Web.
Wandering the Web late at night I typed in the names of two old lost friends in case there was a clue to their whereabouts. The first one was the only American I have ever been out with and he was the first married man I ever slept with. But it was 'all right' because he was in an exciting 'open' marriage. This did not preclude him getting divorced not long afterwards, luckily at least three girls past me and it was his wife who ran away with another man AND his best friend, to live happily ever after in a threesome. I had heard ages ago that he was now a sucessful interior designer in NY but the only entry that came up was a short transcript from a TV programme. On older men who decide to have plastic surgery. 'So Jim, what made you decide to take this step?'. 'Well, you know, we all like to feel good about ourselves and I thought some tweaks here and there would keep me out dating for a few more years ... ha, ha.' Okaay. Luckily there was no clue to his present address.

The second one was a girl I knew at prep. school who I wrote about in February when I was going skiing. I had tried to find her before but with no luck at all. This time I had a lateral thought - her family had lived in a famous house but it was divided in half, so I looked up all the members of the other family. Da, daa ...ish. They actually had a huge family website listing every single person related to them right up to the present day with all the girls' married names and various obituaries, but not addresses or phone numbers. But ... (I hate you 'Life') ... there was a link to a classified advertisement. The mother, who I had assumed had died years ago, had actually only died this year. She was very well known in the ballet world and a long term and beloved teacher. The advertisement had been for anyone who had been her pupil, ever, (me), to come to a huge memorial drinks party - three months ago. Where, after twenty years of searching, my girlfriend would absolutely definitely have been.....

Funny how a quiet midnight stroll on the Web can send your emotions from A - B.

- posted by Iris @ 9/18/2004 09:49:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
Popular.
Every boy that my older daughter has been out with for any length of time still wants to marry her. I find that quite unusual. She finds it difficult and upsetting. Since she broke up with the last boyfriend she has turned more to her old friends, the four closest of which are boys she once had an affair with. She did end these affairs herself in every case but as kindly as possible and has continued to see all of them on a fairly regular basis, giving support and love life advice etc. like a sister.

But in the past few weeks every single one of them has suddenly come out of 'friend' mode and admitted that they have never loved another woman in the same way and have always deep down assumed that they would finally end up with her. One of them, (gorgeous), even said that for the last FIVE years he has only had casual affairs because 'what was the point' of settling down with someone else when he was eventually going to marry her? Not only that, she has been very impressed with the attitude of the one she has just broken up with, who has been calm and reasonable and continued to meet her for drinks unemotionally. Now his behaviour has taken on a worrying edge, especially as she has realised that every time she sees him he is wearing clothes that she gave him.

'So all my 'best' friends have some scary hidden agenda and nothing they have said for years is actually real. And when I do finally marry someone - probably none of them - some hell will be let loose and I will never see any of them again'.

- posted by Iris @ 9/18/2004 09:35:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
Presents.
It was my husband's birthday a couple of days ago but he was luckily in London for it, so various old friend underlings from work took him out to lunch and dinner and I had to do nothing. But obviously I am not a complete bitch and now he is due here today I have made some kindly preparations.

Last week he said, 'I really don't want any presents this year. Especially any birthday kind of 'stuff', you know'. 'You mean like the things we normally give you?', I said sarcastically. 'Yes, exactly', he replied non-sarcastically.

Hmmm .... a challenge then. My son has said in the past that he is afraid to admire anything in a shop or magazine because, long after he has decided that he didn't specially like it after all, it will turn up as a Christmas present. 'Well, what am I supposed to do? You will never say what you want and some things have to be a surprise or it is all really dull'. So now he says, 'Wow, that's pretty cool .. BUT I DON'T WANT IT'.

I hope this doesn't apply to practical things in my husband's case because that is what I decided to do. At a great deal of time and boredom to myself I set up two things which should make him happy. He has often moaned that due to the setting of the house it is almost impossible to have his breakfast in the dawn while facing the sun. SO ... I have cleared and replanted a small terrace outside one of the big East facing windows and cleaned and dragged down a charming ancient garden chair from a barn miles away. And, with electrical knowledge I didn't know I possessed(?), bought and wired up some speakers on a vast length of flex so that he can listen to music on the other side of the house, plus a CD of an ancient Cuban jazz piano player to move him on from his favourite (but not mine)
early tinkly piano music.

