Two b and b guests expected any time now. Four more tomorrow. All staying for the weekend – plus my stint as safari supper hostess on Saturday night. Colin says the cooker will be working by Friday morning. Tricia says not being quite ready for the supper will be “all part of the fun.” No problem there then . . .
Nearly there . . .
So there we were, standing in the kitchen at 9am today, contemplating the gaps. The man from B&Q looked at the kitchen plan, looked at me, and smiled wanly. Yes, there were gaps, he agreed. And yes, it was my fault because they had been on the plan and I’d agreed to it. But he smiled again and said not to worry, it could all be put right very easily and without any argument. New cupboard, new work surface, new drawers, new everything. No more gaps.
“So – like I said, no problem there, Mrs Everett. We can fix it all. There’s just one thing. You will have to pay for it. Much as I would love to be able to say we’ll do it for nothing, I can’t. That’s just the way it is.”
I turned to the nice lady he’d brought along with him who was the showroom manager of the B&Q store. What did she think, I asked. She looked at the spaces into which the stylish gaps had been planned, gave a little frown and shook her head in what looked to me like disbelief.
Five minutes later the problem was resolved. It would be put right and we wouldn’t have to pay another penny. So – good for her, good for him, good for B and Q. I will eat my words. In the new, red, shiny fitted kitchen. Fingers crossed . . .
I know the answer is yes. It is me. Who else can it be? Who else’s fault is it that my new, super-duper, lovely red kitchen that I’ve worked and saved for, and which two nice men called Colin and Chris came to fit this very morning is – guess what? - approximately two and a half feet too short. Oh no. Hang on a minute: one foot eleven inches too short on one side and seven inches too short on the other. Of course it wasn’t the fault of the first man who came to measure it, or even the second one – surveyor, no less – who came after him to make 100 per cent sure that there were no little glitches. They took their very careful measurements and drew up a plan with lots of numbers and arrows and little green dots on with a line across (single socket) and some more with two lines across (double socket, wouldn’t you know) and yellow bits and blue bits and so many lines you go cross-eyed looking at them. And I never once thought to say: “Could you just explain that to me please? Could you just confirm that this little drawing means that the units on the right actually meet the fridge-freezer and don’t stop seven inches away from it and leave a massive gap? Oh yes – and could I just seek reassurance that the unit on the opposite wall meets the bit where the window starts and doesn’t stop one foot eleven inches away from it so that instead of a cupboard which I could put things in, and a work surface which I could put things on, which would be really useful, there’s another massive gap which – guess what - I have no use for?” And the reason I didn’t ask all this was because I just kind of assumed that kitchen designers, for that is what they call themselves, designed kitchens that fitted given spaces, not kitchens that don’t. How stupid an assumption is that?
And the worst thing of all is that now, when I look at that plan, I can see with total clarity what had eluded me before: those white bits that I didn’t even realise were white bits are in fact spaces. It means there is nothing there. How did I miss that?
“I don’t want you to worry about it,” says the man on the end of the ‘phone – the man, in fact, who took the measurements the second time just to make sure there weren’t any silly gaps or anything. ”I shall come and see you in the morning and it will be sorted. The main thing, Mrs Everett, is that you should be happy with your kitchen. That’s all that matters. So don’t worry. Everything will be ok.”
Oh good. I’m smiling again. But it won’t be ok. Will it? I just know it.
Cover of Say Yes
“You know where I live, don’t you?” asks the plumber, when I say I’ll call round with the cash for the leaking pipe he’s just fixed. “Yes, of course!” I reply with an air of “why wouldn’t I?” Except the real answer is “No. Tell me.”
“I’ve said I’ll run a discussion on what puts people off church,” says a friend. “Will you do it with me?” I look at my diary and see I have a prior engagement – perfect. I open my mouth to say “Sorry. I can’t. I have a meeting that night” and find myself saying”Yes – sounds fascinating.”
“You’ll sell some raffle tickets for me, won’t you?” Yes. (No. I’ll just give you £20 not to have to sell them). “Would you do a sponsored read/walk/anything?” Yes. (No. Same as raffle tickets, only make it £50). “Please send this to 10 strong women whom you love, admire, and respect and send it back to me so I know you have.” OK. (No! Just press the delete button. I hate getting emails telling me how wonderful I am. My ego needs no boosting, I can tell you).
Why do we say yes when we want to say no? Or is it just me? I don’t think so. Though I did once work with somebody who, as she was leaving, was asked by a colleague: “You will keep in touch won’t you?”
