WAVES OF MEMORIES

The slightest thing resurrects memories. 

I am sitting in Soho House in Los Angeles, where next to me they are laying out oysters and shrimps (or shrimp, as they irritatingly call it in the US) for their new Friday afternoon special. Soon, a Martini cart will be arriving.

   

I didn’t have my first oyster until 2001, when I moved to Paris at the age of 42. It was just after 9/11 and I wondered that if I had been on one of those doomed planes, what my one regret in life would have been. It was that I had never lived in that city and the next week I was there - apartment, TV show (originally scheduled for UK filming) - and loving it.

   

My introduction to oysters was in Bofinger, a restaurant in the Bastille area and where I had recently enjoyed a lunch, courtesy of Channel 4 (it’s all coming back to me, Tracy . . . those endless bottles of champagne, the Eurostar liquid picnic on the way home . . . those were the days of real PR in the TV industry).

   

I quickly realised I was not a fan of oysters, but found that if I covered them with the onion red vinegar, black pepper, Tabasco sauce and lemon, I could just about get them down. In fact, I might as well have just cut out the middle man and had the drink in the shell. 

   

In my first month in Paris, I lost three quarters of a stone consuming mainly champagne and oysters; it’s still my favourite diet of all time.

   

The memories in my nose today are not just those of Paris but of Mum and Dad, who I think probably never tasted an oyster. I recall them returning from a dinner at a restaurant called The Grotto in Cardiff’s Roath Park, where they had enjoyed Coquilles St Jacques. Food on a shell! Yegods! I remember it so well because they had the waiter wash out the shells so that my brother Nigel and I could add them to the collection we were gathering from numerous beaches. 

The ribbed plates sat alongside the empty Mateus Rosé bottles from the same trip, a glamorous accompaniment to the white candles in the green glass, as Mum tried to recreate the nocturnal excitement at home: an overcoat of lava wax that breathed memories of another day, another life.

   

I remember so many sea smells associated with my parents. We took regular trips to Cornwall, where the beachfront shops and smell of the sand and salt filled me with an excitement I still feel today: every wave dispensing with the old, bringing in the new, an endlessly changing canvas that promises change, rejuvenation, rebirth. 

   

Mum introduced me to cockles at Barry Island. You bought them in a cone, covered them vinegar and lemon juice and picked at them with a cocktail stick. Much like oysters, the texture made me think in subsequent years it must be like eating your lady parts (smell included), but the liquids managed to disguise whatever horrors I was feeling. There was still something so exotic about standing around on a freezing cold day (as beach days tended to be in Wales), feasting on weird things from a cardboard hat and not with a knife and fork. How cool were we!

   

I loved our trips to the sea, even though by the time we got there on a Sunday after church, we would have had to swim to France to catch the tide. Flotina, Tupperware containers of squash and sandwiches, chairs, table, Lilo, lounger, wind break, at least three different kinds of pre- and post- sunning lotions - Mum was meticulous in her time-consuming planning. We could have gone on safari for a decade and not wanted for anything. My favourite photo is of my brother and me in our cardigans (heaven forbid the sun should taint our tender skin) next to Mum on the lounger - complete with hairpiece. She looks like Brigitte Bardot; we look like orphans trying to get in on the action.

   

We were never allowed food at the beach. An ice-cream was pointless because it would have melted in the three mile trek on the way back from the vans (why could they never just park right next to the beach?), and burgers and hot dogs were a strict no-no.

   

How I craved the meat as we made our way back to the car (well, the sidewalk; Dad had to walk up the hill for the car while we stayed at base camp with our small house): the fat, the onions, the warmth. But no. “They’ll give you worms,” said Mum. She said the same about Farley’s Rusks when I tried to persuade her to give me those for breakfast instead of Corn Flakes. 

Worms. 

They were the gastric horror of our age in the Sixties. It would be decades before I realised that “worms” was a euphemism for “We can’t afford it.”

   

When we were relocating from Newport, Mum and Dad almost bought a house at Ogmore by Sea, before deciding upon Bridgend. I was so disappointed, but Dad had done his research on how sea air could damage property and before you knew it we were living in Coity, a small village that in education terms was lagging behind Durham Road in Newport by about a decade. 

The head told Mum he would have Nigel reading “by the time he’s seven”. I was not allowed to read or write after lunchtime and was consigned to basket-weaving and making butter by shaking the creamy top of every kid’s free school milk in an Empty Maxwell House coffee jar. In Newport, I had been doing algebra and Shakespeare; in Coity, I was handed a book in which 2 + 2 = was the hardest sum.

