I have never been one for bravery or heroics. Never mad, bad and dangerous to know, although in some ways each one of those.

I have been mad. And as my husband says, I have the certificates to prove it. This morning in the car waiting for my boys’ bus a strange conversation ensued. Sometimes I blabber on and this was one of those times. I told them how when I commuted from London on the train home that sometimes I had to fight the urge to get off the train one stop early. Another train wouldn’t come along for an hour and it would have taken me until midnight to walk home. Too quiet for taxi ranks. That would have really pissed me off.

I mentioned this to my traveling companions once. “Don’t you ever feel like that?” Mouths were screwed up into sneers, bodies shuffled away from me. “No. Of course not!”

When I told this story this morning, Son No.1 looked at me slyly. I gathered myself to receive scorn. “Yes! Yes! I’m always thinking of getting off the bus one stop early in the afternoons!”

I smiled proudly but as they left the car when the bus arrived I shouted after them. “Don’t do it though, will you? Too dangerous!”

Bad. Well my first boyfriends had motorbikes and I sat behind them in all weathers (England). Dressed in denim and leather, a fluttering fringe escaping behind me as I was tossed from the bends on country roads. The whistling noise of speeding down the motorway. Oh yeah baby. The rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. I’ll let you into a secret. I had to have lessons in cool from my first man in black. “Will you lean with the bike you great Jessie. Every time I hit a bend you straighten up and I nearly drop the bike.” “Not cool then?” “Not cool”.

I went to festivals on the back of bikes. There were no bathrooms in those days, only trough toilets and flies on the breeze. I never went anywhere without a full face of make-up and a miniature nail kit in my pocket. I lost my eyeliner pencil once. It was intense.

After an absence of twenty years I got to ride pillion again. The husband bought a retro Triumph a few years back. I had my new racy red jacket and my Union Jack DMs. I was ready to rock! I hadn’t banked on being absolutely terrified and the husband has to be the least dangerous road rider ever. I shook with nerves. Still not rock ‘n’ roll- even after all those years. Headlines swooped in front of my eyes. STEINER PARENTS KILLED IN BIKE ACCIDENT. Mother’s last words to sons “I’ll Always Love You” to the strains of Whitney Houston. I had to stop. The headlines and the songs got cornier and more frightening.

Now the husband has a trail bike without a pillion. I mean I would. But it’s not… Can’t bring myself to part with that red bike jacket.

Dangerous? Let’s face it I’m the sort who would wear a crash hat while driving a car if I could get away with it. I drive the dodgems as if I’m taking my test, complete with hand signals. And I never, I repeat never, stood on the cracks in the pavement to see what would happen. Or lay down with a boiled sweet in my mouth. Ran with a lolly stick in my gob. I heard every wives tail and believed them all.

Of course I’m fast tracking to fifty and that’s a dangerous age. Still. I can be eccentric now. Eccentric is cool for the fifty something. I may adopt a succession of hat wear. Ironic of course. Or wear bright colours to detract from the lines on my face. I could drink gin in the mornings and buy a pair of high heeled fluffy mules. I could team my red bike jacket with a black tutu. I see myself as a cross between Marianne Faithful and Edina Monsoon.

I feel a train trip coming on.

