Blog 4 - Wednesday 3rd of January - Insomnia

Last night I became an insomniac with Jiminy Cricket reminding me of all the things I must put right and all the things I have done wrong.

My granddaughter Jettie is high up on my list of problems as I remember her little head on the pillow staring at me on Boxing Day morning. Her parents have had such a bad, sad split and now she bounces between her mum in Wellington and her dad, my son Charley, in Auckland, with her Cambodian grandmother ensuring she has excellent nutrition and well-plaited hair. I try to help Jettie with her reading but this has made her not like me anymore.

I lie in my bed and try reading but gaze instead at my muscleless legs mottled with speckles and a small clump of black hairs that the laser missed back in the good old days when smooth legs, not the reading age of my grandchild, was my primary concern.

Finally, as I am dozing off, the right light shyly peeps in the black transparent blinds.

I lie awake, disappointed and exhausted.

Mum brings me in a cup of tea in a red mug. She is wearing this very pretty pyjama set with blue and white stripes and rows of frills around the collar. She looks like a little sailor girl.

“I slept so badly,” I whinge.

“Aah child, sleep is a miracle. In this I have been given a gift from God.”

“Mum,” I say, dismissing her excellent sleep and addressing my night-time concerns, “Jettie is part of our whānau and we must assume responsibility for her.” I deliberately stress the we. Mum nods sagely into her red mug of tea. “This, darling, requires great reflection.”

She goes away to reflect and make our porridge.

When she returns, she seems to have forgotten about reflecting and says, “After I bought the porridge yesterday I posted my letter to Sister Elizabeth.” (Sister Elizabeth is Mum’s friend who is a nun in Rarotonga.) “It is very important to post one’s letters. I sent one to Janey the other day but I worry that, like all young people, she doesn’t often consult her letter box.”

My sister Maryse rings and we talk about Jettie. Maryse suggests that Jettie comes and lives with me permanently and I am not opposed to this. Truthfully, the present condition of my life that whizzed through my mind as I was unable to sleep was rather bleak. Travel, as a means of disguising the reality that my life lacks purpose, doesn’t appeal with the treacherous nature of my body! If my adhesions had strangled my bowel in one of my last 3 holiday destinations — Cambodia, Vanuatu or Peru — I wouldn’t be writing this or worrying about teaching Jettie to read against her will.

Before going to have her shower, Mum asks whether I might like to go first. I tell her I am trying to write a book about her and me and that I have to remain in my pyjamas all morning as the temptation to do anything but concentrate on writing is irresistible to a Taurean born on the 15th of May. These unfortunates, according to the book of birthdays, may not choose to emerge at all, and the few admirers they have may wind up supporting them emotionally and financially, and this becomes a real problem for all concerned.

When I finally go to have my shower in Mum’s bathroom, I pass her in the kitchen. I have a yellow towel in my hand that I have grabbed absent-mindedly. “Is that towel not too heavy?” she asks. Translation: “Where is the white towel I gave you yesterday?” My white towel is lying on Mum’s never-turned-on heated towel rail.

Walking back down the corridor after my shower, I deter sharply to check what Mum is preparing for my lunch. It’s Tomatoes Provençal, which a good French housewife makes every morning for healthy snacks during the day.

I approve and continue to my room to write and gaze through eyes whose optical bones seem to have changed. Either my eyes have shrunk or my eye sockets have grown. I think of prisoners in Siberia — how they too wear pyjamas and stare like bored cows.

At last I hear the sing-song call of my mother bird. “Lunch is ready.”

I sit at the table in my nest and idly glance at the paper. “Gosh,” I say, “a billionaire nearly burned down Arrowtown with his fireworks extravaganza.”

“Goodness,” says Mum, “I remember when one worried about leaving the iron on.”

Lunch is presented like a debutante to a queen.

“Now darling, I don’t know what our little lunch will be like but with a bit of luck it will pass muster.”

“Mum, it looks wonderful.”

“Well the proof of the pudding is in the eating,” she replies in that perfunctory French way which applauds idioms and boos at superlatives.

I take my first mouthful of pale rose salmon and tomatoes and sigh, “My God.”

“I don’t know if it justifies that,” Mum says, eating a bit of tomato which has been emptied of pips and filled with breadcrumbs, garlic and parsley.

We read our French book “And Only the Sweet Moments Last”, and Mum continues to struggle with modern French, as the French she learned as a child is now over a hundred years old. I read a phrase that translates as “I have the feeling that I’m living under an armpit.”

“Well I can’t imagine living under an armpit,” says Mum. “I’m sure that’s not an expression Flaubert would have used.”

I continue reading aloud in French.

Mum interrupts after about three words. “Darling, in French every syllable is pronounced.” Like a good pupil, I then very deliberately pronounce the x at the end of dix (10), dee-ss.

“No, no, no, do not pronounce the x unless you are saying the number 10 on its own,” she explains, like a university professor relegated to teaching infants.

“You see darling, the exception proves the rule.”

By way of some light relief, Gus rings. He tells me Bella, my delinquent springer spaniel, whom he is looking after, is at this very moment bounding in the sewery marshes of Cox’s Bay, completely ignoring his screams. Bella used to belong to my ex-husband, whom I refer to as Moo Hefner; Moo was our old nickname for each other, with the addendum referring to his Hefnerian post-marital behaviour. Moo Hefner and his girlfriend, Lizard, used to leave Bella alone in the Marlborough Sounds where she learnt to kill goats to survive. A penchant for biting resulted, and a few Grey Lynn residents have been bitten, but as with all culprits in New Zealand, Bella is forgiven on account of her unfortunate childhood.

Anyway, the point of Gus’s call is to let me know that if Bella fails to appear soon, he is going to miss Avatar 2.

I wonder with amazement if he thinks I can sort this problem out from my chair, where I am very earnestly trying to pronounce dix.

Gus hangs up but rings back an hour later. He has missed Avatar 2 and will I reimburse him.

Night falls and we pull down the blinds and have a dear little chop and a perfect shiny brown sausage for dinner; a mixed grill, Mum calls it. I had offered to buy Uber Eats but Mum says she doesn’t buy into that: “By the time it arrives, darling, it has lost its charm.”

We eat the last two squares of chocolate from the advent calendar, dividing them into four so one of us doesn’t only get the marzipan one.

I drop a half Zopiclone, washed down with Difflam, and it takes a while to work, so I take the other half. I wish I hadn’t divided it, as the taste is ghastly and I have to squirt Difflam in the back of my throat again.

The next thing I remember is opening my eyes in the morning and gazing through my enlarged optical sockets at the trees; through just the right light.