   

So much in my life might have been different had Mum and Dad bought that house in Ogmore. 

I could have grown up with the sea in my veins and avoided a lot of pain that subsequently came to me via Bridgend. 

On the other hand, I might have drowned on day one. 

Swings and roundabouts, people. Swings and roundabouts. 

And I’m still spinning. 

   

   

INSIDE OUT - THE GRAMMAR OF THE COLON

A month is a very short time in US healthcare. Within a matter of weeks, I’ve had a mammogram, cervical smear and a colonoscopy, all included in my insurance under the banner of Preventative Care (or preventive as they call it here).

   

The mammogram involved machinery that made me think I had gone on vacation in Thunderbird 2. The paddles I last had in the UK that transformed my breasts into muffins were no more; instead, the 3D technology involved a gentle process that nevertheless produced hundreds of shots from every imaginable angle.  

   

The smear was likewise painless. The last one I had in the UK made me feel as if I’d been attacked by a bear - from the inside out. For some bizarre reason, they always started with the metal tube that threatened to split me in half like a water melon; the one they ended up with, to fit my petite size, was barely wider than a nostril. Then there was the scraping, like a soon to be employed miner, desperate to get a memento of the last coal mine on Earth.

   

In the US, they were in and out so quickly, I didn’t even notice (a bit like some of my exes). I have no idea why in Britain everything was so painful and across the Atlantic almost a pleasure to be put under the spatula/tube.

   

I was dreading the colonoscopy, however. Only once had any outside party ventured up there and that was when I was doing a show called So You Think You Want a Heathy Lifestyle? It required me to have colonic irrigation, performed by a male doctor with his sidekick wife, and accompanied by the show’s director (female), camera and sound men. There was a poster of Princess Diana on the wall and the doctor explained how she was such  fan of the colonic procedure. I pondered that if I could look like her at the end of it, the trauma would have been worthwhile.

   

The problem was that I was supposed to go out on a bender with alcohol and a Vindaloo one night and, the next day, have the colonic to get rid of all the toxins. Owing to the tight schedule, we had to shoot the scenes in reverse, so in the morning I had the colonic and in the evening went out for my monstrous meal. Alas, by that time, there was precious little to hold the food in and I recall running across the restaurant floor to the restroom, desperately trying to hold everything together.

   

The doctor had earlier said I had “stubborn stools” as I lay patiently on my back, awaiting the great swirling movie of my bowels he encouraged me to watch in the overhead mirror. By the time the Vindaloo had done its stuff later on, they weren’t so much stubborn as eagerly trying to sell themselves on the Black Market.

   

This morning I was booked for my first ever colonoscopy, which they perform as a matter of course in the US after the age of 50. Three days before, you are required to eat a low-fibre diet, so I had fish, potato without skin, eggs and herbal teas.

   

The day before, the great purge begins. No solids, just clear fluids, four tablets and a whole 8oz bottle of powder to be dissolved in 64oz liquid - 32oz of which had to be drunk six to eight hours before the procedure, which meant setting the alarm for 4am today.

   

Niagara Falls doesn’t begin to describe what happened to my bowels (stop reading now if you are squeamish); but by the time morning came round, I was peeing in stereo, with only my vagina a safe dry crevice separating the geysers either side.

   

Fussed over by no fewer than nine medics in all, I wafted around in a gown that could have housed three Texans and still had room for a multi-storey. I was told I would have a twilight anaesthetic, which is like sedated sleep (although I was given the option to stay awake throughout if I wanted to. No thanks: give me The Twilight Zone every time). As with general anaesthetic, I had no memory of falling unconscious; I just recall being woken, when I started to tell them about a dream I’d just had; I think there were hamburgers in it which, not having eaten for 48 hours, was understandable.

   

The doctor arrived with photos of my super clean colon (I tell you, the crown jewels could not look more polished; there was not a molecule of waste in evidence. “It’s very clean, isn’t it?” I boasted. “Yes, you did really well,” she replied. I felt strangely proud; I may use one of the pics as my Christmas card). There was one polyp, which I had given them permission to remove, and now  that goes away for examination. Even if it comes back showing potential risk, it still means five years until my next colonoscopy, although most polyps are benign anyway.

   

I’ve read more about colons, bowels and intestines the past few days than I ever thought I would need to know. I’ve lost no weight, my stomach is still flabby, and I’m right out of toilet paper. 

