Tales from the Lightside 3: No Safety in Numbers

First published Monday, 26 April 2010

No Safety in Numbers

Early yesterday morning I arrived at the dentist's flossed, brushed and gleaming for my appointment in two weeks' time. The receptionist puzzled awhile over the list of patients for the day, before inputting my data and finally explaining a little too gently that my appointment was on Wed 28th, not Wed 14th. 'OK, no problem,' I beamed, 'see you in a couple of weeks then' and made my way back outside to await a bus home in the wind and rain.

The days when I would have tried to explain in flustered apology why I'd turned up on the wrong date were long since gone, though inwardly I was fuming at yet another morning of my life wasted in this fashion. Over the years, I've sent birthday gifts and cards a month early or late, missed important appointments by a week and once arrived at hospital packed and ready for an operation a full two months ahead of schedule. Only a few weeks ago I had my family in fits by innocently asking what date Christmas Eve is. I'm never sure what age I am and forget the answer within seconds of working it out.

I have dyscalculia. To anyone unfamiliar with the term, it means that I am dyslexic with numbers. They make almost no sense to my brain - never have done, and never will.

Dyscalculia has only recently been addressed by the teaching profession as a cognitive disorder in its own right; I only wish that this knowledge had been around when I was at school…the powerful connection I now have between maths and corporal punishment has left a lasting association in my unconscious mind.

Over the years I've evolved various resourceful methods to help me live in a numbers-based world, and the invention of the pocket calculator in the mid 70's did much to improve my quality of life, but day-to-day living is still fraught with problems.

People initially think I must be very stupid and once they've realised that this might not actually be the case assume I must therefore be either too lazy to acquire mathematical skills - "if you really want to learn it, you will, you just need to try harder" - or in possession of some kind of ditzy, ’girlish’ affectation. If those who judged us so harshly actually became aware of the depths of embarrassment to which the dyscalculic person is frequently subject, or the sheer amount of time we spend creating complex coping strategies for this frightening maths and commerce-oriented culture, they would probably be very surprised.

Dyscalculia affects not just a person's competence to process number, but also several other related fields which can include co-ordination, comprehension of direction, distance, left and right, memorisation of game rules, date and time recognition and measurement, accurate name and face recall and the ability to learn sequences of movement.

Whilst the child who struggles with numeracy is given some small social leeway, the adult who frequently makes 'childlike' mistakes both in speech and action comes up against a far less forgiving world. I've learned to join in with the general amusement that erupts whenever I fail to recognise a close acquaintance or apply the wrong name to someone I've known for twenty years and to shoulder full responsibility for every mess-up involving times or dates, but deep down inside something silently cringes under the blows of each additional mishap.

Remember that moment each January when you first go to write out the date after the New Year - a part of you wants to write the familiar number of the year just gone? A brief mental struggle ensues in a sort of grey Limbo as you update your brain to the change of digit. The first couple of times you write the new date feel a little weird but you quickly get the hang of it. Well for me, that initial moment of confusion - when the meaning of the symbols by which we measure our reality seems temporarily dissolved and fluid - is my permanent state. I live right there, in that soup of numeric weirdness. Most people have a kind of mental blackboard they can write on to perform calculations.  I have one too, it's just that the digits don't stick to it. If I try to mentally multiply 24 X 5 right now for example, I hear 'five-fours-are-twenty' and can put 0 in the 'totals box' beneath and just about carry the wriggling 2 (even though it's starting to fragment) to leave nearby...but now as I look back at the board for the next bit I see that it has wiped itself clean, and when I return to the totals box there's nothing there either, and already I cannot clearly recall the sum. Something about 25, yes?

If I have to count a lot of things, I do so under my breath in chanted groups of four, curling a finger under my palm for each completed group of eight, because there is no memorable rhythm to 10 and I get lost very fast. Even so I sometimes forget to include the number 15 which causes no end of muddle.

For me there is no safety in numbers: they are fishy, slippery, unreliable things with a life all their own. I've learnt to say that 'three from eight equals five' but between you and me, I'm not convinced, since if you count down three digits like this: 8, 7, 6, the answer could well be the end one, 6. If you're not going to include the 6, you shouldn't logically include the 8 either. Therefore 8 - 3 might really be 6, 5 or even 4. To navigate this kind of low-level arithmetic in situations where a calculator would be useless - such as whilst knitting or weaving for example - I often resort to two plates and transfer small objects from one to the other to mark each row. When shopping I struggle long and hard to tell whether '1 kg potatoes for £1.50' is better value than '1 kg at £2.50 Buy-One-Get-One-Free' and frequently pick up the more expensive one with the lower figure, convinced I've got a bargain. I'm pleasantly surprised to receive change from a £5 note for four items costing 99p each but conversely experience disappointment when said fiver fails to cover a £5.49 purchase.

Dyscalculia impacts into so many areas of daily life, and the worst part is never knowing - despite all one’s precautions - where it will strike next.

My landline phone has to have a large capacity to store contacts, because otherwise it takes four or five attempts - not to mention some increasingly irate householders taking my 'wrong number' calls - to dial out a single sequence in the right order, since transposition of number is the norm for dyscalculics. If I have to memorise a series of numbers for any reason I sing them, over and over until they can be written down. I don't dare own a credit card, cannot grasp the concepts behind Sudoku and am frequently unable to tell whether or not I'm winning a game of online Scrabble, even though the scores are visible side by side. Being told that something is six hundred yards away doesn't bring to mind any meaningful pictures of distance. If you ask me to select 'the second item on the left' I won't know where to begin to find it, and if you try and explain I may start to panic slightly. Take me for a driving lesson and you'll probably want a stiff drink afterwards.

When I'm not drastically early I tend toward pathological lateness as the passage of time is difficult to for me to assess with any degree of accuracy. A circular clock face is easier to read than the digital kind but calculating what time one needs to leave somewhere in order to catch a bus involves drawing an imaginary line across the dial from the time of the bus, and mentally blocking out all the minutes following up to the 12. Using circular anticlockwise finger movements I then calculate backwards (towards 'now') each incremental group of five-minutes to which I've designated walking there, saying my goodbyes, getting coat and bag etc., all accompanied by under-the-breath whispers as I try to memorize the sequence, since if I get distracted I'll lose all the information and have to start from scratch. A day, a week, a month and a year all have to be treated in the same way for me to have any hope of meeting social obligations. If you say 'See you Wednesday week' I will probably have to ask you what day that is before I can grasp it, and if you shout 'It's effing Wednesday, innit, you div' our friendship may be short-lived. 

I attended weekly Tai Chi classes for almost three years, but thanks to the inability to memorise sequences of movement I knew no more on my last day there than on my first. I play a mean game of poker, but even after four years still need the rules written out beside me. I can usually memorise a song, melody or poem after a couple of hearings and a gripping scene from a film or novel in one, but despite countless attempts have never been able to read written music.

One of the most puzzling things for a person with dyscalculia is the fact that some days are very much better than others. On a good day I can do simple arithmetic and recall someone's name within a few minutes of thinking about it. On a bad day (such as yesterday) I wonder whether I'm actually developing Alzheimers without noticing, and everyone's simply being too polite to tell me - or worse - they’ve told me but I've already forgotten!

The cause may be genetic since to some extent both my mother and sister shared this lack of facility with number, and within my immediate family at least I suffered no undue pressure on account of it. There were just some things we could not do well, and - with the exception of the household accounts - we avoided those activities as much as possible, concentrating our energies instead on those in which we excelled. Interestingly, both my son and his father have a high aptitude for maths, so perhaps some kind of unconscious natural selection was at play there.

My mother had taught me to read and write by the time I started school aged four, and I coped reasonably well until the introduction of multiplication a year later. I remember the lesson as if it were yesterday, the wizened and incredulous face of Sister Mary Aloysius pushing into mine as she explained over and over in increasing volume that two TIMES two was four. I just couldn't grasp it. 'Two times two' looked exactly the same as 'two plus two'.  That lunchtime my backside received its first taste of her leather belt as I failed to deliver any work to my maths book.  Division a couple of weeks later wasn't much better: a picture of a cake with slices being taken out to be conceptually distributed around the classroom looked no different to 'taking away'. All around me my classmates seemed to be suddenly running with ideas and answers the meaning of which eluded me. Something was clearly amiss. Multiplication and division towered over my desk like invisible, unassailable mountains. After a year of anxiety and struggle I managed to get some kind of crude working model of these concepts fixed in my mind during which brief hiatus my self confidence was restored. Very slowly however, my classmates began to overtake me whilst I stayed where I was, trapped with the maths facility of a 6 year old, unable to progress my ideas. Things went pretty much downhill from there. My teachers punished me for 'laziness' and I in turn grew to detest school and anything to do with Maths or Sport.

