Diary of a separation

13/01/2012 By Guest

A chilly realisation that the boiler has died

I have a theory that you're not really an adult until you've experienced boiler bereavement. There's denial ("It'll just be the pilot light, I just need to press this button a few times"), anger (as the landlord screens your frantic calls), bargaining (with a succession of plumbers you find in the Yellow Pages whose names all begin with AAAA), depression (no one will come out until next week) and finally acceptance (of call-out charges hovering around £200 per half hour or part thereof). Most importantly, there's the realisation that your home isn't the impregnable fortress you had complacently assumed it was.

My boiler died this week. It isn't my first broken boiler, but it's the first one I'm solely responsible for. I've been half expecting it – there's been some worrying business with the thermostat – but it hits me hard ... waking up to a suspicious chill, running the hot tap in vain, hoping I'm wrong. I try not to panic: first, I go down to the basement to stare at it, hoping for a miracle.

The boiler is gigantic and off-putting, with five enormous pipes emerging from its squat grey body at improbable angles. I open the front door, experimentally, and look for a pilot light button to press, but there's nothing, just a sort of rusty screw, and a butch-looking gauge. I'm lost. The thermostat, with its yellowing card of oblique instructions in my landlady's spiky handwriting, is bad enough. It whirrs and clicks ominously in the evenings. I give up and ring my landlady.

"What have you done to it?" she says, instantly on the offensive.

"Nothing!" I protest. "It just stopped working overnight, honestly."

There's a chilly pause. She has a knack of making me feel guilty when I haven't done anything wrong, which must be useful in her occupation. "Have you touched the thermostat?"

"No!" I lie, palms slightly sweaty.

Grudgingly, she agrees to try to arrange an engineer, but not today, and probably not tomorrow. I hang up feeling furiously impotent and cast around for a solution. I could call my neighbour. He's quite handy – he's fixed my Wi-Fi and put up shelves for me in the past – but he's also a total chancer. There will be some outlandish reason why I need to lend him a hundred quid and if I'm really unlucky, he'll show me his awful drawings of cars again.

Or maybe I should try to get it fixed myself? The thought fills me with gloom (they'll lie to me and take all my money, and my landlady will never pay me back), but at least I'll be taking charge of my own heating destiny. I text a friend to ask if she knows a reliable plumber. "Would you like John to come and have a look?" she texts back. John is her husband. "He's pretty good at that kind of thing."

"Thank you!" I text back, filled with relief. "That would be wonderful."

X is pretty good at this kind of thing too. One of the first things he ever did for me was fix my television and then, as now, I was filled with admiration for his nonchalant techno-brilliance. How do people know this stuff? He called earlier about a forgotten video game, and hearing the edge in my voice, asked what was wrong.

"The boiler's dead."

"Oh no, I'm sorry."

I could feel my composure slipping.

"And my landlady is being evil."

"If you need me ..."

"Thanks." I can't though, can I? It's up to me now.

Actually, it's up to John, who comes round a few hours later with his toolbox, and disappears downstairs, refusing cups of tea. After 20 anxious minutes, he shouts up to tell me to feel the radiator and, sure enough, it's warming, slowly. He comes back upstairs, wiping his hands on a piece of kitchen roll. "Oh, thank you so much, John – you're a lifesaver."

"No problem. I don't know how long it'll last though."

Which is exactly what I expected to hear.


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Sex and the over-60s

12/01/2012 By Guest

Older people are living longer and in better health than ever – so of course they're continuing to have sex. Why is it so hard to talk about, asks the editor of Gransnet

Ten years ago in New York, I interviewed Helen Gurley-Brown, the kittenish but formidable creator of Cosmopolitan, who was then 80. Without preamble, she launched into enthusiastic endorsement of a lubricant called Astroglide: "You be sure," she said severely, "that you're all goopy before you get into bed." At the time, I was taken aback. Now I am older, it seems less funny.

Young people are often surprised that older women have sex at all. On Gransnet, the social networking site for grandparents that I edit, one poster described celebrating her 55th birthday at work and being asked by a much younger colleague at what age she had given up sex. She replied that she'd let her know when it happened; the other woman, she said, "looked horrified".

