Vexed again, perplexed again

Aged seven, Thing One is already perfectly capable of sighing, ‘give it here,’ when something goes wrong with my smart(arse) phone. She taps a few keys and bish bosh, it’s not only mended but has a terrible new ring-tone. It’s a tired old cliché, the inability of middle-aged people to cope with modern life, but as I never mind tapping a cliché with a spoon till the shell breaks to reveal a mouldy egg, I will proceed.

Pierced Boy and I were in town when we passed East, latest inhabitant of the 197/Artisan/Si/Leonie’s premises. Noticing it was open despite the incomplete shop-fitting I chirped, ‘ooh, it’s one of those pop-in shops!’ P-Boy slapped me down with a flick of his pierced wrist, informing me that the correct phrase was ‘pop-up.’ So what if I got the preposition wrong, quoth I. I understood the principle.

But as I sat in Tizz’s waiting for Boy to find an blank space big enough for his latest tat – again, please note my familiarity with the vernacular - I realised I didn’t actually understand it at all. Surely pop-up implies a fly-by-night operation, like the mad Christmas wrapping paper shops that used to take over every store in Ilford on December 23rd, staffed by terrifying men in sheepskin coats keeping an eye out for the rozzers? East is a nice ladies’ clothes shop, which has set up in the building it’s going to occupy permanently. So why then is it a pop-up rather than a normal shop?

Pierced Boy chose the back of his knee as an appropriate site for his memorial to Elizabeth Taylor. As he settled face-down onto a bench, and a girl scarcely older than Thing One advanced with the needle, it occurred to me that I didn’t really understand tattoos either. Or piercings. Sure, I understand having one or two of each, to decorate otherwise boring parts of the body. But more than that and I am properly bewildered, adrift in a world which also contains shots instead of proper drinks, paying utility bills by standing order, vajazzling; a world where Lady Gaga is cool yet Dana International is not, where parking attendants have to be mean rather than pleasant and where young men may wear their underpants and trousers as two separate items rather than the conventional one-over-the-other formation.
Pierced Boy asked me to distract him from the pain, so I held his hand and asked what he found puzzling about modern life. ‘Nothing,’ he said, gritting his teeth. ‘I am totally twenty-first century.’

My phone rang with Thing One’s new ringtone: ‘And I’m like baby, baby, baby, oh, like baby baby baby no.’

‘Ooh Justin Bieber!’ squeaked the tattooist, looking at me respectfully. P-Boy raised an eyebrow at me, no mean feat considering the attached metalwork. ‘Maybe some aspects of contemporary life are a trifle incomprehensible,’ he conceded, adding, ‘ow,’ as the tattooist began to fill in Liz’s violet eyes.

Beth Miller, 30th May 2011. Published in VivaLewes.com and in Viva Lewes magazine, July 2011. Photo by Alex Leith.

If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it

Cherry blossom pinked the pavement, and out of a charabanc stepped Uncle Adultery, debonair in his lemon-yellow Parisian suit.

‘Niecey’, he cried, hailing me with a silk umbrella. ‘Marvellous news! I’m getting married!’

Shocked, I hustled him into the café formerly known as Artisan, which is now three numbers (192? 197? 172? No, the 172 was a bus I used to get to school). Over a stiff glass of cloudy lemonade, I pointed out that he runs a dating agency for restless married people and is the embodiment of romantic cynicism. When this didn’t budge him, I recalled his own words, spoken after the dust had settled on the fourth of his exciting-but-better-duck-for-cover marriages.

‘You told me’, I said, ‘That if you ever teetered towards another nuptial bond, I should lock you in a wardrobe until the madness had passed.’ I threateningly waved a wardrobe key that I always carry.

‘Ah, the foolish fighting talk of my younger self’, Uncle A smiled, dropping the key into my lemonade, and ignoring the fact that he had been fifty-eight at the time. ‘It will be different with Emmanuelle.’

I was amazed Emmanuelle had said yes, given the unveiled contempt with which she mostly regards my uncle. He admitted he hadn’t yet asked her.

‘When we visited you last year’, he mused, and a flashback of the fracas outside the Charcoal Grill made me shiver, ‘Emmanuelle saw an item of jewellery she quite liked.’ This constitutes gushing praise from the austere French lady. ‘If I buy an engagement ring from the self-same shop, it will swing the deal.’

He drained his glass and stood. ‘Lead on, Niecey! This needn’t take long. I’ve a table booked at La Gavroche tonight. Bottle of Pétrus and bended knee. Done and dusted.’

I quailed at the size of our task.

‘Nonsense, Niecey – it’s a small town. How many jewellery emporia can there be?’

When I told him I had easily thought of nine, his face went the colour of his suit. We made a start, and Uncle A sifted through sapphires, and discarded diamonds. But when, after three hours, I discovered a new jewellery shop had pupped, where Laceys drycleaners once stood, Uncle A admitted defeat. He rang Emmanuelle for clues. As he spoke – his end of the conversation mere repetition of the word, ‘yes’ – he wilted and aged before my eyes. There’s no accounting for love in the Springtime.

‘She only remembers that its name had a z in it’, he said, straightening slowly. ‘And she said – but this can’t be right – that it sold leg-warmers. She must be going loopy, poor old girl.’

Watching Uncle Adultery negotiating with Tizz’s multiply-pierced and dread-locked sales assistant was a uniquely uplifting experience. He chose an amber ring that cost several noughts fewer than his budget.

‘Two bottles of Pétrus tonight’, he cried, jumping aboard a hansom cab and waving his handkerchief. ‘I’ll call you with the wonderful news tomorrow.’

That was last week. I’m still waiting to hear.

Beth Miller, 11th May 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com and in Viva Lewes magazine, June 2010.