by Phil Rickman,( which I mentioned to Ms.D. because the main character is a young woman priest), and the stories have many references to N.D. and his lyrics etc. which I thought were fictional. Then I read the acknowledgements at the back and found he was real and bought the CD.s and the biography and the sheet music to give to my son for Christmas in 2 days time, thinking that no one else had heard of him and this was really original. This was part of my own secret parallel life, so intoducing my son to him was a slight concession and then to find that my daughter and her friends listen to his stuff all the time was totally bizarre.

Years ago I had a boyfriend who was seeing an analyst 5 days a week at vast expense and he was someone (the analyst) who NEVER SPOKE. So the boyfriend would go in , say Hello, lie on the couch and drone on about his dreams etc. for an hour, say Goodbye and leave. I couldn't bear the waste of money of this and made him give it up and talk to me instead. In fact I made him get up a little early and write down what he would have said to the analyst and he was writing 1,000 words a day. I thought it would be interesting for him to look over it later. Anyway, as part of all this I decided that we would both write down , each day, anything that the other one did which upset or irritated us. We were on really close and good terms and also talked constantly but even so when we read out our notes each evening we had invariably managed to have strange misunderstandings, often quite serious. I was reminded of this by the Nick Drake thing as I talk to my daughter quite a lot and hear her playing her music but obviously everyone has this vast 'other life' that you can never grasp and like 'L'Appartement' you constantly keep passing and missing each other in ways that could change your life. Oh well, too bad.
- posted by Iris @ 12/23/2003 10:14:00 PM (0) comments comment

 
Oh dear. Had a long, drunken talk with my daughter about how annoying my husband is, ending with both of us sobbing. Then apologised for burdening her with my problems when it should be the other way around and she said, 'Don't be stupid. All my friends' parents get on really badly and never stop boring on about it'. Well, at least it gets it out of the way before Christmas Day.
- posted by Iris @ 12/22/2003 09:06:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
There is a huge muddy Christmas tree lying outside in the rain. We let our fields to three different farmers and one has the use of a large barn free. To show his gratitude he has started providing us with a tree (from where?) and the first year he asked how tall we wanted it. As our main room has a very high ceiling we said pretty much as tall as they come. The trouble is that tall forest trees tend to be thin and skimpy at the bottom and rather unlike the pictures of Victorian children playing hide-and-seek around some mass of greenery. In later years he started zooming up and dumping a tree in the garden in the week before Christmas and then zooming away again without speaking to me. On several occasions, like this time, the tree has been just wrong. But there is nothing I can do without causing massive offense. Each year the children say, 'What is the tree like, it's not one of THOSE is it?'. 'Err... maybe just a little bit'. 'Well just f@ck it. You've GOT to tell him'. But I can't. It will now involve dragging out to the wood and finding a way of secretly removing some small branches from another fir tree and then wiring them on to our one. IT IS ALL SO STUPID.

The other farmer also goes in for secretive present leaving but in his case it is invariably an oven-ready chicken which appears mysteriously on the doorstep, (in a bag obviously). This would be sort of okay except that his chickens are ENORMOUS; they are unlike any chicken we have ever seen. 'It probably is free-range', I said. 'Don't be so ridiculous', said my husband, 'You can see that that chicken has never taken any exercise in its life'. They have a sinister, other-worldly look rather like the first stage before Soylent Green. Last year we couldn't bring ourselves to eat it and it spent weeks using up a useful part of the deep freeze. Finally I made it into a casserole when lots of people were coming to supper and my husband and I had large amounts of vegetables and unobtrusively left the meat on the side of our plates.

Thank God the third farmer restricts himself to a card containing a handy pen with the name of his fencing company on the side. He is probably cursing himself for being so slow and letting the other two bag the fun tree and chicken that we accept with such effusive gratitude.

I have been hoovering and cleaning for eight hours with only a miniscule break for lunch, (which was ruined by a cat sneezing suddenly horribly close to my plate). Some trivial woodwork repairs have weirdly spread dust and chippings over half the house and blown all over the garden so that as you drive up it looks sordid and crappy. My husband is driving the children down with all the presents bought in London. For some not-normal reason he is making them leave at 6.30 am and then he is going to put up the tree, cook the ham and then go back to London on the train for 24 hours before returning.... I sometimes feel as if 'The Movie That I Should Be Living In' is not Cinderella but 'Diary of a Mad Housewife'. Although I suppose they have a lot in common, except that Cinderella did not have a strongly developed sense of irony.
The children will be tired and ratty and for sure they will have left some crucial things behind.

