Showbiz etiquette dictates that if you go see a show and know someone in it, you’re supposed to “go round” afterwards and say hi. Because if you don’t go round (backstage) and the performer knows you’re in (the audience), this translates as you hated the show but were too chicken to come lie about it, and you then have to ring the next day with some lame excuse like “racing to get the sitter home” and get trapped in a long boring discussion about the play, which you have to fake, because you only heard half of it anyway, having spent the other half wondering what the hell you were going to say about it.

Going backstage can of course be fun. You get to touch interesting props i.e. fake food, severed heads, polystyrene rocks, or see famous actors scuttling past in their underpants or without their hair (or underpants) but mostly what happens is it means you’re late for your train or a dinner reservation. Because you can’t just dash backstage, say “Hi! Bye! Loved it!” and leave.

First of all, unless you can spot, and then sneak through without being stopped by an usher, a pass door (a door from the house, meaning the audience, directly to backstage), you have to go out and walk round to the side or behind the theatre to the Stage Door where, unless you’re on The List, the Stage Door Keeper won’t let you in even if it’s pissing down. Whereupon you wait. The actor is rung in the dressing room to see if he or she really and truly knows you and if this is the case you wait some more, because: actors like to change into street clothes, robe, pretty kimonos etc. before being viewed; dressing rooms are small and crowded; someone’s aunt’s entire bridge club ahead of you needs their programs signed; actors don’t possess pens.

Once you’re in a dressing room, stick to the rules. The first and foremost one is to dish praise like there’s no tomorrow, even if it was the worst show you’ve ever seen and you spent the night looking at your watch thinking “I could be home watching old reruns of The Waltons.”

Furthermore:

• Dish praise evenly. If there’s more than one actor in the dressing room you’ve poked your head into, don’t tell one how terrific he is without telling the other. It could lead to fights on the playground later.

• Unless you really really loved the sucker, never give your honest opinion. Ever. Even if you’re asked. BEGGED. No one wants to hear it. With the possible exception of Prop Girls, who I can assure you from personal experience don’t give two hoots or even half a hoot what you think (but if you smile nice will meet you for a drink), all anyone involved in a show wants to hear is what a swell job they did and that they thrilled you to the bone. Saying “Did you actually read that play before you accepted it?” only makes actors feel like total morons. Not that they don’t anyway sometimes, but still.

• Don’t say “Great set!” or “Loved the costumes!” to people who have nothing to do with sets or costumes, such as the star or the playwright, unless you’ve praised their contribution first. It translates as “Oh dear God dear God please please PLEASE let me come up with something, ANYTHING nice to say about this turkey and FAST!”

• Actors can be a superstitious lot. Don’t whistle, utter the word “Macbeth”, come in waving peacock feathers or do about a hundred other things that make them crazy. Unless of course, you want to.

• Don’t joke to the writer, “It’s all right, I’ve sorted out the ending for you!”

• Don’t tell the composer that one of his songs reminded you of Get Me To The Church On Time. In fact, even humming Get Me To The Church On Time on the way to supper afterwards does nothing for the friendship (or marriage).

• Unless specifically asked for or there is an anecdote connected to it which has some bearing on the show and how brilliant it is, don’t discuss your route to the theatre. The first thing out of your mouth should not be “Del didn’t want to drive so we took the tube and changed at Liverpool Street”. Nor should you walk in saying “Have you any idea where I can buy linen sheets in this area?”, “Aren’t there a lot of stairs in this theatre!”, nor begin carefully describing the smoked salmon platter you had for lunch.

• Standing like a lemon in the dressing room doorway saying nothing only works if you’re a non-show-biz type i.e. neighbour, school-run parent, electrician who did the upstairs wiring etc. and overcome at being backstage for the first time. NOTE: if someone says “Did you enjoy the show?”, nod. If you’re offered champagne, take it. If for whatever reason you felt like saying “Thanks for arranging (not to mention paying for) our tickets!” it would be totally appropriate.

• Double-edged remarks like “You!” (accompanied by an awed shake of the head), “You’ve done it again!”; “Good was not the word!”; “What you did out there tonight...”(letting your voice drift off); “No, the audience loved it, they may not have been laughing but, honestly, everyone around me had their faces wreathed in smiles!” are perfectly acceptable and should be accompanied by a meaningful hug. The recipient will not in any case be listening, and will in fact be looking past you to see who just came in.

• According to actor friends (those I have left), parents of performers should not be allowed backstage without first being sent through screening devices like at airports to catch any comments that make their offspring want to hurl themselves under the 11:00pm from Paddington. These include “That bald patch on the back of your head doesn’t half catch the light!”, “I nearly broke my neck on the way to the Men’s in the first act!” and “I’ll tell you who was wonderful, that lovely little red haired gal playing your maid!”

• “I’m so proud of you, you make me very happy” is the only correct opening line.

• There is no such thing as too much praise. If you have teenagers or toddlers in tow likely to contradict everything coming out of your mouth or say how many times you yawned, leave them outside tied to the railing or ask the Stage Door guy for gaffers’ tape.

2, October 2013

THE SON:

Now that it’s pretty much been a year since I started this diary with my mother, it’s fitting to talk about an incident that happened earlier today whilst I was playing golf that links directly with events which happened a year ago.

When I first came home to Suffolk I was in huge distress and deep into heroin addiction. Just to remind you, I had planned my own 2 week detox with Morphine Sulphate Tablets and Oramorph, a very strong brand of liquid morphine that one drinks and which is normally given to cancer patients in the greatest amount of pain. I managed to arrange a big litre bottle of the stuff from some dodgy guy in London before I came home. After I had been here for about a week, Mum and I drove into London to go back to my old flat in Brixton and collect all my stuff. [See earlier Chapter: “MORE SURPRISES”]

Since I was still taking opiates and it had only been a week since I’d last used, plus the fact that I hadn’t started Subutex yet, I gave in to temptation and, when in London that day, unbeknownst to Mum, went and scored and used and brought it back home with me.

Also, when I’d packed up all my suitcases in Brixton, I’d filled the bottoms with all of my used paraphernalia, and that of my friends’ too, a massive amount of plastic bags and boxes pumped full of used needles and spoons and citric acid and everything, basically, and then covered it all with my clothes and hid it in my Mum’s car.

So when I got back to Suffolk, and obviously was still getting high for a couple days, I didn’t want to put it all in the bins at home because if someone opened the bin bags and in them were envelopes with my parents’ names on them plus all these used needles, well, that’s how people get found out, something that my old dealer in Leeds was so anal about. He wouldn’t let anyone put even a crumpled up piece of used foil in his bins, we always had to take it with us when we left. Anyway, my solution was to stash all of these bags and boxes under speakers and plastic storage boxes here in the attic and forget about them. Which I eventually did, after I came off the opiates and onto the Subutex and proceeded to get and stay clean for almost a year now.

Back to today. When I was in the car on the way to play golf I got a text from my mum saying “Call me now.” I thought something had happened at home so I rang and she told me that she and Dad were up in the attic trying to find old cassettes and happened to stumble upon my bags of sin (my words not hers).

