Hunchback

Something terrible is happening: I’m getting a back problem. It started months ago, with the sore neck here, the odd twinge there. Turns out that was transferred pain. The real source is where my kidneys are, but now I have replaced my pathological fear of kidney failure with the probability of a more muscular complaint, I fear that soon there will be a new entry in my imaginary telephone book, under ‘C’ - for chiropractor. 

Years and years of bad-postured writing at various different desks over the course of my education seem to have collided with the contained hysteria of having no purpose. This has only been exacerbated by several years of intensive typing activities and heaving literary theory textbooks around. My natural posture was never poker-straight, but recently seems to have deteriorated to that of a defiant hunchback; soon I will become shrunken and wizened, like my 90-year old grandmother. 

This evening, I look like a human question mark. I am bent, but not curious. Pain takes the curiosity away. Pain is introspective, it doesn’t give a damn about the rest of the world, it concentrates on itself. Not that I have anything of great note to be getting on with; the extent of my responsibilities are taking the dog to the vet and picking up dry-cleaning. Soon I’ll be retreating back to my tea-stained dressing gown and crappy novels, only bent over in some peculiar position in order to avoid looking like a down-trodden peasant. It brings tears to the eyes and moans to the lips, so god only knows what sciatica is like. 

Lying here, contemplating my gradual descent into muscular agony, a thought has occurred to me. In fact, two thoughts. One is, did my choice of shoes tip my back over the edge and down the slippery slope towards a painful middle-age? Is my rare indulgence in shoe vanity responsible for my worsening condition? I confess that there have been three occasions in which I have fallen off said shoes, whether inebriated or otherwise. Once was in the changing rooms of the shop. So could this be nature’s warning to start wearing MBT shoes in future? Boat-shoes they may be, but they’re kind to the spine... 

The other is, has my pathological hatred of massages aggravated a condition that could have been periodically relieved? I am fortunate enough to have had a number of spa experiences, and each time I have been desperate to avoid the complete torture that is any kind of massage. This is born out of my inability to relax (inherited from father) and irrational intolerance of people that I don’t know ‘touching’ me (also inherited from my father). But of course, each time I declined the opportunity to be pummeled and prodded by a woman in a lilac baby-suit, I was denying my muscles the opportunity to relax just a little. And as a result, they’re punishing me. 

My greatest fear is that I will eventually become a regular viewer of daytime television, although apparently my last three years as a student entitled me to this habit..yet I never felt the need to touch base with ‘Des and Mel’. Regardless, I still fear the possibility that I will grow fond of Jeremy Kyle and his visiting cretins, and may begin to regard them as proper human beings. However, too many other shows appear to rely on the ritual humiliation of members of the public, whether it be demonstrating your rendition of a whale being machine-gunned on X-Factor, or being shouted at by a professional chef because you don’t know what julienne vegetables are. 

In essence, I fear that if this back pain gets any worse, I will spent increasing amounts of my time horizontal on the sofa, with my head at a 45 degree angle at the TV, at a time in my life where spending more time than necessary in a horizontal position is really nothing less than soul-destroying. The purposeless existence of the unemployed English graduate is enough motivation to keep my back teetering on the brink for a while longer, I hope.

Lucy

My dog is old; 91 in human years. Her name is Lucy and I think she has begun to suffer from some form of doggy dementia, now that she is well into her twilight years. She spends her days, lying on her beanbag, looking as if she bears the world’s problems on her furry shoulders: as though she is in charge of Middle Eastern peace talks or responsible for the compilation of the British Rail timetable...but she can’t quite remember why. She wears a permanently miserable expression. I’ve become convinced that she has never ever really looked truly content at any point in her doggy existence, even as a puppy. My mother is quick to assure me that Lucy’s dour expression is a consequence of bone loss in her wobbly, worn old teeth. I personally believe she is in an enduring state of disgruntlement. 

Occasionally, she plods out into the garden, and will quite happily remain there for about ten minutes or so, staring into the middle distance, until she finally decides to leave what my father terms ‘a product’ in one specific corner of the garden. More often than not, she does not even manage this, but just stares, vacantly, with her cloudy, cataract-riddled eyes.

It had reached the point in the household where we would openly discuss what would happen to Lucy “once her time comes”. My father would suggest burying her in the garden, to which my mother would reply “Oh Martin, how could you! She’s only lying over there!”, perhaps forgetting that Lucy has been as deaf as a post since 2009.  

She has a serious eating disorder; this is because she is also a pathological liar. People come and go in our house all the time, and Lucy manages to convince each resident or visitor that she has been starved of nourishment for a week. Out of ‘desperation’, she would raid the bin each time the house was empty. 

