Futureproof

Benedict Ambrose and I have decided on a bathroom-refurb company, and the tub is doomed. Good-bye, bathtub. Originally I wasn't going to give our business to any of the salesmen who used the neologism "futureproof", but this company came up with a great design and plentiful choice among good materials. It will add to, not detract from, the resale value of the flat. 

I disliked the word "futureproof" not only because it meant turning the whole bathroom into a waterproof tank at great expense but because it suggested B.A. would get worse, not better. If you are swapping a bath for a walk-in shower (or roll-in shower room) because you are 75, well, chances are your mobility will get worse. However, if you are bidding farewell to the bath because your merely middle-aged husband has spinal damage, your great hope is that he will get better. 

Unfortunately, my husband is not currently getting better. His love affair with the rollator is coming to an end; he wants the freedom and security an electric wheelchair will provide. He's afraid of falling down, and no wonder. He fell down trying to take his seat in the doctor's office this week, and he fell down this morning, dropping his cup of tea on the carpet. 

This became a slapstick incident. When he fell, I jumped up from the sofa, only to place my stockinged foot in a puddle of blazing-hot tea. There was then much hopping about as I tried to soak up the tea with towels and then limped to the bathroom to stick my foot under the doomed bathtub cold tap. While I was sitting on the edge of the tub, there was another commotion in the sitting-room. I rushed in to find that B.A. had dropped his bowl of cereal and milk. So I got a soapy sponge and wiped all that up before returning to the tub. I am now wearing slippers.   

When the ultimately successful bathroom salesman last mentioned futureproofing to me, he acknowledged that if B.A. were confined to a wheelchair he wouldn't be able to get up and down our outdoor staircase, and so we would sell the flat. Therefore, there was no point to a tanked room. Such money-saving discussions are my idea of futureproofing. 

Meanwhile, it is perhaps a lucky thing B.A. stumbled at the doctor's office. He has a Stoic (but not always helpful) habit of minimizing how sick or weak he is feeling, and it didn't occur to him to call up the oncologist and tell her his mobility was much worse. But now she knows and is apparently swinging into action, applying on B.A.'s behalf for an NHS-supplied electric wheelchair, disability allowance, a bus pass, and chemotherapy. She and her assistant gave B.A. a very minor scolding. 

Child of the 1980s, I was once terrified by the word chemotherapy, but this kind doesn't involve an I.V. and hair loss but a lot of pills to be taken at home five days a month. I am very grateful to all the people so interested in science (and so determined to cure cancer) that they dedicated their lives to improving cancer treatments. 

Because I wrote for so long for Singles about being Single, I often want to caution the wistful that marriage is not a solution to all ills but merely another stage of life, one that has its own ills. These ills are not directly caused by marriage, I hasten to add. They are just more likely because you are more directly affected by things that happen to somebody else. 

It is impossible to futureproof your life perfectly, especially when that life is shared by another person or--if you have children--other people. However, you can do your best by making sure you marry someone with a good character, someone you respect, not just someone whose appearance accords with your idea of beauty. 

I've never been able to forget a co-worker at Statistics Canada (and we had a thoroughly miserable job) telling me about her husband, a man she met on the beaches of her Caribbean birthplace. She was a lovely person--black and buxom and good-humoured. She met the beauty standard of her curve-loving island, and her handsome husband had considered himself very fortunate---until she got him back to Canada and his new colleagues in the building trade bantered him about her weight. His ardour cooled, he spent too much time away from home, and he wasn't contributing much to the household income. 

"I thought getting married would make my life easier," sighed my colleague--and God only knows how many women throughout the ages have said that. 

Arguably, what getting married does is give your life more meaning (as well as a slightly higher status in your community, if that's how your community rolls). And, in fact, your life becomes even more meaningful if your spouse gets sick because he really, really, needs you to stay alive and, ideally, healthy, strong, cheerful and employed.

Why Catholics must learn to dance

Rumour has whispered in my ear that a growing number of traditionalist Catholics have turned their backs on dancing, even ballroom and country dancing, considering it immoral.....

[Dear readers! I have submitted a version of this blogpost to an online American Catholic magazine, so as to preach to the non-converted. I'll either link to where it is published, or shamefacedly put it back later.]  

 

The Eastertide Dance

I have just paid the bill--small--for the advert I placed in Mass of Ages magazine, and so now all the Eastertide Dance expenses are settled. Sleepy as I was, I entertained myself on Sunday evening by working them out and totting up the ticket sales (and, heartwarmingly, donations) and seeing how close we got to being able to make a donation to Una Voce Scotland. 

Nobody cited Mass of Ages as their source of knowledge about the dance. However, I consider them £14 well-spent for announcing our presence to the wider TLM-loving community in Britain. We're here, we're dear, we're in Scotland. 

Easter Saturday night's dance (7:30 PM - 11:00 PM) was "convivial" someone said, and it was certainly a lot of fun. Nobody, seeing me cut capers in a green-and-black evening dress, could have guessed I had spent the past two days miserable in bed or chair with my annual Easter viral rhinitis, reading Lucy Maud Montgomery, Robertson Davies and then Lionel Shriver like a literary review of life: childhood, adolescence, adulthood. 

The dance began with the Prayer to St. Michael and an explanation of the dance cards I had handed out at the inner door as people came in. There followed 15 minutes or so of noisy conversation which was supposed to be men requesting places on the ladies' dance cards and writing the latter's names in their own. Then our expert Caller explained the figures of the Dashing White Sergeant, the young ceilidh band (playing guitar, accordion, fiddle) played their first chord, and the dance began in earnest. 

The ceilidh dances were interspersed with waltzes. The Expert Caller (who was also officially in charge of the musicians) and I had decided that we would have a waltz-heavy first half and a ceilidh-heavy second half. During the intermission, our volunteer keyboardist would play jazz and anyone who liked could swing-dance. I would also not shout orders from the stage this time, trusting that the gentlemen would ask the ladies in good time without my prompting. 

So naturally I ended up shouting from the stage anyway, which I probably enjoyed too much. However, it was very good fun to watch the couples drifting onto the dance floor and to call out broad hints to the gentlemen who had not yet got partners, the dance cards notwithstanding. 

Dance aficionados may be interested to read that after the DWS we danced to Shostakovich's Waltz No. 2 (which I danced with a Classics professor), Kilar's Waltz from Trędowata (a choice praised by the violinist's Polish father), the Canadian Barn Dance, the St. Bernard's Waltz (a ceilidh-waltz hybrid), Waldteufel's Skaters' Waltz and Mancini's Moon River. 

I believe all the ladies were on the dance floor (we had one or two more men than women) for the Skaters' Waltz, which made me supremely happy.

"Well, Our Chaps ask women to dance," I imagine myself bragging to less fortunate Susans*. "Our Chaps make it a point of honour to introduce themselves to ladies they don't know and ask them to dance. Hospitality is so important to Catholics, wouldn't you agree? Yes, Our Chaps do stand out from the crowd in that regard. They're Traditionalists. "

Many of them are also musical, and I was agreeably surprised when a singer informed me that he had been working with our jazz musician on the intermission music. Traditionally ceilidhs aren't black-tie events, but kitchen-or-barn jamborees in which everyone sings, plays and/or dances. I was even more delighted when the violinist, who was sitting across the room with her parents, suddenly joined in playing to Fly Me to the Moon. Structures should create space for spontaneity--and behold! 

(Another spontaneity was the ceilidh band finally deciding on their name so that we could introduce them properly.)

As I made tea and coffee and set out the cake, wine and beer, I was delighted to see that swing-dancing, though as yet very much a minority interest, was actually going on. The intermission was 45 or 50 minutes, and then we were all back in the middle of the floor for The Flying Scotsman.

This was followed by the Eightsome Reel, the Blue Danube Waltz, and Waltz of the Flowers (I think--the dance card says just Tchaikovsky Waltz because I couldn't decide between Flowers and Sleeping Beauty and left it up to our able pianist). After the Blue Danube Waltz, I saw that we had 65 minutes left but only three more dances scheduled, so we took longer breaks and after we danced Waves of Tory, we had the Dashing White Sergeant again, and only then Strip the Willow, which currently is the last dance we dance at Scottish ceilidhs. 

Of course we followed that with Auld Lang Syne, because we're in Scotland, and we ended with Regina Caeli, because we're militant Catholics. I then went back to the inner door to bid people good-bye, just like a hostess in Etiquette for Ladies. Say what you like about the Victorians and Edwardians, they knew how to make people feel acknowledged and cared for at dances.  