In the past, when I knew that I was being found out, I would become hugely defensive and aggressive, but there’s a difference now (that even I notice): as soon as Mum said she had come upon some “unpleasant” things in the attic I instantly remembered and assured her that they really were a year old, which was certainly proved later by the stench from some of the bags when I opened them up while Mum and I were dumping everything in a black rubbish bag.

The thing is though, she had only found SOME of my stashed-and-forgotten used gear, so when I got home I went through the rest of attic with her and we uncovered everything else. There was—quite a bit. Mum was shocked. Mice had even chewed through some of the plastic bags and needles were starting to drop out everywhere.

In a way, I think that initially when I had stashed it all up there, I was still in the mind set of being unable to comprehend the thought of never doing heroin again and I perhaps kept them there because I didn’t want to let go of them.

Well, in any case, the attic is now completely clear (I hope) and we are at the moment trying to think of a suitable place to dump this massive black rubbish bag packed to the gills with heroin paraphernalia. My Mum emptied her own trash can from her office into the top of it but then immediately realized what a bad idea it might to have envelopes and magazines with her name on it in there, so had to dig her stuff out again. I’m thinking of trying to find a skip in another village or town. We shall have to take a late night drive next Sunday (bin night) and perhaps wear balaclavas.

P.S. THE MOM:

Why, I ask you, would you ever, in a million years, even if you were a heroin addict with only half a functioning brain, think that hanging onto all your dead needles and crap (not to mention all your other addict buddies’ needles), like you’re planning to make an art collage out of them one day, was a good idea? Or that your parents’ attic, an easily accessed area visited almost daily by said parents, would be the ideal place to store things you didn’t want them to see. Even the dog hides stuff better.

And I hadn’t known until now that he’d used again that day in Brixton. God this is hard.

11, September 2013

THE MOM:

THINGS ALEX HAS DONE THIS WEEK TO PROVE THAT HE IS NOT JUST A TV & SPORT & FAST CAR & WOMEN-OBSESSED NICELY-TANNED LAZY-ARSE WHO CAN’T SEEM TO TEAR HIMSELF AWAY FROM THE MIRROR:

• He willingly acted as his Dad’s roadie last night, setting up keyboards, amps, mics and so on for a Jazz Night gig. More important, he hung around all evening, fiddling with leads and wires and sound levels as needed. Even more important, he had a good time and told his Dad so and also how terrific the music was.

• After setting up, he went home and changed out of his ragged and greying wife-beater with the cigarette hole in it before returning in a freshly ironed shirt, which he had ironed himself (beautifully might I add) and put the ironing board away and the iron with the cord wrapped neatly around it, like when they come new out of the box.

• He did a perfect grocery-shop (with our credit card), returning with card and all the right items, something his father has yet to master.

• He understood completely when I voiced objections to having his friend J, who has some disturbing family issues, such as neither parent appears to give a toss about him, come visit for a few nights, my primary concern being that J, a former heroin addict, might still be one, even though Alex says no, he’s not anymore, he’s just a poor lost soul who could use some TLC in a warm family environment. Still. One worries. Plus last time he came he gave Alex nits from his baseball cap. The point though is we all discussed the issue rationally, calmly, and because this week is a bit fraught, with lots on all our plates, it was agreed that it would make more sense to postpone the visit. No raised voices or anyone flouncing off saying “Well thanks a fucking LOT!”

• We got the upsetting news late last night that my father, 95, currently in hospital in Massachusetts, is either going to have to go into a nursing home ($), or have 24 hour nursing care at home ($$$). Alex, after having spouted off about the disgraceful state of health care in America, especially for the elderly, put his arms around me and said, “Mum? I will go over there and look after him. I’m serious. I am happy to do that. Just say the word. I will bathe him and shave him and anything else that needs doing. I know how to wipe a bum. He’s my grandfather and I love him.” I get emotional all over again even typing that.

1, October 2013

THE MOM:

So. Look what I just found while rooting around in the attic just now for old tapes from DK’s Albert Finney album:

About a thousand hypodermic needles, umpteen packets of sterile wipes; umpteen packets of ascorbic acid, three spoons, two mini cooking pans, blue heroin wrappers, some stuff that looks like salt and, the good news, my best tweezers I’ve been looking for forever.

I really really, okay, REALLY hope this is long-ago-dumped-and-forgotten paraphernalia from Alex’s former life. He’s on the golf course, or would ask.

And my mother wants to know why I need a stress test.

FOUND: an Aunt Helen Keepsake

From the box of family treasures in Great Aunt Helen’s bedroom closet.

Two shiny shells, two mini hinges, a silver clasp and chain—and inside?

A rattlesnake rattle!

The purse belonged to Helen’s mother, my great grandmother Lydia, and the rattle to a snake which had had the misfortune to encounter Lydia’s older brother’s shotgun on their way to school one day in Mound Prarie, Minnesota. Dates from the 1870s.

When I was a little girl, I was convinced that the pocketbook belonged to Hans Christian Andersen’s Thumbelina, she who floated down a stream asleep in a walnut shell with a leaf for a blanket.

In fact, Aunt Helen HAD a china box shaped like a walnut on her dressing table.

Makes sense, no? I mean, what other proof do you want? And then a snake ate Thumbelina and died there.

FINAL HOME: keeping

LEFTOVERS. Every Thursday on astridronningking. The Full Story Behind Leftovers

8, September 2013

THE SON:

I have just got back from 4 nights away down to almost the most southern part of England. Feock, a tiny hamlet about 15 minutes drive from Falmouth, is where 8 friends and I rented a house on a creek/inlet. It was an amazing experience. I haven’t seen or spent a prolonged amount of time with any of them for over a year or more and it was a great reminder of the old days when I pretty much spent all my time with my friends, before heroin had started ruining and negating friendships.

The holiday started in London where I met one of my oldest best mates, C, and his mate, R, and we had to do some errands round New Cross and South London, dropping off speakers etc then picked C’s girlfriend up in Ealing so we didn’t get onto the M4 until 6.30PM on Sunday night. However, C has just got his new car, a BMW 330 Ci, a monstrous 3 litre engined beast with full Harmon Kardon 8 speaker sound system. I got to sit in the front the whole way and play DJ. It was a great experience driving into the sunset with hardly anyone on the road and tunes blasting away, going at a ridiculous speed the entire way. We did the journey in 3 hours and 20 minutes which is an achievement.

That first night was basically saying hi to everyone and staying up late and conversing intellectually. The next day we checked out Falmouth, got battered scallops at Rick Stein’s (famous chef), hit the beach then went to Pendennis Castle (cost a tenner, a rip-off). We cooked a massive BBQ and stayed up long into the night, conversing yet again. The next day we went to the beach and spent all day there, looking at fit girls and eating ice creams etc, then, as it was our last night, myself, the twins E & T and F, who organised the whole thing, decided we wanted to go out on the town in the hope that we would get lucky. It was an insane night. So much fun. I ended up linking this fit barmaid at this ridiculous mini-nightclub, E ended up shagging a 36 year old mother of two, whose children kept running into the bedroom in the morning and calling him “Daddy” (!), T managed to get with a rank 50 year old Swedish woman and emerged from an alley with her with his zip undone, and F saw the girl of his dreams but she got away.