I sat on the basic metal bed in small boxy room, swinging my legs. From time to time a kind-looking young nurse would pop his head in to check I hadn’t fashioned a noose out of the hospital sheets. The very bottom, I couldn’t fall any lower.
I had lain in those sheets this morning, listening to the breakfast bell and the shuffle of slippers on tiles. Unfamiliar voices echoed down the corridor. A new patient, like me, made several telephone calls on the phone in the passage. He sounded normal, some of his words washed over me. He didn’t think he should be here, amongst these people. His disdain of them, as if he were different, a superior being who had been led to the wrong place. It had all been a mistake. I knew exactly how he felt.
I spotted an empty light fitting. I wondered if it was actually a camera, watching me, checking I didn’t find something in this spartan room with which to do myself in. The room was painted a light grey and housed only a single hospital bed, a card table next to it and a narrow wooden wardrobe, with a small chipped mirror set into it.
The lunch bell came and went. I couldn’t bring myself to leave this room. Terrified by what I might say to these strangers? A dried up husk, the real Lucinda had left some time ago, leaving a scary woman in charge of the children.
Late afternoon, still lying, hiding in my cell. Wearing the hospital gown they had put me in when I had arrived the day before; comatose from the tablets I had swallowed. To be so near to the all the activity of the ward and yet cowering in this space, hoping to become as invisible as I felt. Eventually the kind-faced nurse returned, the doctor had asked to see me. My husband and children had come to see me, they were waiting in the visiting room. David had brought my clothes, but no make-up, and none of the clothes matched. A bag packed in a hurry.
I left the sanctuary of my room, a cocoon, a womb-like place where I had been curled up for nearly 24 hours. Hair wild and matted, it had been wet when David had lifted me, unconscious, from the bath at home. I knew I looked like the crazy woman I had become. A young man in the corridor, inmate or staff I couldn’t tell, gave me a sympathetic smile.
“It’s the boredom that gets you.” He winked and went off in search of a light for his cigarette. Lighters and matches were convascated at the door, along with aerosol sprays, sharp objects and dressing gown cords.
The doctors, three of them, looked serious. A kind one, a judgmental one and a third one distracted. The kind one explained patiently to my muddled mind that although I had volunteered to be in this place I was to be kept here for one week. Sectioned. A horrible word conjuring images of old black and white films with creepy asylums and people who bite.
The visit with my family took place the other side of the locked security doors.
“No place for children.” The officious nurse guarding the front desk told me, deepening my guilt, already a hollow and cavernous place, filled with dark thoughts and desperate acts. How could I explain how I had got this far to anyone who hadn’t been this side of hell?
At last I manage to join the slow procession to dinner, following the waft of overcooked cabbage down the passage to the dining room. Cautiously I looked around me. The strip lighting showing faces in an unforgiving light. No soft focus here, sharp lines and sallow profiles steeped in sorrow. I saw the young man who had spoken to me earlier, chatty and jumping with nerves, all elbows and jerks. A woman, once beautiful, her long blonde hair now brittle and faded. Her face no longer adored but fixed with an expression of defeat. She was cutting the meat of a young man seated next to her, a boy, shaking too much to complete the task himself.
After dinner and medications I retreat to my womb-room and lay back on the bed. I imagine I am lying on my back in a boat, floating to the middle of a lake. Floating away from sounds and distractions. Only thought remains. Are we all floating on our separate boats, colliding occasionally, our crafts connecting? Reaching out with hands outstretched, fingers touching, momentarily and floating past, separate once more.
During the night a torch intrudes on my slumber every hour or so. Night nurses on suicide watch. It’s never dark here. I wedge my coat against the nightlight with a chair. I feel I’m in an incubator, a human experiment.
The meals are bland but our life revolves around them. Nothing else to do. The piano is played briefly by one woman, who assaults you with a barrage of words if you make eye-contact. She plays the same two bars of the same tune over and over at different times throughout the day.
By the second evening we are starting to gather outside in the cold, night air. Smokers for their fix and non-smokers for company. Not wanting to be left alone with the piano-woman. Fragments of our lives fall from our lips.
Greg, the nervy one, selling himself on the streets of Sydney from the age of 14. The long history of drug abuse which he recovered from with the help of an abusive partner. One addiction swapped for another. He never stops trying to make us laugh. He needs a captivated audience to give himself validity.
“Lucinda, what brings a nice girl like you to a place like this?” Elaine, the faded beauty, speaks between draws on her cigarette.
I’d dreaded the question, no point evading it. We were not here because of our smooth, comforting lives.
“Overdose”. I cough wretchedly.
“Me too.” She smiles, sadly conspiring. “First time?”
“Second”. I admit.
“Fifth time for me. I can’t even get that right.” A hollow laugh emits smoke and steam from her open mouth. A former showgirl, once a beautiful peacock. Now she has three ex-husbands and a daughter she hadn’t seen for ten years.
A quiet man sitting on the edge of the group speaks softly. “I’d had enough. Battling with the ex over the kids and all. I drove out to the cliff top at the bay, you know that popular suicide spot? Well, I stood there windswept and expecting to jump for half an hour.”
“What happened?” It was Greg who spoke, for all of us.
“I remembered a lad I went to school with. His mum jumped off the Skillion, same place. Stuffed his life up. I thought of my kids and I couldn’t do it.”
Quiet again, each alone with thoughts of the journey that had brought us here.
We had our laughs as well, over the days in confinement. Outwardly groaning and eyes being thrown heavenward in mock dread when Iris hit those piano keys, shared disgust at the meals served, Saturday night spent over cups of tea and monopoly.
A strange young wild girl called Anna arrived in the night, hyped-up and non-stop chatter. Two days into her stay she disappeared over the wall. Caught up by the police and put into maximum security next door. A lovely middle-aged man, a barber, tried to hang himself in the shower with his own sweatshirt. He ended up in the same place.
When my time was up I hugged my new found friends tightly and wished them luck. Unspoken promises of not meeting again. Who would want to remember this week of our lives? Elaine had support now to leave a man she didn’t love, Greg a stint in re-hab lined up. Me, well I didn’t want to ever be in a place like that again. Life was frightening but its unpredictability, sacred.