No,” she answered without a flicker of hesitation. He looked stricken. “But we’ve all been good mates haven’t we? It would be great to meet up from time to time – wouldn’t it?” He was sounding a bit feeble. “No. We’ve been colleagues, and I’ve enjoyed working with you. But the chances of me actually wanting to make the effort to see you all again are – well, nil. Cheerio!” And with that she was off.
Everybody was devastated. What’s wrong with her? Why is she being so nasty? Do you think she’s having a breakdown? They clearly all expected her to say “yes” because most of the time, that’s what we do. Will you help me paint the living-room? Of course! Will you come to my total immersion baptism? (yes, really). Love to! Have you read War and Peace? Yes – but when I was 16, so please don’t ask me for a resume.
Now, I can understand why intellectual pride might lead us to lie about having read a great work of literature, but pretending to know where the plumber lives? What’s that about? Somebody wise and clever once said the thing we fear most in life is rejection and the thing we most crave is acceptance. I’ve lived in the village nearly five years – the fact that I don’t know where the plumber lives might suggest I’m just a tiny bit thick, and who wants to know a thicko? This is beginning to fit the rejection theory.
But just a minute – I asked the same friend/colleague one day if she would join me for lunch with another colleague I’d invited, and who I actually found quite difficult to have a conversation with. “No thanks,” she said. “I’d rather stick pins in my eyes.” Oh come on, I say, help me out here. I don’t want to be on my own with her for an hour. “So why have you asked her for lunch then?” I say it’s because I feel a bit sorry for her. “Well, do you know what? I don’t. And I don’t want to have lunch with her. In fact, I’m not that keen on having lunch with you. I want to read my paper and eat my apple – in peace.”
Did I feel rejected and unloved? Did I hate her, decide she was a nasty, selfish piece of work? No. Because she’s not. What she is, is honest. When she pays me a compliment – which admittedly isn’t often – I know she means it. There’s no artifice about her, she doesn’t suck up to anybody, and you can be totally honest with her in return. She makes no excuses, has no regrets, never – or rarely ever – finds herself somewhere she doesn’t want to be, doing things she’d rather not do, and never, ever has to ring round friends asking if they know where the plumber lives. She never tries to sell me a raffle ticket, never tells me how wonderful I am and, as far as I know, has never done a sponsored walk. But she has read War and Peace.
Or so she says . . .
First-class travel, first-class snack, first-class service. Simplicity, and attention to detail. And we wonder why Richard Branson – sorry, Sir Richard Branson – is a multi-billionaire. I know he comes in for a fair bit of criticism – the only way to avoid that is to do nothing with your life, and definitely don’t commit the ultimate sin of actually being rich and successful – but this is a tiny piece of perfection: lunch on a Virgin train. Herb-y black and green olives, a little pack of cream cheese, a tiny pot of pate and some savoury biscuits. Oh yes: and a nice crisp apple. My only regret is not having photographed the free lunch as I travelled with East Coast: an indefinable white slush, a glimpse of a passing mushroom, and a couple of cubes of something that had never flapped a wing or clucked, all wrapped up in a sad, damp, pastry parcel. Six or seven soggy chips and some limp salad. As I say – when it’s so easy to get it right, why do so many service providers manage to get it so monumentally wrong?
PS Nearly forgot – proper cutlery, and a free glass of wine, with my lovely snack.
This week saw the last episode in the present series of the BBC’s ‘Rev’, the half-hour comedy/drama about an inner city vicar – liberal, loving, and a very long way from being successful in any way the world would recognise – which has been our Tuesday night treat for the past seven weeks. Totally unmissable. Ian, an atheist, loves it as much as I do and we’ve both been moved nearly to tears by it a few times, none more so than in the penultimate episode shown last week.
The archdeacon, played to painful perfection by Simon McBurney, turns out – to no-one’s great surprise – to be gay. As he seeks to become a bishop, we witness his increasing desperation to silence those who might betray his secret. In the end, though, it’s he himself who gives the game away. When confronted in the interview with a direct question about his sexuality this vain, precious poseur, with his dinky little quiff, emerges as a man of total integrity, unable to deny his true self no matter what the consequences.
The 30-second scene in which he tells Adam (Rev of the title) what he has done, and his realisation of what it will cost him, says more about the Anglican Church’s attitude to gays than any one of the endless reports and commissions it has produced and presided over: The Lambeth Commission, The Windsor Report, The Windsor Continuation Group, The Listening Process, The Panel of Reference – if words were money they’d have paid off the global debt, never mind the national one, many times over.