My daughter asked me not to start decorating until she came because last year 'Getting all the holly and stuff was such fun'. Unfortunately this year it is pouring with rain and there is a vicious wind. I usually go out and cut down the greenery on my own and it is rarely a pleasure. One year there was a fog so thick I had to practically find the holly by touch and, (one of those times when you start to believe in Higher Powers), I was really fed up but forced myself out once more but in a pointless direction, never good for holly. Just down the track which I never normally use was a cat hanging upside down from a barbed wire fence. It had jumped over it too low and the barbs had hooked into the skin over its stomach and it was hanging there silently. If I hadn't walked that way on Christmas Eve no one else would have come for days. It was one of the half-wild cats that live in our barns and I feed at vast expense, so it knew me and after a short fight I was able to lift it off. The spikes had only gone through flaps of skin and the cat came back with me for outdoor supper and was completely fine.

I had a rather odd experience today. Last night when I was typing at the computer there was a tiny repetitive thumping noise. After a while I realised that a moth was bumping against the out side of the window and then I saw that one wing was caught in a thick strand of cobweb. It was fluttering and twisting and bumping for 2 hours and I could do nothing as the window is high up and sealed closed. It was really sad and horrible and I was glad when it died. This morning I came to the computer again to write to my daughter in India. It was raining hard and windy. I couldn't believe it when I saw that the moth was alive and still fighting to get free. It was 10 hours since I first noticed it. The whole thing was really upsetting and I suddenly thought that God is meant to see every sparrow fall so why couldn't he deal with this. I asked him firmly to do something about the moth. Whatever he thought best obviously. Nothing happened and I could see that the cobweb had wound round and was more attached than ever. I was thinking that perhaps the moth had to work through this to move on to another stage of being or had not done well in a past life, and naturally God didn't answer when you called on him randomly only when you wanted something. I glanced up, the moth was unchanged, when there was a sudden sharp burst of wind which snapped the cobweb and whirled the moth away. I was stunned. Did God answer or not? To me, he did.

I digress. I am going to give a recipe for Georgian Fairy Butter. This is an 18th.C. recipe from one of the National Trust books.

GEORGIAN FAIRY BUTTER. To eat with any Christmas cake-like things.

125 g. unsalted butter.
50 g. caster sugar.
3 hard boiled egg yolks.
I teaspoon finely grated orange rind.
I tablespoon orange-flower water or brandy. (or both).

Cream butter and sugar together. Mash egg yolks and beat into mixture. Add orange-flower water and/or brandy. Pass through a sieve, (preferably a hair sieve), and carefully pile into a pretty, shallow serving dish using two forks. This way you will not destroy the 'fairy' texture, (apparently). Scatter the finely grated orange rind over your Fairy Butter and serve.

This butter can be kept in a cool place for several days.
- posted by Iris @ 12/20/2003 11:08:00 PM comment

 
How, how has this happened that Christmas is now really close and although I have vaguely collected enough presents by killing myself in London I will have to work 18 hour days just to get everything even resembling the Olde Worlde Yuletide that my family have come to know and love. I am not complaining as it is all my fault. I did not follow the Two Months to Christmas Plan in that ancient magazine that promises a stress-free season including several forms of canapes in the deep freeze for unexpected drop-in visitors. How many rainy days in November, perfect for pudding making, passed in a haze of reading and staring out of the window trying to identify far away out- of- focus birdlife. (The binoculars were hidden cunningly between burglaries and have never resurfaced but obviously we can't buy new ones as they are in the house somewhere).

Why does nothing ever seem urgent until it actually is?

How much nicer Christmas would be if the other side of my brain had not constantly and soothingly explained that I did not have to get up early or go shopping when it was cold as none of the little things that I was thinking of doing or buying would make THAT much difference.

I was just interrupted by a phone call from my husband telling me to go AT ONCE to the fridge as he had been struck by the hideous thought that the local butcher had sent (don't ask) a SKINNED ham and I had put it away without noticing. (How true). Cooking the ham is my husband's manly contribution to the Feast and I will not go into the cliches of screaming chaos that this involves every year but they are all there. Oddly, I immediately had a picture of a skinned ham and told him that never mind we would just have to be different and creative with it this year as no way was I facing the butcher and making him take it back. I spent some time cheering him and talking him round to a sullen acceptance and then when I went to look the ham was perfect and not skinned at all. Perhaps I am going to be that paranoid kind of senile. Crap.

Also, he mentioned that various new Christmas cards had arrived including one from the first man I ever wanted to marry; who I mentioned earlier in relation to the stuffed albatross. I think it is because I am an only child that I like to keep in contact with people and also to introduce acquaintances to each other so forming a big blanket-like 'family' around myself. (Who I then never bother to see and hear about in random phone calls. I just like to know that they are out there). I have sent a card and letter every year to this person, who I will call B..., for at least 20 years and , not hard to remember as we spookily have the same birthday, a birthday card. He has always either not replied or sent a card back much later long after receiving mine. Last year I sent my cards from London and had left my address book behind and couldn't remember his post code and then forgot about him. This year I Googled in his name idly and found to my total annoyance that he has a huge Arts Festival each summer at his house in Scotland, ( well, all right he runs the place as an Arts Centre), but it has live pop groups and a thousand people dancing and his name came up dozens of times. You have no idea how good I would have been at that and how dull and wet his wife is. (I am NOT jealous. She never wears makeup as a matter of principle and she thinks that plants scream when you pick them). Anyway. as he had not sent a card last year when I didn't, I particularly thought 'Oh f@ck you, it is time to let go', and crossed him off my list. Hello! As I said, apparently a card has arrived with a plaintive letter, cleverly addressed to both of us, saying what a shame it is to let old friendships die. Mwahahaa, or however you spell it. God, being unpleasant is so much more rewarding. I have even started lying, in little things, after all these years - so relaxing.

