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Big Birthdays
‘Try to think of me as your favourite Grandma,’ I
said to the personal trainer whose services I had won in a raffle.
I was a cowering wreck with tears in my eyes and he was a softly
spoken ex-Marine from the Bronx. He asked me all sorts of unanswerable
questions. What do you want from your body? Are you interested
in maintenance or do you want to upgrade? This was about the
most personal thing a stranger has said to me since the nervous
pilot in Puerto Rico on my honeymoon insisted all all the passengers
on his small plane confessed to him our weight. What I wanted
was to go to sleep. Up all night with Mary for the third day
in a row I was having quite a lot of trouble just standing. I
closed my eyes and did what he said. I used the sort of breathing
I had found useful during childbirth. I tried to visualise nice
things like rainbows and being in a coma. After what seemed like
several days it was over. But to morrow he is coming back again
to fulfil the rest of the ‘prize contract.’
It never rains but it pours. This week two very good friends
of mine are turning fifty and forty. They are both having their
parties on the same night and I will divide my time equally between
both. I do so want to get the presents right.
The forty year old I have known for nine years. A Lacanian
psychoanalyst, subtle and witty, he’s not hard to please
but he always appreciates it when you make the effort to go that
extra psychic mile. I try to think of all the thing he likes.
The Big Labowski is just about his favourite thing. He also loves
the line in Fargo where one person remarks how nice the hotel
cafeteria is and the other nods in agreement, ‘It’s
a Radisson.’ Sometimes we mutter this phrase to each other
as a short hand for ‘Hi how are you?’ Briefly I wonder
about buying him a few shares in the Radisson group. Maybe £50
worth. It might amuse him-but in a strange way this feels both
like trying too hard and not trying enough. Besides, he may be
completely over that line by now and think the present abstract
in the extreme. I have half a short story on my computer about
a psychoanalyst somewhere which I could finish and put it in
a nice box, but when I find it and realise it’s probably
going to end up quite a long novel, I decide not to bite off
more than I can chew. I sometimes like to give men presents that
are domestic and a little tender, an item for the house, some
linen or bathroom or kitchen things. In Paris last week I strolled
past a huge display of electric tagines in the Bon Marche thinking, ‘I
wonder’, but I knew I didn't mean it for real.
The fifty year old is my dear friend and neighbour Kate, top ‘lender’ of
chocolate, reader of first novel drafts, internationally acclaimed
expert on gender in the workplace and all round excellent egg.
For her I am already making a three tiered chocolate cake decorated
with glossy dark icing and very white orchids, but she will need
a present as well. There is an A-line knee length champagne coloured
silk skirt in ALexander McQueen, with sewn down pleats opening
out into laser cut butterflies and a scalloped doily-ish hem.
It’s one of the most stylish garments I’ve seen in
a while and just screams out for a second wedding- but it sure
doesn't come cheap. A small pinkish python envelope clutch bag
caught my eye as well, but it would be such a strain not leaving
it everywhere. Then it hit me. What I’d really like to
do is hide something in the cake -I’m not quite up to a
dancing girl - but I could install a small box in the top tier
in which a little sparkling gift is stowed. Imagine the excitement
in the bustling, Happy Birthday crooning crowd. Hear the gasp
of confusion as knife hits parcel. Watch the wonder turn to gratitude
and melt into admiration. Failing that, perhaps she’d like
some sessions with an ex-marine I know.
Susie Boyt’s latest novel ONLY HUMAN is published in
paperback on Monday. www.susieboyt.com
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