I have been entirely faithful to Mr Walsh and he has been entirely faithful to me. I would ‘know’ if he hadn’t. My woman’s intuition would alert me. Also I keep a close eye on things – lipstick on a shirt collar, the smell of some other woman’s perfume – but he never let me down. Of course, there was that unpleasant incident a few years ago when his ‘ex’ turned up. Nan O’Shea. The woman he ‘dumped’ when he ‘fell’ for me. She came back into our lives and asked if they could be friends, but I nixed that good and lively. Friends! Does she take me for a gom?
U is also for Umbrellas. ‘They’ often say that Ireland would be a lovely country if we could only put a roof over it. The rain, do I need to explain? The rain that never stops. It could get you ‘down’ and I often say that if umbrellas hadn’t been invented I would never be able to leave the house. I also often say that the man who invented umbrellas should be canonized. (D’you see the way I said ‘man’ there? And not ‘woman’! If Claire heard me say that she’d be down on me like a ‘ton of bricks’! She claims to be a feminist. Although she looks nothing like one, with her short skirts and her fake tan and her hair extensions.)
I’m very partial to a nice umbrella. You know the way some women collect Dresden china? Or husbands? Well, umbrellas are my ‘thing’. I no longer buy dear ones because ‘sod’s law’ says I will leave it on the bus on its first outing. But I get given gifts of them. When people go on holidays to foreign parts they will often bring me back a novelty umbrella. I have quite a collection at this stage. When I die, I don’t mind if it’s donated to the ‘V’ and ‘A’. For free.
V is for … Funnily enough, the only word I can think of is ‘vagina’, and the less said about that the better. Will we move on to W? No, hold it, hold it, I have a word …
V is for Vajazzling. It was Helen who first mentioned it to me – oh take her to know about it. Apparently Claire gets it done all the time, the vajazzling. If you ask me – although no one ever does – Claire seems to spend her entire life doing ‘maintenance’ on her appearance.
There was one day that Helen called in to me and Claire was expected also – I can’t remember what we were meant to be doing, but we were meant to be doing something together. Maybe going to the garden centre? Although I don’t know why I said that because I’ve never been to a garden centre in my life. I see other families on the telly doing it and I wonder why we don’t, but we don’t …
Oh yes! Now I remember what we were meant to be doing. We were going up to Shanganagh – that’s the graveyard – to book a plot for myself and Mr Walsh, for when we ‘kick’ the ‘bucket’. It might sound ‘morbid’ but you’ve got to box clever these days – you can’t just up and die and expect a plot to be waiting for you, nice and handy. There’s high demand for good plots. You’ve got to think ahead.
For some reason, Claire and Helen had decided to accompany me – ‘for the laugh’ to quote Helen.
Helen had arrived and Claire hadn’t so I took my life in my hands and asked Helen, ‘Where’s Claire?’ Then I waited to get my head bitten off – ‘How would I know where Claire is? What am I? Her keeper?’ – the usual ‘blah’.
But Helen surprised me by addressing me civilly. ‘Claire will be a bit late,’ she said. ‘A couple of spangles fell out of her vajazzle, she’s getting them glued back in.’
‘Vajazzle?’ says I. ‘What’s a vajazzle?’
Once again I expected to be ate without salt, but Helen said, ‘Vajazzling? Have you been hiding under a rock? Yeah, look at the state of you, you have been hiding under a rock. Okay, I’ll tell you what vajazzling is.’
So Helen explained. Do you know about it? Well, you get all the hair on your ‘lady region’ waxed away and then you get little glittery things glued on instead to make a pattern, like a little red heart, or a flower, or a butterfly, or whatever you want.
At first I was suspicious. I thought it was another one of those things Helen tells me that aren’t real, just to make mock of me, but she produced her phone and showed me ‘articles’ and even a few photos.
At that stage I believed her but I was a bit baffled by the whole business – why would a person go to so much trouble? – and then I ‘got’ it.
‘Sort of like a tattoo?’ I said. ‘A form of body art?’
Helen scrunched up her forehead and said, ‘Body art? What do you know about body art, old woman?’ (That’s right, that’s what she calls me – ‘old woman’ – have you ever heard such disrespect?)
‘Don’t scrunch your forehead like that,’ I said. ‘You’ll get wrinkles. And fyi –’ (I really enjoy saying ‘fyi’) ‘I know about a lot of things.’
‘You didn’t know about vajazzling,’ Helen said, because she can never let a thing go.
But still, we were ‘getting on’ well and we had an ‘in depth’ chat about all the things you could get vajazzled onto your ‘area’. ‘You could get an arrow,’ I said. ‘Pointing to “down there”. So he’d know where to put it, like.’
We had a good old laugh – she can be a great laugh, Helen, if you get her on the right day – and I said, ‘Do you get vajazzled?’
And she said, ‘Sometimes.’
Then I said, ‘Does Margaret get vajazzled?’ And well! We ‘fell’ around the place laughing! It was mean, I know, but if you knew Margaret … She’s really not that sort. She’d shave her legs now and again, if you put a gun to her head, but that’d be the extent of it.
‘Does Anna get vajazzled?’ I asked.
‘’Course!’ Helen said, emphatically. ‘She works in the beauty industry and she lives in New York City! It’s the law!’ (That was a joke, the ‘law’ bit.)
‘Does Rachel get vajazzled?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know …’ Helen said, thoughtfully. Because you wouldn’t know with Rachel; she can be quite serious since she got those qualifications in being an addiction counsellor, and maybe it’s the wrong thing to say, but there are times when I think she was more fun when she was still on the drugs …