But somewhere in West Hollywood, I’ve doubtless made some plumber’s day. 

REMEMBERING DAD

Today is a Father’s Day like no other: the first I have to get through without either parent. No e-mail from Mum to my brother and me, telling us that she is thinking about us – another first, of which there will be many and already have been since she died on April 17^th. I am a 60 year old orphan.

   

I can’t believe that it’s nearly three decades since Dad died: 30 years since I last sent him a Father’s Day card and the first one endured with a gut-wrenching sobbing and feeling of resentment towards children buying cards and gifts for their dads. This year, as every other, those celebratory images in shop windows do not lose their impact. The Interflora phone service from which I once ordered flowers still reminds me every year to send something to Dad, despite my having told them, as the first Father’s Day approached after his death, how much their automated prompt had upset me. I remember two decades after he passed, breaking down at a missive from the Apple Store online, suggesting Father’s Day gifts. “Dad’s digital power tools”, the site excitedly announced about the Mac and i-pod, “exactly what he needs to enjoy the things he loves – movies, music, photos, and more.”

   

The things he loves. The things my Dad loved. They were not computers, movies, music and photos. They were not nights spent down at the local pub with his mates. They were not flash holidays, fast cars and other material goods bought only to keep up with and surpass the Joneses. What my Dad loved most was his family. My mum, my brother Nigel and me. And now, every Father’s Day, I try to put aside the immense sadness I still feel at his not being here and celebrate the fact that I was blessed with such a kind, thoughtful, strong and loving man who, all these years on, continues to have such a huge, positive impact on my life.

   

Donald Arthur Stephen was born in Cardiff, the eldest of five boys, and met my mother, Valerie Mary Jones, at a dance in the city’s Sophia Gardens. Mum wrote in her diary that Dad had “funny eyes”, but after that, the only hiccup to their getting together was Dad’s ex, Jean, for whom Mum thought he still had feelings. He had bought her a handbag, but they broke up before he had chance to give it to her, so Mum insisted that he take it to her in Scotland where she lived, just to be absolutely sure that he did not want to get back together with her before embarking on a relationship with her. The handbag incident (I like to imagine Jean whimpering “A handbag? A handbag?” a la Lady Bracknell) sealed his feelings for Mum and they married in 1953, when Mum was 21 and Dad 24. I was born five years later and, when I celebrated my big birthdays – 40, 50, 60 – wished with all my heart that Dad had been there.

   

The last birthday party he attended would be his last. I was 30, living in London and working as television critic on the London Evening Standard. I still went home regularly, and even more so when Dad first went into hospital in the January of 1987. I was used to him being ill; he had been a smoker and had always had a weak chest. But he had always come through and we expected him to again. The moment I knew he would definitely not was the Christmas before he died, when a doctor at the hospital told me that he had suffered three “small” heart attacks that week. “But no one can survive that, can they?” I asked. “Well, no,” he said.

   

Until that moment, I had not thought of a life without Dad. Although I was very busy in my new job and having problems settling in an alien city, we were in constant touch, either through visits or on the phone. Then, as always, Dad was a huge part of my life, and even the thought of him not being there left a hole that left me gasping for breath. This was what people meant when they talked of the parent becoming the child, and I felt ill equipped for my new role. Feeding Dad his supper one night, when he was too weak to hold the fork, was a moment of grown-upness too far.

   

The doctor had clearly not told Dad what he had told Nigel and me, because one evening he said to Mum, tearfully: “I don’t want to die.” I suspect he knew, but we all continued to live with hope in our hearts, even if it had gradually left our heads.

   

But on his 60^th, in March 1989, he is just out of Bristol’s Frenchay Hospital again and home in time for the celebrations. His hands look older, as if, in spirit, they are still in Frenchay, merely on loan until the day comes for them to be returned permanently. Outside the abnormality of the ward and back home, they seem more lined and appear to have taken on a yellow tinge. The fingernails, as always, are perfectly trimmed, with not a speck of dirt. “Hi, Gaggie Nennens,” he says, greeting me at the front door. It was his pet name for me when I was a child and he started using it because when people used to ask my name, the mispronounced words came out as: “Gaggie Nennens.”

