A middle aged Saturday in the style of Mrs Dalloway. I examine nostalgia, grief, class, and keeping my emotional resilience whilst still moving, still loving, still noticing.
The incessant chatter stopped, and silence fell over the coffee shop, just for a moment, until it started again. The two women, friends, were talking loudly, full of their own self-importance, as it often is with people from this area: Tring, Berkhamsted, anywhere nice to live, in fact, where the property prices encourage a certain type of middle class. These are usually the offspring of parents who have “made it” but come from more working-class backgrounds originally. They want the best for their children going forward, but there’s also a sense instilled in them that they are slightly better than their peers. A superiority becomes cemented in them and their own offspring, as witnessed in this coffee shop today.
I am not one of them.
My dad was a self-made man, but he kept in touch with our roots. Yes, I live here amongst them, owning a property in a nice area, but I am an outsider. An observer. So today, I notice. And I hear. Loud voices, designed so that others can hear every detail of how privileged they are. “Jocasta’s children who go to that school are doing really well with their extracurricular activities: clarinet, ballet classes, society this, bloody that.”
On another table, a young woman arrives to sit with a friend who notices her new haircut. I too have been for a haircut this morning. No one notices mine; a woman of nearly 50 with grey hair, unseen, nothing to concern yourself about really.
I sat at the hairdresser’s in front of the enormous mirror. I felt seen. My wrinkles highlighted, my double chin enhanced by shadows. My grey, tired hair was waiting to be relieved of its split ends and deadness. As I stared at this unfamiliar woman, I wondered what had happened to the younger version who sat here 15–20 years earlier. (I hadn’t been for a “proper” haircut for some time, you see.)
That woman was thinner, brighter-looking, with vibrant red hair. She was able to talk in the same language as the younger hairdresser. They had things in common; cultural references, experience, generational humour. Today, as her twenty-something hairdresser approached, I felt a sort of hollow dread. The inevitable question: “So are you going anywhere nice on your holidays this year?” began an odd exchange between us. She confidently chatted about up-to-date concepts; TikTok, the latest film, her nostalgia of just 10 years ago as a frame of reference. I couldn’t even comment, as I had already moved on from popular culture by then.
My own points of reference were similarly ignored. The conversation became a dance of sorts; two people politely acknowledging what we didn’t understand. Just a way to get through the time.
As the scissors sliced through my wet hair, I felt a shedding of youth with each clump that fell to the floor. This time, I did not feel renewed. I felt empty and unseen.
I needed coffee afterwards to restore myself, a comforting drink to warm my middle-aged, grieving soul. The friendly waitress brought my order to me with a smile. A flat white with a heart on top, and a glistening flapjack with jewel-like fruits peeking through the shiny oats and seeds. The loud women finally left, and my sanity and confidence were restored.
As I drove back to the house, the rain started. Summer rain though, the kind that smears on your windscreen and makes you wonder if you left the washing out. Is it even worth bringing it back in? I checked my mailbox at the bottom of the crooked stairs leading down to the cottage. A bunch of white envelopes. How long have they been sitting at the sorting office? I hadn’t had any mail all week.
This is the result of the changes at Royal Mail, once our flagship delivery service, now suffering from private ownership cuts and competition from courier companies. We’ve become a parcel-sending nation instead of a daily-letters one. Not much to report though; the joint tablets arrived for my dog, and some letters about recent financial actions from my late husband’s estate.
Yes. My lovely Phil, who I lost only four months ago. I can still feel him here with me. With every action I take, I hear his loving words and wise advice when things get tough. But the emptiness without his physical presence is a deafening echo of the quiet life we once led.
It’s Saturday today. We would have been together after a busy work week. The smell of sausages for breakfast would fill the house. The pans would sit waiting to be cleaned until we had dissected the week’s stress and reassured each other with a cuddle. Simple mornings. Coffee. Company. Calm.
But when I came home from the hairdresser today, there was my new emptiness. The house quiet, except for my dog softly sleeping upstairs. I stroked my hand over his rough-but-soft fur. He gently stretched before following me down the stairs. I decided to bring the washing in after all, but first I had to get through the Russian vine that’s taken over the frame of the back gate. I picked up Phil’s old secateurs, still feeling his hands on the orange plastic handles. Left-handed ones, a birthday gift for me but a game-changer for him. He would happily prune the garden, his dominant left hand finally free to lead.
As the metal blades cut through the twisted stems, snow-like petals fell to the ground and onto my dress. I thought of him as I snipped. He used to keep on top of these things. My efforts now feel pale in comparison. The washing had rain spots on it. Enough to warrant bringing it in? Surely it wouldn’t take long to dry if the rain stayed away. But then a dark cloud appeared and my decision was made. I picked up the washing basket and went out in the rain, dress dampening, unhooking the pegs.
I wondered what I might do with the rest of the day. Decisions seem harder since he has gone. I unpacked my charity shop find; some vintage orange-and-brown plastic gingerbread cutters. I thought of the old Timothy White’s kitchen shop in Watford. My mum had some just like them when we were young. My little hands would have pushed down happily, cutting shapes into dough, covered in dusty flour that needed washing off.
