Today
On Sunday we had a lovely meal with Beatrice and Neil at Carluccio's in Brighton. Beatrice asked for a spoon to help her on her way with her spaghetti Carbonara. I have to admit to making a snooty remark, quoting my Italian teacher - "spoons are for children". After reminding me about her malfunctioning right shoulder, Beatrice rather sensibly ignored my remark and got on with enjoying her food.
In My Day
Pasta didn't really feature in the store cupboard at all when we were children. There was "macaroni" which was sometimes turned into a rather solid macaroni cheese, but that was all.
I think I first became aware of spaghetti when I saw "Lady and the Tramp" which has a scene in which the two dogs are dining together in a New York restaurant and sharing a plate of spaghetti. The slurp their way inelegantly through this impossible-looking meal. The "aah!" moment occurring when they start at the opposite ends of the same piece of spaghetti, arriving romantically in the middle. (What a silly film!)
So when did I become able to be snooty about how people eat their spaghetti? As part of my great 1969 hitchhiking adventure I and my friend Angela decided to travel by ferry from Brindisi to Greece. The ferry was an overnight crossing, leaving at about eleven pm. As the youth hostel closed during the day we found ourselves at rather a loose end. Brindisi is (or was then) rather a small, second-rate port, the weather was hot and dry and there didn't seem much to do. Desperate to get out of the sun we wandered into a little dry park. This was even worse as local youngsters indulged in the pastime of pinching English girls' bottoms. As I batted away yet another fifteen-year-old, I caught the attention of a young couple with a couple of children and pushchair. They nodded sympathetically and invited us back to their apartment. We accepted gratefully and climbed the stairs into their tiny flat. They spoke no English and I had very little Italian but we got on fine; understanding that baby number four was on the way (how were they all going to fit in?).
And they gave us spaghetti to eat. A heaping plateful simply dressed with oil and cheese. Amid much laughter they taught me how to eat my pasta with just a fork; a skill I have never forgotten. Don't pick up too much at one time, is at the heart of it.
These kind people also gave us a picnic of cheese, salami, bread and olives to eat on the boat. I sent them a card from Crete and have always treasured up that sweet interlude.
But, actually, who cares how you eat your pasta, so long as you don't slurp!
Today
We rarely recognise a turning point in our lives when we are experiencing it. Only hindsight sheds the clear light.
This week saw the forty-first anniversary of Paul and my meeting. One Facebook friend asked how we met - "must have been a very lucky moment" she said.
Well, most of the family knows the story but I suppose I ought to record it.
In My Day
I didn't feel very lucky, sitting on the grimy floor of a friend's flat at a very overcrowded student party. I'd worked to prepare the party and now it seemed that several hundred gatecrashers had turned up, none of whom I knew. The noise was deafening and the place so crowded that any attempt to move from my place would probably prove fatal. I talked in a desultory way to a blonde girl who was more interested in the bloke on the other side.
It was nearly 3.00 am, I wanted to go home and couldn't figure out how I was going to do this.
Suddenly I heard someone say "Has everyone got lifts?" I looked up to see a chap who looked as out of place as I. He was wearing a suit and tie and was peering around uncertainly. However, he'd said the magic word "lift" and I wasn't going to let this chance pass, if chance it was. "Are you offering?" I demanded, wanting to be sure of my facts.
He was, indeed. He told me his name was Paul and, on the way home, also being someone who didn't let a chance pass, asked me if I'd go out with him the following Monday. I agreed, for want of a good reason to say "no" and because it seemed churlish to disappoint my rescuer.
And, no, at the time, I didn't spot this as a turning point in my life.
Today
This morning Paul commented on a couple he visited in the village. "When I went in, Lilian was making marmalade and Phil was repairing the rotor arm of a model helicopter. Isn't retirement wonderful?"
We have talked many times about retirement and what it really means. Many of our friends are starting other careers or handling a pretty full babysitting schedule, so they don't seem to be retired at all; they're just not going "out" to work any more.
I hazarded that it's something to do with speed; not having deadlines and timetables to follow or being a slave to the alarm clock.
In My Day
I'm no stranger to deadlines and can work pretty fast when I want to. In fact, I'm inclined to work fast anyway, which isn't always helpful.
I remember the district inspector at Eastbourne Tax Office "Speed and accuracy, Mrs Barrett, speed and accuracy." This was in the days when it was fairly normal for a tax officer to have six hundred pieces of unopened post on their desks and I was renowned for getting through it and often clearing colleagues' work as well.
The trouble was that, while nearly all of it was pretty trivial and cleared by merely ticking a box, there was the occasional knotty case and I was less good at slowing down and taking the necessary time to get it right first time.
Once I joined Flare I discovered the dizzy joys of the Local Authority tendering process. There was no scope for either carelessness or slowness. The deadlines were totally fixed; even postal delays wouldn't wash, let alone excuses such at "the computer ate my draft". You felt very much as though the authority was totally in charge and not as though this was a communication between equals. And you were expected to answer the questions as drafted, even if they were nonsensical.