AND, the man upstairs in London who has been creating an anally perfect maisonette for a YEAR of incessant hammering has just left expensive champagne on our doorstep with a note of apology for the 'intrusive noise'. This is a few weeks after I had an hysterical and unreasonable row with him and then left two abusive notes leading him to e-mail my husband that he would only deal man-to man in future.

I have just made a Christmas pudding to an olde recipe which needs 10 hours steaming. And the mincemeat for the pies which normally keeps for a year, so you make double quantities bi-annually, has not. So instead of thinking, maybe no one will notice, I have actually made some more. And I have made cranberry and orange relish, which is like chutney and really nice but only keeps for about two weeks. And tomorrow I will be making something called 'Georgian Fairy Butter' from an 18th.C. book which I will reproduce here. As I only got back last night that is not so bad. NO!.... it is bad, as this was meant to be done ages ago and is now taking up time normally spent doing other things, like making charming peripheral cheese biscuits and stupid but pretty arrangements of furry Father Christmases, (there are several), once given to us by an Australian au-pair girl, on side tables. The detail is all.

OMG. I just read this through and am REALLY senile.. The whole point was that in his letter B... said 'I was sorry not to hear from you last year but I suppose that was understandable'. I thought 'What?' but then remembered that he had sent some rambling note, the year before, about how when he was writing his card he had nostalgic memories of our 'times' together when we first met but perhaps it was 'inappropriate' to mention these things. Aaaargh! You have no idea how gorgeous and amusing and generally perfect he used to be and cynical and well - perfect. What have 20 years in Scotland with HER done to him? How could he be so sad and wet and sad and wet? What can I write to snap him out of it? I know that he is still in there.
- posted by Iris @ 12/20/2003 12:33:00 AM comment

 
Wasted far too much time on Quizilla which was mentioned on Spanglemonkey, but maybe not, as it has provided a well-timed insight. The answer to 'Which Movie Should You Be Living In?' was 'Cinderella'!!!! OMG, how horribly true that is. Not only have I lived Cinderella's life for years - based in the kitchen, cooking, cleaning, washing etc. to make other people's lives smooth and happy - but I even have her mindset. 'I don't have to bother to make a big effort to change things because one day someone will appear out of the blue and take over and turn me back into the selfish princess I was when I was younger'. Much time has passed and there is no sign of the prince or, obviously better, the Fairy Godmother. Perhaps I should write a re-working of the story where Cinderella finds that the Fairy Godmother is actually inside herself and makes all her wishes come true by getting out of the kitchen and doing something positive for once.


Through life I have found that the 'If you want something too much you may get it' saying has applied on many occasions. These have usually been sparked by scenes in a book or film. For example, as an only child, I was particularly struck by 'The Bell Family' books by leoN dleiftaertS where a huge cheerful family lived in genteel poverty in a rambling Vicarage with amusing Cockney cleaners, Nannies etc. Later on I lived in genteel poverty in a rambling old Vicarage with a huge cheerful family that I hated sharing the house with us and a shifty local girl as Nanny who sniffed glue and stole my stuff compulsively and a surly cleaner who did nothing and charged ludicrous amounts of money for mythical 'hours' put in. (Once I had been away for a week and she presented a bill for £120.00. The house looked identical to when I left including toffee papers all over the carpet. When I rang to query the amount, she said menacingly, 'Are you calling me a liar?'). I couldn't get rid of them because not only was there no one to replace them but everybody for miles was related, usually incestuously, and by mad chance these two were both friendly with the local burglars which is why our house was never touched.

Another time I was in the garden in pouring summer rain, wearing a raincoat and bare feet, dead-heading the roses and pondering suicide because I was so mentally lonely and my husband constantly f@cked off to London mysteriously and left me to cope with everything. When, I remembered watching the film 'Accident' and the scene where Dirk Bogarde drove out to his colleague's country house to look for their mutual mistress. He arrives in pouring rain to find the beautiful abandoned wife deadheading the roses in a raincoat and bare feet. Without taking in the implications I had thought, (Why?), that she looked really romantic and cool and I longed for a garden like that and to be discovered like that. Then I had totally forgotten until the moment of re-creation - when of course apart from getting sopping and muddy, no one came round that day.

