by Marian Keyes
What else? I made vegetarian moussaka – Christ alive, what a song-and-dance! I made it because Shirley (beloved mother-in-law) made it for us the night before the big party and it was delicious. (Even though it includes lentils. Mind you, I’m a big fan of lentils, I’m prepared to defend them because I think they get a very bad press.) I asked (like a lick-arsey daughter-in-law) for the recipe and although she warned me it was ‘a bit fiddly’, nothing prepared me for the hour-and-three-quarter marathon in the kitchen. Aubergines – yes, aubergines! Putting salt on them, them draining them and whatnot. Then the lentils – two different types – took ages. And when all that stuff was done, I had to make a topping with flour and eggs and ricotta cheese. Came out nice though.
Mam and Dad went to Canada on their holiers, and Dad was in mortal fear of losing his luggage, and in fairness he is right to be afraid because he is related to me, who has the worst luggage karma in the world. I lose my bags so often that I don’t bother going to the belt any more (honest to God). I go straight to the desk and start filling in the forms.
Part of their trip included a cruise to Alaska. (When they got back they complained to me about the cold – it’s Alaska, for the love of God! What were they expecting? Balmy sunshine?) However, when they got on the ship, Dad’s bag had gone missing! Yes, Mam’s two bags turned up but Dad’s was in the wind. He created ‘merry hell’ (good phrase) by all accounts, kicking up a right fuss at reception, demanding to see the captain, no less, and threatening to get an injunction to stop the ship from sailing until his bag was located.
Sadly, the bag turned up before he got a chance to put his words into actions, but in fairness, is it any wonder I’m anxious, considering what my parents are like?
Meanwhile, my rude good health continues. Apart from a small spell of cystitis I’m in top-notch condition, which is as it should be considering the ENORMOUS AMOUNT of supplements I take every day – so many I’m actually ashamed to list them, but anyway: magnesium (to stave off sugar cravings); spirulina (TONS of it, on Vilma’s advice); vitamin B6; vitamin B5; calcium (to guard against osteoporosis); omega 3s (because you have to, you are no one if you don’t, all the fashionable people will laugh at you); acidophilus (to keep digestion in tip-top condition).
And there’s more, but I don’t want to seem neurotic, which of course I am, but no one wants to look it.
Previously unpublished.
August
The universe is wrong!
Pinkness!
As I write, I’m just after breaking my laptop and I am typing this at Himself’s office computer. I’d just switched off the laptop after a morning’s work and accidentally dropped it on the floor. Now, I am always dropping things, I am clumsy and careless, but I didn’t expect it to be BROKEN, because if I broke everything I dropped I would have nothing left at all! But yes, I DID break the fecker. A lump fell off it and the battery fell out and even Himself, who can fix everything, couldn’t fix it.
He has just ferried it off to the people in Cabinteely, who fixed the main computer when it pure crashed a couple of months ago. He thinks it will be at least a week before it’s fixed, and to be quite honest, I’m upset. Clearly I regard the computer as an extension of myself and the work has been going well – slow but well – and I am really getting into my new character Marnie and now is not a good time to have to stop. Really, it’s not.
Some might take the view that perhaps the universe is telling me it’s time to take a break, but no, the universe is wrong.
Ontra noo, I suspect the universe hasn’t a clue. Everyone thinks the universe is this wise old yoke, who knows everything, but I reckon it is a con job. The universe probably has Alzheimer’s, because this is not a good time for me to stop work, at all.
Then I went upstairs to do my meditation, in the hope that I might ‘centre’ myself (I’m not sure if I’m making fun of myself or not. In a way I am, but in another way I take it all quite seriously).
I went to set my Shaunie the Sheep kitchen timer – I’ve stuck with him even after he let me down that other time – but to my alarm his head was on back to front. (How?!) I set it, but held out little hope, and sure enough, Shaunie didn’t brrringg in twenty-five minutes but clicked to sixty and stared at me in shame, his head once more back to front. I’ll have to get another timer, but I can’t bring myself to throw Shaunie out. I will put him on a shelf with some other broken things, as a reward for long service.
