Love, Nina (24 page)

She means “and
then
see how much you love him.” Probably meaning I'll love him more (though possibly less, I suppose). I'm not going to though, at the moment (read
Ulysses
)—it's too long and I haven't got time.

Stella keeps on about
Ulysses
too.

SH: You should read
Ulysses.

Me: To be honest, I'm sick of hearing about
Ulysses
.

SH: Joyce employs different narrative styles including the stream-of-consciousness.

Me: I'm not fussed about the stream-of-consciousness.

SH: In
Ulysses,
he hardly ever uses the same word twice.

Me: I like the same words being used.

SH: I prefer a wide lexicon.

This is the new Stella. No more mornings in bed with the Goblin Teasmade making cups of Mellow Bird's. Instead she's filling in inter-library loan forms and going to extra seminars. She tried to explain the meaning of the term “hegemony” the other day and tied herself in knots. I steered her off by pointing to a woman (on a market stall called Pat's Hat's—two apostrophes) with red tips in her hair.

Me: Look at those red tips.

SH: Oh, yes, I'd love red tips like that.

Me: I knew you would.

SH: Could you do them if I got the dye?

Me: I don't have any dyeing experience.

SH: I thought you knew about hair.

Me: Only brushing and drying.

SH: Not dyeing?

Me: No.

Anyway, Stella had a birthday party in the cellar bar (dressed up like Mrs. Dalloway in a three-quarter length dress and a floppy hat). Three lecturers came to the party, which is unheard of, and one of them gave her a book titled
The Handmaid's Tale
(hardback).

At the end of the night Stella snogged a student who always has his shirt sleeves rolled up too high and his arms folded. I call him Popeye (because of the sleeves/arms).

Then on the way home Stella was a bit despairing about her crush on lecturer PB.

Me: He's a lecturer.

SH: I think that's why I like him.

Me: Nothing is ever going to come of it.

SH: I know, I don't mind that.

Me: What's the problem, then?

SH: I bet he thinks I'm thick.

Me: Just keep reading the texts and he'll never know.

Love, Nina

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

On Monday Stella was wondering (out loud) why all the boys fancy these particular girls.

SH: Why do all the boys fancy those three posh blondes?

Me: The answer's in the question.

SH: What's so great about them?

Me: Their hair, first and foremost.

SH: But it's thin and blond.

Me: It smells nice.

SH: How do you know?

Me: It looks as though it smells nice.

SH: My hair smells of Timotei.

Me: Yours doesn't look as if it smells as nice as theirs.

SH: Thanks.

It's been a bad week for many.

MK—left shopping in car park and a two-day headache.

Misty—jury service.

Misty's mum—ran her own dog over, not fatal.

Dorothy the Mature Student—lost wedding ring and a silk scarf with horse bits on.

Mary H—locked herself out.

AB—broke mirror.

SH—has dyed her hair whitish blonde (she sees it as a good thing).

Sam—paper cut.

Will—not allowed to go canoeing (with scumbag-type dad of a friend).

Me—fed up.

Love, Nina

PS Will keeps saying “pubic.” Also, I think Stella has gone whitey blond to compete with the posh blondes and in preparation for red tips, which she seems to think I can do.

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

On Monday I attempted the red tips in Stella's hair. I told her I'd had zero experience with dye but she begged me.

Had to mix up powders and ammonia wearing surgical gloves and a protective apron. The mixture melted the spoon, which was a bit unnerving. Stella got into the empty bath and started drinking gin and lemonade. I had to paint the dye mixture onto the last half-inch of each section of hair.

It sounds easy but the dye was difficult to work with (grainy) and so was Stella (drunk). In the end (hours later) her hair was 100% pinky-orange (tip to root).

SH: Oh God, I look like an Easter chick.

Me: Easter chicks are OK.

SH: If it's Easter and you're a chick. I won't dare go into college tomorrow.

Me: No one will even notice.

SH: (
staring into mirror
) Fuck!

I came home to NW1 feeling I'd let her down. I hadn't though. She'd wriggled and been uncooperative due to all the gin and lemonade and I was 100% open about my lack of experience.

At college next day, even I was shocked by it. She'd tried to hide it with a thin scarfy thing around her head but the bits sticking through looked startlingly pinky-orange and very chicklike.

In a quiet moment at the start of our seminar we heard someone say “crazy apricot” and Stella went into a defensive ramble—the girl said she was only referring to a lip balm flavor.

At 55 later, played a board game called Trivial Pursuit. You move around the board and answer questions on certain subjects and if you land on a certain place you can win a little wedge like a slice of cake. Mary-Kay got bored because she got three slices of cake before anyone else had got even one, and it looked like she was going to romp home. She didn't like being
that
ahead.

Then Harriet had a run of easy questions and MK had a bad run (and kept saying the cards were wrong) and Harriet caught up and MK didn't like being
that
equal. Then we noticed that Sam (who was asking MK's questions) was picking up two cards at once and therefore the answers were for the wrong questions (if you follow). Harriet insisted on going back over the questions that MK had apparently got wrong. MK said not to bother, but Harriet insisted again…and the game was over then because MK had basically won.

H: Well, that's it then, we're playing for runner-up.

MK: I knew it was Jane Fonda.

Love, Nina

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

A new development re Misty.

Me: You're always hungry.

Misty: It's because I've gone on the Pill.

Me: What for?

Misty: (
sarcastic tone
) In case I have sex.

Me: Who with?

Misty: Anyone.

Me: Weren't you on it before?

Misty: No, we used the rhythm method.

Later, I asked MK what the rhythm method actually
is
. Is it just what I think it is? Or is there more to it?

MK: It's for people who don't do it enough to make other methods worth the fag.

Me: Oh.