Although I got on well with my peers, my popularity was never a match for the spirit of competition and games lessons became a nightmare when week after week I found myself one of the last picked for a team (amidst groans of team dismay) often only just before the person who smelled and talked to herself at lunchtime and the girl who couldn't run because she wore callipers. The reason for this was very simple: I was a total liability. I could never understand the rules, nor which team I was playing for - tending to enthusiastically throw the ball to a member of the opposition if they shouted loudly enough for it - and when a ball was hurled in my direction I generally ducked. In the whole of my school career I managed to strike a ball just twice (oh joy!) but only because a friendly bowler ordered me to hold the bat still whilst they aimed at it.

The confusion I experience around number is further exacerbated by the fact that I am synaesthetic. This term means that a person experiences a cross-over in one or more of their senses, for example words and sounds and even ideas can have a corresponding subjective colour, shape, texture, taste, sensation or position in one's mental space. Consequently I experience much of reality as relationships, sensations, and colour.

When I think of the dates around Christmas for example, ‘December’ is black. '25' Is hard, dark green, mid-level distant and means "sealed secrets", whilst '24' hangs at shoulder-level, denotes "endings" and being black and thin doesn't really show up against 'December'. '23' However is gold, white and pink, means "possibilities" and "blossom" and hovers around my forehead. To me therefore, 23rd December is the 'best' date, and the most likely candidate for Christmas Eve, because it makes the dark, 'invisible' 24th December that 'non-day' - the date of which we never write - Christmas Day.  Obviously this clashes a bit with other people's plans, with the result that I have no firm, working grasp of what dates constitute Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

My problem with the dental appointment yesterday is that having had to cancel it twice in the past month, it had been consigned, much like Christmas Eve, to my mental stew. Add to this a new wall calendar which now starts on a Sunday instead of Monday and signifies the weekdays by a tiny single lowercase letter and you will see that it actually makes no difference to me whether today is the 14th or 28th: they are all equally meaningless. One is dark purple, exciting and means "stars", the other is black and red and means "the horses" - neither of them however mean 'now' or 'dental appointment'.

I hope that the next time you're stuck in a checkout queue behind some feckless individual shakily tipping out their purse contents on the counter in a clatter of rolling coins for the cashier to count, you'll remember this blog and think twice before you judge them too harshly. After all, chances are it's probably me!

Finally, this Mitchell & Webb video gives a good idea of what life is like for dyscalculics:

Tales from the Lightside 2: Braved New World

First published Tuesday, 22 February 2011

BRAVED NEW WORLD

It is two o’clock in the morning when my son Tom abruptly begins packing for our impending foray across the border to attend an Applicant Open Day at Leeds Metropolitan University.
‘Do you think I should take three pairs of jeans?’ he asks me.
‘Eh? We’re only going for two nights!’
‘They’re forecasting heavy rain and I don‘t want to be walking about in wet clothes.’ he answers.
‘We’re going to England’ I tell him, ‘what they call rain - even the ‘heavy’ variety - isn’t properly wet, and we’ll be indoors most of the time anyway. Trust me, one pair will be plenty.’

Once he finally turns in and the house is quiet enough for me to think straight I throw a couple of T-shirts, some underwear and a toothbrush into my rucksack and crawl off to bed for three hours’ uneasy sleep before we hit the road. I drift into unconsciousness trying to count how many years have passed since I last visited England and realize with some shock that it must be at least ten.

Mornings have never been my thing, so when elderly Taxi Dai beeps frenziedly outside my gate an irritating ten minutes earlier than booked I rush out, forgetting my scarf in flustered panic and with only one eye fully made up and my open bag spilling most of its contents onto the road. As I struggle to negotiate the knot of seatbelts in the back seat of his tiny car, Dai casts a scathing glance over the horrible two-story house being constructed directly opposite mine. Our once breathtaking view across the sharply sloping field to the mountains beyond has now been completely blocked by a grey-black building so enormous that even though the ground floor starts a good fifteen foot below the level of the road outside my home, it effectively fills the view from every window at the front.

‘That’s a blo-o-ody monstrosity, that is’ he sniffs in dour disapproval. ‘Bad site for damp down there too. Never build a house in a hole, I always say!‘

We trundle down the lane and while I’m wondering how frequently he’s needed to issue this particular piece of advice and how often anyone has abandoned their hole-dwelling building plans to follow it, Dai announces that we’re in for a dirty weekend. Since there‘s something indefinably unsavoury about Dai at the best of times I can‘t help feeling a little concerned at this news. ‘Heavy rain and strong winds’ he continues, ‘absolutely filthy it’ll be’. We converse about the general awfulness of weather - past, present and inevitably worsening into the grim future - for the rest of the four-minute journey into town and by the time we clamber out at the station I’m feeling like maybe three pairs of jeans would have been a wise precaution after all. Tom and I settle into the fuggy two-carriage train which will take us from the mountains to the coast, plug earphones into our mobiles and wake up slowly and privately over the following hour to the soothing regulation of pounding techno.

Our connecting train at the Junction is a forty-five minute wait, but Tom informs me that if we run up the steps, along the bridge, down the steps on the other side and collect the-tickets-we-ordered-on-the-internet from the machine at the top of platform two, we might just be able to catch an earlier one purposely scheduled to depart exactly thirty seconds before our current train pulls in. I’m up for the challenge, so as our train ambles into the station we gather our wits and belongings to stand braced at the rubbery doorway, our jaws grimly set for battle. As soon as the automatic doors allow, we punch them open and - trying not to overturn our fellow travellers - stampede up the steps, along the bridge and down the steps on the other side to collect the-tickets-Tom-ordered-on-the-internet from the machine at the top of Platform Two. I’ve never seen one of these machines before and therefore watch very carefully as Tom jabs in the wrong reference number several times in quick succession, uses a different bank card to the one he ordered the tickets with and consequently has to repeat the entire procedure five times before said machine begrudgingly burps up the tickets. 

 

A few rather sweary minutes later we arrive hare-eyed and panting on the platform for the skin-of-your-teeth train only to discover it hasn’t even arrived yet. When it eventually pulls in we plonk ourselves into a couple of reserved seats (on the agreed pre-condition that neither of us will put up an embarrassing defence should their rightful owners arrive to claim them) and delight in buying such copious quantities of tea from the passing trolley that the shy lady opposite us gets an attack of the giggles and chokes on her Dundee Slice, apologetically showering us with crumbs.

As part of his current Music Technology course, Tom needs to design a CD album cover for the music he’s written, so at Warrington Bank Quay I whip out my phone and we take a lot of snaps through the murky train window of the sprawling Unilever manufacturing plant which borders the station. Our fellow passengers are clearly perplexed: why on earth would someone want to photograph such a horror?  ’We live up in the Welsh mountains’ I explain ’so sights like this are unusual to us, and in their way, quite beautiful.’ Faces around us light up with sudden insight…I can see them looking anew at the hideous complex through our primitive, untainted eyes. The Mother-and-Son Savages from the Wilderness become their temporary pets, and they benignly explain to us in simple language what things are. This hilarity continues all the way to Manchester where we step from our cocoon into the bustle of diesel fumes, echoing footfalls and indecipherable tannoy announcements, excited to be back in civilisation after so many years.

My first destination is of course the loo, but our arrival platform seems to be situated in some dimension merely adjacent to the Victorian buildings of the main station and crossing between the two involves traversing an entire wormhole of lifts, bridges, stairs and walkways (including a randomly placed travelator so short it begs the question ‘why bother?’) and at one point we even seem to walk through an empty café suspended twenty feet above the station, although this may have just been an hallucination brought on by culture shock.

The main concourse has changed considerably over the years since I was last there. On all sides I am surrounded by huge electronic billboards entreating me to buy products that will enable me to look more like Cheryl Cole, beneath which are fast-food outlets selling meals which would probably enable me to look more like Susan Boyle. Right in the centre of it all I’m amused to see a Tie Rack stall - still selling the same old tat at extortionate prices - and can only conclude that in the event of a nuclear holocaust, Tie Rack will survive as couturier to the giant mutated cockroaches.

