We have arrived on
holiday so obviously I’m exhausted. This is because, as all parents know, the
first few days of a self-catering family holiday are an endurance test.
After enduring the
hell that is packing and the hell that is Gatwick airport on a Saturday in
August, and the hell that is the procuring and driving of a hire car, followed
by the hell that is finding your accommodation, you then have to find somewhere
to eat because you have no food, and this can also be hell with a h-angry
husband, three h-angry children, and no idea where to go.
Fortunately this year
it wasn’t because a friend had recommended a restaurant and a clever
brother-in-law, who speaks Portuguese, among other languages, had booked it for
us from England before we arrived.
Still, I thought
the first night at the restaurant on the beach, after all that packing and
travelling, which actually wasn’t hell this time, just a bit tiring, was the perfect
moment to end my self-imposed period of alcohol abstinence (31 days) with half a beer. Here
it is…
Day Two, beginning
on this occasion with a stunning bougainvillea-fringed glimpse of the Atlantic
from our bedroom window, usually offers the prospect of more hell in the shape
of a trip to a busy foreign supermarket. And this Day Two was no exception. A holiday
with three boys, who are 18, 15 and 12, revolves around food.
I suppose the holiday
supermarket hell is marginally better now than it used to be when the boys were
little. Then we had no choice but to drag them around the aisles with us, where
they would bicker and kick each other incessantly, while also sneaking extra large
bags of crisps and chocolate cereal products into the trolley when our backs
were turned trying to decipher food labels. Whereas now they are mature and
considerate enough to stay behind at the villa asleep in bed while we do all
this without them. Progress.
Which brings me
here, post-epic supermarket shop, post-first swim in the pool, arms feeling
like jelly, wondering how I did all those pounding laps last year (am I officially
too old now? has it happened?). Tired of limb and heavy of eyelid, I am lying
on a sun lounger watching these three male children, whom I love more than life
itself, throw themselves and each other into a small strip of water,
surrounding by unforgiving concrete, in a manner that looks as if one
ill-judged leap could end in paraplegia, which of course it could.
I have a book to
read, I always have a book to read on holiday, whole piles of them. I dashed
off Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life before we came, which was brilliant, and this
next slip of a thing, which I am about to finish, having begun it on the plane
yesterday, is columnist Tim Dowling’s How To Be A Husband.
There must be some
sort of law requiring columnists to write books with How To in the title. I’ve
read Giles Coren’s How To Eat Out (really enjoyed that) and Caitlin Moran’s How
To Be A Woman, of course, so now it’s T.D.’s turn. I imagine the conversation
with his agent, “You must write a How To book, Tim. Everybody is doing it.”
Actually I think
it’s a curious title for a book that will no doubt mostly be read by women, and
which, from what I’ve read so far, doesn’t include a great deal about how to be
a husband but does tell us something about how to be Tim Dowling, but only as much
as he wants us to know, which I happen to think is just short of enough.
Anyway, hats off
to the fella because he’s somehow pulling off the trick of writing about hot
topics, such as sex in marriage, without telling the reader anything much, plus
he letting it be known how much he loves his wife, while simultaneously slagging
her off.
I suppose he’s
stuck between a rock and hard place. He needs money, he tells us this; he must
think of something to write about in order to earn some, his family is the
easiest and closest subject to hand, but they aren’t just going to roll over
and give him carte blanch to write whatever he wants, indeed his wife’s
hovering presence is almost palpable, and he can’t bang on about how great she
is because that would look immodest and embarrass her, so he tells us that
she’s awful and leaves us to work out that he’s actually fibbing, or at least
guilty of huge omissions, and that his wife is, of course, lovely. (I happen to
know that she is lovely because someone I know knows someone who knows her and
they say that she is, three degrees of separation, and not six, working nicely there.)
So really the book is just one long humble-brag.
I think his best
bits are about what it’s like to be the father of three boys. He certainly
appears more comfortable writing about his children than about his marriage, perhaps
because he doesn’t have them hovering around his right shoulder. So maybe he
should have called the book How To Be A Father, or better still, How To Be Tim
Dowling?
Anyway, despite
the book having the tiniest air of something conceived from a list of topics written
on the back of an envelope in the pub, or things from his column, I am a nosy
person (see last blog entry) and every now and again he gives us a proper sneaky
peek into his life and/or writes something I can relate to…
“He suffers from
Nameless Dread!” I say, reading out the relevant passage to my men folk.
“Who does?” they say.
“Tim Dowling,” I
say.
“Mummy loves Tim
Dowling,” Youngest says.
“Is that the guy
who plays the banjo?” Middle One says.
“Not very elegant
prose,” Husband says.
“He sounds like a
girl,” Eldest says.
Obviously I don’t
love Tim Dowling. I have never met Tim Dowling. I certainly love reading his
column, but then I love reading a number of columns. Possibly I love successful
columnists in the same way that an aspiring amateur footballer might love a famous
professional footballer. There are those I really rate, who bare their souls a
little and who are lucky enough and talented enough to write columns for
newspapers, and this group includes women, or one woman. In fact it hardly
constitutes a group at all: it is three people.
In this manner I
am in love with Caitlin Moran and, as you already know, I am in love with Giles
Coren, although I’m not sure I would get on with Giles Coren if I actually met
him, and I know I would be absolutely terrified of Caitlin Moran if we ever
went out on the razz together (bear with me, I live in a fantasy world) because
she is obviously quite bonkers (lovely bonkers) and would drink me under the
table, especially now after 31 days without alcohol.
T.D. seems the
most normal and writes about his family and for the Guardian, and I write about
my family, and I have written for the Guardian. That was before the lovely editor
I was writing for suddenly vanished and things at the Family section went a bit
weird and tense (I blame Julie Myerson).
Maybe I regard Tim
Dowling, subliminally, as some sort of male version of me, which of course is
ridiculous because he is a successful columnist, an American, in his 50s, and a
banjo player, and I am none of these things. But there are some similarities,
which in no particular order are -
He has three boys
He lives in London
He has been
married for a long time (but not as long as me)
He did an English
degree
His first son was born
in 1995, I think (ours was born in 1996)
He stays in the
house all day
He suffers from
Nameless Dread
He is a bit of a self-confessed
drama queen
He is the romantic
needy one in his relationship
Come to think
about it he isn’t a male version of me at all and Eldest was right: he’s a
girl.
The next book on
my pile is Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. I think reading this after How To Be A
Husband might be going from the faintly ridiculous (but enjoyable, let’s not
forget that) to the sublime. I’ll let you know…
Love E x
Two bits I particularly
liked from How To Be A Husband –
“Never
underestimate the tremendous healing power of sitting down together from time
to time to speak frankly and openly about the marital difficulties facing other
couples you know.”
That made me
laugh.
“… make sure you
are on the same side when battling outside forces.”
I read that one
out to husband. The overdone steak in a restaurant in France last year still
rankles. He should have backed me up when I tried to complain, in French, that it
was badly burnt, rather than turning to me to echo the surly French waitress:
“Yes, that’s true, Elizabeth, you did ask for it well done.” And I certainly
don’t think that after I flounced out of the restaurant, hungry and furious, to
sit alone in the car, he should have taken his time and then paid for the whole
lot having eaten his own meal, and then my burnt steak as well.
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