I've been pondering the nature of loss. Which sounds deep and philosophical, but I'm not a deep or philosophical person so it wasn't, but it did have me thinking about priorities and the ways in which we come to terms with those bad bits that must occur in everybody's life at some point. Surely, even those who, on the surface at least, appear to lead charmed lives must have the occasional off day. And to be honest, I don't have much truck with the 'charmed life' concept anyway. I once new a woman who claimed to have led precisely that, a charmed life. She said it proudly, with the sort of smug smile that made me want to shake her warmly by the throat, and she then related the most boring litany of events I have ever been forced to hear. Indeed, I use the word 'events' advisedly as I think it might imply episodes far more thrilling than anything she came up with. This same woman would text me excitedly to give me the breathlessly arousing news that she'd just made three madeira cakes. You can picture her now, can't you? A tidy woman with a tidy life in a tidy house with a tidy husband, who probably never dared to crumple the bedsheets with any of that unhygienic slap and tickle, and an existence of terrible tedium in which absolutely nothing was permitted to happen that might ruffle the tidiness of it all. If that's 'charmed' then give me blighted any day.
Not that I begrudge anybody having a nice time. It's what I want too, but this woman of whom I speak was so bland and so boring that everybody avoided her like the plague. There was something incomplete about her. I had the following conversation with Kate, a mutual acquaintance:
Kate: D'you get loads of texts from J?
Me: Oh yes.
Kate: Right.
Pause....
Kate: Are yours just a load of old wank?
Me: Oh yes.
Glances of shared sympathy were exchanged and we moved on.
I think it's the rough and tumble of life, the things that knock a few edges off us, that end up making us into proper people, with experiences and thoughts and views and, most importantly, empathy for others when life's jumped up and punched them in the mouth. We can only do that if we have an inkling of how it feels ourselves. If the worst thing that's happened to you is that your Victoria Sponge didn't rise it's a poor look out.
So, back to my bad bits and those losses that I mentioned a while back. I should point out that we didn't rate them as devastating, but they were a pain.The first one has a nebulous feel to it as what was lost existed somewhere in cyberspace. Middle daughter was in residence for a while and using my laptop. As is our family tradition, she had a large glass of red wine at her elbow whilst she tapped away at the keys. We were all chatting pleasantly amongst ourselves when an ill-judged flick of the wrist resulted in the red wine, which was supposed to end up in middle daughter, ending up all over the keyboard of the laptop. A flurry of activity ensued with much mopping and reassurances to distressed daughter that it could have happened to any of us (which it could) but the mopping, at least, was to no avail. Apparently, the acid in wine can destroy your hard drive even faster than your liver and by the time we got it to the recovery man all was lost. Now, we should (of course) have taken the sensible precaution of having everything backed up but we (of course) had not, so I was left ruminating on all the stuff that was gone forever, and wondering just where it had been in the first place. All those little icons representing hundreds of images and thousands of words. Had all of that been hovering in the ether somewhere, waiting for me to summon it up? I like using modern technology, but I've no firm grip on how it works. And I don't want you to try and explain it to me because I still wouldn't understand, I don't have the right sort of mind. Actually, you could tell me it was all down to a network of tiny elves and I'd be happy to go with that.
But back to the losses. I mourn the passing of the lost 'photo albums and I've now decided that the digital camera isn't the boon we all take it to be. Sure, we can snap away to our hearts content and, in keeping with these times of instant gratification, we can then just download the results straight onto our computers, cutting out the business of having to take them to be developed and then waiting for days before collecting our efforts. And don't get me started on taking pictures with mobile 'phones. I'm sick to death of people insisting on handing me their mobile to inspect a tiny image on a tiny screen and having to nod and smile admiringly whilst having no clue as to what I'm looking at. I have to take it on trust that it's 'me and our Sheila at that barbecue I told you about.' I don't disgrace my self by saying, 'D'you know what, if you hadn't told me I'd have thought it was someone beheading a duck,' or whatever it looks like to me as I squint at the stupid thing, but I'm always uneasy about making the right response. But back to the old days, when the waiting had an excitement all its own, even though the anticipation was rarely matched by the results. Now we can see immediately how shamefully pissed we looked at somebody's party or that we cut everybody's heads off in the group photo. But, joy of joys, we can instantly delete the disasters, before anybody gets the chance to snatch the shameful image from our hands, crying, 'Let's see,' before we can grab it back and tear it to shreds. Now it's just the click of a button and it's gone. However, it also means we might miss out on the pleasure that our family enjoys from time to time, usually when all the children are visiting, and we'll spend an evening with the few albums I actually got round to putting together, but mostly the jumble of 'photos that I've chucked into boxes, recalling holidays and picnics and family occasions, laughing at what we were wearing or trying to remember all the names in a gang of school friends. It's not the same, all squashed shoulder to shoulder in front of a screen flicking through the images, rather than comfortably sprawled, with the pictures passing from hand to hand. But despite this nostalgic leaning towards a good old Snappy Snaps print, I too had succumbed to the digital age, and more recent pictorial records had ended up on my laptop. Now they're gone and, having emptied my camera's memory after downloading, they no longer exist, anywhere. I see this as an excellent argument for a return to the good old Box Brownie.