I had to ring my son’s school this morning to clarify something. It was a perfectly reasonable request to find out more information and work out which form went where and how much do I pay. Sporting event, you know the drill. I found myself saying things like ‘I’m sorry to bother you.’ And ‘I’m not very good with forms’ and even a ‘silly me’.

Sorry to bother you – the woman works in the school office. She’s used to being bothered, she’s even paid for it. I’m not very good with forms. What do I eat them instead of filling them in. Have a panic attack every time my sons bring one home. And as for silly me – am I a little girl being told off by matron? No. I’m a woman who’s approaching fifty with a whole wealth of experience. Of using the telephone, having adult conversations and yes. Filling in forms.

I was wondering if this is an English thing, a woman thing or just a me-thing. I swear I came out of the womb apologising. “Oh excuse me Mrs. I hope I didn’t cause you too much pain. I’ll try and make it up to you by not waking you in the night for the next five years.”

Possibly it came from my parents who were huge on being polite and deferential. There were so many rules. Give up your seat to someone younger, older, fatter, thinner than you. Walk on the outside of the path, nearest the scary road with the big lorries, so other people can walk on the inside and be safe from certain death or a least a puddle being splattered all over them. This was when I was five. It just got worse after that. Let everyone choose from the tray of cakes first, even if you are left with rock cake while all the others are now tucking into chocolate éclairs and meringues. You have done the right thing and you should be proud.

Please and thank-yous – I was trapped in their merciless prison. The first six or seven things I said to anyone especially grown-ups, was ‘please, thank you, please, thank you, please.’ Quite frankly it made me a right pain in the arse. Would the stuttering child with an attack of over-politeness please stand up! But of course I couldn’t. I was too shy, too nervous of getting it wrong. So I hid at the back.

I was prone to tears and would always stand at the back so as not to draw attention to myself. I’m surprised I didn’t wet myself but the fear of bottle green tights was the dominant fear. Then everyone would know and perhaps I would have an unfortunate nickname, like pissy pants, which would stretch into adulthood.

Nervous-Nerys turned into Wilma-Worry. In the old days it was straightforward things like will I fart in front of my gorgeous new boyfriend, will my hair get any curlier? Does everyone’s intimate body parts look like this? To bigger things such as being so terrified of falling under the train that I might just jump as a way of getting the ordeal out of the way. I should have started therapy earlier.

All those worries paled into insignificance when I had my first child. This tiny scrap of human life was completely dependent on me for his very survival. Holy crap. There was so much that could go wrong. There was no instruction booklet. Scrap that. There were zillions of books that all had conflicting advice. I liked the pictures in Miriam Stoppard’s books but she was even scarier than my parents. “To get your child to eat his or her dinner, make the different items of food into an interesting scene. A smiley face, a flower or a scaled down model of the Houses of Parliament.”