Last one (for now). I used to be a big fan of a long running drama series about masters and servants set around 1900. For some reason I really took to the 'Lady of the House' and at one point my mind suddenly said to me 'I wish MY mother was more like that. In fact I wish SHE was my mother'. I absolutely horrified myself because I really loved my mother although she was not as perfect as Lady Thing. Many years later the family that I hated who were renting from us moved their mother in for a long stay, without asking. As we shared the kitchen this was a massive bore. Especially as she was lazy , demanding and a total bitch. Yes - she was the actress who had played Lady Thing.

- posted by Iris @ 12/11/2003 01:01:00 PM comment

 
I have just read of a celebrity marriage between a famous actress and a pop star. Funny how life goes.

A few years back the children were moaning that they hadn't got a New Years Eve party to go to down here. The only entertainment on offer was a 'dinner party' given by an old schoolfriend of my older daughter. I am always keen to expand their social circle in the country so that they will want to spend more time here, so when they returned I questioned them avidly about the other guests. 'No, no we knew them all already', they said. 'Oh well, there was one boy, some local friend of H...'s, quite nice but rather quiet and not massive fun.' 'So, what does he do?', I asked. 'Well. he's started up some sort of band'. We sniggered. 'No, I mean what does he REALLY do?'.
- posted by Iris @ 12/11/2003 09:29:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
I think, in the absence of my brain activity, you might like to know a little more of the original Iris - who is with us in spirit. Here is a description of her first appearance to one of her greatest admirers.


"Now, I had no sooner cast my hat on the bed than the bell rang. It was one of those infernal things you pull at, so that they may go on clanging for ever, and as it clanged I wondered, I am afraid ungraciously, who it could be.... I could, however, always order my privacy without seeming too unfriendly by looking down from my bedroom window..(from which)... I had a clear prospect of our lane. Of pests, however, there was no sign; nor of cats, nor of men, nor of any low and usual thing; only, under the lamp at the Sheep Street end.. a long, low, yellow car which shone like a battle chariot. It was empty.

... I am one of those who are affected by motor cars; their lines thrill me, the harmony of their colour touches me, a gallant device wins my earnest admiration so that, walking along Piccadilly, I will distress my mind by being a partisan of this one, a despiser of that one. Nor am I to be won by any cheap thing, no matter how brave-seeming it may be to the eye ...but I am only to be won by the simple lines, the severe and menacing aspect, of the aces among motor-cars... This car charmed the eye. Like a huge yellow insect that had dropped to earth from a butterfly civilisation, this car, gallant and suave, rested in the lowly silence of the Shepherd's Market night. Open as a yacht, it wore a great shining bonnet, and flying over the crest of this great bonnet, as though in proud flight over the heads of scores of phantom horses, was that silver stork by which the gentle may be pleased to know that they have just escaped death beneath the wheels of a Hispano-Suiza car...

Downwards ... I looked, and there was a green hat before my door. The light from the one lamp in Sheep Street fell about it, and that was how I saw that it was a green hat, of a sort of felt, and bravely worn; being, no doubt, one of those that women who have many hats affect 'pour le sport'.

'Do you know if Mr. March is in?', asked the voice of the green hat. But I could not see her face for the shadow of the brim, for it was a piratical brim, such as might very possibly defy the burning suns of El Dorado."
- posted by Iris @ 12/11/2003 12:28:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
I notice that many people say at some point that they dread the moment when they can no longer think of anything to blog about. For me yesterday was not good and I will certainly never mention burglars again unless something dramatic happens. Then again fascinating thoughts strike so often during the day but when I reach the keyboard they are gone.

I was messing around looking for some more A.F. books to see if they had gone up in price since she died (no) when through tortuous means I came across this site. Making Light. The entry for the 4 Dec. called Namarie Sue. 1.Really interesting and amusing. 2. The comments list was actually longer than when Plain Layne switched off and just on a normal day and most of the comments were literary and interesting too. I feel totally disheartened and will have to have a drink and maybe start again.

Actually, is this woman famous?

Also, this is the first link I have ever made. Who knows, I may work out how to set up a blogroll next.
- posted by Iris @ 12/10/2003 08:53:00 PM (0) comments comment

 
One thing I really hate is being alone here at the full moon. The last time was on Halloween which is obviously particularly bad but tonight has a double edge of unease as I have the spooky
AND the criminal to contend with. Skipping to my bedroom for the bottle of whisky which resides by my pillow, (a natural remedy for night-terrors), I glanced out of the window and noticed to my horror that there is a RING AROUND THE MOON. I know that this means something weird but I can't remember what. (Perhaps it is better that way). Google just has pages of scientific sites ...... 'The reflection of moonlight from the frozen crystals in the upper atmosphere ...' Don't speak to me of frozen crystals, I am already wearing a hat in bed. This is probably a job for the 'Witches' Bible' but I can't be bothered to go and look for it.

