One of my most secret character traits is that I am outstandingly, astonishingly, at times debilitatingly sentimental. It is a secret because over the years I’ve trained myself to cope with this inclination through being extremely selective about what I permit to sneak through to make me verklempt, because when I get misty-eyed about something or someone - oh! do I ever get misty-eyed. It really messes with my life.
I note this because tonight my iTunes shuffle - uncharacteristic for me to leave it on shuffle, since I like to listen to the same song thirty times at least before moving on - hit some tracks that I purchased years ago when I was keeping company with a young man whom I unwisely decided to be sentimental about, shortly before he stomped on my heart. But! I actually found myself enjoying the songs, rather than crying for three weeks.
My shower is fixed, so I no longer have to take baths every morning, which is both inefficient and bad for the environment (obviously), albeit relaxing and good for reading The New Yorker. I am so excited that it is mended that I even wrote to the property manager to thank her, in an attempt to establish good feeling before the inevitable Rent Increase Smackdown 2008.
Ha! I am not much of one for TV nostalgia, but I was transfixed by this utterly mad programme (whose idea? who funded it? which drugs were they smoking?) in the summer of 1988.
- Lunch with my pregnant friend! She is glowing and hilarious and makes me want to be pregnant, just for the sheer comedy value. (Note to my concerned mother: I realise that comedy value is insufficient reason to bring a child into the world. Just.)
- Craving some kind of indulgent snack, I went to the grocery store and spontaneously purchased crumpets and strawberry jam, like a proper American person pretending to be English.
- On the way back from the grocery store, I noticed, again, the newishly-opened College of Venereal Disease Prevention. It is in a small shabby building. I am fairly mystified how an entire college can be devoted to Venereal Disease Prevention, since at school we had exactly one 40-minute lesson in the correct application of prophylactics to bananas and that was considered to be sufficient. I am so curious, I may just have to enrol.
- I am quite sad that I’ll be arriving in the States just as the Olympics are wrapping up, as I fear I won’t be in time to watch my favourite maudlin NBC Olympics coverage. The BBC just doesn’t offer the same fuzzy-lensed packages about athletes’ troubled childhoods. When I was a kid, I used to fantasise about the fuzzy-lensed package about MY troubled childhood, considering which of the terrible hardships of my life - the time I had appendicitis? The tragedy of being the middle child? My parents’ refusal to let me eat interesting breakfast cereal? - would be the focus of my own Olympic sporting career. Which sport I would pursue to have said career, was, of course, moot.
- Reading, on the tube: The Elegance of the Hedgehog, translated from the French, which I suspect is so much better in the French and makes me wish that I could read French at a speed of more than ten words an hour. There’s a page and a half on the spiritual affront caused by a misplaced comma that made me want to weep and scream with delight. But I controlled myself.
As the festival approached, events piled up, and often it was after midnight when she pulled into her driveway. Then she had to start the process of washing and drying her long hair. Kristen was beginning to suffer from sleep deprivation…That’s when a cosmetologist friend named Nancy Rupp stepped in.
Mrs Rupp, as she was called by everyone, moonlighted in funeral homes, ‘fixing the hair of loved ones,’ as she put it, which is how she came up with the idea of styling Kristen’s hair while she slept. Kristen began spending the night in a spare bedroom at Mrs Rupp’s house.
”
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“The Strawberry Girls”, by Anne Hull, The New Yorker, August 11 & 18, 2008.
Not online, alas! A must-read. This is the kind of writing that makes me want to be a writer.
It’s grey in London today, in that particular way that London is grey in August. But it suits my mood. I spent the grey afternoon at the cinema with Steph, where we watched a film about adolescent angst, followed by mediocre sandwiches and lattes at Starbucks made lovely by chat. And then I bought a ridiculous sundress (on sale) to wear when I go to Mauritius next month. And then I drank tea with Jude.
And I still feel grey, but it is important to feel like this sometimes, because it makes the non-grey days feel that much more sharp and fine.
I am at my neighbourhood vegetarian/vegan cafe of choice. They do good coffee. But I am not sure about their food. They are evidently catering some kind of event today: there’s a tray of absolutely horrible-looking canapes at the counter, some sort of meat/cheese/green pepper stacked on a toothpick, except that the meat and cheese must be made of soy. I mean, it wouldn’t even look appetising if it was made from actual meat and cheese.
(I would like to illustrate this with a photo but I suspect that would be frowned upon, so you shall just have to imagine it, I’m afraid.)
I am a freelance journalist and author, originally from New York, now living and working in London. This is my personal blog, with general bits and pieces, as well as links to my work as it is published.
Please do contact me: jean@jeanhannahedelstein.com
