Now then. I’ve been
neglecting you. I can see you there, in
your electronic eyries, peeping and cheeping with your gobs agape, just itchin’
for me to hawk up a great glob of regurgitated words into your little trembling
beaks. Of course I won’t desert you
again. I’m a good mother. Just look how well Baby Mumps turned out.
After the initial period of mourning (oh those long nights
of Blue Nun through a bendy straw and weepy wanks to Fanny Cradock) I am over
the monkey. I’ve done everything the
magazines tell you to do – I’ve given myself a snazzy new look (‘Disco
Prospector’), had a ceremonial burning of love letters and sentimental trinkets
(I chucked on a few final demands while I was at it, and all those letters from
the council about the Garum pit – never waste a good bonfire) and I’ve even
signed up for something called Zumba. I
am a new woman.
So my life has become a giddy whirl of Glamorous Stances and
Executive Business. My Filofax is full
of cocktail parties and conference calls and at any given point in the day, I
have literally just stepped out of a salon. I’m pretty much Huddersfield’s Fanciest
Lady.
There comes a time when one must put away childish things and
move on in life. Obsession is the finest
hobby you can have, but you must never let it get to the point where you are
slumped in a cold bath slugging warm gin crooning Total Eclipse of the Heart to the memory of an imaginary monkey.
Unless, of course, that’s all part of the fun.
P.S. Perhaps Zumba was not quite such a good idea. Apparently they expect you to be on time AND
appropriately dressed AND relatively sober AND they don’t take kindly to
smoking AND they don’t want to see your Hornpipe, thank you very much.
