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Thursday, April 08, 2004

On being off for a bit

The blog is in hiatus while I piss off to glorious Croatia for a couple of weeks with the new husband. Dubrovnik is apparently a bit like Tuscany, but with fewer rah-tourists, more islands and much cheaper beer. Full report in a fortnight.

Wednesday, April 07, 2004

On why size matters

The sporadically entertaining BBC News Magazine today notes that theatre-goers are risking discomfort and long-term injury by sitting in seats that are too small for them. London's theatres were built many decades ago, and were not designed to accommodate today's fat arses and gangling limbs.

Oh, shame. I have spent my life sitting on chairs that are too big for me. Even at primary school I was inches shorter than my peers, so my feet dangled while I worked. My feet have always dangled; it's what they do. The chair I'm sitting on right now is too high, so I'm perching my bum on the edge and wiggling my back regularly to stop it feeling so sore. Stop whingeing, you over-tall, overprivileged bastards. Chairs have always been made for people like you [etc etc moan blah]

Monday, April 05, 2004

On joining the wedded classes

(Or: A Brief Moment Of Blogger-Like Self-Absorption From The Woman Who Thought She Was Above All That)

So it's all over bar the "whose Lacroix thong is this?" for David and Victoria. Lucky, then, that Meejaboy (nee Lord Muck) and I are now married up and ready to fill the void.

To my great shame I have spent the first two days of my married life feeling physically shit and less randy than a giant panda. No-one will tell you this while you're having your third hair rehearsal, but getting married really ballses up your immune system. By Saturday I'd had around eight hours' sleep in four nights. This may be fine for a humanoid like Thatcher, but if I sleep fewer than seven hours I go a bit Tourette's, and my body puts out the bunting for all passing airborne viruses.

I had made every effort to keep the wedding hassle-free (quick register office bash, down the pub, move along now there's nothing to see here) but thanks to those people who have felt driven to ask me on the hour every hour for the past several months: "are you nervous?", I finally succumbed to self-fulfilling prophecy and spend last week shitting cluster bombs. I now have a sore throat and my legs refuse to walk anywhere.

But hey, I'm married, right? So everything's lovely. Actually I'm the same person that I was last week. Same feelings, same fears, same flaws. I'm no wiser, no more worthy, certainly no more sociable. I still enjoy solitude more than normal people do, and a night in with a book holds more allure than a night on the tiles. So why did I get married? No disrespect to my extraordinary new husband, but it's a question dying to be asked, partially in the spirit of social inquiry.

I've looked up what others have said about marriage, and they're not happy about it. Lawrence's Women in Love alter-ego Birkin calls marriage "cowardly": "the world all in couples, each couple in its own little house, watching its own little interests and stewing in its own little privacy -- it's the most repulsive thing on earth." Marriage "hath in it less of beauty... than the single life," wrote theologian Jeremy Taylor. Philip Larkin, the Hermit of Hull (hermits are my favourite people: I respond to their fears), decided that marriage would stop him writing poems. "If women are to effect a significant amelioration in their condition," wrote Germaine Greer with characteristic over-generalisation, "it seems obvious that they must refuse to marry."

They're right, of course. Meejaboy may even agree. We've both been volubly cynical about marriage, shocked the bejesus out of our families with our decision to get hitched and remain queasy about other people's extravagant nuptials. But our reservations were more than reasonable. Marry for many common reasons and you will find yourself trapped in a dual identity, silenced when you want to be at your most blissfully irrational, guilty when you want to be alone, guilty when you want to be with mates, and reduced to a domestic, coupled-up sun-bleached photo version of your authentic single self. Singlehood is not necessarily lonely; marriage to the wrong person is infinitely lonelier.

I like to think we've got it right. There is a delicious, self-affirming comfort in being married to a person who doesn't merely tolerate your quirks but embraces them. It is more than just a gesture to one other. It's a state of belonging, a final goodbye to that exhilarating, soul-destroying jigsaw-life of serial dating that hurls you from high to rejection to desolation and back to another high. I'm ashamed to say that I've also felt oppressed by the (growing?) cultural prejudice against single people. Everywoman is suddenly Bridget or Carrie, whose experience teaches us that to be single is not to be free, strong and independent, but to be sad, mad and pathetic. Single women over 30 are either failures, desperate man-hunters, or lentil-eating freaks with loopy earrings and too many cats. I deplore myself for being taken in by all this, but I don't want to be associated with any of those sterotypes.

I'll end this slice of self-absorption by completing that quote from Bishop Jeremy Taylor. "Marriage hath in it less of beauty but more of safety, than the single life. It hath more care, but less danger, it is more merry, and more sad; it is fuller of sorrows, and fuller of joys; it lies under more burdens, but it is supported by all the strengths of love and charity, and those burdens are delightful."

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

On dead wordsmiths

God can look forward to some smashing conversation this weekend.

First to go was wolfish raconteur Peter Ustinov, whose death at the age of 82 was announced yesterday. He seems to have been a bit of an elder-generation Stephen Fry, and achieved all the things any sensible person would wish to achieve: being lauded by the Writers' Guild of America, winning a matching pair of Oscars, speaking French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Greek and Turkish, and being mates with Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

Ustinov was also the most quotable man alive, a title that I suppose must now be passed to Woody Allen. His description of love ("An act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit") does more to sum up this freak emotional state than the complete works of Shakespeare and Celine Dion combined.

More sagacious favourites: "Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious"; "Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy" and "In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from".

I notice that ITV News got Michael Winner to comment: "He was a very dear friend for over 50 years." This is a bit like getting a 10-year-old boy to say "bum".

Then I woke up this morning to hear that Alistair Cooke has also shuffled off to the great studio mic in the sky, this time at the admittedly advanced age of 95. I knew how old he was (well, he has been sounding a bit doddery these last few years) and always found it extraordinary that he kept on churning out his Letters from America when any other bloke of his age would be sucking on liquidised custard creams and watching re-runs of Baywatch.

Sunday, March 28, 2004

On the eligible Mr Cruise

Why Can't Tom Keep His Girls? asks today's Sunday Mirror, lamenting the decision by Cruise and his mis-spelled namesake to part company.

Leaving aside the dubious use of the word "girls" (Nicole Kidman is 36, Mimi Rogers 44), the angle of this story seems just a bit disingenuous. "Tom Cruise is one of Hollywood's most handsome and richest stars and has had a string of beautiful women on his arm," it says. "But there's the rub - he just can't seem to hang on to them."

It goes on to speculate reasons for Cruise's "failure" to maintain a relationship. The words "we think you're a screaming woofter, Tom" aren't actually used, but I think we understand what the Mirror is getting at here.

How on Earth is a 10-year marriage to Kidman, followed by a three-year relationship with Cruz, proof that Cruise is a "loser in love"? Sounds like pretty long-term going to me. Moreover, Cruise remains on good terms with Kidman and there's no reason to disbelieve reports that his recent break-up was amicable. I think such behaviour shows more moral strength and good sense than hanging onto a dead relationship just for the sake of clocking up a few more years.

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