Love Letters

 

His Nibs and I watched a documentary tonight, about Mallory, the famous climber who tried to climb Everest in the 1920’s, but died in the attempt.  Nobody knows for sure whether he made it to the top or not but two climbers who’ve done the same thing with the same equipment as George Mallory and his climbing partner Sandy Irvine would have had, succeeded a couple of years ago.

George Mallory’ body was found on Everest a few years ago, and the only thing missing from his belongings was a photo of his wife, which he’d promised to leave at the summit of the mountain if he made it to the top.

Mallory was in a very happy marriage, and the whole documentary was peppered with quotations from letters he and his wife wrote to each other during the expedition.

The documentary led me to start thinking about love letters, and His Nibs to start wondering whether he should climb Everest, just “because it’s there” – as Mallory himself said.

I’ve never had a proper love letter.  Certainly nothing like the ones the couple on this documentary were writing to each other, swearing undying love, and going on about staring up Mount Everest and thinking it’s the second most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Of course, these days, there’s no real letters anymore, is there? I write the odd one, actually, because I think it’s a lovely thing to get. I even have fancy matching paper and envelopes to write them on. I think a personal letter sends a bit of a message, that I’ve bothered my barney to sit down and write down my interminable ramblings, been a grown up and bought a stamp, and generally gone to a little bit of bother. I seem to be alone in that though.

I can’t remember the last time I got a personal letter.

We've had the opportunities for love letters in our house.  Plenty of opportunities, in fact.  His Nibs has been allowed off on numerous little adventures unaccompanied, some of them up to three weeks long.  I’m pretty cool that way.  Especially if he’s blathering on about going somewhere I have no interest in.  I just say that I want him to do all the things he wants to do in life, and that he should go.  He never puts up much argument.

Anyway, in the days when His Nibs is far from home, I invariably ask him to email me to let me know he’s safe.  I know his limits.  There’s absolutely no question of him writing a letter. So I only ask for emails. 

He always mutters a promise that he’ll forget before he gets to the front door, so I make him stop what he’s doing, which is usually packing or looking for his passport or something.  I make him stare me in the face and take me seriously.  I ask him to commit himself to long emails letting me know everything that’s going on, and how much he misses me. 

And he does email, when he has to, about once every four days.  And the mails are never more than a line and a half long.  They usually just say that he’s having a great time, and that he misses me and the dogs.  All of us, as a threesome.  Nothing directed at just me at all.

Then at the last minute he sends me a long and complicated mail with full details of his flight home, in order that I can collect him at the airport.

I’m no better.  I try to mail him messages of love and longing, but I always lose focus in the middle of them.  So they usually read something like “I wake up every morning thinking of you…..and irritated beyond reason because the tap in the bathroom is still dripping, you HAVE to fix that.”

Or maybe “everything is really boring without you.  Well, not everything, the cooker blew up yesterday, which was quite exciting, and I’ve had to put a new one on the credit card, so don’t use yours too much over there.”

Not exactly the stuff of wine and roses, is it?

Maybe the day of the love letter is over forever.  I think it’s a shame though.  Instead of pages of beautiful script on vellum paper, blotty with fountain pen ink, we now get texts arranging to meet up, and that’s on a good day.

Maybe there should be an International Letter Day, when everyone has to write a one page letter to one other person, full of niceness and warmth and no giving out?  Will we start a campaign?

 

                                                                                                                                  

Operation Middle Aged

I was the bravest of warriors one morning last week.

As middle age continues its merciless and insane march on me, a new problem has raised its repulsive head.

Skin tags.  They’re rather unattractive things, at the best of times.

The one on my neck was absolutely repulsive.  And so big that it was like a second head.  Or at least I thought so.

I’ve been walking around for weeks, holding my hand up to my throat, in an attempt to cover it, and looking like an alarmed lady from an old film.

And wearing scarves that I’ve grown quite fond of really, and might continue to wear in happier days to come.

