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Authors: Lynne Truss
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herbs again, I can announce that a variegated sage has now turned peaky (‘The drink, the drink – I am poisoned’), and my sense of failure is complete. It occurs to me belatedly that the friend who cat-sits for me when I go on holiday makes a point of spending ‘quality time’ with my cats, watching their favourite snooker videos with them and shouting at
The Archers
in a plucky imitation of me. I should do something similar with the herbs. After all, I know that my friend listens to Radio 3 and reads the
Independent.
An hour each day in their company, then, with the wireless blaring, and with me pretending to read her newspaper (exclaiming ‘Swipe me, how pompous’ in an authentic
Indie
-reader kind of way) might set them on the road to recovery.
Meanwhile I have started to wear my keys on a girdle, in the fashion of a Victorian housekeeper, shifting it from side to side on alternate days, to prevent curvature of the spine. I have always associated keys with the getting of wisdom, but since unlocking things seems to scare me so much (I lock them up again as quickly as possible) perhaps I should stick to the road of excess, instead. It is not much of an insight to boast of, in the end: that acting bored by the
Independent
might save the life of a flat-leaf parsley.
Having never given a second thought to the practice of diving into cinemas on the merest whim and spending two and a half hours in blissful solitary communion with a large screen and a sack of Opal Fruits, I was rather alarmed to discover recently that some of my friends think this marks me out as a desperate case.
‘I went to see
The Fisher King
on Wednesday,’ I announce cheerfully. ‘On your own?’ ‘Er, yes.’ ‘Oh dear,’ they say, and catch up my hand for a bout of sympathetic patting and smoothing. ‘I ate two boxes of Fruit Pastilles,’ I add hurriedly. ‘Boy, you should have seen my tongue afterwards!’ But they continue to shake their heads, with tears in their eyes. They think it is awful.
There is a stigma attached to it, you see; an atavistic idea that a woman sitting alone in a cinema is a woman self-evidently abandoned to the black dog of depression, and therefore a proper cause for public concern. Does this attitude reflect a rather deep, dark prejudice against the idea of women enjoying their own company? It is possible.
The real point is that I never, in any case, feel sorry for myself in a cinema. If you want to feel miserable, there are many more surefire ways of achieving it, after all: sit in a doorway with a homeless person; lean over a parapet on Waterloo Bridge and gaze into the mesmerically choppy waters; go and see how long
Starlight Express
has been running. The impulse simply to buy a ticket and sit comfortably in a dark public place of entertainment seems by comparison a whoop of life-affirming joy.
What I like is the feeling of sanctuary. Hugging my possessions to my chest, sinking low in the seat, and prising great juicy wads of Opal Fruit away from my molars, I feel tremendously comforted by the reflection that I have vanished off the face of the earth; nobody has a clue where I am. The phone won’t ring; motorcycle messengers cannot pursue me. If it didn’t cost £6.50, it would be like stepping through thewardrobe into Narnia. As I huddle down, and prepare to sneer at the now excruciatingly familiar advertisements, I like to imagine that my friends are all ringing each other in panic. ‘She’s gone to earth again.’ ‘Damn.’ ‘Now there’s nothing we can do but wait.’
In old movie thrillers, of course, outlaws on the run frequently took refuge in cinemas. They would stoop as though entering church, shiftily taking aisle seats and removing their hats. They pretended to watch the picture, but kept a constant eye on the door, waiting for the inevitable pair of mackintoshed cops to appear, asking questions of the usherette. For them, the cinema was only a temporary haven; for me, it is total.
The Archers
in a plucky imitation of me. I should do something similar with the herbs. After all, I know that my friend listens to Radio 3 and reads the
Independent.
An hour each day in their company, then, with the wireless blaring, and with me pretending to read her newspaper (exclaiming ‘Swipe me, how pompous’ in an authentic
Indie
-reader kind of way) might set them on the road to recovery.
Meanwhile I have started to wear my keys on a girdle, in the fashion of a Victorian housekeeper, shifting it from side to side on alternate days, to prevent curvature of the spine. I have always associated keys with the getting of wisdom, but since unlocking things seems to scare me so much (I lock them up again as quickly as possible) perhaps I should stick to the road of excess, instead. It is not much of an insight to boast of, in the end: that acting bored by the
Independent
might save the life of a flat-leaf parsley.
Having never given a second thought to the practice of diving into cinemas on the merest whim and spending two and a half hours in blissful solitary communion with a large screen and a sack of Opal Fruits, I was rather alarmed to discover recently that some of my friends think this marks me out as a desperate case.
‘I went to see
The Fisher King
on Wednesday,’ I announce cheerfully. ‘On your own?’ ‘Er, yes.’ ‘Oh dear,’ they say, and catch up my hand for a bout of sympathetic patting and smoothing. ‘I ate two boxes of Fruit Pastilles,’ I add hurriedly. ‘Boy, you should have seen my tongue afterwards!’ But they continue to shake their heads, with tears in their eyes. They think it is awful.
There is a stigma attached to it, you see; an atavistic idea that a woman sitting alone in a cinema is a woman self-evidently abandoned to the black dog of depression, and therefore a proper cause for public concern. Does this attitude reflect a rather deep, dark prejudice against the idea of women enjoying their own company? It is possible.
The real point is that I never, in any case, feel sorry for myself in a cinema. If you want to feel miserable, there are many more surefire ways of achieving it, after all: sit in a doorway with a homeless person; lean over a parapet on Waterloo Bridge and gaze into the mesmerically choppy waters; go and see how long
Starlight Express
has been running. The impulse simply to buy a ticket and sit comfortably in a dark public place of entertainment seems by comparison a whoop of life-affirming joy.
What I like is the feeling of sanctuary. Hugging my possessions to my chest, sinking low in the seat, and prising great juicy wads of Opal Fruit away from my molars, I feel tremendously comforted by the reflection that I have vanished off the face of the earth; nobody has a clue where I am. The phone won’t ring; motorcycle messengers cannot pursue me. If it didn’t cost £6.50, it would be like stepping through thewardrobe into Narnia. As I huddle down, and prepare to sneer at the now excruciatingly familiar advertisements, I like to imagine that my friends are all ringing each other in panic. ‘She’s gone to earth again.’ ‘Damn.’ ‘Now there’s nothing we can do but wait.’
In old movie thrillers, of course, outlaws on the run frequently took refuge in cinemas. They would stoop as though entering church, shiftily taking aisle seats and removing their hats. They pretended to watch the picture, but kept a constant eye on the door, waiting for the inevitable pair of mackintoshed cops to appear, asking questions of the usherette. For them, the cinema was only a temporary haven; for me, it is total.
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