Wife with troubled marriage:
We're supposed to leave in an hour. He just lies on the bed and won't get up and says he won't come on holiday with us.
Bad Lindy:
Am cra**ing excessively so know I'm eating too much. But I don't care.
Cultured Mum:
Suffice a dire, il pleut des chats et chiens. En plus il neige en haut.
Vicky:
Am bored, f****d off c***. How the f*** r u?
Sunday, 12 August 2007
Saturday, 4 August 2007
Back on August 13th
Off to raise extra funds by selling off some old words and surplus paragraphs at car boot sales.
Atone deaf
The Day of Atonement usually comes but once a year. In our house, it came whenever my father damn well pleased. A childhood encompassing escape from 1930s Berlin to set up home in the UK as a dispossessed, orphaned Jewish teenager who spoke only German and Hebrew gave him, not altogether surprisingly, the sense that organised religion hadn’t done him or his family much in the way of favours thus far (cosmic wishing, at that time, not having been invented) – so he decided to ditch it.
The world, he told us, would be a better place if all religion were abolished, given that it tends to benefit only those who are card-carrying believers of whichever God happens to be in vogue with those in power.
These were fine sentiments. Unfortunately, being Jewish isn’t something it’s easy to give up. It’s a race thing. You can’t be born a Christian. With a Jewish mother, you can’t be anything else. My father did his best, marrying a Gentile or, as we liked to call her, Mum, but however hard he worked on renouncing his Jewish ancestry, it insisted periodically on creeping up on him and giving him a gentle nip on the bottom.
His resulting bouts of ambivalence had me swinging from steeple to synagogue faster than Tarzan in a cassock. One minute I’d be belting out ‘There is a green hill far away’ in school with the rest of my Church of England class mates - Christianity might have manifest flaws but at least they were conveyed in a language I could understand - the next, thanks to a letter from my father, I’d be whisked into a side room for a quick burst of Jewish assembly, where a clever girl called Natasha led the prayers in Hebrew and I mouthed the words, miserably conscious that I was opening the book at the wrong end and that every word I failed to pronounce proclaimed nothing but my half and half, in-between status to the world.
Because my father had married out, I was not only not Jewish but, as my father occasionally reminded me when I was being a bit uppity, ‘worse than a bastard’ in the eyes of the orthodox Jewish community. I felt bad about this for years, until I worked out that unless I’d used latent pre-foetal telepathic powers to bring my parents together, they could have been part Klingon and it still wouldn’t have been my fault.
Objectively, of course, my father knew this. But his heroic early history – scrimping and saving to buy food for his parents; wheeling and dealing until he acquired a pistol when Jews faced severe punishment for possessing firearms – made him, I now believe, envious not only of his own child’s relatively pampered existence but also of the fact that I took it for granted. He did his best to get the message across, lending me grim autobiographies of life in concentration camps; one, I remember, was called, simply, ‘I survived’. I read them as I read everything, fast and uncritically, enjoying it as a gripping adventure story while feeling guiltily conscious that this wasn’t what I was supposed to feel.
Some mixed marriages provide a happy fusion of cultures. In my family, what we ended up with was a kind of religious half-life that concentrated on all the negative emotions – notably guilt and fear - provided in generous abundance by all religions everywhere, and avoided anything approaching a celebration. My father’s belief – that we were sufficiently Jewish not to celebrate Christian festivals, but not Jewish enough to enjoy theirs, made Christmas a tough time as my mother, whose birthday also fell on December 25th, felt strongly that celebration of some description was essential and resorted to guerrilla tactics, planting decorations at night like explosives, and disguising entire Christmas trees as over-sized pot plants. We even managed a Christmas meal of sorts, although my father’s valiant attempts to fight back by refusing to make small talk were so successful that one year, when we timed it, we sped from turkey to crackers in under 15 minutes.