As that particular hall doesn't offer china or glassware, the presence of proper wineglasses, china tea set, giant tablecloths and the large reproduction of Guido Reni's St. Michael were thanks to the Security Man and his little red car. The car of one Generous Donor (we had a few Generous Donors, whose names are known to heaven) broke down, so the Security Man volunteered to make extra trips to acquire, and then take home, the electric piano and its owner. This is a bittersweet acknowledgement that it is difficult to have well-appointed dance without a car---and impossible without a Committee. 

I am very grateful to our Committee, for I finally followed my own management philosophy and delegated as many tasks as possible. (Take note, fellow Susans.) For example, it was a great blessing to be free to leave the dishes to the Kitchen Manager. This was one of the lessons I learned from the Michaelmas Dance. Thanks also to our first foray, I bought only 12 bottles of wine (bringing 5.5 bottles home), baked only one giant carrot cake, and solicited a donation of beer.

This dance had lessons of its own, and I think the first is to have music from the moment the guests step over the threshold. As with the Michaelmas Dance, the beginning was a little timorous and unsure. I wonder if we know any pipers? 

Meanwhile, Benedict Ambrose waved aside my taxicab suggestion and decided to have a quiet night in. I now regret getting someone to rescue me from his approximation of the waltz at the Michaelmas Dance, as we suspect that it will be a long time before he is able even to attempt to dance again. However, he enjoyed hearing about the Eastertide soiree, and he wrote me a delightful poem about it in advance. In fact, this highly flattering poem gave me the energy I needed to finish the preparations, and so I am grateful to him, too. 

*A Susan, in case you are wondering, denotes a Catholic woman who interests herself greatly in parish church affairs, cf Susan from the Parish Council. Not all Susans are bad, Harry. Parish councils, on the other hand... ;-)

The Parish Dance

I saw the film Brooklyn during a visit to Toronto, and the scene in which Saoirse Ronan's "Eilis" meets Emory Cohen's "Tony" could have been filmed in the basement parish hall of an old Toronto Catholic church. (I have checked, and it was filmed in Montreal.) The low ceiling, the two-toned pillars, and the stage are just so familiar. 

I found a clip of the dance scene on YouTube, and in the comments a wistful viewer writes "Wish i could meet someone this way... Not at a club, not online, just a nice old fashioned dance."

It just occurs to me that Polish Pretend Son met his wife, not at a nice old fashioned dance, but at a tango-dancing festival. I had put his chances of meeting a Nice Catholic Girl at tango at zero, but I suppose the odds of meeting a Nice Catholic Girl in Poland, even at a tango festival, are still very good. 

However, we don't all live in Poland, so you are as unlikely to meet a Nice Catholic Somebody at secular tango-dancing, Latin dancing, and even swing-dancing events as you are at Tequila Jack's or the Opal Lounge. And back when my grandparents were young (and when my parents were children), young Catholics went looking for other young Catholics at their parish dance or--as Tony did in Brooklyn--at another parish dance. If you wanted to meet Irish girls in New York, you went to an Irish parish in New York. 

Young Catholics today may feel nostalgic for the dances they never knew; I am feeling nostalgic for a parish hall. When Father Flood and Mrs Keogh organized dances for the young folks, they already had a parish hall. Poor, poor Mrs McLean is a TLMer, so she doesn't have a parish hall. She must pay for everything. Therefore, she must also solicit donations and sell tickets. 

The Eastertide Dance is my most recent attempt at resurrecting the Nice Old-fashioned Parish Dance. (Unlike the parish dance in Brooklyn, however, there will be wine and beer, tea and coffee, crisps and cake.) Catholics who love the Traditional Latin Mass are a minority within a minority in Scotland, so my original idea was to bring them together for a night of merriment. (Unfortunately, I haven't yet figured out how to provide childcare.) This worked well, I thought, at the Michaelmas Dance, so now my goal is to attract an even larger crowd. Of course, the difficulty with being a minority within a minority is that the community is not necessarily very big. Thus, I have invited a priest at a conservative-enough parish to tell his youth group all about it. As Generation Z supposedly makes all its decisions at the last minute, I am crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. Oh, and experimenting with direct marketing. 

Looking at videos of the Brooklyn parish dance, I note that poor Dolores, who so badly wants to meet "fellas," is darting glances around like a crazed cockatoo. The viewer is invited to consider if anyone is likely to ask her to dance. One of the strengths of the Eastertide Dance over that dance is that we have 7 ceilidh dances planned. Our dance balances out "couple" dances with "group dances." Dolores, if she deigned to dance our Scottish gambols, could stop worrying about the fellas and just dance.

The Frogs on the Tiling

Once upon a time I was very entertained by "transformation" scenes in popular films. It was fun to believe that streetwalkers could be transformed into elegant ladies, dowdy schoolgirls into princesses, and tough-talking cops into beauty queens over the course of a day at a beauty salon, plus new clothing. 

Sadly, I have never found that beauty services plus new clothing transformed me into someone better, unless there is a particular virtue in having less money. In terms of physical appearance, what really does--or did--the trick is sleep, sharply curtailed calorific intake, a job involving much walking, and going to gyms up to 10 times a week. 

When I lived that way, I worked at a Canadian passport office and, still possessing the arrogance of youth, marvelled at the difference between older women who had clearly given up fighting the ravages of time and older women who seemed determined to fight them to the grave. "Older" meant over 40. And I was in a unique position to know exactly how old every woman was, as it was written on her passport application and printed on her birth certificate. 

Having worked hard to become athletic and slim, I was very much on the side of the Over-40s fighting time. And after I reached 40 myself I was among their number until 2017 when I was going so often to visit my husband at the hospital that I bought a bus pass. The bus pass photo showed an exhausted, worried middle-aged woman, a most-unfashionable kerchief tired around her mad hair. She looked terrible, like an Over-40 who had given up the fight. 

"Who cares?" I thought. "So be it." 

What I did not know when I was a slim 20-something is that you don't get the face and figure you deserve after 40. You get the ones handed to you by life. If you are blessed with good genes and good luck, you can appear youthful for decades. If, however, you are walloped with illness, family illness, unexpected deaths, financial disasters, political unrest, emotional betrayals, fire, flood, and goodness knows what else, it shows up in your appearance. Nowadays when I see an obese old woman on the street, I try to picture the slender teenager she probably once was and wonder what life did to her. 

Sometimes you can actually feel years of life taken from your body. This definitely happened to me in 2018 when I came back to the Historical House after an unpleasant social call and discovered the priceless, irreplaceable, never-to-be-touched-without-gloves contents of the museum collection set out on the front lawn. 

Benedict Ambrose and I had been more-or-less guarding that collection with our lives, so I thought immediately that B.A. could be, despite months of the NHS's hard work, dead. However, he suddenly became visible, breaking away from the huddle of people and precious furniture, coming towards me wearing a hard hat, and calling, "I'm all right. It's all right!"

It wasn't, really. The worst thing that can happen to an old house is fire. But the second worst--which had happened--is flood. The fire retardant sprinkler system had malfunctioned while we were both away from home. Almost all my clothes (right under one of the sprinkler heads) were destroyed, but it always seemed churlish to mention that (let alone demand redress) given the damage to the national treasure. And, of course, we were suddenly homeless. 

Catalogue of Alarums and Excursion:

Amoris Laetitia, the brain tumour, the Deluge, homelessness, brain tumour again, experimental radiotherapy, finding a mortgage, buying a flat, double-taxation (now resolved), COVID lockdown, B.A.'s subsequent voluntary redundancy, Traditionis Custodes, spinal tumours, more experimental radiotherapy, Fiducia Supplicans and, slowly yet unexpectedly, B.A.'s inability to walk unaided. 

No, I do not think a day at the beauty salon and a Rodeo Drive shopping excursion would suffice to soothe the ravages of time.  

You will be surprised to read that the intent of this post was to think in print about renovating the bathroom. The opening sentence was going to be something like "I have lost the desire to renovate myself, and now I desire only to renovate the bathroom." Bathroom renovations, I am assured by the internet, are naturally difficult, stressful, and involve many decisions. Mistakes are costly. And, sadly, in our case renovations are absolutely necessary, as B.A. can't climb over the side of the bathtub without risking his neck. Thus, it too gets added to the list of alarms and excursions. 

I veer between wanting to cut a hole in the side of the bathtub (and covering the edges with rubber trim), which would cost £30, and wanting the local bathroom designer to build us a spa, which would cost £15,000+. (American readers: this is not a request for funding! One of the most wonderful things about Americans is your overflowing generosity, but we both have jobs and are not on our uppers yet.) The good news is that home repairs done under the duress of a physical disability are sales-tax free. The bad news is that my preferred approach to life improvement is to remove things and habits that cost money, not buy new ones. 