In fact, people over 60 are now the fastest-growing group contracting sexually transmitted diseases, according to government agency figures. Since 2002, syphilis has tripled in the over-65s in the UK, and HIV is up by 60%. Even allowing for the fact that we're starting from a low base, this is clearly not post-menopausal purdah.

Much of the ignorance about sex and the older person stems from resistance to thinking about old people at all, least of all their yucky bodies. There is a profound cultural fear of ageing, which glorifies the young and deprecates anything old: "ageing infrastructure", "sunset industries". This distaste tends to feed a perception of older people as a homogeneous group – which is absurd, because we tend to become more diverse, more assertive about our likes and dislikes, as we age. This is likely to be as true of sex as of anything else. Certainly, the impression that discussions on Gransnet give is that there's a spectrum of activity, from "none and not bothered" to "lots and up for more". Some of it may also be highly inventive, if only out of necessity.

When one Gransnetter asked recently: "If 16 is considered too young for sex, when is too old?" the majority view was summed up as, "when you can't remember what sex is", and "I'll tell you when I get there". There's clearly one big plus to being older, in that intimacy benefits from time and a lack of toddlers and teenagers. "Thank God for HRT and retirement – it's better than ever (aged 58)" says one poster. "I don't care who's programmed to do what or when," says another. "I've been married for nearly 40 years and have no intention of giving up our siestas and weekend lie-ins."

As the HRT reference suggests though, menopause can trigger a crisis. Those who sail on through it may well have to adjust, to make use of Astroglide-type aids or other chemical assistance. But among those who do slow down, it isn't necessarily (or mainly, according to our admittedly self-selecting panel) women who make the decision. "My husband has never tried to have sex since a 'failure' (the first ever) 16 years ago – since then it has never been discussed."

"We haven't bothered since 1999," says another woman. "There was no discussion or decision, it's just never been mentioned since then – on a holiday to Tunisia, to be precise." A combination of reticence and a bland assumption by young GPs that menopause will put paid to sexual desire leaves some people accepting that sex doesn't go on for ever, though not all are reconciled to the idea. Some are left with a sense of mourning: "I miss wanting sex as much as the sex itself."

Menopause may not, of course, be the only or main cause of waning desire, even when it takes the blame. New relationships have a suspicious habit of reviving enthusiasm. "It's much better when you live alone and have 'visits'," says nanachrissy. "When I was married, I think sex was spoiled by underlying resentments and suppressed anger. Now there are no strings and sex is the best ever. Also I have no hangups about my body, because I don't really care what he thinks (although he is very kind!)."

The memoirist Diana Athill writes, in Somewhere Towards the End, of her sadness that making love with her "dear habitual companion" had staled: "Familiarity had made the touch of his hand feel so much like the touch of my own hand that it no longer conveyed a thrill." She assumed this was a question of her age – she was in her late 50s – until she met someone else and experienced what she thinks of as a reprieve: "I found, to my amusement and pleasure, that novelty could restore sex."

Nora Ephron, who has written entertainingly about ageing, maintains that if you're lucky enough to be having sex in your 60s, you won't be having the sex you had in your 20s. This is probably true, although it doesn't have to be worse. Some Gransnetters claim to be having the best time of their lives. The ingenuity of people with dodgy hips should not be underestimated, nor, for those with less than fighter-pilot reactions, should Slow Love.

When Jane Juska was 66 and living in Berkeley, California, she placed an ad in the New York Review of Books: "Before I turn 67, next March," she wrote, "I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works fine."

Her bestseller, A Round-Heeled Woman (and the play adapted from the book, starring Sharon Gless, which finishes a West End run this week) catalogues a sexual odyssey that is by turns alarming, sad, funny and pleasurable.

Menopause, according to Gloria Steinem, can give women a new drive and confidence. "What we lose in those menopausal years is everything we needed to support another person," she argues. "What we keep is everything we need to support ourselves." Former Columbia Journalism Review editor Suzanne Braun Levine takes this as her cue in a new book, How We Love Now, arguing that older women have more satisfying experiences of intimacy because we can shuck off expectations of femininity, niceness and acceptability, to be more honest about desire.

Internet dating sites have made finding someone to suit this new, more assertive state easier. There are some that are specifically (and by some accounts successfully) targeted at people in the second half of life, though one Gransnetter warns, to no one's great surprise: "All the old men of 70 think they are only 40, so that's the age of woman they are looking for."