So good being single and going out with mates. I haven’t seen the twins for over a year and I used to spend all my time with them and the best thing is that nothing has changed between us. Still so easy to chat to everyone, plus the shining moment was when I realised they finally feel as though their friend is back after many years in the Opiate Wilderness. C actually said “It’s fucking good to have you back man” and it was a great feeling. Also, chilling with F, who I have known for a while but has never been one of my close friends, was incredible. That boy is an absolute legend. He is in a similar situation to me in that he is living at home with his parents, but in Cornwall rather than Suffolk. He was so glad to see mates and have them come down to him rather than having to get a 6 hour train from Truro to Paddington.

The whole trip was so worth making and I wish it could have gone on forever but reality has kicked in after two days of being home and I finally have restarted my revision again. Anyway, it was a great incentive to stay on the straight and narrow and that I still have sound boys as mates.

THE MOM:

Gosh. SO very happy to hear everyone had SUCH a great time speeding and clubbing and shagging, warms a mother’s heart to hear of the adventures, doesn’t it.

Still. THE SON came back in one piece, with credit card, also in one piece. And sans heroin. Can’t really ask for more.

What I would like is a gardener. Just once. A real one. Not someone who used to be a fisherman out of Lowestoft or who’s real job is to drive a schoolbus, captain a tour boat or play in a Sixties tribute band. They are all fine, all lovely, and the lawn gets mowed but if there’s other stuff that needs doing, and there always is, I have to tell them and point a lot.

And I’m just guessing here. Is the problem. I don’t really know. I like to look like I know, but I don’t. And so I want someone who does to come over and tell me what should be moved or removed or divided or pruned or fertilised and so on (and ideally do it all for me) plus tell me why the orange climbing rose keeps dying and why the red one on the pergola seems to have another rose, a white rambler of some sort, coming out of it and also what I’m supposed to do with the half dead hedge and why won’t anything grow along the fence by the cars or if there’s anything like Round-Up you can sprinkle on a husband or son to get them to lift a green finger once in awhile to help. And to stop DK calling everything a rhododendron.

I mean, what is their problem anyhow? How can you not like watching something grow? And get excited when it blooms! I don’t get it.

Now, in their defence, which is an expression I don’t use very often, neither husband nor son went through Basic Garden Training from an early age. DK grew up during the war and by 11 was touring the country in Twice Nightly Variety (Vaudeville). Plus, his parents, when they moved to Hornchurch, Essex where DK was born, dug up an established asparagus patch because they didn’t know what to do with it, they only knew asparagus if it came in a tin. So maybe we cut DK some slack. Not too much, but a little. Plus he’s 87 and had a lower back operation.

As for Alex, he grew up in a flat in London. Yes, a nice flat, a triplex (three floors) with balconies and roof terraces with planters and pots (97, according to pissed-off actor friend Doug Stender who asked to house sit for a month while we were in the States and then found out he had to water) but can’t think Alex noticed them, and the only interest he ever showed in Hampstead Heath—790 verdant acres on our doorstep—was that it offered some excellent stonework for him and his Italian friend Fillipo to deface with graffiti. The first sign of any horticutural leanings didn’t occur until he was in his late 20s, by which time we were living here in Suffolk and eleven marijuana plants he sowed behind the shed without my knowledge grew to the height of the Empire State Building, which is about when I noticed them, and smelled them, at which time I asked for them to be removed, which they were, and taken away by somebody named Rico, a former chef from Lowestoft.

Enough about them.

My father was the gardener, growing up in Connecticut. We had five acres. He was only home weekends and now I wonder how on earth he managed. My great Aunt Helen lived with us, I think she helped weed the lower garden, I can see her bent over in a hat pulling stuff but my mother I’m not sure even went outside. Men came to mow, but that’s it. My job was to fling all the rotting crab apples into the bushes before they arrived, and then use a net after they left to scoop grass out of the swimming pool. Neither activity appealed.

Later, when I was older, I had to weed “Daddy’s roses” along the driveway. I’d leave it until about two seconds before he got home on Friday nights because I would have forgotten about it and in fact would already have a foot in my boyfriend Rob’s car to go out somewhere fun when my mother would appear OUT OF NOWHERE and say “Where do you think YOU’RE going, young lady?” and make me get out. Imagine, 15 years old and already gardening in high heels.

So then, let’s see. College. No garden but my dorm roomate Debbie showed me how to grow an avocado plant from the pit. We all grew those. A long stem with leaves on the top and zero avocados. Odessa, our illegal cat used the pots as litter trays and to shovel dirt everywhere.

Next came working in theatre and rented apartments or beach houses. Any plays with a lot of plants in them meant that after the show we took the plants home. (NOTE: in England it’s considered unlucky to have real ie live plants and flowers onstage but in the States we don’t care). Our place was always filled with big potted palms, philodendrons, snake plants, things that didn’t require much care, plus a million spider plants that kept making babies. Annie and Debbie and I occasionally remembered to water everything but then the theatre season would end and we’d have to give up the rental or beach house for the summer and the plants needed somewhere to go and that’s how my parents ended up with so many (plus a cat).

Then it was Frank, my first husband, an actor, and he and I were on the road filming a lot and living in hotels and rentals but in 1975 we bought an island a quarter of a mile off the coast of Connecticut, one of The Thimble Islands, and it came with a four bedroom Victorian clapboard house, two pine trees, a lilac, a lot of rock, and a triangular patch of ground the size of a pizza slice. This became my first garden. The first and last things I planted were dwarf irises which bloomed for about an hour before Derek our builder’s St Bernard puppy ate them.

Which brings us to 1980 and a move to the UK and a third floor sublet in Belszie Crescent, London NW3 with zero pots or windowboxes or house plants. Hope your finding this as riveting as I am. A larger flat in New End Square followed, and my very first windowboxes, which I filled with red geraniums. Which looked pretty until Mike, World’s Laziest Brother-in-Law, neglected to water while we were away and P.S. also ruined my paella pan and used up all my good bath oil from Penhaligon’s.

Unbelievably, he then joined us when we moved to Parliament Hill, just off Hampstead Heath, well-known graffiti destination.

Correction. Mike asked to stay for two weeks but stayed 12 years. And I’m sure I have more to say about this but, another time.

From Parliament Hill, London NW3, famous for 97 house and balcony plants, came a move to a converted barn rental in Suffolk, where I went to a local garden centre, bought something called a geum, which I’d never heard of, but liked the look of, so planted, which immediately attracted a hornet the size of a pterodactyl which went after the dog which I had to keep inside for three days. Six months later we moved villages and into another rental which had a beautiful lavender border buzzing with bumble bees, one of which Buster the Border Terrier ate, an established black grape vine, but not the good Concord kind, and a lot of something called alchemelia, a new word, and one which I heard as “You’ve got Al Camellia at your place!”, which I denied, thinking he was an actor at the Jill Freud Summer Theatre.

Finally, we come to the move to where we are now, to a house we own, where the garden is all ours, to fill with stuff I’ve never heard of, and never buy enough of, because I walk around garden centres zombie-style, scared to buy the wrong thing, so end of planting any old shit, and if it likes it here and doesn’t die, I get more, or would, if I remembered its name, or where I wanted it to go. And so that’s why I want a gardener.