I read all sorts of stuff. When despite breast feeding my baby, the clinic advised me to feed my child water. He didn’t like it so the nurse suggested putting sugar in the water. I didn’t like the sound of that so I read a health magazine, I read a lot of those in those days, which suggested using honey instead. That sounded good but I was out of honey. Next time I visited the clinic the nurse said that children shouldn’t be fed honey until they are one years old because of botulism. I had nearly inadvertently poisoned my baby.

The list went on. SIDS, sharing the bed with your cherub, let alone dropping them. We had a three story house with open plan stairs. Well, he survived. So did his brother. But I lost touch with my sanity somewhere along the line.

Anyway, I’m off for a coffee. If that’s okay with you. Thank you, thank you. (Moving deferentially from the room so as not to turn my back to you).

I don’t know if it’s my age. I don’t know if I’ve got to the stage where my mind and body don’t work the same and I’m reflecting that out to the things around me. Or vice versa. Or I could be living in some sort of house equivalent of a small revolution. I’ve been living with it so long I’m not completely sure.

It started with dishwashers and don’t get me wrong, I don’t actually think that dishwashers have a voice or anything. But whenever dishwashers are around me they stop working. From the expensive chrome fronted beauty to the cheap version yellowing in the rental house. When I moved into this home we bought a cheap one, thinking that all dishwashers are equal. Don’t even think about it. It went wrong almost every month. Little niggly problems until the thing started filling up with evil black gunk. A bit like hell’s ectoplasm. Nobody could work it out, especially not the man who came to fix it, who we’d become very close to over a period of five years. Eventually the dishwasher of Beelzebub was taken away by a man waving a white flag and delivering a new one. Alas the man got his truck stuck in the muddy grass while navigating around our driveway. Four hours and many dramatic gestures from this poor chap later, the local tow people pulled him out. He never said goodbye.

Every pump – whether it be the pool, the water system or the pump that sends our dam water to a tank and onto our toilet. They’ve all carked it recently. And when the water pump died in the early days it killed our perfectly working washing machine. Turns out it didn’t like running without water.

If we want hot water we have to run the tap (in the shower for example) for a while. If this fails we have to then hop out of the shower, mess with the sink taps and eventually, hopefully, we get hot water. Magic.

I mentioned the pool which reflects my optimism. It’s not a classic in-built affair. It’s a paddling pool with rigid sides and attitude. It’s very innards have split and been patched over and over. The pool is now dead. Or simply refusing to go on.

My car stereo (sounds so old fashioned doesn’t it?) will only work sometimes. I like to drive with the radio on or with my cutting edge music selection beating away, making me feel like I can still kick arse. But due to a loose connection somewhere unreachable I can’t always do that. I have to drive in silence for miles. And miles. Sometimes it comes on of its own accord. I mean what is that all about. Do the wires jiggle and right themselves while I’m driving. It seems unlikely to me.

My metabolism. Alright. I may be spinning it a bit here. I’ve had a dodgy metabolism since I was 16. The blame should really fall on me discovering decent cheese. My mum didn’t have decent cheese when I was growing up. She was a stranger to France or even Cheddar Gorge. We had something called processed cheese and trust me, its best avoided.

We have spiders, the occasional snake, geckoes and skinks. How lovely. No, I mean in the house. And when we first moved here, before certain areas were boarded up, we had possums and the occasional bush turkey. There was a cane toad once when I foolishly used the toilet, in the early days, without switching the light on. I remember thinking ‘oh how sweet. A doorstop shaped like a frog’. Or a toad. On the wrong side of the door. But at least we’re not haunted.

