sheldrake

I hear that Joan Collins said that David Cameron had a "face like a pudding." This annoys me no end, because I said ages ago that Charles Kennedy looked like an undercooked currant bun, and I stand by that.

I got tagged for this fascinating meme by the equally fascinating sophrosyne31: write five alternate versions of your life. It was very interesting to do, because I found I had no idea what was going to happen in my lives until I wrote them, and sometimes they went off in rather unusual directions. I'm afraid some are very silly and others are ridiculously melodromatic. Fun, though. I tag anyone who wants to do it, as I'd be interested to read any of them. (yeah, yeah, copout).



1.

Eccentric spinster Miss B, on a flying visit to London from Suffolk in 1987, changes her mind. Perhaps she’s running late, she doesn’t have as much time as she thought she did. She decides that, after all, she will not visit her old guitar teacher in Edmonton. The poky, run-down cottage adjoining hers remains unrented. My parents do not, after all, move to the country on a whim. I stay in London, and become increasingly unhappy. Cripplingly shy and a natural victim, I am bullied at school. I feel alienated from everyone there, students and teachers alike. Most of the time I don’t go at all. My home is my refuge. Inventing illnesses becomes more and more of a habit, until I can’t remember when I’m lying and when I’m not. I frustrate my family and the doctors and everyone around me, but the habit is too hard to break. I am depressed and introverted and agoraphobic. I withdraw into a small, narrow world, mostly of my own invention, which lasts throughout my teens and twenties. I spend most of my time reading and watching television. My brother becomes a heroin addict at 16. He is in and out of hospital and prison throughout his life. My father suffers a complete mental breakdown and is more-or-less permanently hospitalised. My mother copes. Eventually, so do I. In 2001 I am given a secondhand computer and simultaneously develop an intense passion for the new Lord of the Rings films. Over the next few years I discover a new place to exist, and in it, things are not hopeless. I can do things. I can make friends. Slowly, the cocoon of my inner life widens and breaks open, and I come out into the sunlight.

2.

I am born a boy. I listen to a lot of Morrissey and fall in tragic, unrequited love with beautiful, winsome girls who are way out of my league. I write bad poetry about them and lie awake feeling sorry for myself into the early hours. For a few weeks in 1994 I think I might be gay, but then it turns out I’m not. After that I toy with the idea of becoming a monk, but I decide that’s probably not for me either, particularly since I don’t believe in God. Eventually I get over myself, marry a nice woman I meet in the pub, and settle down. I have quite a nice life.

3.

In 2005, I decide to ride out the redundancy rumours at the company I work for, rather than cutting my losses and going back to my old dead-end job. I am not made redundant. I continue to work there, overcome my doubts about working in the design industry and become fairly successful. In 2008 I take the opportunity to transfer to a London branch of the company, where I continue to do well and eventually leave for a better-paid position. From there I go on to higher and higher things. I’m doing ok. I have a lovely house and plenty of money, with which I am able to buy myself some friends and a sense of style. I suffer from terrible nightmares and develop a heavy caffeine addiction in order to cope with the lack of sleep. I take up smoking to help deal with the caffeine addiction. At the age of 37 I fall suddenly and devastatingly in love with a 23-year-old art student I meet at a yoga class. He’s planning to abandon his degree and go and live a life of minimalism and self-sufficiency in Bhutan. He asks me to go with him and I throw caution to the wind and agree. The next morning I get up early to write my resignation letter and, dizzy with a new sense of happiness and freedom, I walk outside and step straight into the path of a bus. Fortunately, the driver is just able to stop before the bus hits me. Less fortunately, I suffer a massive coronary and am pronounced dead on arrival at the local hospital.

4.

I am born in the early nineteenth century to a mildly unsuccessful Yorkshire cart-builder and his wife. Life is tough, but we survive. I am married at the age of 19 to a local labourer. My parents do not really approve of the match, seeing it as beneath me, although they themselves often find themselves relying on the charity of the parish. My husband decides that, the way things are going, we’d be better off upping and moving to the city, so we do. We both find work within the Sheffield steel industry: he spends his days grinding forks, while I burnish Sheffield plate. I rub the steel with soap and white Calais sand to remove the dirt and grease. I use tools made of steel, agate and bloodstone to get inside those hard-to-reach crevices, and then I polish the pieces with soft old linen until I can see my face in them. Then I start all over again. It’s not a bad life. It’s a bloody terrible life. I have 14 children, eight of whom survive. I dose them with opium to keep them quiet, and myself with gin. I give birth to two of them on the factory floor and, within a few years, they’re back here, working. My husband develops a cough. He says he finds it difficult to catch his breath. It gets worse and turns to bronchitis. Eventually, the tissue of his lungs solidifies and finally ulcerates. He is dead before he’s 35. Over the years I gain deformities in my hands and wrists, until they become paralysed and I can no longer work. I end my days in the poorhouse.

5.

I don’t split up with that bloke I’m sort of seeing. I decide to stick with it and try and make it work – I don’t want to end up alone, after all. We get married and go on to have a terrible sex life. Eventually, he annoys me so much I stab him with the carving knife over Christmas dinner. I am arrested for murder and my trial ends up in all the papers. I am sentenced to life imprisonment, but then released on appeal six years later after a high-profile campaign by a group called WarDie (Women Against Rudeness, Dullness, Irritation and Ennui). My case is helped by support from such celebrities as Germaine Greer and Dolly Parton. I give a tearful interview outside the courthouse and go on to publish my autobiography. It tops all the bestseller lists. I follow it up with a popular series of children’s books detailing the adventures of Blinky the Beetle. I make pots of money. At the age of 51 I am shot by an unknown assailant while on a press-tour of Canada. The general feeling is that it serves me right for being a bit of a twat.