   

The party feels like a farewell: a rehearsal for the funeral that in our darkest hours we suspect is not too far away. When the guests have gone and he is ready for bed, I kiss him goodnight at the top of the stairs and am shocked to feel the smallness of his frame in his pyjamas, bones drowning in blue cotton. When I hold him close, the softness gives way to small, sharp points bursting out of his back. This is not the body that lifted me up to Georgie in his budgerigar’s cage, saying “Night, night, Georgie”; nor the hands that held my clammy forehead over the toilet bowl when I was sick. Dad is slipping away to a place he has not yet been, and I am helpless to pull him back. The more I try, the further he falls, all the time shrinking, shrinking, and it tears me apart to feel my father so small in my arms. But the inner strength that has always been him is still there; he does not seem like a man who wants to die.

   

I was always Gaggie Nennens to Dad, just as I would always be the little girl who was never old enough to cross the road by herself. Well into my twenties, when I went home and would venture out for, heaven forbid, a pint of milk, he would warn: “Be careful crossing the road.” When we went for a drink, after two minutes he would be wiping his eyes, as if he had never even recovered from the fact that I learned to speak.

   

Dad was an intensely emotional person, whose feelings did not reveal themselves in outbursts, but in still, quiet moments when the tears would come at the slightest prompting. He would be the first to cry at Lassie on a Sunday afternoon when we sat watching TV as a family; he could never talk about his parents without crying; and when our pet poodle Emma died, he was grief-stricken for months.

   

He blamed himself for not cleaning out the boiler flue that killed Emma by carbon monoxide poisoning. He and Mum had wondered why my brother, who was also near the flue, was sleeping almost to the point of rigor mortis, so in fact Emma saved his life. But Dad never forgave himself and, when we had our next dogs (two, to assuage the guilt still further), he was particularly soft on them.

   

Sally the Chihuahua and Tara the poodle lived longer lives than their predecessor (indeed, they outlived Dad) largely as a result of Dad’s solicitations. When Dad was taken ill, they had, between them, two good eyes, six good legs, one and a half tails, one womb and no properly functioning bladder. Where Mum would put down one square of the Bristol Evening Post for both dogs for their nocturnal habits and then berate them for the spillage, Dad put down the equivalent of the New York Times. When he was in hospital, his role as acting urologist to the dogs was probably the main thing they missed. That, and his giving each of them a saucer of coffee in the living room last thing at night.

   

If Dad’s love for the dogs was revealed in such small acts of kindness, it was multiplied a hundredfold when it came to his children. He always treated us equally and also could not bear for him and Mum to have anything without sharing it with us. On the rare occasions when they had a Chinese takeaway (very rarely; money was tight), he put a small amount on two saucers (having been washed after the dogs’ coffee, I must presume) and brought it up to us in bed, two little birds with open mouths anticipating a rare luxury.

   

Until my late teens, our social life centred on family activities. We were all ballroom dancing competitors and used to travel with Mum and Dad to their evening competitions, where my collection of rubber animals was always a hit amongst the judges. It did no good when they came to awarding Mum and Dad points, though, not least because no lime green latex praying mantis in the world is going to compensate for the fact that your parents cannot dance in time to the music.

   

They were occasions when Mum and Dad were guaranteed to argue, each blaming the other for dancing on the wrong beat. As with all their disagreements, they were little more than surface spats. My mother was the more volatile of the two, and Dad a placid person who let what he saw as pointless conflict go over his head. But I never doubted their love, and even after 37 years of marriage at the time he died, Mum said that her heart still missed a beat (a bit like her dancing, in that respect) when she heard his voice at the end of the phone.

   

You would imagine, that having such a good, strong role model, that I would be drawn to men of similar emotional stature; but throughout my entire adult life I was drawn almost exclusively to weak, cruel men, who undermined me and drained my confidence. I had a wonderful childhood that equipped me with high self-esteem, and, until the age of 16, considered myself an extremely happy person. Becoming involved with one of my school-teachers at that time set me on a destructive path that would colour – or rather, discolour -my life for the next 30 years, and he could not have been more different from my Dad in every respect: selfish, a user, emotionally inept. It just goes to show: you can have everything going for you, have the best role models in the world, and you can still screw up.

   

Dancing to the wrong beat was one of the rare skills Dad could not master. In other things, he had a lot of knowledge about a lot of things, and his practical skill at all things electrical and mechanical (he was a mechanical engineer) is something I have inherited from him, albeit on a small scale. I also inherited from him a strong work ethic that was instilled in me from primary school age. If you are not in work on time, he used to say, it is not your employer’s problem. But what if the bus breaks down, I used to say. Still not your employer’s problem. The responsiblity to do what one is asked, to the best of one’s ability and deliver it on time is something to which I have adhered to my entire working life, and it astonishes and frustrates me that others do not adopt the same philosophy.