I thought we were haunted in London. We’d moved into a newly renovated flat in an old house. It even had a space where olden bells had rung the servants in days gone by. Our more conventional doorbell kept ringing with visitors and then when grown-up guests turned up for dinner they banged loudly on the door. ‘Why didn’t you use the bell’ we cried. The door bell hadn’t worked and when the husband (who was the boyfriend in those days) looked at the place where the batteries should have been, there was nothing. Except the plastic that assured us there had never been batteries in this new casing. It had never been used. Ever.

Slightly spooky but not as spooky as the terrible nightmares I had while living there. One memorable one was a bunch of crones turning up at the door with an empty coffin. The head crone, with very few teeth, screamed ‘leave this house, leave this house.’ I haven’t had a spooky nightmare since we left that lovely flat. I’m glad. If I’m honest I am still frightened of the dark. There could be anything out there. It’s nearly mice season isn’t it.

…Scarlet O’Hara famously said. I’m with her on that one. I am a procrastinator. There. I said it.

I have to-do lists on my computer that lap and spool into another year. Cleaning. Nothing makes me clean better than shame. Visitors expected and I’ll de-cobweb, wash floors and scrape the mould off the cheddar.

I detest phoning people. It’s almost a phobia now but it’s a sad side effect from old depressions when speaking was impossible. Before I was the sort of girl my friends screened when I called. Had they got a spare three hours to chat? Or not? One close friend once told me that sometimes she would have loved to have called me up for a chat but she just didn’t have enough hours in the day. Well now that’s over. I’ll text, email, send a pigeon, create smoke signals. But I can’t call even my closest friends. I’ll sit by the phone summoning the nerve, sweating from pores I didn’t know I had. Nope. Phone calls are now only for emergencies.

I hate those glib little sayings that people trot out regarding procrastination, with a knowing glint in their eyes. ‘Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.’ ‘Someday is not a day of the week’. ‘You may delay but time will not’. Arghhhh!

Doctors appointments, opening bank statements, those little jobs around the house. Scrubbing behind the taps with a toothbrush, dusting the dog, emptying the car of broken cd cases.

But the biggest one of all is putting off writing. Whether it is a short story or a longer piece. First draft or a bit of last minute tweaking and suddenly almost anything is more attractive. Lining up my mugs in order of sets or colour, dividing my books between read, unread and not bloody likely. Looking for stale food in my youngest son’s room (I recruit the dog as assistant for this chore). Finding old photos to put on facebook. Staring at a favourite blade of grass in the garden for hours. I’ll do the hand washing before said articles spawn new varieties of mushroom.

Drinking coffee to help me think, going through the marketing crap from supermarkets, pulling hairs from my legs individually using tweezers whose ends don’t quite meet. I can write the blog okay as its mainly rants and moans which come naturally to us poms.

I don’t know why I do it but I’m among the great and the good on this one. Mark Twain, Erica Jong, Oscar Wilde. I suppose I shouldn’t really have my email and facebook account minimised in the background. I’m five minutes away from a distraction at any time. Marvelous. Important stuff like what a woman I once met in a crowded shop had for breakfast that day. An email from another rugby mum asking if I’d inadvertently gone home with her child’s sock/mouth guard/snotty handkerchief. And there’s always those simply hilarious clips of children/animals/over-stressed mothers.

The thing is when I get down to it there is no better place for me to be than putting words on a blank page. It keeps the demons away and makes my heart soar. So, why do I do it? Why do I put off turning a not-quite-finished story into something that makes me smile way beyond my daily coffee. Starting a story is like being pregnant and finishing it is similar (well almost) to falling in love with your child. But without the leaky breasts and nappies of the brown variety. Search me. I’m off to peg socks on the Hills Hoist in size and colour order. You think I’m joking?

I grew up in England. That’s the tiny little place in the middle of cold and murky seas. The place where we still have Queens and Kings, Princes and Princesses. Where humour was invented to get through bad weather. The land of many regional accents and builders tea. Of Wordsworth and Boris Johnson.

France has Paris and artists starving in garrets. Spain has paella and fabulous dancing. Italy has mountains that reach lakes and an entire city built on water. Holland has its broadminded people and it’s dykes and I could go on and on. England has wonderful things too but its location is not to be sniffed at. It’s in a fantastic spot to travel from.