Sex, for most people, does tail off at some point, though there's little consensus about the timing or rate of decline. For some, it may stop abruptly on an otherwise unremarkable holiday; others have every intention of continuing to the end of their days and will point out that less frequent doesn't always mean less intense.

Greater longevity and improved health mean that a phase of life never previously seen now exists: an extended middle-age: fit, competent and interested in sex. The novelty of this means that very little is understood about its erotic possibilities – but these are likely to be as varied as for any other group and, probably, more so. "Don't give up hope," one woman posted recently. "I speak as one who met the love of my life (and he really is just that) six years ago after 15 years of (intentional) celibacy. I'm nearly 74 and he's 56." Meanwhile, another poster reported that she knows of one 80-year-old care-home resident who insists on having her vibrator passed to her every night.

gransnet.com

Geraldine Bedell

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Filed Under: Features, Life and style, Older people, Sexual health, Society, The Guardian, Women, relationships, sex Tagged With:

Diary of a separation

06/01/2012 By Guest

The boys are back in town ...

The children are back from their Christmas holiday with their father, irrepressibly bouncy and laden with plastic tat, an inch taller each. They ripped through their painstakingly assembled stockings in three minutes, then settled on the sofa to bicker and play video games while I stuffed tissue paper and plastic packaging into bin bags and moved their shoes.

X, who dropped them off, looked less buoyant. When I asked him about Christmas with his family he shook his head bleakly, then left with swift efficiency and the look of a man who scents freedom, so close he can almost touch it. He's gone skiing, somewhere Spartan where he can eat sandwiches in blizzards and wear hi-tech fabrics.

The boys move through the house, opening cupboards and shedding socks, leaving a Hansel and Gretel trail of chocolate coin foil, crumbs, used tissues and satsuma peel. "I'm starving!" the youngest announces melodramatically, half an hour after lunch, and fills a tray with the contents of the kitchen cupboards. The dog follows them round at a respectful distance, newly fascinated by all their noise and animation and hoping for leftovers.

I found them quite startling too, at first, after my monastic Christmas. Lulled by those peaceful, orderly days of drinking tea and working in bed, I had forgotten how urgent their needs are: they are always starving, they need to tell me something, they have to get batteries, right now.

It's lovely, though. It wasn't bad, my time alone, but I've felt a bit peculiar: detached, I suppose, from all the celebration. All my friends are still out of town and I've felt almost invisible. It's nice to be needed again and I like how the boys have come back breezily casual, slinging a cheery proprietorial arm around my waist as I bring more snacks, taking me for granted.

We've mainly been mouldering around the house in these short days, dozing and squabbling. Even New Year's Eve was more of the same: we didn't manage to stay up until midnight. The boys flaked out around 10pm and, certain they would be up early, I put in some earplugs and followed them.

I was woken with a start by something moving on the bed. Reaching over to put the light on, befuddled and stupid, I saw the dog, trembling and sheepish, dark eyes anxious in the lamplight. Fireworks – I had forgotten.

"Oh, dog, you are daft. Come here then." I held the duvet up for him and he crawled in speedily and gratefully, curling up neatly on my feet. He used to sleep in my bed when I first moved in and the bed felt very empty, but he hasn't been allowed upstairs since the night I woke to hear him retching, daintily, on my pale oatmeal carpet. I think this counts as an emergency, though.

Wide awake now, with my feet on the warm, gradually calming dog, I remembered the previous New Year's Eve. I spent it in Paris, with my best friend, at a riotously funny house party, with champagne and dancing, haggis, gatecrashers and an ice cube fight. There was even a small fire in the early hours when we accidentally left a box of meringues next to a candle. I woke up the next morning with a stomach ache from laughing so much.

On some level, I reflect, that is how I expected single life to be: parties, and laughter and endless opportunity. It seems chasteningly stupid now after my year of professional disaster, romantic idiocy, money angst, moments of soul-searching unhappiness and implausible amounts of time spent sweeping the kitchen floor. A year later, here I am at home at midnight in my pyjamas with a dog for company, broke, anxious and a bit lonely.

There have been a few moments like that last New Year's Eve, though: stupid and funny and life-affirming – moments I don't think I would have had if X and I were still together. And that was sort of the point of all this. Wasn't it?


