I sit on the tube and close my eyes to make the world go away.  I'm too old for this: The right words from the wrong person for all the wrong reasons.

The two glasses of wine I drank at lunch time make me sleepy and befuddled but as we lurch into Marble Arch, the train jolts my eyes open and I find myself under the scrutiny of the  line of commuters opposite me staring like I'm a specimen in a display case.  Middle Aged Woman with Face Even Botox Cannot Save and Large Blemish on Chin,  Giacommeti head, Botero body, reflected in the window behind them.

I'm wearing a red dress and have felt, all day, like I should be handing out samples for the Special K diet.  But it was that or the pink one that makes me look like a politician's wife according to my youngest daughter.  'I'm going to open a fete,' I joked to a colleague the last time I wore it.  'Really - that's amazing,' he replied, believing me.  The Sam Cam style does not become me.

One of my fellow commuters looks like a Mormon on his proselyting year abroad painted by Stanley Spencer, and has a jade tinge to his skin that gives him more than a passing resemblance to something that's been dead, or undead, for a while. He twist his long spindly ET fingers with Lady MacBeth angst.  I feel sure this has nothing to do with me, though his eyes don't flicker away when I stare back but keep examining me.  Next to him, an Asian man whose index finger is a down-turned sad clown face over his mouth, shifts his gaze to my right ear, as if to pretend he had been contemplating this, and not the small planet on my chin, all this while.  On his left, a bald man in a yellow hill-walker's anorak, with a daytime Radio 2 presenter's face, drops his eyes and resumes his texting. 

I look to the other side.  Mormon man is still transfixed but his neighbour, a shaven headed chap in plimsolls and a pin-striped jacket blinks and examines the space in the middle distance between us.  Damn.  I wonder if I've been snoring.  No way to know.  In my head there's a running commentary from the person I just had lunch with, but all around me are mute, except for the disembodied voice of the underground who announces that the next station is Lancaster Road.

I thought I was going off to meet a man about a job, but apparently not.   I'm too old for the casting couch.  And for what?  A book review paying twopence ha'penny  for 500 words that he forgets to bring with him, and so far has forgotten to send?  And even if it had appeared.  I still have to read the damn book beforehand.

He thought we'd go to the Savoy for an afternoon of passion.

Really, and what am I supposed to do then?  Congratulate myself on an afternoon of good shagging and go back whistling as I work? Do middle aged men know anything about middle aged women?

I don't want an afternoon in the bloody Savoy unless it's with a man whose going to come home with me afterwards and put out the garbage.  I may have got rid of all my children and a husband, but then why would I want somebody else's?  I've been the leavings on the side plate of my own marriage, and now I should willingly step up to be scraped off the dish of someone else's?  Sod that.  I want someone who will buy a dog with me, and then walk it.  I want his and hers cats and a holiday companion who will drive across Europe with me, who will come round on Boxing Day for a second Christmas, and pick me up from the airport when I come back from a trip.  I want someone who will wind their arms round me in the morning and kiss the back of my neck before he gets up, and be back in the bed in the evening.  I want someone who will share grandchildren, and a wide bath with a handrail for when we get arthritic.

'If you want a mistress who doesn't rock the boat of your outwardly perfect marriage then I suggest you look around the wives of your married friends and see who is the most discontented, and tip your hat at her,' I said,'but women like me - we're on a different page of the almanac all together.'

He blinked.  Like I was imparting the secrets of the universe.

'Maybe she too is in an unsatisfactory relationship but doesn't want to lose her spa membership, her half of the pension plan and the house in Essex with the three car driveway, and for whom the idea of a matinee in town, a vegi-burger and two glasses of Sancerre followed by a suite in Savoy afterwards would be a welcome distraction.'  But that's not me...

Not even with a book review thrown in.

Now a two book deal - that's another question all together.  Then I'd settle for a couple of hours in a Travelodge. And the vegi-burger would be optional.

