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The Lie

Posted on September 29, 2009

The Wheatsheaf Inn book club took a field trip to London last Thursday to attend Book Slam, self-described as London’s best literary night club. We went to see William Boyd read, having recently finished his novel, Any Human Heart. Mr. Boyd, or Lord William of Boyd as our emcee referred to him, delivered both the gripping first chapter of his new novel, Ordinary Thunderstorms, and a humorous short story about a man whose life is defined by kleptomania of varying degrees.

The other literary guest of the evening was poet Don Paterson, with whom I was unfamiliar. I have a hard enough time trying to read poetry so I held out little hope for absorbing verse read aloud to a crowded, Chenin Blanc soaked room. But almost a week later it’s one of Paterson’s poems, The Lie, that has stuck with me — not exact words but his image of the lie, a boy of three or four, shackled in some hidden room in his house, grotesque from his years of confinement. A large glass and a half into my own Chenin Blanc submersion and influenced by Paterson’s repeated apologies for reading poems about divorce and death, I interpreted The Lie as being about his own divorce. The boy to whom he tends so faithfully and yet from whom he has remained detached for “thirteen years or more” is any one of the number of small lies in our relationships, lies that somehow culminate in that one big lie, that everything is just fine.

Husband and I have a different approach to our marriage, although I’m not sure it’s any better than the lie. We are, if anything, too honest, holding nothing back, particularly when we fight which is often. Bickering is our lingua franca, escalating more often than I’d like into full-blown, no holds barred, verbal WWF matches in which there are no failures to acknowledge that which the other perceives as lacking: sex, mental health, something to say to each other at the dinner table. Our lie is free, hopped up on sugar, and tearing around the house wailing like a banshee.

Books Random

The Unreliable Narrator

Posted on June 16, 2009

The compelling inaugural read of the Wheatsheaf Inn book club was Ross Raisin’s God’s Own Country. Early on the narrator, Sam Marsdyke, tells us about the attempted rape allegation that prematurely ended his school career. In his version it was a mutually reciprocated teenage dalliance interrupted by a teacher with unfortunate timing. I believed him. Then, a few pages later, Sam dropkicks a chicken for no particular reason and the doubts set in. Sam’s descent into the realm of the unreliable narrator continues unabated from there.

Over the weekend husband had occasion to tell the story of his own “chicken dropkick” moment with a much more personal unreliable narrator, his mother, who suffered from undiagnosed schizophrenia for many years of husband’s childhood. When he was ten years old he decided to reverse engineer a record player and, in the process of disassembling the transformer, gave himself a nasty electric shock. The experience disturbed him and over the next few days he became convinced he had developed a lump in his chest caused by the shock. After a few more days he decided to confide his worries in his mother. He told her the whole story, then she asked him what he thought the lump could be.

“I think it might be cancer,” whispered husband.

His mother paused and thought this over before answering.

“Could be, son,” she replied. “Could be.”

Lately I too have been struggling with the reliability of some personal narration in my life. For the last few days my right arm has felt weak. I notice it most when I’m driving and want to drape it on the arm rest or lay it in my lap in an imaginary sling position to get relief. I’m worried it’s an MS-related symptom, but husband is convinced it’s nothing. He tells me I’m just getting old and feeling creaky is to be expected. The problem is he’s understandably invested in me not exhibiting MS symptoms, having no desire to ponder a future in which he gets to play nursemaid to someone with a chronic illness. The part of me that knows positive thinking matters in situations like these welcomes his optimism. But another part of me knows he’s a fundamentally unreliable narrator on this particular subject.

