The First Rule of Book Club

Thursday

I did not realise that retirement was going to be so stressful. I thought I would have all the time in the world to lie about on my literal and metaphorical sofa and write this diary but… Oh, you naïve young thing, I think fondly, looking back to those youthful days of last Autumn when I was just a slip of a girl. With a bloom in my cheek and a foolish dream of empty days to fill with nothing in particular.

But how wrong I was.

When I’m not driving hundreds of miles a week to see various members of my family – who are inconveniently and selfishly scattered around the country – I’m busy fretting about being old.

It's come as quite a shock. Not to anyone else, apparently, from all the blank looks I've been getting when I've shared my startling discovery, but the sight of DWP on my bank statement was a eureka moment for me (and not in an exciting, world-changing, emerging from a bubble-bath kind of way).

If you don't know, DWP stands for Department for Work and Pensions. I expect you do, because, no offence, but I'm not expecting you to be a rocket scientist. Clearly I'm not. Obviously, I knew it was coming, my personal Government bonanza (ironic), but the official Pensions, in black and white, finally confirmed that I am, well, an official pensioner. As in pensioner. As in OAP. As in one of those old people I give up my seat for on trains, who seriously consider funeral plans and who talk to absolutely anybody in supermarket queues…oh, well, yes, I’ll admit to that one.

So now, when I’m not driving hundreds of miles, I count the age spots on my hands and spend a lot of time consulting ChatGPT about my ailments. That ache I’ve started experiencing in my right hip; could it be the beginning of arthritis? Rheumatism? We try and pin it down together in a prolonged conversation over a cup of tea before Chat diplomatically suggests that the ache in my right hip could possibly be due to the amount of time I’ve spent on the sofa consulting Chat on my phone and perhaps I should try and start moving about a bit?

I really want to ask how many age spots are normal for a woman my age but I’m afraid it will tell me off so I obediently get up and make myself another cup of tea.

Friday

Fortunately, now that I am driving thousands of miles a week, I have a new car. It’s a lovely greenish-blue, and me and Nancy have called her Gorgeous, for obvious reasons. My driving seat is really more of a throne, compared to my old car, with a command centre, and a screen in the middle of the dashboard that shows all sorts of icons and complicated things that I don’t really care about. All I need is to never get lost, keep warm, play Taylor Swift songs and listen to Stephen King books.

‘This will be perfect for you,’ says Mr Young, looking pleased with himself. ‘These cameras will make it so easy for you to be able to reverse into a space. You just can’t go wrong.’

I eye him suspiciously as this seems extremely unlikely.

We go to the Co-Op car park to practise and find an empty spot. I position myself and can see the space on the screen in front of me.

I don’t trust it.

Mr Young uses his gentle coaching voice to begin with as I reverse slowly;

‘Now just watch the screen and those lines, you don't need to turn round and look at the cars - don’t look at the cars, I said – just look at the screen,’ he tells me. ‘Those lines will just guide you – I said don’t – you don’t – stop looking at the cars – just go forward again – no, stop looking at the cars – that’s it, very slowly go back – no, I said STOP looking…’

I’d like to say I get the hang of it after a few dozen attempts. I’d really like to. On the positive side, I can forward park almost perfectly.

And anyway, now I’m a pensioner, I get a bus pass.

Saturday

I have joined a gym. And I go to the gym. (I feel like I should say that because anyone can join a gym. I should have started with that really.) I go three or four times a week to weight train. I have a proper routine that I designed myself and I’ve also had a couple of sessions with a personal trainer called Thomas Pike – who I chose almost entirely because he sounded like a character from a George Eliot novel, and he didn’t let me down because he does have an impressive beard, although the tattoos would probably have alarmed the characters in Mill on the Floss.

My gym  (it’s not actually mine; obviously, if it was I’d have a comfy seating area and a claw-foot bath at the end of the shower cubicles with some Jo Malone bath oils)  is a very functional place where everyone is extremely focused and no one is there to show off in inappropriate lycra.

I've only had to put up with two episodes of mansplaining and I was thoughtful enough to nod gratefully each time to make them feel good about themselves (You wanna make sure you increase the weights gradually each time, you know what I mean? Don’t try and do too much at your age!) instead of punching them in the face.

Mr Young is very impressed by my triceps and biceps.

‘Wow!’ he says admiringly. ‘I can see your shoulders too.’

I am very pleased with this until I wonder later if he meant he could see my actual shoulders instead of my shoulder muscles and if he was just humouring me and if I ought to punch him in the face.

A woman can only put up with so much male condescension.  

Monday

Our Alconbury Weald book club is still going strong. (Ha! A cheeky little segue pun!) We have four hard-core members, meeting monthly to discuss – well, of course you know how book clubs work. We do actually talk literature for half the time, then everything else for the rest of the time. It’s always a well-lubricated conversation. I have a suspicion that I often confide things to my fellow book-clubees that I have told them before, but can’t remember because of the lubrication factor.

‘Ah,’ says Mr Young knowingly when I tell him I will be out and we’re having an early supper. ‘Yes, it’s Book Club, isn’t it? Heavy night, then.’

I want to say something withering but can’t think of anything. Anyway, I don’t want to break the first rule of Book Club.

Tuesday

Talking of books, one reason for my thousands of miles of driving is that I visit my father every week, who now lives in a residential home. I read to him, ineptly in my opinion, but for some reason he is very impressed by my narrational ability.

‘You should be a professional reader,’ he tells me regularly.

‘I really don’t think so,’ I say, aware of the many times I’ve stumbled over words, coughed, sneezed, hiccupped, trailed off completely, or tried and failed to do Irish/Scottish/Welsh accents.

‘Oh yes, you’re very good. You could be one of those Audible readers,’ he says.

As he wears a hearing aid, this is not as complimentary as it sounds.

Although we both enjoy these occasions, they are inconvenienced by the fact that the weekly delay means we’ve both forgotten what happened at the end of the previous chapter, so we spend a substantial amount of time having a recap before we start reading the next instalment.

Occasionally, swear words or a sexy scene will rear its head (whoah! Another pun… no stopping me now!) but I’d rather eat my own foot than face my 95-year-old father in his wheelchair and read aloud anything even vaguely indecent so my characters tend to say Flipping heck! and Botheration! I also tend to just make things up if anyone caresses anyone else’s anything or handles someone’s something roughly behind the harbour wall.

I’m not quite sure what he thinks is happening at those parts of the book.

But then we’ve both usually forgotten by the following week anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.

Wednesday

Mr Young’s woodworking skills have come on in leaps and bounds. (What a wonderful idiom! Doesn’t that sound Spring-like!)

There is nothing that man can’t turn his hand to now. New chopping board? I go upstairs to put the washing away, come back downstairs and it’s there, next to the sink, all ready for use, with Mr Young lurking about nearby, looking appropriately modest.

He has made a bath rack, desk for Nancy, rebuilt the wardrobe and dressing table in the bedroom, made a hall cupboard, a recipe book stand, side table, bird box, planter, book shelves. The man is invincible. Unstoppable. Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No, it's Timberman!

Right now, I want a new sideboard for the dining room. Kaboom! A Whatsapp message arrives with an image of a sideboard – is that the one I want? Why, yes it is, actually – but with different legs and handles please. Kapow! Like these? Why, yes, that’s right…Kaboom!

I know I don’t have to worry about him if anything ever happened to me because… Kaboom! He’d just go and make one of me out of wood.

Timberwoman!

Kapow!