The Coming of Age.April Part 1.

2nd April. I have a nasty cold, caught, I am sure, from Alice and Letitia, when I looked after them last week, and shall take the opportunity of staying in bed for a few days. One advantage of being alone is that you can be ill for as long as you like. Until you get better in fact. Husbands (i.e. Martin) don’t like you being ill and I have found that two days, possibly three if the disease is near fatal, is all they can stand. Nextdoor one triplet starts screaming and the other two join in.

3rd April. Heavy beat of music from next door at 11 am. This happens every day. It hardly seems suitable for calming fractious babies. Whatever happened to Brahms Lullaby?

9th April. The modernist vicar, the Reverend Mr Scuffling at St Philips, has taken to leading pilgrimages through the town on Good Friday. They end up on a rocky outcrop just outside known as Nell’s Tump where they erect a wooden cross. Then they all march back again. For some reason, Nell’s Tump reminded Mr Scuffling of the Mount of Olives which he had seen in a Victorian painting. This year, by Easter Saturday, the cross appeared to have been pulled out and replaced upside down. The town is awash with talk and all sorts of stories are being passed around. Vera Buddle found a dead cat at the bottom of her garden. Someone else was sure they had seen a dead cat on the edge of the by-pass. A walker on Nell’s Tump was sure he had seen a very large black cat lurking under a rock. The Mayor has issued a statement telling cat owners not to panic. The local paper has a banner headline: ‘Satanism.’ in very large black letters.

I know for a fact that the cross was upended by Alex’s best mate Jools’s younger brother and some of his friends after a night on the town. Alex informed me that they were completely ‘rat-arsed’ – what is the derivation of this quaint phrase I wonder – and they just did it for a laugh. I don’t expect the intrepid reporters on the local paper will find this out.

10th April. Harriet and Russell come for Easter. Harriet has stopped being sick but feels very tired and needs nurturing.

It is amazingly warm. We go out for a walk and a pub lunch. While we are sitting in the pub garden having lunch Russell spends the whole time lifting Harriet’s T-shirt up and stroking her tummy. When he isn’t stroking her tummy, she is stroking it herself. There is nothing to see.

I think, but do not say, ‘It was different in my day. We held our stomachs in until it was impossible to hide the bulge anymore and then graduated to concealing smocks.’ This was nothing compared to the previous generation, when pregnant women were only allowed out after dark.

Val’s mother could not even go to her sister’s wedding because she was obviously showing the effects of sexual activity and might put ideas into people’s heads. Mind you this was in Wales.

After Harriet and Russell have returned home, a long solitary evening awaits. Quite a restful thought really. I settle down with my book after a late supper and then discover I am out of liquorice allsorts. This nearly precipitates a severe breakdown until I remember that one supermarket in the town is now open twenty four hours a day. I go and get the car and drive down there. The car park is eerily empty. So are the aisles. One or two youths are hanging about, as is the man who talks to himself all day in the library.

Then I discover there are no liquorice allsorts. There are Pontefract cakes, liquorice and blackcurrant toffees, liquorice bootlaces, liquorice twists, and liquorice wheels, but no allsorts. I stand there, gazing at the empty space, willing the things to be there. But they aren’t. Shall I break down and sob, or have a full-scale tantrum? I decide to behave like a grown-up and plump for the Pontefract cakes, while mentally writing long letter to manager telling him that the own-brand liquorice allsorts are the sole reason I come to the shop at all.

There is only one check out open and I arrive to find there is a small queue held up by a woman shouting at the operator. Apparently they don’t sell alcohol as late as this. The aisles were chained off but she had hopped over, taken a couple of bottles of gin and was now proposing to pay for them or take them away without paying for them.

Neither of these options was possible said the checkout girl to the increasingly hysterical customer. A couple of youths were egging her on. As the woman at the till seemed to be the only member of staff available, she was understandably looking trapped. We all had to wait in the queue while this altercation continued. The woman was quite desperate. I understood how she felt. I bet she will soon be writing letters to the manager as well. She didn’t seem to be pacified when I suggested she could make do with wine gums.

14th April. Mavis is coming down the road. Her right arm is in a sling.

'Gosh, Mavis, have you broken your arm?'n I ask in sympathetic tones.

I can't not ask but I am in a hurry.

No, she hasn't broken her arm, no, nor her wrist. She is sure she has repetitive strain injury.

'Have you been doing lots of work on your computer?'

No, she has been stripping the wall paper off the back bedroom.

'Well,' I say, 'you are doing the right thing, resting it like that.'

Mavis looks positively relieved. She obviously believes me to be an expert.

17th April. A tearful Poppy on the phone. I was right. Pink Rolls Royce Convertible was definitely a man given the wrong idea. He called to pick her up and they set off down country lanes but apparently he was so mesmerised by Poppy's thighs that he kept losing concentration on his driving. Dangerous in a narrow lane in a large car. He did not drive fast, she said, but it was rather erratic; they seemed to cross the road from side to side and she could not understand why her view of the countryside kept changing so dramatically until he put his hand on her leg.

Just at this moment they were passing a farm gate from which a tractor was emerging in the insufferable ways that tractorsdo emerge from gates and they came to a sudden, very sudden stop. The car slewed to one side on the med that is also frequently found outside farm gates, and ended up in a blackthorn hedge. The delicate pink paintwork of the Rolls Royce was scratched.

'Not badly,' fluted Poppy, 'there were only about half a dozen scratches and really you couldn't see them from a distance, but, Jessica, he was so cross with me. It wasn't my fault. When I tried to wipe the scratches with my handkerchief, he just snarled at me. I think he is rather a horrid man. I'm glad I didn't know him any better.

And do you know, it wasn't even his car. I can't think why he got so angry. I had to wait ages while he and the farmer wrote things down and it smelt so dreadful. When I asked him if he could possibly close the top down so I didn't have to smell anything, he shouted at me again. I don't like convertibles anyway any more. I think I've had a narrow escape.'

'Gosh, what an exciting likfe you lead.'

'I was quite upset but, oh, Jessica, I have learnt something. I shall never ever buy a convertible.'

And here was I thinking she was going to say that the next time she went out with a strange man she would wsear thick tweed trousers in the manner of Victorian lady explorers. I am more relieved than ever that I stopped affirming 'I have an exciting life'. There is something to besaid for a quiet one.