ladykingstonlivesdotcom

It may surprise you to hear that I would rather go to the dentist than the hairdresser. Just about. At least you aren’t required to make banal conversation with the junior shampooist, discuss where you are going for your holiday or listen to remarks about movement, choppiness or product. (Mostly on account of not being able or encouraged to talk at all. Good luck with that one). For the uninitiated, or bald, product means industrial quantities of sticky gunk is applied to your locks ensuring that your very expensive hair do will look as though you have rolled it in egg whites within twenty four hours. Maximum.

In an unsuccessful attempt to recreate a beautician feeling my dentist has even invested in a fluffy blanket in which to cocoon her patients whilst they submit to her ministrations. The hygienist, bad cop to good cop, doesn’t even pretend. Her ‘I have to be cruel to be kind’ is up there with ‘There’s a cheque in the post’ and I hardly know the girl’ in the scale of Great Lies of All Time. In an attempt to at least have the psychological upper hand I tell her that as she works, I am composing an article about her sadism for international release. Adding that if you have already said ‘We’re nearly there’ at least ten times you begin to lose credibility. Not even a blush.

I also announced that following a recent significant birthday I would no longer be investing the annual GNP of a minor African nation in my teeth that has been my practice up to now. I doubt, I announce, that I will live long enough to reap the benefit and what bliss never to have to use those wretched TePes frantically before every appointment in a pathetic attempt to convince them that this has been a twice daily habit since early childhood. They never fall for it. Obviously. Like the parents of a wilful toddler they have seen it all before and aren’t going to take any notice of today’s tantrum. For which, secretly, I thank them. Without their care and persistence I would have been reduced to a liquid diet years ago (and you can keep your thoughts to yourself on that one). I have carried out my threat and now we can go back to having a wonderful laugh. You really are more fun than the hairdresser. And better looking.

Given the amount of news this sport has generated in the last few weeks, I have cast my mind back to the summer I decided to do a bit of mini-cabbing in south west London.

“What bad luck that it was not until this year that the Wimbledon uniforms had been designed by Ralph Lauren – I would have offered before but even I have to draw the sartorial line somewhere. I was banking on the fact that a woman in uniform is normally pretty irresistible, as in air hostesses or nurses who are reputed to go always armed with frozen spoons. Google it. (For men think firemen. Or Cossacks.) Years ago, pre-Epstein obviously, I even dragged my old gymslip out of retirement for a job interview but sadly for the Wimbledon drivers, Mr Lauren had decided to design a cabbage green, polyester shirt, beige (Beige! The horror) ‘slax’ and a plastic anorak of a particularly unflattering hi-vi shade. Prize for anyone who can think of a ‘flattering’ hi-vi shade. It was, fashion-wise, a suicidally low moment but as always with my devilish scheme, needs must.

Clearly the only area with any scope for self-expression was in footwear but even this was possibly unlikely to appeal to men who had chosen to spend their lives in plimsolls. And, to state the obvious, feet are not the first thing you notice about a driver and it strained even my fertile imagination to think of a plausible reason to have my Manolos balanced on the dashboard, at least on a first drive. Eventually I dispensed with the footwear altogether. The stiletto heels kept getting wedged under the accelerator and what with the screaming of the passengers and the screeching of other driver’s tyres, it was almost impossible to hear my mobile ‘phone. One passenger did observe, in French, that driving without shoes was illegal in France but I was able to reassure him, also in French, that it is allowed in England, providing that you are not wearing socks – a bit like the rule for men in sandals.

All this reminds me of an unfortunate incident in my distant past when I was on a shoot (Film, not grouse) with a truly gorgeous director. It remains a mystery to me why the media attract so many attractive women but virtually all the men wore cardigans, smoked pipes and ignored us. More than a little naively I asked the crew for advice and the senior cameraman offered to ply the object of my affections with strong drink at lunchtime (Those were the days!) and report back. ‘He’s a foot fetishist’ he slurred on his return, ‘Go for interesting shoes’.

