Design and Technology

Marvellous. At the click of a mouse I can set the background of my new blog to a scattering of old fishbones, which is frankly all most of us amount to at 50, top it with a rather racy handwritten scrawl of a title, and bob's your uncle, I can present myself to the world as young and designery instead of woolly brained and varicosely veined.

WEDNESDAY, 16 March 2011

Eliza Who?

So, I am Eliza Gray. I live in a tiny thatched cottage in a village in the rolling English countryside. Lovely... on a sunny day. Dark, dank and dull the rest of the time. I am divorced. Gitface, as I like to think of him, left me for his toyboy nearly 13 years ago, five months before the emergence of our daughter, Lily. Now, despite recently being a multi-millionaire, he’s left us practically penniless.

At my feet as I type is darling Dusty, my faithful hound, a golden retriever with white whiskers, who, like her dog-sister Lily, is 12 years old (though a venerable 88 or so in dog years).

This isn’t a blog about girlpower. It’s a blog about no power. That’s what happens when you hit 50. Gray by name, grey by nature. That’s what I’ve become! Invisible to the opposite sex, doormatted by my child, selectively ignored by my dog.

I show it to Meredith.

‘Eliza! You see! You’re a natural. Keep it up and you'll be a rich woman before you know it!'

Dooce® and Eliza®

‘I’ve been thinking about you all night long, Eliza.’ Meredith is studying me with her deep-lidded, clear eyes, her hands clasped around her coffee cup. ‘I was watching you scribbling away at your journal yesterday, like you’re the next Samuel Pepys. What you need to do is harness the flow. Make it work for you. Why don’t you write a blog?’

‘But do I really want to expose myself to the world?’  

Meredith raises her eyebrows at me as witheringly as the Botox will allow. ‘Listen to you! You’re so Mrs La-di-da English! When did you get so risk-averse? You were much more fun in Hong Kong! Haven’t you heard of reality TV? Confessional novels? You don’t get anywhere without exposing yourself these days!’

I feel like I’m on the wrong end of the stick in a Punch and Judy show.

Meredith is in full swing. ‘There’s this woman in the States called Douche who writes about her life and she’s making half a million a year! Or you could be the next Julie and Julia. Set yourself a challenge and write about it. You’ve got to set goals, think creatively, take action!’

‘But how can you make money writing a blog?’ I dare to ask.

She gives me her eyes-to-heaven confounded look. ‘We’re so far ahead of you in the States. It’s big business there. Listen, sweetie. Ads! Writing about products! In kind payments! And the people who do this are not commercial businesswomen but women just like you, ordinary stay-at-home moms.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I’m not saying you’re ordinary as a person, I mean that you’re a regular mom who stays at home to look after her kid. All you need to do is write about your life, throw in a mention of your favourite diaper or handbag or face cream, and watch the ad money roll in. These women get wooed by PR people and showered with free products and invited to conferences all over the world.’

Hmmm. Sounds promising. While Meredith is coaching someone on Skype, I sneak into the cupboard and start surfing. She’s right! The net is awash with mommy/mummy blogs whose authors seem to spend half their time writing about the business of blogging and making lots of money.

Google ‘Douche mommy blog’. Oh my God. The blogosphere is awash with douches, too! Or, more precisely, douche bags. Yuk. Oh, it seems a douche bag is akin to a tow rag. As momscrazylife explains, rather more clinically than I would like, ‘A douche bag is a person whom acts like or resembles a vagina cleaner and/or enema.’ Who, I want to tell her. Who. Not whom. Even with my poor education I know that.

Aha. Got it. www.dooce.com. Dooce®. Hmmm. Eliza®. Not bad. Dooce is in fact the nickname of Heather B. Armstrong. Eliza H. Gray®? Sounds nicely authorative, but bordering on the Jesus H. Christ. Dooce also has two cute children with unusual names, a dog that wears a blue wig and a husband who gave up his job so she could breadwin through her blog.

‘You need to choose goals that are attainable and congruent with your life purpose,’ Meredith is telling her client. Oh God. What life purpose?  

I return to Dooce. You can hardly tell it's a blog, so divebombed is it with picture ads and small ads for things like Drug and Alcohol Rehab and Treat Meth Addiction. It seems these ads latch on to your site according to what you write about. You see, not enough grit in my life. I’d have Doggie Chews and How to Bake and Family Solicitors latching on to me.

Lists are clearly the way to go in the blogosphere. Dooce’s is the 5 People You Would Most Like To Have Sex With Outside Of Your Marriage. Her Bad Mother’s is Ten Ways That I Have More Fun Now That I’m a Parent (ha! Ten Porky Pies I Tell Now That I’m a Parent!). Diminishing Lucy (‘I juggle life, love, food, family and exercise. I blog, I lose weight, I write, I tweet’)’s is 6 Ways to Get Happy.

Urgh. 6 Ways to Feel Sick.

‘Have you written down your goals?’ Meredith is asking her beleaguered Skype victim. ‘Make that your No 1 priority. Number them, one to ten, pin them on the wall, write them in a notebook, keep them with you all the time. Then each day, write a To Do list, and make sure your To Dos are congruent with your Ten Goals.’

Urgh. 10 Ways to Feel Sick.