   

His practical skills manifested themselves in all areas of our lives. It was to him my mother turned when the Betterware man, Tupperware man, Avon lady, or whoever else my mother had taken pity on, rang the door for payment for the useless goods she had ordered (there was a Cancer research man, too, but he died). Whatever they required – the Avon payment book, invoices, insurance certificates, cash – Mum could never find to give them. Along with car-keys, lipsticks, cheque-books and pens, these items were Dad’s responsibility in the midst of Mum’s mounting panic over their apparent loss.

   

When Dad dies, the first card through the door is from the Avon Lady.

   

My first thought is one of surprise that Avon ladies still exist; the second, that Mum still buys from them. Within two hours of Dad’s death, Mum picks up the card from behind the door, opens it, smiles, frowns and cries. “It’s from the Avon Lady,” she says, passing me the first bereavement card of the day. I read the message: “You’ll never be able to find the book now.” Don’t bother calling again, Avon.

   

Both my Mum and Dad gave my brother and me a good, fulfilled and joyous childhood. There was not a vast amount of money, but we lived a comfortable life in which we felt no deprivation - well, apart from my resenting the cooked meal we had every day after school, when my friends up the road were enjoying Ritz crackers and cheese. Our holidays were spent at Butlin’s, where we enjoyed late nights drinking hot milk and watching the doughnut-making machine sugar our supper. On summer weekends we went to the beach, where Dad really came into his own packing the car (and unpacking it at the other end) the essentials Mum deemed necessary for a day at the sea - wind-break, Lilo, Flotina, deck chairs, table and chairs, cold-box, hamper, sun umbrella, Tupperware for sandwiches and squash, flasks for tea and coffee, dog bowls, towels and swimming costumes, eight gallons of Calamine lotion. By the time we left the house, dusk was falling and our day out became 40 minutes. But as with everything, Dad bore his lot with equanimity.

   

Dad’s calm nature was in stark contrast to that of Mum, Nigel and me, whose rather wacky humour put us in tune with each other in rather more obvious ways. Where Mum had me dressed in psychedelic dresses and wearing cowbells to school when I was 11, Dad practically needed oxygen when I wore my first pair of platform shoes with a bright red plastic heart on the sides. His views on fashion were, as his values, old-fashioned by today’s standards, but I remain grateful for them.

   

He taught me manners and respect; the importance of hard work and being driven, but not to the point of negating the people closest to you. Despite his intellect and enormous success in his work, his family came first, ambition second. I doubt he ever thought of it as a sacrifice, but it is one that I believe he made in order that his children might have better lives. Mum still lives in Bristol and works as a therapist. Like my relationship with Dad, it is a very close one, and undoubtedly Dad’s goodness and love live on in the special relationship I have both with her and Nigel. Every year, on Father’s Day, we call each other and remember just how lucky we were to have him.

   

The day of Dad’s death is as clear today as it was in 1990. I wake in London in my flat in Belsize Park Gardens to the sound of my answer machine clicking in the living room. When I play back the messages, the last one says: “He passed away a few minutes ago . . . Jac? JAC? Oh, my God, it’s the answer-machine! What do I do? What do I do? It’s her answer machine!”

   

The nurse, having heard my voice, passed Mum the phone, without realising that it was a recording.

   

A moment of numbness quickly becomes one of hysteria. I play the message again and again, hoping for a different conclusion.

   

I take the train from Paddington to Bristol and, hours later, am in my parents’ home, looking at two bags on the kitchen unit under two separate pieces of paper. The first says SMALL ITEMS OF VALUABLE PROPERTY and lists: £1.25 – cash, 1 watch, glasses and case. The second, PROPERTY TO BE KEPT SECURELY IN GENERAL ADMINISTRATION OFFICE, listing toilet requisites, 1 track suit, 1 vest, 1 pants, 1 pair slippers, 5 hankies, 1 book, biscuits and container, cards, 1 towel, 1 dressing gown.

   

On paper, it doesn’t look much to show for 60 years, but they are tributes to a man for whom avarice and materialism were anathema, and I stand crying next to a half-eaten tin of biscuits where, true to form, Dad has eaten only the plain and left the chocolate.

   

And then, as now, I give thanks both to, and for, my Dad. 