She is also stupid. This is because her life-time habit of bin-raiding recently caught up with her. She has her own food, yet the fool decided that the bin would hold a more promising variety of delectable treats. Why on earth she thought a piece of corn on the cob would be palatable, I don’t know. Regardless, Lucy somehow manages to swallow it, unbeknown to my family and I. So follows three days of a literal playing-out of the term ‘sick as a dog’. By Wednesday, however, things had taken a significant turn for the worst. I thought her tiny little dog brain was finally succumbing to its slow but expected demise, little more than a useless sponge that told her to do two things: 1) stare into space some more 2) inexplicably dig holes in the flower border. A rushed visit to the vet revealed an ‘obstruction’ in the shape of a corn on the cob, and immediate surgery. Had we left it any longer, the vet said, then Lucy would have died. 

Naturally, Lucy is blissfully unaware of this. Dogs do things that humans are unable to do (except psychopaths or people reared by wolves). Dogs have no conscience; they do not suffer from feelings of guilt. Lucy remains unfazed by my father’s numerous barbed remarks over the ominous vet bill. She will not wake up in the night, drenched in sweat, thinking about the astronomical costs of anesthetic and gastrointestinal recovery food. Dogs don’t suffer from existential angst. 

One look at Lucy’s greying old face and shaved, bruised legs where her drip had been, and I started to question the point of animal and human existence. Why are we here? Lucy lived to eat, that much was true, and little else ever popped into her tiny little brain. But now that she’s home and recovering, her strange behavior has evaporated into little more than sleeping and eating mouthfuls of cat food, and eyeing each of us with equal amounts of disdain. Naturally her sleep is being constantly disturbed by stumbling, swearing people. Not to mention the furry intervention of the youthful equivalent of her great-great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter, Ella, shoving her nose into Lucy’s stitches with great enthusiasm. 

Yet, she appears to take this all in a spirit of haughty, ancient doggy tolerance, proving that at the age of 91, there’s life in the old gal yet. 

Hobo-man

I recently came across a ‘gentleman of the road’, sitting in a shop doorway, and drinking from a can of Kestrel at just past nine in the morning. 

“Ha ha ha I’m not being very p.c!” the hobo-man said, brandishing his can by way of a toast. 

I continued on my way, pretending not to hear him. Of course, I reflected - as I hurried towards the sanctity of M&S and all the comfort and security of the middle-class shopping experience - getting pissed at 9 o’clock in the morning outside the Iceland on Sidwell Street, Exeter, has absolutely nothing to do with political correctness. Nor is it an effective means of ‘challenging’ the establishment. He is merely playing up to the stereotype that all tramps get wankered at unseemly hours of the day. He was not formulating a conspiracy to bring down the Murdoch empire, or concocting ways to undermine David Cameron. 

I glanced back towards hobo-man, who was now engaged in a wordless discussion with Iceland’s resident security guard, staring blearily up at him and waving his Kestrel can. He was the perfect incarnation of the recurring nightmare I’ve had since grammar school - the nightmare of failing, and ending up like hobo-man. His choice to be ‘politically incorrect’, by indulging in the vaguely risky fun of drinking cheap lager when most people are at work, chimed very well with the habits and lifestyle of student-hood that I have officially chosen to leave behind. No longer is it acceptable to devote an entire day to drinking - not that I ever have; my old-woman tendencies extend to my liver also. Going out will be confined to Friday and Saturday night, once regular employment occurs. I am no longer privy to the accepted norm that all students are allowed to sit around in their pyjamas all day, spooning Sugar Puffs into their mouths and watching Friends re-runs. 

I am now entering a phase of life where less gravity is placed upon the type of underwear I chose to put on each morning, largely because I believe I have reached a point in life where I am more comfortable in my own skin than I have ever been. And my own skin says miniscule g-strings are not a good idea. Men are becoming blessedly forgiving creatures, so really you could get away with wearing a Gregg’s paper bag with leg-holes torn in it, and it wouldn’t put them off. The demented level of self-preparation that you undergo before each outing to Arena is beginning to wear off, and is being replaced by a violent feeling needing to come across as ‘serious’ and ‘capable’ in the workplace. My hair has emerged from its ‘wilderness years’ - I wore my graduation cap without hair-related tragedy. I do not feel the need to EVER WEAR FALSE EYELASHES EVER AGAIN (largely because the first and only time I tried them, I glued my eyes shut). 

Having just lived through my last week as a student - and the closest I ever want to be to hobo-man’s lifestyle - I’m very frightened at the prospect of having no clear-cut ‘plan’ for the future for the first time ever. Luckily, I’ve moved on from my childhood conviction that I was destined to be a princess. A goddess. An air hostess. But I have managed to create a more concrete form of who I think I am as a person, and this includes my complete intolerance towards dirt, and an unhealthy Facebook obsession. Now the real world looks very frightening, but in another ten years, when my eons of chocolate abuse have caught up with me, and I weigh 20 stone, I bet I’ll be longing for the uncertainty of today once again. I will be craving to be ‘politically incorrect’ and keep up my enthusiasm for cocktails at any time of day. We’ll all be longing for that infamous duvet day. 

Congratulations Class of 2011; here’s to the mini hobo-man in all our student-selves...and here’s to the road to adult responsibility! 

"I am in heels! I am woman!"