Here’s a post promoting a book called 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, which among other things will make me:

• build relationships with readers
• reach out to and develop working relationships with other bloggers
• discover ways to be more connected to your niche/topic 

Urgh. Oh good, Meredith’s finished with her client.

‘Meredith…?’

‘Uh-uh?’

‘I thought the whole point of blogging from your cupboard is that you don’t have to expose yourself to real people. But it says here I have to build relationships. Not just with my readers but with other bloggers. I have to be part of the Blogging Community.’

‘Honestly Eliza, you are so wrong-headed about things! Every time you open your mouth you do yourself out of a job or a relationship or a pair of eyes you can see out of. Just get on and write the goddamn blog, sign up for the ads, and forget about whether you have to go to bed with the entire Global Blogging Community!’

Hmmm. Glad I’m not one of her clients. Right. I’m going to do it. Now.

Life coaching with Meredith

11:10

Bit of an abortive week on the job front, but all is not lost. My American banker-turned-life-coach friend Meredith, who I knew in Hong Kong, is coming to stay. I spent practically the whole of yesterday tidying, cleaning and filling the fridge in her honour. Am on way to collect her now. Would that there were a cure for congenital lateness.

Meredith is standing on the pavement outside Candlebury station next to a very large suitcase, turning her head to left and right as if at a tennis match. It’s about six years since I’ve seen her. She’s looking no-nonsensy and sophisticated in a black leather jacket with black leather boots. I am in my Primark coat with the missing buttons and brown cords with the yellow felt patch on the knee. I draw up in a space marked TAXIS and dash across the road, waving madly.

‘Eliza! You’re here!’

‘Yay!’

‘Look at you!’ She opens her arms and grasps me in a squeaky embrace. It’s a bit like hugging the Gestapo.

‘Can you manage that, sweetie?’ she asks in honeyed tones, getting into the passenger seat while I lever the case into the boot. On the trip home, I fill her in on the Gitface saga and she tells me about her latest beau, an old flame from Yale.

While I’m unloading the car, Meredith marches into the cottage with her boots on, makes straight for the sofa, removes my electric toothbrush from the socket and plugs in her laptop.

‘You do have wifi?’ she checks, opening her laptop. ‘Thank God! Mallorca. Istanbul. Italy, can you believe! There are people out there with no wifi! How can they live like that? What’s your wifi code, sweetie?’

I go over to the router, lift it to the light and squint at the hieroglyphs on the back.

‘You are hilarious, Eliza. Why don’t you just use your glasses?’

‘They’re always somewhere else when I need them.’

‘Why don’t you get a cord so you can wear them round your neck like this?’ she holds up her glasses on a chain. I watch as she focuses back on her screen and starts tapping away. Are we going to have any more communication? Hmmm. Seems not for the moment. I go and make lunch while Meredith works. It’s a bit like being a wife again, not that I ever got the lunch.

13:30

Meredith has joined me for Greek salad, hummus and walnut bread.

‘So, Eliza, why are you living like a hamster in a cage?’ asks Meredith, spooning salad onto her plate. ‘What happened?’

Oh God. I explain about Lily moving school and Gitface selling the Chelsea flat and this place coming up through a friend of Cass’s and how it looked bigger before we moved our stuff in.

‘And what about men? Work? Social life? A proper home for you and Lily? Spiritual fulfilment?’

My mouth is contorting in an evermore exaggerated Edna Everagey grimace with every word.

‘I can see you need some life coaching,’ she says, layering butter onto her bread. ‘For a start, you need to get back out there, dating. If I were in your shoes I’d be aggressively pursuing a wealthy man. Get online! Match.com. Dating Direct. I met some very eligible men that way.’

I look anguished. ‘I went on Otherhalf.com and I’ve been suckered in three times…’

‘Sucked in,’ she interrupts.

‘Yes, well, I’m the sucker, paying my 20 quid to be allowed to write a message to someone who looked halfway attractive, and not one of them has written back! I tell you, I’m invisible!’

‘Don’t be retarded! Every time you open your mouth you’re doing yourself out of a date! Eliza, you’re living in the wrong country. How can you be invisible? You’re beautiful and you still look so young.’

‘Young?’ I exclaim. ‘Look at my eyes. The lids overhang so much I can hardly see out!’

‘I have one thing to say to you, Eliza. Cosmetology.’

My brows knit with confusion. ‘Lily loves anything to do with space.’

Meredith throws her head back with laughter. ‘Cosmetology! Not cosmology! Honestly, Eliza. Where have you been? If you’re bothered about your eyes, have a lift! Look.’ She points to her forehead. ‘Botox.’ Then she points to the place where her crows’ feet should be. ‘Botox.’

I scrutinise her brow and eyes. ‘But you can still raise your eyebrows and create little furrows.’

A satisfied smile spreads over her face. ‘I’ve had really natural-looking botox. I go to a public hospital in Manhattan for the poor people, but it’s a teaching hospital so you get the top doctor overseeing it. You pay nine dollars per unit.’

‘How many units do you have?’

‘Oh, four, four, three, three…’ she prods her brow in a different place as she says each number. ‘It’s just a little blob in a syringe. They just poke it in.’

I grimace, but she’s on a roll. ‘Look.’ She hitches up her skirt, yanks down her tights and shows me her thighs. ‘Spider veins. I’m having them done next. They can get rid of them with a shot.’