And, as we are probably the last people in the world to discove the oroM* Cookbook but we have and it is really good. An alm0nd and sh3rry tart. This has all turned out to take about a million hours more time and thought than usual and he had better be pleased - or at least nice about it - and definitely not have 'that face'.

- posted by Iris @ 9/18/2004 09:04:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
Surprise.
I am stunned. As I logged on I was reading the news in case anything else had happened with the h-nting protest, (you remember that I live in the h-nting epicentre of the universe and the whole place was deserted yesterday as everyone had gone to demonstrate outside Parliament) and .... In passing, I voted on whether h-nting should be banned or not and out of 50,000 voters 50% said 'No' and 48% said 'Yes'. The government's big excuse for all this has always been that the 'vast majority' of people were strongly in favour of a ban and who am I to know that they are wrong? But, now I do know, and so they have lied about this as with everything else.

I am predicting here that this cynical, possibly illegal, action might eventually bring the government down. Many people don't particularly like the idea of h-nting but there is something so fanatical, extreme and just peculiar about the way this has been pushed through that I think it has stirred up the British tendency to side with the underdog.

Also, the thousands of protesters are mostly educated middle-class with spheres of influence and a confidence and arrogance that is not normally seen under these circumstances. I said to my son when we were watching the protesters running into the House of C0mm0ns chamb3r, 'It's a shame that you don't care more about this issue because I think lots of boys your age are going to have massive fun with it'. A couple of hours later the first H. of . C. invader was named and is a boy who went to prep. school and judo classes with my son. My husband is desperate to get out there. I think for many people it is a catalyst for feelings of fury at a government who are more like a dictatorship and, especially down here, their total lack of understanding of what life in the countryside means and the endless stupid, shortsighted 'townie' measures they have brought in; treating the country like some twee London suburb - which is all they know. As one protester said on television last night, 'The war has begun'.

- posted by Iris @ 9/16/2004 09:24:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
Life.
I have been too superstitious to even mention it here but now it is over. All three of my children were flying home on the same plane on Sept. 11th. They have never been all on a plane at the same time without me there before and they told me the date casually as if it had no significance. While they were coming in to land I was actually at a party, (Good god, I hear you cry - oddly I do occasionally leave the house but never write about it here. Why on earth not?), and became totally obsessed with thinking about them and was forced to talk about it several times. Every single person had either forgotten what day it was or looked blank about the idea that there might be some anniversary nastiness. I pointed out that the Madrid att@cks were on March 11 which I had thought meant something and they looked blanker than ever. I suppose living down here, where there is absolutely no chance of anything ever happening, does mean that it all drifts over your head. I still sometimes feel my stomach drop when a serious voice booms out in the local supermarket, because of all those times years ago in London when you had to put down your shopping and run. Though nowadays they are warning you about a spillage in Aisle G.

The party was held in a large house right out in the middle of the moor which was a famous hotel until our friends bought it. It was sold off, short sightedly, in the middle of the f00t and m0uth crisis when no one was allowed near it for several months. As we approached through lashing trees, having seen no other soul for some miles, I said, 'You might think our house is lonely but there is NO way I would spend the night by myself here'. Later, on the way back, my husband said, 'I told P... your remark about being scared to live here but he said it is a really warm and welcoming house'. 'Why the f-ck did you tell him that, it was really tactless?'. My husband leant over, patronisingly, the better to impart a useful social lesson, 'You have to give something in conversation in order to get something back'. 'YES... but you give something about YOURSELF. Not pass on a confidence said by me'. He looked hurt and surprised. I was reminded again of his high score on the QA* t3st.

I noticed a strange phenomenon lately and when I have shared this observation with other people they have been struck by it too - but you have to be there while discussing it for full impact. You enter a room filled scarily with total strangers all talking and laughing. After two drinks you slowly begin to realise that you have met large numbers of them before and occasionally, like the other evening, that you have met ALL of them before and have many things to talk and laugh about yourself. Presenting a frightening picture for the next person who enters the room.

This was epitomised by our drawing up to park at the same time as another couple. Which was particularly annoying as I had been travelling with my trousers undone due to tightness and needed a moment standing up, preferably alone, to drag them around and force the zip closed. So I was staring at the man fiddling with his car keys to force him with the power of my will to bugger straight off into the house and not speak. And he was a complete stranger but of that dull kind who always looks faintly familiar and I had definitely never seen his wife before.

