The Good Things in Life

Article by Leslie E



I should be clear that there are benefits to this next essential period of transition on my journey towards inevitable pumpkinhood. Throughout my adult life and as a matter of routine I have set my face firmly to the grindstone on an almost daily basis, bringing home the bacon, eggs, chips, mayo and of course the designer trainers to feed the voracious, often perplexing appetites and mores of the offspring. I have struggled with balancing the books when mortgages peaked, and as the mysterious tanned gents wearing the very best in table-linen set barrel prices which must certainly have gold-plated more than the bath taps. I have coped as the annual rates and the costs of motoring rose to values that would undoubtedly have bought a half decent house and car in the not too distant past… and now I find I am in a bit of a lull. Which seems such a simple little word to describe the recent rather pleasant changes to the previously frenetic struggle to make often very frayed ends meet.

Now that the aforementioned offspring have flown, though never so far that they can’t still conjure up the instant image of a lost fledgling demanding sustenance with mouth desperately agape via a three word text; and the mortgage is finally being beaten into a sort of sullen submission, I find I am becoming just a little less reactive to the latest pump price and rates increase.

Such things no longer seem to have the power to generate a ‘light blue touch paper and stand well back’ fiery type of response in me, and seem rather to provoke only irritated muttering while I hand over the inevitable recompense. Though the erosion of such an essential and entertaining feature of my personality, when coupled with increasingly frequent bouts of talking to myself in this manner may just be the first sign of Swiss cheese in the brain. It seems that, together with him-indoors I now have a certain sense of financial stability, if not quite freedom, of which I often dreamed, and there now seems to be the occasional opportunity to indulge in a few of the easy liberties of spending that have been denied for so long. Finally I seem able to afford one or two of the good things in life.

Somewhere along the same journey, shopping began to move gently from a struggle for the essential and necessary coupled of course with the wistful browse, to the essential, necessary and the blow-me why-not? Only to find that many of the things I have hankered after for all these years either went out of production before the shop assistant was born, make me look like an aging hippy, aren’t made in any size larger than anorexic, are so blooming uncomfortable that I wonder why they don’t come with a health warning, or bring on such acute indigestion that I must assume only those of a cast iron constitution or well-practiced in the lifestyle can get away with the indulgence.

Along with my new shopping freedoms I have also found myself picking up packs to examine the nutritional claims for a variety of foodstuffs that I would more usually have associated with my gran, such as prunes. A staple part of her diet in her latter years, tinned prunes were inevitably foisted onto visiting grandchildren with a dollop of condensed milk, making an instant hero, or heroine of the one with the highest number of stones remaining perched around the edge of the bowl. My promise to myself as an eight year old, never ever again to allow anything brown and wrinkly to pass my lips when I grew up failed miserably when I discovered the sybaritic indulgence that is a fig. And it now looks to be set for the final sacrifice as even the ubiquitous prune seeks to become the latest in-vogue health giving nosh in the hands of the nutritional marketing gurus. I am beginning to somewhat grudgingly admit that I should perhaps break with my self-imposed exile from all things prunish and give this now foil-fresh, moist and stunningly healthy marketing miracle a second chance.

Though to be frank, picking up the things I know I should eat only tends to lead to a gathering of mysteriously shaped packages at the back of the larder shelves. They form the ranks of spear-carriers and the back row of the chorus to the stars and principal players of the pantry. I know they are good for me and they all need to be eaten before they reach their sell-by dates, but they never do quite fit into the routine of daily meal preparations. They lurk, sadly neglected in the shadow of other, more favoured comestibles, fading gently in the half-light whilst demanding consumption every time a cupboard door is opened, and nonetheless succumbing finally to time and the rigours of the pre-Christmas clear out necessary to make room for the creation of a whole new chorus line of unnecessary festive indulgence and new year resolutions.

In my defence I must point out that this tendency towards a new sense of retail independence doesn’t only apply to me. After years of robust, functional vehicles with interiors providing essential features such as rear seats with a low seam count to aid smoother clean up after ice-creams or coast roads, and space for packing even the most basic of requirements necessary for any trip with offspring in transit; from nappies, changing mats and collapsible cots through to the back to uni trip after the break, and finally to that ultimate load, the wedding gown with full train and veil. Transport has simply never been a opportunity to indulge. Our vehicles have always needed the suspension of an angel in flight, the ground clearance of an army jeep and the load bearing capacity of a Bedouin camel train. Speed and style have never made quite enough of a fuss to pip critical camelness to the post.

But now with the offspring flown, him-indoors held a quick head count of potential vehicular occupants, reconsidered the nature of likely future use, and after a wide and extensive search over many weekend visits to car dealers he has come to the slightly sad conclusion that the two door slightly sporty number he always wanted and could perhaps now indulge himself in only comes with seats and doors fitted for a slimmer, more bendy version of humanity. A version with a spine unaffected by too many years of disregard and hard work, and cheeks of pure muscle that can shrug off the creeping numbness resulting from the hard suspension and not-quite-padded sporty seats. Quite aside from which considerations he found during a series of test-drives of increasingly low to the floor and more roller-skate-like models that he folded himself carefully into and rolled ineptly out of, that he has suddenly discovered an acute dislike for the feeling that almost everything else on the road suddenly seemed to be huge, and could see over the top if him so well that they were completely disregarding his presence.

This weekend we begin to look at motorhomes instead.

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