How did it get to be so biblical? I’m a Londoner. How did I find myself up to the neck in muck and bullocks? All this relentless begetting and now twins.
When you are a matriarch, people start complaining about your money. The twins were the last straw. I offered Tom and Natasha a stained-glass window in St Stephen’s to celebrate the birth of their twins … perhaps a couple of cherubim bursting out of veg boxes … something tasteful like that. What happens? Helen goes into one of her sulks because I didn’t offer her children a window as well. (Though, frankly, the less said about those two the better. I’ve been holding my breath waiting for their fathers, a sperm donor and an abusive husband, to turn up any day now.)
Shall I break the stained glass over their heads as Moses did the tablets of the law? I increasingly see Moses’ point of view. Did I beget all this? A tribe afflicted with every woe known to man – and some accents unfamiliar to anyone. My own voice was always soft, gentle, low and BBC. Like Alvar Lidell. “Here is the news and this is Alvar Lidell reading it reassuringly.” Calm above the hubbub. A lighthouse.
At 103, life begins to sound like a rowdy party going on a few doors down. Recently, Aunt Ada Doom has been much on my mind. She abandoned the whole contentious, mud-caked, quarrelsome crew and flew off to Paris.
I quite fancy going back to London. I think it will be quieter.