He has, however, made one very accurate observation of late. Ever since this whole health debacle started, my brain has gone into overdrive making me highly sensitive to any physical anomalies no matter how slight. No cramp, tinge or tingle goes unnoticed. It’s as if 24/7 surveillance has been installed in my central nervous system. The fundamental question, though, is how reliable is the person my brain has put on duty to monitor the surveillance? Is it an Agent Scully type in charge, smart and grounded even in the face of an alien attack on my neurons? I’d be happy if P.I. Precious Ramotswe was on the case, wise and warm and down to earth seeming somehow appropriate for the task at hand. But maybe my cerebellum has gone and hired an overzealous mall cop for the task and now he’s stirring up “symptoms” to justify his own inflated sense of self-importance.

Of course I am hopeful my brain has just made a poor hiring decision and my lazy right arm is all down to mall cop’s overactive imagination. After all, there’s no need for the warmth and wisdom of the Lady’s No.1 Detective if there’s nothing wrong. I’ll find out soon enough because my follow up appointment with the neurologist is booked for the end of the month. Until then I’m keeping my inner mall cop away from the phone.

Books Cotswolds

Rescue

Posted on January 10, 2009

My first week on the new job is in the bag. People complain about long commutes, but my drive time was one of the highlights of the week despite the frozen conditions. I’ve established a set of landmarks for my journey that go like this: The Royal Agricultural College or RAG, known as the Oxbridge for farmers; The Veg Shed, a farm shop on the estate of Prince Charles’ country house, Highgrove; then a series of villages with names that make me smile: Little Badminton, Petty France (I looked for but did not find Gracious Switzerland or Important Italy), and Old Sodbury, which I like to think is populated wholly by old sods; finally the motorway and the bright lights, big city of Bristol.

After the snow melted this week there was a true frost, transforming my commute into a bit of Narnia. The entire landscape looked like it had been flash frozen then sugar dipped. It was something I’d never seen before having grown up in Florida where frost refers to that one night a year when farmers worry the orange crop might be lost. But upon encountering this new found beauty I admit my first association wasn’t with fairytales, but rather the Russian Winterland wedding Joan Rivers threw for her daughter Melissa at the Plaza Hotel some years ago. Why my brain can produce this data from an ancient episode of Entertainment Tonight at the slightest provocation but not the location of my keys is one of life’s little mysteries.

Another such mystery is what exactly “Process Portal Framework” means. This was the subject of one of no fewer than twenty-eight PowerPoints I was given on Monday morning as an “induction pack” for my new job. By the time I got to the Process Portal Framework sometime on Friday afternoon I was pretty sure I hadn’t landed my dream job. It’s a good enough job, a well paying, middle management job in an interesting industry where I’ll get good experience I can use to parlay into yet another one of these kind of jobs. Which I realize may be very depressing sounding depending on just what kind of person you are but, for whatever it says about me, I feel just fine about it.

I cannot say I felt the same about seeing Katie Price next to Annie Proulx in the Fiction Ps at Waterstone’s today. I went in to buy a calendar (despite BlackBerry enabled Outlook syncing, husband and I are still dependent on a paper version to manage our new found active country social life attending bingo and fetes and such), but I have no self-control in bookshops and was soon browsing the shelves.

Katie Price is a glamour model (Britspeak for topless tabloid model) turned reality television star who has a commercially successful series of ghostwritten children’s books, adult novels, and no less than three autobiographies. Think of an industrious Pamela Anderson. She was most recently in the news for renewing her vows after a whopping three years of marriage to a man she met on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. I saw her in the fake tanned flesh two years ago when she was eating lunch in the same room as me at Royal Ascot, our collective presence perhaps revealing something about the social decline of this once venerated event. And there was Katie today, three volumes exactly, snuggled up to a single hardback of Annie Proulx’s latest book of short stories, Fine Just The Way It Is. Now Annie Proulx is one of my favourite authors, and this was an indignity I couldn’t tolerate. Even though I’ve already read it, I bought Annie just to rescue her from the slight. Of course I can afford to dispense such biblio-thropic acts of justice precisely because of my well-paying not so dreamy job, which in its own small way is a good enough sign that there’s some kind of order in this world.