However, I will have to lump it because B.A. doesn't like the hole-in-the-side-of-the-bathtub plan, and I have long since wearied of the frogs on the tiling. 

Observations from Misfortune

I was exhausted by bedtime last night, thanks to a long day dominated by travels by bus, car and rollator to and from Mass. 

I once thought being car-free was a great blessing; now I think it is a luxury we can no longer afford. The last time we took a taxi anywhere, it became obvious that the driver had no idea how to navigate the area without a GPS, the GPS took us on a highly original route, and the driver charged us £30.72. 

The first thing I noticed yesterday was that if I stand back and allow Benedict Ambrose to lift his lightweight rollator up or down a step, strangers will lunge past me to grab it. I am sure they mean to be helpful,  it's lovely to live in a society where people care, and. B.A. is a humble, patient man. But it leaves me feeling like a seeing-eye dog who has just been chastised for laziness. People, ask first.

The second thing I noticed was that there was dried dog dirt on a wheel of the rollator. Mindful of the car we were going  to travel in after our two bus rides, I wiped it off with a clean paper napkin I fortunately had in my pocket. I know everyone says this, but honesty, do pick up after your dog. Not everyone can see where it poops, especially after dark. (We had gone to a dinner party the night before, and our return journey was out of the Odyssey.)

The third thing I noticed (not for the first time) is that everyone is horrified when I mention the quotes given to us by mobility bathroom salesmen. Amazingly, nobody else has been asked to pay £16,000 for obviously cheap materials and a crew guaranteed to finish the job. I keep checking the internet, and it keeps telling me that people remodelling a small bathroom in the UK in 2024 should expect to pay between £4,000 and £6,000, unless they go all out and buy luxury goods.  

One salesmen told us the high price was due to COVID and Brexit. He also told us that nobody uses plywood for waterproof wall panels anymore, and in fact plywood comes from Russia. (The horror!) On the coffee table before him was a catalogue of wall panels from a rival firm, and their centre cores are made from plywood. 

As I have not yet spoken to a firm that remodels bathrooms, not just mobility bathrooms ("We did the bathroom for  X hospital, have a look at the photos!), I cannot say if it is the word "mobility" that adds £10,000 to the bill. However, as the people most likely to hire a mobility bathroom firm are the elderly and disabled, which is to say the most vulnerable adults in society, I suspect an investigation is in order. 

The fourth thing that I noticed is that my nerves are fraying, and that we both need the services of the cancer support service. Unfortunately, the cancer support service is two bus rides away, and when we were last near it and had time to go at once, it was closed. 

The fifth thing that I noticed was that I reached a flow state yesterday afternoon while reading my daily two pages of Bolesław Prus's Lalka (The Doll). It is set in 1878, it is hardly a text for foreigners, and when I go over it unaided, I can only get the gist. However, it is great fun to compare the text afterwards to a translation and fill in the gaps. 

This reminded me that I sometimes want to write a post arguing against feeling sad all the time. When Benedict Ambrose was very sick in 2017 and I was combining full-time work with second-guessing doctors and either begging them to do something or visiting B.A. in hospital, I received an angry email from an up-to-that-moment cherished friend disgusted by my blogposts about learning Italian. Apparently this then-friend believed that I was not doing enough to help Benedict Ambrose and that I was criminally negligent. I needed to stop going to Italian class and follow her [expensive and lunatic] care plan.*  

What she didn't know was that Italian class, and thinking and writing about how speaking a second language changes a brain, and how and why second and third languages get scrambled up when you try to speak them, gave me a respite from acute mental torment. She knew Benedict Ambrose was suffering, but she couldn't seem to grasp that his wife was suffering, too, and that if she sent her wacko email, it would scar the latter for life. 

Anyway, when someone you love is very sick, you don't have to be sad all the time. You should feel free to admit that you are sad, but you should also work on keeping depression at bay. Fortunately for me, I have never thought solitary drinking or drugging the path to joy. I am also not a fan of lying on the sofa reading endless paperbacks although I know that works for others. Instead, I disappear into the world of foreign languages, and quite a wonderful world it is, too. 

*Yes, I know I have written about this recently. But it was, hands down, the worse communication I have ever received in my life. Never, ever write to the spouse of a very sick person accusing her/him of maltreating him/her. 

Thinking about Our Boys

I tried to write a companion post to "Talking to Girls", but it got bogged down in the caveats about the minority of men who are mad, bad and dangerous to know, so I gave up. Let us put all that Daily Mail stuff aside and think about only those good men to whom you have been introduced at the Newman Center, CSU, Juventutem, on pilgrimage and/or at the After-Mass Coffee and Tea. In fact, let us talk about Our Boys.

Thinking about Our Boys suggests discrimination, and that's exactly what women should exhibit towards men: discrimination. After all, the Christian woman's ideal is to share her life with only one man (or, if a nun, only with the Son of Man) while being a cordial neighbour to the other men around. It is easier to be cordial when these men are sane, good and safe to know. And the easiest way to ensure that is to avoid the other kind completely. 

Sanity, goodness, and safety are merely the essential basics, of course. Young marriage-minded women often have a long list of traits that the Ideal Husband should have. It gets shorter as they get older and realize some of the things on the list are very trivial, or when they fall in head-over-heels with someone with few of the characteristics written secretly in the back of the notebook. Look at me: I married a man with a beard who can't drive.  

However, Benedict Ambrose was definitely one of Our Boys, which for me meant that he was a Catholic who went to Mass every Sunday and prayed every day. And since shared Catholicism was my number one value of values, I knew that however much B.A. might irritate me in future (if he did), I would stick by him through thick and thin: he was one of Our Boys. Also, he was funny, clever, kind, talented, and had great dinner parties. But that said, while B.A. was sliding into a coma, all that was left was the shared Catholicism. It was enough. 

The importance of thinking about men who share your most cherished values as Our Boys is that it helps dull the negative effects their more amusing traits have on you. In my experience, young women have a harder time understanding that men are not just women in larger, more rectangular bodies. Thus, it might seem hilarious when men are not as good as women are at certain things: striking up conversations with women, colour-coordinating outfits, reading micro-expressions, walking gracefully. It isn't really. 

Incidentally, as I am writing primarily for Our Girls, I am sure I don't have to explain how unreasonable it is to say men "just shouldn't look" or "should keep better custody of their eyes" in response to complaints to immodest female attire. Of course, some of the more original-minded of Our Boys will argue that women should dress like statues of Our Lady of Sorrows. He is, of course, making the error of thinking that women are just men in smaller, rounder bodies who will dispassionately weigh such ideas in an abstract fashion and not view them as personal attacks or think immediately of the Taliban. Naturally, it would be an error to take these Our Boys seriously, just as it would be an error to dress like statues of Our Lady of Sorrows. Tell them that you  tried dressing like OLOS at one point but gave it up when you tripped on your hem in front of a bus. 

In short, I am counselling patience, understanding and kindness. It is a terrible thing to laugh at a well-meaning young man. It is also a bad idea to scold him. Given the very anti-male turn our society has taken, and given the female domination of the education industry, the average young man in the West has been bullied by women from birth and is mighty tired of it. Therefore, instead of employing the "delightful raillery" used by millionaire's daughter Elizabeth Bennett when punching up at the billionaire Mr. Darcy, it is a better idea to give young men the impression that you think they are marvellous. 

There is an appropriate degree to this, of course. You don't want to give the impression that you are man-mad, and obviously you must be super-careful in what you say to married men. However, I cannot see that there is anything wrong in giving voice to positive, if trivial, thoughts that come into your mind when you see a pullover you like on a fellow Single or feel that your dance partner has greatly improved. 

And that's all I have to say. To recap:

1. Avoid all men who are mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

2. Develop feelings of solidarity with the men you know who share your most cherished values, aka Our Boys.

3. Plan on marrying one of them, or someone like them, one day. 

4. Be patient, understanding and kind when Our Boys, though well-meaning, are tongue-tied, puppyish, clumsy, or colour-uncoordinated. 

5. Some boys come up with weird abstract theories that you should neither take seriously nor get upset about. If possible, make a joke about it. 

Boy: Women should never work outside the home. 

Girl: That's why I'm going to marry for money. What's your major?

Boy: Women should dress like Our Lady.

Girl: I tried, but then I tripped in front of a bus. 

Boy: Women should not go to university.

