Annalog

I don’t want to write about the abuse of women. Any abuse especially sexual abuse is both simpler and more complex than it appears to be, hard hard hard to make rules about, because so many aspects of it are about individual perception, because of the many reasons for it, both in the case of the subject and the object, and because of the bandwagon syndrome as in “Oh, that happened to me too.”

I don’t want to write about Facebook or its clones WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram which I regard as the technological equivalent of bubonic plague, carbuncles on the soul.

I don’t want to write about the price of a cashmere sweater (Times 30.10.2017) because most of the cashmere I come across is a poor shadow of the lovely thing it once was.   Perhaps this is a perfect example of why everybody can’t have everything for the mass production of it has impoverished its quality, feel, line, endurance and value in every sense including warmth… but of course we don’t need warmth now because everywhere is centrally heated – so what we need is cashmere because its name means money, but it’s no good if it’s too warm because we can’t wear it. Last days of the Roman Empire, anyone ?

I don’t want to write about HMRC exporting function involving the tax matters of British nationals to a US company (madness) or a former Whitehall IT chief breaking rules designed to keep senior civil servants from benefitting other commerce with insider knowledge (revealing).   Both are horrid examples of “what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over” – only this ignorant heart does.

I don’t know enough about Spain and the Catalan secession to write about it, though this seems to indicate further fractionalisation of the European dream.

I don’t give a damn about football and thoroughly resent its intrusion into national news.

In the last couple of weeks I have seen longer stays in prison invoked for people who are cruel to animals, people who throw acid, and returning jihadists or Isis sympathisers.   Will somebody please tell me where these elastic walled facilities are, because the prison system is full to overflowing, its staff demoralized and inadequate in number, while taking offenders off the street and into a lockup environment was never more than a short term answer to much ?

I don’t want to read another article about the shortage of housing and the ever extending numbers for the new build.   I do want somebody to explain – certainly in London – why existing property is allowed to stand vacant for years while the young and the poor struggle in B&B or worse ?   Surely – even as an interim measure, because building on any helpful scale will take time – the law could be changed so that a building, commercial or domestic, may only stand for one year and then it reverts at the lowest market price to the local authority, where it is mandatory that it is used for housing, this law having to be reviewed annually so that abuse is minimised ?

I fear platoons of hastily built ugly housing on green belt when it is widely agreed that space and light are increasingly essential to mental wellbeing.

I don’t want the weather forecast sold to me – gloss over today, sell you a better tomorrow, urge you into looking at the week ahead – when we all know the weather systems are less perceptible than they used to be. Are these meteorologists or sellers of snake oil ? I cheered when one of the better practitioners said last week that he could only tell you tomorrow and urged watchers to keep their eyes open because it wasn’t clear, even to him, how things might go from then on. It has come to something when you find the relative honesty in a weather forecast uplifting.

The idea of the contrary* comes from Arthur Penn’s film “Little Big Man”, when certain braves did everything back to front in a First Nations version of examination of the nature of paradox, when films were something to see, enjoy and think about. Old looks more and more inviting.

Linda used to wear, among other scents, Caleche (Hermes) and Mitsouko (Guerlain).

“A perfume organ in Grasse”

The trouble with modern perfumery is that it has discovered that synthetic fixatives – the thing that make the perfume endure – are cheaper than natural substances.   But they have changed the smell of the smells as we remember them.   Mitsouko wafted very faintly of chrysanthemum and I was reminded of it because I have ten great big bronze blooms in the living room. I buy them every year I can afford them (some years I couldn’t), they last and the centre, where the petals grow tightly, is exactly the way the hair grew on the head of the son of a friend. Seth’s hair was a celestial fingerprint.   I cherish my sense of beauty but more than ever recently, because the world’s horrors come unendingly, funnelled through the news coverage, and there is only so much misery a person can digest before it leads to torpor and depression.

