I recollect my friend, when I observed Hodge was a fine cat, saying ‘Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I like better than this’; and then, as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, ‘But he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.’
I think I prefer fine cats to clever cats. Which is my way of apologizing to my cats, should they ever read this. But imagine if your cat really were cleverer than you, and kept breezing in to say, ‘Did you mean to leave that tap running in the bathroom?’ and ‘You really must read this TLS; it told me quite a few things about Tennyson that I didn’t know.’ Much better that they consider reading a mug’s game and tap-regulation none of their business. All of this IQ testing makes you realize, with a sigh of relief, that brains are not everything.
The Single Woman Stays at Home and Goes Quietly Mad
To some people, Wimbledon is a tennis tournament. To me, it is a sort of binge. Confronted with a mere two weeks of fantastic tennis on the TV, I approach it with the same gimme-gimme intensity as the competition winner allowed three minutes to fill a shopping trolley with free food, or the fat boy attempting a speed record for the consumption of cream buns.
‘More!’ I demand, each evening at 8.15 when BBC2 stops transmitting, and the light begins to fade. The cats exchange glances, as if to say ‘She’s off,’ but I take no notice. I want more, don’t you see, more. More matches, more coverage, more – I don’t know, more male knees. And above all, I want the very beautiful Pat Cash to remain prominent in the men’s singles tournament, despite the unfortunate fact that he was knocked out last Thursday.
Bingeing, of course, is something you do on your own. It is therefore one of the great pitfalls of single life. When there is nobody to say, ‘I think that’s enough Wimbledon for one day,’ you don’t know where to stop. Leaving aside those knees for a moment, let’s imagine you had an addiction to – I don’t know, to fruit jelly, but did not live alone. Well, you would simply be obliged to curb those unnatural wobbly cravings, wouldn’t you? It would be no good leaving a nonchalant bowl of Rowntree’s black cherry on the coffee table, because the pretence (‘We were out of olives, so I thought why not’) would fool nobody.
But being single means that not only can you buy jelly in telltale catering quantities; you can make it by the gallon-load in the bath, and fill your entire living-room with great amber columns of it (if you want to), so that it resembles a confectioner’s Monument Valley. Similarly, you can watch two channels of Wimbledon simultaneously, and then the evening highlights, and then your video of the highlights, without anyone objecting that it’s getting out of hand. Believe me, it can happen. Last autumn I conceived a crush on an American leading actor and, in the absence of any restraining sensibility, had reached the jelly-columns-in-the-living-room stage before you could say ‘Jeff’.
It was alarming. One minute I was quite normal, the next I was popping out to see Jeff’s latest film every time I could contrive a free slot at 1.10pm, 5.05pm or 8.30pm. I considered finding out from Mastermind whether ‘the films of Jeff’ would be an acceptable specialist subject. And sometimes I pretended that I needed to cross Leicester Square on the way from Baker Street to Euston, so that I could accidentally find myself quite near the big Jeff pictures outside the Odeon. I was on a binge.
Virtually overnight, my flat turned into a 24-hour Jeff season-cum-masterclass. Friends popped in and found themselves being pushed roughly into seats while I snatched up the video control.
‘Watch the way he says ‘‘Small world’’ in this scene.’
‘Oh God. More Jeff.’
‘Have I shown you the bit where he glances away to one side, and sort of rubs his nose before the ‘‘Listen, princess’’ speech? It’s brilliant. The man’s a genius.’
In the end, they gave up expecting me to talk about anything else; instead they patiently cut nice Jeff pictures out of magazines for me, bless their hearts. After all, we are each entitled to find our own peculiar way of dealing with celibacy, and it turned out that this was mine. Jeff. I was even happy. ‘This is great,’ I said. ‘The last time I had a crush on someone it was in the pre-video age, but now I can watch Jeff deliver the ‘‘Small world’’ line fifteen times together if I want to.’
‘Mmm,’ they agreed.