And yet again, a novice mistake. I spent the next two weeks tottering around in heels that Naomi Campbell would have refused to wear, many of them borrowed from friends with differently sized feet, in total agony. Every day the crew would admire the day’s offering and award marks out of ten. From Mr Ken Russell and Bromley, nothing.

Years later I met the director again at a drinks party and was surprised to discover that he remembered me. ‘Good heavens’ I said, ‘I had no idea that you were even aware of my existence’.

‘Indeed I was’ he replied ‘But I was told that you were dating that cameraman, the one you wore all those wonderful shoes for. You know who I mean, whathisname, the foot fetishist’.

And exhale, gentle readers, the ladykingstonlives.com blog returns. Even I, a legend of optimism, did not think it right to post jolly news when the world was falling around so many people’s ears but as the first, tiny green shoots of normality returning begin to poke through the parched earth of the last two years I have decided that it might be time to lift the spirits of my devoted followers by updating some of the pieces I have written over the last 20 years. The following comes from a time when Saddam Hussein was still in power and woke was something that happened when you weren’t asleep.

‘My hairdresser was tending to my fabulous locks the other day when I regaled him with a story that would have been excised from that well-known misery memoir, ’Angela’s Ashes’ as being too cruel. As children, my sisters and I all had waist length hair which was washed weekly in a character forming combination of cold water and carbolic soap and then combed through without the benefit of either compassion or conditioner. Any sign of protest was met with a swift, sharp shock – usually a thwack from a hairbrush and a reminder that one had to suffer to be beautiful. (Didn’t we baby boomers have it easy?) Given the amount of suffering we collectively endured it seems in retrospect a national scandal that not one of us went on to become Miss World.

My older and very lovely sister took the message very much to heart as she demonstrated when she took to wearing plastic bags inside a pair of blonde, thigh length suede boots (Sadly not in her actual size) so that they would not be stained by the blood which poured from her blisters. Beat that, if you can, Opus Dei, with your softie hair shirts.

Which brings me to the burkha and the c word, an expletive which never crossed my mother’s lips – yes, Comfort. And of course c for Childline to which your modern infant would have turned to in an instant had it, like us, been expected to walk barefoot across the fields to school each morning because my mother sincerely believed that it improved the complexion, especially if pneumonia didn’t get you. The unsung advantage of the burkha is that far from being a symbol of oppression it allows the more pressed mother to drive their children to school in their pyjamas without being spotted, especially by over-zealous traffic policemen who seem to think nightwear behind the wheel is a cause for great mirth, but that dear reader is a story for another day.

C is also for cruel as was the remark that my son made to me the other morning. I later informed him by text that I had gone to live in Baghdad where people were not so unkind to their mothers and he received another text which read ’Thrilled that your saintly mother has joined me in my fight to overthrow cruel and oppressive regimes. Signed S. Hussein’. My next blog will be on the letter D for ’Don’t mess with your mother’. They have to learn’.

This evening Her Majesty the Queen will address the nation and I imagine her words will be considered, thoughtful and above all positive.

Happily not being a monarch, I am unconstrained by such things and can rant away as usual.  She will doubtless and rightly praise the people who are working to get us through this crisis, many quite literally putting their lives at risk.  I, on the other hand, would like to give a complete bollocking to the moronic element in society who appear incapable of understanding the very simple instruction to STAY INSIDE.  At the risk of appearing to drum up work for my son, I should like to have the words ‘I am completely selfish and stupid’ tattooed on their Neanderthal foreheads.  Or ‘I don’t give a toss about anyone else’.   Perhaps when things settle down we could extend it to ‘I drink and drive’ or ‘I beat my wife’?  Am I getting a little bit medieval spending too much time on my own?

