The Coming of Age. January Part 2.

8th January.
I spent all yesterday thinking about what I should affirm. It is quite worrying. If you don’t affirm that you are healthy, but you do affirm that you are rich, does that mean you will become rich but an invalid? I arrive at a list of about twenty things I think my life needs. And that’s a minimum. You are supposed to sit and relax and send these thoughts off like e-mails into the ether. I cannot remember more than three, healthy, wealthy and wise, that sort of thing. Does it work if you have to continually re-read the rest of your affirmations off the back of an envelope? Perhaps I should reduce them to three or four, the most important ones. That might mean that while I was affirming that my waist was below 30” again, I would be reduced to penury or have a heart-attack while carrying the shopping home from Sainsbury’s. In spite of these worries, I will try this and I shall record how I get on.
9th January.
Decided that my affirmations would be: I have an exciting life. I have all the money I want. I am in perfect health. Doubts instantly creep in. Are you actually supposed to believe what you are saying? This is an exciting life? I can’t even afford the things I want from the Lakeland catalogue which arrived this morning and one hip joint is in a permanent state of protest like members of the labour party before 1997 and after 2000.
It is icy outside and I am worried about breaking a leg, or worse, hip. If you break a hip you have to go into hospital and in all probability come out loopy. That is what happened to my aunt. Of course that was before HRT and she was 86, but you can’t be too careful. She was perfectly sane when she went in. I decide to stay indoors and read the Lakeland catalogue. I really need some small saucepans but they are expensive. I am just about to order a Pickle grabber, a Coconut Pyramid Maker and an Easy Pineapple Corer/Slicer because they are all cheap when I realise that I never grab pickles and rarely eat pineapple. I actually hate desiccated coconut.
I mutter my affirmations throughout the day. Nothing happens.
10th January.
I have decided to let my hair grow out to its natural greying mouse colour after my 80 year old friend Jean, who hasn’t a grey hair in her head – she is a Christian Scientist – spoke scathingly about the moral turpitude of women who feel the need to alter their hair colour. After all, I am not ashamed of my age. Am I?
11th January.
The weather has done one of its u-turns and it is now dull and damp, but at least safe underfoot. I have all the money I want, I say to myself. I am in perfect health. I have an exciting life.
I walk out of the gate and bump into my neighbour Mavis. Oh dear. Her eyes light up as she sees me. That means I am going to have to talk about my ailments, and then, in politeness, listen to a very long account of hers.
‘Oh Jessica, how’s your hip?
‘Much better’ I say. I hope my breezy response will lay the subject to rest and we can talk about more interesting things like who is leaving whom, art history or even local politics.
There are some very exciting things going on in this town. Youths use the steps of the Town Hall as a skateboard ramp and then congregate outside the Chip Shop after ten o’clock at night. The state of the verges is causing inhabitants grave concern while the local paper reports that an elderly man was deeply upset by coming upon some blood and guts in the gutter near his house. He instantly thought of Satanism and rang the press. People often think about Satanism here. After exciting us all with this gruesome tale, the paper went on to reveal that the innards were those of three rabbits.
Always quick to spot a pun, the editor is incensed by the council’s sudden decision to push the headstones over in the local cemetery. This time it really is Grave Concern.
Alas, my ploy does not work; I have to listen to Mavis’s account of her dealings with an osteopath, a homeopath, and the local hospital. Mavis suffers from many things – although she walks around and looks quite healthy – like collapsed arches, lower back pain, bursitis, thrush and migraines. Talking about them is her main activity these days. One day my friend Val found herself trapped in her own house for two hours with Mavis and another migraine sufferer who had called in unexpectedly; They fell upon each with joy and talked non-stop about their migraines. In the end Val had to go and take two aspirin to alleviate a headache brought on by stress.
Luckily today, our footsteps go the same way for only ten minutes. I sympathise with every condition, feeling superstitiously that if I don’t I too shall be struck down with bursitis etc, adding to my own quota of catarrh, athlete’s foot, wonky hip and desire to wee every half hour. Today Mavis is suffering from colicky bloating, which she is worried may be the start of something serious.