On the phone earlier I had been discussing this party with a local friend and she had said that coincidentally one of the people who would be there was another friends old art teacher from school who had just arrived in the district. He had an incredibly rich American wife and they were restoring some ruined gem at vast expense and thingy hadn't seen him since she was in the 6th form many, many years ago and so it would be weird. Some drinks into the party I remembered to ask her which one the art teacher was and she pointed out the man from the car park. 'I thought he looked familiar', I said, 'but he is just a clone isn't he?' 'God yes. Seen one grey haired middle-aged man, seen them all. T.. W...., Interchangeable Man'. 'What did you say? T.. W...? OMG - I do know him'.

Twelve years before we had shared a villa in Tusc@ny under slightly odd circumstances. We were arranging a holiday in It@ly inefficiently and at the last minute in 'high season'. Everywhere was booked. Then an acquaintance offered us their villa but they had already promised it to some poor and desperate friends, free. So, rather brutally from the friends point of view, they said that we could go there too, paying, if we were prepared to share. It seemed quite a funny idea - so we did. The villa was massive and we are all English and polite and it worked out really well. We even split slightly into two pairs as the wife and my husband both love cooking and the husband and me both love drinking and talking about books while sitting on a shaded terrace. We found that we had been to school in the same city and even had some friends in common, which the wife and my husband didn't. I have to say that I felt a frisson of flirtation in the air. And then we never saw them again..

Until last week. And he now looks much, much older and un-handsome and is divorced and no longer poor as he has a younger, millionaire American wife. When I sprang up, all happy and excited because I love coincidences, he was pleasant but cool. All mention of the old wife was glossed over at top speed and he did not introduce me to the new one nor did he exchange phone numbers or ask us over to inspect his building work and he left without a glance or a goodbye. I was rather drunkenly saying this to the husband of the woman who had been his pupil at school. 'Interesting', he said, 'Of course we can't see them socially as he gives my wife the squiggles. She keeps expecting him to shine a torch on her and tell her to stop smoking. But even apart from that he does have an odd quality'. 'Tell you what', I said, ' He kept reminding me of that Ag@th@ Chr1st13 film with H@yl3y M1lls. Where the man has a rich Amrican wife who loves riding out on the moors and they are idyllically happy but then she falls off her horse and dies. And you find that in fact he killed her and it was all a plot so he could marry his housekeeper and have all the money'. 'Hmmm ... His wife DOES love riding. So that IS a possibility'. 'Aaargh. No it isn't. You aren't going to tell anyone else what I've said, are you?' 'Why on earth not? It was fascinating'. 'OMG. NO, no, no. Pleeease don't. I was joking, obviously'. He smiled, sadistically. When we were leaving he waved from across the room. 'See you at the funeral', he called. Leaving everyone else saying, 'What? .... What?'.



- posted by Iris @ 9/13/2004 08:35:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
Fear.
This morning I am gripped by an all-encompassing fear. It is dark and raining; the chestnut tree now has an unmistakeably orange tone; it is Autumn. And I'm not sure I can take it.

SIX MONTHS are on their way of mud, weird scary weather, biting freezingness and evenings that start soon after lunch. Even if I pull myself together and have people to stay there is nothing for them to DO in the Winter and to a normal city person our house is very, very cold. I need backup and I am not going to get it. The Summer free spirit skippiness of enjoying the fact that I have no relations is waning with the hours of sunlight. Oh god, even if they were social workers who wore sandals with socks like many of my husband's second cousins at least they would be obliged to listen to hours of drivelling about whether my son is happy or not. That is what 'family' does.

That cleansing of my address book a few years ago was obviously disastrous. I was at a very low point (so what's new?) and some self-help article said that you should stop seeing anyone who didn't make you feel good about yourself. I was a bit over-zealous with this and found that meant that I didn't want to see anyone. After cutting many phone conversations short and using unconvincing excuses to stop old friends from dropping in, I am out of the loop now for reciprocal ringing up and moaning drearily about domestic problems.

I just don't feel up to supporting all my children through a Winter of things not working out. I don't feel up to sorting out two children's birthdays which both come near enough to Christmas to use up all your ideas. I don't feel up to organising an entire Christmas all on my own and making it fun especially as, of the few local families that we would normally see for drinks or something, one had that horrible tragedy last month and the two with children of the right age are going AWAY to have Christmas abroad because they have decided it is too dreary down here.