Which leads us to an initiative from HM government petitioning the United Nations to refer to “pregnant people” rather than pregnant women in case we offend the truly tiny number of transgendered who can reproduce.   So, let’s get this straight, at a time when women globally are still fighting for the right to choose to have a child or not, equal pay, parity in law, freedom from workplace abuse (dream on baby, dream on – as Tammy Wynette would have said), sexual slavery and domestic violence, and are beaten to death, scarred with acid, broken, (in Vivian Merchant’s life haunting phrase) “just flesh” – we are going to give up being called women.   I always thought woman was a fine thing to want to be and I still do. I have known some splendid women, starting with my mother. I have also known some deeply unpleasant people who happened to be female and no, I wouldn’t want to eat with them. Nobody’s perfect.

The title* derives from a speech given by a former slave, Sojourner Truth, at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio in 1851.   I first came across it rather later in my life, my feminist reading being less than complete, and it moved me. In slavery, there may have been gender inspired division of labour among house slaves (women in the kitchen and the dressing room, men in the garden and the drawing room) but beyond that, work was work.   I remember my friend George Vargas speaking proudly about his aunt, “as good as any man” in the olive harvest.   As a cash crop, you wouldn’t risk less than the best in the hard work of collection. I loved his aunt, taller than me, she and her husband watching me talk and asking George something in Greek. “They say you are like no English person they ever met” he explained. I asked him the Greek word for gipsy – tzigane – and said it to them. Shouts of laughter – their side of the family !

I don’t know what men say because I am not a man but among themselves, women may be heard to say “Oh, I sound just like my mother !”   And this can be the cause of anything from mirth to consternation.

At 7.00 or so the other morning, a man came down the road towards me, fine eyes and a bad suit, picking and flicking the contents of his nose into the street. For a moment I was lost for words but when I spoke, I was my mother, down to the inflection. “What do you think you’re doing ?” I demanded. “Your mother would be ashamed of you.” And I continued to stare at him which discomforted him more than anything I might have said. Just for the record – I don’t call this a man. Rather, a tall unpleasant child, thoughtless, uncaring.  And before you say “Oh, well, London … “ It’s a great city, London: it has, as it always had, problems with bacteria.

We used to have discussions about the difference between being female and being feminine and everybody has a personal view which is coloured by home, hormones, life experience, social mores, expectation, function and usage.   On the basis of the foregoing seven pointers, no question: I qualify.

I came home to two envelopes containing identical letters (yes yes -I know, the computer) from my energy company, who have booked an employee to come and read the meter between 12.00 and 4.00 on Friday.   It says “If this time is not convenient, please call us at least 48 hours beforehand on (telephone number) to re-arrange our visit.”   So I rang. We’ll set aside how you work your way through to the alternative that seems to be for you and then – because there is a wait – how to endure the kind of music that makes an MRA scan sound like a delightful option.   And I wait.   Well, it’s Saturday. I can wait.   And wait I do, eventually answered by Keith (not his real name).

Keith was great.   He asked for my account number. I gave it. He asked for my name and address and my date of birth. “Why ?” I said.   Instead of mumbling defensively, he giggled.   “Let me see if I can ask you something else …” he said, and the penny dropped.   “Sorry “ I said “security ?”   He said yes, I told him and he asked ”How can I help you today ?”

“You could change the music for a start” I said. He agreed it was awful.   I told him about the meter reading and said I would like to alter it, I couldn’t be available for when it was booked. I offered the 23,25, 26 October. He said “Can’t you read the meter ?”   I said “Young man, I am an old woman, and we have arranged that my meter, recently replaced, should be read.”     He began to ask about the meter being replaced, found the entry on the screen and countered “But you don’t need to do this.”   I said “The letter, both copies of it, says –“ and I quoted.   “So “I said” I am calling, with lots of time in hand, to rearrange.”   He said again ” But you don’t need to do this.”   I asked why, if that is what the letter tells me to do ?