The loos when we finally locate them now cost a hefty 30 pence per visit. Will we be offered a complimentary chocolate-mint while we’re waiting I wonder - and would I actually want one, if we were? We queue to ask for change from a nearby coffee stall only to be directed to a change-machine blatantly displayed beside the loo entrance. Feeling foolish we obtain the necessary coinage and push through the clanking turnstiles with the suspicion of sheep lured to a dip. I’m hoping that these expensive facilities will be superior to the old-string-on-a-cistern, ammonia-scented, floor-flooded efforts of North Wales and am not disappointed. Once inside the windowless twilit world of maroon faux-marble and diffused globular lighting I’m delighted to discover that the loo-flush mechanism, taps, soap dispenser and hand dryer all operate entirely by optic sensors and spend several pleasantly infantile minutes waving my hand at things simply to make them happen. After applying the missing make up to my left eye (having forgotten all about it in the interim) I wander outside to find an equally bedazzled Tom. ‘Wooh!’ I say to him.
‘Wooh!’ he agrees.

We scan the vast array of electronic notice boards for the next departure to Leeds and plough through the crowds toward Platform Three. Tom has yet to acquire his city legs and gets stomped on a fair bit, but we arrive there reasonably intact, all things considered.
‘Leeds?’ I ask the depressed ticket inspector at the barrier.
‘I dunno’ he shrugs, scrutinising my ticket and waving me through.  

Three trains are standing end-to-end alongside the platform, all of them going to different and interesting places, none of which are Leeds as their drivers and conductors confirm with sorrowful shakes of the head. There are no helpful signs, VDUs or boards anywhere and the tannoy is uselessly warbling a dramatic warning about the possibility that outdoor rain might cause the indoor concourse to become perilously slippery, the inference being that if you’re silly enough to go arse over tit in this vicinity, well you were warned in advance, so don’t even think about trying to sue anyone.

The shabby middle aged driver of the central train has squandered most of his lunch break in a futile attempt to pull the tiny Polish girl in charge of the tea trolley and whilst failing to obtain her mobile number he has nonetheless managed to glean that she’ll be working the Leeds train. He therefore suggests that we ‘Follow the trolley dolly.’

I instruct Tom to check with said Dolly if this is the case and am amused to watch her melt into a wreath of smiles as she chats animatedly with him. ‘Yep’ he returns beaming, ‘and she asked me out too.’ Others around us - all equally at a loss - have been quietly monitoring these events, so when Dolly gets a last-minute text informing her which platform the Leeds train will manifest upon and begins to expertly propel her wobbling trolley toward the exit, I fall in behind her teetering red stilettos and an eager crowd forms up neatly in my wake.

Our carriage on the Leeds train is fairly quiet until boarded by a young foreign couple gripping their large and intractably furious infant, by which time it’s too late to move as all of the seats have been occupied. The screeching child displays the rare, back-arching levitation of a cat undergoing intrusive veterinary examination and every so often manages to flip himself out of his mother’s arms altogether and rolls helplessly across the train floor, which doesn’t really make him any happier. His father tries to dodge the brain-curdling mayhem by surreptitiously inching farther down the carriage, his expression indicating that it’s due to a failure in his wife’s maternal skills that his son is such a pain in the backside. Eventually however he is forced to step in as mum is clearly reaching meltdown and could well start screaming and rolling across the floor herself very soon. His paternal solution is to securely restrain the roaring child in a pushchair far too small for him, which he then ties several times over to the upright rail, and the young couple spend the rest of the journey staring out of their respective windows in despairing silence, hating one another, their rainy British lives and bound, recalcitrant offspring in more or less equal measure.

Crossing from Lancashire into Yorkshire brings up powerful emotions in me; despite having left Barnsley forty-two years earlier I feel an overwhelming sense of homecoming. ‘Look, Tom: that’s Saddleworth Moor’ - as its great dark golden curves suddenly expand to fill our window. The student nurse revising leg-bones in the seat opposite looks up from her laptop and gazes out, smiling. ‘It’s always special, isn’t it!’ she says quietly. We English don’t do hiraeth I reflect, but if we did, this probably wouldn’t be too far off.

Disembarking at Leeds, we stop at the Information Centre to ask directions to the out-of-town university campus. A tweedy, square-faced man in square tortoiseshell spectacles carefully annunciates the names of all the roads we must find in order to locate the correct bus for our destination. As we emerge into the open none the wiser, Tom whispers that he thinks - from the happy little clicking sounds the man was making to himself - that our helper was probably mildly Aspergers. I point out that the indicators were even simpler: most people would tell a stranger which large and obvious landmarks to head for.

Despite being barged by aggressive pensioners wielding wheelie-cases made from materials manufactured for the Space Race, Tom takes a determined lead and within moments has skilfully navigated us away from the crowds of exiting passengers and onto a very small concrete island entirely surrounded by twelve lanes of heavy traffic, all whizzing in different directions without a single traffic light or zebra crossing in sight.
‘Oh sh*t’ he says.
‘Is this what you intended?’ I ask helpfully.

He somehow gets us back onto the pavement outside the station from where I’m proudly able to lead us in a mad dash over multiple crossings to a bizarre concrete oasis on the farther side. The newly built plaza upon which we now find ourselves wittily combines the millennial European elegance of a large, sophisticated outdoor restaurant with the gritty Northern realism of lairy, tracky-bottomed Stella-drinkers watching from the surrounding arc of wooden benches, the two echelons being symbolically separated by a cordon of potted palms, waste bins and dribbly half-arsed pavement-fountains; the whole ensemble simmers in the incessant roar and exhaust of passing lorries. I have never been to a place like this before and I can’t really imagine ever wishing to return to one: nothing here gels at any level I can access. The streets have no name and everyone looks like they’re urgently trying to assimilate some item of vaguely disquieting news.

We make our way from the plaza toward a side street lined with tall buildings that cast long afternoon shadows and eventually find a passer-by with enough leisure to direct us to the relevant bus stop which turns out to be just round the corner. Our bus is pulling away as we arrive and the driver ignores my frantic attempts to flag it down, a reaction I‘m not accustomed to since in our part of the world one can stop almost any bus, any time, anywhere (a small one even drove my partner all the way up the winding country lane to our door one night many years ago, just to see where we lived). Deflated, we drop our bags and prepare for a long wait. This is not, however, the Welsh countryside where buses only run every 90 minutes and to our amazement another pulls in within a minute. Our joy knows no bounds and the day is redeemed as we ease into the traffic and observe the uncomfortable mix of Victorian municipal buildings and hideous 1980’s shopping malls yield slowly to the wider vistas of University buildings, parks, tree-lined suburbs and sooty sandstone villas. Many of the grimy gothic chapels we pass have been converted into nightclubs with pseudo-religious puns for names. Maybe in Leeds God really is a DJ.

We disembark at Headingly together with a crowd of students who appear startlingly healthy. Tom explains that this particular campus houses both the sports and the technology faculties, and as the athletes stride ahead of us in a radiant glow of Olympian vigour I glance round and catch reassuring sight of several yellow-toothed pasty geeks staggering along behind us rolling fags and laughing inanely.

The hill we climb is lined by 1930s red-brick semi-detached houses, from whose front gardens blossoming cherry trees shower the pavement with fragrant pink confetti. Blackbirds are singing among the sunlit branches and at the summit a small copse reveals a carpet of scented bluebells. I’m already falling in love with the place and secretly hope that Tom is, too.

The campus consists of a vast grassy quadrangle surrounded by imposing H-shaped Georgian buildings. Set a little behind them is the small block of ultra-modern purpose-built luxury student flats where we’ll be staying for the duration of our visit, which Tom proudly informs me are ‘so energy-efficient they don’t even appear on the National Grid’. The young female receptionist takes an instant shine to Tom and - tossing her hair a lot and ignoring me completely - addresses her entire instructions to him. Since these are issued in gunfire staccato from which I can glean little beyond the fact that our stay there will be far more complicated than it ever needed to be and involves all manner of electronic security, this is probably just as well.

We are then each presented with an A5 envelope - slightly creased from re-use - containing breakfast vouchers, electronic swipe cards for various doors and blobs of black plastic on neck ribbons and are led at a sudden silent jog away from the daylight and down long, bland windowless corridors where pallid bulbs mysteriously illuminate and extinguish themselves as we pass and the conditioned air prickles the nose with unaccustomed chemicals. Thick glass fire-doors meekly submit to a peremptory wave of her plastic card: she glides through them like a priestess and we hurry along in her wake, a flat carpet wrought of some dark, indeterminate modern substance absorbing our thudding footsteps. Having shown us to the doors of our rooms she vanishes back toward the sunlit worlds.

