THE LEAST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR

The dried figs set me off. 

Tightly packed in their plastic drum, they look as unappetising as they always did. The figs that every Christmas throughout my childhood appeared next to the box of JL dates and tin of Quality Street on our sideboard. The figs that, come the first week of January, would be thrown out in their entirety.

   

I am in my local supermarket and the music blares over the loudspeaker: ‘It’s the most wonderful time of the year.’ And I start to cry. I sob next to the figs and the dates because this is the very worst time of the year. It’s the first Christmas I won’t have my mum.

   

Mum died on April 17^th after a fall 18 months previous left her incapacitated and dependent on carers for her every need. The end was sudden and unexpected, and the “firsts” without her keep coming. 

My parents’ wedding anniversary (April 18^th; she almost made it), Mother’s Day, my brother’s birthday, my birthday, and now Christmas, which I’m dreading.

   

I’ve spent just four Christmases away from Mum in 61 years and although the actual day was not spent with her on those rare occasions, we still spent the preceding days together, exchanging gifts and reminiscing about the past.

   

Mum loved this time of year and even from her chair, nursing a broken kneecap, she managed to shop – and how. I swear that one of the reasons Jeff Bezos is a billionaire is because of the amount of stuff Mum bought online from Amazon. In the Christmas of 2017, she insisted on checking herself out of the nursing home where she was recuperating, against medical advice, because she was determined to have Christmas at home; she was hysterical because she hadn’t written her cards. That was the beginning of the downfall in a big way – emotionally, physically, practically. 

Christmas killed my mother.

   

My brother Nigel and I have nothing but happy memories of the annual festivities. The excitement began in the autumn with the arrival the catalogues featuring dozens of new toys and games. ‘Don’t tell anyone I buy from catalogues,’ said Mum, a warning it took me years to understand was because no one should know she had to pay in instalments.

   

How I loved those toys: the sea of red, yellow and blue plastic that was Mouse Trap, Booby Trap and Hats Off (we had a poodle called Emma, who was very good at Hats Off: pressing her paw on the lever and sending the plastic cone high into the air); the sophistication of Masterpiece, where the aim was to sell artwork; the excitement of Cluedo. Nigel and I spent weeks trying to guess what Santa might be delivering, an illusion that was soon broken when I discovered a bike under a blanket in my parents’ wardrobe and when the postman arrived with a radio for Nigel and a record player for me. Mum was furious they had handed the parcels to us and ruined the surprise.

   

The build-up in the preceding weeks was filled with excitement, laughter and anticipation. The advent calendar (I used to wake early and rush downstairs to open the day’s window before anyone else got to it); the arrival of the tree (always a real one) and the heady scent of pine; the box of decorations – long chains of colourful crepe, lights (always broken), a special frosted crystal bauble that was my particular favourite, the fairy, who looked as if she’d just done 15 rounds with the Angel Gabriel. Piece by piece, as it all came together, we knew we were loved.

   

On Christmas Eve, we put down the saucer of milk and biscuits for Santa and, when we no longer believed, were allowed to open one present. This was also the time we were allowed to dive into the sweets and nuts. How we loved cracking open those nuts with the silver device that ensured you’d still be picking up bits of walnut shells from the sofa in July.

   

And then, the day itself. Waking at 5am, we sat on the stairs, coughing loudly and praying for Mum and Dad to wake and come down to watch us open present after present: a symphony of paper-tearing and the dog barking wildly with excitement, the scent of turkey already taking up residence in her super-sensitive nose. We wanted for nothing.

   

The presents didn’t stop when we became adults and this is the first year I won’t be receiving anything from Mum and, of course, the first year I won’t have anyone to buy for, my friends and other relatives having long ago decided that we really didn’t need anything and that the money would be better spent on food and wine.

   

Mum’s presents were always so thoughtful and she took great pride in keeping up with her children’s lives and choosing accordingly. She was especially thrilled when she bought me Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs in 2011. When I had all my jewellery stolen some years ago, Mum gradually replenished the supply every birthday and Christmas and she had exquisite taste. She bought me so many things useful for travel, which has become my favourite pastime. She was excited when she discovered a book of Sylvia Plath’s artwork, remembering how much I admired her as a writer. She bought many fabulous clothes for my brother and also contributed hugely to his rugby book collection.

