In which I make an emotional journey
I’m always being backed into a corner. I invited David 1.0 on a mini break to Sicily, then Gracie died, and I can no longer afford to go anywhere. Then he emails me:
‘Hi. I’ve just ordered a new holiday wardrobe. T-shirts, jumper, shorts, a suit.’
Oh dear God. Couldn’t he have just ironed one of his lumberjack shirts?
Me: ‘Where from?’
Him: ‘Asos.’
Jesus Christ. Could you date a man who shops at Asos? It’s as bad as saying they ate a packet of warm Revels for lunch. But I feel bad for getting his hopes up.
Him: ‘Do you have a flight yet, so I can book my mobility vehicle?’
Me: ‘I’m not absolutely concrete on dates…’
Him: ‘But if it’s a group, surely everyone has agreed on dates.’
What a tangled web we weave. Am just going to ignore the issue. I think I’ll say we need to meet for dinner one night beforehand, as it’s strange to go from me blocking him to sharing a berth on a yacht in the Mediterranean. Then we can get into an argument as we normally do (last time, it was because I said ‘poached’ instead of ‘coddled’*) and Sicily will be off anyway. Problem solved.
On Friday I had to collect Gracie’s ashes from the clinic in York. I asked my friend if I could borrow her Mercedes (see reason in the Moans section), as she has two. As I reversed it off her drive, she started screaming ‘Stop!’ I wound the window down. ‘You were about an inch away from a tree!’ I told her I’m not good at reversing but am OK going forwards. She went pale. I once hired a car in Tuscany
(I’ll never understand why, when you go there, all the shops and restaurants are shut) and I kept driving the wrong way around roundabouts. It was before satnav, and it took so long to find the villa that I weed on the doorstep before I could find the key.
So, this is me. In a borrowed car. Going to collect my dead dog. It’s hard to think of a worse scenario. For the first time in 14 years, I’ve been able to leave the house without employing a dog sitter, as Gracie couldn’t be left alone (the other three collies don’t chew), but I take no pleasure in that.
I park and go into reception. I’m taken into a small room. There is a wooden box with Gracie Jones inscribed on the front, in brass, and an envelope. ‘Oh Jesus,’ I tell the nurse. ‘Not another bill!’
‘No, we took prints of her paws, and her nose.’
I hadn’t asked them to do that. Gracie hated her paws being touched. I feel she’s been violated. When Lizzie, my thoroughbred, died, Nic had a few hairs from her tail made into a bracelet: I can’t look at it, let alone wear it.
I take the box in its carrier bag, along with her collar and name tag, and return to my borrowed car. I put Gracie on the back seat. She always loved being in the car: it was the only place she really relaxed. At home, if you so much as breathed, or changed channel, she would be on her paws, ‘Where we going? What we doing?’
I email my friend in Canada to let her know why I was sobbing on my last podcast. She first contacted me having read one of my columns, telling me how she had survived a relationship with an addict, but is managing to rebuild her life and career as a singer. It’s weird, but three of my four best friends (Andrea, Isobel and the singer in Canada) started out as readers. She replies:
‘What a life you two shared, and so many memories you’ve put out into the world, letting us know who she was, how she was, and what made her so dear. In a world that is so often s **** y and unfair, you found each other. You were true to her, from beginning to end… even protecting her from a final waking that would have been upsetting for her, even if it would have given you the chance for a shared goodbye.
‘Hang in there. I’m rooting for you. Always. xo’
*We were talking about our breakfast, he complained his bread wasn’t buttered (it’s a Shoreditch thing), and I brought up my mum’s egg ‘poacher’ (it’s about the only thing she left me).
I put Gracie on the back seat. She always loved being in the car