         

   

  

    

    

    

     

THE ONLY STRAIGHT IN THE VILLAGE

The message was clear. At least, they thought it was. On a glorious hot weekend in Los Angeles, rainbow colored flags, clothes, scarves, jewelry, dogs (you name it, rainbows owned it) took to the streets to celebrate Pride.

   

Except for THEM. The tiny group being penned in behind a metal barrier and being carefully watched by the police. They were like the Cybermen, sinisterly lurking in wait to attack the Tardis of pleasure. Their banners said it all - or would have done, had one man not also had a microphone, into which he bellowed the terrifying message. God’s pronouncement on the ten plagues of Egypt could not have been more sinister. I tell you, ten minutes later I could barely keep my cost price Pride Special Breakfast down.

   

Putting things in your “rear end” is WRONG! the beast declared. God is going to punish you for using your bottom as a parking lot (my words; you really don’t want to hear how explicit he was). So there. Engaging in this heinous activity will give you AIDS. “How many of your friends have DIED. . . Do you WANT HIV?” The capital letters rained down like a plague of locusts.

   

Then he got started on lesbians, for whom he had saved most of his wrath. “Wait till you get licked out by God!” (To be honest, he seemed to know a little bit too much about it all for my comfort. Does God even know what licking out means?). “Your vagina was not meant for a dildo!” he declared. Hey, mate, it wasn’t meant for yoghurt, either, but sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

   

I was in two minds whether to go over and bring him up on a point of order: straight women use dildos, too - usually when pricks like this make us lose all hope of ever finding a man.

   

Here was the legal issue: was it lesbians per se who were going to hell, or just the dildo-wielding lesbians? Or was the dildo itself the real crime of the drama? If a straight woman uses a dildo, does she stand more chance of passing the pearly gates than the heinous gay one? If a straight woman’s man is away on business, is she allowed to indulge as a point of desperation? I was so anxious to try to clear this up; it’s a moot point.

   

And back to the rear end. The voice boomed out that there were all sorts of unspeakable things that men were putting there (dildos suddenly sounded the least of everyone’s problems). Indeed, we wouldn’t believe what men were capable of in their uphill gardening (ok, the gardening bit is again mine, not the speaker’s; he had all sorts of words for the unsavory trough awaiting planting). The suspense was killing me. For the love of God, mate, tell us! My imagination was running riot. What goes up there? A toaster? Air con unit? A condo?

   

I have a lot of gay friends, male and female, and rear ends hardly ever enter the conversation; in fact, a lot of my gay male friends are rather averse to that part of the proceedings. Maybe they need to buy a toaster.

   

Apparently, the God Squad group gets smaller every year, which is a blessing. On a day celebrating diversity and tolerance, it’s ironic that it was only the Born Again Christians yelling their messages of hatred. If cars had been allowed on the street, I’d have been sorely tempted to...well, rear-end them.

   

How do people find the time to worry so much about what others are doing in their sex lives? I can barely get it together to think about whether I can be arsed to reach the remote for the telly, let alone hire a speaker system to discuss what people get up to amongst themselves. Who cares? Unless there is evidence of abuse, you can build a multi-storey in your vagina or rear end and you won’t hear any complaints from me.

   

Homophobes and lunatics aside, it was a joyous weekend. T-shirts backed their various causes - “I support planned parenthood”, “Lesbian single mom strong” - and strangers mingled with likeminded people as if they were long lost family.

   

I will admit to having felt a little bit out of it though - The Only Straight in the Village (the opposite of the UK’s Little Britain show featuring The Only Gay in the Village). With the exception of the friend I met for drinks, I didn’t meet one straight person the whole weekend. That’s nothing new, really. As friends have pointed out in the past, if I will take up residence in Soho (London), West Hollywood (Los Angeles) and Hell’s Kitchen (New York), I’m not going to meet Mr Right or, as I now prefer to say: I’m going to have to kiss a lot of toasters before I meet my Prince. And, let’s be honest, time’s running out. I’m 60 years old now: at the rate my underused innards are shrinking, I’ll be lucky if I’ll be able to harbor a cocktail stick, let alone a dildo.

   

One thing I took away from the day was what a family day Pride has become. Rainbow-decked kids were out in force with their families, gay or straight (I didn’t ask), and I felt proud (yes, pride with a small “p”) to be living in a time (at least, in our part of the world), where being gay does not make you an outcast; where those young people I saw on the street will know that being gay is not an affliction. To thine own self be true (Shakespeare). Be good to one another (Jesus - so stick that up your rear end, arseholes!).