My father’s dead now, but his half and half legacy lives on. Even at his funeral we mixed and matched, playing traditional Jewish prayers for the dead but scattering his ashes in the woodland he loved – something his parents would have considered sacrilegious but we thought he would approve of.
Now I have to work out what, if anything, to do about my own children. Their ancestry shouldn’t, of course, make any difference in a society where religion is, supposedly, in decline. And for those in full possession of their spiritual credentials, whether or not they choose to flash them about in public, this is probably true. But, as with all these things, religion looks anything but a spent force when you’re having to operate on its fringes.
My children know that their inheritance confers a difference that I’d like them to be proud of, but they don’t really understand what it is. The youngest keeps asking to be christened; I keep saying no. Christmas, with Santa’s visit and a string of light polluting, ASBO-worthy outside decorations has become a big deal but when we go to church, I mumble my way through the prayers and leave out Jesus’ name when it appears.
All this I can live with. But I struggle with legacy of the Holocaust. To me it’s a family memory. To my children, it’s something to tick off on the list of National Curriculum projects, a bad thing that happened to other people a long time ago and has nothing to do with them.
Some of my cousins, who share my half and half inheritance, have gone the other way, strengthening the blend by marrying Jewish partners and having children who, within a generation or two, will be up to full religious strength. I’ve gone for full camouflage, with an identity, name and lifestyle that relegates my Jewish ancestry to an interesting sideline in dinner party conversation.
For now, that’s where it will stay. But, every now and then, as I survey my children, the irony of their situation strikes me. For while their Jewish ancestry remains something they comprehend only with difficulty, if at all, the Nazi party, which required only one Jewish grandparent to have shipped them straight off to a concentration camp, would have had no problem acknowledging the legitimacy of their inheritance straight away.
The world, he told us, would be a better place if all religion were abolished, given that it tends to benefit only those who are card-carrying believers of whichever God happens to be in vogue with those in power.
These were fine sentiments. Unfortunately, being Jewish isn’t something it’s easy to give up. It’s a race thing. You can’t be born a Christian. With a Jewish mother, you can’t be anything else. My father did his best, marrying a Gentile or, as we liked to call her, Mum, but however hard he worked on renouncing his Jewish ancestry, it insisted periodically on creeping up on him and giving him a gentle nip on the bottom.
His resulting bouts of ambivalence had me swinging from steeple to synagogue faster than Tarzan in a cassock. One minute I’d be belting out ‘There is a green hill far away’ in school with the rest of my Church of England class mates - Christianity might have manifest flaws but at least they were conveyed in a language I could understand - the next, thanks to a letter from my father, I’d be whisked into a side room for a quick burst of Jewish assembly, where a clever girl called Natasha led the prayers in Hebrew and I mouthed the words, miserably conscious that I was opening the book at the wrong end and that every word I failed to pronounce proclaimed nothing but my half and half, in-between status to the world.
Because my father had married out, I was not only not Jewish but, as my father occasionally reminded me when I was being a bit uppity, ‘worse than a bastard’ in the eyes of the orthodox Jewish community. I felt bad about this for years, until I worked out that unless I’d used latent pre-foetal telepathic powers to bring my parents together, they could have been part Klingon and it still wouldn’t have been my fault.
Objectively, of course, my father knew this. But his heroic early history – scrimping and saving to buy food for his parents; wheeling and dealing until he acquired a pistol when Jews faced severe punishment for possessing firearms – made him, I now believe, envious not only of his own child’s relatively pampered existence but also of the fact that I took it for granted. He did his best to get the message across, lending me grim autobiographies of life in concentration camps; one, I remember, was called, simply, ‘I survived’. I read them as I read everything, fast and uncritically, enjoying it as a gripping adventure story while feeling guiltily conscious that this wasn’t what I was supposed to feel.