I am also not entirely in favour of spending millions of pounds to repatriate Britons abroad, particularly anyone who left after the date on which it became clear that things were about to end in tears, or who had plenty of time and opportunity to get back but didn’t want to ‘cut short my holiday’. Bad decisions, as it turned out, and perhaps we should invoke the now forgotten rule that you lie in the bed you choose to make.

It is of course a privilege to live in a country where there is freedom of speech but I begin to wonder if we shouldn’t have the tiniest suspension of it for the duration which would spare us from the endless criticism of what the government is doing.  No, they are not perfect, perhaps not every decision has shown the wisdom of Solomon but how the hell is anyone supposed to know how to handle this?  Is there a book we should have been reading:  ‘Pandemics: An easy way to sort them for beginners’?  Can I appeal to the carping critics to share their infinite knowledge of how we should actually be solving this with the rest of us before I start a petition to have them done for treason?  You are not helping, people.

Dark thoughts but not quite as dark as how I felt on Wednesday when I hit what marathon runners call The Wall, as those of you who saw my posting on Facebook will already know.  A huge thank you to the friends who responded – just the sound of another human (Who’s not on the radio talking about the c word) made a world of difference and I’ve now got my second wind which will hopefully carry me to the finish line.  Let me know if you in turn need a hand.

Yesterday evening I had a phone call from a girlfriend who lives up North and who I only see about once a year. It is our long established  habit to settle down at either end of the line with a glass or three of wine while we have a catch up session.  It was a beautiful evening and I sat watching the sun go down as we chatted, gossiped and bitched for 90 minutes about our families, friends and pets, just as we always do.

I can’t describe how wonderful it was to feel normal.

 

HHow far into this solitary confinement are we ?  It would help if I knew what day of the week it was – not strictly true because it’s definitely Sunday and the clocks have gone forward, sparing us one whole hour of imprisonment, she said, making another chalk tick on the wall.

On the subject of confinement, there was a piece in the paper yesterday by Terry Waite, someone famously held captive  for years and years by some now forgotten group in the Middle East which led me to wondering how he had survived. (Didn’t bother to read article.  Far, far too busy).  He was apparently chained to a radiator in a dark cellar for about a decade, give or take, yet he came out firing on all cylinders and gave a speech Shakespeare could have written. Lack of exercise had not withered his muscles, unlike the effect on me of three months walking with a stick.  He had not died from lack of vitamin D, his teeth had not fallen out through want of flossing, he was able to stride about in new shoes – something I have yet to master – and, most importantly, his brain had not turned to jelly, even though all he had had for entertainment was a postcard from some cathedral.  Sure, it’s a miracle whereas  another week for me and I’ll be leaving in a straitjacket.

Yesterday I was reduced, whisper this, reduced to cleaning the insides of the windows.  There were two upsides to this.  Firstly I managed to find a lot of slightly more interesting things to do by way of procrastination and secondly, when I did eventually start, it made the most amazing difference.  Cancel that appointment at Spec Savers and let there be light.  And it didn’t actually take that long because given the exterior walls of my house are about 50% glass, I had invested some time ago in a Karcher window cleaner, obviously still in its box.  What a brilliant device people.  Actually does what it says on the tin.  Get onto Amazon now!  I may even use it again.

Lowest point of the week has been the abandoning of my beloved Radio 4.  May I remind you at the BBC of the Reithian edict that your purpose is to educate, inform and amuse?  Not to go on and on and on about the same miserable subject, often in totally unintelligible accents, until your gentle viewers have reached for the off button before they self harm.  And cancel an episode of ‘The Archers’ to boot, something that wouldn’t have happened even during the war had the programme not started sometime afterwards.  Mere details.  It would have been like rationing tea resulting in an utter crushing of the British spirit.  Unthinkable.

