Read Online No! I Don't Want to Join a Book Club: Diary of a Sixtieth Year by Virginia Ironside - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Virginia Ironside
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films, art galleries, exhibitions and theaters at special rates. I’m told that abroad the over-sixties have an even better time of it, wandering anywhere they like, their wrinkles a passport to free entrance. The greatest perk of all is that, if I am rudely challenged about my ancient status, I shall not be offended but, rather, deeply flattered.
Tomorrow I shall apply for my Freedom Pass, which will give me free transport—whether it’s for a lazy trip from one bus stop to the next, or from one side of London to the other. In the Underground I shall simply wave my card over something and sail in. None of that fiddling around with money, feeling pathetically inadequate as I stare at a blinking computer screen wondering what zone I’m in. Now I’m in the free zone, the old zone, and that’s the zone I like.
I’m also suddenly in receipt of a pension—£74 a week. True, I will be taxed on it, but still, I shall be quite a bit better off.
Even more fun, I then spent hours trying to cancel standing orders, get passport-sized photographs for the bus pass—all the pleasant rituals of stepping from one age into another.
As a treat, Penny had organized a birthday lunch at an incredibly smart restaurant in Piccadilly called the Wolseley. I remember it as a gleaming bank; later it turned into a Chinese restaurant, and now it is owned by a couple of people who used to own the Ivy. Penny had very sweetly bought me a scarf, though I am not very keen on scarves: they seem to be worn by people who want to hide lizardy necks, and if you haven’t got a lizardy neck there’s no point in wearing one. Wearing a scarf always seems to me rather like planting a row of Leylandii when there’s no nuclear power station to hide.
Unfortunately, as is so often the case these days, the restaurant was so noisy that neither of us could hear the other speak, and we spent an hour just mouthing across the table, pretending we could hear what the other one was saying. All I could gather was that she wanted us to go for a weekend to France as a big birthday treat, on her, which was incredibly kind.
When I got back I found a huge bunch of flowers waiting with the neighbors. It was, oddly, from the now-widowed Archie.
“Happy Birthday!” read the note. Then: “Lunch? Or dinner? Do ring. Much, much love, Archie.”
Dinner? Much, much love? Surely not. It’s odd how, even at my great age, one reads so much into such things. Recently I found myself counting the number of “xx”s a girlfriend had written on an email. Why only one? Why not two? Had I done something wrong? But I must say it would be lovely to see Archie again. He’s always been a friend, along with Mrs. Archie, the poor dead Philippa, but I haven’t had a proper conversation with him à deux for a couple of years.
In the evening I went round to Jack and Chrissie’s flat in Brixton for a sixtieth-birthday supper with Hughie and James. I gave James a lift but Hughie stayed behind because he wasn’t feeling well.
In the car, I asked: “What’s up? A cold?”
James looked worried. “He’s had this cough for ages now, and today he really feels terrible. I’ve told him to go to see the doctor, but he won’t. When I ask him to make an appointment just for my sake, he gets angry. I’ve begged him to take arnica and echinacea, but he says it’s all snake oil. I even turned the bed round the other way because I’m certain that facing north does us no good, but he got so angry he just put his pillow down at the bottom and slept the other way round, so I had his feet next to my face.”
“I can’t imagine Hughie angry,” I said. “Or rather,” I added, having just imagined it and been unpleasantly surprised at what my brain came up with, “I can. It must be horrible. Cutting and sarcastic, I suppose.”
“You have it,” said James. “His temper is like a nuclear bomb. Very, very rarely used, but when it is, it causes death and destruction all round.”
“I’ll
Tomorrow I shall apply for my Freedom Pass, which will give me free transport—whether it’s for a lazy trip from one bus stop to the next, or from one side of London to the other. In the Underground I shall simply wave my card over something and sail in. None of that fiddling around with money, feeling pathetically inadequate as I stare at a blinking computer screen wondering what zone I’m in. Now I’m in the free zone, the old zone, and that’s the zone I like.
I’m also suddenly in receipt of a pension—£74 a week. True, I will be taxed on it, but still, I shall be quite a bit better off.
Even more fun, I then spent hours trying to cancel standing orders, get passport-sized photographs for the bus pass—all the pleasant rituals of stepping from one age into another.
As a treat, Penny had organized a birthday lunch at an incredibly smart restaurant in Piccadilly called the Wolseley. I remember it as a gleaming bank; later it turned into a Chinese restaurant, and now it is owned by a couple of people who used to own the Ivy. Penny had very sweetly bought me a scarf, though I am not very keen on scarves: they seem to be worn by people who want to hide lizardy necks, and if you haven’t got a lizardy neck there’s no point in wearing one. Wearing a scarf always seems to me rather like planting a row of Leylandii when there’s no nuclear power station to hide.
Unfortunately, as is so often the case these days, the restaurant was so noisy that neither of us could hear the other speak, and we spent an hour just mouthing across the table, pretending we could hear what the other one was saying. All I could gather was that she wanted us to go for a weekend to France as a big birthday treat, on her, which was incredibly kind.
When I got back I found a huge bunch of flowers waiting with the neighbors. It was, oddly, from the now-widowed Archie.
“Happy Birthday!” read the note. Then: “Lunch? Or dinner? Do ring. Much, much love, Archie.”
Dinner? Much, much love? Surely not. It’s odd how, even at my great age, one reads so much into such things. Recently I found myself counting the number of “xx”s a girlfriend had written on an email. Why only one? Why not two? Had I done something wrong? But I must say it would be lovely to see Archie again. He’s always been a friend, along with Mrs. Archie, the poor dead Philippa, but I haven’t had a proper conversation with him à deux for a couple of years.
In the evening I went round to Jack and Chrissie’s flat in Brixton for a sixtieth-birthday supper with Hughie and James. I gave James a lift but Hughie stayed behind because he wasn’t feeling well.
In the car, I asked: “What’s up? A cold?”
James looked worried. “He’s had this cough for ages now, and today he really feels terrible. I’ve told him to go to see the doctor, but he won’t. When I ask him to make an appointment just for my sake, he gets angry. I’ve begged him to take arnica and echinacea, but he says it’s all snake oil. I even turned the bed round the other way because I’m certain that facing north does us no good, but he got so angry he just put his pillow down at the bottom and slept the other way round, so I had his feet next to my face.”
“I can’t imagine Hughie angry,” I said. “Or rather,” I added, having just imagined it and been unpleasantly surprised at what my brain came up with, “I can. It must be horrible. Cutting and sarcastic, I suppose.”
“You have it,” said James. “His temper is like a nuclear bomb. Very, very rarely used, but when it is, it causes death and destruction all round.”
“I’ll
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