So what else has been happening? Well, it’s been a busy time – months can be long things, can they not? – and I have much to report, which I’ll try to do as quickly as possible before Himself comes back and ousts me from his chair.
(Speaking of Himself, the football season has started, and as you know at the end of last season Himself’s team (Watford) got promoted to the Premeer Division and I wasn’t happy, suspecting that they were in over their heads. They’ve played three matches since the season began, they have lost two and drawn one, and I have a knot in my stomach every time they play. Himself is being quite bullish and gung-ho, but I’m not enjoying it one bit.)
We’ve been awash – yes, AWASH – with visitors. Ljiljana arrived from Prague, with Ema (six), Luka (four) and Zaga (sixty-five). (Zaga is Ljiljana’s mother. When I was at the Belgrade book fair she fed me so much on two successive nights that I nearly wept from fullness. This was my chance to get revenge.)
God, how weird! Ljiljana has just rung. And me just writing about her! It is funny being in Himself’s office, in the hub, with phones ringing, etc. Normally I wouldn’t know about anything until I came downstairs at the end of the day. I told her the sorry story of my smithereened laptop and how upset I was, and she said the next stage would be denial, then anger, then I would say, ‘Feck this for a game of soldiers, I’m going shopping!’ (Acceptance, I believe that stage is called.)
So, in instalments, we went to Lahinch. First Tadhg, Susan, Lilers and Luka. Then Rita-Anne, Jimmy, Ema and Zaga, then, bringing up the rear, Himself and me. Lovely, lovely time, except a consignment of them went out in the boat to see the Cliffs of Moher and nearly drowned. Honest to God! I stayed back in the house, working, and the next thing I heard a helicopter clattering overhead, which I just thought was some smug, fat golfer in a visor and hideous clothes, getting choppered into the Lahinch golf course. But no! It was the Air and Sea Rescue Helicopter, and it flew so close to the window that myself and a rescue man in a red jumpsuit made actual eye-contact, then he winked – yes, WINKED, at my age! – at me.
It eventually transpired that it wasn’t Lilers/Zaga/Himself et al who needed rescuing, but it was bad enough. Huge waves had their boat almost on its side. Zaga puked, Lilers, Ema and Luka went to bed as soon as they got back, and even Himself, who has a cast-iron constitution, needed a pint of stout and a plate of chips to settle his stomach.
There had been bold talk of going to Inisheer the following day, but these plans were abruptly abandoned with Zaga stating she was never again getting on a boat for as long as she lived.
After a week we came back to Dublin and there wasn’t enough room for me in the car so I had to get the train, which I was v. excited about, as I was hoping for ‘local colour’, entertaining anecdotes, etc. Sadly, the only thing that happened was that I and another woman were sitting on a bench at Ennis station, eating a scone (me), and the next thing a man in a hat emerged from the stationmaster’s office (possibly the stationmaster) with a yellow measuring tape (one of the ones that can stand by themselves, fyi). ‘Girls,’ he said, ‘would you mind getting up. I want to measure the bench.’ We duly got up and he duly measured the bench
(four foot six) and I would love, love, love to pretend that this was just his hobby, something to do to pass the time when he’d finished the sudoku in the paper, but then he said, ‘We’re getting more benches for the platform, I needed to see how long it was.’
Once I got on the train, no one addressed a single word to me for the three and a half hours it took to get to Dublin. I was quite bitter about this because Anne Marie once got a bus to Donegal and sat beside a woman who opened the conversation by saying loudly, ‘Suck my dick! Yes! Suck my dick! That’s what they sprayed on my fence, the local gurriers. Suck my dick!’
However, I did have a TREMENJUSSLY chatty taxi driver from the station, and we complained at length about the Irish Government and the Gardaí and their swizziness in extracting millions in speeding fines from the poor people of Ireland for doing 43ks in a 40k zone. We were in firm agreement that there are only seven roads in Ireland where it is ever possible to do above 40, because the rest of the time we are stuck in gridlock and crawling along at 8ks an hour, and that the coppers position themselves with their cruel little machines on these seven roads. Then the taxi driver changed the conversation to mackerel fishing, which I did not enjoy half as much.