   

I have her iPad and it’s painful to see the thousands of e-mails coming through from all the online stores from which she made purchases. Eden, Zulily, Liz Earle Beauty Co. Every time I use my facecloth from one of the many wonderful Liz Earle presents Mum bought me, I am tearful. She swore by its cleansing properties and daily I am reminded of her tiny hand wiping the last vestiges of the day’s dirt from her increasingly fragile face, even though towards the end she rarely left the house.

   

Present buying was always Mum’s domain; I had a wonderful father, but shopping was never his thing. Mum had to choose her own Christmas presents from him because, on the rare occasions he chose them (just before the shops shut on Christmas Eve), they were disasters. I’ll never forget how her face fell when she opened the amethyst necklace and ear-rings: pretty enough, but more suited to someone of 90 than 40. 

Then there was the year of The Bird. Oh, goodness, that was ghastly. Mum opened the box to reveal a hideous china bird ornament and, initially, feigned pleasure. It took less than half an hour for all that to change: ’Why would you think I’d want a china bird?! I hate birds!’ Not since Dad accidentally left the tea-cloth in the turkey after cleaning it out and baking it along with “the bird” (how Mum hated it when he called it that; clearly, she really had a thing about birds) had voices been raised so much.

   

After Dad died in 1990, Mum came to me for Christmas, firstly to my home in Bath and later in Cardiff. She was able to drive at the time and arrived with a car packed to the gills with food and drinks. We could have gone on safari for six months and not wanted for anything. She was a great cook and always brought her homemade Christmas cake and puddings. Her greatest disappointment, when she was hospitalised, was not being able to make them.

   

No Christmas was complete without the proverbial row over the Queen’s Speech. Mum a Royalist, me a Republican, I refused to watch it. Mum never watched it either, but every year made a big deal of wanting to. When she was no longer able to drive, I used to pick her up from her house in Bristol and, one year, spent a tortuous motorway journey during which she admonished me for not having set her Sky box to record the speech. 

‘I’ll come off at the next turning, go back and do it,’ I said, impatiently. 

‘No, don’t bother.’ Then we passed the turning. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t record it.’ 

What I wouldn’t give this year for that annual row.

   

Mum’s Bichon Frise Maddie always accompanied her on these visits and I had to be prepared for the dog being sick on every cream rug in my house when she overdosed on turkey, slipped to her under the table by Mum. Maddie always had her own dinner anyway, but Mum could not resist her pitiful Oliver Twist impression, silently begging for more. The dog had to be put to sleep in January 2018. I’ll even miss the hours I had to spend trying to coax her out from the bushes in my garden, her stubbornness as integral to her personality as her greed.

   

With my having taken over cooking duties in recent years, Mum was content to just watch TV. She loved her soaps, but as I, because of my job, had already seen them all, I left her to enjoy them, even though the volume at which she had the TV meant that I heard every word. I’ll miss that noise.

   

I’ll miss her jumping with fright every time she leaned on the dishwasher and it sprang into life; the horrific mess she made making her porridge in the morning; the disapproving looks when my brother or I opened another bottle of wine: all those niggling things that were irritations of Christmases past suddenly feel like gifts to treasure: memories to make me smile and be thankful for 61 years when Christmas really was the most wonderful time of the year. 

Happy Christmas, Mum.  

  

      

HOW TO BE . . . A FAILED EXTRA IN AMERICA

A taxi driver put me up to the idea. 

I was in LA and he started telling me about how much money he was making on the side as a “background artist”, as “extras” are now called – or “supporting artist”, as seems to be the case in the UK. “Relatively superfluous to requirements” would be a more accurate description as far as I can see, but who am I to take away a minion’s moment in the sun (well, the shade out of the sun’s rays).

   

He said the first step was to sign up to a casting agency and so, now in possession of my Green Card, when I returned to New York I decided to do exactly that.

   

I won’t name the agency for reasons that will become apparent, but let’s call them Muppet Casting, only because the people in the waiting room mostly looked as if they had just walked off that show and were awaiting their next gig on Fraggle Rock.

   

Never have I seen such an assortment of shapes and sizes gathered in one room; I thought I had walked into a Hall of Mirrors. It’s not often I’m the slimmest, youngest and, dare I say it, the most attractive person in the room (in fact, never), but I was nailing this. One woman was so enormous, she lost her clipboard in the folds of her stomach; there were at least three serial killers (the real kind, not the actor possibilities); and one woman was stuffing so many crisps into her mouth, if she were auditioning for a Walker’s commercial the director would live in fear of losing the product by the end of the shoot. 

