The Coming of Age. May. Part 4.

22nd May. The day of Harriet’s scan arrives. This is Russell’s mother’s first grandchild and she is very excited. This is my first scan and I am anxious. I should have sat in my new meditation room and creatively visualised the arrival of a perfectly formed baby but every time I passed the door all I could think of was that nice man. How could I have been so selfish.

We wait in the waiting room and Russell strokes Harriet’s tummy. I could make very little of the picture on the screen as the technician passed his instrument backwards and forwards over Harriet’s bulge but he said everything was present and correct.

All of a sudden he stops and says ‘do you want to know what it is?’ And Harriet says ‘Oh, yes.’
‘You can’t do that’ I gasp, ‘you aren’t supposed to know until it’s born. There’ll be no surprise.’

Everyone looks at me pityingly.

‘It’s a boy.’

Russell is thrilled. He particularly wanted a boy. Everyone is thrilled. Harriet has done something different from Sarah and isn’t just following along behind like younger sisters have to, which is what she has always done. My first grandson. Now that I know the baby is all right, I can be thrilled too.

23rd May. Alex comes home for the weekend. It is lovely to see him. I have prepared for his arrival by doing lots of cooking and bought some beer. One hour later, he has eaten everything, drunk all the beer and hit his head several times on my ‘windchimes’ which Poppy hung in the loo doorway, so that any good luck that was bound to come my way wouldn’t simply disappear down the toilet.

Alex’s best mate Jools has a gig in Potterington and I have been very kindly asked to drive Alex over and stay myself, so I can drive him back. I have never been to a gig, so this will be a new experience.

24th May. It was not quite as I expected. There is a roundabout on the way to Potterington and I manage to take the wrong turning. I do this quite often and it is all the fault of the Highways Department. They put the directions for major destinations so far away from the roundabout, that by the time I have reached it, I have forgotten which exit it is that I need. The one I took led to a narrow country lane with high hedges and absolutely no turning places, not even a field gate

We drive on and on and on into the unknown. Mist is rising from the interminable series of identical green fields. Eventually we arrive at a crossroads and take the most likely turning.

After another half-hour or so we arrive in a suburb which is as featureless as the country had been. A quarter of an hour later, we find a sign post and discover that we are still ten miles away. The total distance from home to Potterington is only 12 miles, so this is a bit of a blow.

At last, however, we do find the pub by a garage on a main road where the gig is to be, only to meet Jools and the band coming out, heaving their instruments and equipment behind them. The musicians, five of them are all 30 plus, large and hairy.

They had been attacked by skinheads they said and refused to stay. I get out of the car and Alex and I wander in to the pub, sorely in need of a drink. Three spotty, ill-favoured underage and undersized youths are swaggering about inside.

‘Look’, says Jools, ‘that’s them, that’s them.’

Alex muttered something that sounded like ‘a lot of wusses’ and asked if he should grab one of them in the Home Office approved grip which he learnt at Police College and feels he gets insufficient practice at, and tell him what was what. He felt in his pocket for his policeman’s badge. Normally the fact that he is in the police-once-force-and-now-service, is a dark secret when he is on home ground.

‘No,’ said Jools. ‘They are National Front. They are dangerous.’ He is quite pale.

‘They’re children,’ I say. I didn’t once have three teenagers for nothing. ‘You are all much bigger than they are. Tell them you’ll thump them.’

Thank goodness Fran isn’t here to hear me.

Alex marches across the room. I follow close behind. I expect him to say something like, ‘Ere ere, what is going on of ere’ like a stage copper.

‘Do you have any proof of age Sir?’ he says picking on the most undersized youth, emphasising heavily the last word.

They do not even ask him who he thinks he is. They just go. I haven’t seen Alex in policeman mode before. I am quite proud of him.

‘How did you do that?’

‘It’s what you learn,’ he says. ‘Body language, you act as though you have authority. When I’m at work, I do have it but here, well, I just hoped it would work and I wouldn’t have to fight the three of them.’

It seems a bit like affirmations. You pretend and then things happen as you want. Perhaps I should start them again but now I have been feng shuied by Poppy there is probably no need.

I’ve still not been to a gig.

28th May. After the weekend’s excitements I am exhausted. I stay in bed till 10 am. I feel I should feel guilty. I am not ill. Val never stays in bed after 7.30 a.m. Jean is at the swimming pool by 7.30 twice a week. Another friend gets up at 5 to take her dog for a walk. Sarah is running round Highgate Ponds at 6.30. Think of Descartes and Proust however. They spent a lot of time in bed I recall and I feel better.

Then I remember that Descartes thought while he was there and discovered Cogito ergo sum. Proust wrote a great novel. They did not read the paper and drink cups of tea. Feel worse. Perhaps I should get up and swim twice a week like Jean?

Jean is such an admirable character. I wish I was like her, self disciplined, ascetic and philosophical. She spends a lot of time by herself reflecting when she is not swimming that is, or eating prunes in Paris.

I try to reflect every now and then about life’s meaning but after five minutes or so end up muttering to myself about Phil Mitchell, what can he be constructing at the bottom of the garden? Or the time when Martin, who was very impatient, made me move all the shopping from checkout to checkout in the supermarket three times because he thought another would be quicker. Why didn’t I hit him with a chilled organic chicken? Questions like those make the meaning of life pale into insignificance.