unfashionablylost

I was having much too jolly a time at the Edinburgh Fringe, so I went to see Race, by David Mamet. ‘It’s terribly good,’ someone told me, although everyone was constantly telling me things: that this was the show that I simply couldn’t miss, that Scottish notes would be accepted back in London, that a sandwich was only £2.50. I had begun to walk about Edinburgh with my hands in my pockets and my head down, only occasionally raising my head to check if my friends had noticed how well I had adapted to being at this friendly and inclusive festival.

We were put into the front row, which my friends were possibly more pleased about than I was, having the type of face that renders many conversations obsolete. (I try not to let this stop me). I like to experience my theatre from the safety of the nosebleed seats (or a box, if anyone is offering), safe from censure. As it turned out, Race was terribly good, although I was firmly convinced that it was set in apartheid South Africa, so thought the American accents of the cast was some sort of theatrical attempt at levity. It wasn’t, so I was pleased I hadn’t laughed. (Other occasions this week I was happy to have not laughed: when my cleaner told me she had quinsy, which I thought was a typo, but turns out to be a real, genuine illness; when someone mispronounced ‘miscegenation’ and it turned out that it doesn’t rhyme with ‘rice-e-nation’, as one might hypothetically assume; when my friend told me that her best childhood friends were horses, which I would usually have mocked roundly, except that until I was four my very best friend was called Melon, and lived in the curtains, and we would have continued together very happily indeed, except for my Mother’s infuriating insistence on asking my teacher if she could invite him to my birthday parties, which I actually think says more about the type of pre-prep school my parents sent me to than my own ability to make human friends).

Looking back on it, I behaved very well during Race, nodding along sagely as the drama evolved, maturely pretending to ignore the actors’ naïve attempts at South African accents and only whispering to my friend once that ‘she was very good at fake crying’. But as it turned out, all my grown-up posturing was superfluous, because another of my friends, who had been enjoying an equally jolly time at the festival up til then, felt at that moment it all catch up with her, and put her head down to have a quick nap.

I’m temping for my Mother, who despite all appearances to the contrary has a real, grown-up job. I arrived at 11.30am, which I am aware is not usually the start of the professional working day, but I had a pre-existing Genius Bar appointment at the Apple Store, and those things are harder to come by than the opportunity to laugh at my Mother’s foolishness in a professional environment, so we all had to work around it.

Equally, my Mother had not concerned herself with insignificant details such as ‘working hours’ or ‘salary’, so I felt free to make it up as I went along. 

This is not the first time I’ve temped for my Mother. I started, aged 16, during a Summer holiday, where I was enticed by the idea of ‘making my CV look good’  into lugging boxes of files up and down the various flights of her office. David Sedaris wrote a series of excellent and amusing stories about the Summer he spent as a removal man in New York. I sulked, and vowed never to work for my Mother again.

Which sees me, naturally, back here for the next two weeks, offering holiday cover for one of her staff. (I should probably be more firmly aware of what particular role I am covering, but my Mother has a series of ‘people’ who perform various tasks for her, at home and in the office, and I have only a very nebulous idea of what everyone does. There is, I am told, a ‘knife man’, who sharpens her knives, just to give a clearer idea of the types of things my Mother likes to outsource). 

Temping for my Mother is going well, despite her firm belief that we share a cosmic bond which means that I already know what she is thinking, and that therefore she does not need to bother herself with giving me clear or understandable instructions. (I, at all times, have very little idea what my Mother is thinking. Yesterday she stared at me in horror until I asked what was wrong, at which point she stated that she ‘very much liked my new jumper.’) Equally, there has been very little heavy lifting, which only leads me to suspect that there’s a new ‘box man’, who I very much hope to cross paths with. ‘Make the most of this opportunity,’ I will tell him or her, as they lumber up the stairs. ‘And in a few years you could be me.’ 

I’ve positioned my music system next to my bed, so that in the mornings I can simply roll to my left and turn on the radio. I know, I know, there’s a way you can do it so that the radio becomes your alarm, but I can scarcely think of something more frightening than waking up to the sound of strangers talking in my bedroom. But as it turns out, this shows a paucity of imagination on my part, because Radio 1 have spent the last week thinking of new and exciting ways to wake up one of their presenters. This morning, they woke him up with a snake.

Whilst I would very much dislike to be woken up by a snake, I’ve decided to leave it off my personal list of ‘the ways I most hate to be woken up’, simply because of statistical probability. (By the same token, I have also left off: being woken up by Santa, because I barely sleep at all on Christmas Eve).