Some mixed marriages provide a happy fusion of cultures. In my family, what we ended up with was a kind of religious half-life that concentrated on all the negative emotions – notably guilt and fear - provided in generous abundance by all religions everywhere, and avoided anything approaching a celebration. My father’s belief – that we were sufficiently Jewish not to celebrate Christian festivals, but not Jewish enough to enjoy theirs, made Christmas a tough time as my mother, whose birthday also fell on December 25th, felt strongly that celebration of some description was essential and resorted to guerrilla tactics, planting decorations at night like explosives, and disguising entire Christmas trees as over-sized pot plants. We even managed a Christmas meal of sorts, although my father’s valiant attempts to fight back by refusing to make small talk were so successful that one year, when we timed it, we sped from turkey to crackers in under 15 minutes.
My father’s dead now, but his half and half legacy lives on. Even at his funeral we mixed and matched, playing traditional Jewish prayers for the dead but scattering his ashes in the woodland he loved – something his parents would have considered sacrilegious but we thought he would approve of.
Now I have to work out what, if anything, to do about my own children. Their ancestry shouldn’t, of course, make any difference in a society where religion is, supposedly, in decline. And for those in full possession of their spiritual credentials, whether or not they choose to flash them about in public, this is probably true. But, as with all these things, religion looks anything but a spent force when you’re having to operate on its fringes.
My children know that their inheritance confers a difference that I’d like them to be proud of, but they don’t really understand what it is. The youngest keeps asking to be christened; I keep saying no. Christmas, with Santa’s visit and a string of light polluting, ASBO-worthy outside decorations has become a big deal but when we go to church, I mumble my way through the prayers and leave out Jesus’ name when it appears.
All this I can live with. But I struggle with legacy of the Holocaust. To me it’s a family memory. To my children, it’s something to tick off on the list of National Curriculum projects, a bad thing that happened to other people a long time ago and has nothing to do with them.
Some of my cousins, who share my half and half inheritance, have gone the other way, strengthening the blend by marrying Jewish partners and having children who, within a generation or two, will be up to full religious strength. I’ve gone for full camouflage, with an identity, name and lifestyle that relegates my Jewish ancestry to an interesting sideline in dinner party conversation.
For now, that’s where it will stay. But, every now and then, as I survey my children, the irony of their situation strikes me. For while their Jewish ancestry remains something they comprehend only with difficulty, if at all, the Nazi party, which required only one Jewish grandparent to have shipped them straight off to a concentration camp, would have had no problem acknowledging the legitimacy of their inheritance straight away.
Friday, 3 August 2007
Glowing in the dark
The word is out in cyberspace. I'm searching for a present for Francis' birthday and every gift site knows it. Like dodgy merchants in a third rate bazaar, they quickly dust off the utterly hopeless non-sellers. Top of the list are the toecovers that combine two totally unrelated functions and lump them together, simply because they can.
There's 'The amazing credit card torch - such a cool gadget you won't be able to put it down for days once it arrives',* though only, I suspect, if it automatically staples itself to your hand when you first unwrap it.
Or what about the 'Ego Boost key ring'*. Press it just before nerve-wracking occasions, such as job interviews and it will deliver such positive, life-affirming statements as 'Wow, I love what you've done with your hair!' - in Francis' case, presumably, referring to his body's successful attempts to shed most of it.
How about the 'Glow in the dark love dice.' *Throw them during those passionate moments and get a random selection of naughty things to do. In the case of the Brits there's doubtless a selection of highly charged eroticism like, 'Remove socks!', 'Close book!' or 'Share boiled sweet!' And it gets rave reviews, too: "Probably the best £3.50 I've ever spent," says Tony from Basingstoke.
I give up in disgust and leaf through a magazine. Then I come across a paragraph that makes me realise that, to misquote LP Hartley, celebrity is a foreign country. One loving spouse has, apparently, paid for a rose to be named in honour of her multi millionaire husband. He, in turn, has taken the logical next step and spent millions on turning the rose's fragrant smell into a mass market scent.
