On the appointed day, my long-time driver, Dave Pask, arrived at my house, beautifully suited and booted to take us to the town hall. On arrival, we waited in the anteroom until someone asked us which fiancée was the bride and which the groom? Heather is intensely private and found the whole thing mortifying rather than moving. She nearly expired with horror at the question, and I tried to explain that we didn’t quite see it like that and it was myself and the other lady who were getting a civil partnership. We were led into another room and the extremely courteous lady registrar explained that this was NOT to be our Splicing Day but only our Answering Questions Day, preparing for another future date to be arranged. ‘But I’ve booked a table, can’t you do it today?’ I asked. ‘No, I’m so sorry. This is the process we have to observe,’ the registrar said kindly. I contained my rage; no point in fighting with officialdom, especially such a pleasant example of it, but what it meant was that after we had gone through the history of our relationship from 1968 to the present day, showed our passports and birth certificates and signed various documents, my little ‘Unwedding Party’ went to Zédel, claimed our table and had a merry time. To say I felt a right twat doesn’t quite convey the depths of my squirming; of all things to fuck up, this was the worst. At least I’d been able to rearrange the Actual Day for two weeks hence, according to the rules. It had to be 16 July, the latest possible date before my departure for Australia. The Rendels wouldn’t be there, alas, they’d already have had to return to Australia, but Dave Pask and Denise and Carol bravely agreed to attend Take Two. Carol and Denise were the new witnesses.
Dave turned up punctually, again suited and booted, and he drove us four ladies to the town hall. We were all hysterical with laughter. We went together into the main room — there were flowers everywhere. The same nice lady was officiating. She made a very good speech, not religious at all (we were glad of that) but expressing a pleasure in our happiness, and wanting us to realise the seriousness of what we were doing. She shook hands with Heather and me, wishing us every happiness, and off we scooted for the Second Lunch at Zédel, just Heather and me and Carol and Denise. As it turned out, on my arrival in Australia I was taken straight to hospital with a wandering gallstone and given intravenous antibiotics. But it didn’t matter: all I could think about was the fact that we were well and truly spliced — TWICE!
Getting Older
Getting older is a hideous experience. I’m not someone who believes old age is a blessing — bollocks! It’s fucking awful and you get through it as best you can. I’m glad I only have to do it once.
No one ever tells you about how things change as you get older. It’s one of those topics that people avoid talking about until it’s too late and you are old too. That’s when you realise that it’s going to be such an effort bending over to pick something up, you might as well not bother. You change, and what you want changes. I get extremely irritated by it — I don’t mean in the superficial sense of mourning my youthful good looks: I refer to the general sagging and wrinkling, the age spots and skin tags, the sprouting of facial hair. Some of my friends have had plastic surgery and Botox, but that’s not for me. My face has always been a pleasant one; I have a winning smile and good eyes. The wrinkles which have appeared are the honourable traces of my life: laugh lines rather than frown lines.
My body is taking its revenge. The years of overeating and under-exercising have resulted in a belly of gargantuan proportions. I am ashamed of it. And my bladder is weak, or is it my sphincter? All I know is that I have about ten seconds to get to the loo. I always carry a spare pair of knickers: when this book is finished, I’ve promised myself a course in pelvic firmness. Apparently, it can be done, so I live in hope.
Although I was never sporty, as a young person I was not unfit. Until the inexorable passage of time took its toll, I had health, vigour and stamina. I’ve always loved water, and for forty years I swam every day. I wasn’t a good swimmer; I was, in fact, a pathetic swimmer, but at least I did it.
When I was a child, my parents forbade me to join in school swimming lessons: they were frightened of polio as many believed that swimming was where children caught the disease. In 1955, Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine and the world breathed more easily, much as we’re doing now facing the horrors of COVID-19 and the sensible ones rushing to get their jabs. (Don’t mention anti-vaxxers to me; that is not a sane opinion to hold.) Eventually, however, I persuaded my parents to let me learn to swim — at school, we had our lessons in the River Cherwell. From that moment on, swimming was my sport. In London, I used to swim in the Marshall Street Baths in Soho, or sometimes at the Queen Mother Sports Centre in Victoria. Mary Wilson, Harold Wilson’s widow, used to swim there, and also Jennifer Paterson, one of the ‘Two Fat Ladies’. We always knew when she was in, because she was a baritone and she sang, ‘Pomty pom, pomty pom’ in stentorian tones as she dried herself in the cubicle.
My local pool, on Clapham Manor Street, is one of my favourites, as it’s easy to step into. I hate pools where they have only perpendicular metal ladders, so you are required to be a climber as well as a swimmer. And I prefer to swim in the open air; if Tooting Bec Lido and Brockwell Lido were heated in the winter, I would be so happy. My favourite pool in the world is the Carnegie Memorial Pool in suburban Melbourne, but alas, it’s being redeveloped (a word which strikes terror into me — next to ‘cancer’, my least favourite word is ‘developer’), until at least May 2023.
My daily swim was marred only by selfish swimmers. Pool Nazis are usually men, who pound up and down the lane, ignoring anyone nearby while they splash, hit and kick with impunity. There is no excuse for not looking around to see who else is in the pool.
In my seventies, I was diagnosed with benign positional vertigo (BPV) perhaps caused by water getting into my ears. That sadly brought an end to my daily dips. My poor body was used to swimming, so when I stopped, it gave up too and went to pot. I’ve had skeletal problems, osteoarthritis, and a knee replacement operation since. The latest blow is spinal stenosis, a debilitating condition which makes it difficult to walk or even stand for any amount of time without severe pain.
Consequently, I’ve become physically nervous, though I think that’s something that comes to all of us with age: while I never liked my body much, I used to trust it, and now I worry it’ll let me down and so I move about the world, anxiously and carefully. I walk with a stick, and if people get too close, and their droplets could infect me, I wave the stick in their faces — and mostly, they keep away.
The worst thing about ageing, obviously, is the great sorrow of losing friends — as you grow old, people you have loved and imagined would always be there start, with wretched regularity, to leave your life. I’ve loved writing this book, but the saddest part has been revisiting the losses.
It’s not all doom and gloom, however. There are perks of age. People listen to you more. They don’t see you — you’re invisible when you’re in the street — but if they’re sitting talking to you, they think you’re wiser and you’re going to be talking sense because you’re old. It may not be true, but still…
Also, you stop giving a damn. When I get into a tube train and I want to sit down and there are no seats, I say: ‘Please, may I sit down?’ Once I was so exhausted and a man was sitting down right in front of me. When he didn’t stand up to offer me his seat, I just plonked myself on his lap! He was surprised, then really quite angry, but he got up pretty quickly. He didn’t stay under the Mighty Margolyes for long!