1, September 2013

THE MOM:

Alex’s three night sojurn last week in the Big City (London) was a success, from the Not Returning Home A Heroin Addict Again point of view, and so now we have embarked upon the Further Afield Test. He is currently frolicking with seven friends down on the coast of Cornwall in a house they have all rented (£61 each) and he has gone off with, believe it or not, his father’s credit card, speaking of tests and, here’s a switch, with our permission. “Just for emergencies.” That old chestnut.

And which of course in the old days used to mean—to him, I hasten to add—train fares, taxi fares, Chinese take-aways, top ups on his Oyster Card, new trainers, taking his girlfriend out to dinner for her birthday, gas, drinks, taxis, lunch, and as many drugs as would fit into his shopping cart.

But which Alex, now in his Ten Months Clean State, views differently. He says.

He who has never ever lied to us before, ever ever.

Look, what would you have me do, trail him down to Falmouth and sneak around in the bushes all night trying to see in the windows?? You’ve got to give the lad a chance to prove himself, by himself, without Mama around.

And anyway I know these guys he’s with. Well, some of them. And they’re good news. I think. Or were. I think. Am just checking now to see if I have their mobiles. Yes. Well, one. Good enough. And Alex left me the address.

Better go set the Sat Nav now if I’m going to make it before dark.

22, August 2013

THE MOM:

Back to CRI in Lowestoft today, my favourite mother-son haunt, and feeling totally different from when we first started going up there, when I didn’t trust him to go in or come out and sat parked in surveillance mode, eyes glued to the front door, feeling sick the whole time until I saw him again.

Today, I dropped him off and went grocery shopping and collected him one hour later. He came out beaming. He’d passed the drugs test (”Naturally!” he added) and sang the praises of some new doc who’s a forensic advisor to Scotland Yard in his spare time. Alex’s meds are being reduced again in two weeks. The goal is to be completely free of Subutex by January 2014.

Tonight he helped a local widow give a dinner party. £35 for 2 hours. His new venture: helping hostesses who miss having a man around and could use a hand. The following email just came in from her and I am glowing:

“You should be very proud of your son. He is so charming, helpful, a joy to have around and lovely for me not to have to worry about the BBQ or wine. He did everything beautifully, confidently and gracefully and I hope to book him again once I pick up my courage and entertain more often. Love. S xx”

However. I just found out another village resident asked a friend of ours, a friend in the know: “Is it true Alex King has a drug problem?”

So the glow is being ever so slightly dimmed wondering how in hell THIS got out. I can only think that Alex, now that he’s feeling good about himself and beating a path towards his GED exam, has not hesitated to disclose that he was kicked out of school years ago on a drugs charge. Indeed, our friend dismissed it as such and changed the subject. God forbid we’ll need to rethink his “One Pair Of Hands” ad campaign poster..

Do you enjoy entertaining but run out of steam? By the time guests arrive are you sometimes too exhausted to enjoy them?

ALEX KING, formerly on heroin, is on hand to help you!

I offer good, reliable assistance with your dinner party, including errands, food preparation, table-laying, wine-choosing, wine-pouring, serving, clearing, clean-up, anything and everything to save you work and help make your evening run as smoothly as possible. I will come to your house as early as you like or stay as late as you like. I will come for one hour or six, whatever you need. I am at your disposal.

£15 per hour

I can also provide a Dessert/Pudding, should you not feel like making one yourself, or a starter. And P.S. I have been well-trained by my mother (not a drug addict herself, but thinking about it!) Prices to be determined.

Tomorrow is a “date” in London, and then the Notting Hill Carnival. Hopefully he comes home on Sunday refreshed. Invigorated. Not having relapsed and not dead.

The thing is, once I understand that, I will not stop worrying about him, even if I live to one hundred, I will be fine.

Meanwhile, I’ve ironed his shirts.

FOUND: mother’s attic

So what do I do with this. My mother’s mink.

Well, one of them. She had a mink jacket too, short-ish sleeves, I guess for evening wear, and lighter in color, but the mice got at it in her upstairs closet, tore it up and maybe lined their nests with it. Whatever was left she sent to my friend Giliana in L.A. who made Peg a throw pillow out of it.

Both minks plus a few others, now long gone, came from the prestigious Henri Stern fur company in New York in the 1950s. Peg’s initials or name was always monogrammed inside.

The coat is very very heavy, or I would wear it. Maybe all coats were heavy back then but compared to say, my down parkas, it’s like walking around with a bison draped over your shoulders.

Wearing fur doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Never has, never will. I was in Rome once just before Christmas, not that long ago either, and every single woman I saw was parading around in real fur. Maybe I’m part Italian. In fact, also in the attic here and also so heavy I don’t know what to do with is an Australian opossum coat that I bought one day in 1978 at Kramer’s in New Haven, Connecticut when I went out to buy vacuum bags at the Electrolux place next door and got distracted. As you do. Frank, my husband at the time, never forgave me, even though it was my money, and for the rest of our marriage, whenever we’d be driving and there’d be a dead something in the road, he’d slam on the brakes and say “Here, honey—go get yourself a hat!”

Gosh he was fun.

FINAL HOME: my attic. For the moment. All offers considered.

LEFTOVERS. Every Thursday on astridronningking. The Full Story Behind Leftovers

19, August 2013

THE MOM:

We’ve reached a tricky stage: when and how much does one start trusting one’s recovering addict child again? When does he start calling the shots and when do I back off?

Alex has made great strides, there is no denying this. He has matured in many ways. Not all, but many. He is more aware of others and their problems, not just his own. He has learned how to control his emotions better. He is happier. He is nicer. He has embarked on a project regarding his future (getting his GED and hopefully afterwards gaining admittance to Berkeley or another college of music to get a degree in Film Compostion). Friends tell me how good he looks. His grandparents adore him. He has won the admiration of his case worker at CRI, and their trust, so much in fact that he is allowed to collect one week’s worth of his meds at once, which is improvement indeed from last September, when it entailed him going to the chemist to collect it every day and being watched by them while he took it.

One result of this is that Alex is no longer forced to be on hand every day or every other day in order to collect his Subutex (which is still being reduced). He does not have to be here, in this village, in other words. I have noticed, however, that he is starting to “announce” plans or intentions, to go places or do things—rather like a done deal. For example, there is no “Say, had this idea I might go into London on Thursday if that’s okay with you guys, stay over with Arch, maybe take this bird out to dinner, maybe go to the Notting Hill Carnival? What do you think?”

Now it’s: “Oh, didn’t I tell you? Well I’m 26 for fuck’s sake, I can do what I want!” [FLOUNCE OFF TO LOO LOOKING PISSED OFF]

So we discussed all this. Just now, in depth, after a row, or what could have turned into a row, if I’d let it. I’d somehow managed to walk away after saying “Fine, ok, sure, you certainly are old enough to make your own decisions, it would simply be polite is all, to let people you’re living with know your plans rather than find out when you suddenly appear downstairs with your knapsack slung over your shoulder and say “Can I get a lift to the train station?”