I look out at the scrubby lawn. If there were ever roses the man-eating dandelions saw them off long ago. Still......."Francis Pis en Lit," has a certain ring to it. And with a bit of cross marketing, it's a slogan that lends itself nicely to the 'Glow in the dark love dice,' too.
* = Absolutely genuine quotes, for once.
There's 'The amazing credit card torch - such a cool gadget you won't be able to put it down for days once it arrives',* though only, I suspect, if it automatically staples itself to your hand when you first unwrap it.
Or what about the 'Ego Boost key ring'*. Press it just before nerve-wracking occasions, such as job interviews and it will deliver such positive, life-affirming statements as 'Wow, I love what you've done with your hair!' - in Francis' case, presumably, referring to his body's successful attempts to shed most of it.
How about the 'Glow in the dark love dice.' *Throw them during those passionate moments and get a random selection of naughty things to do. In the case of the Brits there's doubtless a selection of highly charged eroticism like, 'Remove socks!', 'Close book!' or 'Share boiled sweet!' And it gets rave reviews, too: "Probably the best £3.50 I've ever spent," says Tony from Basingstoke.
I give up in disgust and leaf through a magazine. Then I come across a paragraph that makes me realise that, to misquote LP Hartley, celebrity is a foreign country. One loving spouse has, apparently, paid for a rose to be named in honour of her multi millionaire husband. He, in turn, has taken the logical next step and spent millions on turning the rose's fragrant smell into a mass market scent.
I look out at the scrubby lawn. If there were ever roses the man-eating dandelions saw them off long ago. Still......."Francis Pis en Lit," has a certain ring to it. And with a bit of cross marketing, it's a slogan that lends itself nicely to the 'Glow in the dark love dice,' too.
* = Absolutely genuine quotes, for once.
Thursday, 2 August 2007
Soft re-starts
Francis goes off for his 'meet the new company' day. He is taken out for a 'hello' lunch, which makes a change from all those farewell ones, and is introduced to the products, his colleagues, and his responsibilities.
Not only will he be in charge of sales to Boot's, but there's more.
"I've been given Eastern Europe," he says, with a tinge of pride.
"As part of your bonus package?" I say. "How very generous. And just when they'd got used to democracy, too."
This job is better than Nojob, but not by enough. It pays 25% less, for a start, and while we're not on the breadline, we're certainly on the hydrogenated fat masquerading as a tasty teatime treat line. Bearable for now but not healthy in the long term.
The side effect of going back to work is that Francis, who has just become jargon-free, thanks to the Ribald Laughter programme much advocated by his loving family, is plunged into the addictive world of management speak, with disastrous results.
"I'm just going to commission the fridge," he announces, lugging our latest Freecycle acquisition through the front door.
"You what?" I ask him. "Surely you commission boilers or soldiers. But fridges?"
He looks a little hurt but carries on, switching on the fridge freezer in a small but simple ceremony that involves no more than a very small speech and the symbolic opening of a can of Stella. The fridge, which obviously doesn't like jargon either, whirs away busily but, in an interesting reversal of normal refrigeration principles, produces only hot air and the occasional burp from the coathanger bit at the back that looks like a 3D IQ test.
Francis is on to the problem at once. "I think a soft re-start is called for, this time round. We may have missed out a crucial stage in the ignition process."
He switches the fridge on again, but in slow motion. It still doesn't work. I know this is the first day of the rest of our lives - though, come to think of it, isn't every day the first day of the rest of our lives? - but I am feeling strangely unsympathetic. "You're rolling your eyes again," he says, accusingly.
I deny it. I am definitely not rolling my eyes. But as to muttering under my breath -well, that's a different matter altogether.
Not only will he be in charge of sales to Boot's, but there's more.
"I've been given Eastern Europe," he says, with a tinge of pride.
"As part of your bonus package?" I say. "How very generous. And just when they'd got used to democracy, too."
