And maybe some time soon I’ve give the patches another whirl, just for Andrew. It might make me live longer. I might get to see Andrew’s children, my grandchildren. When they come along. I can change my habits. Showbiz stars do. That Roseanne lost loads of weight. They printed a photo of a pile of pats of lard, the equivalent of all she lost. She says she feels much better on it. I don’t know if she smokes, though.
The next thing for me usually at that time of night is wondering what we should have for tea. I’ve never liked cooking much and by the time I get in on nights I can’t really be bothered.
I remember frying up chips for the kids, winter nights after school. These were the years before oven chips, which only started in 1980. My home-made chips were always either too limp or too hard. A pale yellow and they sat in puddles of grease on your plate. The kids ate them slowly, dutifully, doused in tomato sauce which separated out into floating red blobs in the cooling fat. Like I imagine blood cells to look. Or a lava lamp working.
I wished then that I could cook better for the bairns and I wished that I could learn. But who is there to teach you? On a limited budget, not much time. Where do you go for perfect chips? And I’d sit and watch the bairns be good, forcing every last bit down. Then one night Joanne got a burnt one stuck in her throat and great fat tears came rolling down. Her face was all puffed up.
“I’m sorry, Mam. This is horrible. I can’t eat it.”
And she looked so ugly and sad that I started crying too.
The 1980s began with oven chips being invented and we’d wrap them in newspaper to make them taste even more real. Also in the eighties there were other things, making mams’ jobs easier. Pot Noodles—they came along and you could pretend, in your own front room, that you were camping out on some adventurous holiday somewhere.
Once, when we had my second husband, we did go on an adventurous holiday, to a caravan in Robin Hood’s Bay, and we took twenty-four Pot Noodles with us, one each for each of the nights, trying every flavour. The front of the caravan was all windows and at teatime we’d leave the canvas blinds open to watch the sun set behind the cliffs and some nights we’d be eating Chinese, or Indian, or Mexican.
We never had pizzas until 1986. It seems like forever. Suddenly the local free papers had adverts for deliveries. You’d wait an hour after phoning on the spur of the moment. Then some lad would arrive on his bike, carrying the boxes up to your door, grinning in his leather rider’s gear with his helmet on top of your boxes. Golden rounds of flabby garlic bread, cans of pop and lettuce leaves in tin-foil dishes. A treat we routinely surprised ourselves with every Friday night, coinciding with Dynasty.
For a while everyone was in padded shoulders, we all had clumpy jewellery, and the men rolled up the sleeves on their shiny suit jackets.
The eighties were the twins’ teens, my forties, and between us we managed to shovel on the weight. My husband then sold second-hand cars and by God, he was a big feller. I’ll tell you about this some other time, but it was on that holiday to Robin Hood’s Bay that we lost him. Swimming in the bay he went bobbing out away into the North Sea, never came back. It was terrifying and horrible, but somehow peaceful, too, to watch him, just like floating away. Like a whale put back out of captivity. That was about the time we all started going green. So we never finished our holiday properly—our first since 1976 (That gorgeous summer! I remember Lake Ullswater rimmed with cracked, parched mud, us eating breakfast, boiled eggs dipped in salt in the heat)—and we never finished all our Pot Noodles off. Had to bring them back with us. They’re still in the cupboard somewhere.
These days the twins both cook and, as I say, we’re all green now, aren’t we? Healthy eating is the watchword round here and they’re trying to convince me, but it seems a faff-on to me. I couldn’t come in from work to clart on with garlicky things and what have you—salads. I’m too old to change all of my dog’s tricks. I piled on the pounds in the eighties and I reckon they’re here to stay for the nineties. Mind, the twins have shed their puppy fat. They did when they were about nineteen. They try not to, but I catch them sometimes, turning up their noses when I bake big cakes or rustle up a nice fry-up for tea. They’ll neither of them eat baked potatoes or cheese on toast or crisps or Mars bars at midnight any more.
So it’s a surprise when I start to think about what to cook for tea and I go through on my way to the loo and, in the dining room, I see that it’s all been taken care of.
Behind me, in the kitchen, I hear Andrew snigger softly. Pleased with himself at my gasp of surprise.
He’s put on a lovely spread. He must have spent the whole day baking.
And I forgot! It had clear gone out of my head.
Tonight’s the night of me soiree.
Andrew hasn’t forgotten and he comes into the dining room to see me staring at his handiwork. He puts his arms around me and gives me a big hug, saying, “The water’s on, so you can have a bath and get yourself ready. I’ll bring you a gin and tonic. You’ve an hour or two yet before your guests arrive.”
My guests! How could I have forgotten?
Tonight’s the night I play lady of the mansion.
And our Andrew has done us proud.
What really snags me