She thrusts her hands out. ‘Look at my hands. They’re the hands of a 50-year-old. All wrinkly and veiny.’

I spread my hand out alongside hers. ‘Same thing,’ she says. ‘Hands of a 50-year-old. They can put botox in your hands too. That’s what I’m getting done next. And this.’ She points to the slight indents between her cheeks and mouth.

‘Suppose they get it wrong and you end up with a fish face?’

‘Oh stop with your concerns! Life is short. If it doesn’t work, it’ll go away in five months! So. Action. Goals. Small steps. What are you going to do?’

My mouth is involuntary curling up like Dame Edna’s again.

‘OK, let’s move on to other areas of your life, and we’ll come up with the action plan at the end. Work. What are you doing?’

‘Um… nothing, yet.’

‘Where’s your computer? Where’s your desk?’

‘I don’t have a desk.’ I open the cupboard under the spiral stairs and show her the computer shelf. ‘It’s in here.’

‘What? You can’t keep your working life in a cupboard under the stairs! You need a permanent workspace. So you can search and apply for jobs online, read the news. I subscribe to about 10 newsfeeds. You need to know what’s going on in the world if you’re going to get a job.’

‘I know,’ I wail. ‘The problem is there’s always so much stuff everywhere.’ I glance in shame at the side table which escaped yesterday’s tidy-up. It is stacked high with letters from Lily’s school, school prospectuses, forms to fill in, magazines, the village newsletter, the parish newsletter... oh God. I hasten over to the table to remove Lily’s hairbrush, two elastic hairbands, a Mini Winnie, a tape of The Hobbit and two Nintendo DS games. 

‘Oh I see,’ says Meredith. ‘It’s not a Workspace issue. You have Clutter Issues.’ She makes it sound like a syndrome.

‘I’m not that bad. If I had a bigger house…’

‘Uh-uh,’ she’s shaking her head knowingly.

‘You mean you expand to fill the space available?’

‘U-huh,’ she’s now nodding. ‘I have friends in New York who make a lot of money solving people’s Clutter Issues.’

I cringe.

‘Right, come on Eliza, let’s deal with this. First of all, you need to put together a CV.’

‘A CV? I haven’t got anything to go on it.’

‘Sure you do. What did you do before you married Ru…’

‘Gitface,’ I remind her.  

‘Yes, Ante-Gitface, you must have worked. Tell me you worked. What did you do when you left high school?’

‘I did a typing course at the local tech – college – and then I worked in an art gallery in Kensington.’

‘Right! So you can do admin! You have admin skills!’

‘Typing used to be a skill when you had to hammer on a manual typewriter,’ I protest, my fingers hammering the air typewriter. ‘But everyone can type now. The thing is, I can’t use a computer.’

‘Sure you can. You do email. You Skype. You shop online.’

‘That’s the limit of it. I don’t know how to write a letter on a computer or how to merge mail or fill in databases or whatever you’re supposed to do, and I wouldn’t know an Excel spreadsheet from… a bedspread!’

‘Sweetie,’ she leans forward and pats my knee. ‘I’m going to go out and buy you as a gift Word and Excel for Dummies and we’re going to do a tutorial.’

I affix my Dummy Smile. ‘Does anyone need secretaries now?’

‘FYI, they don’t call them secretaries any more. They’re assistants! Administrative Assistants!’

I try not to cower.

‘So, what about since you had Lily and moved down here?’

‘Nothing. I haven’t done anything.’

She’s doing her theatrical aghast look.

‘Well, I’ve been looking after Lily. And Dusty.’

‘You can fill your days like that?’

I am sinking lower into my chair. But Meredith sits up, suddenly perky and radiating warmth. I think she’s seeing me as a Client Challenge.

‘OK Eliza, let’s start at the top. Tell me what you do in your day.

‘I drive Lily to school.’

‘So. You know how to drive. You can read a map.’

‘I can listen to TomTom,’ I correct her.

‘What?’

‘The SatNav.’

She juts her head forward in a ‘What are you talking about?’ kind of way.

‘Satellite Navigation system?’

She nods dismissively. ‘What else?’

‘I confer with other mothers at the school gate and then I take the dog for a walk.’

‘Oh, so you have dogwalking skills. And then?’

‘I might do a shop at Waitrose. Come back, do the washing, check my emails, do a little research online, write my diary, that takes me up to lunch, then one of my friends might call…’

She’s looking blankly at me.

‘And if Lily’s not boarding, I collect her and cook her supper.’

‘You cook! So you can cook!’

‘Well, my friends Sally and Cass think I should do South-East Asian delivered to your door, but I really don’t think that’s feasible round here. The doors are too few and far between. I do sometimes make cakes for the local market and for Lily’s cake sales.’

‘So, not only are you a cook, you’re a baker! Can you make French confections as well?’

‘American confections… I can do chocolate brownies.’

‘So you could put an ad in the paper: Baker, specialised in American desserts.’ She does a ta-da flourish with her hands.

‘But how would that go down in Mistlebourne comma Candlebury comma Middle England?’

‘It’s only a small leap from that to catering, sweetie. What other skills?’

‘I used to deal with the rentals on the Chelsea flat when we lived in Hong Kong.’

‘You could apply to real estate agents. Rental agencies. Say you’ve been in property for many years, you have experience of collecting references and rental money…’

‘I might be able to get a job showing people round houses in this area.’

