A friend of a friend has been staying for a few weeks until her new house is ready to move in to. She is 50 years old, divorced, never stops talking, works with deaf people. She is as shallow as the Thames at Southend when the tide’s going out, but I quite like shallow. I’m shallow myself, come to think of it.
In her spare time her interests are men, wine, Golden Virginia and cannabis sativa. She claims to be a socialist, but I think the extent of her solidarity with the toiling masses is that she might buy a Daily Mirror occasionally to catch up with the showbiz gossip. The truth is she is rather a snob. She is anxious, for example, that her new house might be too close for comfort to a social-housing estate, and she can be very sneering about what she calls ‘poor people’. But we are all ridiculous snobs in one way or another, so I’ve found this particular crassness of hers relatively easy to forgive.
What I have mainly objected to, however, is the moodiness. This woman is up and down like a yo-yo. It’s like living with a dangerous dog. I also strongly object to the imperialism of spirit accompanying these moods, whereby the prevailing mood of the household must conform to hers. On down days she despises happiness. ‘What are you so cheerful about this morning?’ she’ll sneer. On up days, it’ll be, ‘Will everybody lighten up, please?’ Then she’ll start whistling to prove how happy she is. It’s an excruciating, tuneless whistle, clear and unwitting evidence of the exact opposite.
The cause of her unhappiness is so clear-cut that even she recognises it.
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