Here are the ways I most hate to be woken up:

1. By my Mother, precisely 1 minute before my alarm is due to go off. ‘Darling, are you not going to be late?’
2. By my Mother, on a day I’m not working. ‘Darling, are you not going to be late?’

3. By my Mother, poking her head round my door to ask if I want to go to a 6.30am spinning class. (I went to a class! The first day of my stay, to be impressive! Is this Groundhog Day?)
4. By my Mother, asking if I want a pair of plain black knickers that she ‘bought but doesn’t like’.
5. By my Mother, asking if a plain white t-shirt is ‘yours, or your brother’s?’ (My brother is approximately a foot taller than myself. I would take my Mother to have her eyes checked, but then she might notice that I’ve been steadily ‘borrowing’ things from her house for years.)
6. By my Mother, wanting to check that ‘I’m up’. (I wasn’t. I was down, sleeping. It was blissful).
7. By my Mother, shouting at my silent stepfather to be ‘quiet, because Lucy’s sleeping.’
8. By my Mother, ‘wondering if you wanted dinner?’ (I think it’s her ability to really focus on what matters that makes her so excellent at her job).
9. By my Mother, asking if I had any plans to get married. (Apparently, she likes to ask us questions when we are ‘more vulnerable’, as she feels it will increase her chances of getting an honest answer).
10. By my Mother, ‘just checking if you were asleep.’

I ran into a child this morning. It wasn’t my fault, but I still felt terrible. I was running up the street, wondering if I should concentrate more on my burgeoning rapping career (I have been practicing in my bedroom, and I wanted to show my little sister last night, but she was working late, and I like to be in bed by 10.30pm, so like all modern day rap superstars, was peacefully sleeping by 11pm),

when a small child swerved in front of me. I have noticed, recently, in a variety of circumstances, that my instinctive reaction to small children is to put my arm out – to protect them from real and imagined danger, I assume, although possibly because of some deep-rooted need to measure how big they are compared to me. ‘Careful,’ I said softly, although I was listening to Iggy Azalea in both ears, and from the look on the child and her mother’s face, I may have spoken a little louder than I meant to.

I stopped, naturally, even though I had barely grazed her, and lowered my arm, which she was now pressed up against (I would like to point out that by running into her I had in fact placed my own body between hers and the traffic, which anyway was moving extremely slowly at that moment, it being the school-run hour).

I waited patiently for the child’s mother to encourage her to apologise, but when nothing happened I gave an odd head jerk of recognition and then continued on my run. (I ran too fast, naturally, in a bid to impress them, and writing this am deeply concerned that I might have broken myself).

Oddly, because I run in a state of near-total somnolence (I read that the best time to do any exercise is as soon as you wake up, to ‘fool the body’, which has made me realize with alarm that many normal-looking people are walking about in bodies which are idiots), this kerfuffle has stayed with me. Not because of the child, who looked a little alarmed but not at all traumatized (I do not wish to imply that I have a wealth of experience of traumatized children, but this kid really seemed unfazed by the whole event), but because of the apology. Or, more factually, the lack of apology.

I do not wish to constantly refer back to the good old days, but as someone who spent her entire childhood being forced to apologise, for things which were and were not my fault, I am pretty certain that if I had been the child in question, merrily skipping into the path of an oncoming grown-up, I would have started apologizing even before she had removed her headphones. Which has only stiffened my resolve to work on my new rap album, currently titled: “Give up your tube seat for a grown-up”.

I’ve been staying with my Mother. It’s different back home – the quality of the sheets is better, and the toilet roll is replenished for you, and somewhere between having your laundry done and being told that you can’t eat upstairs, you forget entirely that you’re now an adult.

‘I’m going to a spinning class in the morning,’ my Mother announced the first evening of my stay. ‘Would you like to come?’ ‘Sure,’ I said, leaning across the table to help myself to more steak. ‘That sounds great.’

It didn’t sound great – not then, when I was more preoccupied with wondering what pudding would be, and certainly not at 6.15am the next morning, but I wanted my Mother to think of me as a go-getting, impressive sort-of-person, who liked nothing better than starting a 16-hour work shift with an early morning spinning class. ‘Wake up,’ my Mother announced, standing ominously close to my sleeping head. ‘We have to leave in 35 minutes.’ I stared at my Mother blankly. I imagine I would need 35 minutes to get ready for the Oscars.