Then there were the stupid people, who hadn’t brought any ID with them, despite having been specifically told to do so and were quickly shown the door.

   

The form-filling was incredibly tedious and very complicated, not to mention long. At the end of this torture, officiated over by a woman who could not have been less enthusiastic had she been playing a corpse, it was time for the photos. That took forever, too. I swear I had two birthdays during the course of the afternoon. Then, before you can do any work, you have to complete the online anti-harassment course – and there’s no escaping it. At least it paid $15.

In essence: don’t make unwanted advances; don’t persist on pursuing someone when they’ve made it clear they don’t want you; and don’t grope anyone. 

That would pretty much wipe out the Nineties for me.

   

Now, this is how the system works. You get a text asking for your availability and you answer YES or NO. My first job – “woman in blue coat” came through pretty quickly, but I missed out on it.

   

What was wrong with me, I wondered? Did they think blue was not my colour? Maybe the coat was too big? Maybe I was too fat for it. I had already dismissed my chances of being a “concentration camp survivor” I saw advertised online; I was overweight by about five stone. 

I pondered applying anyway, arguing that if I had survived, maybe I’d managed to wolf down a few hearty Big Macs, but thought that if groping was politically incorrect, trying to wangle my way into a Holocaust production by devious means was definitely a no-go area.

   

And so, to the next job. It was a major show on Netflix (I can’t say which one because I am bound by confidentiality) and they were looking for people for a crowd scene. My YES resulted in a positive response and my booking was confirmed the day before shooting.

   

Then the problems started. I would not receive the details until after 9pm, when I had to click on the link and key in the code I had been given (and they also tell you to check in again in the morning, should anything have changed). 

A voice at the other end rattled off a number of addresses – 5^th Avenue, East 102^nd (that’s practically Canada, for those of you who don’t know Manhattan streets), 92^nd . . . there were instructions for gates, groups, individuals. I listened to it a dozen times and was still none the wiser, so had to call the “urgent” number to confirm my details.

   

My call time was 6.48am on East 102^nd Street. I live on West 45^th Street. WEST. I never go to the East side unless there is free beer. Here, I was told, there was going to be no refreshment whatsoever; it was a “walkaway lunch” for which I would have to bring money or my own grub. 

I presume that’s because I’m non-Union, because I know that SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) extras (I’m still going to stick to the shorthand term) put on at least ten pounds a day on every shoot. Last week, there was a violent fight at a food truck on set and the police were called.

   

But really, NO LUNCH? Apart from free food, there is no other upside to the job. It’s a nine-hour day for minimum wage, on which you are taxed at source, you have to pay your costs of getting there and back, and for what? To mingle amongst the muppets.

   

I told them I wouldn’t be able to make it after all as I could never make the venue by 6.48am. She tried to negotiate.

“I’ll tell them you’ll be late.”

 “Ok, how about 8.15?”

 “Could you do 7.15?”

 “This really isn’t going to work for me. I’m so sorry.”

   

She got really huffy with me. 

“Well make sure you DON’T turn up tomorrow.”

“I WON’T!”

   

My Background to the Future career has not begun well; I’m just not ready for my non-close-up. Heck, I was Top Extra in Kenneth Branagh’s Frankenstein (you can read about that in the blog How to Be in Commercials in America, by the way); this already felt like a real comedown. 

Don’t they know who I am?

HOW TO BE . . . IN COMMERCIALS IN AMERICA

“Hi, Jacqueline,” the message began. 

“A Walgreens Commercial Pays $800 is looking to cast a role With your Specs. Call now XXX-XXX-XXXX.”

   

I have no idea when or where I signed up to do commercials, but heck, $800 sounded a pretty good rate. I have a Walgreens card, so I must like something about them. How hard can it be to go into the store, fill a shopping trolley and walk out again? I’ve done a lot more for a lot less. Human chess piece, scullery maid, and I was even an extra in Kenneth Branagh’s Frankenstein. 

None of this experience has enabled me to get through the doors of Central Casting in the States, where my attempts to sign up for work as an extra have been doomed because there are never any spaces available to complete the process in person.