The criminal part is that the pre-Christmas burgling fest is upon us once more. Two years ago at this time every other person in the district had their small, but expensive motorised vehicles stolen. Quad bikes were the favourite but they also were happy to take ride-on lawnmowers, motorbikes, the more unobtrusive forms of 4 wheel drives, chainsaws and trailers. We didn't lose anything as our stuff was old and crappy and got rather overconfident until burgled three times a year later. It is very creepy that it has started again as they were never caught and also went in for highly skilled and daring snatching. Including removing a motorbike from outside a kitchen window during breakfast and clearing a farmyard of everything valuable while the family were out for two hours for the first time in months. You must remember that this is very empty countryside in terms of casually strolling strangers, combined with large numbers of wandering farm workers, game keepers, women with dogs etc.

It is believed that they are a gang who drive down the motorway from Birmingham and move around the country targeting different areas. They then ship their stuff to Ireland, having stolen it to order. They use fairly small white builders' vans and seem to push the bikes silently well away from the houses and then load them up. They have never even been seen except once when they were caught driving out of a track but just accelerated madly away and the van turned out to be stolen. The last time they waited for a couple of months until people had replaced everything from their insurance and than came back and stole from all the same houses again. Except now armed with bolt cutters to remove the fancy new safety chains and padlocks.

Police in London are saying that muggers are using, Dickensianly, teams of small boys on bicycles to alert them to anyone walking along wearing expensive jewellery. The pinpoint accuracy of these thieves' timing makes everyone here sure that they are being tipped off by someone local.
Probably teenage boys lurking around in the hedges with binoculars. A happy thought on a night like this, especially when, like us, you've never got round to putting curtains up except in the bedrooms.
- posted by Iris @ 12/09/2003 08:38:00 PM (0) comments comment

 
Reading the very interesting discussion of vaccinations on Badger's site reminds me of when I was younger - this is where my children ease out of the room - and had just had my first baby. There was a serious scare about the safety of the whooping cough vaccine and even after it was proved that it was only one, numbered, batch my doctor refused to give it to my older daughter. As I was young and knew little of such things I went along with his decision. Two years later we were living in Norfolk, as I have described, in a huge ruin filled with builders and I had made best friends with a pair of sisters who had lots of young children. It was summer and everyone running around outside usually bare, (and not just the children - one of the sisters was obsessive about an all over tan), and I was seven months pregnant. Unusually for that season, one tiny boy had a deep smoker's cough. When I mentioned this his mother said, 'Oh God, I forgot to say. He's in the middle of whooping cough and we are all meant to be in quarantine'.

Even then I thought nothing of it. They were my closest friends and it was really cosy that we weren't allowed to see anyone else. We spent every day together, with the children still bare and constantly breathing into each other's faces. The first boy had hardly seemed to notice his illness but slowly some of the others caught it too and their coughing left them unable to breathe and often they were violently sick without warning. Then the school holidays ended and I was left pretty much alone and my daughter started to cough.

She had scary bouts of coughing about every hour and that included the night and with each bout she would make the horrible whooping noise and then suddenly be sick. She was so little and became so tired that I was afraid she would be sick in her sleep and die. So all through the night I sprang up at the faintest choke and rushed into her room. Whooping cough lasts for SIX WEEKS. As she reached her fourth week, I started to cough. I was eight months pregnant at that point and I had the illness as badly as you can get it. I was sure that it was going to bring on premature labour and rang the doctor in a panic. 'I don't think anyone ever COUGHED out a baby, ha ha', he said, 'Have you tried slowly sucking throat sweets?'. 'IT IS WHOOPING COUGH', I said. 'No, no that's not very likely and anyway there is no medicine for it so I'm afraid you will just have to hang in there'.

I should mention here that this doctor had been taken up by one of the sisters who had fallen in love with him during her pregnancy visits. Her family were actors and bohemian and wild and the doctor's head was turned. Nothing ever happened, partly because he was timid and had a tough wife and also she was his patient. There was a lot of heavy flirtation at drunken dinner parties where the doctor was totally out of his depth but smiled a lot and his wife looked silent and uncomfortable. Suggestive games of Charades were often played with the sister and doctor always on the same team. It culminated in two ways. Firstly the sister decided to have her baby at home in her own bedroom, delivered personally by the doctor. This involved her lying there half naked for hours with him investigating her more secret parts in depth. You have to admire her persistence - how could anyone feel sexy in the middle of childbirth? In the thrill of the moment she begged him to be her son's godfather and, (to her husband's fury, 'But we were going to choose people who were rich!), he accepted. 'I've got him in my life forever'. she said smugly afterwards.