And it’s all been in the name of maintaining this precious thing, the Anglican Communion. Which isn’t a Communion any more, anyway, because there are within the church those who not only won’t take communion from a woman priest, but from a male priest who was ordained by a bishop who’d been ‘tainted’ by ordaining women. There are also those who accept openly gay priests, ordain gays to the priesthood, and have no problem at all with offering blessings in church to gay couples. So the split is not only already there, but has become a yawning chasm. (I have actually attended a bizarre ritual called – and only the Church of England could dream this one up – ‘a Mass of the second integrity’). So the church for the past 10 or more years has tied itself in knots trying to hold this non-existent thing together, in a bid to appease those who oppose gays in general and gay priests in particular: they’ve even managed to come up with a formula that says it’s ok for a priest to be gay as long as he doesn’t actually have sex. It’s bonkers, and it’s shameful.
I like the Archbishop of Canterbury. I’ve heard him preach, I’m in awe of his massive intellect, his ability to speak (I think) at least 10 languages: his gentleness, his genuine concern for the poor and the dispossessed. I cannot imagine what agonies he suffers daily for the sake of the church he leads, and the God he loves. But I think on this issue, as on any other, he should have put truth and integrity above everything, and spoken up for gay couples everywhere, instead of presiding over this agonising, damaging, and ultimately futile exercise of trying to hold together a non-existent communion, thereby denying a whole group of people their basic human rights.
Rev has been a gentle, sympathetic portrayal of the Church of England at its best. It hasn’t ridiculed it, or portrayed its people as the usual ludicrous stereotypes. It’s the best bit of propaganda the church could have had. I just hope somebody in the hierarchy appreciates that.
Not being an economist I can’t pretend to know what’s brought us to the precipice of global economic collapse or indeed what it’s going to take to stop us all tipping over the edge. Oh, just a minute: correction – not being an economist means I am perfectly qualified to pronounce on these matters. It must be the economists who know nothing, otherwise we’d never have got to this point. Simples . . . a meerkat could work that one out. Or a mere woman. Me.
So here it is in a nutshell. My answer to everything that’s wrong in the world. One word – service.
Ok, maybe not everything but quite a lot. A man on Radio 4 the other morning said it wasn’t all doom and gloom, things didn’t have to hit rock bottom, but if we were going to survive the economic tsunami we’d need to be “sharp, focussed, and giving it everything we’ve got.” In the good old days – ie when we were all spending money we hadn’t got, individuals as well as governments – service didn’t matter that much. People would buy anyway, from anybody. But now, we all had to go the extra mile, look after our customers and each other, and realise that the world didn’t owe us a living. We were in danger of talking ourselves into an even gloomier scenario than the one the pundits predict and people would stop spending completely. Or so he said. He sounded like he knew what he was talking about and as he was a businessman not an economist or a politician, at least there was a fair chance.
Well, I have to say I haven’t seen much evidence of this dramatic change in attitude. Quite the reverse.
“We’ve been waiting 20 minutes to ber served. Is there a problem?” we ask in a small seaside cafe – a bustling hub of entrepreneurial activity. “Sorry – the chef’s having his break.” Truly – this was 12.20 in the afternoon. And yes indeed, there he was at the table, enjoying a sandwich and reading the paper.
At the next we waited another 20 minutes. Still no service. “Five minutes,” the manageress (presumably) told everybody who kept enquiring what had happened to their lunch. “There’s a problem in the kitchen.” This was the first time she’d mentioned it.
In a pub in Kirkby Stephen five of us drop in for lunch. “We’ve stopped doing food,” says the barman. “We were so successful we bought another place down the road and all the food’s down there. They took it yesterday” Was he serious? Yes, apparently. So we head a mile to the next pub – possibly the one he’s referring to. No food although it’s still only 1.30pm. Why not? “The chef didn’t get here in time to clean the fryer this morning.” After some persuasion they manage to produce a few stale, white bread sandwiches.
At the opposite end of the scale I go to John Lewis’s. We’re thinking (just thinking) we might need a new kitchen if we’re going to continue with the bed and breakfast which, despite the economic downturn, is thriving. If we and others like us keep it up, people really might decide the Yorkshire countryside is preferable to Ibiza. Or the Canaries. And that’s got to be good for the local economy, to say nothing of the national one.
After 15 minutes of hanging meaningfully around the kitchen displays being totally ignored by smart-suited assistants – sorry, Partners, which is what they are in John Lewis – chatting to each other, I make an approach. “Would you like to sell me a kitchen?” I enquire, hopefully. I can almost see the calculation in his eyes as he decides it’s not going to be a high-end, all-singing, all-dancing £25,000 job, because my hair’s a mess, I’m wearing no make-up and I give the appearance of having just popped out to the corner shop in the middle of doing the cleaning. (It’s not far from the truth: but guess what? I am still a customer). They want to charge £50 for a planning visit – after a 10-minute, below-stairs consultation to see if they will even come out to such a distant rural area – and they’ll charge an extra £300 on top of the normal fitting charge because we live so far away.