Girl: But then how would we homeschool our sons?

6. If your outfit would have been morally acceptable in your town in 1962, it's fine now. 

7. Their female-dominated education may have been rather tough on Our Boys. Feed and water them with kind words.  

Talking to Girls

When I was a young thing, as thin as a pin yet bursting with dreams, I had a very hard time meeting handsome young men. After I married, they appeared as if by magic. Absolute crowds, my dear, around the dinner table, filling the guests rooms, asking my advice about minor ailments. 

This may partly be because I had joined, through marriage, the Traditional Latin Mass community which, in Scotland, has a male majority. More recently it is also because I have advanced in the brotherhood of scribes and thus meet many young men with strong views on political subjects. During the course of my working day, I may contact them to ask "Should we care that Counsellor X has been chased into a McDonald's on Y Square by a baying mob, or is this just a normal Tuesday?"

To my diminishing surprise, the young men I speak to most eventually ask for my advice about girls. These are always Catholics, so their ultimate goal is to get married and have children. I am very sympathetic to these aims, and I am particularly sympathetic if the men are in their 30s and having an awkward time of it. 

By the way, the problem is not always that women don't notice them, but sometimes that the women who like them don't like what they like, and the chap can't contemplate a lifetime with a woman who doesn't appreciate classics of 1970s cinema or whatever. 

"Well, that's because you didn't love her, so that's okay," I said on a similar occasion.

"Really?" 

"Yes. If you had been really crazy about her, you wouldn't have cared less that she didn't know who Clint Eastwood was. So don't worry about it. I almost never say this, but have you considered Ave Maria Singles?"  

As a matter of fact, I really dislike dating websites because they remind me of those windows in the red light district of Amsterdam where women sit about being ogled by men. Men and women looking for true love should not be divorced from their contexts, by which I mean their families, friends, neighbourhoods, parishes, professions, teams, and everything else that goes into who they are. And although women are said not to be as visual as men, we are still visual when looking at dating websites, and instead of seeing a man on his own at a party, we see one face among dozens, if not hundreds, of other male faces. By the way, the ones in their 20s are so much better-looking than the ones in their 40s and 50s, it makes me sad. 

Therefore, my next piece of advice to men looking for wives is not to rely on the dating websites but to go where there are a lot of women and not necessarily many men. Benedict Ambrose caught my attention, not only because my English pal Aelianus mentioned him in his list of marriageable friends, but because he became a frequent commentator on my then-popular blog for Single women. 

One place women who like men will always want to find men is the partner-dance dance floor. And women who frequent partner-dance dance floors will almost always dread being wallflowers and will almost always be grateful to be rescued from this fate by a man who is clean, polite, reasonably well-dressed, and can dance reasonably well. If he can dance very well, so much the better. 

In my swing-dance days, I became so frustrated at not being asked to dance, I paid a tutor to teach me how to dance better. (I had noticed that the best women dancers were always asked.) If you are the kind of young man who has money to spend on a private dance tutor, I highly recommend doing the same. Pick your favourite kind of music, match it up with its dance, and take lessons. 

Being great at something both public and prized by women is a definite advantage. I recall being terribly impressed by how well Benedict Ambrose gave a tour of the Historical House. It was lucky for both of us that I had a chance to see him do something that he really excels at (public speaking, lecturing on historical topics) so soon after meeting him. It was also lucky that he lived in the Historical House, if we believe women are as prone to hypergamy as all that. 

One of the most controversial ideas about women, its controversy springing partly from the fact that this has long been used as a weapon against us, is that we would prefer to marry men who are richer, more educated, and higher up on the social scale than we are. If true, this may be down to social conditioning; I can't see why it would be innate. But I can see why, in days of yore, it would be obvious: until very recently women were poorer, less educated, and by definition lower on the social scale than men. The addresses of almost any bachelor must have been flattering to any spinster whose only other options for survival were domestic service or life-long dependency on her male relations. 

Old attitudes die hard, especially when they are enshrined in such female scriptures as Pride and Prejudice, Little Women, and the Anne books. I no longer think Elizabeth Bennett was joking when she said her feelings towards Mr Darcy began to change when she first saw his stupendous estate, for I will never forget the Historical House first rising up beyond the dark woods to greet me one September night. I already liked Benedict Ambrose, of course, but his house! Naturally, it wasn't really his house, but--to adopt the theory--try telling that to my reptile brain, or wherever it is that the hypogamic impulse lives. 

Instead of judging me, gentlemen, ponder what you have of symbolic value (a Chair at the university, a great-grandfather who was Prime Minister, a great-great-grandfather awarded the Victoria Cross, a two-bedroom flat overlooking Edinburgh Castle) that you could present tastefully.

And that brings me to my next point, which is about talking to girls. When talking to a lady, it is a very bad idea to talk about yourself too much. It is a very good idea to ask the lady about herself. After all, you are not talking to the lady for the sake of talking about yourself. You are on a quest. This quest is to find the Future Mrs You but ALSO to make many female friends along the way. These new female friends will know many more eligible women than you do. Your chances of marrying the friend of a friend are rather higher than marrying a woman off the internet.

Mrs McL: Suzie, this is Scooter. He has driven all the way from Lasswade to be with us today. Scooter, this is Suzie. She is one of our many highly prized university students. Excuse me while I make the tea. 

Suzie: Nice to meet you, Scooter. I don't actually know where Lasswade is. 

Scooter: Nobody does, really. It's about ten miles south. Are you from Edinburgh?

Oh, brilliant Scooter! He has turned the conversation to Suzie in his third sentence. 

Suzie: No, I'm from Fife, but I'm now living near the uni. I share a flat with Miriam, Jane and Georgie over there. 

Scooter: I hear Edinburgh rents are very high.

Suzie: They are atrocious. How are they in Lasswade?

Scooter: Well, I don't know. I do know the mortgage rates are ghastly. 

Oh, look: Scooter owns his home. He also, Mrs McL has dropped, has a car. Will this frighten Suzie, intrigue her, or leave her utterly indifferent? I'm not sure. It all depends on Suzie, and if Scooter is smart, he will leave it at that. He should be finding commonalities with Suzie, not obviously striving to impress her. He could ask "How did you meet Mrs McL?" or "How long have you been in Edinburgh?"or any other open-ended question. 

Suzie, like most women, is a genius at small talk, so she will be certain to ask Scooter more questions about himself, which he will answer as humbly (UK) or as impressively (US) as possible. 

Scooter (in UK): And so they gave me a promotion. The fools! I don't know what I'd doing, really. 

Scooter (in US): So now I'm the youngest Vice-President of Operations in company history.  

Well, that is quite enough advice from me. I now want to ask Benedict Ambrose if he would like to go to Lasswade,  as there is a mobility bathroom designer there. And that, by the way, is an opportunity to remind you all that marriage is serious stuff. There's a reason the Anglicans serve up the bad news along with the good in their wedding vows: poverty, sickness and bad times are guaranteed in this valley of tears. 

It is possible you could get along reasonably well in marriage with someone you just rather fancy, but should cancer arrive and disrupt your bower of bliss, you will need something rather stronger--like profound respect for a sterling character--to rely on. So develop one and don't marry until you find another one. That's my ultimate word on the subject. 

To recap:

1. When you are in love, you don't care if she's not interested in your dumb masculine interests. (That said, her not being interested in them is not a good reason not to ask her on a second date.)

2. Don't expect dating websites to give you an advantage over other marriage-minded men.

3. Go where the women are and want men to turn up.  

4. The renewed craze for partner-dancing has brought such places back.

5. Learn to dance or do something else very well that is public and valued by women.

6. Continue increasing your social capital through work and education or, in a pinch, association with stuff that the kind of woman you would like to marry finds impressive. (I imagine that in some communities chaining yourself to endangered trees or flinging yourself between the hunter and the baby seal is the thing to do.)

7. When talking to women, ask them about themselves sooner rather than later. Women want to feel that we are interesting as ourselves, not just as Potential Wife Material.

8. Pay strict attention to cultural expectations when presenting your accomplishments.  

9. Life is hard. Continue developing a good character, and marry a woman of good character. 

Yes, but have an emergency plan

This morning I took the bus to Edinburgh's west end to retrieve an important key I had misplaced despite years of careful husbandry and subsequently had hysterics. 

On the way home I looked at First Things on my mobile phone and came across a thoughtful article about the destruction of America's careful and (in general) fruitful democracy based on the complementarity of the sexes. The article gave me a lot of food for thought, and I agreed with it (in general). 