My sense of having entered an open prison is not diminished by the protracted trial-and-error discovery that the lock to my room only yields (with a bleep and the wink of a green light) to a double pass of the tear-shaped plastic fob from my envelope.  The room itself is pleasant enough, in a featureless, artificially air-freshened sort of way. The atmosphere is pervaded by the faint smell of MDF and an indefinable humming noise, just within the threshold of my hearing. It is the same, constant ambient temperature as the rest of the building and - like the corridor outside - the flooring is brownish and the walls that indefinable colour somewhere between lavender, pink, cream and beige: an unnatural hue so utterly calming to the senses that I suspect it was originally devised as an indoor wall covering for the psychiatric wards in Broadmoor.

I am used to preparing holiday accommodation that conveys the country-chic illusion of home comforts to the visitor: bucolic watercolours on the walls, ornate mirrors, an antique vase of dried flowers on a mantelshelf over a painted Victorian fireplace filled with giant fir-cones, a nicely quilted counterpane, that sort of thing. This student room has dispensed entirely with such concessions: there’s a bed, a wardrobe and a large shelf all made from pale pine laminate and a shiny black vinyl office swivel chair. The one redeeming feature is a large triple-glazed window set into the far wall. That it opens onto an earthen bank supporting the perimeter fence of a running track is a shame, but at least between the slatted white blinds I can see a few disintegrating daffodils outside and beyond them a spindly young tree in a cage coming into full leaf against the watery April sky. With some difficulty I hoist the blind up out of the way and eventually manage to prise the window open by the three inches allowed when a small red lever is depressed. Several disembodied ankles dash past on the track above me, accompanied by the sound of desperate panting.

The ensuite bathroom is a tiny, windowless white-tiled cubicle containing a wash-hand basin above which an uglyfying mirror supports a glass shelf holding complementary shower gel smelling of pine disinfectant and a miniature soap that is mostly paraffin wax. High up on the farther wall there’s a fixed showerhead behind a flimsy white plastic curtain that clings nastily to the face of anyone trying to use the adjacent loo.

Having eventually worked out that the knob-less basin taps work by a movement sensor I approach the shower with some trepidation and much experimental hand-waving, but nothing happens. Despite pushing, pulling and swivelling the chrome bar positioned at waist-height beneath it I cannot for the life of me work out how to operate it. A knock at the door a few minutes later informs me that Tom has encountered the same problem. Hearing a cleaner outside, I enlist her help, but surprisingly she doesn’t know either. She summons assistance from one of her colleagues, who - based on the fact that this looks vaguely similar to her shower at home - launches an anticlockwise attack on the chrome bar so aggressive we are drenched in a sudden blast of lukewarm water. Lending her the towel, I back out, hoping I can memorize the technique. The knack, she explains, mopping her hair, is to creep up on it unawares and take it by surprise from underneath. Leaving the bathroom I look in vain for a light switch outside, and finding none allow the door to swing closed…as it does so the light within the empty room switches itself off, like a fridge.

After we’ve unpacked, Tom and I pad up the deserted, softly-humming corridor to the kitchen area at the far end to make ourselves a cup of tea. We are greeted by two massive, spotlessly clean empty fridge-freezers, two immaculate double ovens, two enormous gleaming steel microwaves and two long rows of empty pine-laminate cupboards: not a spoon, cup, saucepan or plate in sight. Tom spies some paper coffee cups with corrugated cardboard sleeves and white plastic lids near the kettle and a further search reveals a jar of flat wooden tapers. We recognise these from our train journey: they are what apparently pass for teaspoons in modern England: horrible, teabag-puncturing environmentally-friendly sticks that are neither use nor ornament. If twig-spoons and cups are here - we reason - tea cannot be far away and deeper investigation turns up some knackered organic fair-trade teabags (do they make them look pre-used on purpose I wonder), a dozen or so individually wrapped micro wafer biscuits and various tiny cellophane tubes, some of which contain coffee, judging from the pleasing crunch when squeezed.

I send Tom to cadge some milk from the receptionist back in the real world and brew us a panad each in the paper cups, whilst eating all the miniscule biscuits. I’m just hiding the evidence of this when he returns looking both amused and faintly embarrassed.
‘The milk is already here’ he announces. ‘See if you can spot it.’
After five minutes’ hopeless groping around I give up.
’Here it is’ he says and pushes a jar toward me filled with black and green polythene tubes slightly larger than drinking straws.
‘No way!‘ I say.
‘Way!‘ he says.
Each little packet (which claims to ’taste just like real milk and uses 50% less plastic than a typical UHT container thus protecting the planet’) contains around half a teaspoon of milk and therefore I need to use around twelve per cup as the opening instructions don’t work on this particular batch, there are no scissors in this shell of a kitchen and since my front teeth don‘t actually meet in a proper ‘bite‘ I‘m forced to side-chew my way into each one, spitting out bits of wrapper and squirting most of its contents down my front in the process. In the other half of the kitchen meanwhile, Tom tries to operate the plasma TV suspended at neck-cricking ceiling height from the room partition, but it’s a generic remote control that continuously defaults to the Shopping Channel and he eventually gives up in disgust, which is probably a good thing since he would have had to lie on the floor to watch it anyway.

We wander back to our rooms and I spend the next half hour peering over Tom’s shoulder at the images on his laptop of the rest of the accommodation available to those studying here. Tom remarks that there seems to be some kind of inverse proportion at play between the pleasantness of the name and the nature of the location, the least expensive halls ‘Sugarwell Court’ being a case in point. Under this logic I instruct him to see if he can find anywhere called ‘Belle End’ as it’s bound to be wonderful and drift back to my own room to check the minor tic beneath my right eye that started yesterday evening. Just as I suspected, it has progressed during the course of the day from an occasional flicker into a protracted, leery wink. Poking it to make it stop makes it suddenly much, much worse.

A cleaner knocks to ask if there’s anything more I’d like for my room. Since the previous cleaner had dried her hair with my original towel I request a fresh one and my eye gives her a slow, deliberate wink. She looks worried.
‘No, I'm sorry, I'm afraid we can’t give you another towel’ she says, backing away slightly, ’but would you like another pillow?’
‘Um, no thanks, just a towel please’ I reply, and wink meaningfully at her again.
‘I’m sorry, we’re not allowed to give towels out. Is there anything else you’d like? A pillow, perhaps? We are allowed to give out those.’ At this point I notice the large aluminium trolley behind her. It is stacked with pillows.
‘Er, no thanks…I just wanted...just a towel, really.’
I realise we have got stuck in a loop and close the door, thanking her and winking madly.

Alone in my cell again, I am suddenly filled with a kind of deep, spiritual exhaustion for which I can find no remedy. I want normal. I want strong tea brewed from Welsh lake water in a big china mug and milk from a plastic bottle in a fridge. I want heat with yellow flames that lick and flare from wet, dirty coal and draughty windows and doors that open with real handles and lock with metal keys. Thick rugs, warm furry cats kneading the bedcovers, light switches that click, cushions to cwtch into, wobbly furniture made of real wood and held together with nails and dovetail joints. I want cooling mist coming silently over the mountains and the tender cry of ravens on the wing. I’ve been away from England too long and am not equipped for this strange modern world in which I find myself so suddenly and utterly adrift. I recall my late father expressing something similar when he returned to the UK on his retirement after forty years' Civil Service in Africa, which is why he elected to return there and spend the remainder of his days as a lowly janitor for a charity in Kenya rather than face a life of modern comfort in Filey.

After an hour’s break to restore energy levels we meet up to make our way through the half-light and electronic doors to the great outdoors where the sun still shines, a fresh breeze blows and carefree students relax on the lawn. They are an eclectic lot and I find myself staring. One tall, gentle-looking lad in beige shorts and 1960‘s style ‘Brains’ fashion spectacles has such a dreadfully executed indigo tattoo on his right calf that we can’t stop surreptitiously glancing at it in mirthful conjecture as we pass.  It looks something like a penis tree, but then again it could be a couple of blurred kayaks, or some kind of handicapped dragon…we really don’t know.