Secondly, (of the two ways), the doctor cracked up. The first signs of this became apparent on the night following the birth, when the sister's husband was woken at 4.00 am by a phone call.
'I've been thinking about the afterbirth', the doctor shrieked, 'You must get it immediately and bring it to the telephone. We will compare its appearance with this picture I have here of one infected with brucellosis. If it's the same your wife must rush to hospital immediately'. 'But it's out in the dark in the dustbin', said the husband. 'JUST GET IT'. The husband said later that it was one of the most disgusting things he had ever done. Feeling around in a dustbin by the light of a wavery torch and then carrying the thing in and inspecting it microscopically. Naturally it was totally normal and everyone went back to bed. The doctor started drinking more than heavily and self-administering random medication and at the point of my phone call I think I might have been his only remaining patient. His surgery was always empty and each of my visits lasted more than an hour. Once his hands were shaking too much to give me an injection and he suddenly shouted, 'Oh God, I just can't do this', and ran out of the room. After a bit his wife came in with a cup of tea for me and I went home.

As I have said, Norfolk is very remote and there wasn't a lot to do. At that time the local town contained a doctor, (him), a vicar and the headmaster of the famous public (or private in America) school which happened to be sited there who were all in their 30's and all slightly mad. They formed a close trio and would drive around the district drunk, often after shutting one of them into the boot. The vicar, of whom I will write more some time, once came up to the other sister after a church service and said conversationally, 'Did you notice that I could hardly concentrate on my sermon because I was staring at your breasts?'. The doctor finally took so many of his own drugs that he decided that he was having a nervous breakdown and one dawn he set off and WALKED the thirty miles into Norwich to the nearest mental hospital and handed himself in.

My illness came about mid-way between the birth and the handing in. This is all a bit of an anti-climax after that digression. Anyway, my daughter was still not better and I felt so awful that I decided that if there was no modern medicine I would turn to Ancient Lore. Naturally I had many books of medieval remedies and one of these had an interesting section on grotesque throat ailments. ( I had these books as one of the reasons we left London was because I thought there was going to be a world war and I had set up a useful library for when I was the only person left alive). The recipe involved picking many different herbs in the moonlight, which was no problem for me as Norfolk is very dry and all the tiny herbs I had planted had taken over the entire garden, wildly. You then had to boil them for three days with a large amount of honey, which I did. At the end of the time there was a very small amount of black treacly stuff in the bottom of the double boiler - really only enough for one. With typical motherly self-sacrifice I poured it into a sipping cup and took it to my child. 'This is sooo special', I said, 'You must drink it terribly carefully'. She took a tiny mouthful and then with a convulsive movement spat it out and tossed the cup into the flowerbed, where the treacle drained away. I never had the heart to make it again.

I was still coughing, though weakly, when I finally had my second daughter. Leading up to that I coughed so desperately in the night that I was constantly sicking up large quantities of blood and had to take a bucket to bed. At that time I used to wear (real) long white Victorian nightdresses which you could buy for nothing. My husband had moved to the other end of the house in order to get some sleep but once at about 3.00 am he opened my door at some sinister sounds and says he will never forget. In the low light was a figure with massed, tangled hair and staring eyes, wearing a long red-splashed white gown and clutching to her chest a bowl of blood.

I think the original point of this is that it is probably better for your children to be vaccinated.


- posted by Iris @ 12/08/2003 10:21:00 PM (0) comments comment

 
With synchronicity I was just finally going to post off the out-of -print books of my favourite children's author, to make her a household name in America through a popular blog, when I opened Saturday's Daily Telegraph to find her obituary. I am going to write her name here backwards (I assume that will work) because I don't want any annoying English people, who are suddenly Googling her after reading how good her books are, to arrive here. She is called ainotnA tseroF.

I found her randomly when I was in my early 20's and feeling rather paranoid and sad. Life was all a bit much and when I read children's books (for older children obviously) I was reminded of how cheerful and positive you could be in those days before 'Love' took over everything. Although they are mostly about boarding school they are some of the most realistic depictions of teenage thinking that I have come across. Apparently they were never published in America because they are 'too English'. That is so weird isn't it as children love reading about the different ways that children behave in other countries. As they were written over a long time starting in the 40's the characters are very innocent compared to now but the stories are still gripping. They went out of print here I think when there was a big politically correct purge by the publishing houses of books which weren't 'relevant' to the life of the 'average' child and they said that the lifestyles of the characters were too affluent. How bizarre is that? Do they have no idea what Harry Potter's school fees are? (I can tell you they would be about £20,000 a year).

It is so stupid that having loved her for years I have all her books and had no idea that finding them again would be so difficult. I thought that most of them were still in paperback and was just going to ask Amazon to post them off. Instead they are all now collector's items and even on eBay where I ended up there is brisk and vicious bidding. Luckily they are being reprinted by a tiny private press and eventually should be available again. The annoying thing is that they absolutely have to be read in order as they run straight on and some of the books are really rare. The first one 'Autumn Term' does still seem to be on Amazon if anyone is interested and I could become an intermediary for finding the later ones, maybe.

I can tell that no one will be. But they are really good.
- posted by Iris @ 12/08/2003 12:46:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
As I couldn't get into my blog for an hour because of 'technical difficulties' I was wandering the web and have now discovered from the Oz site that Keller AND Cyril both die. How unnecessary is that? (Although there was the fascinating fact that Ryan and Cyril are actually brothers in real life.) I will obviously have to watch the whole series on my own - I hate to cry in front of my children.

