No! I Don't Want to Join a Book Club: Diary of a Sixtieth Year by Virginia Ironside
Authors: Virginia Ironside
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die. Dream on.
Later
When I got down to the kitchen I found that I had no milk left. I have an awful feeling that Michelle took my last drop. I felt enraged. First because I had no milk but secondly because I find it so irritating to get upset over half an inch of milk. It is very difficult to convey to anyone that it is not the milk I mind, but the fact that I have to get dressed and go to the shop to buy more supplies in order to have a cup of tea. In the event, I tied my nightdress up tight with my dressing-gown cord, put my coat on over it, stuffed my bare feet into a pair of shoes and staggered round the corner to the supermarket. Apart from my hair sticking up on end I didn’t look much different from how I always do.
The sky was pouring with spring sunshine and, in the street, the imam of the local mosque bowed to me and said: “Good morning!” He is perfectly charming, with a long gray beard, and he was wearing a cricketing jersey over his dress and had a lovely embroidered hat on top of his head. So I didn’t feel too embarrassed about my own weird attire that day.
Last week, when I was sweeping leaves away from the road outside my house, he took the broom from me and insisted on doing it himself.
“As-Salaam Alaikum,” he said. I replied, feeling very proud of myself: “Wa-Aleikum Salaam.” But this does not mean that I am learning Arabic. Those three words are going to be the very limit to my foreign-language learning in later life. And who knows, they might save me from death when I am kidnapped by terrorists in Iraq.
I am very lucky to have the mosque so close. It means that a) I will never get hit by a terrorist bomb and b) I have the pleasure of looking out of the window in the summer and seeing all the congregation out in the garden, praying while facing my house, it being in the direct line to Mecca.
I noticed to my surprise that the Kwik-Fit garage on the corner of the street had been boarded up and was for sale. Immediately went into panic mode. Just hope it’s not bought by someone who wants to turn it into a rock music venue with twenty-four-hour drinking. Will have to alert the Residents’ Association, of which I am chair. I was chairman until someone said it was sexist, so I had to turn into a chair.
I thought I had got away with my disguise and was hurrying home with my milk, when I was stopped by George, the black guy across the road. He is very tall, with two teeth missing and one gold one.
He has two very nice reckless sons. But this time he had a terrible tale to tell. The man downstairs, he said, had threatened him.
“My neighbor,” he shook his head. “He mad! You know what he do the other day?”
“No. What?” I asked. I knew this neighbor. A nasty piece of work of about sixty-five, covered in tattoos, with a bald head, who lives below George. Once he asked me to come in and measure his curtains for him “because my daughters won’t ’ave nuffink to do with me.” He is thick, whingeing, tough and lonely. When I wrote a few days ago that any man who turned his attention on me would set me sparkling and simpering, I was not including this creep across the road. Nor, actually, bearded counselors.
“A policeman came for one of my boys,” said George. “And my neighbor, he let them in the door! So I came down next day and I say: “When policeman ring my bell, you don’t let them in, you leave it to me to let them in, you hear?” So he get most unpleasant and that night, you know what, he bring a friend with a baseball bat and they come upstairs and they beat me op!”
“But he’s disabled!” I said. “He’s got a sticker on his car!”
“Disabled—nonsense,” he replied. “He’s a bad man. I don’t speak to him no more.”
When I got back I found that my dressing-gown cord had come adrift and my nightdress had been trailing on the pavement like a ball gown. God knows what they thought in the shop.
May 10th
Went to the Tate, where I was meeting
Later
When I got down to the kitchen I found that I had no milk left. I have an awful feeling that Michelle took my last drop. I felt enraged. First because I had no milk but secondly because I find it so irritating to get upset over half an inch of milk. It is very difficult to convey to anyone that it is not the milk I mind, but the fact that I have to get dressed and go to the shop to buy more supplies in order to have a cup of tea. In the event, I tied my nightdress up tight with my dressing-gown cord, put my coat on over it, stuffed my bare feet into a pair of shoes and staggered round the corner to the supermarket. Apart from my hair sticking up on end I didn’t look much different from how I always do.
The sky was pouring with spring sunshine and, in the street, the imam of the local mosque bowed to me and said: “Good morning!” He is perfectly charming, with a long gray beard, and he was wearing a cricketing jersey over his dress and had a lovely embroidered hat on top of his head. So I didn’t feel too embarrassed about my own weird attire that day.
Last week, when I was sweeping leaves away from the road outside my house, he took the broom from me and insisted on doing it himself.
“As-Salaam Alaikum,” he said. I replied, feeling very proud of myself: “Wa-Aleikum Salaam.” But this does not mean that I am learning Arabic. Those three words are going to be the very limit to my foreign-language learning in later life. And who knows, they might save me from death when I am kidnapped by terrorists in Iraq.
I am very lucky to have the mosque so close. It means that a) I will never get hit by a terrorist bomb and b) I have the pleasure of looking out of the window in the summer and seeing all the congregation out in the garden, praying while facing my house, it being in the direct line to Mecca.
I noticed to my surprise that the Kwik-Fit garage on the corner of the street had been boarded up and was for sale. Immediately went into panic mode. Just hope it’s not bought by someone who wants to turn it into a rock music venue with twenty-four-hour drinking. Will have to alert the Residents’ Association, of which I am chair. I was chairman until someone said it was sexist, so I had to turn into a chair.
I thought I had got away with my disguise and was hurrying home with my milk, when I was stopped by George, the black guy across the road. He is very tall, with two teeth missing and one gold one.
He has two very nice reckless sons. But this time he had a terrible tale to tell. The man downstairs, he said, had threatened him.
“My neighbor,” he shook his head. “He mad! You know what he do the other day?”
“No. What?” I asked. I knew this neighbor. A nasty piece of work of about sixty-five, covered in tattoos, with a bald head, who lives below George. Once he asked me to come in and measure his curtains for him “because my daughters won’t ’ave nuffink to do with me.” He is thick, whingeing, tough and lonely. When I wrote a few days ago that any man who turned his attention on me would set me sparkling and simpering, I was not including this creep across the road. Nor, actually, bearded counselors.
“A policeman came for one of my boys,” said George. “And my neighbor, he let them in the door! So I came down next day and I say: “When policeman ring my bell, you don’t let them in, you leave it to me to let them in, you hear?” So he get most unpleasant and that night, you know what, he bring a friend with a baseball bat and they come upstairs and they beat me op!”
“But he’s disabled!” I said. “He’s got a sticker on his car!”
“Disabled—nonsense,” he replied. “He’s a bad man. I don’t speak to him no more.”
When I got back I found that my dressing-gown cord had come adrift and my nightdress had been trailing on the pavement like a ball gown. God knows what they thought in the shop.
May 10th
Went to the Tate, where I was meeting
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