Within moments of reaching the main road a crowded double-decker bus pulls in to take us back into Leeds city centre where Tom hopes to familiarise himself with the layout of the streets and I want to quiet a rumbling tummy. Tom insists ‘We’re here!’ long before we actually are, and we tumble out into the middle of bustling, noisy God-knows-where. I feel like a midget in this town: the buildings are all so tall, the streets so wide and all things look alike. It’s impossible to see any landmarks from our position on the pavement but when Tom decides he wants to return to the train station in order to begin mentally mapping the place from there, my excellent sense of direction kicks in and I’m somehow able to guide us toward it without problem, detouring through a mall on the way to purchase a replacement scarf for the one I left at home that morning in my haste. As I’m paying for it a diminutive Chinese girl who has just attended an interview at Leeds University asks for directions to the train station in pulverised English. I tell her where I feel it probably is, but Tom subliminally instructs me not to take her with us…afterwards he explains her moustache put him right off. He can be a tad harsh at times.

We are just approaching the station - I can see the bridge - when Tom insists that it is actually in completely the opposite direction. For reasons only those readers from dysfunctional families who were conditioned into denial for the first fifteen years of their lives will understand, I readily accept that this probably is the case and we turn our backs and set off downhill. After thirty minutes of striding around the dusty streets Tom gives up in despair and admits he’s lost, so I take us back to the station again.

My tummy is now protesting loudly at the injustice of having had to travel a hundred and thirty miles and walk five on the fuel supplied by twelve individually wrapped micro wafer biscuits. Employing some kind of gastronomic sixth sense I’m able to lead us up a side road to where a Wetherspoons has taken possession of a large Victorian bank. The hand-painted pub sign hanging from the upper stories depicts a Regency-clad Mr Wetherspoon smiling with benign idiocy against the menacing backdrop of a stormy sky. The artist obviously didn’t ‘do’ hands because despite being blatantly repainted many times over, the left one is horribly deformed - like a bunch of soft pink bananas - and his right has been conveniently tucked into his tight trousers, the after-painted bulge giving the unfortunate impression of pocket billiards in progress.

The only empty table is on the upper floor beside the door to the Ladies, which means our seating constantly bounces on the juddering floorboards as an endless succession of strapping great Northern lasses in leggings and killer heels pound their way to the loo and back in shrieking pairs. Each time the door is opened it swings closed with a deafening slam, the table jumps and the distinctive odour of Izal Rim Block wafts over us, so when another table becomes vacant we lunge for it with unseemly haste, beating the newly arrived - and therefore still slightly dazed - competition by seconds. This second table is perfect, overlooking the customers seated in the cordoned-off pavement area across the road outside the Slug and Lettuce where a fascinating drama begins to unfold as we tuck into our food.

The main party consists of a slender middle-aged man, his fluffy blonde partner and their female friends, all enjoying a quiet outdoor pint in the setting sun. Their idyll is soon interrupted however by the unwelcome arrival of a large, greasy, straggle-haired drunk in his fifties, his arse all gone in dirty jeans, clutching an outstretched can of Special Brew at shoulder height and laughing uproariously at his own jokes. He seems to like these people very, very much. He leans precariously across the flimsy fabric cordon to flirt with the ladeez and bellow comradely confidences into the face of the man.

Halfway through my plaice and chips I glance down again to observe their progress. The members of the little group now appear frozen in various attitudes of recoil, but Drunkman is evidently on a mission to wow his brand new friends with witty banter and their increasingly desperate body-language is falling on deaf eyes.

Every so often he starts to lose his balance and staggers toward the seated guy who evidently thinks that smiling faintly and nodding with polite disinterest will eventually convince Drunkman to back off and move on. Seated Guy’s blonde companion is obviously in a quandary: she doesn’t want to encourage Drunkman, but neither does she wish to risk giving offence, and he looks the type to take offence particularly easily. He also looks the type to get his willy out and wave it at them all very easily too, and no-one wants that. The dark haired woman opposite her has no such qualms: she is visibly annoyed at having their evening ripped apart by this social seagull and would happily stab Drunkman to death with a plastic spork, but he is far too big for her to tackle alone so she confines her glares to the male of their party instead, whose ‘balance points’ are plummeting by the second. ‘If he was a REAL man he’d have put a bloody stop to this a long time ago’ I can see her thinking, through gritted teeth. To her left, the rest of the group are beginning to ostentatiously put things into bags - they have realised that the only way to bring the situation to any kind of non-violent conclusion is to get up and run down the street faster than Drunkman can. A few minutes later I see that the Slug and Lettuce is now eerily empty and am caused to conjecture that Wetherspoons might actually be employing Drunkman to sabotage the competition from their nearest rivals.

As the evening advances we begin to yawn and a short bus ride brings us back to our rooms. I shower and retire to bed to study the feature-length text from my faintly hysterical cat-sitter back home, who having been brought live prey to play with - possibly a snake they thought - had failed to pounce quickly enough and promptly lost it beneath the sofa. Relaxing between crisp sheets I listen to the long-forgotten night sounds of a city and munch my way through a pack of recently purchased chocolate chip cookies, which have evolved since the last time I encountered civilisation to the size of small dinner plates.
‘Mmm, yum! Not everything in this brave new world is bad’ I tell myself.

The distant chromatic wail of a police siren is mixing with the subliminal hum and gentle electronic clicks of my room as I begin to doze. It’s the music of the future and curiously comforted at the end of this strange day, I peacefully drift off to its heartless, automated lullaby.

Tales from the Lightside 1: The Institute

First published Friday, 26 March 2010

THE INSTITUTE

''You are coming along to the Women's Institute meeting tonight, aren't you? We're not at all stuffy...and you can forget about the film 'Calendar Girls' - in all the years I've been going nobody's ever asked us to pose naked for a calendar.''
''Oh what a shame, Hen. I'd been rather looking forward to that part. Sorry, but I don't really think my Welsh is fluent enough.''
''Oh Heavens! You needn't worry about that dear! Our WI group is English-speaking. You're thinking of our sister branch in town - Merched y Wawr - their meetings are in Welsh, but not ours. No, you really must come, I insist.''
I racked my brains for a better excuse. ''I would, but it's not really my thing...I mean I don't do cookery and the like. Last time I made a cake the oven had to be replaced.''
''You won't be asked to bake anything, not if you don't want to.''
''And I'm not a church-goer.''
''Oh, we have all sorts, even Women Who Don't Go To Church.'' Ouch, at that one. But then I was talking to Henrietta the Happy Clapper. She'd once told me ''My God is bigger than your God.'' Seriously. When losing an argument, Henrietta's most infuriating insult was to say with a patronising smile: ''I'll pray for you!''
''Look, I'm not really sure I'd fit in with the other ladies at WI, Hen. As a divorcee I sort of float about now on the fringes of local society. I just don't do the wifey, mothery thing these days. And I have friendships with disreputable people.''
''Nonsense. Everybody's welcome whether they've still got their husbands or not, and I'm quite sure all your friends are perfectly nice. Perhaps they'd like to come along too? Why don't you ask them? - All the more the merrier!''
''Nooo!...They're uh...busy! Oh and I can't crochet and don't like sewing things. Not even for Orphans.''
''Well dear, not everybody does. I mean, I do, I love sewing and knitting...I can't just sit in front of a computer screen doing nothing all night like some people. I always knit a new set of dishcloths for each of my daughters and daughter-in-laws every Christmas. But I'm sure you can contribute in other ways. After all you are Artistic.''
I was starting to get pissed off now. There are certain things you just shouldn't say to an artist and somewhere fairly near the top of the list is informing them they're 'Artistic'. ''Look Hen, I'm awfully sorry but I just don't think I'm Women's Institute material!''
''Rubbish, you'll love it. I'll pick you up at half-past six. Don't be late.''
Enough was enough: it was time someone in the village finally plucked up the courage to stand up to Henrietta's bossiness and put her firmly in her place. ''Uh no Hen...it's OK...Delphine's going tonight - I'll...erm...I'll get a lift with her.''
Thus I sealed my fate.

I must admit I was secretly curious...the rebel in me hankered after a new order to insidiously overturn from the inside, whilst the innocent within sought redemption from a perfectly terrible time at Girl Guides. Memories came flooding back from when I was ten and newly settled in Kent: my new best friend had invited me along in an ultimate gesture of sharing. I remember a sea of mushroom faces in berets and uniforms parading in a draughty church hall that smelled of fusty plimsolls...a complex series of codified salutes, marches, songs and prayers - none of which I ever fully got to grips with - and a never-ending list of indistinguishable sew-on fabric badges to be earned through such unrelated acts as the tying of ridiculous knots, being excessively kind to the elderly and fire-starting without matches. These girls had known one another since their mothers attended antenatal class together and my status as interloper was not helped by a speech impediment due to the industrial-strength brace which at that time was rearranging my organ-pipe teeth, together with my strange accent and even stranger (many would say eccentric) mother who'd just taken up teaching at the very secondary school many of my fellow Guides attended.  I couldn't have been a clearer target had a bull's-eye had been painted on my front. I lasted three miserable months before finally admitting defeat and handing in my woggles (toggles? Boggles?- I forget) to a coldly disappointed Helter Skelter - or whatever bizarre title it was by which the irascible old bag who led us had to be addressed.

