Monday
I went out on Friday night, to a beloved friend’s 50th birthday party, and I think it is going to be the last time I do. Nearly 72 hours later I still have a hangover. I’m exhausted, look like death and everything hurts. And the thing is, I wasn’t even drinking. I had two Cokes. It’s now the going out and meeting people – even people I want to meet! People I know and really, really like! – after 7pm that almost kills me. All the standing up when my body is expecting a sofa. All the not being at home. All the not knowing quite where the loo is. All the not being in stained clothes and slippers. All the having to get home afterwards. I cannot, not any more.
It was an excellent party. But it was definitely the last. I’m glad I went out on a high.
Tuesday
Shrove Tuesday. I am making pancakes. “Jesus Christ,” I mutter, appropriately and yet not. “Can’t I just confess my sins? Walk to Canterbury with dried peas in my shoes?” But no. These days it’s bloody pancakes. I am making them for my son. Savoury first, then sweet for pudding.
“Thank you,” he says, as I slide the first one on to his plate.
“You’re not welcome,” I say, sweating with tension as I stand at the hob to start another one. “I hate making pancakes.”
“I know,” he says. “You should let me this year.”
“No,” I say. “This is my annual attempt at mothering.”
He looks at his plate. “Aren’t … aren’t pancakes … just traditionally, you know … supposed to be flat?”
“These are menopausal pancakes,” I say. “Cooked with equal amounts of love and fury. No one knows how they’ll end up. That one’s a lump. This one might be perfect. Or I might throw it and the pan through the window. But none is poisonous, probably. So.”
He pours on beans, adds grated cheese, then starts trying to cut it. We listen to the sound of him sawing away for a few moments.
“I’m a very lucky boy,” he says. “Very lucky indeed.”
Wednesday
So what are we all giving up for Lent? I have a choice (now that alcohol has given me up already) of chocolate, coffee or antidepressants. The effects of doing without any of these seem likely to inflict at least as much punishment on others as on me, which seems unfair.
A friend of mine once gave up novels for Lent. I consider this a greater sacrifice than dying for someone else’s sins, so that’s out.
“You could give up swearing,” suggests my son, as if anyone ****ing asked him. But it’s a good one. I do swear a lot. I come from a family of swearers. Not inventive, but hearty and impassioned. My mother is of an essentially violent disposition and we were always glad she had such a safety valve and encouraged its use at all times.
So, swearing it is. At least there are no pancakes during Lent. Maybe I’ll be fine.
Thursday
Spring is here! Spring is here! Life, as Tom Lehrer had it, is skittles and life is beer! We have reached the one point of the year when – thanks to an ineffable change in the very air around us, some tipping point reached in the amount of fresh green growth that is finding its way into even the heart of grimy London and the appearance of the sun in almost a convincing manner for more than 10 minutes a day – my heart, against all its better judgments and against all my brain’s instructions, floods with happiness and hope.
I don’t know quite what it believes the appearance of crocuses and daffodil spears are going to have on JD Vance, Ukraine, Gaza or any of the other crises of our age, but then I spot a cluster of blue tits tweeting like crazy fools in a bush covered in the prettiest tiny white flowers I’ve ever seen and all sensible thoughts disappear.
I know from past experience that the spring sensation, this seasonal flood of serotonin, lasts no more than 24 hours, so I decide to give myself up to it. Maybe this is what enables me to get through the rest of the year.
Friday
I’m off to Budleigh Salterton literary festival to take part in my first event talking about my new book, Bookish: How Reading Shapes Our Lives. My sister lives nearby. I ask her if she wants to come.
“You’ve written another book?” she says with a sigh. “Why?”
“It’s what I do,” I say.
“But why?”
“It’s sort of … all I can do,” I say.
“That’s true,” she says. “You are completely useless. I heard about the pancakes, by the way.”
“Do you want to come or not?”
“Do I have to read the book?”
“No.”
“Can I sit at the back and pull faces at you?”
“Yes”
“Will you buy me lunch afterwards?”
“Yes.”
“And I definitely don’t have to read the book?”
“Correct.”
“OK then,” she says. “But you really should get a proper job soon. I mean, I don’t ask you to come and watch me in a meeting, do I, or accompany me to site visits?”
“No, you don’t.”
“Because it would be wrong and cruel and very boring for you, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, it would.”
“Do you get what I’m saying?”
“I do, yes.”
“OK. See you there.”
Families. What would we do without them?