I also lost all twenty five thousand words of the dissertation I wrote for my English MA. I suppose the hard copy that I had to have bound and then presented for assessment still exists somewhere, buried in the vaults of the university library, which is probably the best place for it, and if I really wanted it I could request a photocopy. But I'm not convinced I would ever have been moved to read it again anyway, so I doubt I'll bother. To be honest, I'll probably be more inconvenienced by the loss of my Christmas card list, complete with changes of address, and of names of partners. I'm going to miss that. So, despite the initial feelings of despair over the disappearance of all those words and pictures, I reckon I can live without them. And we've learnt a valuable lesson about making sure we back it all up in the future. Or, and here's a radical idea, we could go back to printing off our pictures and writing things down, on paper. Alternatively, I could make sure there's never any red wine near to the computer, but that would be a step too far.
The next loss was rather more shocking. On a bright and sunny morning, a couple of weeks back, I went downstairs, made myself my habitual mug of tea and wandered into the front room. I stood at the window to survey the street. I had an excellent view. I had far too excellent a view. It took me a minute to realise what was wrong. My view should have been partially obscured by our lovely little VW Campervan. It was not. I stared at the space where it should have stood and I went on staring, being gripped by the mad idea that if I did it for long enough the van would magically re materialise. It didn't, of course, but I couldn't believe it had gone. I peered up and down the road, hoping for some clue as to what had happened, but all I saw what the enormous tabby from number fourteen, scratching itself, and the cheerful woman from twenty eight, heading off with the tartan shopping trolley that we all know she fills with the cheap cooking sherry she imbibes throughout the day, which probably has a bearing on why she's so unfailingly jolly. But whatever floats your boat, that's what I say.
So, I summoned the help of the local constabulary and they dispatched a delightful policeman, who must have been all of thirteen, to assess the situation. He was kind and sympathetic but dispiritingly pessimistic as to our chances of getting it back, and it seems he was right as it's been a while now and there's still no sign of it. I'm both angry and upset about this loss, and find myself wishing unspeakable horrors on the ne'er do wells responsible and ranting about how we worked hard to get the money to buy it and why couldn't they do the same if they wanted one. In short, I have to keep slapping down the Daily Mail reader within and reminding myself that I'm a Guardian woman of liberal mindset and balanced opinions. I'm trying to keep things in perspective, reminding myself that far worse things happen to people and I should count myself lucky. The thief may have led a far from charmed life and his need might be greater than mine. But it's hard. And even more than the loss of the van, I'm grieved by the loss of the contents. The teapot was a dear little yellow thing, bought for me by a daughter from her very first pay packet when she got herself a Saturday job in sixth form. Now some thieving bastard has their filthy, criminal paws on it. See? I keep getting cross and turning nasty. Aforementioned policemen (who turned out to be a sergeant, so must have joined the force as an embryo) has kept us updated on...well...nothing really. He just rings and says they still haven't found it so now we're waiting to see what sort of a pittance the insurance company comes up with. It'll probably be enough for a tandem and a tent.
So there it is, and life still goes on pleasantly enough. I have a bike and a bus pass and all my bits are working so I'm not confined to the house by the absence of what was our only vehicle. And all that twaddle in my dissertation has undoubtedly been said better, elsewhere by someone else. It's no great drama and we've pretty much come to terms with it. I wonder if this equilibrium is something to do with age? I think it is. As time passes, and I become increasingly aware that the time I can expect ahead is getting considerably shorter than the time I've already had, I'm convinced that, actually, there's very little that REALLY matters. The people I love come top of the list, naturally, and I think it's important to retain a compassionate view on the world, but not much else springs to mind. It's rather liberating.
I have most certainly not had a charmed life. I've experienced events that were so devastating at the time that I felt sure I'd never smile again. But I did. And it all helped me to get my priorities sorted. It's called life. It's supposed to be messy. How can it not be if you choose to engage with it fully. So, onward and upward and let's live dangerously. Pour the wine, I'm firing up the laptop!