I have on my desk the three major food groups of weight loss:  Salt, Aspartamine and MSG, namely Instant Soup (providing a two-fer), soya sauce and Diet Coke.  I'm guessing that alcohol, currently top of my dysfunctional food pyramid at least provides a bit of variety as well as most of my calorie intake.  In the SMEG I currently have four kinds of vodka; while several different grapes have been blended to provide the contents of my wine rack. I'm a gourmet.  Heston, eat your heart out

Happy Monkey

New Year Resolutions

Eighteen months ago in a bookstore on Madison Avenue (oh yes, I'm that swanky) I bought a bunch of books with the usual stickers and gold seals printed on the front and packed them into my suitcase.  In December, I carried them back to New York with me, returned to the same bookstore and added to the pile.  All came back home with me.  They then travelled to Florence, back again to the States where, despite a week long delay thanks to Miscount Volcano - yep - they went into the suitcase and returned to London.

They have since been to Syria, Lebanon (where my ereader broke meaning that I started reading the dross that other people leave behind in hotel rooms - but still not the ones I'd physically taken with me), Crete, Budapest, and Brazil.

Those books have travelled.

They have not yet, however, been read.

They make my bedroom look very literary however, should the thought police pass by and scrutinise my bedside table.

My new year resolution?

Surely, it's finally to read What was Lost or one of it's siblings?

No.  It's just to stop packing the dratted things.

On Fire

'Do you know I could live alone now till I die.'  I tell Luke, my occasional overnight guest.

This is a very likely possibility, his sigh seems to indicate.  'And maybe you won't,' he adds wearily.

'Yeah but probably I will.  I'll be alone for ever and ever and ever.'

'So what's so bad about that?'

'I don't want to live by myself.  I liked being married.  I had a solitary childhood and spent my whole life with the aim of having someone to cuddle up to at night.'

I realise that I'm in great danger of alienating my sole cuddlee.

'I've always wanted to live alone.'  He says, pointedly.  I am looking into the future and not seeing his and her hand towels - hardly surprising giving that he's cursed with Bridget Paranoia.  'It'll be fine.  You'll get used to it.'

'I don't want to get used to it.'  I say petulantly.

'Go back to sleep.' He urges, and his eyes close, - but sleep has been a rarely visited country since I started exercising my anxieties in bed.
‘But what if there’s a fire?’ I whisper, anxiously to his back.
I'm on the second floor, up a twisty staircase with a thick fire door that effectively blocks both flames and sound.  I can't hear the doorbell.  Nor the fire alarm.  
But youngest daughter, the one who hangs out her window like an Amsterdam Hooker chucking smouldering roll ups on to the roof, having taken the burglar locks off the most easily accessible point of entry in the whole house, is blowing smoke rings into her drawer in a dorm up North.  You, Marion, are in bed, not making toast downstairs or roasting a lamb on a spit in the back garden.  How is the fire going to start, exactly?

Faulty wiring?

In your head, you idiot.

But my fear  is talking to the person who hired an electrician to come in and rewire a bedroom after she smelt burning in the kitchen.  Admittedly this following a scare when our future Fumadora was 'playing Lara Croft' in the hallway, lighting flares (matches) and had dropped a few on the (new) carpet causing some singeing...  It was only when I paid his (large) bill and got another whiff of bonfires and realised that the charred woody smell was in fact coming from the rope of smoked garlic hanging from the pot hook, that I'd bought a few days earlier from the farmers' market...
Still, concentrate.   What happens if there’s a real blazing inferno with smoke belching up the stairs and no comatose teenagers serving as an early warning system.  In the event of a fire, how do I get out?

The answer lies on the internet with the 'speedy escape ladder' that you keep under your bed with the bogey man, then hook onto the window ledge and unroll in the case of fire.  Perfect.  Except my roof goes off at several angles before it drops down like Rapunzel's hair.
'But ma, you're terrified of heights.  You're hardly going to sling a ladder out of a second storey window and climb out.'  Scoffs eldest.