We live in dark times but all is not lost.  In its infinite wisdom the government still allows me to visit my allotment where digging for victory/sanity is well under way.  The chard is planted and seeds for carrots and beetroot are in.  Paths have been mown, leaves have been raked, peas and beans are sitting in the new greenhouse.  I pruned the fruit trees and in a waste not, want not moment, bought home some of the cuttings with blossom buds on them.  These are now flowering and as Dennis Potter (And as usual, look him up) once poignantly said, they are the blossomiest blossom ever.

By the time there are apples this may all be behind us.  Stay safe.

 

’This will be a mercifully short blog’ think my regular readers but not a bit of it.  Brace yourself; once I get going I may well end up rivalling Hilary Mantel which brings us to reason Number One.  Always jaw achingly fashionable, my copy of ‘The Mirror and the Light’ popped through the letterbox on publication day.  (Not literally.  Obvs.  The size of it meant it had to come through the bi-fold windows on a wheelbarrow).  I’ve started it and even as possibly the world’s fastest reader, that is going see me through to the autumn.  Of 2021.  Minimum.

Moving on I am at least in solitary confinement; being locked in with anyone would be a trial.  No need to say ‘Especially  for them’ thank you, that boy at the back.     Selfless as ever, I have already sharpened my axe and offered it to married friends, along with an alibi.  You don’t have an axe?  I bet you were down to your last roll of loo paper when all this happened.  Be prepared, people.  How many times?  People of my age were reared by parents who had been through the war and if they taught us one thing, it was never to let supplies run low because you never know.  Well now you do, you with your single old tin of lentils and enough spaghetti for one in the cupboard.

Also, thank God, I am not locked in with children although today’s cohort would be perfectly happy just to be allowed to sit in front of a screen for 18 hours a day so the horror of having to entertain them isn’t an issue.  Why, oh why, weren’t iPads available when I was crossing the Bay of Biscay in the good ship Motherhood?

And so to the best news I had yesterday.  Visits to the allotment are still permitted and so I should think.  What else in the world combines exercise, mental well-being and organic food in one package?  Plus the opportunity to socialise at a plot-wide distance.  My broad beans will be making their way there this morning and my potatoes are chitting as we speak. (Look it up, for goodness sake.  You’re not exactly pushed for time).

Time, once as rare as unicorns, is now hanging on our hands.  Tasks that have been avoided for years are now cherished as a way to fill the morning.  I actually find myself saving up jobs for the next day – don’t want to rush the ironing, perhaps I’ll just concentrate on the dusting today.  Will we ever get up to speed again, post-plague?

There is time for conversation, albeit on the telephone.  Begone, damn texts with your arcane spelling and emojis, lets talk to each other.  And what a rediscovered pleasure it is, just to natter away, with the added bonus that you can ring people on their landline – they are going to be at home after all – and you can hear each other clearly.  Remember that? Bliss.  When this is over get one installed.

One personal low point has been the death of my little cat.  She was a gentle soul and not having had anything approaching a hard life, had made it to 20.  The vet rang me yesterday to say that her ashes were ready for collection.  Would I like to go round there or should they keep them for the next couple of weeks? ‘Hang on to them please’ I said, ‘I will pick them up later’.  Something to look forward to.

 

Cabin fever is now rivalling the dreaded C virus as a possible cause of death.  Being self isolated in the house with waves lapping at the door from the never ending rain has led to that most dangerous of occupations – thinking.  One result of which is that I have sent a couple of savage emails having long since passed the point where I had the mental strength to turn a blind eye to complete incompetence.

Another consequence of the wetness has been that the shed door lock has seized up, again, preventing access not only to my heated seed germinators (High time to get those broad beans going) but also to the red wine stash.  Thank God that the local lock-related Saint was able to rush round and after two hours working waist deep in mud, in a monsoon, in pitch darkness, was able to open the door.

I considered £80 a small price to pay but it did lead me to muse on how much I spend on just maintaining Stuff.  This is the second time the shed has repelled invaders, the front door has devoured keys on more than one occasion, as have the sliding doors on the balcony; I could have had a Greek holiday for less money.  (What is it with keys?  Is it built in obsolescence? Did you know they only lasted six months?).

