The Voice sounds all smooth and reasonable, but is actually really micro-managey and controlling.
Then I realize what it reminds me of. Or rather, who.
What did Lawrence say, shortly before he moved out?
‘Can you not interrupt me to tell me to do another thing before I’ve even begun doing the first thing you wanted me to do?’
That’s what happens when you let checkouts be voiced by mothers. There should be a Teenage Response Button you can press that snaps back:
‘NO: I WILL IN A MINUTE! JUST STOP GOING ON AT ME, WILL YOU?!’
This is something they don’t tell you when you’re thinking of becoming an Older Mother: your kids’ rapidly increasing competence at this stage, when they’re roaring out of the pits firing on all cylinders, coincides exactly with your progression towards decrepitude. And it’s dawning on me, with a dreadful, sinking sensation, that it’s only going to get worse.
It’s a strong argument in favour of becoming a Teenage Parent. When they’re fifteen you’ll only be, say, thirty-two: in full possession of your faculties, instead of fifty- or sixty-something and increasingly defeated by the modern world. I didn’t go to university and no one’s ever asked to see my two useless A levels. So just think – instead of going to the pub and not reading The Winter’s Tale I could have been having these two and be one step ahead of them all the time, instead of the pathetic object of their disdain.
Except they wouldn’t be these two, so I suppose I’ve got the better deal after all.
Ages 18 to 20: Toys R No Longer Us
Lydia is off to another festival and has left a huge black sack of God knows what in the hall.
‘Lyd! Can you please put away this bag of – whatever it is?’
‘It’s the last of my cuddly toys. You’re always telling me to get rid of them. Well, now I am.’
Actually, I am not always telling her to get rid of them. I am always telling her to tidy them up, which is not the same thing.
‘Hang on – can I look through them?’
‘Why?’
‘No reason.’
Our friend Sarah B has recently suffered a shock: after months of begging followed by a stand-off, her daughter abruptly tidied her room before moving out.
And others we know have been caught off guard by this unexpected personality change. The young person is off to be furtherly educated in some distant town, abandoning a festering chamber of one-legged Darth Vaders, mangy stuffed animals and vintage tat. So the hapless parent nags them to tidy their bloody room or they won’t be going anywhere.
Then suddenly – in these rare but not unique cases – they do.
And the poor parent panics as they see – in Sarah’s words – ‘practically their whole childhood’ being flung into the rubbish. Karen, who has three boys, gets up and mimes trying to catch a spray of tiny little shorts before they hit the black sack, while Sarah does a touching imitation of herself holding up a manky top redolent of infant memories and making a tragic mewing sound.
Also, there may be something buried in there that Lydia’s made herself, and I’m discreetly saving her early pieces for when she’s successful and we can flog them off to pay the carers.
I open the bag and take out:
A Hallmark teddy holding a tiny star-shaped cushion with a gold ‘L’ on it.
A ‘lifesize’ mauve unicorn hobby horse with only the head left – the stick having been used for something else, possibly poking her brother – looking as if recently shot and ready for mounting on a shield.
A soft brown horse in reclining pose, like Manet’s Olympia: ‘The first I bought with my own money.’
A small fluffy puppy brought back by me from Dublin, formerly in green bag with shamrock.
Official Peter Rabbit ‘merch’, misshapen from excessive cuddling and being repeatedly thrown.
Kangaroo with label saying ‘My name is Matilda’ brought from Australia by Peter’s friend Jason, with tiny fluffy Joey in pouch and jagged tear in tummy resembling emergency Caesarean scar where Joey was abruptly removed for deployment in another game.
Faintly smirking knitted duck in mauve bonnet, suggestive of one of those ‘alternative’ adaptations of Jane Austen.
Naturalistic soft small tiger (standing).
Little furry hedgehog with what looks like a plastic picture of a lobster round its neck.
I ask: ‘Why has it got a picture of a lobster round its neck?’
‘It’s a starsign hedgehog. Scorpio? I got it at the airport in Italy.’
Dalmatian sewn into its kennel – with no visible back legs – as if it’s been through the matter transporting machine in The Fly.
Baby fox: her first Sew it Yourself kit.
Hand-knitted rabbit finger puppet with a vaguely melancholy expression.
Puppy finger puppet from Jellycat.
Arctic fox brought from America by another of Peter’s friends.
Two little dolls with wool hair, one in yellow gingham, one in green, both in slightly smeared lipstick like the aftermath of a school trip that’s ended in a mass shoplifting spree at Superdrug.
Tiger key ring from London Zoo.
Soft frog key ring.
Soft camel key ring.
Pink satin frog with bronze appliqué shapes on its back that are presumably meant to be frog-like, but more closely resemble the medieval skin disease in Game of Thrones.
Pink, fluffy sphere with dreamy blue face. May have been taking MDMA.
Soft teddy key ring in blue T-shirt that says ‘Friends Always’ and a bleary expression, evoking the morning after a hen night.
Soft pony key ring with too-tight string round neck, suggesting auto-erotic asphyxiation gone awry due to lack of opposable thumbs.