I am writing some more about Paris although it isn't interesting but I may be glad of it later as, I have to admit, one of the reasons for going there was that my husband is looking for a flat. It is supposedly a family thing but he is the one who is there constantly on business and he is the one who is paying for it with some money he has inherited. We, apart from him, want to live on the Left Bank and he wants to live on the Right Bank within walking distance of the Gare du Nord and all the places he visits businessily. An impasse has set in but not really as when it comes down to it he has the last word. He has decided on the district near the Opera which is DREARY AND NOT FUN and I can already see myself on the top floor, (the inherited money isn't that much), of one of those blank houses watching French television alone and thinking about suicide.

This is not being whiny and 'Get a grip,woman', it is totally objective. I can see that the Left Bank is not what it was and is full of tourists and chain shops and restaurants selling rubbishy moules frites and steaks which aren't even horse any more. And that in spite of this it is also ludicrously expensive and we could probably only afford a 'studio flat' of supreme nastiness but I don't care. It is still full of memories and nostalgia for charming bohemians through the ages and literary allusions and the ghost of me at nineteen. And we walked over the river to have dinner there for half the nights last week and each time turned out amusing, well relatively. And in one restaurant my son actually met some boys from his old school who are now studying in Paris and they took him out drinking for two of the evenings which was perfect. The nights in restaurants on the Right Bank towards the Opera we met no one and no chance of it.

On one of the L.B. nights we went to the famous 'A.....r' where we were having a really expensive meal when my daughter found a live slug on her plate, (not huge). As we had been drinking heavily this seemed killingly amusing and she also has this incredibly friendly smile which makes everyone behave scarily nicely to her. As she had hardly started eating we had to call the waiter but couldn't stop doing stupid giggling and didn't make much of it. After a bit the manager appeared and did Japanese-style self-humiliation in a hushed voice and said she could have a free dessert. We were saying, also hushedly, no no think nothing of it, could have happened to anyone etc. When the bill came they had given us her entire meal free and all the desserts and coffee of the rest of us and the manager turned up again and said this was because we had been so nice and had not 'embarrassed' him. I'm sure this is not original but if you had a tiny jar on your person with a slug on a piece of lettuce, you could get a discount on many of your meals.
In fact someone did that in a film, didn't they?

Lettuce played a part again later; on our last day we had lunch again on the Left Bank and chose an 'authentic' looking bar which although not cheap was filled with French workmen. Everything was fine until we were walking 'home' and I suddenly felt a strong urge to lie down in the gutter and rest. We were in the middle of a quest for Daddy's Christmas present from my daughter which is an obscenely expensive box of gourmet chocolates filled with a range of gourmet cheeses. (Don't ask). Which can only be bought from one boutique chocolatier at the far end of infinity. As we were using my credit card I had to be there and did finally make it after collapsing into a bar which charged £6.00 for two cups of undrunk coffee and had a notice on the wall assuring their customers that all their beef came only from France and Belgium. (Don't get me started... but British beef is now the safest in the world after all the fuss and new regulations and the French are STILL refusing to buy it against all laws and sanity because it suits their farmers so well. Our revenge is that French beef is rife with BSE, I have this on first hand authority, but they just cover up the evidence all the time ..SO THEY WILL ALL DIE).

Anyway, our last evening was meant to be for me and I had chosen to fulfill a long-held wish and go to the Buddha Bar in smart but discreet French clothes with my glamorous children shielding me from anyone thinking I was frumpy or too old and drink idiotic cocktails and listen to the Buddha Bar music. But when we got back my daughter suddenly had the lying down in the gutter urge combined with various other symptoms and had to spend the evening in bed.
We had passed many meals of the holiday sniping at my son for his casual attitude towards vegetables but now the only thing that he hadn't eaten was the lunchtime salad, of which she had taken far the most, healthily. She had to be practically carried to the Eurostar and lay pathetically and pale grey across two seats, (from which I had flushed a rather ratty businessman who said, 'What, are you expecting me to STAND all the way back?'.) And that was it.







- posted by Iris @ 12/08/2003 12:08:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
I can't bear it. I was thinking that writing about Paris isn't the height of scintillation but I would do it as an exercise and be glad afterwards etc. and so wrote a long, informative and quite amusing account .... and then the screen froze and then I heard my husband coming upstairs to fiddle with the fuse box which is just near the computer. So I kept pressing desperately to make Iris concealed.... which it did and then froze again and wiped everything.



Anyway..............


If I had read the guidebook personally I would never have entered the Catacombs. (Which probably proves that unimaginative people tend to get out more.) A brisk queue was moving through an archway and once you joined it there was no turning back. We set off in single file down a narrow stone spiral staircase which went on and on until you were dizzy and insane and then went on and on. 'We must be f@cking far under ground', said my son pleasantly. I chose not to reply. At the bottom there was a low passage, also narrow, dimly lit and disappearing into infinity. Behind us a relentless crowd advancing one way. It is not very often that you realise that you have absolutely no choice.

