children,’ and tried to focus. Bella was that kind of child. She was boisterous and outgoing. She loved to try new things. Hopefully she’d never experience the slog and sheer averageness of my own life. She was in good health. All was well.
Back to the presentation and the phrase ‘sweet spot’ was a good one. I used it a fair amount. It made me think of ‘G-spot’ and was just as mythical – it was where the truth lay, where an idea suddenly sprang into life and resonated, where it made people orgasm. In life, I’d failed to find this blissful truth for myself. For now, I could hear the boy next to me playing MC Hammer through his headphones. It brought back memories of a night in South London in my youth when I’d snogged a boy called Freddie. Freddie had been a very good dancer but a terrible kisser. I’d gone out with him for four months before finally realizing the truth. I wondered whether this music had come back into fashion, or was it part and parcel of this irony thing, where anything shit was cool? What was Freddie doing these days? Had someone taught him to snog properly?
Was he working on a ‘disruptive proposition to send a baby to sleep whilst you cleansed its bottom?’
‘Bella is still in good health,’ a new text buzzed.
‘Thanks for the update,’ I replied.
‘Log onto our portal for updates on our menus this week,’ the next text said.
Was this a real person?
And would they text me when they took her to A&E? Or when she was in intensive care? I needed to call them to check she really was okay but that would mean staying an extra half an hour, and missing bedtime. Bedtime was the key objective – if I could get home by bedtime then my life wasn’t completely messed up.
I tried to get back to work again.
‘The idea is overwhelmingly negative,’ I typed as this was closer to the truth, but this sounded, well, rather awful. ‘The idea works on some levels,’ I concluded.
I looked up and the MC Hammer fanboy was wearing a baseball cap with the word ‘TWAT’ emblazoned across the front. He looked up for a second and then back at his screen. Many of these young folks thought I was an elderly person hired by the company to help with our diversity initiative. He had no idea that back in the day I’d been a hot shot. No, that wasn’t true. I’d never been a hot shot. I wasn’t strategic enough and I worked hard but not so hard that I ended up in hospital with nervous exhaustion.
A proper sissy pants, me. Besides not all of us can be Phoebe-Sheryl Sandberg-BIG-BOSS-PANTS. Not all of us want to be her right?
I checked my emails, and there was yet another one from Mum complaining that Dad was being anti-social. I didn’t know why she was surprised by my father’s tendencies to lock himself away – they’d been together for forty-five years now.
Your dad refuses to try line dancing with me. He says he’s too busy but it’s pretty obvious that he’s just hiding away. I never thought my life would be so lonely.
Mum was prone to being dramatic. I could empathise as I could clearly see that there was very little to recommend getting old (unless you were rich and old). They lived in a different part of London, I rarely saw them. It took me two and a bit hours to travel from Acton to Beckenham where I’d grown up. It was quicker to take the Eurostar to Paris. Dad was usually tinkering in his shed with his model railway. He’d retired five years ago and had a history of depression. Maybe it wasn’t depression but was just low mood. He’d set the railway up so it ran around the garden. Mum was a social animal and needed to be around people. Dad was happiest when he could spend uninterrupted periods alone. Mum was constantly experimenting with a range of different evening classes, from watercolour through to Mandarin. They were relatively healthy but each time I spoke to either of them there seemed to be the arrival of another ailment. It was hard to see how there could be much of a silver lining.
Both my parents had always instilled how important it was to work, to have a dependable income, to have financial stability. Sometimes I wished they hadn’t.
And I went for a walk this morning and another big, frightening dog attacked Puddles. He’s shaking with fear whilst I type this. I am at my wit’s end.
Love Mum
Mum was often at her ‘wit’s end’ and Puddles was my parent’s Yorkshire terrier. Puddles was an unhappy dog that shook when he went for a stroll (or more accurately a ‘shake’), shook when he took a dump, and shook when you offered him a treat. He was constantly being attacked by mean dogs and lacked confidence (something we had in common perhaps?). I made a mental note to ring Dad. We usually talked about the weather at great length and then I’d ask him how he was really and he’d say he had a cold (which meant his depression was mild) or the flu (which meant it was pretty bad) or a stomach bug (which translated to needing more antidepressants). We never used the word depression and yet this time I was worried about his reclusiveness. At the same time, I envied the fact that he could avoid people for long periods of time with nothing but Classic FM blaring out of the old ghetto blaster that had resided in my teenage bedroom. He didn’t have to get crammed onto a train or listen to sad men swearing in meetings and he could amuse himself fixing little carriages together with glue and drinking tea (he even had a kettle in there so Mum had enabled him to be more of a recluse). He’d spent his working life in academia and this was how academics were. They pootled and liked quiet. This behaviour was not out of the ordinary.
Lunchtime arrived, and like every other work day I walked listlessly round the local boutiques trying to dispatch the sad feeling that lived inside me. It was cold and windy, so I bought a bobble hat. A scented candle. A new pair of gloves. None of these items were satisfying, and I went back to the canteen upstairs, bought my protein and salad lunch, and hunched over my phone, trying to see what was going on in the world of Instagram. It seemed that everyone else was doing far more interesting things than I was. There were a lot of motivational quotes about how today was the day where my life would finally take off. Others were preaching the benefits of feeling good about our bodies (which felt rather obvious, I thought, but these posts always proved popular). I spent ten minutes trying to think of something witty to fling into the mix, and then gave up. I called Pete instead. He worked at a catering company that provided posh lunches for corporate clients. He hated it but was good and rarely moaned. He accepted that part of life was doing a job you disliked. We were both very different in that regard.
‘What’s up?’ he said picking up after the first ring.
‘Not much. I just had lunch. Are you having a good day?’ I asked. ‘The nursery texted and said Bella fell off the climbing frame again.’
‘Is she okay?’
‘I think so. No she’s definitely okay or they would have sent another one. How’s work?’
‘Bit of a pain. There’s a massive order in for a conference tomorrow. I’ve been on my feet all morning but I’m going to buy some tinned tomatoes on my way home and make a nice prawn pasta for dinner.’
‘Did you take the prawns out of the freezer?’
‘I think so.’
‘If you didn’t take them out then we can’t have prawn pasta can we?’