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What did Santa bring? | Children’s Christmas presents

06/01/2012 By Guest

From the family on the breadline to the newly rich Soviets, eight children talk about the presents they got for Christmas

Robbie Thomas, 10

Gwen Mooney, Robbie's mother We had a hell of a lot of problems last year: Robbie was diagnosed with diabetes; my brother died; I had a breakdown. I haven't been able to look after the kids, so Robbie's dad had to leave work. There are seven of us, and things have been hard, with fuel and food prices going up.

We set aside £20 a week since the summer to spend on presents. Robbie got a bike from Halfords. We got a good bargain – it was £70. Family Action also gave the boys a present each – Robbie got juggling balls – and they provided our Christmas hamper, with turkey and all the trimmings. It took a lot of the pressure off.

Robbie's good as gold. He's been good at school. He never asks for anything. I've brought my kids up not to be spoilt, and I've taught them there are children much worse off than them. It's a very greedy world, though. Robbie and his brothers see toy adverts on TV, they look at the Argos book. They look, they want, but they know that they don't get.

Total spend, £70.

Robbie What did you want for Christmas? A bike.
What did you think of your presents? Fine. All right.
What was your favourite present? The bike. I ain't ridden a bike in [a long] time, and I get to ride one all the time now.
What's the best thing about Christmas? The dinner and everything – the turkey and all that. We had party poppers and we shot them all round the house. Then I had to help clean them up.

Maria Vvedenskaya, 4

Liana Vvedenskaya, Maria's mother Maria saw the rocking horse in Harrods earlier this year. "I love it!" she said. "May I ride it?"

Ever since, she's been asking, "When will you buy me a rocking horse, Mummy?" I said, "It's very expensive – you'll have to wait." She's been dreaming about it. When I had enough points on my Harrods card, I bought it. It was £4,800.

I can't explain how happy Maria was when she saw her present. She didn't expect it. I never told her that I would get it, so it was a big surprise. She also got sweets, five or six toys, including a small pink dog and a cupcake-making set, and a very pretty dress from Ralph Lauren. When she opened the other presents, she said, "These are for me as well?" She couldn't believe it. She thought it was just the rocking horse.

I grew up in the Soviet Union, in Abkhazia. We couldn't have anything like that – our parents couldn't afford it. My typical present would be something small and simple: a teddy bear or a doll. I used to work in a bank in Moscow, but now I stay at home in Knightsbridge and my husband is a lawyer. It makes me very happy that I can afford nice toys for my daughter.

Total spend, around £5,200.

Maria What did you want for Christmas? Some little toys and a small rat like in Ratatouille.
What did you think of your presents? I don't know yet.
What was your favourite present? The rocking horse – it has a beautiful tail.
What's the best thing about Christmas? Sitting with all my family at a big beautiful table with flowers and Christmas candles.

Dimitri Volcic, 6

Matilda Lee, Dimitri's mother Being ethical informs my whole worldview. I'm an editor at the Ecologist, I've written a book on ethical fashion, we have homemade decorations, buy an ethical tree, eat locally sourced, organic food. When the children were little, it was easy to buy them green gifts, but now Dimitri's six, it's more difficult. He watches TV, he sees adverts, all his friends talk about what they're getting for Christmas. He wants stuff.

This year, as well as a stocking full of arts and crafts and a satsuma, and an adopted snow leopard from WWF, I'm afraid he got a Nintendo DS. I am troubled by how it was made, by whom, and what's going to happen to it when, inevitably, he finds it uninteresting. Also, I worry about the impact it'll have on him. We get him outside as much as possible, and the last thing he needs is something to keep him inside focused on a screen.

We're in the years when our kids are into the idea of presents under the tree. When Dimitri's older, I'd like to buy him a day out for Christmas. There's a place near us that does cooking classes – he'd love that. If we lived in a like-minded community where everyone bought ethically, it would be perfect, but, for now, I don't think it would be healthy for him to be very different from his peers.

Total spend, around £130.

Dimitri What did you want for Christmas? A mini car so I can drive to school and a Nintendo DS.
What did you think of your presents? I was very happy.
What was your favourite present? A Lego house from my mum's mum.
What's the best thing about Christmas? Christmas dinner – we had ham and apple jelly. The ham was very salty.

