Monday
It’s just possible that this has been said before but … it’s too hot. I’m sorry. It’s all I can think about. Because there’s the heat – the external stuff, coming from the sun, rising from the pavements, radiating from baked houses, the unmoving inescapable hot air wrapped round you with no relief – and then there’s the internal fire of hatred boiling my blood about how much I loathe this weather, about how ill-designed London is for coping with it, about how much I miss my cardigans, about how impossible it is to imagine ever being cool or comfortable again.
And above all about the fathomless stupidity of us all – but mainly governments and big fellers like that who are the only ones who really have the power, who have ever had the power to change things on the scale necessary – in continuing all the fathomlessly stupid practices that are making a burning, boiling, cardiganless planet an unavoidable reality. Oh God, this heat, inside and out – I cannot bear it.
Tuesday
A little of my rage lifts when I press, at last, “Send” on the first draft of my latest book, which is a sequel to an earlier one, Bookworm, because I would never like to be accused of a surfeit of imagination. Off it goes to my agents and I can revel in the sweet, sweet relief of a long, long task completed. I love this part. It’s just a shame that it lasts literally 20 minutes.
I timed it last time I handed in a manuscript. That’s what I get for between 18 months and two years of labour – 20 minutes. Twenty minutes of feeling light, unbound, uncrushed and free before the dread anticipation of others’ opinions, of facing up to the mistakes you must have made (factual! Tonal! Ineffable! All points in between!), of rewriting the unutterable bastard of a thing start creeping in. Twenty minutes. I spent it facedown on my keyboard. It’s barely long enough to dent your forehead.
Wednesday
Hurrah for Nadine Dorries, lone crusader after truth! The former cabinet minister is planning to hang on to her seat until she can find out who – but who, who?! – is behind her failure to be awarded the peerage promised to her by serial liar and breaker of promises Boris Johnson. It’s Rishi Sunak, she reckons, because she is a poor girl from Liverpool, or because he didn’t want a byelection, or because she’s taller than him or something – the important thing is that it certainly isn’t, because nothing is, Boris’s fault.
It’s the resignation honours list written by Brian Rix, with the sitting MP for Mid Bedfordshire – our hearts go out to constituents even more fully than usual – played by Veruca Salt. Dorries could have settled for the peerage given by convention to every cabinet member in the dissolution honours list next year but she wants it NOW, Daddy. Because otherwise she has to rely on Sunak to do the right thing rather than the known colossus of rectitude Boris. So she clings mutinously on to a job she had made clear to her electorate she will drop behind her without a second glance the minute a space on the red benches is made available, and everything is as mean and vulgar and stinking of cess as – assuming you are not a member of the rat king that is our current governing party, tails tangled til you die – one could possibly hope.
Thursday
According to various spikes in Google search terms, expectant mothers and new parents are suffering a crisis of confidence in their abilities to rear the little buggers since and because of the pandemic. The lack of socialising, community support and informal advice, it is thought, has left them feeling isolated and unsure of themselves.
Oh, my poor dears. I feel for you so deeply. New parenthood is a terrible time even at the best of times, and these are not they. But – if I may – try not to worry. In fact, let what feels like isolation from those who know better free you instead. Because here’s the thing all parents come to understand in the end: you, and you alone, are the boss of your baby. You know him or her best. Only you sit at the centre of the web of sleeps, feeds, changes, moods, temperatures and feel every vibration in it. Anything you do is likely to sit firmly in the category of “right things”. Other people’s advice can be helpful, but more often than not it is confusing and contradictory. And, if offered in the wrong spirit, infuriating and the cause of arguments you then have to waste several precious naptimes undoing over the phone. Try to think of yourself as Lord God King Right, master-mistress of all things infant that you survey – willing to entertain graciously the occasional thought from a subject but ultimately undistracted from your vision – instead of alone and adrift. You will get through this, I promise you.
Friday
Today is the day I take Mum on the train from Catford to Waterloo to meet Ben, my brother-in-law, who will travel with her on another train to Devon so she can stay with him and my sister for a few days.
I meet her at the front door where she has been waiting, with the house packed into two small bags, for – at a conservative estimate – the last 36 hours. I try to pick up a bag. She slaps my hand away. “Don’t! I’ll not be balanced if you take one!” A number of responses spring to mind but years of training means they are in no danger of utterance.
She marches to the station. I follow behind, panting like a decrepit dog. I was 42 seconds late; we’ve time to make up so that she can arrive the full 40 minutes early for a 20-minute journey to Waterloo East.
At Waterloo East we must cross to Waterloo. She buys food for the journey. “Your father would have made sandwiches, but he’s dead.” “I know,” I say. “I bought shares in M&S ready meals before the body was cold.” “I’ve got one of Auntie Jessie’s towels in my bag,” she says. “So we can buy ones with mayonnaise if we want.” She buys a BLT for Ben. “What are you having?” I say. “Nothing,” she says. “I ate yesterday.”
Ben arrives and I see them both safely on to the train. “I’ve got you a BLT,” she says. “And crisps, but they’re from the Co-op. Here, take this before you start.” He looks startled.
“It’s Auntie Jessie’s towel,” I tell him.
“What …?” he says as the doors begin to close.
“She’ll explain on the way,” I say. “The time will fly by.”