In my very early 30s, me and the husband moved to Australia. It had been a possibility since I’d met him. I’d spent five years thinking, oh if it comes up it’ll be great. Not ever really believing it. After all the husband was a salesmen and I’d worked with salesmen. That big deal was forever on the precipice, threatening to come in but rarely doing so.

It did come in and within two months we were gone. To the other side of the world. Beautiful weather, stunning beaches, one of the wonders of the world. Great. Fantastic.

Except Australia’s location isn’t the best. I’m assuming you know where it is. Tucked away in the bottom right hand corner of the map, that’s where the Europeans have put it. And in England if you dig a hole in your back garden for long enough you will get through to Australia. In the end. In Australia if you dig that same hole, you come out at China. Apparently.

What I hadn’t factored in while I packed my case, gave away books and my winter coat, was just how far I would be from the rest of the world. Australia is massive. You can get on a plane and travel for hours and still be hovering over the same country. In the UK people walk from Land’s End to John O Groats (top end to the bottom). Not too many people do that over here. Not even using the shortest route. It’s too big, too hot, too deserty. Perth is allegedly the most remote city in the world. I went there once. I liked it but I had a bit of a panic attack realising that on one side there was nothing but desert and the other the Indian Ocean. For miles and miles and miles. I’m getting short of breath thinking about it now.

When I lived in England I hadn’t got my travel mojo working. I was never the type to backpack across Europe or go youth hostelling somewhere remote. But I wanted to see places and I would have got round to it. I mean I’d been to Scotland and Wales. The south of France, the Alps and the north. The Algarve and I’d spent a very long day in Seville after an argument with an ex. I’d been on business trips to Rotterdam and an expenses paid lunch in Amsterdam, flown in from London. I’d driven through Geneva once, had lunch at a lake there. My first fondue was in a restaurant on a mountain in Switzerland as snow began to fall. We honeymooned on the Greek Island of Thassos and I’d spent a couple of sweaty weeks in Jamaica in the early 90s.

But that’s it. Embarrassing for someone who likes to think she’s cosmopolitan. In the last 16 years I’ve not been far at all. A couple of trips to the old country, a wedding in Hong Kong, Christmas in New Zealand with family.

I have a yearning to go to Italy. I’m saving up all my spare coins in a jar. I’ve been learning the language for some years. I read Italian novels. I can’t eat the food. All those carbs go to my bum and hips. But I am a little obsessed.

I’m not comfortable being in one country all the time, not now I’m so far from anywhere else. I miss the different smells, cultures and the music of a new language being spoken around me. Down to different shaped tomatoes and the haunting sounds of a local choir. I watch foreign language films and speak aloud the different sounds. French and Italian. Spanish. And Danish of course.

My jar has a picture of the Italian flag on it with the words ‘Mum’s Italy Trip’ stamped below it. It may take me 20 years to save up, currently I have enough for a one-way bus trip to Rockhampton. But I have faith. I have to have faith. George Michael wasn’t wrong there. I can imagine myself drinking coffee in Florence, standing on one of Venice’s bridges. Looking up Salvo Montalbano in Sicily. And one day I will. I tell myself this every day as I empty my purse of shrapnel into my jar of hope.

“I ordered a coffee and a little something to eat and savored the warmth and dryness. Somewhere in the background Nat King Cole sang a perky tune. I watched the rain beat down on the road outside and told myself that one day this would be twenty years ago.”
― Bill Bryson.

I look at my eldest son and see someone sure of what they want, someone organised and on time. I look at my growing up (and the husband’s too) and think somehow this has to be nurture not nature.

In my younger son I see myself. Untidy, messy, forgetful. Non-stop chatter. Noisy head and mucky knees. At school I lost my bus pass so many times – well not lost, but hiding somewhere. Next to school books stained yellow from a leaky lemonade bottle. Under roller skates and mushed up apple.

