Not that kind of Playmate

I’m going to have a grizzle now.

I am feeling rather sorry for myself in a nihilistic, existentially angsty sort of way.

For starters, and I feel quite justified in complaining about this, Bagpurrito did a runner outside earlier on and is now (I hope) sitting somewhere under the deck refusing to come back in despite being lured with tempting food and street cred ruining cries of “Here kitty kitty, come on my little diddums ookum sweetie puddy tat” etc.

We did spot him around dusk near the barbeque, eyeing us contemptuously, but he has since vanished and now I can hear the coyotes baying up in the mountains at the crescent moon. Worrying.

But this, upsetting though it is, does not really get at the core of my troubles.

I have been trying over a period of some time (weeks? Months? possibly even a couple of years?)  to identify exactly what it is that is so very unsatisfactory about my current life and I think that yesterday I cracked a very important aspect of it.

I don’t have anybody to play with.

I remember visiting the zoo in Barcelona some years ago (oh, what a trip! When we could stay up late, drink endless cava, dance, make love and sleep all afternoon in fabulous boutique hotels that did not have any high chairs in evidence) and seeing Snowflake, the albino gorilla, sitting amongst a band of ordinary black ones. He looked so incredibly sad, lonely and out of place that I burst into hysterical tears and had to be taken home immediately. I didn’t know why I felt such a kinship for the giant primate back then.

Now I do.

Today I am Snowflake and Stepford is my cage.

You might well ask how I could possibly be unhappy in this incredibly beautiful town that has no crime, no rubbish, plenty of cultural activity, a thriving university which provides many intellectual inhabitants (supposedly) plenty of money floating around (not actually any of it mine, though), perfect weather, friendly, well meaning people and good schools?

It could be that I’m a churlish ingrate.

Yes, well, there is that.

It could be that I am homesick – I long for my culture and my tribe. It’s been a long exile in the land of happy meals, you know.

It could also be that I live in a vacuum of any kind of interesting creative thought. Most of the people I come across in real life are so very literal and earnest, so reluctant to take whimsical flights of fancy for no particular reason other than a moment’s amusment. They’re all focused on making money, or being good citizens, or attaining some kind of invisible rank which will enable them to measure themselves against the next winner-takes-all in the sweepstakes of life.

It’s very tiring and incredibly dull.

Nobody wants to be seriously silly. I sometimes think that I might be able to foster this kind of thing in One – he is a natural giggler – but I’ll be working against Husband and Four’s furrowed brows and distrust of things that do not ‘make sense’ or conform to a rational explanation.

Yesterday I was lamenting my lack of playmates to Husband and his solution to this was to  suggest I ‘go on a course’ which would both retrain me for a second career and also find me some nice friends. You might think this a sensible idea, it probably is for any normal person but we are not dealing with normal persons we are dealing with me, and as such this was both the funniest and the most tragic thing I had ever heard him say.

Me? A COURSE?

Listen, I am the girl who famously attended no fewer than  15 schools and failed to come away with a single qualification except a slightly shabby US high school diploma and an art A level. I didn’t quite finish Art School because I was busy being an aspiring musician and having a tempestuous relationship with my first husband, and every single other ‘course’ I have ever taken in my entire life (which was usually something like ‘car mechanics for beginners’ or ‘childbirth for expectant parents’) I have dropped out of almost immediately.

Remember the German classes? I made it to one. ONE!

So, the odds of me going to a class are pretty slim, in the first place. And furthermore, let’s think about a job I’d like to do. Hmm. Well, Um. Ah yes. Uh. Ok, Hm.

What kind of job is there for a reclusive composer who does not like to be around other people for longer than an hour at most, dislikes being told what to do and is only available intermittently when not attending to the needs of two demanding terrorists under 5?

Really? Not many in this economy? You do surprise me.

Husband, brow furrowed, pointed out that I was being negative (true) and said I didn’t HAVE to go on a course, it was just an idea, why didn’t I think about what I might want to do and then slowly build it up, I had a good 30 odd years left to work (fun!), so why not take it at my own pace, I could do anything I wanted.

This was very sweet of him to say, but I couldn’t resist interjecting playfully that perhaps it might be a bit late to be a ballerina, or a Playboy bunny.

To this he knitted the eyebrows even closer together and said yes, too late for a ballerina and as for Playboy, he would hope that I would be above that kind of thing by now.

BY NOW?? WTF?!? *

I am not making xenophobic references about senses of humour, or lack thereof. I am not.

*(For the record: I have never been a centerfold, nor has it ever been my ambition to be one or anything of that nature. )

 

At this point I would normally have rushed off to ring one of my mates so we could have fallen about laughing.  But they were all asleep 6000 miles away and anyway I haven’t spoken to them for ages, the time difference and the children are always in the way.

I tried to laugh to myself, but it didn’t work.

So instead, I wandered off to the bedroom, shut the door, lay on the bed without the disloyal Bagpurrito and started slowly to cry.

Like I said, what I really miss is having someone to play with.