“Well” he said “it depends on the meter reader.   Usually what happens is, the meter reader arrives and if you’re not there, he puts a card through the door and tries to come back within 24 hours.” “Then” I said “why does the letter ask me to ring this number ?” He said he didn’t know. “Normally (!) what happens” he reiterated “is that the meter reader tries to come back as soon after the missed call as possible, and he leaves a card so you can read your own meter – “   I said I wanted the meter read, particularly after it had just been replaced and if the meter reader usually came back, then this call therefore is a complete waste of time ?   “Well, no” he said, the laugh warming his voice.   “But that’s generally what happen, if he’s a good meter reader.”   I said “Keith, give me a break: can you see me walking up to a man I have never met and asking – are you a good meter reader? “   He said he could see my point. “So what you are advising me to do is to leave it till the meter reader comes, and work it out from there ?” He agreed. I told him that if I had to listen to that ruddy awful music again, I would invoke the protection of my civil rights (he laughed aloud) and when he finished the script with “have a lovely day” he sounded as if he meant it.

I tell you this because it made me laugh and a laugh is good thing in a week of starvation, natural disaster and not one single person who knows the film industry thought to explain to civilians (the rest of us) why women put themselves through the Weinstein mangle. Gifted producers are rare, and often when somebody in the industry says “I’d do anything” they mean just that.    I don’t endorse the way the power structure works but my biggest single insight was that all sorts of companies function the same way as the movies do without as much reward for the unspeakable.  

There is a moment in Out of Africa,

African Lions (Panthera Leo) living at Out of Africa Wildlife Park in Camp Verde, Arizona

set in the early 20^th century, when the car engine fails and between them Meryl Streep and Robert Redford crank it again and again until (thank heaven) it coughs into go.   We may have more sophisticated machinery nowadays but when it falters, it is hard to restart.

Where we are now* feels like what I have read about the phoney war, the period after the declaration of WWII when the allies lined up their troops, the public was briefed and – nothing happened. Brexit suspended animation has gone on for much longer (a trade war is just as expensive and punitive as a military one) and the clinging to relentless normality – too much of much when there is so little of things we need as opposed to want – superficially reassures us into believing a start has been made, however difficult it was to do. But conditioned by 21st century technology, do we perhaps expect a series of clicks and all to fall into place? Not a hope.   For all sort of reasons – not the least the unpicking of several decades of human history – this is going to take a long time.   And the trouble is that there are various interested parties who would like it to go slower while others would like to speed it up.   Balance and keeping interests on board is difficult.

In the meantime the Tories enjoy their new sport of maykicking. Nothing these guys like better than kicking someone who’s down, especially if it’s a woman. Sexual prejudice is an aspect of racial prejudice because men and women are two different races – a thought leading straight into sixth form psychology about social constructs (I’ve been dying to use that word), hormones and whose parents did what to whom for several generations.

Last week I received a complimentary copy of a new magazine – the usual overstuffed mixture of relentless consumerism and features on what’s “hot” with one exception – a truly terrifying and very informative article about transgender called “When Girls Won’t Be Girls” by Charlie McCann. It was a very long way from Brexit and women in power. But it was to do with a change in perception, that where in the past, time had been taken to do something difficult carefully, now life changing permissions were granted far too fast, in the current belief that slowly and (more) surely would be a problem in itself.

I was interested in this article for several reasons.   One is the small paragraph I had read some months ago about a young man who transgendered into being a woman, wasn’t happy, changed back, and was still unhappy, so he killed himself.   I was interested because the first person I ever went to meet when I worked at the slightly po-faced sex publication where my journalistic life began, was a man in his late forties/early fifties who was contemplating a sex change.   I remember sitting with him in Green Park and being aware of the role depression played in all this.   When Jan (formerly James) Morris wrote the book Conundrum, Germaine Greer raised thoughtful points about gender and took the flak.   Simple it ain’t.

But now speed is God.   Do it fast, it must be right. And the more interests that have to be represented, the harder it is to make a start and continue at a reasonable clip.   Any form of democracy from physician’s office to parliament takes time – time to listen, time to be heard, time to debate and choose and time to decide, the very opposite of a pressed button.

