Isn't it interesting, what different people think is enjoyable and correct? There are polarities of type everywhere one looks. For example; there are people who like to visit garden centres on Sunday, and there are people who would prefer to have their uvulas sandblasted. There are people who wear rubber gloves to do the washing up,and there are people who only do the washing up when they are forced to use the Harry Potter paper plates left over from a long-ago child's party. There are,in particular, those who would rather be right than happy. They are the folk who delight in conflict and argument. You will be in the pub, with your fellows, talking agreeable nonsense, and lightly batting the conversational ball about in a way which harms none and furnishes amusement. Then a person with strong opinions arrives. They will not rest until they have badgered someone into disagreeing with them. The badgeree will have made attempts to deflect this, using anodyne and emollient words.But the badgerer will not let it lie. For their idea of a satisfactory evening is someone crying in the car park, and an atmosphere of nerve-jangling tension. I don't really care that much what anyone thinks. I do care about how they behave. Opinions are like bottoms, everybody has them, and they are far better left unaired in public.
Another tribe I do not understand much about are the money-grabbers. I was brought up to believe that one did not discuss money any more than one discussed the condition of one's digestive system. Necessary, yes. Interesting, no.
Of course, I have never been able to contribute very much to that sort of conversation, being vague and impractical. If you view money as pleasure vouchers, you are not going to engage productively in a chat about how it behaves in the abstract,and what it gets up to when it isn't with you. Every now and then I encounter people for whom the topic exerts an uncanny fascination. I have generally not wished to grapple them to my bosom and nestle them there. I had a very long-feeling lunch with three women once, whose sole topic of discourse was how much everything everyone was wearing had cost, and what "label" said garment bore. Bore being the operative word.
The Giant Boy is going through a phase of being a bit of a Labels Queen. He likes to wear polo shirts from Ralph Reader sorry Lauren. They are eye-wateringly expensive. All his friends are similiarly afflicted. I can accept this (just) in somene who is fourteen.But oh I do hope it doesn't last; not least because to indulge him in this habit I shall have to take up burglary,which I shall be most awfully bad at. For one thing I don't have a ladder , nor yet a bag marked "Swag" ,and for another, I have enough trouble getting into my own house,let alone anyone else's.
It is not money per se that is the root of all evil, it is how people regard it. Using it to make others feel uncomfortable or inadequate is rotten,and obviously vulgar. Thinking that it is an adequate reason to have sex with someone is just a little odd, I think, if this is not one's actual job. When I was at school, the big thing amongst the nice girls was to have a boyfriend with a car. I was so perplexed by this, as I could not see how it worked. If the chap was on the plain and charmless side, did you close your eyes and think of his driving licence? And surely there was more time by far spent NOT in a car with him? Or did you just insist that he kept driving until he ran out of petrol?
I have never really had any money,or a boyfriend with a car. I had a friend whose chap had a hearse, though. A hearse, or a horse. I could see the appeal of either.
I like horses. My cousin has started to buy them,or bits of them, in an absent-minded way. Horse-racing is the only sporty thing I can bear. It doesn't last very long, which is good, and you can dress up and drink,which is better. Although with my eyesight, I could just as well be watching an ant race. Lots of money changes hands, but punters appear to be rather good-natured about it, and winners splash champagne about in a jolly, public-spirited manner.
The first black gentleman I ever saw was at Aintree Races. North Liverpool in 1957 was not racially diverse. So I was in at the deep end with Prince Monolulu. Seven foot tall,and generally draped in leopardskin and full tribal regalia, he was a flamboyant tipster who
rose to prominence after picking out the horse Spion Kop in the 1920 Derby. It came in at the long odds of 100-6, and he personally made £8,000, a considerable sum of money at the time.
The biography of the journalist Jeffrey Barnard describes Prince Monolulu's death . Barnard at the time was working as a horse racing correspondent and visited Monolulu in the Middlesex Hospital to interview him. Bernard presented him with a box of Black Magic chocolates, and offered Monolulu a strawberry cream. He took it, and choked to death on it.
On this happier occasion, he seized me from the arms of my Mother, and lifted me high in the air, laughing uproariously,and then tickled me with his hat. I was delighted, apparently. Nothing as sensational happened to me for many years afterwards.
I suspect that this experience may have helped to form my taste for people and situations which are a little out of the ordinary. I once shared a flat with a girl who liked order and normality. Her most scathing remarks were reserved for things or people who were "weird". Not uncanny or eldritch, as in the proper usage, but just unusual. It was not a successful co-habitation. She accused me of "Always making things up about your social life to make you seem more interesting". I was miffed,as I had been going cross-eyed with the effort of shielding her from the more interesting aspects . Mind you, she ironed her knickers.
These worlds do not mix, and it is a grave error to try. I don't approve of the "I'm mad, me" self-conscious whackiness in which people set out to shock and offend others,but I do consider that everyone has the right to be eccentric in their own little way, as long as they don't upset people or frighten the cat. The knicker-ironing girl was barmy in a very dull way, to me. And I was reprehensibly barking and shambolic to her. But we managed not to kill each other,and I moved in with three drag queens,with whom I had much in common. Including shoes. And we all lived happily ever after,until the house burnt down.But that is another story.
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