I left home reluctantly at age 19 when the parents moved away. Wouldn’t have been my first choice but I didn’t want to move areas again. Holding down a job and keeping myself together was a full time occupation. The biggest surprise was dust. Mum being such a keen housewife I’d never encountered it before. Except in spooky houses on the television, when dust and cobwebs spread on old wooden furniture. It was a shock when things started to turn grey.

There was so much to learn. How to cook, what to eat for breakfast, budgeting my meagre earnings. I didn’t sleep my last night at home as I had no idea how to work a washing machine. The only chores I had done in my nineteen years were a bit of washing up and a spot of light ironing in front of the telly.

I once poured hot fat down the kitchen sink and blocked up all the pipes. Mum was furious. I was hopeless. I had friends who did loads, who knew how to cook and helped out at home. When I mentioned my dilemma they looked at me like I was inhuman, spoilt. Which of course I was. Spoilt, not inhuman.

An ex of mine used to lose his temper at my ineptitude. He was the youngest of six and had to fend for himself while his mother was at work. My Mum was there when I got home from school. The smell of cakes wafting through the back door. She baked homemade rolls for my pack lunch – and my three other siblings too. She made our clothes and knitted cardigans and jumpers. Were we grateful? No, we were not.

I thought my friends who had mothers who worked were so lucky. They had sophisticated shop-bought cake. Their cardigans were from Marks & Spencer. They twirled around in their chain store frocks while I almost died with jealousy.

Over the years I still got that exasperated look from friends and boyfriends, sometimes if I was lucky, a pitying smile. When I met a man who was even more spoiled and undomesticated than I, it was love. We moved into a flat in London and lay on the sofa, smoking and laughing at the world. Indulging in our own messy Utopia between white-for-a-time anaglypta walls. I had learned to cook but not how to manage time. I would spend hours in the kitchen creating high fat meals. We put on weight but still we smoked and laughed, ha-ha-ha. Lying on our sofa, watching kid’s movies and wondering where our hard earned money was going. Budgeting took years to come to terms with, I’m not completely sure we’ve got it yet. I tend to not spend anything and he’s prone to panic attacks that see him lashing out and buying something inappropriate. Hat stands, universal remote controls, new age cd’s. That sort of thing.

As I type this the youngest is running the vacuum over the downstairs and our eldest is changing his sheets. The husband and I had to teach each other how to look after ourselves and it wasn’t pretty. There was shouting and screaming. And a particularly nasty accident involving a purple rug and white work shirts in the mid-90s. We came through it and have almost grown up. I’d say we are domestically about 29 and physically late forties, early fifties.

But it isn’t going to happen to our kids. They vacuum, change beds, load dishwashers, occasionally wash up, cook simple meals. They will leave home with the skills they need.

And we will have to look at getting a cleaner.

I recently went to see the movie ‘Quartet’ with three of my girlfriends. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about aging. What we lose and what we gain. In this case the characters live in a beautiful English house. Large rooms decorated in expensive wallpapers and golden fabrics. It wasn’t dark with faulty plumbing. Art works graced the walls.

The house itself is Cliveden. The exterior anyway, I’m not sure if the interior is as I haven’t visited it. But some aging Poms (of which I am one) will remember the scandal in the early sixties, or at least the nineties film about it, when John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War met Christine Keeler at a house party at Cliveden. Christine was, among other things, accused of having an affair with a Russian Spy. Heady stuff. So much more steamy and exotic than John Major’s affair with Edwina Curry.

Scarily you can take the ‘Profumo Affair Break’ at Cliveden. You get to experience a mini-break Bridget Jones style, in a beautiful house, at the same time as finding out all the ins and outs of the scandal.

But I digress, which is probably the point. I’m talking about aging and what it does to our minds and bodies. Our attention wanders, we lose our thread, we find the remote control in the fridge. When we gather in groups we no longer discuss sex or successes. We compare medications and illnesses but just as competitively as we had previously discussed who was doing what to whom and who’d got a promotion, a new car, a filo-fax. Yes, I am that old. A friend of a friend recently received one of those pill boxes with days of the week on it from her husband. On Valentines Day.

