Living for Disco

I may have indicated here that I’m trying to get pregnant at the moment. There’s something slightly different about sex when you’re doing it in the hope of conceiving, and I’m not just talking about the fact that now, after the fact, Gordon usually picks me up by my ankles and bounces my head off the mattress in a misguided attempt to help the little swimmers along.

A few times lately we have been to see Gordon’s grandmother, who is in her 90s, and whiling away her twilight years in a retirement home, which she hates with a passion. She’s a brilliantly cantankerous old lady – she doesn’t give a toss what anyone thinks, she just says what’s on her mind. Everytime we go there she tells us how awful everyone is, usually within earshot of several of them. So, we went to the pub, where, after insulting the landlord by saying that she ‘didn’t like his nasty face from the moment she walked in’ and that ‘you can smell people who are only after money’, she began waxing lyrical about how she can’t understand why anyone would want to have children, as they are a pain in the backside in general. We thought this would be a good time to mention that we were thinking of starting a family. Instantly she was excited for us – a turnaround so speedy I got whiplash just watching her face. She seems to have jumped straight from ‘we are trying to conceive’ to ‘the baby is due ANY MINUTE NOW’.

The other day she rang up and asked Gordon if I was ‘swelling’. He, of course, was confused, taking it to be an old-fashioned reference to conception. It made me feel a bit unsettled, and I had to check my face and ankles for puffiness, just in case I was actually swelling and hadn’t realised it.

Then yesterday, as we sat in the car on the way to lunch, she asked Gordon if it was a boy or a girl. “Is what a boy or a girl?”, he asked in some confusion. “The baby!”, said grandma. “They can tell you these things pretty much straight away now.” I don’t know how soon you can actually find out the sex of an unborn child, but seeing as we only told her we were going to try for impregnation just before Christmas, I think she’s run away with the timeline a little. I suppose when put up against 94 years, 9 months must seem like a tiny drop of time. We told her of course. I think she was quite disappointed, but I’m not sure she’ll remember.

As for me, I’m trying not to get to hopeful. It’s only month one. And pregnancy tests are expensive, especially when you use them far, far too early in an attempt to make yourself stop obsessing about how an egg might feel when it implants in your womb.

Honestly, it’s like waiting for Christmas to come around, when you’re about 4 and not sure whether it will ever, ever happen.

I’ve decided to stop browsing through my copy of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, as they really have no tact. Surely the vignettes are supposed to provide a short review of the book, telling you why you should read it, not give you the plot rundown in 50 words or less. Now I know exactly what happens in A Clockwork Orange, I’ve lost all desire to read it.

The only reason that it doesn’t give the plot for The Book of Disquiet is because there isn’t one. Nothing happens. Occasionally he cries and gnashes his teeth, and finds himself paralysed by metaphysical contradictions, but that’s it so far. It’s the kind of book that you need to dip in and out of if you want a taste of the, albeit beautifully written, existential ponderings of a man who feels his life has amounted to nothing. It’s most definitely a toilet book, in my opinion.

You know what though? That doesn’t do it justice. I found myself relating to alot of what he says, and marvelling at the beautiful way he has of saying it. His internal, fantasy life is so rich, that you can’t really say that he feels his life amounts to nothing – it’s just his physical existence that doesn’t do much for him. So, I can recommend it – just not all at once, which is why the book belongs in the loo.

Anyway, I decided to move onto Mrs Dalloway, which was interesting. I’ve never read any Virginia Woolf before – I always found the idea of her intimidating. Once I got used to her stream of consciousness style of writing I enjoyed it. The narrative skips from character to character, perching on one for a while, then moving on as if blown onwards by a sudden breeze. I read like I eat – with a tendency to gobble the food in record time without really stopping to taste it. I had to really concentrate on the prose in this book – every word seems to be there for a specific purpose, which can’t be said of alot of books I’ve read. Much of the pleasure comes from how she’s strung the words together, rather than the story they have to tell.

And then, once that was bagged, I started reading Candide, by Voltaire. Mercy! Voltaire! How cerebral! I was encouraged by the fact that it’s astonishingly slim – you could get through it in about 3 hours. It’s also excellent – a stinging satire on the idea of fate, and the belief held by many that everything happens for the best. It’s so irreverant. I love it. So, I won’t be astonishing party-goers with the phrase ‘Voltaire is so overrated’ tripping from my lips after all. How horribly disappointing.

Anyway, sorry if this post is on the dull side. I’ll try and make the reviews more exciting – perhaps I will inject some drama into them next time (well! I was reading Voltaire, and what do you think happened? Jellyfish invaded the earth! Anyway, I managed to finish….)