MK: It works by not doing it most of the time.

Me: Right.

MK: It has a high failure rate.

Me: Oh?

MK: If you
do
do it.

Me: (
getting on with something else
).

MK: So, unless you pretty much don't do it, you shouldn't use it.

I've honestly never heard MK talk so much about a thing, she was practically rambling (for her). Normally it's everyone else yakking and being boring and pointless and her piping up with a defining two words.

Realized later she must've thought it was
me
using the rhythm method. But it's Misty. She's still going out with the same bloke (and when they have sex she still imagines the dog chasing her near St. Thomas's church). Going on the Pill seems a big step.

Anyway, thanks for our aprons. Gave MK the Ritz Cracker one and I had the other. MK has used hers but not gone the whole hog (didn't have the loop over head, except to try it on). She's not a sloppy cook but might (theoretically) wipe hands on skirt, so it was fine like that. Plus she likes Ritz Crackers (theoretically).

MK: It's very nice, tell Victoria. I don't usually wear orange.

Sam: It suits you.

MK: There you go, it suits me.

I don't do that cook-twice-as-much-as-you-need and freeze the other half thing. Partly because we don't have a freezer as such and partly because it goes against the grain.

Made my version of your Victoria cake but had to do it using an apple on the weighing scales (we've lost the weights) and it came out fine. I worked out that 1 large apple = roughly 50z (you get 3 apples in 1lb).

Jam (blackcurrant) in the middle like you say, but also (by popular request) peanut butter. Everyone liked it except AB, who said the peanut butter should have been served on the side for those who don't partake.

MK does the big shopping—a mixed blessing—she buys stuff without a plan (I think she copies other people who know what they're doing). This is the kind of stuff that comes back:

quark (German style liquid cheese)

mustard with seeds

rye bread with seeds

balsamic vinegar of Modena (black vinegar)

fresh lichees

turkey mince

oatmeal crackers with seeds

figs, fig rolls

bourbons

spinach

bulgur wheat

Persil

Simple soap

seeds, sesame seed sweets

olives

break-ins

tiny oranges (bitter, you eat the skin)

herbal tea

honey

And other mysterious things that add up to nothing much when it comes to making meals. It's like living in another country.

Love, Nina

PS Thanks for gifts. Gave Will the juggling balls and Sam the fake ice cube with a fly in it—neither has mastered either yet.

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

Saw Pippa for the first time in ages. Same as ever.

She's moved into a new flat near Richmond with beautician Mel who's got a job in a new shopping center there. The new flat is very nice apparently, except the kitchen cupboards all smell of semen.

I still can't take to Mel. I'm suspicious of anyone who eats an apple with a knife and can't forgive her for my six weeks with red eyelids.

Anyway, Pippa didn't want to hear anything about my Poly life and when I started an anecdote about
Blurt!
magazine she said, “Sorry, I'm not really interested.”

Told Mary-Kay.

Me: She just put her hand up and said, “I'm not interested.”

MK: Oh.

Me: Don't you think it's rude?

MK: It saves time.

Me: Yeah, but I listened patiently about her kitchen cupboards smelling of semen.

MK: That
is
quite interesting.

Me: More so than my magazine?

MK: Afraid so.

Also, the boyfriend that Mel the beautician was advertising as “a musician” turns out to be a busking one-man-band. Pippa was scathing.

Pippa: He was standing there in Long Acre playing a mouthorgan with a drum on his back and cymbals between his knees.

Me: Was he any good?

Pippa: He was a one-man-fucking-band.

Me: Maybe he's good.

Pippa: It's tantamount to being a clown.

Hope short letters mean you're otherwise occupied, not that you've got nothing to report.

Love, Nina

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

Sam's getting on my nerves with
Chas “N” Dave's Knees Up.
It's gone beyond a joke. I'm struggling with
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
and all I can hear is “Rabbit.”

Which reminds me…Stella has managed to embarrass herself via a note to the beloved lecturer (PB). The note read as follows: “sorry essay is one day late. I had a bit of a struggle with Rhinoceros.”

She was referring to a play called
Rhinoceros
that we'd looked at in a little course on the theater of the absurd (some v. good & funny plays, some really strange).

In a seminar today PB shared the note with the class. “This note, clipped on to a student's work, made my day yesterday…(
reads note
) I couldn't help imagining the struggle.”

Everyone chuckled. He didn't say who'd written it, but Stella gave herself away by dropping her lighter under a desk and staying down for too long.

After the class:

SH: God—that was so embarrassing.

Me: No, it was funny.

SH: I felt humiliated.

Me: Don't be silly, it made his day, he said so. I'd have loved it if he'd read my note out.

SH: Yes, but you're not in love with him.

Me: I'd have loved it even more if I were in love with him.

That's the difference between us. One of the many.

Love, Nina

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

Yes, Stella has a perfectly nice boyfriend (live-in). He's clever, funny and from Lincoln but Stella can't see any of that anymore (except there's no ignoring he's from Lincoln). They bicker a lot and have pretty much stopped liking each other. She thinks he's moved on to pastures new—he is a postman after all and they have pastures new on offer all the time apparently (especially in Plumstead, according to Stella).

Her crush on lecturer PB continues. Still, at least now she's bothering to read the text(s) and turning up for lectures (and scratching her teeth).

PB was planning to run the first of his popular culture days with videos of popular gems such as the early
Carry On
s (which were as full of symbolism and meaning as Pinter—only a lot more watchable) and chit-chat.

Stella was worried she'd be late (9 a.m. start). I said I'd ring her just as I left NW1 to wake her and give her plenty of time to get in. Which I did.

She turned up, looking flustered, ten minutes into it—we were discussing “Why comedy matters” unfortunately.