'I'm more afraid of fire, though.'  I retort, annoyed that she is not taking me seriously and would, seemingly, see the possibility of me being fried as a cause of some jollity, like November the 5^th without the rockets.
Time to call in your local, friendly, fire officer who according to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea's website, offers a free fire service.
‘Yes, ma, you call 999 and they come with their hoses.’
‘No I mean, they check your house for fire hazards and give you advice.’  She rolls her eyes.
Ding dong.  The doorbell rings on a lonely Saturday afternoon in the House of Abandoned Mothers.

On the doorstep is not one, but three, burly men.  In boots.  With helmets under their arms.  To my shame I turn into a stereotype and begin to gibber and fluff.
'Firemen,'  I say, giddily and unnecessarily lest someone passing should mistake them for ballerinas.  I even fluff  my hair.

'Hoaw.'  They sort of say - all three making that indeterminate, macho sound that passes for a greeting and which body builders make when they pose.

'Can we come in?'  Said main fireman, the one with the gift of speech, and a recent Riviera tan, no wedding ring and capped, very white, teeth.

I take them into the sitting room.

'I'm going to ask you a few questions while the rest of the men take a look upstairs.'

By this point I'm practically incoherent.  It's like porn for middle aged women.  There is so much hair twirling that I have a head full of ringlets and I'm poised on the sofa expectantly, bodice heaving, smiling like it's an Olympic sport even as the voice in my head, momentarily freed from talking me off the ledge of the empty void of nestlessness, is berating me for being a tart.

'I wasn't expecting three of you.'  I gush.

'We've got the engine outside.'  He says.  And sure enough, through the shutters I see a ruddy big red fire engine.  The entire fire fighting capabilities of Kensington and Chelsea are immobilized because I'm scared of matches.

I hear the tramp of heavy boots upstairs.  For once I find it reassuring.  Firegod asks me questions which he reads from a sheet.

'Do I use the fireplace?'  There are three months of ashes piled up in the grate.  I nod.

'Do I smoke?'  I shake my head, no.  I would say that my daughter does but words will not form.

'Do you use candles?'

I gesture around the room.

It's like a shrine to tallow.

There are three candelabra on the map chest.  Two on the silver chest of drawers.  Several individual candlesticks are dotted around other surfaces. including ten tea light holders and 18 pillar candles in tall glass tubes.  I could be about to hold a black mass.

'Yes.  That's just like my wife.  She loves candles.'  Damn, he has a wife.  Of course he has a wife.  My smile fades to Commonwealth Championship wattage.

He lectures me on the importance of making sure my candles and fires are properly extinguished.  I could just say 'wife' to them.  That would put a dampener on any flames still left burning.

The Firegod attendants return.  'Everything is alright upstairs,'  They say.  I hope I made my bed that morning.  'We've installed two fire alarms.'  They add and Firegod tells me how they work.

'But really, the reason I wanted some advice was on how to get out of the upstairs bedroom if there's a fire.  I was thinking of buying a ladder that you chuck out the window.'

They laugh in unison.  I hope it's not because of the picture of me going out the window bum first, and the slim possibility of my wide posterior actually fitting through the even slimmer window.

'Don't bother.  You'd be wasting your money.'  Says Firegod.  'The fire alarms we installed are very sensitive.'
‘ But if there's a fire on the stairs I can't get out.  All the fire alarm is doing is alerting me to my impending death.'  I'm aware I sound like a pathetic spinster.  The sort that calls out the emergency services because she can't get the lid off the jam jar.

'Put a blanket round the door and call 999 - we'll come and get you.'  Says the dusky Mark Ruffalo look-alike with thighs like small family sedans.
My heard goes clang.
'We're only down the road.  We'll be here in five minutes and we'll get you out. Don't worry.  We won't leave you.  We'll search for you.  Just tell us when you call in that you're on the second floor and we'll be here.'

My heart goes clang, clang, clang, clang, and I realise I haven't taken a breath for what feels like ten minutes.

I’m so overwhelmed with the picture of Mark Ruffalo appearing on an extending ladder outside my bedroom window and rescuing me, that I almost feel like setting the fire myself.

Eventually, like all good things, the firemen come to an end, and they leave only an impression of two large butt cheeks on my sofa and a few footprint outlines on the pelt of my bedroom carpet as proof that they were actually here.