In fact, I even had in my handbag an old notebook dating to 2016, about a year before I took a full-time job. I had word-sketched there a moment of absolute peace I was experiencing in a friend's greenhouse. My friend (who has since died) lived in half of a house built for a duchess, and I was living in the attic of a house bought by a law lord a few decades after it was built. It was a warm and rainy April day. My delightful and perfectly healthy (we thought) husband was at work. I did not have to earn more (we thought) than I was already earning. Naturally it was sad not to have children, but I wasn't thinking about that as I sat sheltered from the rain.

A year later our whole world had turned upside down, and I thanked the Lord of History that a woman, even a woman my age, could, in fact, find a good professional job and be paid the same wage as a man.

So my answer to "Compulsory Feminism" is  "Yes, by all means let us work to bring back and support the traditional family, the traditional breadwinner, the traditional homemaker, and the traditional roles. Let us strive to make men and woman marriageable again. Let us teach young men how to woo women, and let us help young women to preserve their mental health. But at the same time, we must insist on an emergency plan. Husbands fall ill; fathers of young families die. The wives and children of sick men are vulnerable to predators; widows and orphans even more so.  Every woman longing to marry a good man and have a family must have an emergency plan. This could be income insurance. That could be an in-demand trade or profession. Whatever it is, let us be rooted in reality. Let us have, by all means, emergency plans."

UPDATE: Children get sick, too. If you're looking for somewhere to put your Lenten alms, you might want to consider this poor family. 

How to be Youthful

On Saturday Benedict Ambrose and I took the bus to an old-fashioned mobility aids shop and got the former a rollator. A rollator, if you happen not to live or work with elderly or sick people, is a kind of trolley that helps you walk as you push it along. It usually has a seat and it sometimes has its own work or shopping bag attached. The next time you are at a bus stop look out for a very elderly lady; she might very well have one. 

I have seen elderly ladies with rollators all week; having been in the market for such a device, I suddenly noticed them everywhere. I have also noticed many people who ought not to have been sitting in the seats for the disabled on the bus. Such people have never really caught my attention before.  But all of a sudden, the availability of the disabled seats on the bus is of city- (if not world-) shaking importance. 

Anyway, the kindly salesman, who did not appear to be that much older than B.A. and I, tried B.A. out on three different rollators, which B.A. pushed up and down the pavement outside the shop, and divined which one B.A. liked best before telling us the prices. B.A. liked the medium-priced one best. At one point, while B.A. was pushing a rollator out the door, the salesman mentioned to me sotto voce that the gentleman was patient and unusually easy to work with. 

"He's very practical," I said in response to this tribute, while thinking what a mercy it was to be working with a knowledgeable person instead of buying a rollator through eBay and hoping for the best. I also imagined crowds of stubborn 70- and 80-something men, all putting off getting walking sticks, let alone a rollator, because in their minds they are still the men who ran races or sailed boats or urged horses over fences. I am sympathetic to their point of view, though, for, as B.A. got on the bus home with his refolded new rollator and we took our seats in the disabled section, I felt about 75 years old. 

By the way, my first authentic memory of a historical event is probably the funeral of Paul VI, so although no spring chicken, I am a generation younger than I felt on Saturday. Wearing a tweed coat, spectacles, practical shoes, a beret, and zero makeup like a Scottish granny of the old school no longer seemed like such a great idea. 

Thus, B.A. and I, fast-forwarded into our 8th decade by misfortune, debated on how to be more youthful. 

"Complain on Tik-Tok about having to work a 40-hour week?" I suggested.

"We already go to the Traditional Latin Mass," B.A. observed.

"True," I said smugly but typed "how to be youthful" on my smartphone. Unfortunately, the internet thought I meant how to look more youthful, and presented two lists--one all about expensive moisturizers and cosmetics and the other about drinking lots of water and getting enough sleep. 

On Sunday morning I discovered I had mislaid an important key and, when I couldn't find it on our return home from Mass, became depressed and hysterical to the point of suicidal ideation which is, sad to say, rather youthful. Fortunately, today I got a message from someone who had found it, so I left off self-contempt and decided to blog. 

In Gigi, a charming film lying about high-class prostitution, Maurice Chevalier sings a song about being glad he's not young anymore. It's mostly about love stuff but the "feeling you're only two foot tall" can unfortunately continue into adulthood. Right now, the part of youth I most envy is the power of compound interest, which is why I bombard my younger relations with advice to save at least 50% of their earnings or pocket money and invest it when they can.  

I suppose planning ever more complicated dance parties is youthful. There's a school of thought that youthfulness involves going to dance clubs and rock concerts. However, I was scarred when I saw what middle-aged Goths look like after leaving a Sisters of Mercy concert in Glasgow that time. (It turned out the Sisters of Mercy were the early show, and we oldies left just as the younghies were queuing to get into the late show, and the contrast was just unspeakable.) Then there's the idea that to be youthful is to get on the floor with building blocks, or a train set, and entering fully into the interests of friends and family aged under 10. 

Well, what do you think? If you woke up feeling 75, what would you do to get back to your proper age? 

 

The February Dance Party

It is sad to contemplate that I cannot do everything; it feels like defeat. 

Not having a violinist for the upcoming Eastertide Dance, I seriously pondered how many years (and how much therapy) it would take me to learn the violin myself. Apparently, with steady practice it would take 5 years. Having discovered this, I then looked up the price of violin lessons. I swiftly realized that it would be a lot more economical to use that money to hire violinists. That said, I still haven't found a violinist. 

"You don't need a violinist," says Benedict Ambrose. "A piano is accompaniment enough." 

There is another factor. In his fascinating essay "A Different Drummer," Michael Platt mourns how amplification moved music out of "the home and similar small settings" to "halls, clubs, and honkey-tonks."

"Instead of people who know each other playing for each other, now a few strangers could entertain a crowd they did not know, and most of whom did not know each other. This was a big loss in community," Platt writes. 

Thus, ideally, we shouldn't hire strangers for the sake of a specific instrument, but accept whatever instruments can be played by friends or acquaintances. And I was absolutely delighted, by the way, that one of the young men who goes to our TLM was available to accompany yesterday's waltzing practise with his electric piano. 

Incidentally, I may stop being the After-Mass Tea and Coffee Tea Lady on Waltzing Party Sundays. Even with help (and I am most grateful for the help), it is too much to plan the dance party, plan the waltz lesson, canvas for RSVPs, make biscuits, pack 6 bags of supplies, buy the supplies for the After-Mass Tea and Coffee, get a lift, go to Mass, set up the After-Mass Tea and Coffee, serve the After-Mass Tea and Coffee, advertise the Eastertide Dance, remove the After-Mass Tea and Coffee, help with the dishes, make a thermos of coffee for the Waltzing Party, turn off the hot water machine, check that the wheelchair-accessible door is shut, check the hall for crumbs, chase out the stragglers, lock the door, and then hurry down the street to the new hall to teach a dance lesson, my deceased ballet and piano teachers turning in their graves. 

That said, nobody but me drank the coffee, so I think we can dispense with hot drinks at the parties, at least until the autumn.

After a fair number of RSVPs and changed RSVPs, in the end there were 17 dancers, including me, in the lovely big hall. Our program consisted of a waltz lesson, a ceilidh lesson, and a swing-dancing lesson. I reviewed Asking a Lady to Dance, the Box Step, the Natural Turn and the Reverse Turn. Then our Ceilidh teacher taught the progressive (i.e. changing partners) Canadian Barn Dance and how to add a Figure-8 to the Dashing White Sergeant. At 3:30 PM we had a 20-minute pause for refreshments. Then our professional swing-dance teachers spoke to us about marrying dance to music, reviewed the Jitterbug and the Lindy Hop, and showed us how to put them together.

Winter nights are long but Spring comes early to Edinburgh. It was so nice to see light still streaming through the pointed windows of the hall. I was also very pleased that there were 9 men to 8 women. Apologies to the chaps, but I think it ideal to have one "extra" man at a dance whereas to have one man too few is a terrible social solecism and a crime against my fellow women.      

Splendidly, pound notes and the heavier British coins found their way into the donations box.  This is especially important now that I am planning to find a professional waltzing instructor, too. I am finding it difficult to be a good hostess and a good teacher at the same time. There is only so much I can make myself learn from YouTube, and there is always the risk of losing my head. Of course, I shall never, ever employ the tactics of my most memorable ballet teacher; she used to pinch our insufficiently tense buttocks with her long, sharp fingernails, and she bent my toes back so far toward my heel that---.

I'll spare you that detail! 