Mrs. Clinton has never met Mrs. May but they have one thing in common: under pressure, they do not speak well in public.   They take refuge in a limiting formality which risks sounding like bright girls wanting to be taken seriously by the all male sixth form. The pressure on the female voice in public life reminds me of the stories about male presenters “fixing” mikes at the BBC so that women sounded shrill and insubstantial, and were thus discredited.   Of course it’s not the whole story but it is some of the story – as are personal likes and dislikes, in or out of Europe and the terms thereof and what makes a woman.   Where we are now* (see title).  

Sometimes I fall on the keyboard with enthusiasm, thinking oh good, I can write about that for annalog : about the Chilean lady of the new family moved in up the road, a real delight, and meeting the Jungian who helped me face up to my part in the failure of my second marriage on the bus – of course, the bus – would I have a life without a bus ? How the magic of her unthinking perception and Louise Gluck’s wonderful poem Hesitate to Call changed the game. I want to tell about the garden, in that last blush of growth and warmth as autumn is and winter calls, the pleasure of the programme on Auden on BBC2 last night and Anna Jones’s recipes in the Sunday Times colour magazine – the first time I have really wanted to cook something new for ages, no moody stuff with overrated kale, pineapple and some hifalutin’ spice combo you know you’ll never use again. My mind is like a stuffed shop.

So I make lists. I don’t make them every day and I don’t fixate about them but I do make a note of things. Otherwise I’d just hide in a book. I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions which all too often become a case of ”now I’ve acknowledged it so I don’t have to do it” ie drink less, exercise more, have one night a week with all the communications media switched off, one night a week off (not the same night). Resolutions of that kind are omnipresent chez Raeburn, addressed every other day if not daily. I am a great believer in one day at a time – only do Monday on Monday.

I have a book list in the notebook I am rarely without.   Every so often, I read through and dump things I have tried to remember for too long. Other things stay with me (or have more descriptive titles) and I work my way towards them. I keep notes of films I love or want to see, of artists I admire

Byland Abbey, Yorkshire by John Piper

and every so often of some cosmetic wonder that is going to work a miracle on my face or my hair – though I should add these get crossed off faster than anything else except shopping items.

I have a Big List – new boiler, ring the gardener, sell Pop’s medals (? son), renew passport.   And a weekly list – call the IFA (not next week, he has exams), book the inhouse soft furnishings cleaners (once a year), dentist (this side of Christmas or yon ?).

I have a daily list – milk, potatoes, salad, rubbish bags, citrus, call the plumber (about the new boiler, a domestic god which murmurs and is every bit as unknown and frightening to me at the stone heads at Easter Island.)   And I do try not to just slide things from one day’s list to another, though the list is not conventual rule and I don’t go anywhere unnecessarily in the rain.

There is a small sense of achievement if I work through several things on a list. At other times I wish I had never started but acknowledge that now, there is only one way – forward – no going back.   Forward is frightening, the boiler again – but I can’t rip the darned thing off the wall and throw it away, however much the idea currently appeals to me. I knew what I was doing when I embarked on it though the midwives of domestic improvement probably lie as much or more than the ones who deliver babies.   “It will be fine” and “Don’t worry” are not phrases that do a lot for me.   It will be fine – for whom, I want to know ?   And as for don’t worry – it is the only thing I do to Olympic standard.

There isn’t a list for everything. Some things you don’t plan to do – you just do – like the amount of effort I have put into my nails this year, having all the strength in my Samson hair and nails like tissue.   There isn’t a list for the woes of the world – it would be too long.   But putting an item on a list acknowledges it and crossing it off says it’s done – or “well begun is half done.”   Thank you, Nanny McPhee.