Two days later the fire alarm that they installed on the hall ceiling falls down on the stairs and smashes into several plastic pieces.

I don't know if this constitutes a 999 emergency but it could be worth a try.

On Standby

It's a new world.

One where all the doors are closed because I am beset with childish fears when I walk past them, yawning into black.

One where I retire early because I feel like an imposter in my own house, suddenly uncomfortable on the chair where I've slumped happily for years.

One where, for the first time in a couple of decades the glasses are arranged in lines, the cups all hang facing the same way on the hooks, and the plates are stacked in piles, and there are enough of each to serve a regiment.

Except this is a new world where it's just me.

I wish I was that Elizabeth David sort of person who makes a perfect omelette and pours herself a single glass of white Burgundy, and eats it at the table with a linen napkin and the good china, instead of the Bridget Jones sort who microwaves a baked potato and eats it while half-watching X Factor, drinking vodka with diet coke because it's the only thing I have to mix it with.

Clearly, this single occupancy life is going to take a bit of practice.

Meanwhile the anxieties gather like fluff under the bed.

What happens if we get burgled? (Why didn't this worry me when the house was full of vulnerable teenagers, all of whom slept on the first floor and were first in the line of attack should anyone have broken in.)

What happens if I need to go downstairs in the night - something I did regularly when my ex-husband lived here and I was beset with insomnia?

Well, you go downstairs, I tell myself impatiently.

But it's pitch black out there.

So you put the light on.

But still the house is so big and so empty.

So put a lot of lights on.

But I hear noises. People walk across floors who don't live here. Doors that are bolted (Oh yes - it's like Blue Beard's House since the kids moved out), click shut

There are creaks and groans and cracks and heavy items, suddenly dropped from a great height. I've often been here on my own and been sure there was somebody upstairs.

It's an old house. Wood expands. People next door move around and the sound travels.

There isn't anyone living in the house next door. It's been empty for six months.  When the neighbour died alone on the floor after falling down the stairs.

Alone.

Dead.

Alone as by herself.

What happens if I get sick and die in the night?

Or in the day?

What if a fox gets in and eats my face? (This last courtesy of my eldest daughter. Thanks.) Or the squirrel who walks like a man on the roof, climbs into my bedroom and has rabies? (I got that one all by myself.)

Take a Valium.

Take a Sleeping Pill.

But then I won't hear the fire alarm (more on this one later...)

Oh Burn Bitch, Burn...

It's coming to something when even the voices in your head get annoyed with you and want you to shut up.

Luke is somewhat more patient.

He's lying beside me (ie, roused from sleep at an ungodly hour so I can obsess aloud).

'What's that noise?'

'Apart from you talking, you mean?'

'Shhh. Listen. There's breathing coming from the corner of the bedroom.'

'It's me. I'm breathing.'

'No, listen, it's horrible. It's like a wolf. There's a wolf in the corner of the bedroom. Slavering.'

He listens and yes, he can hear it too, the low, wet, pant of a vicious wolf getting ready to pounce from behind the dressing table. HHHHHHHHHHHHAaaaar. HHHHHHHHHHHHaaaar. HHHHHHHAAAaaaar.

'Oh it's a fox.'

'What? A fox has got into the bedroom. I knew they could climb up walls. It's going to attack us.'

'No, it's a fox outside. Barking.'

'It's not outside. I can hear it in the corner.'

He points to the open window. Again comes the unearthly sound, hoarse and ungodly. But the window is open.

'Are you sure?'

'Yes, I'm sure.'

Gingerly I unpeel myself from Luke's chest and tiptoe the three inches from the bed to the dressing table. The corner is bare.  Nothing but a lot of scarves (which I could tie together and use in the event of fire to lower myself to safety). I put my ear to the open window and sure enough:

HHHHHHHHHHAAAAAaaaar comes louder, drifting across the bowling green.  It is coming from outside.  Not the dark recesses of my bedroom, but my psyche.

Though it still sounds like a wolf.