YouGov, which you might have thought would be otherwise occupied as byelection season comes upon us, has released theresults of a pollrevealing which swearwords people in the UK find most-to-least offensive. I shall not go into details here in a family newspaper. Suffice it to say, the one you’d expectisin first position, and “arse” is – ahem – bringing up the rear.
But all such crude terms! And so unnecessary. I am reminded of a post I once saw on social media by a reverent American who’d been here for some time and had become deeply enamoured of and awed by the ability of Brits to express feelings of rage, frustration, disappointment and other emotions at the negative end of life’s spectrum with the use of “you absolute” plus a “[heavily emphasised]ordinary noun”. For example, “you absolutenana” was the first he heard. “You absolutewombat” another. But his favourite, never bettered over the years, was “you absolutesuitcase”.
I am so, obscurely, proud of us.
Good news. A newmale contraceptivehas been shown in trials to be effective for two years so far. Experimental subjects, we salute you!
The contraceptive comprises a hydrogel that is delivered (“via a quick injection”, according to its manufacturer’s website) to the vas deferens to block all the little swimmers intent on finding a receptive female and her gametes. The sperm back up behind the temporary blockage, wither and die. The hydrogel disperses and is absorbed over the years and fertility is restored.
I have done some very complicated sums and statistical analysis on the back of an envelope and worked out that the only problem with this is there are roughly three men in existence at any given time who can be trusted, when they say: “Don’t worry, babe, I’ve had m’vas deferens blocked. You can relax!” Maybe each injection can come with a time and date-stamped video recording that can be presented to a potential mate, perhaps in lieu of flowers or ironing a shirt. What a brave new world may be upon us.
This is a really fun day for me at the moment because it is the day my editor emails me with the weekly sales figures for my new book (Bookish: How Reading Shapes Our Lives, if you want to improve things for me). Obviously this is harrowing, and yet I must be told. I must know.
Alongside this masochistic compulsion, which I already knew I had because I have been alive and a fool for many years now, is a new, equally unwanted piece of self-knowledge. Which is that whatever the number is, I feel terrible. I feel I have failed. I have not sold … I don’t know – more of the books? Or all the books? I have to sit on my hands until the urge to email everyone involved in its making and apologise for not doing better has passed. I am told everyone is delighted with the sales figures. I scurry to my corner, hissing and spitting at these blatant lies and liars, and try to control the suffocating blaze of self-hatred that is spreading from my stomach throughout my system.
There is no answer to this. There is no figure that would soothe me. This is literally a “me” problem and I have yet to find a solution to my personality.
Of course, as a classy laydee I am not going to tell you my age. But I am going to tell you how old I am. I am old enough to be thrilled that the new Ikea storeopenstoday on Oxford Street and to be in no measure contemplating joining the queue seeking to get in there as soon as the doors are flung wide open at 10am.
Ikea is a wonderful place. It is restorative. It is balm to the soul. You laugh derisively because you know it only as a hellscape made of marital rowing and tealights. No. Ikea is a sanctuary – as long as you go there alone. Then you can gaze in peace at the perfect solutions to every storage need on offer. Then you can marvel at the clean lines, all the forms following function, the unfussy, egoless spirit that dwells in and among every well-designed, fairly priced item and imagine a world where everything is like this, until it is time to get meatballs and apple pie for your solitary lunch, wreathed in undisturbed dreams.
“It says here,” I say, shaking out the paper to read to my 82-year-old mother while she re-grouts Catford, “that being shouted at by parents can change children’s brains”.
“Well, of course it can,” she says. “That’s the point.”
“I think they mean – in a bad way.”
“How can there be a bad way? Children are idiots. They need a telling.”
“But can you not train a child without shouting at it?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Well, you can but it takes too long,” she says.
“What if by shouting at it you are making the child fearful? Perhaps in some deep, visceral way that leaves it hypervigilant and anxious for the rest of its life?”
“Has it picked up its clothes off the floor and hung them up the right way in the wardrobe in the meantime?” she asks.
“Yes. Compulsively so.”
“Then what’s the problem?” she asks.
“No problem,” I reply. “No problem at all.”