‘Now we’re getting somewhere. Number one, real estate and rentals. Number two, cooking – are there any public service bodies around who you could cook for?’

‘There’s a lot of Army.’

‘There you go! Army chef!’

‘Except I think you need to be in the Army first.’

‘Well, call them up and find out. Go to a recruitment day.’

I am sinking and cowering again. ‘They’ll all be 18-year-olds with tattoes. I’ll fail on my flat feet and eyesight.’

She seems to concede this. ‘Number three, dogminding. What can you get for that?’

‘There’s someone in the next village who charges £15 a day to have dogs when people go on holiday.’

‘OK, I’m a banker so I can do the number-crunching. How much do you need to live on?’

‘About £10,000 for the house rental and bills. No idea for car and food and general living expenses…’

‘Say another £10,000,’ she says.

‘And then £20,000 for Lily’s school fees.’

Meredith’s eyes widen. ‘Sweetie, you need to take Lily out of school, put her in a state school.’

‘I know. But we’ve just moved down here and she’s loving school, so I really don’t want to keep chopping and changing if I can avoid it. It’s only another year after this.’

Meredith is busy with the calculator. ‘So that’s roughly £3,400 a month, £110 a day.’

‘Oh my god! That’s shocking. I can’t earn that. And that’s without paying tax!’

‘So let’s say £45,000.’

My mouth is agape.

‘£125 a day. Divided by £15 per dog. That’s 8.3 recurring dogs a day.’

‘There’s no way I can have 8.3 recurring dogs in this house. Plus that means 8.3 recurring families need to go away throughout the year.’

‘Well let’s say realistically 3 dogs a day.’

‘45 quid. It’s not going to get me anywhere.

‘Yes, but at the same time you can do the cooking and the rental work and you can apply to big corporations as a receptionist or to do admin work.’

I’m feeling nauseous. How can I go from no job to four jobs in one fell swoop? ‘Candlebury doesn’t have big corporations,’ I say. ‘It has small businesses.’

We both fall silent. It’s not looking good. ‘What I need is a get-rich-quick scheme.’

‘Such as?’

‘I could invent something… like…’ I look out of the window just as a low-flying crow craps on the outdoor table. ‘Crow poo remover.’

Meredith nods her head slowly, the full ineptitude of her Client Challenge sinking in. ‘Crow poo remover,’ she says meditatively, getting up to return to her laptop. ‘Cr-ow p-o-o remover.’

Sunday afternoon with Lily

13:54

Nice lazy weekend with Lily after all that jobhunting. I am at the computer, still in my nightie and Lily’s pink fluffy dressing gown with the sleeves up to my elbows, which I put on to make her laugh after finding it on the bathroom floor. She’s playing Rhapsody in Blue on the saxophone. I’m so hungry that I can’t make a decision – do I wash my hair? Get dressed? Take Dusty for a walk? Finish downloading photos and answering unanswered emails? Make breakfast? I settle for making lunch.

14:26

‘I don’t like this salad with those things in it,’ says Lily. ‘It’s too fishy.’

‘But they’re those little anchovies that you normally love.’

‘Did you put them in the plastic thingy?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Usually you have to put them in that plastic thingy with the lid yourself.’

She’s so fly. I know what she’s getting at. Are they fresh is what she’s getting at, or did you pick some manky old ready-packed ones? ’No,’ I say crisply, ‘they came already in the plastic thingy.’ 

There’s a pause while I eat and she picks.

‘You normally like them,’ I add.

‘Well I don’t like these. They’re too fishy.’

‘Well take them out and eat the rest of the salad.’

She glances up and catches me with baby leaf stalks sprouting out of my mouth like whiskers. ‘Mum!’ exclaims Lily. ‘Don’t put so much food in your mouth! Hypocrite.’

She has recently become the police, fighting back against hypocrisy, corruption and lawlessness in the home.

‘Mum! Look where you’re putting your feet!’ she said to me this morning as I tripped over the computer cable while looking at the iPhone as I walked to the window where I could get reception. ‘Hypocrite!’

You must get an early night, tonight, I said to Lily yesterday as we drove home from Waitrose.

‘Mum! You must go to bed early and not stay up till 3am watching television!’ she retorted, her eyes wild and laughing. ‘Hypocrite!’

I separate the salad from the fish. The trouble is, she’s always right. These are not only ready-packed anchovies. These are old anchovies. They were clearly end of batch, shovelled into cartons and reduced. Plus they’ve been in the fridge since last week. I thought they’d last because they’re practically pickled, but they taste chewy and acidic. I put the rejects in a bowl for Dusty, who laps them up. 

‘There. Dusty doesn’t think they’re too fishy.’

‘She’s a dog!’ says Lily scornfully.

15:48

I am sitting in the empty bath, washing my hair under the rubber hose, when the nozzle flies off the hot tap and boiling water pours on my foot. I shriek.

‘What?’ calls Lily from the kitchen. She has taken over the housekeeping and is making chilli con carne for supper.

‘I just burned my foot.’

‘Oooh,’ Lily sucks in her breath sympathetically.

As I dry myself I spot the loo roll, soaking wet, clearly sprayed by Lily when she washed her hair earlier.

I march into the kitchen swathed in towels. ‘I hate it when the loo roll gets wet!’ I accuse, plonking the offending item on the Rayburn.

