Possible pasts

Just got back from a weekend Oop North with what I used to call my APs (Aged Parents) and Little Sister. Only now she is 30 she is not so Little and I am beginning to feel pretty Aged myself.

Shite six hour journey up there thanks to four lorry collision on the M6 -- why do they have to do that on a bloody Friday afternoon -- but a relative breeze at three and a half on the way back. I wasn't driving and didn't look at the speedo.

I love going up there, but I always return slightly unsettled, as I get a glimpse into the parallel universe life I could have had if I hadn't headed off to university and never come back.

And it's not all bad. It's a small, friendly town. It's by the sea. There's lots of space. The shops are great: there's a local fishmonger and greengrocer and baker. The beer's cheap. There is a big, big sky. Lots of people were at the Remembrance Sunday service at the war memorial.

Having said that, as a teenager I couldn't wait to get away. It's a safe Tory seat (how many of *them* are there left) and every other shop sells bouffant leather couches and china shepherdesses. There's even a men's shop which specialises in 'cruisewear' (and they're not talking about Clapham Common).

Older women have enormo-hair, wear diamante and drive 4WD vehicles they are unable to park, while younger women wear very little and puke in gutters on a Saturday night. The men are (on the whole) either unreconstructed or paternalistic, and the local GP once wrote me a prescription for the morning after pill on his doorstep, presumably judging that a girl of such loose morals should not be allowed in the house. (By strange twist of fate I ended up at the same GP's house for the same reason about eight years later: this time he let me in, but I still had to suffer the indignity of having my blood pressure taken in the kitchen in front of his wife and labrador).

So on the whole I think I did well to escape to a world where trade can be fair, where eyebrows can be left unplucked, and where basically I do not spend a significant proportion of time feeling like a freak.

But sometimes I wonder. So many things would be simpler. Fewer decisions to make, and a big green to walk the dog on. If only I could be a proper woman.

joella