How does one change like this? When we first arrived the whole place seemed magical especially as it actually snowed for the first two Christmases. It is like some foreigner's dream of olde worlde charm and people pay huge amounts to rent houses down here for the season. I keep imagining a perfectly possible parallel universe where things are exactly the same but I have 'snapped out of it' and am springing around smiling. That is all it would take.

I have thought before about trying to live in the moment. About the ridiculousness of shutting down for half the year. For many people round here the summer has to be got through before the h-nting season starts again and life begins. So if you loved riding or skiing the sight of the dropping leaves would have you leaping about, energised. When you are lying around in August, fanning yourself, you think of the pleasures of wood fires and charming coats with (fake) fur-lined hoods and watching TV in bed while rain beats on the windows. Why am I, however, always sitting morosely in the moment thinking about its crap aspects and how some other moment would be so preferable?

I was thinking about the 'strength to carry on' and where it comes from. I suppose it is the life force. At times I have physically felt as if I was reaching down - (it seemed like the bottom of my stomach, is that where it is kept?) - and pulling a reserve of strength and 'coping' up into my brain.

Maybe the 'counting your blessings' thing is helpful. People with a positive attitude are supposed to live ten years longer, aren't they? So how come I am still here? And in the paper yesterday a survey had found that students who kept personal diaries were far more prone to anxiety and depression than those who didn't. (But it was stupid as the point was that they wrote down all their worries and sadness and then often re-read it - so that makes it meaningless in general terms.) I feel better already after moaning on here - it helps me sort through superficial feelings which are sparked off by, today, waking up to a thunderstorm and my parcel containing the trousers I was going to wear tonight not arriving. If I hadn't delved a little deeper here I would be stuck in the top layer of feeling maybe all day.

Right, I will try making a mental list of blessings and rest positively in this moment. Autumn ... how cool is that?

- posted by Iris @ 9/10/2004 10:00:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
testing
Badger here, testing 1-2-3.
- posted by Liz @ 9/08/2004 06:58:00 PM (0) comments comment

 
Holiday.
My three children are all on holiday together - they have rented a villa in aizibI* with a few friends and boyfriend. (No longer plural as my older daughter doesn't have one, for the first time since she was sixteen). Although her longest running old boyfriend is with them as he became like an older brother to my son and they automatically share rooms when away. (Don't even flicker - it is NOT like that). We all know that he is still waiting for her to come to her senses and realise that he is 'the one', but we never speak of it. As an only child myself I get ridiculous pleasure from a holiday situation like this and dreamily re-live my own past as if it had happened to me.

I know in reality they are probably arguing and sulking and annoying each other but just the fact of them going away together from choice is soooo sweet. I think there is some subconcious clinging going on as this is really the final end of childhood with my son leaving for college in a few weeks and my older daughter seriously thinking of moving out. She has that twenties dream of a huge loft space where she can 'express herself' and not have to fight her sister for the bathroom.

In the past Ib1z1a was like a second home to many of my hippy friends but for some reason I have never been there and spent all Spanish holidays driving up and down the mainland. That was when it was full of people lying on the sand druggily near picturesque fishing villages, rather like Thail..d now and I always felt that I had missed out. Which is nothing to how much I longed to go later on when the clubb1ng scene took off but by then I had small children and a resistant husband. The M@num1ss10n CD is practically worn out.

'Look, you are partly living this holiday for me', I told my middle daughter. 'One. You are spending at least twelve hours at the full m00n beach fest1val of the drums. Two. You are going to a massive club where they squirt you with foam - and I want pictures'.

'Riiiight. One. The beach fest1val of the drums was last week. Two. No'.

'What do you mean, 'No'? This is the club epicentre of the world. Come ahnn ... how often do you have the chance to spend the evening covered in foam and you know about the specialised entertainment at Man.....ion. You HAVE to.'

'Do you have any idea what these places cost? I think it may be fifty pounds each and then a tenner for every drink. Anyway it is all so old now and I specially booked the villa miles away at the north end of the island because it is quieter'.

'I don't care about the money. I will pay - for all of you - just GO, please. I really don't understand your attitude ... were you swapped at birth?'

'MUMMY. We are having the kind of holiday that WE want. Pottering around, going to the beach, making barbecues .... If you want the clubbing and the all-night drumming parties then you can go next year with your own friends.'