‘So, it’s 4 o’clock and you’ve finally decided to get up,’ remarks Lily, lifting the Le Creuset lid to stir the chilli.  

‘Don’t be mean.’

‘I’m only saying!’

It’s all Gitface’s fault. If he’d stayed and acted like a proper father, Lily would have been a child. Instead she’s my sibling rival. As well as my other half. I read it all online today in an article about SPOCs. Single Parent Only Child. It’s apparently typical for SPOC parents and children to bicker like siblings. It’s also typical for adult-child boundaries to become blurred and SPOC children to think they’re on a level with their parents.

Lily interrupts my thought processes. ‘Mummy! You’re delaying Dusty’s walk.’

Did it mention SPOC children actually taking over the parenting?

16:18

Ah. It’s good to be out. Spring really seems to have sprung. Everything is humming with summeriness, with that haze hanging over the earth, even though it’s bloody cold. The fields are golden green and the sky is a sparkling blue and there are dear little pink piglets and the most darling, spindly-legged newborn lambs frolicking across the field. Two early swallows dart down the track at ankle height, flit into the air as they reach me, then swoop down to continue their low-level reconnaissance. What a delightful time of year to be in the country! 

Bloody hell! The irritating thing about being in the country is these bloody tractors who come up here at a rate of knots.

Why does Dusty keep stopping? What is her problem? She’s never done a refusal before. Come on Dusty!  Maybe it’s because I’m talking to myself. She thinks I’ve turned into a witch or something.

I make it to the top of the hill before Lily flits into my mind. I left her in charge of a Le Creuset. What if she puts it in the oven, then takes it out of the oven, then forgets it’s been in the oven, picks up the cast-iron lid with her bare hand, drops it on her foot and is now standing there with third-degree burns and a broken toe?

‘Come on Dusty,’ I turn and jog down the hill. The pigs stop to stare at me.

16:47

Lily looks up from the sofa where she is watching Calamity Jane. I glance at the Rayburn. The Le Creuset is on the simmering plate. No burning smells or lid bouncing and hissing.

‘Have you checked it’s not burning?’ I ask.

‘Yes,’ she says, getting up calmly to check again. ‘Fine,’ she says replacing the lid and returning to her relaxation station.

Everyone I know is calm, cool, collected, guilt-free. I, however, am like a swallow, flitting hither and thither, achieving nothing but a massive guilt complex.

Over the desk

‘We don’t need anyone at the moment,’ says Mary in the office at the Manor. ‘But there is quite a turnover of junior matrons.’ No, no! The juniors are all Ugg-booted gap year students, who share a Nissen hut with cracked lino on the floor. Surely it hasn’t come to this?

‘Someone of your age would be more likely for the Senior Matron or Assistant Matron roles,’ continues Mary as if reading my mind, ‘but they’d normally have some experience…’.

‘I am a mother,’ I say.

‘There are a couple of part-time mummy figures who assist,’ says Mary helpfully. ‘They get paid by the hour, they do two or three days a week plus night cover once or twice a week.’ She’s a bit cagey about the pay, but I wheedle it out of her. £10 an hour plus £45 for a night. So, let’s say three days times eight hours = £240, plus £90 for two nights = £330 x 36 weeks a year = £11,880. That doesn’t even cover a year’s school fees!

‘Any concessions on school fees?’ I enquire.

‘No,’ says Mary. ‘But you could apply for a means-tested bursary in the usual way.’

A bursary. Of course! Will email Sir John Bradshaw, the chair of the governors!

Good, that’s done. Am motoring this morning! Will just check out what else is available online. Google ‘boarding school matron jobs’. Here we are. Oh. No we’re not. They’re all nursing jobs. Try again. Bum. They’re all jobs for RGNs, which seems to be the new name for nurses. Back to Google. I wonder what this is? ‘…job as an assistant matron in a boarding school…’ Yuk! Some young matron’s horrible story about being required to witness children being caned and then having to inspect their wounds. What is this site anyway? Click ‘Home’.

Over the Desk. Like you, we’re just ordinary spanking enthusiasts.

Oh my God! Forget it, I’m not going to be an assistant matron.

Ping! Email from John Bradshaw. Good service.

In haste. Grants all allocated until end of current school year. I’ll send you an application form, but school numbers are low so there ain’t much money in the pot.

JB

Hmmm.

Birthday tea with Sally and Cass, Part II

‘So tell us,’ says Sally, offering us more cake and topping up our glasses. ‘What did your lawyer say?’

‘Basically, he’s very cleverly severed all ties with this country. He’s sold the flat, he’s living overseas, he works for a foreign bank, so they’ve got no way of enforcing the court order. Which means he gets off scot free.’

‘Surely he can’t just cut the funds like that,’ says Sally. ‘It seems unreasonable. Isn’t there some group, Fathers for.. ?’

‘A Father’s for Life, not just for Christmas,’ interjects Cass.

‘I was going to say Fathers for Justice, but that’s the other way round, isn’t it.’

‘I’m going to tell him, A father’s for life, not just for Christmas!’ I declare. ‘Bastard!’

‘As you know, I’m not big on vitriol,’ says Sal, ‘but I do think it’s terribly, um, mean. I never liked him anyway.’

‘But you must feel sorry for him,’ says Cass, ‘because he’s…’

‘…gay,’ I interrupt.