Flowing forward

Today I finished reading Flow: The Psychology of Happiness by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. First published in 1990, it is cited in many pop psychology books today. 

Flow was fascinating and gave much insight into human behaviour. It was comforting to discover that ruminating on Everything That Can Go Wrong is what humans normally do when we are not concentrating on anything in particular. Psychic entropy is our default, and the way out and forward is to order our consciousness with absorbing challenges. 

I tried this out the other evening when worry was preventing sleep. Remembering the insights of Flow, I tried to recall the Polish declinations for anyone (ktoś) and anything (coś), which I had reviewed that morning. It worked like a charm. 

One wonderful thing about learning a foreign-to-you language, never mind two, is that it is a lifelong project. Even if you have an unusually quick grasp of languages, such that you develop C2 (near-native) fluency in 3 to 5 years, there will always be another, more complex language to learn. And once you have learned all the rules, you can learn how native speakers authentically break them. If you developed a lifetime goal to outdo Cardinal Mezzofanti, who spoke 30 languages fluently (and often), that would certainly order your consciousness and might give you sufficient meaning in your life to drive the blues away forever. 

Naturally, a meaningful long-term learning goal would not have to involve languages. Partner-dancing is thoroughly absorbing, there are dozens of partner dances to learn, and they are always slightly different, depending on who you were dancing with. Dancing has the advantage over language learning of being very good for your body as well as your brain. The more frequently you danced, the greater the chance you would still be able to do it at 90. Naturally, the more you dance the better a dancer you become. 

Flow says that our challenges should not be so complex as to cause anxiety. This reminds me of Dr. Jordan Peterson's advice to depressed young men to make their beds. Making a bed might be as much of a challenge as they need to cheer up a bit and look for some other challenge, like washing the dishes. Washing the dishes would hopefully get them positive feedback too, something else necessary for happiness. Having washed the dishes, they might go outside for a walk, stopping by the Job Centre to ask for help writing a resume. Telling a boy to get a job when he's too depressed to get out of bed would merely fill him with anxiety, I imagine. 

The idea of working up from small challenges to big challenges reminded me of a plan/wish I had some years ago to have a Grand Ball for all the TLM-going families of the United Kingdom with teenagers. Never having rented a flat, let alone a ballroom, in the UK, I didn't know where to start. And the idea of having to find Edinburgh accommodation for all the TLM-going families of the United Kingdom with teenagers was too daunting. Besides, what for Canadians is a quick trip of 100 km is a wild adventure of 60 miles to a British person. Obviously this was much too big a challenge. The teenage girls with whom I had shared this dream were somewhat disappointed. 

However, all was not lost. As you know, I decided to have a waltzing party in the parish hall last February, and it was successful enough to have another one after Easter. Then there was another and another, and I hit on the more complex idea of having a bigger dance in a bigger hall with live musicians and TLM-going families of All Scotland with teenagers. Including the musicians, there were 60 people, some who travelled from other Scottish cities. 

The entertainment of 60 people was well worth the work, but the hall increased its prices, so the next challenge is to increase the number of people who buy tickets. (Sadly, I realized that I had to raise the prices of teenagers' tickets, but I kept the adult tickets the same.) My goal is to attract between 70 - 100 people, some of whom might conceivable travel up from the North of England or, if they would like to visit Edinburgh friends over the weekend, London. To meet this challenge I have so far bought an advertisement in the next issue of Mass of Ages magazine.  

The self-appointed task of creating rational (and, incidentally, flow-creating) entertainments for TLM-going Catholics (while restoring Western Civilization along the way) throws up many, many challenges. One is actually teaching a dance myself. Talk about leaving one's comfort zone! Another is organizing a group trip to Vienna to waltz at a proper Catholic Viennese ball---a challenge so big as to be slightly insane.

Nevertheless, I spent part of last Saturday afternoon organizing my consciousness by working out the problems involved in taking young folk to Vienna and unleashing them upon the Viennese. I mentally picked the 6 candidates most likely to go, pondered how we could raise money, and found a dancing school in Vienna that could polish up their skills in an afternoon. I even sent an email to the St. Boniface Institute to ask if they were planning a ball for 2025.  

But then I found out that there is a charity Viennese Ball tonight in Denver to raise funds for the International Theological Institute, and I got cold feet. At first I was charmed that these plucky Americans were recreating in Colorado what I hoped to see in Austria. But then I saw the word Quadrille. It had not occurred to me that the Viennese dance anything but the waltz at their dances. I checked YouTube and, lo, quadrilles. How on earth would I teach my merry band of 6 quadrilles? And which quadrilles? 

"But we don't need quadrilles," boomed an ancestral voice in my head. "We have many square dances of Our Own. And we don't need Viennese Balls. An Edinburgher Ball would be good enough." 

Normally I get cross when people (even voices in my head) discourage me from doing things. But in this case, I think the ancestral voice was quite right. I shall wait until there is once again an actual Trad Catholic Ball in Vienna before I worry about taking people to one, and in the meantime I will work towards a proper Trad Catholic Ball of our own. It may take ten years, but I think it would be well worth working towards. 

The Chas. K & M (if M he be) Dinner

I looked forward to Benedict Ambrose's attendance at his friends' annual "Charles King and Martyr" dinner with some trepidation. 

To explain Chas. K&M: some Anglicans, Scottish Episcopalians and Catholic converts have a soft spot in their hearts for Charles I,  executed on January 30, 1649. Naturally Charles really was a king, but these Anglicans and ex-Anglicans maintain that Charles was also a martyr because the Scots handed him over to the Roundheads after he refused to swear to establish Presbyterianism in England. 

In short, Charles was a martyr for the Anglican religion, or so his adherents hold. And since old-fashioned Scottish Piskies are themselves a marginalized group, long snubbed by Catholics, long suspected (or even harassed) by Presbyterians, and then betrayed by their own now-woke communion, is it any wonder than they (even if now mostly Catholics) gather annually to commemorate Good King Charles? 

It is also an excuse to drink themselves paralytic, and you couldn't pay me enough to go, even if women were invited. And since BA can't get very far without a walking stick, and because the last time he drank alone with men where there were stairs he fell down them, I was a tad concerned. BA's phone call from A&E is a trauma I revisit every time he tells me he's going to the pub. Fortunately, this is only once a month or so, and he never drinks more than two pints. 

However, that pub has no stairs, and his host's flat is at the top of a lot of them. Thus, I popped out of my office yesterday to tell BA not to fall down these stairs and to remind him of the scar over his left eyebrow.

"If you're going to hold that over me every time I go out, I'll... I'll... just have to take it," said BA. 

But he was so incensed by my suggestion that he inform his host that he might need help getting down the stairs that I gave up my plan of secretly emailing the host myself. However, BA had reserved his taxi home and trousered the £25 I handed him, so I hoped for the best and went back to editing articles about the sharp decline of Western Civilization. 

When I was done, BA was at the party and I discovered we had no oregano. We might not have had it for some time because--brace yourselves, Gordonites--BA does almost all the cooking and his recipe for spaghetti sauce is entirely unlike my mum's. Anyway, I made myself a halfway house of a spaghetti sauce, cooked some pasta and settled down to watch The Gay Divorcee on the BBC.

The Gay Divorcee was over and I was watching International Lindy Hop Championship videos on YouTube when I heard a commotion at the front door and a voice that was not BA's. I got up to investigate and found BA propped up against the vestibule wall by his host. The host was looking very well, I must say, and was wearing a sharp jacket. Never one to ignore male pulchritude, I complimented the host on his appearance. 

But he had apparently seen better days, as he had had to carry BA (and his stick) from the taxi, and two of our neighbours, coming home from the pub, had had to come to his assistance. BA, fizzing with happiness and wonder, told me that it had also taken three men to get him down the tenement stairs. 

I imagined the scene with great wifely smugness. 

"I'm not drunk," said BA cheerfully as I slowly lugged him from the minute vestibule to the loo. "I didn't drink more than anyone else, but when my taxi cab came, my legs wouldn't work. It was as if someone had turned off a switch."

"In fact you were literally paralytic," I said. "How much did you drink?"  

"Two gin-and-tonics, three glasses of wine with dinner, then two glasses of dessert wine, and three ports."

"That's ten drinks. I think that's a week's worth of the NHS recommendation all at once."

"But I was able to walk from the dining room to the sitting room! It was after the singing. It was as if someone had turned off a switch." 

Fortunately, this switch turned off only everything from his knees down, so eventually I was able to get him from the loo to his bed. It did cross my mind that it was a mercy that I go to the gym five times a week.  