Snowdrop (he loves them) came down to visit last week. He is very good at finding new places while I get thoroughly restive and fear getting it all wrong. The French wine bar had apparently changed hands in six weeks which didn’t seem to me to augur well so I emailed and said I couldn’t think.. and did he mind.. and we’d find somewhere. Snowdrop is a lecturer, esteemed by his students (as a matter of record) as well as me for the same reasons: you can tell him anything. So we ambled off in the late autumn sunshine and found a small long established French restaurant called Mon Plaisir where we had a bottle of rose, the palest pink verging into straw, and heavenly food.   As I came back from the loo, I heard Madame’s voice checking “Had we really enjoyed it ?” and Snowdrop reassuring and as I came up, I asked why, had there been a problem ?   “Oh. You know, TripAdvisor” she said wearily. “We’re too slow, it’s too dark …” Snowdrop and I stared at her and reiterated – the ambiance, the setting and the food had been everything we wanted: if customers wanted hard light, in and out in ten minutes – they should buy fast food. Heaven knows, there are outlets enough.

I have friends who live out of TripAdvisor and make it work for them. It would just never occur to me. For every good turn, I fear there is a bad one and this reminds me that, usually in audiences, there was someone dying to be miserable, who disapproved or just got off on being objectionable. If you were lucky, you could feel them – the atmosphere changed in their corner, and you were wary of them from the time that you began to speak.   But sometimes you’d have to face somebody who truly disliked you. What were they doing there- symbolically slaying me – the enactment of my lifelong nightmare of being stabbed in a crowd? (I wonder, did I “send” that message to them or did they “send” it to me?)

Overall, I relished public speaking because it was a real test – no kindly camera man to light you flatteringly or chose the best angle: no merciful scissors to cut out the bit you wish you hadn’t said: no way of knowing till it was over what clothes or which mannerisms don’t work. Sincerity won’t always carry you through – you need head as well as heart. (See my favourite quote from Hilary Mantel: “You don’t get on by being original. You don’t get on by being bright. You don’t get on by being strong. You get on by being a subtle crook.” This doesn’t mean you lie – it means you choose your words. )   The audience, any audience, is the nearest I get to a big cat.   The colours and shape are beautiful but it is strong enough to obliterate you. With pain and the swipe of a powerful claw.

Being beastly when you can’t be seen or traced plays into the worst of people.   Hence the trolls, but before you get to them, there are lots of people who just love being disagreeable.   God knows, I can complain with the best of them but there is nothing more ageing than a permanently resentful expression.   And if individually prepared French food isn’t for you, go grab your Korean Street food and be fast and trendy. (I may consider Korean cuisine when Donald Trump has been dropped on the President of North Korea, thus dealing with the proverbial two birds with one stone.)

I can’t help thinking that the wish to avoid disappointment only leads deeper into disillusion. Do you think that the people who inveigh against this restaurant and that theatre, this performer and that concert, and who do it over the electronic devices so that they cannot be identified or not without effort – do you think they are equally enthusiastic when they do enjoy their food, their entertainment, their uber driver, their Airbnb? Somehow, I doubt it.   And I wonder too is praise as loud as condemnation?  

Mon Plaisir 19/21 Monmouth Street  London WC2H 9DD

Sometimes death seems like a very good idea. I am far from fixated and most of the time it doesn’t cross my mind. But the news isn’t good wherever it’s coming from and the idea of any other kind of peace is very relative.

My father who introduced me to death both through what he taught me about it and his own dying was wary of what figures could be made to say: “lies, damn lies and statistics” he’d growl.   But occasionally there’s an article that makes you think, without trying to tell you what conclusion you are obliged to reach (see Nigel Hawkes’ piece in the Sunday Times 17.09.17).   There is a fall in life expectancy throughout Europe and to his credit, the writer ends by commenting that over-interpretation of background and possible relevant data is a risk. In other words, we don’t know why.