Sometimes I would add another document which basically said "I've answered your questions, but I don't think that gives you a proper idea of what I'm tendering, so here's another document explaining it better". This put even more pressure on completion; many a time the final copy was churning off the printer while I frantically grabbed the pages requiring signature and the courier waited impatiently outside on double yellows.
There were other deadlines such as new training courses, exhibitions and end of year figures. They all required a high standard of presentation and polish as well as accuracy.
This meant long days, sleepless nights and the tyranny of the alarm clock and I don't miss it one bit.
I promised myself at the start of the year that I would concentrate on doing everything to a high standard and not as though I had a deadline to meet. The trouble is, 2012 is shaping up as a year when everything has to work to deadlines. So I don't really feel retired, right now, and am just hoping to cross each finishing line on schedule.
Today
I've been reading Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the Rights of Women". Although the language is often convoluted, her arguments are undeniable. I looked up details of her life and found that she was writing her ideas more than two hundred years ago.
And that's pretty depressing when you consider how long it took for women to be allowed to vote, go to university and have their income treated as fully their own.
And we still treat as celebrities and role models women whose main claim to fame is their appearance and their ability to be as vapid as possible. We think it's acceptable for women to have major surgery just to look more attractive to men and younger.
In My Day
I never felt, as I was growing up, that my rights were inferior to that of my brothers and I assumed that I would lead an independent life and follow the career of my choice.
I carried this assumption gaily and naively into adult life, believing that most rational people would accept the equality of all people.
This attitude did, at least, prevent me from carrying about a feminist chip but I also had quite a few wake-up calls, so to speak.
There was the discovery that building societies could quite legally refuse to take all or any of my earning into account when we applied for mortgages. The assumption seemed to be that I would instantly stop earning once I started producing babies, and did not accord us the dignity of allowing us to make our own financial choices, It was only the liberal lending policy of Eastbourne Borough Council, anxious to bring younger people into the town, that allowed us to get off the rental treadmill.
As a working mother I received many a criticism about "farming out" my babies, as though I had somehow abandoned them.
We've had bosses refusing to allow Paul to take a day's leave to care for sick Becky because I should be doing it -"That's the trouble with allowing women to work". People have railed at Paul for "allowing" me to work and others telling me that wearing a suit to work was "aping a man".
The incident that really took my breath away was when I worked at the Tax Office in Lewes. I was pregnant with Becky at the time and was due my annual job review. The district inspector, rather a dry stick, started auspiciously by saying that the review was really a waste of time because I was pregnant. I explained that this was my second pregnancy whilst working for the IR and I had a track record of returning to full-time work. He them moved on to my promotion prospects which he said were nil, because, having a family, I would not be able to relocate. I began to prickle and said that I wasn't aware that only women had families and why not give me the opportunity. The interview continued in this frosty vein and concluded insultingly with the assumption that I had no outside interests, motherhood having finished off whatever little brain I'd started out with.
(It's interesting that under his leadership not a single woman at Lewes was promoted although many have been since).
I do not apologise for the years I spent working to support me and my family, nor for taking the lead in a number of family matters. My life is and should be my own; shared in marriage as a partner equal in every way. I have been ever grateful for the wholehearted support that my family has given me and cannot understand why any modern, rational, educated woman would ever for one second, wish to compromise her independence.
Battles have been won, my sisters, but the war is not over!
Today
A friend today commented that she has only just, after God knows how many years, realised that her favourite coffee is "espresso", not "expresso". She added that we often read what we expect to see, not what's there.
Quite.
In My Day
As a child I was a greedy reader. I read my books very fast and often ones that were a bit beyond my age. Thus, I read Dickens by the time I was about nine, Laine's Arabian Nights and so on. Often I had to struggle with strange phrases, especially in my beloved Hans Andersen. What, exactly was meant by "snip, snap, snurr, bassleurr" in the Snow Queen? ..... Something very Scandinavian that meant nothing to me and which I couldn't pronounce.
And all those Persian names in the Arabian nights! I just had to stumble along somehow, I didn't ask my parents (that would have meant admitting to reading those books at three in the morning), so my misunderstandings just went on.
One of my favourite HCA stories was "The Wild Swans" which tells of little Elsie and her struggles against cruelty and prejudice. I read it again and again and cried as she was dragged through the streets in a tumbrel and rescued at the last minute by her brothers.
Only when I read the story out loud to my daughters about twenty years later did I realise that her name is "Elise".
I think I first became aware of spaghetti when I saw "Lady and the Tramp" which has a scene in which the two dogs are dining together in a New York restaurant and sharing a plate of spaghetti. The slurp their way inelegantly through this impossible-looking meal. The "aah!" moment occurring when they start at the opposite ends of the same piece of spaghetti, arriving romantically in the middle. (What a silly film!)