And now it is Wimbledon, and I get so excited I expect tennis on all channels, all day. More. I get so involved that I even relish the on-screen computer statistics, tabling the number of times each player has changed his shirt or wiped his face with his wrist-band. In the old days, when Dan Maskell said, ‘Seventh double-fault,’ I would think, ‘Oh crikey, what an old bore.’ But now I exclaim, ‘Seven!’ and get angry with the commentators for making nothing sensible of such a thrilling statistic. ‘Ah, now, seven double-faults,’ said a Dull Donald during a match last week. ‘Lucky for some, but perhaps just a passing statistic in a famous victory.’ I could not believe it. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I yelled. ‘Good grief!’
Thankfully the Wimbledon binge contains built-in limits, and will be over by Monday. I do not watch tennis at any other time of year: say the words ‘French Open’ and ‘Prudential-Bache Securities Tennis Classic’, and the pulse-rate does not lurch. It is the annual two-week tournament of Wimbledon – the stars! the knees! the knock-out! summer in the city! – that is so unputdownable. It makes me think of warm summer fairs and dances in Thomas Hardy; the travelling circus setting up tents for solstice-week on some pagan hillsite, and the whole town queuing up nightly on hot dusty grass to grab it before it goes. I am getting carried away, I suppose. But honestly, for an all-alone binge, Wimbledon is almost as good as sculpting indoor jelly stacks. And a lot less messy.
What does it mean, anyway: ‘Do not remove lid before cooking’? There you are, in the kitchen, cook-chill dinner in your hand, oven nicely heated to 180 degrees, saliva glands triggered to the point of no return, and you receive this gnomic instruction about the lid which stops you dead in your tracks. Does it mean take the lid off, or don’t take the lid off? Why does life have to be so complicated?
‘I’m cooking it now,’ I reason (I have to talk it through, slowly, usually sitting down). ‘And I didn’t take the lid off before. Which was right. Hmm. All right so far, then. So perhaps I should take it off now. But perhaps they mean not to take it off until after it’s cooked. But then of course I will take it off when it’s cooked, won’t I, ha ha, because otherwise I couldn’t eat it. Hmm. So why would they mention it? I mean, if I didn’t take the lid off then I’d have to throw it away uneaten, and all that cooking would have been a waste of time. Hmm. And they show a serving suggestion on the box, so they can’t mean for you not to get the food out, otherwise they’d show a picture of a foil box in a bin. Hmm. And another thing …’
This goes on until the ghost of Bertrand Russell whooshes through the kitchen (screaming what sounds like ‘For Pete’s sake’) and dashes the box to the ground. It’s usually Russell, but sometimes it’s Wittgenstein. I have lost a lot of dinners that way.
As a consumer, one often finds oneself on the receiving end of superfluous advice, and I suppose it is a measure of one’s mental health how one deals with it. Buying a couple of ice-cube trays the other day, for example, a friend of mine discovered an interesting household tip on the packaging: ‘Keep a tray in the ice-box for those occasional drinks, and keep another in a chest freezer in case of unexpected callers or a surprise party!’ Could have worked that out for myself, thought my friend – but then she is a sensible, well-adjusted person who does not experience semantic vertigo over the removal of tin-foil lids. A more neurotic and literal-minded consumer (i.e. me) would have read this ice-tray advice on the bus home, and been obliged to go back to buy a chest freezer.
My hobby, by the way, is replicating serving suggestions. You know: I study the picture on the packet and re-create it with the real food. It is an unusual and creative pastime, I like to think. Sometimes, with a frozen dinner, the serving suggestion seems to b
e that you just take the food out of the dish and put it on a plate with a sprig of parsley, which is a bit too easy and not much of a challenge, quite honestly. But sometimes you have to add new potatoes or peas or something, and a bottle of wine in the background on a chequered tablecloth, and then you can spend quite a lot of time getting the composition just right. I have never told anybody this before.
Sometimes, just for a change, I defy the consumer recommendations. For example, recently on a bottle of hair conditioner I came across the advice: ‘And then just arrange your hair in its usual style!’ And I thought, well, I shan’t then, and I put my head in a bucket instead. I thought the advice was slightly redundant, in retrospect (from inside the bucket). I mean, if they hadn’t said anything I would have arranged my hair in its ‘usual style’ without even thinking about it. I wonder how they know where to draw the line, these people. Perhaps there are other bottles which advise, ‘Arrange your hair in its usual style, and then have a nice cup of cocoa’. Or, ‘Arrange your hair in its usual style, and then take a holiday in the West Country’.