Blue teddy key ring bought at school fundraiser, or maybe puppy. Possibly both gender and species fluid.
About twenty-five items of Build a Bear clothing, including Dalmatian-pattern playsuit with inset sleeves, Velcro closure and tail, made by Lydia.
And this is just the final bag.
‘I just want to say, Lydia: well done for having that clear-out.’
‘Yeah, because I need the space for something else. Well, sort of . . .’
Can you guess what our eighteen-year-old daughter wants next in her life?
‘They’ve got some at the Emmaus Shop.’
A worthy venture, where knackered household appliances are reconditioned and sold on by the long-term unemployed, and the funds used for training them in useful skills.
She wants a freezer.
Immediately I envisage her opening the lid and loading in a whole deer, probably because I like venison and we haven’t had supper yet.
‘Just a small one. So I can keep my dead animals in it – for stuffing. And I don’t have to take up so much space in the family one.’
There’s currently a blue tit in there next to the ice cream, and another squirrel, plus there’s a fox pelt in a box beside the back door. Oh, and the woodpecker.
The landline had rung – a rare event in itself. Lawrence picked up.
‘Lydia, phone! A woodpecker for you: it’s coming round after lunch.’
I knew word had spread, but surely not to the extent that the local wildlife had begun turning itself in.
‘It was Mrs H from school,’ said Lydia. ‘She found it on the balcony outside the dining block. It must have flown into a window.’
The only creature more desperate to get in than the parents.
So we haven’t yet had to evict the prawns and chicken thighs. But I don’t want to make it too easy, especially as one of her friends rang last week to say she’d seen a dead fox in the road, and Lydia persuaded Peter to take her in the car to get it. He admitted he wasn’t fully behind the idea.
‘But I didn’t want to be a killjoy, you know. I didn’t want to be the Person Who Says No.’
‘God forbid: that’s my role.’
‘But there were quite a few flies round it.
Then to my relief a Highway Maintenance van pulled up and we hid behind a tree.’
‘So where’s this freezer going to go then . . .?’
‘Um . . .’
I say it can go in the shed. She gets a modestly sized one for £25 from her savings, and we also pick up some £1 DVDs.
‘You’ll have to rearrange things and tidy up to make space.’
‘Of course! Thank you! You won’t regret this, I promise.’
For some reason the phrase ‘you won’t regret this’ fills me with apprehension.
That autumn, Peter goes to Australia to see his old friend Jason, and brings her back a kangaroo skull – what else? – Jason found on his own land.
‘I suppose you didn’t find any whole pelts to stuff?’
‘Sorry, darling.’
‘This is great though!’
There’s just one teensy problem.
There’s something moving about inside.
Lydia puts it in a spare test tube she happens to have, and Peter calls his friend James, who has the most eclectic contacts list probably in the country.
‘I brought this kangaroo skull back from Melbourne, and there seems to be a very small live spider in it. Obviously, being Australian, it could be poisonous.’
Not to mention probably illegal. Of all the challenges I anticipated with teenagers, I can honestly say that the accidental importation of potentially lethal non-native arthropods in the partial skeletons of marsupials was not on the list.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘I probably know someone who can deal with this. I’ll pop round and get it.’
He puts it in a little box with some water, then emails a photograph to London Zoo, two pet shops and Heathrow Animal Reception, where thousands of impounded creatures live out their days in a kind of eternal transfer lounge. They’ll take it, but Heathrow’s a bit far, so he calls a pet shop in Wales, which puts him onto a man in Sutton, which is a lot nearer: a collector who has 170 in his otherwise normal terraced house. He takes the box, identifies it as a white-tailed spider – Lampona cylindrata, not fatal to humans – and gives James a medal: ‘For Services to Arachnology’.
‘Well done, spider,’ says Lydia, ‘surviving all that way. And James too.’
Thank God it was too small to stuff.
The woodpecker that came from school to us seemed an appropriate beginning of the end, as Churchill might have said, of Lydia’s fourteen years of formal education. For we have reached her last day of school, ever.
At 2 p.m. she will become a Neet – Not in Education, Employment or Training – and Peter and I will finally be Neeps: Not in Education, Employment or Parenting.
I watch her getting ready for the programme of Total Wipeout-style activities that’s been organized on the playing fields for the last day.
‘I’m so glad you didn’t listen to me,’ I say. ‘About the fringe.’
‘It’s part of growing up though, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘Stopping listening to your parents.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’
‘And going out and getting drunk all the time . . .’
I glance across at her.
‘JOKING.’
‘Yeah . . . But – don’t make that a template for the rest of your life.’
She looks at me and grins.
‘TOO LATE!’
And she’s gone.
Proceed to Checkout
The main difference between Lawrence’s sixteenth birthday and this, his twentieth, is that now he can cook. But to save him the hassle, I offer to order party food from M&S.
We sit and deliberate together over each item in the copious selection. One of the surprising and rather welcome side effects of his becoming a student is that he is reluctant to spend very much, even of our money.
‘Go on,’ I say. ‘Have two trays of wontons: it is your twentieth.’