I set off speed-walking, rudely pushing past trembly grannies and sauntering lovers. Herding the children along and ignoring remarks like, 'Ooo look, they've carved the street names to correspond with the ones above. I wonder where we are exactly ....'. Or, 'Mummy, here's a really cool quotation about how we are all going to die'. The floor of the tunnel was made of vile, slimy gravel and the air was warm and clammy but after a bit I got used to it and even paused to try to translate a Latin inscription about Doom. But then we got to the bones.

You probably can't quite picture what six million skeletons look like - I can. Imagine walking along a track for about a mile and on each side of you is a 10 ft. wall made out of stacked bottles. But they aren't bottles, they are the ends of leg bones. Bizarrely, the people who made the walls had used some artistic flair and had incorporated the skulls to make symbols or patterns. There was no form of protection and as you passed you could accidentally brush against ancient faces. One of the nastiest bits was where a section of wall was lower and you could see behind it acres of heaped stained and broken bones not smart enough for the front. Various stone tablets gave the names of the vanished cemetaries and plague pits where the bodies had originated. After the first horror and interest this part too turned into something to get over with and especially when we found that the ceiling was dripping on our heads. 'Isn't it rather like rain?', my daughter said, 'In this warm atmosphere doesn't damp come out of the bones and then gather on the roof?'. We also found our throats feeling rough and sore and I was horribly reminded of a detective story I'd read. The policeman had a theory that, like the tiny flakes of old skin that are meant to fill the air, a room with a putrifying corpse in it would have microscopic particles floating about that you would breathe.

Thank God we must have been walking uphill all the way as I was suddenly struck by the fact that I could never get up a staircase like the one we came down, or at least not in one day, and behind me were countless lithe students and muscular Australian tourists. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad or I was fitter than I remembered. My children disappeared ahead - running. The spiral stairs were literally the width of one person, it would be very hard to squash past a slumped panting woman. I was not fitter than I remembered. After a very long time I didn't seem to be able to breathe. I stopped. This was going to be possibly the most embarrassing moment of my life. 'Mummy, have you stopped? What are you doing, we're at the top'. There were two more turns and I was out. The perfect pleasure and relief at not making a sad 'spectacle' of myself made everything worthwhile. The rain continued to fall gently and our faces glowed in anticipation. 'Demain', we said, 'les egouts!'.
- posted by Iris @ 12/07/2003 12:38:00 AM comment

 
I have got back now - safely into freezing cold and very catty-smelling farmhouse. I am so happy with that comment of 'Get a grip, woman' and used it as a mantra throughout trip and probably for the rest of my life.

The only really depressing thing about the holiday was that nothing interesting happened. It only rained for two of the days and the flat, although EXACTLY as I had described, managed to have a huge kitchen which at least had a stone floor (washable). We lived totally in this room but had to drink out of two old Nutella glasses and a mug as everything else was irreplaceable including the kitchen table which was 18th c. hand painted so you couldn't put anything down on it directly. This man has three children including a baby, WTF? I made coffee and boiled eggs every morning on this vast gas cooker which looked like a stainless steel and brass range. On the first evening when I moved the kettle to boil it again, every place I had set down any pan had made a RUST mark. How is that possible? The flat is on two floors so we started taking our shoes off just inside the front door in case we sullied any carpets, all of which priceless or in fact in the region of £100,000 in the drawing room apparently. We only crossed this room once or twice to check the weather which was, oddly, noticeably different on either side of the building. My husband had to stay there the night after we left and rang me to ask who had chipped the leg of the 'glass stool' once owned by Marie Antoinette or something. NO ONE. He kindly smuggled the chip out of the building and turned the stool to the wall and nothing more is being said. By the time we left I felt like a very careful wreck and had had little sleep because I kept springing awake nervously all night for no reason.

We have all been to Paris quite a lot and the children had both done school Art History trips so museums etc. didn't have quite that pulsating excitement of old. I will just say quickly that the shops have become crap. Two years ago we rushed around buying charming but weirdo things like hand-painted jerseys (uncleanable) and, my personal favourite, les ours-anges for the Christmas tree. Perfect tiny furry teddybears with padded golden wings of the highest quality.
Now most of those little individual shops have gone ( we walked for miles and looked at about ten different districts) and have turned into chains or Gap. The only funny thing on the Left Bank was that they had randomly turned one narrow, twisting street into a children's ski run with fir trees and slippy white material over the road.

The day after the shopping disappointment, with my son's internal clock sadly unchanged, it was raining. My daughter had an inspired idea - we would explore 'sous-Paris' as it said in the guide-book. This meant the Catacombs and - if raining tomorrow- the sewers.
- posted by Iris @ 12/06/2003 08:17:00 PM (0) comments comment