No Shows
Although it is well known that many people have gym memberships
that they never call on and country cottages that they
just cant bring themselves to visit (What is there to
do in the country, anyway, apart from eat?) it has struck
me recently that I know several people who are in full
time or at least three times a week psychoanalytic psychotherapy
who never actually attend their sessions. They write
down their appointments dutifully, these non attenders,
in their palm tops or their kitchen calendars, they pay
the bills promptly and they genuinely believe,as each
session comes and goes, that they intend to go, that
they almost made it, that they just missed it by whisker,
yet they never quite manage to get their appointments,
or at least certainly not at anything like the right
time.
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Badge
Of Honour
Years
ago I was in a pub in Oxford, The Bullingdon Arms,
on a date with a boy, who was
impossibly glamorous and
slightly dissolute. It was after a Tammy Wynette concert
at the Apollo Theatre and Tammy’s courageous, melancholy
strains were buzzing round our heads. I had the feeling
this young man quite liked me when I was happy and not
at all when I was sad, so I cranked up high levels of
cheer in his company to help things to go well. Yet every
so often this pose tired me and I found myself worrying
lest I went too far and he decided I was airheaded and
without any depth so I would sink into unexplaned and
sophisticated (I hoped) bouts of gloom. I wasnt the world’s
easiest companion back then. Dressed like a school girl
in a wine coloured velvet mini skirt and a navy v neck
and I fought my way valiantly thorugh the smoky crowds
in the pub to order our drinks, humming Stand by your
Man. ‘
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