"I am going to blog about this tomorrow," I warned him. 

Nevertheless, he provided me with a wealth of detail about the dinner and how much he had eaten (ah, steroids) and how amazing the trifle was (made from hot cross buns--a brilliant idea we must try) and how [So-and-So] had sung "The Vicar of Bray", including the new verses BA had penned for him. Already very satisfied with life (and amazed rather than frightened about the off-switch), he was very pleased that I wasn't cross. 

And I wasn't cross because the deal was that he could go to the party but not end up in A&E. Also, this is the first time in 15 years that BA has had to be carried to and from a taxi by his hard-drinking pals, so it had all the charm of novelty. Plus, the dysfunction of his knees wasn't just the booze, obviously.  

All's well that ends well, and this morning his knees are working again. 

What not to say

Hidden behind all this jollity is my husband's illness. This time, I am very relieved to report, he is not in much pain and he is not wasting away while doctors drive me insane by telling me he must be fine. Instead, he is having difficulty walking. We do not as yet know officially why, but Dr. Google has given us a clue. 

Now I very much regret never having learned how to drive. I seem to recall staring at a black rotary phone on the wall when I was 16 or 17, phone book open on the kitchen table, and not having the courage to call a driving school. The four great fears of my childhood were 1. Drowning 2. Dogs 3. Adult strangers 4. Talking to adult strangers on the phone. (That's the order in which I got over them.) Childhood swimming lessons were hell, and I never learned to drive.  

The upshot is that we have had to ask a fellow TLM-goer for the favour of driving Benedict Ambrose from a bus stop on the way to church to actual church. So that is how we are. He's getting another scan this week, we're seeing his oncologist next week, what's new with you?

My preferred way to cope with BA's return to illness is not to think or talk about it. Seeing someone you love sick and sad is one of the worst things in life. The less I think or talk about it, the better. If someone outside our marital dyad wants to talk about it, I feel trespassed upon.

I am learning--the hard way--what not to say to someone whose spouse has cancer and hopefully what not to say to someone who does have cancer.  Very high up on the list of what not to say--and it turns out this occurs frequently enough to appear on cancer care websites--is that you know of a miracle cure. 

1. Don't impart your knowledge of a miracle cure.

The miracle cure can take four forms, in my experience. There is the secular mango smoothie miracle cure. There is the traditional Catholic holy oil cure. There is the palm-to-the-forehead-falling-backward TV evangelist cure that apparently some Catholics now indulge in. And then there is the summon-a-Medivac-helicopter-to-remove-him-from-the-satanic-schemes-of-the-NHS-and-take-him-across-the-ocean-to-the-Mayo-Clinic miracle cure. 

For the record, this last one is the worst, especially when accompanied by both the accusation that you are criminally negligent of your spouse and the fantasy that people who love him have agreed that you need an intervention. 

Do not impart your knowledge of a miracle cure to a sick person or his/her spouse unless you are their very best friend/beloved sibling, and they are now so desperate they will try anything. 

If you are a mere friend or even just an acquaintance but really cannot stop yourself, just send the holy oil by post with a nice letter. When B.A. was slowly sliding into a coma, I very much appreciated kind letters, and I even anointed B.A. with the holy oils that came along with them when it looked like he could be dying. It is important to note, however, that I was in the now so desperate they will try anything stage. I had also asked for kind letters over Facebook. And I'm also a traditional Catholic, so miraculous holy oil is almost obviously within my range of what is tasteful. 

Incidentally, someone once insisted in putting me in touch with a nun who sent me chalky gravel from a miraculous shrine where other infertile married ladies went to beg God for a child. I was told to put the gravel in a glass of water and drink it. Readers, I drank it. I'm lucky to be alive--and that nun is also lucky I'm alive, for otherwise my family would have sued her order into oblivion. 

Unhappy desperate people will do stupid things. Their families should keep an eye on them. 

2. Don't talk about another person who has cancer. 

Thinking about your loved one's cancer is bad enough. It is too much to have to think about other people's cancer, too. If you combine this with a miracle cure, it will intrude upon the thoughts of the patient or the spouse that God might love that other person more than them. Or that God already sent them a miracle, and now look what's happened. 

3. Don't ask the spouse how the sick person is when the sick person is around. 

If you really want to know how a sick person is, ask the sick person. If he's my sick person, he will appreciate you asking and will tell you some polite version of the truth. 

4. Don't ask the spouse how he/she is in a gloomy, caring voice. If the spouse looks cheerful, sound cheerful.

The spouse of a sick person is probably not really fine, but in Anglo-Saxon countries she or he can automatically say "I'm fine" and change the subject. In other countries, you probably shouldn't ask unless you really want to know. The answer could be "I'm stressed out of my mind, and I wake up in the middle of the night imagining the worse, and we've had to tear up our retirement plans, and I'm terrified we're going to end up on a council estate being terrorized by fentanyl dealers. How are you?"

5. Don't say "What can I do to help?" without having contemplated the wide range of what that could be. 

Horror of horrors, they might need a loan. Or a drive to the rubbish tip. Or a drive to Mass every Sunday. Or someone to call the Council about something complicated. Or to find out something to do with taxes. Or to make and bring a meal every Thursday. Or to mow their lawn and the next door neighbour's lawn, for he always used to mow her lawn, too. Or to babysit their sullen 10-year-old. Whatever it is, it will not be as easy and fun as one batch of cookies. 

If you are lucky, the answer will be "Please pray for us." At any rate, think hard about what it is you are willing and able to do for a sick person and his or her spouse before you offer, and be specific.

"If you need a drive next week, I'd be happy to pick you up from ...."

"If you'd like a lasagna, I made too many for my party and I could drive one or two over." 

"Listen, I'm going to the rubbish tip tomorrow, and I'm wondering if you have anything to go."

"Hey, it's a gorgeous day, and I'm dying for some exercise. Does your lawn need mowing?" 

That would be really very kind--but only if it's something that you very much would like to do, of course. Nobody likes feeling beholden. 

Meanwhile, I am truly very grateful for all the prayers and love to hear that children pray for us every night. My faith in the prayers of innocent little children is much stronger than my faith in Padre Pio holy oil, etc. 

6. Don't talk about it without first asking "Do you want to talk about it?" 

If he or she does, you won't be talking about it. You will be listening about it. Are you up for that? If not, don't ask. And you don't have to ask if it's not your job to listen. Me, I have a therapist, two priests and a mother.

Advice put into practice

The other day I noticed that an acquaintance had an elegant new haircut. It very much suited her, and I said so. She later volunteered that she had recently had chemotherapy and this was one of the few things she could now do with her hair. I said that I was sorry to hear about the chemo, and she thanked me. Then I said that her haircut was indeed very smart and that I was glad to see she was still [out and about]. "Oh, always," she said cheerfully.  

End of conversation. I did not mention BA. 

 

"How to ask a girl to dance (6 mistakes)"

A Polish friend once grumbled to me that all the young single women in his town were interested solely in mountain climbing and dancing. My advice was that he should either seek women elsewhere or hire a private dancing instructor. I also recommended instructional videos on YouTube. 

"Dancing is a human activity like singing and cooking," I said (in Polish, so I really said something like "Dancing is a people thing like to sing and kitchen"). "Everyone can learn people things."

Coincidentally, for Christmas this Polish friend sent me a bag of Boże Krówki toffees wrapped in quotations by post-Vatican II saints. The last toffee wrapper revealed a Thomistic thought of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, i.e. "Pokora to nic innego jak prawda," which in English is "Humility is nothing other than the truth." 

I very much like this saying, for it is another way of telling people to be rooted in the reality of who they are. It is not about putting yourself down or bewailing your lack of "talent."* It is not humble to say that you cannot sing or dance, especially if you belt out songs in the shower or perform a secret two-step behind closed doors. It is more humble to acknowledge that you could sing and dance as a child and would probably be able to do so again with instruction and practice. 

I offer myself as evidence that a monolingual ballet-program dropout can, with enough persistence, converse in three languages and teach waltzing classes, although not at the same time, and all imperfectly. 

That said, I did come across an amusing video about mistakes to avoid when asking girls to dance, which combined my new interest in dance instruction (formerly high up on my list of worst nightmares) with my decade-plus interest in Polish. Thanks to the physical comedy, I think it quite hilarious and will share it here with a rough translation.  

Incidentally, I am credibly informed that the dance instructor is not himself Polish and has a strong accent of some other Slavic nation, and therefore I should not feel bad about not hearing all the words. To be honest (humble), I hadn't been feeling bad. Polish is hard. Not grasping the totality of a foreign-to-you language is not a moral issue. But now I am bragging, for getting past the agony of error is even harder than Polish. 