The point is this: I see no evidence – none whatsoever – that they are hungry for business. They’re not exactly rude or dismissive, but they are just not engaged. It’s difficult to put into words, but they are definitely not making any effort to sell me anything. Nobody is, because – so it seems – nobody cares.
Finally, the friend I’m shopping with gets to the counter with her goods – among them a glass jug, which she notices has a fault. “Oh no,” she says (she’s loaded with bags). “I’ve just brought this all the way down from the third floor!”
“Oh,” says the assistant (correction, Partner) dismissively. “Well there’s nothing I can do about that.”
But there is, my dear, there really is. You could have said: “Oh I’m so sorry. Hold on and I’ll get someone to bring you another one.” And you could have picked up the phone and done just that in, probably, two minutes flat. But you didn’t because it was just another customer, buying just another glass jug and a roll of wrapping paper or two. So instead of a happy customer saying “Wasn’t that nice of them” you have a disgruntled one saying “****** John Lewis. I thought they were supposed to be world-beaters on customer service. Might as well have gone to IKEA.”
And that’s what’s wrong with this country. Or maybe the world, for all I know. Not enough people care; about their customers, or about each other. Rhett Butler spoke for us all.
The Georgian Theatre Royal in Richmond – again – this time for DOUBT, a play by John Patrick Shanley which I originally watched (twice) as a film. It started life as a stage production (it won the Pulitzer prize) before Hollywood got hold of it and cast Meryl Streep as Sister Aloysius and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the charismatic priest whom she suspects (with no firm evidence, but a terrifying confidence in her own intuition) of sexually abusing an altar boy.
As a film, rather than a theatre, fan, and as someone who could watch Meryl Streep reading the phone book and still be entranced, I approached the play with expectations just above floor level. A tiny set – a desk, two chairs and a pulpit – and a cast of four actors I’d never even heard of, did nothing to lift my spirits. So my surprise was magnified a thousand-fold when it turned out to be one of the most gripping and powerful productions I’ve seen.
Clap Trap Productions (its website gives details of the cast and plays, but says little about itself as a company, which is a shame) did a superb job: the writing, direction (by Gareth Jenkins), set design – everything was pared to the bone: a supreme example of less being more. As the suspicions of Sister Aloysius (Cal Stockbridge) grow and her consequent mental pursuit of Father Flynn (brilliantly played by Simon Waley) intensifies, his confident demeanour crumbles, and the man whose personality and joie de vivre has dominated the stage, shrinks into himself in front of our eyes. It’s an extraordinary performance.
So – did he do it? Did he sexually abuse the vulnerable and innocent boy who idolises him? The more I see it, the more I think that to ask that simplistic question is actually to miss the point. The play invites us, instead, through a fine and multi-layered narrative, to reflect on issues of exploitation, both sexual and emotional, faith, morality, authority, homosexuality, compassion and human frailty.
It’s a play that follows you home. Ian and I – very different people, with different interests and often diametrically opposed perspectives on life (he an atheistic church lover, me a Christian non-attender) – are still talking about it three days later. This amazing theatre company is restricted, as far as I can see, to taking it only to Northern venues: Richmond was its opening night. Which is a shame: it deserves a much wider audience. But if you can’t get to the play (see the website for dates and venues) go for second best and get the DVD. Either way you won’t be disappointed.
Just seen a fantastic play – went with Ian and Charlie. It was We are Three Sisters by Blake Morrison. I loved his family memoir, And When Did You Last See Your Father, so had high hopes for the play. I wasn’t disappointed. It’s about the Bronte sisters and it was a Northern Broadsides touring production at the tiny but beautiful Georgian Theatre Royal in Richmond (North Yorks, not London). We had the most uncomfortable seats in the house (all that was left by the time I booked) and could see only 2/3 of the stage but still it didn’t spoil our enjoyment.
There’s a strong connection with Chekhov’s Three Sisters, apparently, which in itself is an incredible story: he apparently read a biography of the Brontes and there’s a suspicion he may have based his story on the family at Haworth. The writing is superb – despite the gloom of life in the vicarage, it has moments of hilarity – the acting terrific, the set simple but effective. It’s on tour ’til the end of November so catch it if you can. The website’s here www.northern-broadsides.co.uk.