‘… confused,’ says Cass.

‘You shouldn’t feel sorry for someone because they’re gay,’ says Sal, who always says that when I’m having a go at Gitface.

‘But you should feel sorry that he started off pretending he wasn’t,’ I point out, as I always do in riposte.

‘But he has got a lovely daughter,’ says Sal.

‘Yes he has,’ I say, ‘but he never bloody sees her. He’s not interested in her at all. He’s not interested in her welfare. He insisted she move school, and just as she’s getting into it and making friends, he says take her out, she’ll be fine…’

‘Uncaring,’ agrees Sal. ‘Mmm, this is delicious.’ She licks each finger in turn. ‘Well, I think we’d better write him off.’

‘We have written him off,’ I say. ‘But we need some money.’

‘Well if you’re not going to get it from him,’ says Sal, ‘you’ll have to get it yourself.’

There’s a squeal from the sitting room as Arthur sits on Phoebe in order to get a look-in at the computer.

‘Get OFF!’ cries Phoebe.

‘Come on, lovely,’ calls Sal. ‘Come and sit with us.’ Arthur lopes back to the kitchen and helps himself to the last slice of cake. ‘Would you not explode if you breathed out before you went into space?’ he asks.

‘Oh-h, I don’t know,’ says Sal thoughtfully. ‘But I suppose you can’t do, or there wouldn’t be any astronauts left.’

Cass is frantically trying to get her jumper off. I help disentangle it from an earring. ‘I’m having a hot flush,’ she says. ‘I’ve got my thermal vest on, that’s why.’ She shows us an orange Uniqlo sleeve under her shirt.

‘So have I!’ I stretch out my black Uniqlo sleeve from under my wool dress.

‘So have I!’ Sal pulls up her jumper to reveal an off-white Damart granny vest.

‘Can I just tell you they’ve moved on?’ says Cass. ‘They do colours now.’

‘Without all those lacy holes,’ I add.

‘Is it one of those ones that’s shaped and comes over your bottom?’ asks Cass.

‘Yes, absolutely!’ says Sal proudly. You have to admire her for ploughing her own furrow.

‘So, back to the question of dosh…’ I say.  

‘You’re going to have to join the real world!’ announces Sal with, I detect, a certain relish. Sal works as a writer for children’s television.

‘Cass doesn’t have a job either, talking of joining the real world,’ I point out.

‘I’ve worked all my life!’ says Cass indignantly. ‘I’ve brought up and fed five children, a husband and countless cats and I’m currently project managing an extremely demanding and drawn-out restoration job.’

‘How is it going?’ asks Sal, which unleashes a torrent of builder woe, culminating in yesterday’s disaster, involving four likely lads painting grey oil stain on Cass’s new reclaimed oak floorboards while she was out, and failing to read the vital instruction about immediately wiping off the stain to leave a hint of pigment in the grain rather than a solid layer of oil paint.

We duly commiserate before I bring the conversation back to the problem du jour. ‘So what am I going to do on the job front? The iChing says I shouldn’t do anything. It says if I try and be the Shaper rather than the Shaped, I’ll miss an amazing opportunity.’

Sally is giving me one of her looks. ‘You know how I feel about these things you do online – the tarot and the angel cards and the iChing. You can’t put your faith in them.’

‘But you put your faith in God and think He’ll look after you. It’s only the same thing. Maybe it’s God’s way of sending me a message, because He knows I won’t be going to His House to talk to Him direct about it.’

Sally looks doubtful. ‘Well, I still say you can’t sit back and wait for the opportunity to come your way. I think you at least have to put the word out that you’re looking.’

‘Well,’ I say, ‘I have had a cursory glance at what jobs there are round here and everything’s £6 to £10 an hour max.’

‘That’s very good, £10 an hour,’ exclaims Sal.

‘You think that’s good? But that doesn’t send a child to school!’

‘Down here, for a per hour payment, it is quite good, isn’t it?’

‘What you want is a per annum job,’ says Cass.

‘I can’t get a per annum job,’ I say.

‘Well, what are your skills?’ asks Sal.

‘I have no skills.’

‘You must have some skills,’ says Cass.

‘I have none. I am unfit for purpose. My brain has … prolapsed, or whatever it is, like your vagina.’

Cass laughs. ‘You’re getting a bit ahead of yourself! It’s not prolapsed. It’s … what is it? Petrified or perished or something , like a bit of old rubber.’ There’s a pause while she tries to dredge the term out of the memory files. ‘No... it’s not coming back. Well I suppose it wouldn’t , not till I’ve shoved a load of oestrogen up it, which I’m not going to be doing.’

Looking mildly disturbed, Sally gets up to stack the tea plates on the draining board. ‘More sherry?’ she asks, sitting down again. 

 ’You must have learnt something being a banker’s wife in the Far East,’ Cass restarts.

‘I should have learnt something – but what?’

‘There’s all sorts of interesting things girls do in the Far East.’

Sal and I laugh.

‘A couple of pingpong balls and you’ll be away!’

We sip on our schooners thoughtfully. I don’t think I’d be any good with a pingpong ball. Not with my prolapsed pelvic floor.

‘What about looking after people’s children?’ asks Sal.

‘What sort?’ I say, suspiciously.

‘The usual – two-legged, two-armed ones.’