Also this week a bill of several hundred pounds for servicing the car.  Another couple of hundred pounds on carpet shampooing, window cleaning and the weekly cleaner.  It’s amazing how filthy the house starts to look when you spend a lot of time indoors.  Add to this the cost of two vacuum cleaners and industrial quantities of cleaning materials and a week in the West Indies becomes a distinct possibility.

Whilst I don’t count myself strictly as ‘stuff’ I still attract huge maintenance bills.  Hairdresser, manicurist, pedicurist, eye-brow technician to say nothing of the ten grand it cost me to get my spine sorted out when the NHS was a bit too busy to bother. And don’t start me of what I spend on the dentist each year.

Even if I want to get rid of things it comes at a price.  Part of my huge council tax bill goes on dustmen, there are waste water charges, £60 a year for green waste and separate charges for the collection of ‘large items’.

Its a miracle that there is enough disposable income left to eat.  Just having Stuff is burning through money, and what I don’t spend on maintaining it goes on contents and  car insurance.

I am beginning to think that the way forward is just to have a huge bonfire and get rid of all of it.  (Suggestions needed on how to do this without releasing tons of carbon into the air.  Obvs). With the money I save I would hardly ever be in the country, much less in the house and I would just take Uber’s everywhere.  Result!

I hope the above illustrates where thinking leads.  As I have said so many times before,  it’s not a good thing.  Roll on the better weather.

Some of you may have seen the leaflet I posted on Facebook.  Where lesser folk are fretting about Real Life and pizza delivery offers,  my neighbours are getting flyers about treatment for ski injuries.  And no, we do not live in the Alps but somewhere where people leave ski racks clamped on their cars until May, just to make a point.

One of this week’s offerings on the local website was a peevish rant about dustmen leaving the lids of wheelie bins open.  (Would that I was making this up).  To the credit of other citizens it did attract a fair degree of derision – perhaps they would prefer to  live in an area where flooding renders such concerns less of an issue?  “I’ve got water in my bin” versus “I’ve got six foot of water in my house”.

I can only imagine that the Oscar winning ‘Parasite’, required viewing in the nearby posh cinema, must have been an uncomfortable couple of hours or would that require a level of self awareness that doesn’t appear to exist?

I went to the ‘Picasso and Paper’ exhibition at the Royal Academy this week and there were actually people wearing soggy face masks.  The urge to tell them to grow up and stop worrying about monsters under their beds was almost overwhelming and I will eventually give in to it.  If you’re that worried stay indoors pet and make space for the rest of us. Thank God they weren’t organising Dunkirk.

Incidentally don’t rush off to  see it.  Yet another poorly curated avalanche of odds and sods and the utter pretentiousness of the signs on the walls reached an all-time high.  I may start a competition to find the worst nonsense spouted about art on a gallery wall.  And who else would rather have quality than quantity?  We skipped the last two rooms entirely.  And the fridge magnets.

I do worry that we have lost the plot and that, increasingly feeble and degenerate, we are about to go the way of Ancient Rome but perhaps it is just the time of year.  We always dread January but the snag is that having survived it we are confronted by even dreamier February and no relief in sight.  Supplies, spiritually speaking, are at an all-year low and now we are confined inside by an endless string of oddly named storms.  These have clearly caused havoc around the country but here the streets were silent and deserted in the face of a fairly restrained bit of rain and several large puddles.

High time, methinks, that I looked out my own stiff upper lip, slapped a smile on my face and Got On With It.  The daffodils are practically in flower and you can’t hear yourself think because of the bird song.  Spring is just around the corner, allegedly, and I would be feeling a lot less sour if we hadn’t missed victory two weeks running at the pub quiz because my, as it turned out correct, answers were ignored.  Perhaps I’ll book some assertiveness training.  Perhaps we all should.