   

Alas, much of the world and much of our own society in the so-called civilised world does not concur, as witnessed by the fanatics behind the barrier. But that barrier served as a metaphor: the bigots are behind bars, screaming to ever-decreasing circles as the world changes and evolves. Be proud.

   

And if I ever do meet Mr Right, I don’t want an effing toaster for a wedding present. Goddit?

PS for my UK friends, I now write with US spellings!

  

THE GRAMMAR OF DEATH

Is to was: the tiniest change of tense that is the difference between my having a mother and then not. 

Dead. Passed. Gone. Reduced to single words that remind me the world yesterday is not as it is today. 

   

Mum died late at night on April 17^th, on the eve of what would have been her 66^th wedding anniversary. Dad, who became a past tense on January 23^rd 1990, was the love of her life, and although I have no religious beliefs, there is still something poignant in the fairytale belief that she got to him in time to share the day.

   

Dad’s last words to me, when I last saw him at the hospital, were: “I love you.” Mum’s were: “I am compos mentis.”

   

Who would have thought her last words to me would be in Latin, a language she had never learned but, as with her limited French, one she resorted to when English was inadequate. Her greatest fear was losing her mind, which she never did. Being in control of her faculties was a blessing to her, but a frustration to others, not least the medical staff and carers who were powerless to make her eat, sleep, or do her physiotherapy if her favourite shows were on the TV.

   

Three days before she died, the river of morphine losing its fight against the circus of cancer entertaining her every organ, I sat at her hospital bedside and she looked at me with terror.

“I don’t know you! Who are you?” she cried, her tongue and eyes bloody with fear.

“It’s Jacqueline. JACQUELINE,” I managed through tears. “Your daughter.” 

Calm subsided with sudden recognition. Reaching out to touch my face and then clutch my hand, she said: “Daughter.”

“Yes, Mum.” 

“You see, I am compos mentis.” They were the last words I would ever hear her say before she embarked on the big sleep.

   

Is. Was. 

Suddenly, everything seems to conspire to remind me of my ex-mum. Mother’s Day (in the USA) on May 12th, and the dozens of ads appearing on my social media pages, recommending what to buy Mom on her special day; security checks on my credit cards, asking to confirm what my mother’s maiden name is; a packet of smoked salmon in a supermarket refrigerator, and the memory of her shaking hand trying to deliver her favourite feast from plate to mouth; packets of humbugs on the shelves remind me of the opened packet in her returned effects from the hospital; a half-read book in her office, the ending of which she will never know. 

Death magnifies the remains.

   

I am spending the time before the funeral trying to change tense: bringing my past back to life with memories that will remain forever present. My younger brother Nigel and I were blessed to have enjoyed a childhood filled with love and support that has seen us both grow into fairly responsible, caring adults, and, as always, we share a close relationship that has deepened still further during the past difficult days.

   

I remember the rare times when my parents sent out for a Chinese takeaway. Hating to exclude us from anything, they shared the chicken and pineapple and boiled rice between their plates and two saucers (fleur-de-lis – I can see the pattern to this day) and brought them to us in bed. Nothing ever tasted so good as that illicit feast.

   

We had many trips to the beach, for which Mum packed for hours before we set off. We could have gone on safari for six months and not wanted for anything. Lilo, lounger, dining table and chairs, deck chairs, Flotina, Tupperware containers full of squash and sandwiches; by the time we arrived at the shore, there was no problem finding a parking space because everyone and everything else had left – including the tide. We would have had to go to another continent if we wanted a swim.

   

Yes, I remember the Tupperware. Mum had Tupperware parties and became the most successful seller of plastic in the neighbourhood. Then she went on to wig parties. Being a hairdresser, she was a veritable topiarist constructing the pieces on her friends, who had no hesitation in buying there and then – only to discover, 24 hours later, that when they tried to manufacture the hairy beast into a semblance of normality without her assistance, they were faced with something more akin to a dead stoat.

   

Mum gave up hairdressing and went to college at the age of 50, where she obtained a degree and then a Master’s. She specialised in young people, in particular abused children, and it has been heart-warming, during the past days, to hear from many of them who credit her with having changed the paths of their lives, and, in some cases, having saved them.

  

She had her faults (as we all do); she could be difficult (can’t we all); but at 87, she knew, and repeatedly told me, that she had had a good life. She adored my dad, and her greatest fear was something happening to her children. 

My greatest fear was something happening to my mum. 

Every day will always be Mother’s Day. 

Is. Not was.

