sashinka | observation orientated, with a twist of lime | a blog

Read this post quick. I feel ambivalent about it. I might delete it when I get back from my meeting.

I think I said already that I'm Jewish. And I'm not married. This is anathema to my extended family.

Aside: at my sister's wedding a few years ago, during the reception I was talking to a couple of people, and an old Aunt-by-association, Great Auntie Essie, came up to me, clutched my left cheek in a vice-like-grip, and exclaimed in an extremely loud voice "A shame! A shame! Such a shayna maydel (tr: pretty girl)." More people gathered round, drawn by the commotion. Now there were maybe twenty people. "A shame!" She reverted to the no neck position, let go of my cheek, raised her arms in the traditional questioning stance, and carried on. "Such a shame! You'd think there'd be somebody.(inference: anybody) A shayna maydel like this. A balobuster (tr: homemaker-type, but it's a compliment), her Mother says. You'd think there'd be somebody." Now there were around fifty people. Older people nodded in agreement. I wanted to crawl under a table but I had my best dress on and didn't want to ruin my shoes.

So you get the picture.

My Mother deems it her life's work to find me someone, and there is a relatively constant stream of accountant-types who run a mile when they meet me and find I'm loud, and have personality and cleavage and left-of-centre views. I'm trying to get her to stop, but no is not a word in her vocabulary.

Monday, I get a phone call. He’s called Jonny. They’re all fucking called Jonny. He got my number from his mother. She, in turn, got my number from my mother. The bush telegraph has never made so much money; telecomms deregulation has no effect on volume business. Because I'm basically polite, I talk to him for a while, turns out he was my leader in the Jewish Youth Movement we both belonged to. Trying to change the subject, I say "well, I'm sure we've both changed a lot since then." He replies: "Not really. Apart from putting on a huge amount of weight." Now I have childbearing hips to beat the best of them, but it doesn't sound good.

We talk some more. He's an accountant. Obviously. Lives in North London. Obviously. And, er, he's seen Status Quo one hundred and twenty-six times in his life, and has tickets to see them six times more this year. "That's what the internet's great for," he tells me, "I've met Quo fans everywhere I go, and we meet up after all the gigs."

Now I too have some addicitive patterns of behaviour, and fandom is fine in moderation - anything is fine in moderation - but rocking all over the world is not where I'm at.

This has to stop. Maybe I can get into a twelve-step programme for this. Or get my Mother into one. She's got the marriage version of Munchausen by Proxy. I'm not a piece of meat and I can't be bought and sold.