Alex admits wanting to be able to call the shots. I told him I would love him to, when he’s ready. And he’s not yet ready, in my opinion, close, yes, but not really, not until he gets stuck in, either at college, or working, earning a living and making ends meet.

I know he needs to assert himself now and again, and needs to see friends (the right ones) and have the opportunity to enjoy female company. And while I would not personally have chosen the Notting Hill Carnival as a venue for a recovering heroin addict, I can’t tell him not to go. It’s his life, his body. His money. He’s got birthday dollars saved from his grandmother, and is working tomorrow night, so he can pay for the nights in town by himself, it won’t cost us anything for once. Not counting replacing the wallet and iPhone and laptop that gets stolen and whatever the lawyer charges to get him out of jail, or the facial reconstruction after the mugging while cutting through the council estate trying to peek into gangland kitchen windows.

SO. He will go into London. And put himself to the test.

And I won’t sleep for two nights but am used to this.

Going to get a glass of wine, now. The irony would be that he recovers successfully from heroin addiction but I end up an alcoholic. Wonder if he’d pay for my re-hab. Or even notice I was gone, if the cricket were on.

Along around April of 1980 I took a big breath, two suitcases, and a hot glue gun, which you should never be without, and walked out of the door and went to the airport to follow my heart to England, my heart at the time being in the possession of an extremely charming, nice, kind, polite, amusing, attractive, talented, and how can I put this, short, English composer I had met one sunny day in Connecticut and for whom I was ready to give up my home and my country. I had just extricated myself from my marriage (think of the long sucking sound of someone being pulled from the La Brea Tar Pits) and arrived at London Heathrow that April morn exhausted, sick with apprehension, but absolutely convinced I was doing the right thing.

When, of course, I wasn’t convinced I was making the biggest mistake of my life. Not counting driving my car under a truck once on the Q Bridge in New Haven when I’d only looked down for a second (I swear) to do lipstick.

But all that’s another story. Let’s talk about glue guns. What this gun does, by the way, is everything, and you have to get one. It’s instant bonding, for plastic, paper, leather, you name it, it hardens as it cools, which is in about five seconds, it’s good not only for fast repair but for fiddly craft work.

According to my Glue Gun Milestones Chart, I saw my first one in 1970 when I was apprenticing at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts one summer in hot pants and high heels. Allow me to point out that this was years before Martha Stewart started acting like she invented hot glue. Which I guess you could say makes me better. In a glue-gunny sort of way.

Anyhow, I’d tripped on over to the scene shop to see how close to a saber saw I’d like to get and got immediately yelled at to go put on some different shoes, so went back to the dorm for some blue ones that matched better, and promptly got banned from the shop. Which was the whole idea and I ended up doing props all summer, where I could wear what I wanted. The first show that summer was Cyrano, starring Frank Langella, and a show with nine million props and sets that included a fancy bakery and then a cemetary that needed to turn into a fancy flower shop. Enter the glue gun.

In order to make fake cakes and pastries you’ll need, along with your glue gun, round hat boxes, styrofoam (polystyrene to Brits), a small saw, a rasp, Elmer’s (white glue), paint and shellac. The Elmers is to coat the styrofoam once you’ve carved them into pastries so the paint sticks and doesn’t just soak in; the hot glue is for: sticking towering stacks of “buns” or “pastries” together; attaching “ladyfingers” to the sides of cakes; and cementing everything to platters so you can hold them upside down if you want during a lightning scene change and nothing falls off.

For tombstones—and you’ll want about 30 of these—get more styrofoam, a tool with which to carve names and dates and designs into them, and then paint so they look weathered and old. The fun part, if you’re not having enough so far, is that on the other side of these standing tombstones will be your fancy flower shop. Get it? The back sides of the tombstones are going to have hundreds of fake flowers hot glued onto them! Roses, lilies, whatever you want to make. And all you’ll need besides a shit load of hot glue is crepe paper, scissors, wire, green floral tape, and anyone who makes the mistake of entering the Green Room backstage only to discover they’re not allowed out until they’re shown how crepe paper flowers are made and they’ve made at least 50.

Soon, you will have the six hundred million you need, whereupon you stick a glob of hot glue onto each flower and arrange it artistically onto the back of a tombstone, bouquet-fashion. What you want to watch is this glue oozes out not just hot, it’s molten hot, like lava, and what you do with burns—this is important, don’t skim—is to plunge the red, pulsating area into cold water, then peel the stiff cold glue off, otherwise if you pull it off when it’s hot you take the skin with it and this hurts more. I once had an entire glue gun explode onto my naked thigh. And what can we learn from this, besides don’t sit around in hot pants glueing? That’s right, it’s hard getting thighs in sinks. Note: use a ceramic tile to set the gun on when it’s heating otherwise it’ll embed itself into your counter top (or mother’s table).

Other imaginative uses for hot glue include fake leather-tooling, which you probably don’t do a lot of at home but in the theatre you would, an example being: an old book or tome.

First, spatter spray, perhaps in burnished gilt, the edges of a large book, any book, all edges (fore-edge, head and tail), to age it, then cover the book like we used to have to do in school with brown paper, only use fake leather such as naugahyde. Again, age it. Magix leather spray has good colours. Now go at it with the glue gun to create an embossed look. Do spirals, curlicues, outlines. Dots. Corners. Spine. Whatever works. The glue hardens proud. You can ever write a title with the glue if you need one. Now get gold or silver or bronze-leaf paint. Not much, just enough to lightly go over all this raised glue work to look like metal. You can then age the whole thing again with spattering and a small brush and presto! A 16th century bible. A giant book of fairytales. Scrooge’s ledger. Easy. And you can use the glue gun in similar fashion to create silver filigree work on “goblets”, say for Hamlet. Sword handles, pikes and so on. But of course where hot glue really comes into its own onstage is glueing down any props you’re sick of actors messing with.

You are sure to find MANY uses for what the Brits call Hot MELT glue. Indeed, one is spoiled for Glue Gun choice over here now. You can buy them most anywhere these days, and in all different types and sizes and even colours. However. Back in 1979, when I’d made a quick recce over to London prior to moving here, just to see, you know, was this new husband idea going to work, nobody had heard of the stuff.

I almost didn’t come. How would one repair sneakers? Glue back the trim on the cushion? Hem a skirt? Stick that moose back onto the moose candlestick from Norway? Or, say, if he asked me, one more time, what night garbage night was, glue DK’s little fingers to the keyboard?

13, August 2013

THE SON:

I don’t have any idea what to write about.

This may seem like a completely random post but I think it explains, partly, why I got so heavily into drugs. I have, for as long as I can remember, been completely fascinated by gangs, and gang culture and how people from that walk of life live and where they live. For example on my recent trip to the States, when we were taking the train from Connecticut into Grand Central, I flipped on my iPhone’s 3G and Data Roaming setting which had both been off for the rest of the trip as it costs ridiculous money to use those features when abroad. We were going through the west & south parts of The Bronx and the railway line was intersecting some of the dodgiest-looking Projects (council flats) that I had ever seen but I really wanted to know exactly where all these horrible looking places were. Just seeing these gutter high rises with cages round everything and seeing lads hanging around outside every building and to me it was obvious that they were slanging dope and/or keeping watch. I saw some withered old woman pushing a Price Chopper cart with an old shoe and an air conditioning unit in it so slowly and it made me wonder if she was going over to the pushers to try and swap them for more crack.

