The Drink and I

First of all let me be clear: I don’t have a problem. I can take it or leave it and just at this moment in time I am choosing to leave it. For now. A week or so ago I had a bug which rendered me sans energy and appetite. After three days I got better and realised that for the first time for decades I had gone longer than 24 hours without a glass of wine. It seemed like an interesting experiment to continue for as long as it felt comfortable and see what effect it had both on my spirits and on my weight. I have difficulty keeping under 9 stone and a few pounds above that and it feels uncomfortable owing to small bones and a short torso. Eight and a half would be grand.

I didn’t want to miss the evening ritual – a relaxed drink before supper – so substituted Diet coke. (Flat D.C. is great, incidentally for Delhi Belly.)

As a child – at Sunday school I was a member of the Band of Hope – much to my Granddad’s amusement – him being a regular at The Rose and Crown, My first memory of sampling the demon drink was the end of our last term at grammar school. In the bowels of the cloakrooms we had discovered an unlocked cupboard which housed meters and had a faint gassy smell. Four of us girls would crouch in there at lunch time in the dark and discuss what we were going to do with our lives, boys and tell each other creepy stories; Edgar Allen Poe was a great favourite. Cider was our tipple - thank goodness we hadn’t got into smoking or I fear we’d have been blown sky high.

In the fifties with babies and little spare money we entertained friends with coffee and sandwiches. It was in the sixties the rot set in; we didn’t do drugs but it was the era of the dinner party. There would be quite stiff drinks as aperitifs, copious amounts of wine with the meal – each course of which would be laced with alcohol and followed by liqueurs and anything we fancied. Then we would drive home. Breathalysers were unheard of. Fortunately the roads were much quieter then.

In the seventies we became more health conscious and many of us stopped smoking and cut down on unhealthy foods and drink. Alcohol became more of a treat and I remember fondly visits to my friend’s farmhouse in the Dordogne. The mornings would be spent hard at work making the house liveable and then at lunchtime we would be treated to champagne cocktails and oysters.

In the eighties after my reunion with MTL there were some long evenings over a bottle of whisky as we caught up with 30 years of living and eventually I realised that spirits were not for me – I couldn’t take the headaches. So wine only was my tipple from then on. The amount would vary according to events and the company but then – after three separate leg fractures I took on board that alcohol inhibits the absorption of calcium and cut down further. So a glass a day is now the norm.

I’m not sure if I shall have a drink before Christmas – I’m not making any promises. It would be good to be more of an epicure and drink only excellent wine, modestly on special occasions. I asked MTL if he had noticed any difference since I cut out the alk. He said:

“You don’t stagger and fall over quite so much.”

That’s a joke!

On with the Motley

Story contd.

Thou art not a man, thou’rt but a jester!
On with the motley, and the paint, and the powder!
The people pay thee, and want their laugh, you know!
If Harlequin thy Columbine has stolen, laugh Punchinello!
The world will cry, "Bravo!"

I saw an old Italian film of the opera Pagliacci and when the eponymous hero sang ‘On with the motley’ I thought I understood his angst. In spite of my lovely boys, my home, a good husband, my shop, the theatre and good friends I felt this inner yearning and it is only now, at this late stage of my life, that I understand what I was looking for.

The theatre club were impressed by my having attended a production course and invited me to do one myself. I thought I had better start with a one act play and as John Mortimer was a big name then I chose his ‘Lunch Hour.’ It was the era when the’ Anyone for tennis?’ middle class drama was beginning to look old hat and the theatre of the absurd was rearing its ugly head.

‘Lunch Hour’ was a sad/comic tale of a man and a younger woman having a liaison in a shabby hotel near King’s Cross. The only other character is the Manageress who, unbeknownst to the girl has been told a long involved cover story of his wife having travelled down from Scarborough, with the children who have been left with a sister in law in another part of the town. Unfortunately the girl knows nothing of this and in the course of the crazy conversation discovers she has three children, a sister in law, and that there have been family rifts since the wedding.

It all becomes real to the girl and she quickly becomes the injured wife, romance goes out of the window and the affair is over before it has begun. It must have been hilarious with the original cast of Wendy Craig, Emlyn Williams and Alison Leggatt but whilst my man and manageress were very good, the girl couldn’t quite get it. Still the committee liked it enough to ask me to do a full blown production. This time I would make sure the key parts were played by more experienced actors and ‘The Deep Blue Sea’ and then ‘Separate Tables’ were productions I was proud of.

Julia - (who I had met through Pete– the first director I had worked with) -with all her experience - became a mentor and I looked forward to the day when I could have her in one of my plays. I had been intrigued by the play ‘The Unquiet Spirit’ by Jean –Jacques Bernard and Gary had even designed a set for it but Julia read it and said it would depress her too much and I understood what she meant. Not only was she a successful actress, director and writer she was also a member of the Crime Writer’s and invited me to go with her to their Christmas party.

I was thrilled to meet Kathleen Whitehorn; she was a journalist I much admired and had just written a very funny article on sluts (with regard to dress) and admitted she was one of the first order. I proudly told her I – at that very moment - was relying on a safety pin to hold up my bra. Julia said she was asked who was the girl who looked like she had escaped from a James Bond movie – not the impression I wanted to give at all.

Another trip to London was to a lecture by a foreign man -whose name escapes me - on set design. When I asked him how I could create the effect of peeling wall-paper for ‘Lunch Hour’ he suggested I paper the set and then peel it. No short cuts then!

The sixties was a time of change and people tended to question the beliefs they had hitherto accepted. I became increasingly aware of the gulfs between the haves and the have-nots; of the families who lived their happy peaceful lives without much care for the unhappy dysfunctional people and I rebelled against anything that branded anyone as lesser humans. I had always been receptive to other people’s worries but now it was as if I had a sign on my forehead which said 'Stop here and tell me your problems. ' This was some time before I actually became a Samaritan and before I befriended someone who helped me to keep my head above water.