Now, if I may talk a little about Ema and Luka – I love them hugely, they’re very beautiful, inside and also outside, with gorgeous skin and eyes and hair and everything, legs and all, that sort of stuff. Ema is a girl’s girl and I had a lovely time with her. I had a lovely time with Luka too, but every time I tried to kiss him he made a face and ran away, whereas Ema hung around with me and made me put down the roof on the car and drive around listening to Sister Sledge and wearing pink sunglasses. She said frequently, ‘We have the same taste, Mariana.’ (That’s what she calls me – Mariana. Is that not gorgeous?) Then, when we were washing our hands in the loo in Roly’s, the soap was pink and she said, ‘Pink! It’s our colour!’
I missed Ema very much when she went back. I would love to share a flat with her and I’ve decided that if Himself leaves me, that is precisely what I will do. She’s brilliant company, and we could sit around all day long, watching Bounding (seminal line: ‘Pink, pink, what’s wrong with pink?’) and swapping pink lip gloss and trying on pink shoes. Now and again, we would don our pink fairy wings and put lovely spells on each other with our lovely pink wands. (I think the child has a gift: she put a spell on Susan so that she would pass her driving test – and she did!) We would eat only pink foods – cranberries (and thereby keep cystitis at bay – mind you, she is only six, she mightn’t be in as much danger as I am), ham, smoked salmon and strawberry-flavoured Starbursts. (I don’t like strawberries, but I like things with fake strawberry flavouring.)
Speaking of cystitis and thereby moving the conversation to matters gynaecological, my monthly visitor was very late, so late that I wondered if I was pregnant and actually did a test (there were a couple in the drawer left over from more hopeful days), but I wasn’t, then I decided I must be starting the menopause. Then I discovered that I had my dates wrong by a week.
No sooner had the Praguers returned home than Himself’s parents arrived. Shirley is doing very well, she says she feels better than she has in years, which is a massive relief to hear.
Then I gammied my back. I tried on my new baggy-sleeved top that I got in London, and it’s sort of Russiany looking, and I was so overcome with its lovely newness and Russianness that I decided to try a little Cossacky dancing, as you do. Inevitably it ended in tears with me falling over and damaging my back. I have pulled a muscle, which keeps spasming like a jack-in-the-box.
Culinary news this month: I did an Introduction to Vietnamese cookery class and an Introduction to Indian cooking one. And I made a risotto, the first one I ever made, and it turned out very well – God, it’s scary though, isn’t it. I read Alastair Little’s cookbook and it said for risotto you must adopt ‘a rigid and unwavering methodology’ or some such and I thought, ‘For God’s sake, it’s only a bit of rice!’ However, I DID adopt the rigid and unwavering methodology and it was v. nice – Himself said it was ‘a triumph’. He is a tremendously easy man to please, thank Christ.
Oh God, he’s back and he wants his computer, he needs it to do the tax return. I have to go. I’m going to France on 10 Sept for a walking holiday – this time in the Loire Valley. I will report. Also, on 10 Sept I will be forty-three and I love, love, love getting older. My only regret is that I am not fifty-seven. Or ninety-two.
Previously unpublished.
September
La Belle France!
Birthday passes ‘peacefully’!
I had un visit merveilleux in France. Much fancier this year (in the Loire Valley). Staying in chateaus (or chateaux, if we want to be correct about it, and why not?) that have been turned into les hôtels and dining like kings chaque evening on 28-course dinners. Despite walking up to fifteen miles a day, it was not enough to cancel out all the grub and I am now in familiar territory where I hate looking in the mirror, hate having to get dressed and am terrified to weigh myself. But it was worth it!