Also, as I looked around, no one else was in sight and it was like an inner city ghost town. Surely if you live an an area like this, you don’t hang around outside, you either go to work or claim your welfare benefit and then get back into your flat as quick as possible. Completely different to the streets of midtown Manhattan where people are dining al fresco and everyone is doing their thing, interacting with others getting on with life, yet less than 2 miles away there are so many of these imposing, intimidating towers with no one to be seen but what appear to be the dregs of human society. Where is everyone?

I don’t know why I am attracted to these sorts of places so much, it must be some sort of warped adrenalin rush that I have been looking for in the past, always got completely buzzed when walking into council estates in Clapham or Brixton or Tottenham or Highbury, back in London, with my gold watch on and my Macbook pro in my bag like some little dickhead baiting anyone rude enough to come and jack me (which they have). But all the drug dealers I have always gone to have always been good to me and friendly with me, a lot of them telling me to cover my watch up etc but obviously it’s because they’ve seen me as a walking bank.

Also, because I have been brought up in a middle-class household and been privileged, there has been a desire to live a slice of life that is unknown to me and picking up drugs I suppose is basically like the cherry on top of my warped, lower-class, council estate-of-mind fantasy.

Anyhow, as soon as the train had pulled into 42nd St. and Grand Central Station, ten minutes after I’d switched Data Roaming 3G on, O2 very kindly sent me a text letting me know I had spent £40 on data and that they would automatically switch off mobile internet capability once it hit £50.

How thoughtful. I have to say, it was almost worth it.

THE MOM:

News to me. Not had the O2 bill yet. Thank you, Alex. Once again, for all you’ve spent.

8, August 2013

THE MOM:

Okay, three areas, if we’re counting being in a house that smells good. The first thing I did upon getting back here was stand in the garden breathing sea air. DK had for once watered everything (I had left detailed instructions for once) and he’s even mastered deadheading, almost, so nothing, for once, to complain about or feel sad about seeing brown and withered. Plus house clean as a whistle and fresh sheets. And he cooked breakfast and then dinner for us. A decidedly lovely homecoming. It wouldn’t even matter if I suddenly found knickers or a hair slide that weren’t mine under the bed, that’s how happy I am to be back here inhaling roses and salt spray.

So the first area in which we have major progress is in the Subutex Department. Alex noticed he was running out about a week before we left my mother’s house in the States, thought he’d had another packet, then thought he’d lost it, then decided he hadn’t lost it, he’d just been taking too much when he first got there, hence the depleted supply. He’d forgotten they’d reduced his (“voltage” I was about to write, where’s that from??) dosage—so was initially taking the old amount. I got all this from my mother by the way, he hadn’t mentioned it to me. How in God’s name had she even processed this, let alone pass it on correctly??

In any event, for six days or so he was reduced to taking one eighth or sixteenth of what he was supposed to be taking and, here’s the important part, experienced no adverse side effects whatsoever. No withdrawal symptoms, didn’t feel sick or fluey—felt, well, fine. Normal. As soon as we got back to England he rummaged in his room and found a few grains here and there on magazine covers (he smashes the pills and snorts, not my choice but so be it) and that minute amount tided him over until he could get to the pharmacy the next morning, where more positive news awaited: it seems Alex has been such a good little recovering addict that he is now allowed to collect his prescription merely once a week instead of every day. This I guess means they are now convinced he is actually taking the stuff and not selling it on the street. (Wait. How much could we get for it? Perhaps a stand at the end of our drive might work. I’ll do the artwork and find a cute apron.)

The other area of progress regards his GED, the high school equivalency exam he’s been studying for. He’s contacted, off his own bat, the testing center in London, found out the drill, how much it costs ($50 per test so $250 for all five, plus a $20 fee per day) and you can take all at once or spread them out, whatever you want or can afford and he has filled out all the forms and is now registered. He plans to sit the test in September.

Today he went into London for the night to see his best friend, Arch, and also some guy he met at rehab in South Africa who had a gambling addiction issue. I am happy for him to go but will be even happier to see him return, and in time for his Yoga class tomorrow.

My best friend Annie in the States has an only child too, a beautiful daughter, my god daughter, who is now 30, and Annie said to me on this trip to the States that even though she wouldn’t wish on herself or her daughter what Alex and I have gone through, part of her is deeply envious of the time we have had together, that to be able to spend any time at all with one’s grown child is a blessing.

Actually she didn’t say blessing, I can’t remember the word she used, but I understand what she means. And I know that whatever time I have now with Alexander The Young Man, it is only temporary, that my job is only to get his wings untangled and then watch him fly off. Hopefully, when he does, he’ll land somewhere soft for a change.

I need to go strangle the dog now, who is objecting to some pigeons in the Norfolk pines by the shed.

FOUND: in trunk in attic

Love letters from an ex-husband. Mine. Circa 1973 - 1974. Two hundred and fifty-three of them. I don’t remember saving them. Am thinking my mother must have.

It occurred to me to throw them out, then it occurred to me to return them, or burn them, then it occured to me to read them again and then decide. But I haven’t. So far. Which is perhaps just as well, since I promised my ex-stepson I would not be unkind or disrespectful or make any jokes at his father’s expense. And which I haven’t. So far. At least not today.

FINAL HOME: open to suggestion

LEFTOVERS. Every Thursday on astridronningking. The Full Story Behind Leftovers

3, August 2013

THE MOM:

Alex turned 26 this week. Rather than celebrate in a urine-scented house in the Berkshires, we aimed for a stylish night out and about in Manhattan, three hours away. A New York friend had organized a Big Birthday Dinner at Morton’s, a steak house on W 45th—a friend who in the past has always always picked up the tab and I had no reason to think he would not do the same last Wednesday. Just shows how wrong you can be.

The bill came, no one moved, no hand reached out, so eventually I got out my Amex card, opened the naugahyde folder and nearly dropped dead: over $700 for 5 of us. And this was half price apparently, it being “New York Restaurant Week” or something. And then I saw the $76 for the bottle of wine which I never in a million years would have picked, the friend had let the Maître D’, his (kind of) nephew, do it. Christ. Plus the tip. Felt like bursting into tears, almost did. Had to go down to the Ladies to get a grip. Hating that we have no money, hating that a stupid restaurant bill could make me cry, hating the friend who knows the situation we’re in but “organizing” a night that was going to cost me money I don’t have, plus him saying he’d “organized a cake” which turned out to be a squirt of whipped cream with a raspberry and a candle in it.

But loving my son, who followed me down the stairs and put his arms around me and told me the only thing he wanted for his birthday was to have me not cry anymore.

Am working on that.

Anyhow, the friend chipped in because I told him what his share was. If I’ve learned anything as I get older it’s to speak up, then and there, and not do it Brit style, which is to say nothing at the time but then complain about it for the next hundred years to people who can’t do anything about it.