Books Cotswolds Random

Redemption Looks Like Tom Cruise

Posted on September 24, 2008

Last weekend the pheasants appeared en masse in the Cotswolds, the humble brown hens and their queenie male companions tarted up like Louis XIV out for a country stroll. They have invaded the sheep fields, pecking and skittering about the flocks. The first time I saw a pheasant last year I was enamoured. The delight faded after the third or fourth time husband was forced to slam on the brakes to avert a panic-stricken pair who decided to run out in front of the car. They are stupid birds, and I pity the sheep.

The pheasants were the most idyllic thing about last weekend. It was tits up* from the start, which was marked by an aborted attempt to get out of town on Thursday night that ended with an argument at a West London gas station. We made it out on Friday in time to attend a long planned dinner party where I drank too much. Attempts to exorcise the hangover on Saturday with painkillers and fresh air failed where dinner at a Mexican chain restaurant in Cheltenham succeeded. The pleasure of the latter was promptly undone by going to see Mama Mia!.

Oh, Meryl.

The film produced an allergic reaction in me, triggered I suspect by Pierce Brosnan singing. The upside was that my sneezing drowned out the sound of husband’s blame for the film selection all the way home.

Sunday started full of promise with a trip to a charitable country house car boot sale (aka a flea market). It was planned for the grounds of Lord Vestey’s estate, Stowell Park, but was moved to a disused airfield in the next village over due to flooding. It’s been dry for a good week so I am cynical about the motives. I think Lord Vestey thought better of having the masses invade his estate, who were indeed a different crowd than the plant loving elderly crew from the previous open gardens day at Stowell Park.

Lord Vestey had hinted at royalty in attendance in the promotional interview I had read in this month’s Cotswold Life magazine. Instead we got Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen (think cable show interior designer if you’re American) and donations to a silent auction from HRH Princess Michael of Kent. She proffered a purple velvet bag of potpourri and a set of miniature wooden Christmas figurines, both of which looked just about worthy of a shelf in Oxfam. Honestly, she’s letting the royals down. Charlie is going to have to open another organic food porn store in the area (have I mentioned the newish Highgrove shop in Tetbury?) to make up for it. I had to go sit down in the shade with a half pint of 7.7% Old Rosie cider just to get over the disappointment.

Sunday descended into nothingness with husband bitter, complaining, and getting on my nerves—a pheasant to my sheep. On cue, the alarm failed to go off Monday morning and when we did get back to London there was no hot water thanks to some fault with the boiler.

Things only got better last night when we went to see Ben Stiller’s flick, Tropic Thunder. Tom Cruise as Les Grossman showing off his best dance moves since Risky Business was alone worth the price of admission.

*Speaking of “tits up,” I recommend Annie Proulx’s new book. One of the stories, “Tits Up in a Ditch” was published in the New Yorker earlier this year and, like Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder, the book is worth the purchase price for it alone.

Books Random

Poor Precedents

Posted on March 8, 2008

Today I read an interview with author Peter Mayle in a FT Weekend column where famous people talk about their favourite house. “I go away less and less and each time I can’t wait to come home. That’s the true test of having found a place where you’re really happy.”

Our trip to Paris is the only one we’ve planned for the year, apart from a family wedding I have to attend back in the states. Our Cotswold cottage is passing his test.

I’ve also been thinking about how much more to blog about depressed husband and his adventures in pharmaceuticals. I read Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence when it first came out, but I don’t remember if his wife featured much in it. The FT article mentions he was on his second marriage when he wrote it. It doesn’t mention if his first wife divorced him for being mentioned in a book.

Years ago I read Frances Mayes’ Tuscany books, and I vaguely remember her mentioning her husband. My recollection was that he was wonderful and her second one. I am getting worried I may need to divorce husband and get married again before I can write anything useful on the subject of him and depression.

The only memoir of recent years I can think of where the husband features prominently is one of my favourites, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. That starts with her husband dropping dead.

This isn’t helping.