I offer Mavis my Niagara Vibrating Mat but she is doubtful about its ability to cure flatulence. Mother passed the mat on to me when she bought both a vibrating bed and a vibrating chair. She spends all day in one or on the other, her teeth permanently chattering. My mother swears by vibrations for all known ailments. I repeat her praises to Mavis. Mavis is still not convinced. so I suggest a course of acidophilus tablets which worked very well for a friend of mine. This friend who shall be nameless was in despair, thinking that she could never again have a lover because of the absolute certainty that she would pass wind whenever they got close to embracing. She was about to embark on diet free, as far as I could judge, of all decent food, when I suggested she try acidophilus tablets first. And they worked and her digestion calmed down and her stomach was silenced. I think my advice to Mavis though fell on deaf ears.
When I got to the supermarket, my friend Jean, the octogenarian Christian Scientist, was there. She had just been to Paris.
‘It was very expensive to eat there but it didn’t matter because I had some dried prunes with me and I ate those.’ she tells me.
I am dumbfounded. I do not think I have the strength of character to eat prunes in Paris. I am not sure I have any strength of character at all. Without Martin to exhort me to greater efforts, I have become a slob. Friends and relations everywhere seem to be pounding the pavements or doing 62 lengths in the swimming pool, giving up dairy products and alcohol or learning Greek. I keep very quiet about the many evenings I spend eating liquorice allsorts and watching The Bill.
I tell myself I am going through a severe reaction to all the years I spent married to a man who would only ever go to obscure foreign films or very advanced operas. We used to go to the opera but I have never seen Tosca, La Boheme, Madame Butterfly, or La Traviata. I have however seen many operas by Harrison Birtwhistle, Arnold Schoenberg, Luciano Berio and a version of The Creation performed in a barn with the audience sitting on hay bales. My thighs itched for a week. It was scored for Zither and Descant Recorders and Adam was played by a woman and Eve by a man.
I am having an exciting life. I have all the money I need. I am in perfect health. I am. I am.
15th January. I am still in the beginners class at Salsa dancing and I think I have at last got the hang of the steps. All the other beginners are now Advanced and twirling and whirling with the best. Val has graduated to the intermediates but declares that she is not going any more.

‘You need a man’, she says. ‘You need to have someone who is your regular partner.’
She is right of course. All those twirls and twists, well, you do need someone who is leading you properly otherwise you end up as an undignified plait. I am disappointed but I can see what she means. There are too many women and you end up desperately hoping that someone will ask you to dance, someone, anyone, including chaps you’ve seen round the town and would have barely passed the time of day with in any other circumstances. Just like school dances in the fifties.
Still I do have something to do today. Julia, Poppy, Val and I meet monthly on a Saturday – the evening when for a single woman there is nothing to do and nothing on the television either. We have dinner together and occasionally go to the theatre or a film. This modest arrangement is invariably described by every male acquaintance or relation as A Coven. They think this is a huge joke. Men are very odd about women meeting together while upholding their inalienable right to do so themselves. We do not fall about laughing hysterically at every mention of Pratts or Rotary. At least I don’t think so.
Tomorrow they are coming to my house. It will be an interesting evening. Julia will tell us the different cruises and holidays she’s booked for this year. Julia is a widow. There is something dignified about being a widow that is denied to those of us who have been merely dumped. It says in the Bible that you have to be charitable to widows and orphans. Widows go back a long way whereas abandoned elderly wives on today’s scale are a relatively new phenomenon.
The last time we met Poppy was embroiled with a New Zealand beekeeper who was over here for a six month vacation. She met him in a pub where she thought he looked lonely. She is very kind-hearted. You only need to be around for six months to beekeep in New Zealand. You work hard for half the year, at least the bees do, and then you can take the rest of the time off. When I heard about it I thought this sounded rather good. On looking into however, I discovered you would need thousands of hives to make money over here. British bees just do not produce the goods in the right quantity.
Val has just started a new art class. We might talk about art. But probably we will talk about men; that’s what we usually do. Julia is always, unlike the rest of us, praying not to get married again. It would interfere terribly with her bridge and frequent cruises. If you don’t have any inclination to play bridge and can’t afford cruises, then time can hang a little heavily and a husband or lover might fill it up a bit. Mind you, there is a man in Julia’s life, a bridge-player, only ever referred to obliquely as the ‘old codger’. She is very secretive about him.