This job is better than Nojob, but not by enough. It pays 25% less, for a start, and while we're not on the breadline, we're certainly on the hydrogenated fat masquerading as a tasty teatime treat line. Bearable for now but not healthy in the long term.
The side effect of going back to work is that Francis, who has just become jargon-free, thanks to the Ribald Laughter programme much advocated by his loving family, is plunged into the addictive world of management speak, with disastrous results.
"I'm just going to commission the fridge," he announces, lugging our latest Freecycle acquisition through the front door.
"You what?" I ask him. "Surely you commission boilers or soldiers. But fridges?"
He looks a little hurt but carries on, switching on the fridge freezer in a small but simple ceremony that involves no more than a very small speech and the symbolic opening of a can of Stella. The fridge, which obviously doesn't like jargon either, whirs away busily but, in an interesting reversal of normal refrigeration principles, produces only hot air and the occasional burp from the coathanger bit at the back that looks like a 3D IQ test.
Francis is on to the problem at once. "I think a soft re-start is called for, this time round. We may have missed out a crucial stage in the ignition process."
He switches the fridge on again, but in slow motion. It still doesn't work. I know this is the first day of the rest of our lives - though, come to think of it, isn't every day the first day of the rest of our lives? - but I am feeling strangely unsympathetic. "You're rolling your eyes again," he says, accusingly.
I deny it. I am definitely not rolling my eyes. But as to muttering under my breath -well, that's a different matter altogether.
Wednesday, 1 August 2007
Lofty ideals and mounting climaxes
"It's ridiculous," says Cultured Mum. She's glowing round the edges - not obviously but the way an imperfectly fitting door gives a sense of the lit room behind it.
"What's ridiculous?" I ask.
"He ..... oh, he laughs at things I say. The way Tom used to. And he looks at me with these wonderful eyes. Tawny. Like cats."
Good grief.
Normally, the problem with Cultured Mum is bringing her back to the downlands where we lowbrows live, scrabbling a hand to mouth existence without recourse to Cultured Mum's encyclopaedic memory and lofty ideals which, like manor houses, are incredibly impressive but horribly draughty for anything other than a brief visit.
But for the first time I find myself desperate to elevate the conversation and stop all this subversive talk of eyes and laughter. If Cultured Mum carries on like this, she'll soon be onto moonlit evenings, candlelight and then, as far as I can see, moving straight into irrevocable action.
"And that whiney voice?" I say, playing what has to be a trump card.
"That's easily solved. I just talk more."
I'm not convinced drowning out 50% of the conversation is the basis for a long-term relationship but I suspect Francis might argue differently.
"So - how's Tom," I try again.
"Oh, Tom. The same as ever, really. Do you know what I think?"
Oh, boy. Please let it be about some hard to understand development in avant garde theatre.
It isn't.
"I think marriage vows shouldn't be about the big issues - better or worse stuff, but about the niggly things you're going to have to live with day in, day out. Take Tom. Every day I find matchsticks lying round the house. And I just know he's been cleaning his ears out with them. Now if the vicar had mentioned that I'd spend God knows how long - decades - making sure I picked up matchsticks by the striking end because the other end's all sticky, I might have thought twice about saying 'yes'."
"For all you know, Colin might do even worse things. Like - I don't know - picking the dry skin off his heels."
"This isn't about Colin," she snaps.
"You could have fooled me," I say. But that light's on again.
"We're going to see Wagner in a couple of weeks."
Dear God. All those mounting climaxes and leitmotives - a Teutonic version of 'I can't get no satisfaction,' stretched out over hours and hours. What is she going to be like afterwards.
Please, please don't let me have to find out.
"What's ridiculous?" I ask.
"He ..... oh, he laughs at things I say. The way Tom used to. And he looks at me with these wonderful eyes. Tawny. Like cats."
Good grief.
Normally, the problem with Cultured Mum is bringing her back to the downlands where we lowbrows live, scrabbling a hand to mouth existence without recourse to Cultured Mum's encyclopaedic memory and lofty ideals which, like manor houses, are incredibly impressive but horribly draughty for anything other than a brief visit.