I contort my mouth in mock-horror. ‘Do you mean babysitting? Or childminding?’

‘I know. You could be a matron at the Manor!’ interrupts Cass.

‘That’s true,’ I say. ‘What qualifications do they need? Would I need a nurse’s training or a children’s something certificate?’

‘For prep school you don’t need to have anything,’ says Sal. ‘Just your face needs to fit. Knowing how to do the laundry would be an advantage.’

‘I’m very good on laundry! I spend my life trying to match up Lily’s socks.’

‘There you go!’ says Sally. ‘Eliza, school matron!’

I pull another contorted face. Talk about how are the mighty fallen.

‘I think it’s really positive,’ says Sally. ‘It’s an opportunity to reinvent yourself. You might love being a matron.’

‘I might not,’ I say.

‘You’re always saying you’d have loved a bigger family,’ says Cass.

‘Yes!’ agrees Sally. ‘Here’s your chance!’ 

She and Cass raise their glasses. ‘To Eliza, school matron!’

Birthday tea with Sally and Cass, Part I

17:15

‘Coo-ee,’ I call at the kitchen door, simultaneously knocking at it with my elbow. Ow! My funny bone. Normally I walk straight in, but am currently encumbered with a birthday cake loosely draped in tin foil.

Cass opens the door, bearing a look of forlorn commiseration. ‘Sal told me,’ she says. ‘What a git!’

‘…face-features,’ I add drily.

‘Oh, you are brilliant!’ Sally takes the cake from me and puts it in the centre of the table. She whisks off the foil. ‘Mmm. It looks delicious.’ She turns and locks me and Cass in a group hug.

‘Happy birthday to us,’ Sally and I chorus,

‘happy birthday to us...’ 

‘…you look like two monkeys,’ sings Cass, sounding slightly muffled,

‘ and you smell like them too!’ finishes Sal’s 14-year-old daughter Phoebe, who, at the promise of chocolate cake, has broken loose from Facebook and drifted into the kitchen.

I fumble in my bag, pull out the birthday candles and plant them in the cake. Two numbers, 4 and 3. Cass and Sal laugh.

‘Are you 43?’ asks Phoebe suspiciously.

‘Yes,’ I say, while Sally makes Pinocchio nose-growing signals to her daughter. ‘Ah, thank you for this,’ she says. She is in high spirits.’What a treat! Tea, or shall we crack the sherry?’

‘I need a stiff G&T,’ I say, knowing a) there won’t be any and b) Sal knows I don’t like it anyway.

‘Did you get on to your lawyer?’ asks Sal, pouring us all a sherry.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘Oh! Before we hear all about that, which I do want to, first I have to show you something very special.’ She prances like a fawn to her office and dances back with a wedge-shaped box covered in green, gold and red foil.

‘Look what Arthur made for me: A rocket!’

Cass and I exchange glances. Sally is genuinely thrilled.

‘Are those chewing gum wrappers?’ I ask, studying it more closely.

‘Yes! He had to chew an awful lot of gum to produce this. Look at this wonderful shape, like a stealth bomber. It’s very fragile so I’d better hold it. Look at the fire coming out of the back!’

Her enthusiasm is infectious.

‘There’s a solar panel on the top!’ I remark. ‘It must be a green spaceship.’

‘I don’t know,’ says Sally. ‘I didn’t get the spec.’

Cass hands me a present swathed in crisp silver tissue paper, tied with a crimson satin ribbon. ‘It’s from Sally and Giles and me and Piers and Franny and Jim and Dan and various London friends,’ she says. ‘They’re all on the card.’ I undo the ribbon and take off the paper carefully. I gasp. Inside is a beautiful oil sketch of Mistle Hill by Patrick Stour, a well known artist whose works we all covet.

‘God!’ I say, overwhelmed. ‘I can’t believe this! I know that view exactly – Dusty and I were up there earlier! I didn’t know he’d painted Mistle Hill. What a brilliant present!’

‘Well you dropped enough hints,’ says Cass.

‘Did I?’ Surely my memory isn’t that bad, is it? I have no recollection of making any hints or indeed thinking of such a present in order to hint about it in the first place.

‘When we did the Candlebury Art Trail,’ says Cass, ‘you told me about that woman you know who got remarried and didn’t need any more Le Creusets or toasters, so all her friends clubbed together and commissioned her favourite artist to paint a picture of her house. And you said, if you ever got married again, that would be the perfect present…’

Ah, that hint. Which wasn’t a hint. It was just a comment. But well translated!

‘Patrick was a nightmare to get hold of,’ continues Cass, ‘but somehow through a friend of a contact of a contact of Franny’s, I tracked him down and we commissioned him to paint your favourite view.’

‘You commissioned it! Gosh! He did it specially? That’s amazing! Thank you so much.’ I put it reverentially on the table and fumble in my bag again. ‘I’ve got a little something for you,’ I say to Sal. Sal’s already had her 50^th. She’s exactly a year older than me. Schools weren’t such sticklers for being the right age for the year group in our day. Though, I admit, eight years’ difference in one year group is pushing it.

‘Oh thank you,’ says Sal, ‘but I’m dying to try your cake. Shall we have some first?’

We sit round the kitchen table. I am on tenterhooks in case it’s inedible. We light the candles and blow out one each, then Sal and I hold the knife together, like a newly wed couple, and as we’re plunging it down into the chocolate, I say, ‘Wish!’