Having spent the past few weeks searching for a suitable pair of heels for my graduation ceremony, I have accepted that my ability to look ‘professional’ might be somewhat compromised by my deep-seated hatred of high-heeled shoes. This is somewhat at odds with the stereotype that women are supposed to adore heels, more than their own bodies or thoughts. One feature in Elle even concludes that a woman in heels possesses the “greatest weapons in the style wars”. A woman in five-inch platforms can easily dominate in the boardroom and achieve her aims. In fact, womens’ magazines generally have an unequivocal stance about heels: they form an exclusive and specialised part of a woman, along with the potential to lactate. 

My first pair of heels were hideous specimens. They were purple, and made from that cheap, plastic-y leather that makes your feet sweat as you walk. I had to wear them as part of a summer ball outfit, and the moment I put them on, I was only too painfully aware of the notion that each step I took, I was demonstrating what it would be like to have dying mice as my insoles. I also remember them being quite painful in that sort of itchy pinching-toes kind of way - but no matter! I was in heels, I was a woman! What a privilege. Instead I spent most of the evening sitting or leaning against various objects and people in order to relieve the unrelenting pain in the balls of my feet. For the days that followed this discomfort, I refused to wear anything but slippers.

If we lay aside the fact that heels are the source of much discomfort, we should consider the potential they have in ruining an evening completely. I have had too many heel-induced accidents to count. One was when I was mistakenly assumed to be drunk, because I overbalanced on my heels (platform black boots) in front of the bouncer. The result was that I was denied entry to the club, because in the bouncer’s eyes, I was so intoxicated I could not stand up properly. In fact, I had been trying to transfer my weight away from the balls of my feet, and was understandably unsteady. My explanation that my shoes were inflicting eye-watering amounts of pain on me were waved aside, as were my claims that “No one messes with a woman in heels. I am a woman”. I had no option but to go home, heels in hand.

However, I am not one to give up easily, and three years on from that night in front of the bouncer, my wardrobe is testament to the amount of faith I placed in the ideal that women belong in heels. And of course, along with many more pairs, I also have many more anecdotes about various outings at which I have humiliated and/or exposed myself, unable to compete with my female peers, by falling over. The fact that I am already developing a bunion on my right foot says it all: we do not belong in heels that could be used as a murder weapon. I can only conclude that the ability to walk effortlessly and without periodic wincing in six-inch heels lies with a select group of around ten people in the world. Six of them are run-way models. 

So why do women keep on buying - often spending considerable sums of money - and wearing these torturous items of footwear? Was Germaine Greer right when she claimed that women wear heels to catch the eyes of men?  Did Freud have a point when he claimed that the shoe is an object of fetishism as it “crystallizes the moment of the undressing, the last moment in which the woman could still be regarded as phallic”. 

I would not agree with either of these theories. I base my judgements about female footwear on the experiences of both my contemporaries and myself. We wear heels because they make your legs look thinner: end of. There is nothing more that can be said on the matter. This is why we endure countless hours of bone-crushing pain, risking premature arthritis of the feet and broken ankles. There is nothing more important to a woman than whether or not she feels good inside, and more often than not, heels come to the rescue in making us appear taller, thinner and as a result more confident. Brushing aside the fact that we are subscribing to society’s prescribed expectations of feminine beauty, I for one keep buying the heels because I like their ability to stop my ankles looking like pig trotters. However, reflecting on this further, I’ve decided that even this idea that heels are flattering is a lie that every woman invest in. I too, have done the same. I think of a new pair of heels as the most flattering, slimming things in the world...at least this happens for the time it takes for me to try on the heels in the shop, take a few paces and exclaim: “They’re actually really comfortable!”. Lies. Such self-deluded lies. 

Anyone only has to open the page of any celebrity magazine and find photographs of Victoria Beckham’s bunioned feet to see evidence of what thirty years of high heels can do to a woman. I, personally, do not wish to have toes that look like thalidomide pasties. 

Of course, despite me declaring that women’s shoes are ridiculous, dangerous, pain-inflicting torture contraptions, I will continue to buy new pairs of heels to accompany various outfits and ‘slim-line’ my figure. However, I now go out shoe-shopping with one specification in mind: if I am going to part with a substantial amount of my student budget on a pair of designer shoes, then I demand the following. I want them a) to be a pair that i can dance to the Black Eyed Peas in and b) to be a pair that will allow me to run away from a murderer, should one suddenly decide to give chase. That is now the minimum that I ask for in a pair of shoes - I should be able to dance in them, and escape a murderer. 

In the meantime, I realise that my views on heels are a minority interest; most girls my age have more bottle than me and are more than happy to dance through the pain. However, I have the mentality of a 60-year old. I watch Antiques Roadshow with interest, and enjoy Radio 4. I am a fan of comfortable, good quality clothes, but I don’t think style necessarily has to be compromised. As for shoes, who knows how long the after-effects of Sex and the City’s decade-long Blanik-wank will continue to rumble through society.