“OMG!” she cried, opening my Instagram page. “You’re in Influencer!” Who knew it? I still have no idea what she was talking about, but they left happily. Joe Allen are quite keen that during these quiet times, I sit in my favorite corner, dishing out relationship advice. They suggested calling it Jaci Unhinged. Nothing new there.
I was asked about my dating history and the type of man I liked. I specially stressed tall. Over six feet. Someone who would protect me from a bear. Apart from David the plump ginger cheat, I had never been out with a man under six feet in my life, nor did I intend to start (have you seen how many wild bears there are out there?).
No Christmas was complete without the proverbial row over the Queen’s Speech. Mum a Royalist, me a Republican, I refused to watch it. Mum never watched it either, but every year made a big deal of wanting to.
Never have I seen such an assortment of shapes and sizes gathered in one room; I thought I had walked into a Hall of Mirrors. It’s not often I’m the slimmest, youngest and, dare I say it, the most attractive person in the room (in fact, never), but I was nailing this.
Originally cast as a grieving widow in the warm church, I was demoted to one of a hundred starving peasants in the freezing January cold outside when they saw how short I was. Hating the stain the make-up department had put on my teeth intended to make them look rotten, I’d been to the toilet and wiped it off.
I quickly realised I was not a fan of oysters, but found that if I covered them with the onion red vinegar, black pepper, Tabasco sauce and lemon, I could just about get them down. In fact, I might as well have just cut out the middle man and had the drink in the shell. In my first month in Paris, I lost three quarters of a stone consuming mainly champagne and oysters; it’s still my favourite diet of all time.
The doctor had earlier said I had “stubborn stools” as I lay patiently on my back, awaiting the great swirling movie of my bowels he encouraged me to watch in the overhead mirror. By the time the Vindaloo had done its stuff later on, they weren’t so much stubborn as eagerly trying to sell themselves on the Black Market.
I was always Gaggie Nennens to Dad, just as I would always be the little girl who was never old enough to cross the road by herself. Well into my twenties, when I went home and would venture out for, heaven forbid, a pint of milk, he would warn: “Be careful crossing the road.” When we went for a drink, after two minutes he would be wiping his eyes, as if he had never even recovered from the fact that I learned to speak.
How do people find the time to worry so much about what others are doing in their sex lives? I can barely get it together to think about whether I can be arsed to reach the remote for the telly, let alone hire a speaker system to discuss what people get up to amongst themselves. Who cares? Unless there is evidence of abuse, you can build a multi-storey in your vagina or rear end and you won’t hear any complaints from me.
Who would have thought her last words to me would be in Latin, a language she had never learned but, as with her limited French, one she resorted to when English was inadequate. Her greatest fear was losing her mind, which she never did. Being in control of her faculties was a blessing to her, but a frustration to others, not least the medical staff and carers who were powerless to make her eat, sleep, or do her physiotherapy if her favorite shows were on the TV.