Eventually, with a bit of persuasion, he chooses enough mini thingies for everyone to have at least three each, and we go to buy the drinks.
It’s only the day before the event that I realize I’ve had no confirmation email.
I have failed to check out! And the do is less than thirty-six hours away so we can’t order the wontons and party-size samosas and little prawn twiddly things.
‘I am so so sorry.’
‘Actually,’ he says, ‘that’s good in a way – because now I can do a barbecue.’
It is August after all, and we have a garden.
So we go and get a great pile of chicken breasts, which he marinates in oil and beer and various other things from Marlena Spieler’s Classic Barbecue and Grill Cook Book, and several packs of wraps. Then he makes fresh guacamole and tzatziki, and when his friends arrive, they can customize their own wraps.
Peter and I mind the barbecue, replenish the salad elements, eat the burned and too-small pieces of chicken and chat to his friends, in our new role as powerless constitutional monarchs brought out for festivals and public holidays.
The ones we’ve known since primary school bring us up to date with their lives, and I compliment the one who’s got something on SoundCloud – with a kind of filial satnav burbling in my ear: beware of uncool adjectives, stick to neutral terms like ‘great’, don’t compare it with some obscure track from the 1970s that no one’s heard of – and do NOT under any circumstances tell him you’ve been dancing round the kitchen to it.
I hope Lawrence notices how well I’m doing with the self-censorship. Succeeding in not copying my mother – ‘As it happens I do know how to keep secrets: for instance . . .’ – means he can’t praise me for what I haven’t said. But I will award myself a Non-Embarrassing half-blue.
At about ten, they all get ready to leave for a club. As part of his present we’re going to clear up.
As they all head in from the garden towards the front door, forming a loose line through the kitchen, they look a bit as though they’re off on a school outing, albeit one with roll-ups and bottles of beer. I slightly want to ask if they’ve all remembered their £1.50 to get a pencil in the museum shop.
Several say thank you for the party, and some even give us a hug.
‘We must treasure this moment,’ says Peter.
‘I’m treasuring,’ I say, as we scrape the dirty plates.
And afterwards it seems like a vignette of a death; the washing and mopping and roll-ups in the plant pots fade away and the beautiful, animated young faces remain.
Photo Finish
When they were babies, I began two photo albums. During the weekends and, later on, the school holidays, I’d take them out, have a look at the loose photos I’d thrown in, and resolve to start putting them in properly when I had time. The aim was to give them one each, to take with them when they moved out.
‘Because,’ as Lawrence said, ‘when we’re packing to go off to university, a massively huge photo album will be top of the list.’
Still I carried on, musing, choosing, swapping, and drifting off into reveries. It’s the ideal displacement activity and a harmless conduit for nostalgia.
I stop and look at one particular picture, of them laughing together on a beach. It was taken when they were only eleven and ten. But something about the pose, with Lawrence leaning up on one elbow, makes them appear older. It’s as if you can glimpse the teenagers within.
Lydia comes in and points out a picture of us on holiday in the Canary Islands.
‘You look really good there.’
‘Are you sure? I don’t think so at all.’
All I can see are my fat knees, that were once quite shapely. The day we got married I had great knees. The angle of the shot is unfortunate; I think Peter must have been crouching, so the shot looked up at my thighs, exacerbated by my too-short holiday skirt. On the plus side, taking photographs is the closest he ever gets to adoring me on bended knee.
And now she looks quite annoyed.
‘Yes! You look great! What’s wrong with you?’
And I realize, with a great fa
t whammy to the brain, that I have no more idea whether I look good or not than any other woman. Quite often, in fact, I only see the flaws. Me! Who’s always telling others to be more confident.
What makes this really unsettling is that when I look at myself in the mirror I’m not repulsed. I don’t think I’m ugly, wizened or fat. I think I look all right for someone who eats a bit more than necessary and could take more exercise. But when I speak, none of that comes out.
‘Of course!’ you say. ‘You don’t want to be boasting. You don’t want to go around like that woman in the Daily Mail who thought women resented her for being too good looking’ – and who they did resent, but for being a big-headed show-off.
No. But I have a daughter. And it should be the law that all women with girls in their care are forcibly prevented from self-criticism – of any physical aspect of themselves whatsoever, unless it’s ‘Got a bit sunburned there,’ or, ‘Stubbed my toe tripping over the doorway of that pub.’
Yet somehow, I – who eat what I like, don’t go on diets, never apologize for the state of my bottom, or any other part of me, and have raised a daughter who eats normally – turn out to have the same affliction as millions of others: I look at myself through shit-tinted glasses.
And she has brought me to this realization.
I thought I was immune. I honestly, sincerely believed I didn’t have the Problem.
‘Me? I’m wonderfully rational and balanced: I don’t hate my body at all.’
And I don’t. It’s just that I have some sort of troll inside, rewriting my lines.
Which is such a pity, because all these years I’ve been telling Lydia how lovely she is, my Inner Female has been pulling in the opposite direction.
Lydia says:
Confessions of a Bad Mother: The Teenage Years Page 21