I know that everyone noticed it.  They were all very nice and didn’t mention it but it was unmissable.

The last time I saw my doctor, after I’d put him through my usual litany of ailments, I told him about the skin tag.  Like everyone else, I’m sure he’d noticed it, but he was probably too worried about his patients who are actually sick to think about it.

He had a look at it and told me not to worry, that it was harmless.  I hadn’t been worried about that. I told him that as far as I was concerned it was more noticeable than my nose (not dainty itself), and that I wanted it gone.

He seemed surprised, maybe he doesn’t consider me to be a person with a neck that needs to be unblemished.

Anyway, he told me to let him know the next time I was going to be in his surgery, and he’d deal with it.

On the Friday, I rang his receptionist.  I gave her my name, and told her that Monday was the day I’d be attending for my surgery. 

I’m only messing, I didn’t say that, I just told her to let the doctor know I’d be there.

She seemed bewildered.  So I let her know that I’d been told to give some notice, because the GP would need a local anaesthetic and something to cut the damn thing with.  I tried to make a joke about him possibly needing a crash cart as well, but she had absolutely no sense of humour and started reassuring me that it wouldn’t come to that.

My mother was with us for the weekend, exerting her bad influence and generally encouraging me to  behave badly (see last blog for details) and she was staying until the morning of the doctor's visit.  She decided to come with me, just so I’d have someone to pity me when I arrived out with the ludicrous white tape holding a pad of cotton wool onto my throat.  Or in case I needed a blood donor.  Joking, again.

Anyway, in I went, and told him why I was there.  He knows I have a penchant for the dramatic, so he was very business like, and told me to get straight up on his doctor table yoke. 

I think I got confused between an anaethetic wipe and an antiseptic wipe.  I know that doesn't really make sense, but I hadn't even thought about the possibility of an injection.  But he came at me with a needle.  He told me that I’d feel a little jab, which I did.

In order to encourage him, and be supportive, I told him that it really hadn’t hurt at all.  But he’d only just put the needle under the skin.  While he tried to give me the stupid injection, I started feeling a bit anxious and unhappy.  So  I started talking to him.  I was sort of blathering on about nothing in particular, and he had to tell me to stop, since he had a needle in my throat at the time. 

That shut me up.

I didn’t feel the skin tag actually being cut off, it was fine.  But the white tape and cotton wool did me no favours, especially with my double chin resting as it was on the little white pad.  It looked like it was holding my head on.

And my advisor (mother) was incorrect.  He didn't just snip it off with a scissors or something.  It was a little scalpel.

Truly I am brave.

Love at First Sight

 

I wasn’t expecting it.  In fact, I’d be hoping against hope that it wouldn’t happen.  But today, once again, I got into trouble for falling in love without warning.

It’s all my mother’s fault.  She has decided, out of the blue, that she’s fed up buying frying pans.  She tells me that she’s sick of burning the arse out of the ones she’s been using to date, and she’s decided that if she goes with the quality stuff, it might be a bit slower to lose its mojo.

So, since she was in our house for the weekend, she wondered today whether we should make our way to Kildare Village, so she could go to the Le Creuset outlet, and think about spending more on a frying pan than she did on her first cooker.

I was worried.  I’m familiar with Kildare Village.  And the Le Creuset shop is directly beside the Radley shop.  Radley is a British brand that makes lovely leather handbags.  I’m very fond of them and have been known to buy them quite frequently.  Even though I can’t afford them, don’t need them, and will never get full value out of them.

I voiced my concerns to my mother.  She is aware of my weaknesses, and didn’t argue with me.  We agreed that we would avert our eyes from the Radley shop, pretend it had closed down or something, concentrate on frying pans, and not look left or right on our way into the shop.

And that’s what we did.  I didn’t even sneak a look at the window display on my way in.  I was a warrior.

The trouble started when my Mam couldn’t choose a frying pan.  They had a crazy range, different sizes and depths, and made of different materials, and what have you.  I’d love to say I was fascinated, but I wasn’t, in truth.  I did my best to be interested, but there isn’t much you can pretend to like in a kitchen shop, when you never cook.