- posted by Iris @ 9/08/2004 10:40:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
Le Rond.
I was just thinking that there was something familiar about the description of backberry picking and endless geese flying over head that I was about to jot down when I was moved to look at my first ever post - and there it all was. I actually started writing on 10th September last year. And how little has changed ... but not NOTHING, so it isn't totally embarrassing.

I am finally alone today after weeks and weeks of a constant trickle of family and even the odd friend. The cats didn't know what to think and began starting nervously whenever I put on the TV and walking towards normally empty rooms with bent knees for maximum camouflage in case there was (horrors) 'someone' in there. But now, as before, the chestnut tree opposite this window has already started to 'turn' and the garden is full (ish) of Autumn flowers like Japanese anemones, golden rod and asters. There is also ... low moaning noise ... a 'bumper' crop of apples in the orchard. My husband regularly gets up very, very early and it is depressingly normal to come down to make coffee and find a large wheelbarrow in the middle of the kitchen heaped with a hundred or so prime cooking apples. 'This is still only scratching the surface', he says, beaming heartily, 'Drink that up and we can get in some more loads before it rains'. 'But ... what are we going to DO with them?'. 'What do you mean? Just turn them into apple puree and put it in the deep freeze. There's enough here for the whole Winter'.

Hello .... the deep freeze is already full right up to the top with god knows what; as no one ever digs any deeper than the first foot or so. (I emptied it once pre-Christmas and found bags of prawns from a company that went out of business years before and a sinister huge plastic packet of 'meat' which turned out to be part of a stag once handed to me by a huntsman as a treat.) Even if it was totally empty, making apple puree is a huge chore .. and bore. Peeling literally hundreds of apples leaves your hands sore and aching and if you make apple juice it also has to be frozen and takes up vast amounts of room. I do have the exciting birthday present fruit boiling equipment (Finnish) but the instruction booklet shows that the enticing product description was faulty. You do not, in fact, throw whole unwashed apples into a bucket thing at the top and then wait, humming placidly, for sterilised juice to pour out of the bottom into a handy recepticle. As if. You have to 'prepare' the fruit .. or peel, core and f-ck around just as normal. If I wasn't so lazy the stupid thing would be on its way back to Hels1nki as we speak.

The trouble is that after so many years of 'seasons', I am all countryed out. When I was younger I had an earth mother, home-making phase which lasted for quite a long time but I think it is tied in with having small children, who really appreciate skipping around with blackberrying baskets etc. Going blackberrying on your own is fun for about ten minutes and then turns sweaty and prickly. The last fruity thing I made was a vast batch of marmalade about two years ago when my husband approached me in the supermarket carrying some Seville oranges and said sadly that he supposed there was 'no point' buying any as I had 'given up' all that sort of thing. I fell for it, naturally.

I decided to make the marmalade perfectly and follow an ancient, anal recipe to the letter. This included cutting the strips of peel in different thicknesses 'for interest' while they were still red hot and washing the jars and polishing them to a blinding brightness. I even dug out the jam thermometer from a dusty drawer back and watched obsessively as it climbed to the exact temperature which combined cookedness with no chance of the dread 'bitter after taste'. The whole enterprise took many, many hours but the table full of orange charm made it all worth while - and there was enough there for an entire year of breakfast delight.

I had left half a jar for my own first breakfast and was taking some out with a knife when I realised that a spoon would be more useful. The stuff was like water - it hadn't set at all. I covered the table with a cloth and silently left the building but by nightfall a ruthless madness descended. I ripped off the perfectly sealed covers and tipped the f-cking stuff back into the pan; re-washed and polished every jar and waited over the stove with the thermometer. 'Boil for about ten minutes at most or the marmalade will become bitter and inedible'. Bitter but at least SET, you stupid assh0le woman. 'Test a small spoonful on a saucer and it should wrinkle when ready'. I may have tested a thousand times and was sobbing hysterically with tiredness and fury when eventually the 'wrinkling' appeared. I had boiled the marmalade briskly for an hour and a half and was beyond caring. The next day it was cooled to a gumminess of scientific precision and my husband said it was some of the nicest he had ever tasted. But my confidence was shattered and the pleasure of jam creation gone for ever.

- posted by Iris @ 9/06/2004 07:58:00 AM (0) comments comment