I may be remembering it wrong. That was a long time ago. The cutters were probably sold in the late 70s or early 80s, which makes me very small then. Four? Five? Six?
When you’re approaching 50, that scarily means you have memories at least half the population does not. Like my young hairdresser today. I miss being able to share those memories with Phil who was older, who remembered with me, who understood the nostalgia. But today it made me feel scared for the future. Where would my depository of useful memories go? Who would be interested? They are part of social history. My generation’s fragments of mind shaping the world now. The indifference from the hairdresser seemed to confirm how it would be: empty and hollow.
Anyway, I mustn’t be so morbid. I can only hope it will be different. That I’m not the only one left who remembers.
I flicked through the TV guide and a warm feeling came over me: Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound was starting in half an hour. That film has connections; both mine and Phil’s. The first time I saw the Dali dream-sequence eyes was at the Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) as a schoolgirl. They were printed large on the wall; strange, weird, and arresting. I’d always been drawn to such things. It stirred my early fascination with witches; something that scared me slightly but pulled me in.
When I met Phil, I noticed he had a VHS copy of Spellbound. We watched it together, and I told him about that trip. I can’t remember now why he had it, but the point is, it connected us.
I watched the film reclined on the sofa, the light shifting to grey, rainclouds forming. Black-and-white films seem to have been a Saturday afternoon staple on BBC Two since my childhood. They are nostalgic and comforting. My dog curled up beside me just then, sensing the need for comfort and quiet. As I watched, Ingrid Bergman looked radiant. She was not just beautiful but intelligent. A female psychoanalyst. The heroine of the story. The one who solves everything.
She is constantly reminded that women can be great psychoanalysts, that is until they fall in love. Surely that can be true of men too?!
Her quiet intelligence shines as she unravels what is wrong with her troubled companion, played by Gregory Peck. It is not the leading man who holds the power in this film. It is the woman. A satisfied glow grew in me. I wondered if Hitchcock realised that, or if it slipped through by accident.
Not only does she fix her patient’s psychological issues; she unmasks the real killer too. Take that, patriarchy.
As the film finished, I got up and made a warm drink, ready to settle in for the next one: Back to the Future.
It’s like slipping into a favourite pair of shoes. A Gen X staple. We quoted it in the playground. The girls fell in love with Marty. The boys wanted to be Marty. Suddenly I’m craving crisps, penny sweets, bubble gum, popcorn.
This was pure nostalgia. But I notice the shift: when the film came out, the 1950s scenes were the nostalgia. Now we are.
Pastel colours. Old cars. Converse. School dances. The line: “Hey kid, what did you do, jump ship?” And Biff: “Make like a tree and get outta here.” (He meant “leave,” of course.)
It was a real family film. Parents could say: “We had a telly like that.” Or, “Our school looked like that too.”
Time has moved on. Kids now look at the 80s like we saw the 50s. I find it both intriguing and terrifying. I am now the age Doc Brown was in the 1950s part of the film. Time still marches on, cruelly, without the chance for most of us to properly look back.
After the film, my dog sensed it was time for his walk. He does this; a stretch, a back roll on the carpet, a playful bark. “Come on then,” I said, as he darted to the door. I never quite know what dogs find so exciting about their walks. Maybe it’s the neighbourhood news, left in sniffing posts. Maybe treasure; like a half-eaten sausage roll. He’s found those before. No chance to remove it; gone in one gulp without touching the sides!
We came home and I felt the day softening toward evening. That liminal time. Heightened since Phil passed. We used to fall into an easy rhythm; dinner, telly, sofa hugs.
Now I stand alone in my sacred space, trying to decide what to eat. Fish and chips tug at me, but my body protests. I choose turkey mince, spinach, brown rice. My stomach thanks me.
Those retro foods were fun to have at the time, but I can’t help feeling they are responsible for many of our health problems today.
People seem to be dying younger. Not just rock stars with their hedonistic lifestyles. People like us. I lost my dad at 68. He lived life to the full; alcohol, cigarettes, fried food. But then, just 2 years later, Phil became ill at 60. He was totally different. Slim, healthy, rarely stressed. He still died too soon.
And recently I lost my my first cousin Mel from a blood clot. She was just 53.
It feels like a ticking time bomb. But I try not to let it scare me.
That night, I finished the day with Red Riding, the second part of the gritty, northern, trilogy. It was made in 2009. Enough people still remembered the late 70s and early 80s then, so it feels accurate. Brown nicotine-stained walls. Grey skies. Concrete. Bleak.
I was a very young child then, but I think it shaped me. Not that we were hard up, but it taught me not to expect too much. To be aware of the sad and violent things in the world which we were not protected from. That melancholy shaped my life.
The men in that TV programme drank, smoked, swore profusely. So many working-class men coped the only way they knew how. Work hard, play hard.
I went to bed thinking about those two women in the coffee shop earlier. Their lives are probably built on this generational hardship, just shaped differently now. Do they even realise? Do they care?
Which people do I prefer to be around?
It certainly isn’t them.
Even if I lose more of my people too soon, I’m glad I had them in my life.
Rachel x