I no longer climb mountains, not that I did that very often. I could usually be found at the ‘Bottom of the Mountain’ café, even in my thirties. But now I am not too sure-footed. The last time I walked in Noosa National Park I tripped over a tree root and did a wonderful impression of Norman Wisdom, arms flailing, legs stumbling forwards. And trampolining is out. If I was a horse I would be shot. And finish up in a frozen meal somewhere no doubt. To be eaten on a tray in front of the telly, by an old lady watching murder mysteries. Oh the irony.

Grey hairs, creaky hips, frequent visits to the doctors. And to the toilet. Failing eyesight or having to walk back a couple of metres to read the bus timetable. Next it’ll be magnifying glasses to do the crossword and cleaning your pipe out with the blunt end of pencil. In the words of Bette Davis, ‘Old age ain’t no place for sissies’.

And yet it does have its advantages. I can drink all the tea I like, as long as I check out the quickest route to the ladies. Afternoon naps, sometimes taken in the mornings. Finally nobody gives me a hard time about staying home on a Saturday night. Remember the old proverb:-
Old age though despised, is coveted by all.

The alternative is unthinkable. I heard the news today that an old friend, young in years, had died. A more gregarious, life loving person you could not meet. And although I hadn’t seen him in years, geography being what it is, I will miss his funny posts on facebook. There’s a new angel with a naughty face and red wings. This one’s for Richard.

Is it just me? Or does anyone else have arguments in their head?

Last week one of my prescriptions was out of date when I handed it over at the chemists. I’ve been going there for the same medication for five years but because this script was an insy-bit out of date and I had to go see my doctor to get a new one.

“Really?” I said. Leaning back slightly as if the shock of such news had blasted my upper torso into a new shape, kinda like a backwards question mark as it happens. I muttered obscenities under my breath, not directed at the woman serving me of course. Just to the air around her. I left the shop still cussing with vigor, not too loudly, but enough for people to nod in agreement on the nature of my unfulfilled prescription.

Later that day while I was pegging clothes on the Hills Hoist war broke out between my ears.

“I detest bureaucracy, you – Chemist Woman. I demand my script now.”

“I’m sorry Mrs Swearing but I cannot do that. We have procedures to follow.”

“Do you realise if I go without this script I will (a) vomit on you, (b) run around knocking everything off the carefully stacked shelves, or (c) put two fingers up to my eye, line up your head between them and squeeze the air. (This always gets them).

“All the same you have to have a current script, Swearing Woman.”

I snatch my useless script back from her claws and point in a jabbing motion. “You, you Chemist Woman have no compassion. Good day!”

With that I would swivel and leave the shop swinging my arms in a sawing motion.

THE END

It is just me. Isn’t it.

Sometimes I have the arguments I should have had ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. I’m re-playing the scene when a boss was overbearing, a friend of a friend looked down her nose at me or when my sister refused to play Monopoly in 1974. Well, that was a bit more than twenty years ago.

I become another person. My voice takes on the persona of a queen, a duchess or when things get a little heated, a villain from an Enid Blyton story (working class, smoking and wearing trousers). I am always victorious. It’s always me who leaves the scene with the last word. A witty reply which has men in wigs covering their mouths with silk handkerchiefs. My head is held high in the manner of Marie Antoinette, Princess Anne or even Edina Monsoon, without the terrible dress sense.

I popped back into the chemist the following day with a suitable prescription. Chemist Woman stood next to me while I checked out the ‘buy 2 get 1 free offer’ on nail varnishes. And I muttered quietly, “I’m ever so sorry about yesterday.”

Chemist Woman smiles, was there a glint of triumph in her eyes? “That’s alright.” She nods sagely, smiles knowingly.

But when she’d run of ear-drops this morning I swear I heard a tremble in her voice as she told me they were out until this afternoon’s delivery. “That’s okay.” I tittered musically. “I’ll come back then.” A quick smile, a raised eyebrow then I sashayed from the store.

Always leave them wanting more.