Some manufacturers of prepared meals tell you that, after cooking, you should empty contents on to a plate. Before long they will also tell you to eat contents, burp (optional), wash up the plate, turn off the lights and lock the back door before going to bed. People are not being credited with much initiative, it seems to me. But then I am clearly susceptible, because I read all small print, listen to all advice. ‘Serve chilled,’ says the gazpacho carton, so I go out and stand in the rain without a hat. The strange thing is that when I come back in, the last thing I want to eat is some cold soup.
Recently I read some advice for people living on their own. I thought it would be about creating a helpful mental attitude, but it said things such as ‘Don’t open the door to strangers’ and ‘Have baths on a regular basis’. I was reminded of a student journalist who once shadowed me for a day and who told me that the lecturers on the journalism course had given her some pretty good advice. ‘What do they tell you to do when you interview somebody?’ I asked, hoping for some useful interrogation tips. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘they say don’t forget to take your bus fare. And always have a sandwich with you in case of emergency.’
So that’s it, then. I don’t open the door to strangers, and I keep taking the baths. I arrange my hair in its usual style, and I empty contents on to a plate. I carry a sandwich at all times. It’s all you can do, really. I remember that I used to pass a doorway on the way to work each day, where I saw a little sign: ‘Speak into the microphone.’ And even if I was late, I would say ‘Oh, all right then,’ and think of another old Max Miller routine to regale it with.
In the early 1980s, when I was a compulsive Blue Peter viewer (recording it while at work, and priding myself on not missing a single show), there was a very upsetting Thursday evening which I shall never forget. There I was, safe in the usual items (potted biography of Louis Braille narrated by Valerie Singleton; how to make a Dinky Toy car-park out of a cornflake packet and a drinking straw), when suddenly Simon Groom announced brightly, ‘And today we reach the letter M in our Dogs’ Alphabet.’ I felt as though my entire world had been tugged from under me. Did he say ‘Dogs’ Alphabet’? What Dogs’ flipping Alphabet was this, then?
I remember standing up abruptly from my working-girl TV dinner, and spilling jelly and custard on the carpet. I choked on some hundreds-and-thousands. I was so outraged that I virtually ignored the ensuing scenes of a large mastiff dragging a Blue Peter presenter skidding across the studio floor, knocking over those triangular stands with teddies on, amid reassuring shouts of ‘Ha ha, everything is under control.’ I was too angry to enjoy it. ‘When did you do the letter L?’ I shouted, in a sneering tone. ‘Nineteen seventy-two?’
So it is with some trepidation that I announce that today we reach the letter H in our Single Life role-model series. Ahem. The choice is wide: Heidi, Miss Havisham, Hinge and Brackett, Harvey the six-foot rabbit. Oh yes. Each tells you so much about the advantages of the unmarried state – in which you can be mad, Swiss, invisible or purely imaginary, and can run around with your hair on fire. But actually I have invented the Single Life role-model series because I want to discuss the little silhouette woman in Hello! magazine who illustrates the films-on-TV page, and she is such a strange phenomenon that I couldn’t see how else to bring the subject up.
She speaks to me, this lonely figure; I don’t know why. Next to the review of each film appears this little illustrated woman, who is evidently watching the TV from a firm 1960s low-armed chair in an empty room. She is wearing outdoor shoes and a knee-length skirt, and she is reacting with bold body language to the quality of the films she is watching. I can imagine her watching that famous Blue Peter episode alongside me, and expressing the whole thing more eloquently, and without words – a hand cupped to her ear (‘What’s this?’); her arms folded in front of her (‘I don’t believe it’); she shakes a fist (‘Someone will pay’). She is a mime, you see, this woman. Her body is her tool.
Her role is this. When the film is very good, she stands up and applauds enthusiastically; when the film is entertaining she leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands, possibly holding her breath. When it is only fair, she sits back, with her hands in her lap. And when it is boring, she sticks her legs out and flings back her head, as though she has been shot.
I have some quibbles with the authenticity of these reactions, of course. Personally, I lean forward with my head in my hands when the TV is terrible, not good. I jump out of my seat only when I want to ring up Blue Peter and give it a piece of my mind. When the telly is exciting, I lie back happily with a cat on my chest; and when it is excellent, I slide down so far in the chair that the only thing vertical is the top half of my head.