  

MAKING A TIT OF MYSELF

Let me say at the outset that I have nothing against breasts. 

Apart from my own, which would have trouble filling a contact lens, let alone a bra, I happen to think they are rather beautiful. In fact, I appear to be the only woman in the world bemoaning the dropping of the swimsuit section in beauty pageants.

   

Let me also say that I have nothing against women breastfeeding in public. But is it too much to ask for a bit of discretion? I know that babies have to be fed and that the human body is the most natural thing in the world, blah blah blah; but having just endured a two and a half hour flight next to a breastfeeding woman, I’m going to risk the wrath of women everywhere. 

I’m sorry. I didn’t like it. If I’d closed my eyes and poked my tongue out a centimetre, I could easily have fooled myself into thinking I’d been incarcerated at a dairy farm.

   

The flight did not start well. I am very fussy about where I sit. Unless I am flying long haul and have my own sleeping area, I have to be at the front and in an aisle seat, quite simply because I suffer from claustrophobia. I book my seats well in advance and pay premium price to get them, so, as far as I’m concerned, I’m not committing a heinous crime by refusing to give it up. 

You want your seat? Book it. Pay for it. Just like I did. It ain’t rocket, or even Boeing, science.

   

Last year, some people were incensed when I wrote about not giving up my seat to a woman in the aisle behind who asked for mine on the grounds of “I’d like to sit with my boyfriend.” No, no and no again. And why didn’t he ask? If you can’t survive three hours without your partner, you really shouldn’t be together in the first place.

   

But back to Dairygate. 

I was in one seat. The woman appeared to want/need five, although I couldn’t quite work out why at this point. I was asked by a crew member if I’d move to row two at the other side of the plane. Not. Going. To. Happen (did I mention I also have to sit on a particular side?). Just as last year, there were dirty looks from fellow passengers – although I suspect had they been asked to move, it would have been a different story.

   

So, the milkmaid sat in the window seat with her baby and one free seat between us. The second the seatbelt sign was off, out game a gargantuan breast to which the six month old infant (at least I was polite enough to ask about the beautiful child) attached herself with the safety instinct of a passenger bracing themselves for landing on water.

   

I continued to politely engage, accompanied with lots of Oohs and Aahs about what a hungry little girl she was. “No she’s not hungry,” said Spanish mummy. “She eesss like theesss all the time; she cannot be away from me. Alwaysss she want the breast.” Oh, great. Another double brandy when you’re ready, steward!

   

Then, the unthinkable happened. From the row behind, another child appeared. She only had effing twins! It reminded me of a story I heard about Mike and Bernie Winters when they were starting out. After Mike’s routine had died on stage, out came Bernie and someone in the audience allegedly shouted: “F**k no! There are two of them.”

   

That was me.

   

Luckily, the boy was not so demanding, not least because his sister decided it was her turn once more. And so it all began again.

   

Now, like I said, it wasn’t that it offended me, but I think we should keep our bodily parts and functions discreetly hidden when in the company of others. I am deeply offended when people put their bare feet on train seats; I don’t like people wiping their noses with their hands; I’m not partial to men getting their willies out and pleasuring themselves on planes (though I have seen it happen). 

As someone who has been getting her tits out for the lads for decades (I promise you: I really have stopped now), I know that the words pot, kettle and black will spring to mind; but I still think that a 150 minute movie of a giant tit doesn’t make for great viewing. I could barely keep my ham and cheese toastie down.

   

Whether we like it or not, we live in a world in which we should be sensitive to others and be aware of cultural differences. I’m not suggesting airlines provide golf umbrellas to shield lactating breasts from passengers such as myself of a delicate disposition; but neither do I want to be sitting next to an air balloon in my face – literally.

   

I know my mother stopped breastfeeding me when I was six months (although she still proudly shows off the chair she used to do it on – less proudly when she recalls that she had me in one hand and a cigarette in the other); I know people who have breastfed their kids until they were four (they grew up to be nuts, should you be tempted); I’ve never had kids, so the best I can muster is a few guys (who were all crap at it, by the way; quite why they think the right technique is downing it like a can of Stella is beyond me, but that’s another story). But this was the first time I’ve been so . . . well, up close and personal as an adult observer.

   

I’m waiting for the screams of “most natural thing in the world”. 

So is masturbation; I still don’t want to see it at 30,000 feet. 

On the plus side, in the unikely event of the plane landing on water, I wouldn’t need to struggle with my life jacket; I’d just grab the nearest lactating tit and breathe deeply.