Now somewhere deep in my traumatized psyche I felt the desire to make good the past, and without raising further objection resigned myself to the ordeal. I telephoned Delphine to make arrangements and set about preparing for the evening ahead. Strangely, as though already succumbing to subliminal domestic programming, I began by cooking an extremely pleasant meal for my son and myself. I hadn't been entirely truthful with Henrietta about the culinary skills...I cook quite well, but leave it to others whenever possible...life is a little too short to squander time in a kitchen that could be better spent - having possibly the second most fun you can have alone - in a studio. Any beams of Stepford pride over my appetising dinner preparations however quickly turned to uneasy twinges of guilt at the pathetic expression of rapturous gratitude on my son's face when he arrived home from work.

At six-thirty sharp Delphine pulled up wearing a nice suit, lippy and eyeliner. I'd never seen her in make-up. For her part she normally only ever saw my hair plaited or piled up: I'd let it down for the occasion and we spent long minutes in her car staring fascinated at each other. ''Do I look ok? Is the hair too much?''
''No, it's great.''
''It's too much isn't it. I'll get my hat -''
She put her foot on the accelerator and we roared into the night.

Of all my friends who would be there that evening, Delphine - clever, outspoken and down to earth - was the closest. She'd told me some months before that she and her neighbour Frances had decided to join the WI; she subsequently reported that it could be quite a laugh sometimes, especially when war broke out between opinionated ladies of strong character (in other words Henrietta and anybody who dared disagree with her) and being in their early forties Delphine and Frances were easily the youngest there by several decades.

''You know Del, I feel a bit nervous about this, not really too sure how I'll fit in...but your remarkable powers of resistance to indoctrination have left a good impression on me. That's the main reason I feel okay about coming along tonight to give it a try.''
As I spoke I pulled a lumpy carrier bag out from underneath me and put it on my lap.
''Oh sorry, meant to move that before you sat down. Remind me please to hand it in this evening.''
I peeked inside. It was filled with tiny knitted cones with pom-poms on the ends. ''Del...what am I looking at?''
''Oh, we're all making them. It's for charity.''
''The Women's Institute asked you to knit willy-warmers for charity?''
''What? - God no, they're hats, knitted hats for Fruit Smoothies. They had to be ready to be collected tonight, but I couldn't get the pom-poms right...they kept unravelling until I remembered you have to use four - ''
''Why would a Fruit Smoothie need a hat to keep it warm?''
''B*ggered if I know. Everybody was asked to do it. Anyway they're all finished now. And I enjoyed making them too, it got me knitting again for the first time in years. So there!''

I winced a bit but there was no turning back..what else was I in for?
''Tell me Del, what exactly goes on at these meetings?''
''Well the first bit's rather boring: they read out the minutes from the last meeting and everybody agrees to pass them. Then we usually have a Guest Speaker who gives a short talk on something - often with slides - and that's followed by a cup of tea and the chance to chat with each other. Some of the talks can be quite interesting, although admittedly the last one was bloody tedious: this woman had just taken part in a sponsored bicycle ride round India for charity. Her slides basically consisted of fat women on bikes, not my thing really, and since they were all knackered from cycling each day the whole lot of them went to bed early each night so there were no pics of them screwing the natives or anything. There weren't even any decent photos of curry. Afterwards a school brass band came and performed for us...to say they were bad would be an understatement: I spotted several of the more senior WI ladies removing the batteries from their hearing aids.

'Tonight should be quite interesting though - it's the St David's Day celebrations so we're in for a bit of a treat: singers from some local Amateur Operatic Society are coming to perform and there'll be a buffet afterwards as well, lots of the ladies are bringing stuff for it.''
''Yum! Will there be quiche and cake?''
''Hmm, low-fat Pringles and Tesco's dips more like.''
''Cheese straws?''
''Only if we're very, very unlucky.''

We arrived at the First World War Memorial Hall a little before seven, parked the car and trudged downhill through the frosty night air. I was wearing a fully-lined, long black velvet skirt I'd picked up in Oxfam the previous week: this was its first outing and the short walk was sufficient to explain why it had ended up on the rail of a charity shop - the lining writhed upward with every step and by the time we stopped at the hall door had bunched itself around my waist in the form of an enormous, irremovable fake belly.

Delphine tried the big wrought iron door handle but nothing happened. "Odd. Must still be locked. Oh well, I expect someone'll come and open up soon.'' We stamped our feet gently in the cold and tried to look nonchalant. Several small girls squealed up on chunky pink bikes and stared at us intensely.
''Be ti'n neud?'' one of them demanded, and then again in English: ''What are you doing here?''
''We're waiting for the Hall to open.''
''Why? Why are you waiting? What are you doing here?''
"Well, erm it's a Women's Institute meeting."
At this point two other ladies arrived. ''Is it still locked? - Oh dear, not a night to be stuck out in the cold.'' Her companion - dressed for the Arctic in what appeared to be a waterproof beige duvet - made a sad whimpering noise implying imminent hypothermia and began rhythmically beating her own torso with flailing arms to maintain an apparently collapsing circulatory system. 
''What are you doing here?'' yelled the little girl at all four of us. I glanced at her...she didn't actually look retarded. Before I could fashion a suitable reply a third woman manifested from nowhere, stepped calmly between us and easily opened the door in one fluid movement. There was almost a log jam as we tried to escape the cold, our own embarrassment and the Midwich Cuckoo children as quickly as possible. ''Ah! They had to wait for that little old lady to come and help them turn the handle'' the small girl behind us explained to her friends.

Inside all was warm and bright and full of bustling female activity. Waiting in line to pay my entrance fee I recognised a dozen faces amongst the thirty or so there and mouthed big deaf hellos to them. Henrietta - who at nearly six foot towers over me - grabbed me in a chortling bear-hug of triumph and only put me down at the insistence of Jill the treasurer who wanted me to pay up and move on. For someone with reasonable accounting skills Jill's wits seemed to have temporarily deserted her in the excitement of having a Visiting Non-Member...''How much do I charge a Visitor again?'' she asked an equally dithery accomplice. ''One pounds fifty? Right, so you've given me two pounds...so now I have to give you...uh...five pounds in change - no, two pounds...no, wait, that's not right either...uh, one pound - is that right dear?''

Clutching my very own free copy of the carefully typed 'Minutes of Last Month's Meeting' I made my way through the throng to be greeted by those who knew me and quite a few who didn't but seemed to want to...did I merely imagine hearing the words 'fresh blood' muttered nearby?

A brief and inelegant tug of war ensued between Delphine and Henrietta as to where I should sit and a victorious Delphine led me to our table companions: Gruff Roberta, a kind and quirky woman in her early sixties who lumbers around in men's clothes and drives the school coach collecting children from their homes in the more remote mountain villages; my dear friend Heather - who has never let her Calling to the Church stand in the way of forwarding me the filthiest funny emails I receive; the sad-eyed lady who'd opened the door for us (evidently our utter incompetence appealed to her sense of humour) who turned out to be called Lynn, bringing the total there that night with this name to eight and the ever-placid, blank-faced Frances - living proof of the theory behind cosmetic botox: having never felt the need to employ any kind of facial expression during her entire life she looked exactly the same age now as she did when we first met fifteen years ago. Some people's 'O' face is frankly impossible to picture...I could only imagine that in the throes of ecstasy Frances might momentarily close her eyelids.

Directly before us stood the broad wooden stage, draped with black curtains that twitched incessantly as members of the Amateur Operatic Society faffed about behind them. Occasionally they accidentally parted to briefly reveal the entirety of someone looking distracted, and at one point I glimpsed an unpleasantly familiar face from my recent past. I took a deep breath: this was going to be interesting...yes, of course she'd be amongst those performing tonight, she was a trained contralto.