But the compelling thing about this woman is not the form but the intensity of her reactions. She concentrates without let-up, whether the stuff is good or not. In the course of a week’s films she leans forwards, leans back, stands up, claps her hands, gets shot, leans forward and leans back – but she never stops watching. Why did Hello! choose this figure? I suspect because she is the antithesis of the couch potato. She is slim and active and self-possessed, and she would never be caught dribbling hot Ribena down her neck by trying to drink it without sitting up – which is what I do, now I come to think of it, while reading Hello!
She gives the lie to all those worthy sociology projects, in which closed-circuit cameras are rigged up next to people’s television sets, to observe how broadcasting is treated in the home. Through the fishy lens, you see the ghostly figures of Mum and Dad wandering in, reading the paper, blinking stupidly at the screen while exciting car-chase noises and gun shots emanate from it, and occasionally pointing at the picture and saying, ‘I know that bloke. He was in, you know, whatsit called. Yeah, he was,’ before wandering out again.
I have never seen one of these experiments applied to a person who lives alone, but I think it would be rather different, and a bit disturbing, because of the aforementioned intensity of response: ‘What Dogs’ flipping Alphabet?’ ‘God, I hate Noel Edmonds!’ ‘Why are the weather forecasts so short, for heavens’ sake!’ ‘They’ll never get a self-respecting Dinky car in a car-park made out of cornflake packets!’ and so on.
I have great hopes for this woman in Hello! I feel she has room for development, and an obvious life of her own. Her little figure could start popping up elsewhere in the magazine, responding to the articles with exaggerated yawns while reading in the bath, or peering terribly closely with a magnifying glass at the telephoto pictures of the King of Spain.
And sometimes, of course, she could fling the magazine aside, turn off the TV, kick off the sensible shoes, and perform the polka with the cat in her arms, the way ordinary single people do. Go for it, my little friend. Live a bit.
A telephone rings. It is tea-time on a day in late June. England. The columnist (a harmless drudge) hastily presses the ‘Mute’ button
on her television remote control. The giveaway background noise of ‘Pock, pock, applause, Thirty love’ abruptly ceases. She grabs the receiver.
COLUMNIST (defensively, and without punctuation): Hello who’s that of course I’m working good grief up to my armpits in fact Huh do you think I’ve got nothing to do but watch tennis? (Her voice rises to a squeal.)
There is a pause, while the caller lets the hysteria subside.
FEMALE FRIEND: Psst, it’s me.
COLUMNIST: Linda? Oh, thank phew for that. I was just watching Wimbledon.
FRIEND: I know, so was I. Did you see him? Andre the Adorable, did you see him?
The columnist guiltily surveys the Andre Agassi press cuttings littering the floor of the study, and nods dumbly. She has just finished entering the names of today’s winners in the special men’s knock-out tournament chart. A keen-eyed observer would note that the equivalent chart for the women’s tournament is left curiously blank. Taking a deep breath, she makes a decision.
COLUMNIST (carelessly): You mean the Agassi match? Oh, I believe I did just manage to catch every single minute of that one, yes. Mmm. I was particularly impressed, actually, by the champion’s new short-action serve – 118 miles per hour he’s getting – the power of the ground strokes, top-spin, all that. ‘Ooh, I say,’ as Dan Maskell used to exclaim, ha ha. Oh yes, French Open, lob, tie-break, Gabriela Sabatini.
FRIEND: Lynne. You’re talking funny. Can’t we discuss chest hair, like we usually do? Is there somebody there?
COLUMNIST: Good heavens, no. It’s just that all these technical sports-reporter aspects, none of them passes me by. More like a fly-swat than a serve, I’d say, that new Agassi action, but still 118 miles per hour. Amazing. Sport can be really interesting, can’t it? Can’t think why I’m usually so dismissive of it. Also, there’s these new, um, graphological racquets … and, um, did I mention 118 mph, and the linesmen, gosh, Sue Barker, new balls, fascinating. And on Today at Wimbledon, Humphrey Carpenter can’t even say ‘Ivanisevic’ properly! So what makes me cross –