To go to a spinning class at the crack of dawn I needed precisely 4 minutes: 2 to put in my contacts, and 2 to put on my trainers. (There is, when sitting on a stationary bike, absolutely no discernible benefit to changing out of pajamas and into workout clothes).

I wasn’t in the best of moods when we arrived at the gym. For a start, my Mother kept trying to talk to me. ‘Hello,’ the gym receptionist greeted us cheerfully. ‘A guest? Can you fill out this form please?’ I waited expectantly for my Mother to fill it out for me, standing lookingly moodily at gym kit I couldn’t afford, but hoped my Mother would offer to buy for me. ‘Darling?’ ‘Oh,’ I said, reaching for the pen. I was a little bit put out, but hid it by scowling blackly at my Mother, and scribbling down my information. ‘Do you need to go to the loo, before class?’ my Mother asked. ‘I’m not a child,’ I snapped. I did need the loo though, so I followed my Mother meekly, rolling my eyes behind her back like a grown-up.

‘Don’t forget to wash your hands,’ my Mother called from her cubicle, so I left the toilets without waiting for her. ‘Madam?’ the gym receptionist called as I passed, but being a mere slip of a thing, and certainly a good 10 years off being called anything but ‘girl’ or ‘miss’, I presumed she was talking to someone else and ignored her. ‘Madam?’ she repeated more insistently. ‘Me?’ ‘Yes, please. You need to fill out this section of the guest pass.’ ‘Madam?’ I thought to myself in horror. Living with my Mother certainly was different – the whole experience seems to have aged me immeasurably.

I couldn’t remember where I’d put my hip flask on Saturday, and tore the entire flat apart, trying to find it. ‘I never lose things,’ I wailed at my little sister in despair. ‘Why has this happened to me?’ I clutched at my brow dramatically, because I’m trying to improve my repertoire of physical comedy. ‘Are you checking in case it’s on top of your head? It’s not like sunglasses,’ my little sister answered. ‘And you probably can’t remember where you put it because at your age, your memory starts going.’

My little sister’s 3rd favourite joke is me ‘being really, really old’, and her 2nd favourite joke is convincing me I have an illness, so this was probably the highlight of her weekend, but it made me very alarmed. I spend a lot of time thinking about things that have already happened, and am not even close to exploiting all the anecdotal possibilities of my past.

For instance, I have very fond memories of school. ‘We went to school in London,‘ I like to tell people. ‘That’s why we have so many naughty stories of going out on school nights.’ I can honestly say that I went out on a school night a grand total of twice in my entire school career. Once I went to Chinawhites, which was dreadful, but I thought was magnificent, and once I went to a club that has been re-named and taken over so many times that you can just tell that it’s a truly delightful place. I think, possibly, before I was born, Prince Andrew had a minor scandal there. I went on a Wednesday, and stayed over at my friend’s house, and noticed during assembly the next morning that I wasn’t wearing any shoes. My school didn’t have a uniform, but it did really require its pupils to wear shoes. ‘I’m not wearing any shoes,’ I whispered to my friend. (A brief digression here on whispering, which some people do not realise ought to be speaking at a volume lower than a normal speaking voice. Unfortunately, my friend was one of these). ‘What?’ she shouted huskily back at me, causing the entire row to wonder what was so exciting about that morning’s hymn. I pointed dramatically at my feet. 

I assume some shoes were found for me, because I can distinctly remember the time I went on the tube in bare feet, because it was Summer, and I was wearing ballet flats, and one fell off into the gap as I stepped onto the tube. ‘And that was during the Summer holidays,’ I told my little sister. ‘I know, because we went to France the next day and Mum kept asking why I was wearing trainers all the time.’ ‘Yes,’ my little sister agreed. ‘That was not a good Summer for any of us.’ 

It wasn’t a very good Summer for me, footwear aside, because I had to read an endless series of Victorian novels, and I hadn’t yet realised that I could skim-read the descriptive bits, so spent much of the holidays looking up synonyms for grass, and wishing that country estates at that time had been a little bit smaller. 

‘You spent all your time lugging books down to the pool,’ my little sister continued. ‘And then you left ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles in the front seat of the car and all the spine glue melted.’ ‘Oh yes,’ I said happily. I remembered that clearly. I had to spend the entire term sitting in lessons with a book that was more sellotape than paper, and missed a crucial plot happening because I’d stuck two pages together. I started thinking about that book, and then I realised that my memory wasn’t going at all, it was just that I’d left my hip flask in a weekend bag, after a weekend trip that went splendidly, because as the host showed me around their gardens, I had so many words to describe things.