We’re now back in the Berkshires and leave tomorrow for England. And we were all having an extremely pleasant night, boneless sirloin on the barbecue, amazing local Silver Queen sweet corn, and belated birthday cake—until my mother went demented because my father opened the door to the former-living-room-now-parent-quarters, just as she was trying to get the World’s Most Neurotic Collie to eat, God forbid she plunks the dog dish down out in the pantry and let the thing eat in peace—and the dog jumped a mile and flew back out into the pen, probably after a sneaky pee under the dining room table.

So then my mother stumbled out here to rant and rave about you name it and whatever I say, however much I try and explain things rationally, I get a lot of “Why don’t you ever take my side!!!” thrown at me and so here I am close to tears again, sorry Alex.

Who has somehow misplaced a box of his Subutex, he told me tonight, and has been having to stretch whatever he has left until he can get to the chemist back in England on Wednesday. Doesn’t appear to bother him too much, which is a good sign.

Other nice news: found a $14 dress at TJMaxx today en route from visiting my 94-year old former dancer friend for lunch, which I didn’t really have time to do but felt guilty if I didn’t go see her because I hadn’t manage it last time and I get so tired of feeling guilty and apologizing to people.

Other good news, my mother, earlier today, prior to the bout of irrational ranting, in other words when she was liking me, did indeed reimburse me for our trip and car rental. However, the local bank, which I got to just before closing (80 mph up Rte 8), didn’t have any big bills so I walked out of there and all through TJ’s with $6300 in twenties, thank you, wishing I’d brought a wheelbarrow, also that I could spend it, but it will go directly to DK’s account at HSBC.

As I drove back into the drive this afternoon a big tan coyote was standing in the middle of it. I stopped the car. We looked at each other for awhile, then it took off north into the forest. About twenty minutes later we heard it howling and then frantic shrieking, like something being eaten by a coyote. But The Great Stainer of Kitchen Carpets remains alive and unscathed in the dog pen (I checked) so it must have been some other critter who bought it.

If Brits had been in charge of writing the Declaration of Independence, their unalienable rights would have read: ”Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness and a Beach Hut.” I’m pretty sure. Because they love beach huts. What are beach huts? Well, beach huts are basically wooden sheds, located, as their name suggests, on a beach. All along the coasts of England, you will find beach huts. Not every coast, no, but most. In fact, were you an invading army, there would be no need for Brits to lay down tank traps, no enemy would get past the rows of beach huts.

Americans do not understand the concept of beach huts. At least this one doesn’t. She finds it, what’s the word? Bonkers.

Okay let’s get critical for a minute. If I lived an hour away from the coast, in Bury St. Edmunds or somewhere inland and fancied a day trip to the beach, I can see how having a beach hut in which to store stuff might be useful. Maybe. But here in the village? A five minute walk from the sea? I don’t get it.

The worst is, if you own a beach hut, you have to talk about it a lot. For example, any plans to go read the Sunday papers or take an ice cream down to eat at the hut need to be announced; you have to invite non-hut-owners to stop by for an instant coffee made on some sort of bottled gas burner that takes forever to light; and if anyone is expecting friends from London or abroad for the weekend, you have to cry out: “Use my beach hut!” as if it’s a Top Suffolk Tourist Attraction and a no-brainer.

A standard wooden beach hut measures 6 foot X 6 foot to 8 X 12. They can be bigger but only slightly, the size depends on the rules of the local council. The huts come with ridged roofs, sometimes a window or two (often shuttered and caged ie burglar-proof), and a door which locks and unlocks by means of a complicated configuration of hasps and iron bars, keys and padlocks, around which plastic bags are wired to keep the salt air from screwing up the hardware. It takes six years to open up a beach hut. More if the key has rusted (or is the wrong one).

The door or double doors swing open towards you, then need to be latched open with giant hooks and eyes so the wind doesn’t slam them back onto you. You either enter via a plank or stone or something rustic and unstable, or get the kind that has a little covered porch or “veranda” at the front, where you can sit and chat and watch the world of instant coffee drinkers go by. Depending on regulations, huts can be a few feet away from one another or almost touching, so you could, should you choose, sit on your own veranda and hold hands with a person on the one next to it. But only if you set down your coffee first.

The village huts are all painted black like traditional Suffolk fishermen’s shacks, but others, say the ones over the river in Southwold are painted in bright colours. You can use one solid colour or a contrasting shade for the trim or even alternate colours on the clapboards for a candy cane effect.

Huts have to be named and that acts as your address ie “Come down the steps, turn right, we’re fifteen along after the cafe, blue with yellow shutters. ‘Sunny Hunny.’” Other cute names are The Dolls House. High C’eas. Jagger the Hut. Sea-Rene. Clo-Jac. Or you can go the descriptive route with say, Beachside Bliss, Pearl By The Sea. Sand Dune Delight. You paint its name on a board and nail the board to the hut.

Beach huts can be rented or bought, which brings me to the really excellent news.

The ones in Southwold sell for between £75,000 ($100,911) and £250,000 ($336,371) but if you want to spend more for a shed that has no running water, no electricity, no insulation, head for a place called Mudeford down in Dorset where a beach hut recently changed hands for £575,000 ($773,654.).

The reason I know as much as I do about beach huts is because five years ago, my friend Jan gave me a key to her newly-acquired beach hut as a birthday present. I keep thinking I need to use it, since I don’t want to appear ungrateful, but so far have not used it because I don’t know what I’m going to do there besides try to get it unlocked.

“But,” Jan asks, “ where do you change in and out of your swimming costumes (bathing suits) in America?”

“We wear them under our shorts and T-Shirts and put a towel down driving home if we’re still damp.”

“But where do you make cups of tea?!”

“We don’t drink cups of tea at the beach.”

“Well then,” she says, “answer me this: where do you go in bad weather???”

I said we stayed home.

Still, it is kind of a nice key.

27, July 2013

THE MOM:

This is an insanely gorgeous part of the world in the summertime, full of a million wonderful things to do. Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival, Tanglewood, Berkshire Theatre, Williamstown Theatre, Barrington Stage, Shakespeare & Co, Clark Art Museum, Mass Moca, plus lakes, mountains, restaurants, good shops—all you’d want in a summer resort area and more. I have done none of it.

I have been to Price Chopper six times, Guido’s Market three times, Nejaimes wine store twice, Staples, Bed Bath & Beyond, and PetCo. I work most of the day collating tapes and disks and reel to reels and VHSes and CDs and DVDs and in-putting stuff into the computer and pen drives and Dropbox and lugging boxes of scripts around the place until I can’t stand the stench of old dog urine any longer, whereupon I either go out and weed because the place is looking like something from Grey Gardens and I’m so claustrophobic here I don’t know how the parents stand it. Or Alex and I head out across Washington Mountain on a lightning shopping run, where I worry the whole time I might have picked up a tick while weeding and now have Lyme Disease, and we roll back home in time to put dinner on the table, which seems to be my parents cue to go lie down for a nap. Only once in two weeks has my father cleaned his bird-size portion plate. My mother cuts everything into shreds then leaves it, with two exceptions (two meals that Alex cooked: Chicken Piccata and Asian Salmon).