At an unseen sign the hall fell silent and we arose en masse to belt out their WI anthem - not as I'd hoped Blake's goosebump-inducing 'Jerusalem' with it's references to the dark satanic mills of England - but a far sunnier ditty in Welsh that bore all the hallmarks of a 1950s Primary School hymn, including several rather unnecessary octave jumps and much mention of flowers, implied sisterhood and nurturing duties. Once we'd subsided back into our chairs, Iris the President took the floor, picked up a microphone and bellowed a greeting into it. Screaming feedback looped round the hall and we quailed in anguish. After five punishing minutes of consonant-huffing mic-adjustments she announced that she now would ask Olwen - her tiny, quivering sidekick - to read the minutes from the last meeting. Holding the notes at shaky arms' length from longsighted eyes, Olwen commenced by announcing that having forgotten to bring her spectacles to the meeting she was effectively blind for the night. Many occupants of the hall promptly removed their glasses and passed them forward: around twenty-five pairs arrived on the desk. The only pair with a suitable prescription happened also to have the highest comedic value: bottle-bottom lenses with heavy black frames which slid constantly down Olwen's straight little nose  - requiring that she continuously tilt her head at an angle so peculiar she looked like she had brain damage - since both her quaking hands were occupied holding the paper and microphone.

Olwen's monotonous delivery was that of the reluctant child in reading-class: "Erm, Mrs Mair Evans-gave. A-demonstration-of-flower. Arranging-and-erm. She-very-kindly-showed-us-how-to. Effectively-arrange-erm-many-diff. Erent-kinds. Of-flowers-to. Produce-a-pleas. Ing. Erm-seasonal-bouquet. Mrs Alwena Williams-erm. Expressed-our-heartfelt. Thanks-for-a. Very-interesting. Talk."

Having put my mobile on Silent, I'd become so preoccupied guiding Bobby Carrot round a maze of deadly traps I genuinely didn't hear Olwen officially greet me as Guest Visitor for the evening and only came-to when a vicious prod from Delphine threatened to send me sprawling to the floor, too late to return any of the smiles of welcome that were already waning as I looked about in confusion. I was relieved to notice several other ladies discreetly playing games on their phones, one slightly deaf member had even left the volume on: one could distinctly hear the bleeps of battleships firing at meteors and collecting plutonium fuel rods.

Olwen's onerous duties fulfilled, it now fell to Iris to introduce this month's Quiz Question sponsored by Lancashire Tea: "Now then ladies, what prevalent weather condition is chiefly associated with the South American Rain forest? Is it A: Snow, B: Hail, or C: Rain?"
"Oh for God's Sake" someone muttered behind me.
"Difficult one, that, isn't it." snorted Iris.

"I'd also like you all to look at sheet three of your Meeting Notes: you will see there that Evelyn has very kindly copied out for us all a warning issued by the police: certain over-excitable young men have been climbing into women's cars while they fill up with petrol and hiding on the back seat until the woman drives away, when they spring out and surprise them, so ladies, when you get out to fill up, please make sure you lock all of your car doors behind you."
"I leave my car door wide open all the time when I'm at the garage" muttered Gruff Roberta, "Doesn't matter what I do, I just can't get excitable young men to climb in."

Iris cleared her throat meaningfully and the underlying buzz of comment - more concerned with the increasing price of petrol than the prospect of ambush - subsided. "And I'd like to draw the attention of all you budding writers out there to this month's competition: it's the Lady Deadman Prize for literature. Anyone who likes to write is invited to compose a short ghost story of no more than five-hundred words, which has to end with the sentence 'So remember, you NEVER KNOW who may be sitting beside you at a Women's Institute meeting!' If you'd like to enter this, please have your submissions ready to hand in at next month's Meeting. So come on ladies, I hope you're all going to have a go!"
"You up for that then Del?" I whispered with slightly more sarcasm than intended.  Delphine had told me several months back that she was starting a novel. Having heard nothing further about it in the interim I assumed Our Mysterious Heroine was still preoccupied with the interior decoration of the country cottage into which she'd mysteriously moved. Perhaps the local D.I.Y shop had run out of paint. Maybe the house was mysteriously bigger than it had looked from the outside.
"Yeah, I might have a go."
"If you get time in between knitting Smoothie hats, that is."
"Smoothie hats are sooo last month. It's egg-cosies now."
"Those pointless knitted covers to keep boiled eggs warm, like we used to make at school? Does anyone over the age of five actually eat boiled eggs? Aren't they supposed to be high in cholesterol?"
"Yes, I think you're only supposed to eat one every six months or something, and they bung you up horribly and make you fart like a..." She trailed off: business concluded, Iris was now introducing the Amateur Operatic Society.

A slender elegant lady in her early sixties and quite a lot of slap swung out from behind the curtains, dressed entirely in black. Against the black of the drapes the immediate impression was that of a disembodied head. She began by telling us in tinkling Welsh and English that the last time she'd been on this particular stage was as a child when her ballet and tap teacher Miss Gwendolyn had forced her - despite her tears of protest - to perform in too tight shoes. Some of the older members of the audience nodded and murmured knowingly - evidently they too shared terrible memories of Miss Gwendolyn's enforced dancing on bleeding feet.

"Now then, tonight, ladies" she continued archly, "We have put together - for your pleasure - a little medley of our own devising, incorporating various popular arias from several different operas which we've tied all together with a little story all of our own...the scenes all take place in a little cafe where you'll see a picture, a book, a game of cards, a ring and a bouquet of flowers. All of these items connect our little tale!" She tripped daintily down from the stage to seat herself at the ancient upright piano in the corner, delicately lifted the lid and attacked the keys with unbridled ferocity: it was as though each hand had six fingers as wrong notes shot out everywhere like shards of broken glass.

The curtains now parted with a jerk to reveal three wonky cafe tables covered with red gingham, each set with a vase of wilting freesias and a water-filled wine carafe. Four women and two men, all dressed in black with scarlet accessories filed trembling onstage and nervously took their places at said tables. As is typical round here, the waiting staff were nowhere to be seen. The youngest of the singers, a blocky woman with bright green sparkly eyelids, catalogue jewellery and the face of a bank teller rose to her feet, took an audibly massive breath and warbled her way unsteadily uphill to a note that vaguely corresponded with that issued by the pianist. I glanced at Delphine's face: she enjoys opera, she was wincing.
''I know one of those women on stage'' I whispered to her, ''She used to be my friend a long time ago. She was instrumental in the demise of my marriage.''
''Ooh really? Which one? What's her name?'' Del looked excited.
''Candida, the short, red-haired one with bingo-wings, sitting beside the girl who's singing at the moment. The one whose eyes are darting everywhere except here because she just spotted me in the front row.''
''What, that geriatric, mad-looking one - that's the Candida you've mentioned before?''
''The very same.''
''Well, b*gger me! No accounting for taste, is there?''
''Have I ever told you what a lovely friend you are Delphine?''
We smirked at one another and settled quietly back in our creaking seats.

Aria followed aria in quick succession over the next forty minutes...most were indifferent, a couple were bad, but one vocalist captured my full attention: an old codger who had obviously been roped in at the very last moment to fill an emergency gap - this was afterwards confirmed by their presenter - as evidenced by the fact that he was reading the libretto from his cafe 'menu' and had none of the stilted stage mannerisms of the others. Clearly not one of their members at all but an amateur Welsh Male Voice Choir tenor, his searing voice rang out accurate and true, comfortably radiating masculine pride and power. The soul of the Welsh Hills poured out through his vocal chords and the hair on the back of my arms stood up while he sang. (If you've ever had the privilege to hear a Welsh Male Voice Choir sing live you'll know what I'm talking about.)

The group's production might have passed for mildly mediocre had not their director - still enthusiastically pounding the piano to a pulp in the corner - felt it necessary to link the works with a complicated plot involving second-rate props and melodramatic stage direction: the singers wrung their hands and sobbed; pursued one another round the tables knocking chairs askew in the melee; sat on each other's laps and got pulled off by someone else; fought over an artificial bouquet; grabbed a book and leapt around strangely with it; pretended to hit one another; wept over a Polaroid photograph no-one in the audience could see and ran off stage and then straight back on again several times, shrieking and pointing at nothing. Since the songs were being performed in Welsh, German, French and Italian and their diction was appalling the whole mongrelly thing amounted to incomprehensible gibberish.