Take it away, Dimitri!  

Hello. I'm Dmitri. In this guide, I will show you how to invite a [potential] partner to dance and how not to ask. Let's begin. (He raises his thumb). First thing. Never say to your partner, "Hey! Come here!" (Buzzer.) It's a mistake. Always use a line like this: "May I ask you to dance?" (Harp.) Always an elegant line. 

(Thumb raise) Okay, second thing. Never grab your [potential] partner by the arm. (Buzz.) Always offer your hand. And she will give you her hand. (Harp.) Always wait for her decision. Never do this (He puts out his hand) violently. 

Okay, third thing. NEVER do a mating dance in front of a [potential] partner. (Mating dance begins!) I know that a lot of guides on YouTube advise that you encourage her and so on. NEVER do this. (BUZZ!) It is simply laughable. (He looks serious in the studio) If your [potential] partner, the lady is a decent sort, she really isn't going to judge you. If you like the music, go up to her (Harp) in a very dignified manner. Keep elegant. DON'T do a mating (he folds hands) dance. I beg you. 

(Raises hands) Always approach your partner with a wide smile. (Partner twiddles hair.) Never go up to your partner looking like you're about to kill her. (BUZZ!) That is always ridiculous. (He approaches with a wide smile.) There is always a big chance that she [Harp muffles what I assume is] will accept your proposal to dance. (He leads her away.)

Fifth thing, be prepared to dance.  [...] Don't go rocking up to her like a bear.  (Buzz.) First, master the basics of a dance. The simplest is Disco-Samba. It works for all types of music that you might encounter at a pub, a wedding, a dance club, and so on. 

Remember that even if you follow all the guidelines I have laid down, always expect refusals. (Knee to rear.) If the girl refuses, if you're a normal guy, if you don't look like a homeless person, [...] then just ask another girl, the girl beside her. For example if a girl says to you, "Ew, yuck, ew," simply tell her you're not asking her and ask a girl who is very modest, whom nobody has asked. That way, you don't lose face---and--- (he shrugs) you get a partner for that dance. 

(Hands fly apart.) Remember that a great girl, a decent sort of woman, never judges you [? I think that's what he's saying) at a dance, or a wedding, or your graduation dance, and so on. If a woman refuses to dance, well, she's just not your woman. 

I hope that I have helped you a little, and and I invite you to our dance course. Ciao! 

Thank you very much, Dmitri, and thanks also to the many kind and patient Poles I know who have contributed to my ability to hear actual Polish words and not just zh-sz-cz-yaka-JEEV-na-koh-bee-ET-a.

*What we usually ascribe to talent usually comes from  hard work done for a long time under expert instruction. Then there is that little extra God-given something that separates the impressive from the astonishing. You probably won't be the next Fred Astaire or Eleanor Powell, but you can learn to dance. 

Newlyweds in a Housing Crisis

It is time to return to my fictional Suzie and Scooter and discover if it is true that Scooter's wife won't have to work. I will being by observing that although I am Susan, I am not Suzie. For one thing I am old enough to be her mother and, for another, I was enormously ignorant about money until my husband got sick. If you can't be a good role model, at least be an effective warning to others. 

Right, so to recap, Suzie spent her income with abandon from the age of 12 to 13, when she was shocked to discover how much she could have saved. Fired by the completely natural, healthy and traditional ambition to save for her eventual wedding, she watched every penny she made after that like a hawk. When she was 18, she put her life savings into a low-cost Stocks and Shares Investment Savings Plan, and thanks to adding 75% of her earnings to this pot for another 7 years, she has a Considerable Sum. 

I forgot to calculate in her pension earnings, so let's say that Suzy's nest egg made her £10,000 between 2022 and 2023, that is, before her 25th birthday in 2023. 

Suzie was not allowed to marry Scooter until he was solvent, so they were engaged for an entire year. They married on Suzie's 25th birthday, and it was all very romantic and glam. Suzie had horrified her colleagues by retiring from salaried employment a week before the occasion, and Scooter's take home pay was £2000.80 a month.  

After the honeymoon, Suzie discovered that a lifetime of earning, saving, and gloating over her ISA made it difficult to be happy doing nothing but housework, shopping, and sewing, so she found some people happy to pay her to walk their dogs. Scooter refused to touch a penny of her ISA income, saying his salary should be enough. 

But was it? Having looked at rentals in their town, I have determined that they had to pay at least £975 a month for a 2 bedroom flat (the second bedroom, which is tiny, fortuitous, as Suzie was pregnant by her 26th birthday) in a decent neighbourhood. I have also asked British car owners how much it costs to run a car per month. As the clickbait headlines say, the answer may shock you. 

Here are Suzie and Scooter's average monthly expenses for 2023, not including their wedding or honeymoon. 

Rent: £975

Groceries: £250  

Car (including petrol): £250

Council Tax: £153

Gas & Electric: £150

Entertainment (including the Pub): £100

Broadband: £30

Church donations: £40.80 (The 80p was for the coffee & biscuits after Mass, 20 p a time)

Charges for both mobile phones: £30 

Gifts for others (excluding Christmas): £20 

Sundries: £30 

TOTAL: £2,028.80

Oh la la. £28 over. Fortunately, Suzie made £250 a month from her dog-walking. The £222 she and Scooter saved from it went into a Lifetime ISA, in which they are growing a down payment for a home of their very own. 

Objections

Holidays: Having been on Suzie's self-funded dream honeymoon this year, they didn't feel the need of another holiday. When Scooter gets a raise in 2024, they will put most of the extra money in a Holiday Fund. 

Emergency Fund: Scooter, who enjoys his work but also reading FIRE books with the zeal of a convert, wondered if the £222 ought not to go into an Emergency Fund instead. Suzie, however, suggested that they should consider the Capital Gains of her self-earned dowry their Emergency Fund. Besides, the UK government tops up the Lifetime ISA by a 25% (up to £1000) bonus per year. This bonus is, depending on your outlook, either "free money" or a well-deserved tax return. 

Scooter's Gym: Scooter quit paying gym fees, for his enlightened employer offers gym memberships in the work benefits package. 

The Low Broadband Bill: They don't have a home phone, and they are willing to switch whenever to keep a cheap beginning deal. 

TV licence? They don't have a telly, and I will not repeat what Suzie and Scooter said about the BBC. 

Christmas: The wheels came off the budget car at Christmas, and Suzie dipped into her Capital Gains after all. However, she used most of the money to buy materials for rag dolls. She made rag dolls for everybody who didn't get a bottle of gin, and they were so popular she is planning to make and sell more on Etsy. 

Clothing: After a year of no new clothes and shoes, Suzie has had it. Everyone has a weakness or two, and Suzie's is her wardrobe. Therefore, on her 26th birthday, she told Scooter she had set herself a family clothing budget of 25% of her capital gains. At this date, that represents £2,500 a year and is well under Suzy's tax threshold. Suzie, like all right-thinking capitalists, loathes taxes.  

Baby Stuff: Suzie is in this unsalaried-married-woman situation because she is that kind of Trad. But like most Trads, she is in a family and a community that is delighted to shift boxes of baby stuff from one home to another. But whatever else The Baby will need when he or she is born this summer, Suzie and Scooter will pay for it out of Scooter's raise and Suzie's clothing budget. 

Conclusion   

Scooter and Suzie can't quite live on one salary in the city in which they live. Therefore, Suzie doing odd jobs and then beginning her own home business, which her creator (me) has decided will flourish, is the only way forward for now, unless she contributes more of her capital gains, which Scooter has vetoed. 

Scooter has a solid profession, a good work ethic, an amiable heart, and a fantastic household manager, so I am not particularly concerned for his and Suzie's financial future. When they are middle-aged they will think about the penny-pinched first years of their marriage with nostalgia. 

*UPDATE: You may be still reeling at their monthly rent and wondering if they would not be better off buying a home. The answer is: not yet. Even if Suzie were to scrape off £30,000 of her capital for a 10% down payment, and even at just a fixed rate of 5%, they would be repaying about £1,579 per month on any flat or townhouse in their town resembling a family home. They would also have to pay monthly home insurance and boiler insurance. If anything needed repairing, they would have to pay for that, too. 

Incidentally, my musings should not be taken as a substitute for professional financial advice. If you're curious about FIRE in the UK, check out Monevator. In the USA, Mr. Money Mustache is a superstar. In Canada, the Millennial Revolution have interesting (if foulmouthed) things to say.