I usually wish for the same thing, a gorgeous, rich replacement husband, but today I have two different wishes: a) that if Gitface can’t feasibly get trapped in a jar of cockroaches, a brick lands on his head, and b) that the perfect, unmissable job opportunity simultaneously lands in my lap. Sally, however, has stopped mid-plunge. She’s looking troubled.

‘I’d better do peace on earth,’ she says finally, ‘but it’s a lot to ask from a cake.’ She cuts generous slices and we tuck in.

‘Oooh,’ says Sally, catching some oozing chocolate as it trickles down her chin. ‘This is delicious. What did you do to it?’

It is delicious! Moist, rich, chocolatey. I am a Nigellaesque domestic goddess. Have invented new cake recipe. So simple. Put the butter icing on while the cake is still warm so it melts and seeps into the cake, à la lemon drizzle. Yes, will call it Eliza’s Chocolate Drizzle Cake. Oh, brilliant idea!

‘I’ve just had a brilliant idea,’ I say. ‘I’m going to do a cookery book. I’ll be the new Nigella! I’ll make my fortune! That’ll be one in the eye for Gitface!’

‘Brilliant!’ says Sally. ‘What will your USP be?’

‘How To Improvise Using The Contents Of Your Store Cupboard and Barren Fridge? For example, you might think this is an all-butter cake. Well the icing is all butter, but the cake, I can now reveal, is 33% Lurpak Spreadable, 33% Bertolli Olive Oil Spread and 33% Flora.’

Cass lowers the remaining half slice that she was about to put in her mouth. ’I think it sounds too studenty. I had a contents-of-your-store-cupboard Penguin paperback when I first went up to London.’

‘Country Cooking?’

‘Haven’t Rose Prince and Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall cornered that market?’

Hmmm. ‘Quick Cooking in the Country?’

Sally holds up Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals which Phoebe gave her for her birthday. ‘You USP should be South-East Asian cooking,’ she says. ‘You’re brilliant at it.’

‘Eliza’s 30 Minute South-East Asian Meals?’ I suggest.

‘South-East Asian in the Country,’ says Cass.

‘South-East Asian on a Shoestring,’ says Sal.

‘South-East Asian in a Sari,’ says Cass, adding, ‘to your door.’

‘Brilliant idea,’ says Sal. ‘There’s too many cookery books out there already. Just do the cooking. I’d hire you!’

‘I’m never going to do that,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘I’m not organised enough. And in the country, going to people’s doors takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money in petrol… no, I’m never going to do that.’

We put the cooking ideas on hold while I give Sally her present. First she opens her card.

‘Oh it’s so sweet! It’s like you can reach out and touch it. I just love newborn lambs. I spend hours leaning over the gate gazing at them... I like eating them as well.’

Then she opens her present, a Cath Kidston make-up bag, an Indian notebook with hand-block printed leaves on the cover, and a wooden sign saying ‘Live Laugh Love.’

‘Aah,’ coos Sally, her face crumpling with touchedness. ‘What a lovely sentiment. It looks a bit like British Rail, doesn’t it? You know, it’s kind of authoritative.’

She strokes the make-up bag. ‘I love this bag, though I’m still using the same make-up I had when I was 16.’

‘Are you?’ Cass and I are mildly shocked.

‘Yes, I’ve still got that old roll-on lip gloss.’

‘What?’ Now she’s got me excited. ‘The one that smells like passion fruit?’

‘Yes!’ squeals Sally. ‘I love it.’

‘Oh yes, yes!’ I sound like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally.

Sally runs off and brings it back. I turn the glass phial in my fingers, feeling the embossed red swirly design. I remember every detail as if I’d held it yesterday. The coldness of the glass, the ridges of the design under my fingers, the red cap, the stickiness of the gloss, but most of all the smell. I unscrew the cap and inhale. Aaah. Laura Ashley dresses. Smooching to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Bellbottom Levi’s. In turn we roll the syrupy gloss reverentially over our lips and pout to each other. Yes, yes!

‘Mu-um!’ grimaces Phoebe, walking out in disgust.

‘Of course, I never go out wearing it,’ confides Sally, as if she’s confessing to secret cross-dressing.

 ’Why not?’ I demand.

‘Oh no!’ Her brow has furrowed. ‘You can’t wear lip gloss at our age. People would think I was on the game. Or a newsreader.’

‘I think we should!’ I say. Lip gloss rights for the over 50s!

‘Men don’t like kissing glossy, sticky lips, they really don’t,’ says Sally.

‘Not even if it smells like passion fruit?’ asks Cass.

Sally shakes her head.

‘Tastes like passion fruit?’ I offer.

‘No,’ says Sally, adamant.

‘How do you know?’ I ask.

‘Giles says.’

Just then, Arthur, my 17-year-old godson sticks his head round the kitchen door. He scans the room, as if expecting an ambush. When he’s decided it’s safe, he lopes in. ‘Happy birthday,’ he smiles, giving me a tentative hug. After cutting himself a mansize slice of cake, he slumps into a chair. ‘Do snakes chase raccoons or is it the other way round?’ he asks. 

Phoebe is now hovering in the doorway. ‘Arthur! What kind of stupid question is that?’

‘The same kind as, “do ants have muscles?” which is the other thing I was wondering on the bus.’