Speaking as someone who is nearer to 90 than 50, I am delighted.   Life is more than the beating of a heart. I have friends who don’t do death.   They think that anything that isn’t the end is good: as long as you have some of your health, you go on holiday or take supplements and everything will be OK.   But I remember the fine looking old woman to whom I spoke who said she was (incredibly) 92. I stared at her, struck. “But I am so tired” she said.   I have friends with parents in the same age group. The longer they live, the longer you hope they’ll live, the more you have misgivings about what can go wrong in the ageing process and the further they often are from what you remember them to be.

You can’t set dates on any of this.   Sometimes the years are hard, sometimes the side effects of your difficulties or somebody else’s knock the stuffing out of you.   And too many people – more or less directly involved – discount the emotional cost of ageing.   (I speak as one whose jawline has just begun to resemble that of a thoughtful tortoise – yes yes I know it’s trivial – that’s the point. It’s only trivial if it doesn’t concern you.)

The Bible offers three score years and ten for a life span.   As nutrition and medicine advanced, this extended.   It is nowadays common to be able to dismiss the idea of death as remote but to find dying a bastard thing.   You risk losing your independence, your freedom of movement, your focus, your intelligence, your energy – all the things that made you feel a person.   If you’re of a certain temperament and lucky, you will find replacement bricks for the house of self.   But you may not.   And not everybody has folk around to see them out.  

Kevin Toolis* thinks that’s what we lack.   We have pushed death away and in doing so, have lost part of our lives. I was taught that death was part of life and that teaching has served me well. Jackie Kennedy stood in the blood of the murdered US President, her husband, for the public to see. I have an acquaintance whose father’s death reprised her mother’s and being covered with her mother’s blood. Her father couldn’t bring himself to touch her.   The finest thing you can do in bereavement is to offer what you can, and be big enough to accept rejection. The offer is an acknowledgement of what is happening. Like most important things in life, death is a highly individualised journey.

On the bus I see the faces of people coming and going grimed with fatigue.   Yesterday I sat next to a Middle European in his fifties who was physically worn out, thickset, strong and eroded by labour. There are articles about the drugs, now epidemic among youth. (Recreational is a word that may make you feel better about it but a drug is a drug and nobody has been able to draw a line between physical and psychological addiction). Look at the number of opioid addictions in the US. Begun through legal prescriptions. And reflect how often US social trends rerun here. Among all the good things, the treasures of every day, this is a tiring time – as they say “Fair wears you out.”

Dancing with Mr. D by Bert Keizer

My Father’s Wake by Kevin Toolis

“What’s that on your face ?” the leading man of Wind River asks his griefstricken First Nations friend.   “It’s my death mask”. “Looks odd.” “I know, I made it up. There’s nobody to teach me how to do it.” Wild River is like that, bits are very good and bits are baloney. Worth it for splendour of the land, one golden eagle and two mountain lions.    Taylor Sheridan’s directorial debut: must try harder.

A face like a mask isn’t a compliment.   Masks have all sorts of ceremonial and other uses, varying from a strip of silk across the eyes to a whole other head, but often, a mask is a protection, a kind of rigidity hoped to define you or defend you against something dangerous. The fox’s face is a mask. And once, long ago, I met a girl who made up like a mask. There was a story, of course there was a story, there’s always a story. Hers involved Ireland at the height of the mainland bombings. The brogue wrapped her voice like a bandage and she was deeply removed from us all – she came as a temp and stayed. You could not see her face.   She did her job and went otherwise unnoticed. Until the day my half drunken deputy editor insulted her. She responded viscerally, so that Madam the bottle shut up and we dispersed to our own corners. A little later I took her a cup of tea and she was still shaking.   She had been duped into being a mule or a safe house or something equally convoluted and painful.   We exchanged cards for years.   I’ve never forgotten the paint. I wondered if the need for it predated the admitted horror.

And it is revealing that the present clothes and makeup offered to us as the last word in up-to-date, smack of costume and mask. We have much to try and keep at bay, much to be afraid of – though looking at the occasional colour spread, I find myself laughing : it really is “repel all boarders” !