Yes another funeral this week – a bit like 21st birthdays and weddings, you go through a period of your life when you seem to go to little else.  This time it was one of my oldest and dearest friends; 46 years of getting impressively drunk together.

I was introduced to him by his best friend, my late brother-in-law – they were both jazz musicians and I could fill blogs for the next year relating just some of the shenanigans they were involved in.  After the brother-in-laws funeral, a tragic early death involving a rogue lawn-mower, my then husband, not as tired and emotional as we were, uthrew us both out of the car on the way back to London.  We went to the nearest pub and carried on grieving.  A proper send off if I say so myself.

We didn’t meet up that often but if he came to London the day would always involve lunch followed by brandies and cigarettes outside the Bar Italia in Soho, opposite Ronnie Scott’s.  He always smoked the most revolting fags and whenever I was abroad I made a point of seeking out the worst local  gaspers as souvenirs.  I recall that the ones sourced in Russia were particularly impressive in their room clearing properties and a real bargain at about 5 roubles for 200.  Sadly unobtainable over here.

We spoke on the phone frequently and for never less than an hour, ice clinking in our glasses as we discussed our respective gardens, his being as eccentric as he was.  Think Tim Burton crossed with Bunny Guinness on speed.  Not a suitable place for children on several levels and talking of which let me deviate to my own offspring.

They too had spent long afternoons with me in his garden drinking whatever gut-rotting Eastern European vodka we had purchased en route.  I found out that he had died because one of them rang me and bless them, they both came to the funeral even though it meant one of them leaving Bristol at 6 in the morning.  They looked handsome, they were charming to the elderly mourners and they came because they knew it would mean a lot to me.  A moment of maternal pride.  Proper old-fashioned values.  I hope I passed them on.

Friends on Facebook and readers of ‘The Times’ will already have read the excellent article by Trevor Phillips; a robust piece of advice to Harry and Meghan on the subject of Real Life, something in which neither of them seems to have achieved an A grade, query even a pass.

Growing up in Disneyville, a little girl might be forgiven for thinking that if you get to marry the prince, the frocks and the jewels and the castle would be yours, ignoring the warnings of the crone spinning away in the attic at their peril.  The frocks were certainly on offer, although oddly declined in favour of jeans on a visit to Wimbledon, the very home of the Liberty Lawn tea dress.  The Queen herself had to put her foot down on the idea that you could wander into the royal jewel box and take what you wanted and also declined to have the happy couple setting up home in the spare room in Windsor Castle.  Good decision as it turned out.

Real Princess Anne has been getting it right for decades, turning up hundreds of times a year to cut ribbons at glitter-free factories, schools and hospitals, eating thousands of dinners being bored to death by Lord Lieutenants, shaking millions of hands.  Not a job that I would ever, ever want but because I wasn’t living in a cloud cuckoo land once I reached twelve, I didn’t sign up for it.  I’d much rather live in Canada too.  Nice people, beautiful country, great food.

And the reason real women are so cross at the moment is because we put up with – and fought to change – things a great deal worse than having nutters insult you on the Internet.  Nobody ever asked how we were either.

We didn’t have access to free contraception unless we were married.  We didn’t get maternity leave or have our jobs held open while we took it.  We couldn’t take out hire purchase without our husbands’ permission.  The police would not attend violent assaults on us which were dismissed as ‘domestics’.  If we divorced, we were lucky – and unusual – if it didn’t condemn us to a life of penury. Almost none of us went to university and only a third of women could drive.

What we did do in the last fifty years was get out there and change things.  A bit.  Although just yesterday, in 2020, the BBC was found guilty of paying women less than men.  It has never been easy being a woman and it’s a bloody sight harder than being a princess.

And looking back through my blogs I can see that from day one every single woman I spoke to said that the Harry and Meghan story would end in tears, not because she’s American or an actress or mixed race but because the pair of them seemed to be dim and delusional.  Turns out all of us were right.