Faith Kompaniyets, 8

Iryna Kompaniyets, Faith's mother Every present Faith gets has to be Nemo. She saw Finding Nemo four years ago, and ever since, for every birthday and every Christmas, she has to have everything Nemo. We have a joke. Faith will say, "What am I going to get?" and I'll say, "I don't know, maybe something…" and she'll shout, "Orange!"

She always knows she's going to get Nemo, but she doesn't know what it will be. She's got Nemo toys, blankets, bedding, towels, a hat, a scarf and, for her last birthday, I got her Nemo salt and pepper shakers. This Christmas I got her a Nemo dressing gown and Nemo egg cups – she also got four boxes of presents from friends, school and the church. Faith has cerebral palsy, but she is quite mobile and enjoyed opening her presents, with a little help from me. When I showed her the big Nemo emblem on the back of the dressing gown, she started screaming with happiness in her usual way.

Most of Faith's presents come from eBay because Finding Nemo is such an old movie, no one makes new products any more. I search the internet and find things from all over the world. It's usually a case of: Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. Haven't got it! Buy it!

Total spend, around £15.

Faith What did you want for Christmas? A real Nemo.
What did you think of your presents? [Faith gives a thumbs up.]
What was your favourite present? [Faith shows the dressing gown.]
What's the best thing about Christmas? [Faith shows her favourite Nemo toy that she carries with her everywhere.]

Ruyi Usuanlele, 8

Bridget Ayemare, Ruyi's mother Last year the kids didn't get presents – my father had died, so we didn't really celebrate. We're very religious, and the children know that Christmas is not just about gifts and eating. Ruyi did very well at school, so I spoiled him a bit. I got him a Bakugan, a BeyBlade power launcher and a Mario Kart Nintendo game. I returned the game in the end because his uncle turned up on Christmas Eve and gave him a bicycle – it would have been too many presents. The bike was a big surprise. Ruyi was speechless – he's never even ridden a bike before.

Total spend, around £50.

Ruyi What did you want for Christmas? A power launcher for BeyBlade and a Bakugan.
What did you think of your presents? I was very excited.
What was your favourite present? The power launcher – it helps me win battles with my BeyBlade.
What's the best thing about Christmas? I got to spend time with my family.

Martha, Grace & Lydia Brown, all 4

Kirsty Brown, the girls' mother I've made a point, right from when they were babies, not to dress the girls the same or to buy them identical presents for Christmas and birthdays. It wouldn't make sense, anyway – apart from the fact that they're non-identical triplets, they are three very different people.

Martha is the thinker. She's serious, very mature for her age and with an incredible vocabulary. She asked me months ago for a musical jewellery box with a ballerina inside. Grace is quite flamboyant – the all-singing, all-dancing one. She's into her accessories and clothes, and she likes cats. Lydia is very different from the others – quite outdoorsy and very active, but quite sensitive, too; she asked for a doll.

This year we've spent about £50 on each girl. I decided to get them all a music box in the end, because I knew it would cause tears on Christmas day if only Martha had one. Lydia's main present was a baby doll, Grace got her all-singing, all-dancing cat and Martha's main present was a post office. They also got a baking set each. There was lots of screaming and panicked unwrapping on Christmas Day, but we tried to focus on them individually when they opened their presents.

Having triplets does become very costly. We have two other children, and we beg our family members not to spend more than £10 each on the girls. The trouble is, we've got a lot of boys in our family, and when three girls came along, everyone wanted to spoil them. I'm like, "They don't need to be dressed up as three little fairies", but people can't resist it.

Total spend, £150.

Martha What did you want for Christmas? A music box, because they are so pretty.
What did you think of your presents? Really nice and beautiful.
What was your favourite present? My dancing ballerina music box.
What's the best thing about Christmas? That we got loads of presents.

Grace What did you want for Christmas? A cat with a lead on.
What did you think of your presents? I was very pleased.
What was your favourite present? I liked my cat.
What's the best thing about Christmas? Going to bed on Christmas Eve and leaving milk and carrots out for Father Christmas.

Lydia What did you want for Christmas? A baby. I love babies.
What did you think of your presents? It made me happy.
What was your favourite present? The baby.
What's the best thing about Christmas? I didn't see Santa, but I heard the reindeers.

Becky Barnicoat

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Filed Under: Children, Christmas, Family, Features, Life and style, Parents and parenting, Society, The Guardian, relationships
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