   

I was, by the way, Top Extra in Frankenstein. Originally cast as a grieving widow in the warm church, I was demoted to one of a hundred starving peasants in the freezing January cold outside when they saw how short I was (no one under five foot five is allowed to suffer a bereavement, it seems. That’s the movies for you). Ken (who had kindly arranged the whole thing for a feature I was writing) saw me lurking among the other peasants and moved me to the front row, resulting in 99 seething peasants behind me and later having to eat my lunch alone, ostracised from the madding (literally) crowd. 

Hating the stain the make-up department had put on my teeth intended to make them look rotten, I’d been to the toilet and wiped it off. I featured three times in the movie and also in the front row in the publicity material - the only peasant boasting a perfect set of white porcelain veneers. 

   

The commercial sounded a little more glamorous, although there were things that were already worrying me about the Walgreens message: not least, why they felt the need to unnecessarily capitalise Commercial, Pays, With and your Specs. And was that Specs as in specifications, or Specs as in spectacles? Should I mention all these concerns to them before discussing what my role would be? I thought it best to put my grammar pedantry on the back burner and, having mentally spent the $800, called them.

   

The young man (I could tell he was young - and anyway, everyone is 12 these days) seemed very thrilled at my having made contact. The only problem was, I had no idea how he had my details. “Do you remember signing up to XX?” he asked. I did not. 

I’ve signed up to a lot of things here, so much so that I live in fear of the FBI breaking down my door and finding me wearing no clothes watching Law and Order: SVU (not that going commando is a prerequisite for watching the show; it’s just how I roll on occasion). Sometimes, I think I worry too much.

   

Anyway, having established that I had no idea who he or his agency was, Calum (I at least established his name, but have changed it to protect his innocence), could barely contain his excitement at touching base. “You’re SIXTY?” he squealed, reading out bits from a form I had no memory of filling in. “That’s amazing!” Then the conversation went like this.

   

“Why is it amazing?”

“Well, you sound as if you have so much energy.”

“I do.”

“You’re not ill?”

“No.”

“You’re not retired?”

“No.”

“Are you thinking of retiring?”

“No.”

“That’s amazing.”

“Why?”

“You really don’t sound 60.”

“Tell me what you think a 60 year old should sound like.”

“Um, well, er, I’ve been talking to a lot of people from 50 to 67 - 67 is the oldest - and you just sound very different.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m 22.” Dear lord, he’s barely out of the womb. 

   

Having established that I was not infirm, heading for the scrapheap of life or, in Calum’s mind, possibly the grave, I enquired about the commercial.

   

“The Walgreens commercial is looking for a confused older customer . . . ” 

   

HANG ON A MINUTE! Maybe it was too soon to be asking about my character’s motivation, but for a rather generous $800, my mental state might have to be deteriorating at quite a rate. Was I just confused because I couldn’t find the aisle where the Corn Flakes were, or did I have amnesia following a car crash (being way too old, obviously, to be behind the wheel of a car)? These were important questions.

   

“Calum - I’m sorry, I have to stop you there. Why am I confused?”

   

Bless him, he had no idea. “I don’t know. Walgreens just said they wanted a confused older person.”

   

“Why would Walgreens assume that a 60 year old out shopping would be confused? And if they are assuming that, they should at least tell you the level of confusion I have to convey. Am I mentally ill?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“Okay, let’s talk numbers.”

   

Calum sounded relieved to be back on the right track. It was possibly three days’ work for the $800 and . . . 

   

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to stop you there again. The contract would have to go through my agent.”

“You have an agent? That’s amazing!” (Why is everything “amazing” to 12 year olds these days?). 

I actually don’t have an agent, manager, or any other kind of representation at the moment (any takers, please?), but if I’m going to make a living from wandering the aisles of Walgreens being chased by men in white coats brandishing strait-jackets, I think I’m going to need one.   

   

“Of course. I’ve done several of my own TV series.” (Ok, now I was being mean).

“Really? That’s amazing!”

“Calum, I’m going to go now. This really isn’t going anywhere.”

   

I know that instead of chasing minor roles as a background artist or a demented old lady playing Grand Prix with supermarket trolleys, I should just be getting on with my writing. But it’s been a tough year, filled with death, personal injury and relocation, and I’m finding it hard to get motivated again. On the plus side, my local Walgreens is doing three for the price of two on certain cosmetics this week. I just can’t find the store. Too confused.