My mother knew this, and I think she had mischief on her mind. 

Also, an expenditure of the type she was undertaking takes some consideration.  You wouldn’t like to buy the wrong pan, and then discover you needed one with a lid, or it wasn’t deep enough to cook a stir fry in, and that you needed to buy another one.

She was almost sure which one she wanted.  We decided, however, that she should think about it for a few minutes before doing the deed.

We wandered out of the shop, promising to return.  The woman in there couldn’t have made it more obvious that she didn’t believe us, and insisted we take a catalogue setting out all their products with us.

We paused outside the door.  We looked at each other, and started to slowly turn right.  That was our mistake.
I asked my mother where she thought we might think about her frying pan.

“I don’t know” she said “we could just wander around.”

By the time she had the words out of her mouth, we were stepping over the doorstep into the Radley shop.

And that’s when I fell in love.  It was sitting there, on an eye level shelf, waiting for me.  I think it might have actually been waiting for me.  It looked as if it should fling itself off the shelf and straight onto my shoulder.

I actually caught my breath, and grabbed my mother by the arm.  The same thing has happened to her, in the same shop, so she knew exactly what was going on. 

“Should we go somewhere else?”

“I can’t.  Not yet.”

The shop assistant smiled at me.  She had probably hoped it was a friendly and welcoming smile, but she looked like a shark staring at his dinner.

“Nice to see someone falling in love at the door.”

I closed my ears to her.  I wouldn’t be tempted.  It looked expensive, even by Radley standards.  And the television licence and ESB bills are almost pulsating with impatience on the phone table.  Not to mention the household charge from last year, which we have yet to register for.

I just stood looking at it.

It’s black, made of butter soft leather and slouchy and casual in shape.  It has two short handles as well as a long shoulder strap.

It’s perfect for me.  It can easily hold all my bits and pieces including my kindle, and a couple of notebooks in case the plot for the Great Irish novel hits me while I’m in the queue in Boots.

“How much is it?” my mother asked.

I was actually stroking it.  I took a deep breath, and drew the price tag toward me.  For the second time in minutes, my stomach flipped.

I’ve often spent far too much on a bag without really thinking about it.  But never this much.  Even I, in my most foolish moments, would draw back from a handbag at this price.

If only I hadn’t loved it.  My beloved mother offered to lend me the money, but I couldn’t bring myself to accept, not for a handbag.

I have to admit, I was pretty sad to leave it. 

That happens to me sometimes. I see something and I want it so much I’m willing to sell my soul for it.  Usually handbags, or shoes.  Sometimes a lovely notebook.  But no notebook I’ve ever seen is so expensive that there’s absolutely no way I can swing it.

 I turned to my Mam

“Quick, let’s go back and get your pan, before my heart breaks.”

We trotted back next door, where the frying pan, the sole purpose of our journey, was bought and paid for.  There was one a draws for customers going on, you know the type, give them your email address, and you might win a €100 voucher.  I must have been wearing my utterly miserable face, but as well as giving my Mam a form for it, the assistant offered me one. 

For a second, I had a shiver of excitement.  Maybe it was a voucher for Kildare Village in general, and I’d win, and the handbag would become possible.  But no, the voucher was only for the kitchen shop.  A casserole dish wouldn’t be much consolation, I felt, so I didn’t even bother.

When we got outside I insisted that we have a sit down on a bench.  Still outside the Radley shop.

There’s no easy way to say this.  I bought the bag.  On the credit card. 

I’m begging now, but NOBODY can tell His Nibs, he will go absolutely bananas. 

Obviously I’m overcome with guilt and shame.

But I love the bag.  Which makes the guilt and shame difficult to maintain.

I’ll be sleeping with it right beside my bed tonight.  So I can pet it during the night. 

Feck it, I might even bring it into the bed with me, if His Nibs is sound asleep.