Now, in an abrupt change of subject, I’ve had an idea for a retro, 1970s-style sitcom. You know I said that I’d love to move into a flat with Ema (six-year-old niece) and surround ourselves with pink? Well, Himself said one evening in France when he had a fair bit of drink on him that if I was moving in with Ema he was going to ‘throw his lot in’ with Luka (five) and Milinko (seventy). (Milinko is Luka and Ema’s granddad, is father to Ljiljana, father-in-law to my brother Niall and husband of Zaga (sixty-five).) The thing about both Luka and Milinko is that they are very good-looking. When me and Himself were in Belgrade, we looked through old photo albums and there were loads of Milinko looking like Errol Flynn, and even now he has a roguish twinkle in his eye.
But Himself said he’d miss me and that was when the whole sitcom thing arose. We said we’d live next door to each other – and that’s the name of the crappy sitcom – THE BOYS NEXT DOOR!
We spent most of our temps en France detailing it. Right, in one EXTREMELY PINK flat live me, Ema and Zaga. We have three single beds in a very pink bedroom. Zaga speaks no English (except for her catchphrase) and does an awful lot of cleaning. Her catchphrase is ‘You STUPID boy’ accompanied by a cuff to the head of the offender. Zaga has an amazing cleaning cupboard, a bit like a Batcave, and when she touches a special mop, a bed leaps from the wall, all made up with lovely pink bedclothes. She sleeps in there if me or Ema have visitors. (More of which later.)
Zaga is the most popular of all the characters and the live studio audience goes wild, clapping and cheering, whenever she comes on. Also, ‘You STUPID boy’ becomes a worldwide catchphrase, with politicians and everyone saying it.
Right, Ema (six). Very, very pink and her catchphrase is ‘Is it pink?’
Me (forty-three). I have no catchphrase yet. Myself and Himself decided on one for me one night over dinner in the Château de Pray but we’ve forgotten it. Himself had a fair bit of drink on him, but I’ve no excuse. I’ve suggested that my temporary catchphrase be ‘One day we’ll all be dead and none of this will matter’, as I do say it a lot, but Himself thinks it lacks catchiness.
Okay, then, the boys’ flat. It is moodily lit, with low sofas, shagpile carpets, a Scalextric race track and an actual bar, stocked only with brandy. The brandy is Milinko’s, because when we were in Belgrade he offered it to Himself in such a great accent that we’ve been saying it ever since. It’s impossible to recreate on the page, but I’ll try: ‘Brrrrrrrennndy?’ Accompanied, of course, by a roguish twinkle. That is Milinko’s catchphrase.
Luka’s
catchphrase is ‘My trousers …’ Said sort of dismally. This is because he has lost them. Again. He is standing there in his jocks, indicating his trouserless state with a fatalistic hand gesture which implies that trousers are unpredictable beasts, faithless characters, liable to leave you at a moment’s notice, regardless of the embarrassment and heartache their departure causes you. This relates back to his visit to Ireland in August 2005 (he was four). He had a long anorak, which came to mid-thigh, and his jeans were a bit too loose for him and we’d be walking around Lahinch and every now and then he’d stop and say sadly to Himself, ‘Himself, my trousers …’ and Himself would look down and Luka’s anorak would still be on, protecting his modesty, but his jeans would be down around his ankles.
In THE BOYS NEXT DOOR, Luka will lose his trousers every episode: he might have to leave them behind when departing from a lady’s boudoir at short notice (her husband came home or she asked Luka when they were getting engaged); he might get them caught on barbed wire while sneaking over a back wall; he might lose them in a poker game; he might get mugged for them … The list is endless.
And then there’s Himself. He is the voice of reason in the boys’ flat. His catchphrase is, ‘Ah lads, have sense.’ To which Luka usually replies, ‘You’re not mines daddy!’ (As happened, in actual real life, on his last visit to Ireland), then they leap up and have a Darth Vader/Luke Skywalker battle recreation.
We have put together a synopsis of the first six episodes, to pitch to TV companies:
Episode one. Himself gets locked out of his flat and the other two boys are too ‘busy’ within to hear him knocking, so he has to come and spend the night in the girls’ flat, sleeping in Zaga’s bed (Zaga stays in the mop-cave). Unfortunately for Himself, Ema and I are doing (pink, of course) face masks and other 1970s-style girlish things, and Himself is obliged to do them too. Much laughter.