So when you see a real face, you want to cheer. If I say I saw a truly beautiful young man on the bus, I don’t mean I lusted for his body. (More rust than lust now, another elderly rakish friend and I have founded The Prim Club: what we did we did, we loved it but we are not chasing shadows : my mother always said “Nothing as straightlaced as an old rake “!)   This tall slender thing

“not him but like this…”

got on the bus with his wheelie bag and another full of papers, talking animatedly into a mobile and sat down beside me. I waved my right hand, indicating “Tone it down !” and he did. When he folded up the phone, I asked “What language were you speaking ?”   “Dutch” he said smiling. “My mother said good morning !”  I couldn’t not smile back.   “And did she tell you not to make such a noise ?” I said flicking his knee with a finger. “Have a good day,” he said beaming. “And you take care too” I answered.   No masks anywhere in sight.   As fine as a flower, bless him, long may he bloom.

Sometimes the mask is so much part of a person, you don’t look beyond.   So a second real awakening came in the form of a neighbour I don’t know well, who suddenly emailed and told me that, unable to sell her house, she had let it (within 48 hours) and she was now clearing and storing – would I come over and look at books ? And I thought I must go, if only to be polite, though without much hope.   There were half a dozen books, one thrilling and I thought I could slide out but she sat me down. Oh hell, coffee when I only like my own – but it was fine.   And she unloaded the freezer, gave me all sorts of bits for the kitchen, a jacket and then took me out to the garden.   I came home with six plants !   And when I emailed 24 hours later and thanked her all over again, she electrified me by saying she hoped to invite me to stay, I had really helped her.

Sometimes the mask gets in the way.

I have a wonderful memory of a young Whitney Houston in a black trousers suit and a white shirt, fresh and lovely with a terrific voice, singing “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”.   Last night with nothing to watch to my taste or not being rerun for the 114^th time, I watched a documentary on her career and fall, subtitled “Can I be Me ?”   Congratulations to the film maker Nick Broomfield, I haven’t slept a wink.

Though the second time I saw Whitney, she was what I call “gussied up” – dyed hair, tight clothes – I thought – if I thought – that they – the ubiquitous “they” – were trying out different “looks”.   I should only have known.  Why do onlookers so often see meddling hands as benign ?

By the time I first saw her, she had been under contract for a number of years. Weigh those two words – “under contract”. They have the weight of a waterlogged hulk.   Whitney may have looked like a Hollywood princess but she grew up in Newark and Orange, New Jersey where it’s all down town.   Not a boulevard in sight.   So she looked like one thing but was actually quite another.

Her mother, a handsome chilly termagant and the power behind the domestic throne, ruled over one husband and two sons, to whom a pretty girl kid was a pleasant enough addition.   Much “molding” took place. It set the scene for the “molding” to follow.   Mother had a fine African voice and sense of musicality which had never been acknowledged. She watched her daughter succeed, fulfil and exceed her – leaving her mother behind. The trouble with threatening and disapproving as a method of childrearing control is that a personality becomes inured against it.

The pattern for conflict was already established.   Mother was a power in the church, and directed the choir – so the family went to church.   But the brothers did what young men do, snuck drugs home and shared them with Whitney. A terrible lesson was learned before it was formulated: it isn’t what you do that counts, it’s how you are seen to be.

When Arista Records got hold of her, a little further down the list from the Big Names already spoken for, they decided to mold (that word again) her into product for the lucrative white pop market – she would be a black for whites.   The A&R man said “Anything too black was just quietly put aside, they knew what they were doing.” She was booed as not black enough at the Soul Train awards and it hurt her very much.

The relentlessness of such a life was well captured because it is what I call “the dream machine”.   You must always look great, innovative if possible, making unending effort with your hair, eyes, hands, jewellery, shoes, companions, in the maintenance of something that starts out as a mouse you might pet but winds up as a monster that eats you.   Whitney married a younger “naughty boy” who at least came from a background similar to hers but caught in the forgiving trap, she never made sense of either of them in the relationship she clung to. She had a little girl.   Oh how I hate to see people trot their children out on stage !

