Home life
Nuts in May
Alice Thomas Ellis
The swarming season seems to be upon us again. It is a very bad (or good, depending on your point of view) year for moths, that is. They must be congratu- lating themselves on their fecundity as they busy themselves in our wardrobes eating up our woollies. Every time I approach my clothes half a dozen moths fall out, sated. We hunted all over London for a shop which would sell us some preparation to exterminate them before remembering that Boots would doubtless have such a product. Our shops are so odd now we scarcely know where to go to buy anything. They seem to sell more or less everything except what you want. Boots sells sand- wiches too. Janet had to tour the metropo- lis the other day for plain white ankle socks. All the ones in Camden Town had flowers or stripes or hearts on them, and the daughter's school doesn't permit that sort. And could we find a short-sleeved white cotton shirt? No, we couldn't. Perhaps the moths have eaten them all.
One shop has proved an unexpected bonus to the winos, who are also swarming at present. It is a very smart new shop in dark green livery, but ill-advisedly keeps its stock of alcoholic beverages in a prom- inent position near the door. The older and wiser shopkeepers in Camden Town keep their stocks well behind the counter and employ a burly person to stand between the two, but this innocent new shop is learning the nature of its customers the hard way. The tedium of shopping is almost daily alleviated by lively affrays on the pavement as the manager hustles out in pursuit of fleeing winos and policemen arrive brandishing truncheons. It is in- teresting to note that none of the robbers say 'It's a fair cop, guy.' They are violently aggrieved when persuaded to hand back the booty, and swear horribly as though they were the injured party.
The teenagers are swarming too. We counted 18 of them in the garden the other day when the sun was out, and only one of them was mine. On Sunday a number of them came to lunch and while I was shoving bits of garlic in the leg of lamb and counting the potatoes because Anna and Estelle are vegetarians (I wish Cadders was: I took my eyes off the joint for a second and he ate a bit of it) there was a knock at the door and there stood a madman. He was a perfectly nice madman and no trouble really, but he wouldn't go away, and what with Cadders and the vegetarians, who have to have extra to make up for the absence of meat, there wouldn't have been enough to go round.
I collared the third son and a friend and instructed them to take the uninvited guest for a walk to the pub and lose him, but he gave them the slip and was back in no time flat. I was getting a touch unhinged myself by now because Puss had been sick under the kitchen table, and I had also been doing some tidying up, which has the effect of reducing me to tears as I find souvenirs of the dead. What with one thing and another hysteria was imminent when Someone thought of a simple device and gave him a fiver to go away. I am not usually inhospitable and once had a guest who came for a weekend, went off her head and stayed for a year, but enough is enough, is it not?
In the end, overwhelmed with guilt about not sharing the lamb with the luna- tic, grief about some old letters I had found, the wine I had taken for my stomach's sake and the general ghastliness of everything, I swarmed over to see Rosamond Lehmann. Anita Brookner was there too and after a while I felt better. It's a nasty old world but it can't be all bad with those two in it. Kindness and intelligence have a wonderful effect on the spirits, and Rosamond makes me think of flowers. I'm going to stop reading the newspapers and read books and think on those things that are lovely and of good report, and if anybody wants any cold lamb they can come and share it with Cadders. Sane or mad, the way I feel at present it won't make any difference.
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