For the most part I managed to completely ignore Candida, something I'd resolved to do with those I no longer wanted in my life ever since reading somewhere that 'hating someone is like drinking poison and then waiting for the other person to die'. When it came to her solo however I couldn't resist a little mischief. Accordingly, I glowered directly at her from the front row with more icy disdain and scorn than I actually felt which, together with my unfortunate and protracted coughing fit, had the gratifying effect of making her performance even more self-conscious than expected: beaming madly in the spirit of true professional defiance, she rose above my heckling body language, and flinging over-gesticulating arms wide, howled off key like a rabid werewolf under a rising moon. Job done.

We all applauded keenly at the end but not so enthusiastically as to elicit an encore; the elegant lady in black had been attacking the piano at the speed of light for some forty-five minutes now without a moment's let up and I suspected the tendons might well be detaching themselves from her hands even as she took her bow: none of us wanted any part of something that might require a visit to A&E at this time of night.

After a speech expressing our heartfelt thanks for their renditions Iris gestured for the hall lights to be put back on and the buffet to be served: "I do hope you all remembered not to eat before you came out tonight ladies, as we have a veritable feast for you all."
"Ooh dear, I completely forgot about that, I've already eaten" murmured Lynn, from the end of our flag-covered table. Tonight we were celebrating St David's Day, the patron saint of Wales. Each table had therefore been draped with Y Ddraig Goch (the Red Dragon) - and decorated with a small vase of daffodils (our national flower) which I'd had to remove as quickly as could be deemed within the bounds of patriotism since the pollen was causing me serious snot paroxysms.

"God yes, I've just had a huge tea - been working all day and I was starving" said Gruff Roberta.
"Well I did remember," said Del, "it's just that I'm a pig."
"It doesn't matter anyway" I said "I don't think this type of food's got any calories in it." This last met with general agreement round the table.

Like ancient elves a dozen small women appeared from nowhere clutching somewhat bent tinfoil trays: a waxed cardboard coffee cup containing twiglets was plonked on our table, followed by a paper plate of Pringles and two Tesco own-brand dips, both of which tasted vaguely like variations on sugary coleslaw with added citric acid. This was just the beginning...cubes of cheese smaller than dice then materialised together with assorted multicoloured rice snacks; sausage rolls less than a centimetre wide; some peanuts; damp, salty scotch eggs roughly the size of a hamster's testicles (and similar in imaginable texture and flavour); drooping carrot and celery sticks; a leaf or two of rocket; several strands of cress, and finally a slice of fruit cake which was delivered at the same moment as a sardine paste sandwich with the crusts cut off. By the time we'd finished helping ourselves to this eclectic spread our plates looked like the floor-sweepings from a chav's wedding buffet. One lovely old lady offered us some fabulous homemade bara brith - upon which we pounced with the alacrity of seagulls - and about halfway through eating this a random ham sandwich arrived followed by several cocktail sticks: a relief too late since by that point I'd pretty much finished off the miniscule cheese cubes by spearing them with a cunningly sharpened twiglet and I was not about to engage in public tooth picking before the assembled Ladies of the Institute.

The piece-de-resistance however were those confections known in Britain as 'Tea Cakes' - which have nothing whatsoever to do with either tea or cake - and are actually small marshmallow domes sitting on a jammy biscuit-base and coated with chocolate. We saved these - the best bits - until last. Sadly, the first bite of these degenerate delicacies was enough to inform us they'd been purchased at the local Aldi store: how the Germans can actually worsen British food is beyond me but they never seem to fail at the task. Thus the marshmallow - which had the peculiar property of tightly whipped adhesive - was so sweet it made your eyelids sweat and so large it splurged all over one's face; the biscuit that tempers the whole experience almost non-existent and the chocolate some novel, wafer-thin carob confection that instantly exploded in all directions upon contact with teeth. The prudent amongst us gave up after a couple of mouthfuls but gluttons like myself persevered in the vague hope things might get better after a while - they didn't - and subsequent attempts to remove smears of chocolate and marshmallow from around one's mouth and nose resulted in shreds of torn paper tissue sticking to one's skin. I derived great satisfaction from observing Candida – shamelessly flirting at the next table with the youngest of the tenors - trying to nonchalantly fellate her marshmallow tea-cake in his face. It all went horribly wrong: cougar to corgi in three bites.

Afterwards, sticky and with queasily confused stomachs, we sat around and chatted for a good half hour while tea and coffee were served, catching up on local news and all the latest gossip. I was intrigued to learn that Gruff Roberta had in fact been driving coaches for 43 years, since passing her test in 1965. She'd been one of the first women coach drivers in 1960's Britain and certainly the first and only one for many years in the company she worked for. She'd had to endure a lot of teasing from her male colleagues of course, but admitted she'd looked cute too "Except when I was pregnant. Didn't look too great then, mind." I was really quite taken with this image of a 19 year old Roberta peering over the wheel of a 60's tour bus, Carry-On type comments being flung her way as she thundered through the leafy lanes of the home counties. ('Oo-er Missus, that's a nice big clutch you got there, fnarr fnarr'.)

We were interrupted by the announced results of the raffle, the winning tickets picked from a Tupperware container by members of the singing troupe. Delphine had very kindly bought me a strip at the door that I too might participate in the opportunity to win a funereal triangular arrangement of gloomy red carnations or a box of rash-inducing scented bath products evidently purchased from the local pound shop. Strangely, the first two numbers called did not appear to belong to anyone in the room, and a third ticket had to be selected before a reluctant prize-winner was pushed forward by her table companions.  Everyone's Smoothie hats were safely gathered in and someone else came round collecting names for an impending trip to one of the Staffordshire Production Potteries, which worryingly sounded quite interesting. Iris, Henrietta, Olwen and several others from the 'top table' stopped by for a chat and the time passed quickly.

Suddenly my hair-trigger boredom response kicked in and without really noticing I began to gather up our paper plates. I must have been reacting to a pheromone sent out by the President for all around me ladies were doing the same: we were a happy hive of bustle as we bore our left-overs to the huge bin bag held out for us by Roberta. "No! Don't throw that away - I'll eat it!" she roared, rummaging thru the cascade of paper plates within for the still upright cup of twiglets I'd just posted. "That's disgusting, Roberta, you can't eat that stuff! Think of all the cough and sneeze germs on it!" I protested. "Don't be daft - course I can eat it - there's no germs on it! Never could stand seeing good food go to waste. This lot'll keep me going at least two nights!" She gestured at the table behind her strewn with an ever-growing pile of retrieved left-overs. Iris was equally appalled and remonstrated with her as I walked away to clear more tables, with the result that upon my plate-laden return, Roberta was now collecting the left-overs for her 'chickens'.

Delphine who'd gone to the kitchen behind the stage to help with the washing up reappeared with a face like a smacked arse: apparently Henrietta had used her massive shoulders and vast hips to physically shove Delphine right out of the sink area and across the room with the words "What do you think you're doing? Get out of the way, that's MY job!" One of the other women in the kitchen had pulled a face behind Henrietta's back, shrugged at Delphine and suggested she vacate the kitchen and leave Henrietta to it. Delphine expended her adrenaline in useful fashion swinging emptied stacking tables onto their sides and collapsing their legs inward with a resounding crack. For someone with arthritis, rheumatism, tennis elbow and housemaid's knee, Delphine can be formidable when hacked off.

It was not long before we had the hall cleared and tidied, and hugging our goodbyes to the handful of people still there, made our way from the light and warmth back into the cold damp night which seemed to have been waiting for us.

"We did well tonight." Delphine announced as she started her grumbling car.
"We did?"
"Oh yes! Didn't you see, the big guns from the top table were coming to talk to us at our table, they never do that normally. We always have to go to them." I had to confess I hadn't actually noticed. 
"And we helped clear up: big brownie points for us there. I think Iris was rather taken with you. Both she and Olwen asked if I thought you'd come back for next month's meeting."
"Did they?"
"You think you might? Did you enjoy tonight?"
I smiled. "Yeah, I did enjoy it, actually, it was kind of nice. Everybody was really friendly, and quite a lot of it was very funny, albeit unintentionally."
"Yeah, I love that aspect, that's why I started going really. And then I sort of got into it as well, if you know what I mean. So, d'you think you'll come back again?" Delphine was trying to sound unconcerned, trying not to pressure me but I could sense my answer was important to her and I was touched.

I leaned back in my seat, watching the vapid glare of the streetlamps flicker by as we left the village and headed out into the darkened countryside. Girl Guides was so long ago it might as well never have happened. Cat's-eyes glittered whitely from the road ahead and a new moon floated serene above the hills beyond.

"Yeah Del, why not."