And where was she in all this ? Working, singing, preparing, touring, exhausted, performing, while the drugs that had been light relief became a secret sustenance for all sorts of reasons, mostly the classic – freedom from pain for a while.   And, bodies everywhere like beetles, the juggernaut of guards and go-fors, back up singers and all sorts of people she knew who now had titles – her father as manager, her old schoolfriend as scenic designer – were all paid by her so she must earn the money. They could only reach her for the moment they did. Nothing lasted.  

I knew why I was watching this film. This is supposed to be “success”, the acme of achievement and the answer to everything – even if the price is life. It was harshly moral, this film.   It said in sum “if you don’t choose, the gods choose for you.”   They chose Whitney, she chose Paradise Road – and it is nothing to do with heaven.

Why does everybody want to go away at the same time over the Bank Holiday ?

“how to avoid Bank Holiday crowds”

There are crowds at the airports, crowds on the roads and crowds aided and abetted by every kind of disruption on the railway.   So everyone rushes away into a halt and the only good news is for those of us left behind, who find we can walk in the street, breathe on the bus and put our elbows into neutral in the shops. This isn’t the whole story, you understand, but it is some of it. And all the better for it – until every sixth man discovers he was given a horn for Christmas and starts blowing it for Britain, children become bored and I imagine the sales of aspirin and vodka take a national hike upward.

On Saturday it was warm, the weather that inspires me to do the sort of cleaning you’re supposed to do in the spring. I never want to do it in the spring… you can’t leave open the doors and windows, it is too cold and everyone who comes to visit tramps in mud and dust and damp (not their fault) so that the washing of floors and rugs is pretty much a waste of time.   So apart from a delightful shopping experience with everybody in a good temper – I swept and garnished, dried the washing on the line and decided that, should the weather last, I would wear a dress next day. And I did and earrings and pretty shoes because I was not shopping for heavy things and could prance about. Trousers are very practical but occasionally, some sort of skirt is in order. And an occasional flourish may be vain but it is good for self-respect.

On the bus I met an acquaintance and we sat together at her companionable instigation, getting off at the same stop and walking together. We were stopped by two young Portuguese women who are starting an online fashion magazine called Felix – could they ask us some questions about clothes and fashion and take a picture ?   Diana and I looked at each other and laughed – how flattering – OK, go ahead. I can’t tell you how nicely they did this, they weren’t bored and they were intelligent and D and I who do not know each other well learned a bit more about each other.   As a younger woman Diana rode and she still follows racing so I was able to tell her about the map I had recently seen, which showed who sold Arab horses where in the Middle East, in 188- something. And about Mary Gharagozlou, Mary Khanoum of the Bakhtiari in Persia, who researched the bloodlines of the Arab horses there – until we parted, she went off to look at auctions and I to a farmer’s market.

This weekend has been marked too by successfully combining black pudding and scallops (thank you Jamie Oliver) and no I didn’t follow the recipe. I just cooked the pudding and the scallops in the pan (worth every farthing, no oil or fat needed), threw the contents on top of watercress and lemon juice and hooray. It doesn’t get any quicker or easier than that.

And the purchase (reduced – thank you Waterstones) of Philippa Gregory’s new book on The Last Tudor in which I admired all over again her skill at managing to suggest how long everything took to go wrong while keeping the tension of reading about it tight.   It was what I so admired about The Other Boleyn Girl.   Hard to imagine keeping Henry VIII on a short lease for years.

So the fact that last night there was nothing to watch on television, a sadly familiar state of affairs, didn’t matter because I had the book. And I went to bed and fell asleep and thanked God rejoicing, because these extended weekends while wholly necessary to working people and families (even if I can’t see why they can’t be staggered so that the enjoyment of time off is maximised) are often thin ice on a frozen pool of loneliness when you live alone.   Not this time.