Home life
All in the mind
Alice Thomas Ellis
Iwas talking to an afflicted friend on the telephone the other day and as I concluded the conversation and turned away I said compassionately that he had had yet another breakdown. I assumed a pitiful expression and was in mid-sigh when Janet remarked acidly that she hoped he'd sent for the AA then. She has very little patience with people exhibiting signs of the vapours, or a general inability to cope with the vicissitudes of life.
In view of this it is unfortunate that she has developed symptoms of what I believe is known as the Royal Free virus. These symptoms are evident to no one but the sufferer and were disregarded by the medical profession until a number of them contracted it and were forced to agree that it did indeed exist and was debilitating in its effects. She has to keep sitting down. I think I've probably had it always. Luckily she seems to be getting better now. I had `Let's put the wind up the Met Office.' visions of us pushing Nanny round in a bath chair until the end of all our days.
In the meantime she's knocked the handles off about half a dozen jugs. They sit, these poor amputees, on the shelf awaiting medical attention. I bought some Superglue to mend them but my friend the analyst posted it. He was walking along, doubtless pondering the complexities of the Oedipal situation, clutching a letter, and the Superglue in a paper bag, and when he got home he found he still had the letter. I put a note in the box for the postman asking him to return the Super- glue to the Institute of Psycho-Analysis. I don't know what the GPO will make of it.
There's a lot of madness around, of one sort and another. Extreme carelessness is, in my opinion, a type of insanity, and I keep losing things. A red purse, a brand- new brooch that I hadn't even worn, the dry mustard, two pairs of warm tights, and a scarf of many colours. I never wear the scarf, but now I've lost it I want it. I waste hours looking hopelessly in places I've already searched. There was some money in the purse too, but now money has so largely lost its value it doesn't seem to matter all that much.
What could have been more serious was the absent-mindedness of the Inland Re- venue who sent four identical tax demands on four consecutive days. If I was stupid I might have paid all of them — stupid and rich, that is. Perhaps their computer has the new computer virus that muddles up the system and wipes their memories clean. Perhaps we've all got it. Certainly many of my friends have an increasing tendency to repeat themselves, showing no signs of remembering that they've told that story before — several times before — and the children consistently forget that I've lent them a fiver twice that week already. Theories as to the cause of all this aberra- tion vary widely — from advancing age, which can't be so in the case of the youngest child — to the changing weather (due to the combination of felled rain- forest and the effect of fast-food containers on the atmosphere) and the influence of malign aliens.
Deirdre inclines to the latter explana- tion. Like the rest of us she fondly believed that if beings from space were amongst us it was because their intentions were be- nevolent and they wished to show us how to comport ourselves with dignity. Then she saw a programme featuring a lady who, driving along in Australia, had been cut up by a flying saucer. As Deirdre remarked indignantly, we've got enough of that sort of thing without Martians coming along to add their whack.
Half of us believe in UFOs, half of us don't, and each faction believes the other to be deluded. Happily Janet shares my views on this, but next time I feel a trauma coming on and she tells me to get a grip on myself I shall tell her her virus is all in the mind.
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