I’ve seen everything on Apple TV, Netflix, Sky, Disney+, Amazon et al. So I clicked on an archive documentary on BBC iPlayer. It was Clive James, talking to the wonderful Victoria Wood (I was interviewed for the job of James’s secretary when he was TV critic on the Observer magazine; needless to say, I didn’t get it).
And there in the background, as the two talked in a London garden, was my beautiful Georgian house on Gibson Square. Black front door. A huge floor-to-ceiling window with a balcony, which was my glorious bedroom with its marble fireplace. How could I have been so stupid to leave it? I sent a screenshot to Nic. ‘Hindsight is a wonderful thing,’ she said.
I was in tears. I hate the countryside. It’s boring. There is no food. No conversation. No culture. I started to think about all the mistakes I’ve made. I went on Instagram and found my niece: I was worried she had got married and not told me or invited me. I scrolled through her photos. There was her sister Sophie’s wedding in Edinburgh, and my brother Tony giving a speech, bursting with pride.
I remember David 1.0 ruined the wedding for me. I had told him, ‘Please, for one day, do not mention the Herdwick sheep, exported from the Lake District, I asked you to save from halal slaughter in France.’ But, of course, during the meal, after a few drinks, he brought them up – that I’d asked him to follow them and buy them (I put the sheep on expenses!), rehome them. Which he did, at his friend’s house in Brittany. He stayed for six months, looking after them. He was bitter about it, moaning endlessly. I was so exasperated that I left the wedding before the speeches, got an Uber back to the Airbnb I had paid £900 for, and tore off my pink outfit borrowed from Suzannah.com. When he got back, he slept in the spare room, only after texting me that I was a c**t.
I wasn’t told my brother Tony had died at the beginning of last year; he had expressly asked I was not to know he was even ill. And seeing his photo on my niece’s Instagram, so happy and proud, made me break down completely. There on her feed, too, was her mum Laura, who died way too soon of alcoholism. I had always been kind to her. She came and stayed with me in London after her marriage broke down. And yet I was the one who was not told my brother had died.
When I texted the girls – they are both so beautiful; Anna looks like Cheryl Cole – asking why I wasn’t told about his death, they said they had struggled with me not knowing and insisted I was finally told. I replied I expect my sister had poisoned my brother’s mind. That when Sophie was a baby, she and her parents had come to my house in Brixton, which I had bought with that sister, to attend the Notting Hill carnival. Sophie’s nappy had been changed in the bathroom and my sister went ballistic. The mess! The smell! Yet I am the one who is ostracised. Outside, always.
I’ve been transforming the Vicarage. Trying to make the best of things, a home. If I hadn’t moved from that London house to Somerset, where I was before Yorkshire, I would never have found Mini Puppy. I love her more than I have loved anyone. But she is 18 now. Every morning, the first thing I do is check she’s still breathing. She gets confused: she goes into the bathroom, stands and barks. Don’t leave me, Mini, please don’t leave me.
I won’t be able to bear it.
I don’t understand why people are so mean to me. Look at Neil (I’m really tempted to print his last name), the cheating German. Can’t even bring himself to reply to a nice message, hoping he’s happy. I get up at six every day, work really hard under pressure, but it gets me absolutely nowhere. I have no one. Nothing. Only Mini Puppy. But for how long?
JONES MOANS… WHAT LIZ LOATHES THIS WEEK
- I bought a cashmere sweater from Sam Cam’s label, Cefinn. Inside, it says, ‘Do not wash’. How can you not wash a jumper?
- When you bother to recommend a programme or film to someone – such as Memory: The Origins Of Alien – and they ignore you.
- People who leave me voice notes. I’m deaf!