But for the first time I find myself desperate to elevate the conversation and stop all this subversive talk of eyes and laughter. If Cultured Mum carries on like this, she'll soon be onto moonlit evenings, candlelight and then, as far as I can see, moving straight into irrevocable action.
"And that whiney voice?" I say, playing what has to be a trump card.
"That's easily solved. I just talk more."
I'm not convinced drowning out 50% of the conversation is the basis for a long-term relationship but I suspect Francis might argue differently.
"So - how's Tom," I try again.
"Oh, Tom. The same as ever, really. Do you know what I think?"
Oh, boy. Please let it be about some hard to understand development in avant garde theatre.
It isn't.
"I think marriage vows shouldn't be about the big issues - better or worse stuff, but about the niggly things you're going to have to live with day in, day out. Take Tom. Every day I find matchsticks lying round the house. And I just know he's been cleaning his ears out with them. Now if the vicar had mentioned that I'd spend God knows how long - decades - making sure I picked up matchsticks by the striking end because the other end's all sticky, I might have thought twice about saying 'yes'."
"For all you know, Colin might do even worse things. Like - I don't know - picking the dry skin off his heels."
"This isn't about Colin," she snaps.
"You could have fooled me," I say. But that light's on again.
"We're going to see Wagner in a couple of weeks."
Dear God. All those mounting climaxes and leitmotives - a Teutonic version of 'I can't get no satisfaction,' stretched out over hours and hours. What is she going to be like afterwards.
Please, please don't let me have to find out.
Flat pack men
Bad Lindy arrives while I'm at Vicky's house, struggling to put a flat pack chest of drawers together.
"What a waste of time," she says, eyeing our efforts.
Admittedly, we are at that difficult, in-between Frankenstein stage.
Nuts and bolts are piled appetisingly in a bowl like nibbles at a Terminator reunion party, and there's so much surplus wood - each bit, apparently, so vital to the structural integrity of the piece that if you insert it incorrectly the entire structure will immediately crumble to dust - that you could give everyone in the country free kindling at Christmas with enough left over to make a small, perfectly formed Wicker man.
Since the piano incident, I've been superstitiously reluctant to invite Bad Lindy round. As well as realistically reluctant. Leave her alone with your partner at the front door to say goodbye and there's always the risk she'll assume he's the leaving present, stuff him in a goody bag and take off.
"Can't you help instead of criticising?" asks Vicky.
Bad Lindy takes no notice.
"Now if men came flat-packed, there'd be some point," she says.
"Or plumbers," I say. "Or good electricians."
"And then you could decide what tools you wanted to accessorise them with," says Vicky. "It could be quite fun. Oh, f- this. I'll finish it later. Let's open some wine."
"What a waste of time," she says, eyeing our efforts.
Admittedly, we are at that difficult, in-between Frankenstein stage.
Nuts and bolts are piled appetisingly in a bowl like nibbles at a Terminator reunion party, and there's so much surplus wood - each bit, apparently, so vital to the structural integrity of the piece that if you insert it incorrectly the entire structure will immediately crumble to dust - that you could give everyone in the country free kindling at Christmas with enough left over to make a small, perfectly formed Wicker man.
Since the piano incident, I've been superstitiously reluctant to invite Bad Lindy round. As well as realistically reluctant. Leave her alone with your partner at the front door to say goodbye and there's always the risk she'll assume he's the leaving present, stuff him in a goody bag and take off.
"Can't you help instead of criticising?" asks Vicky.
Bad Lindy takes no notice.
"Now if men came flat-packed, there'd be some point," she says.
"Or plumbers," I say. "Or good electricians."
"And then you could decide what tools you wanted to accessorise them with," says Vicky. "It could be quite fun. Oh, f- this. I'll finish it later. Let's open some wine."
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