We have had three sets of visitors, journalists and archivists, all to do with my mother and her work and so she has felt important and the center of attention, where she is happiest, and I am glad about this but if she tells me the story about how she once ran into some woman in Greece who turned out to be from Rose Creek, Minnesota just across the street from where her Aunt Frank lived, one more time, I think I may go throw myself off Mt. Greylock.

Alex and I had words the other night, both dead tired, me from the above, him from, as far as I could figure out, doing sweet F-A that was productive all day, which was in fact what triggered the flare-up.

In fact I wasn’t really annoyed with him at all, because in general he’s been like the best assistant you could find, I was just exhausted, and when you’re in that state, as in fact I am now, as in fact I have been since we arrived at my parents’, it doesn’t take much to set you off.

I don’t seem to have any patience whatsoever with my mother. I do not act like a grown up. Why can’t I be smart about it, calm and forgiving, like a good daughter. No idea. All it takes is her complaining about us having a carton of our kind of milk in her fridge, i.e. normal kind, not Lactaid or whatever she drinks, and I lose it. Well I mean please. There’s THREE refrigerators in this place, her daughter and grandson can’t put a couple of things in that we like without her going spare? I give up.

Alex was so very kind to me the other night. Prior to that he’d been completely horrid, we’d exchanged words at the DVD converter machine in front of my parents and two other people. I yelled “Don’t you dare ever speak to me that way again!” and went off in a huff. Five minutes later he came up into my room and gave me a hug and apologized and said I was right, and that he’d just apologized to everyone downstairs for speaking to me so rudely, then sat me down and said how concerned he was about me, that I was letting things get to me so, that I seemed so unhappy all the time, how I needed to learn to let whatever my mother says or does just wash over me and not take it to heart or I’d never survive and he didn’t want me having a heart attack (with his birthday coming up on Wednesday).

We’re going into the city for a few nights to escape. He’ll be on his own one night in New York. Am trying not to think about it.

Apologies for being boring and tired, it’s almost 1:00am and I’ve been up since 6:00. And today Alex spent from about 9:00am till 6:00 studying Biology for his GED so remind me to stop moaning about him. Habit.

24 July 2013

THE SON:

Last night at the dinner table the subject of conversation turned to living conditions and dealing with mess etc. I can’t remember whose house I’d said was atrocious and how could anyone live in such a disgusting place but my mother cut me off and was swift to remind me about my house in Leeds three and a half years ago and what she thought of it, on the one occasion that she saw it. And she saw it on the day that it was easily its cleanest! My housemates had hoovered & cleaned the whole place while I was out to lunch with her. They also washed all my clothes and washed and changed my bed sheets, none of which I had washed in the 6 months since I’d moved in.

Anyway, I got to telling my grandparents about 5 Pearson Grove and what it was like to live there.

They know that I was on drugs during that whole year in Leeds so I think it was relatively easy for them to picture the place I was describing. I actually have some of the fondest memories of my life during Leeds because it was literally a year of complete hedonistic pleasure without having to worry about studying for Uni exams like most of the people I knew there. Also, it’s where I met Hannah, now my ex-girlfriend, as well as loads of really good people, some of which have become very close friends. I didn’t end up paying any rent for the year although I got stung with council tax and quite a few Virgin Media bills (my dad got stung, rather, not me, as I had no money) but I ended up getting my housemate, Charles, a 1st for his Music Technology degree because I did his main piece for him which was to make a complete song from 5 seconds of some weird xylophone music.

To be honest it was a whole year of solid partying, my ratio of being awake:sleep was 8:2 and I consumed an insane amount of heroin plus all the other shit that you expect to find among student wreck-heads in Leeds.

One weird thing to come out of all that was I found it amazingly easy and inspiring to create music when in that environment and truth be told I haven’t had that same constant creative spark since then, which is slightly troubling.

I’m getting a bit off topic but as I explained to the grandparents last night, I would order cheap Chinese take-away every night in Leeds and then eat a few bites and be full so my friends would normally always finish it off but near the end of the school year, my two housemates moved out a month or two earlier than me so the takeaways would pile up round my shithole of a house, the plates would stack up, the rubbish would stack up, the front yard was like a refuse pit as I used my window of my bedroom as a garbage bin. The whole place was generally a depravity but it was home and I had all my stuff there and I had my heroin so I just wasn’t fussed by it.

Also a bloody funny thing happened before the start of summer when my friends and I put on a rave at the West Indian Centre, after which I decided to sneak home on my way to the after-party and the sight that greeted me was the strangest thing I have ever experienced. I came to the conclusion that for the entire year we had obviously pissed off all the houses on the entire street with our constant techno blaring out of 5 sound systems and constant house parties, so, as payback, every house on the street, of which there were around 30-odd, had dumped their wheelie-bins in our front yard and piled them on top of each other, making a mountain of bins. It was an incredibly funny sight but it actually turned out to be very helpful because I’d lost one of my keys at the rave and could only get through the cage (metal security door) but not the actual front door so with the aid of the bins I was able to shimmy up one flight and squeeze through my bedroom window which was one of those that doesn’t open all the way but because I was like Skeletor, I easily slid through and was able to get down to my usual business.

Anyhow, by the end of that summer I was pretty much living at my girlfriend’s house, a few minutes away, because 5 Pearson Grove wasn’t habitable. Eventually, after I was back at my parents’ during summer, Charles called to say the lease ran out the next day and I needed to go clean it and move all the stuff out. I think Mum may have told you about that. She refused to go do it. My dad, unfortunately for him, offered to drive up with me for the day (three hours each way) and deal with it. I think he almost suffered a stroke when I opened the front door and the sight, plus the smell hit us. It was like out of some horror movie. I went up to my bedroom to try and get rid of all drug evidence and discovered the smell was emanating from under my bed. I pushed it up and saw a 3 month old Chinese takeaway swarming with maggots and flies that had rotted through the carpet and into the wooden floor. It was a rank day but I had to do it, although I ended up leaving loads of shit there like random peoples clothes and posters etc. I feel sorry for the people that moved into there next.

THE MOM:

No comment. Too busy throwing up.

FOUND: bookcase in mother’s office, behind files

“Tiger and Doggie”. Steiff brand hand puppets made out of I think, wool? Would it have been? Real fabric at anyrate. They came from the iconic toy store, F.A.O. Schwartz in New York, circa 1953.

Tiger looks to me to be a leopard but too bad, they were my very very favourites out of all the ones my mother came home with. I had maybe a dozen or more all told.

Peg named them, wore them, and made them come alive. Imagine Ethel and Albert, her TV sitcom, with a canine and feline slant: Doggie forgetting where he set his bone down, Tiger running out of catnip just before a dinner party and so on. I never tired of them, ever ever ever. Every long car journey, train ride, flight—Tiger and Doggie came along to keep me entertained. Think iPad but furry, and with my mother attached.

One journey was a 14 hour flight to Norway, with stops at Gander and Prestwick, and I think Shannon too, to re-fuel, Tiger and Doggie chatting non-stop the whole way. (Peg needed no re-fueling). Eventually half the planeload were hanging over their seats or clustered around ours, even the air hostesses, lapping up every word.

I like how the headline says “Sails” for Norway, like we’re leaving on a ship. Also, my father wasn’t a doctor, he was an engineer, but he must have liked the title because I found about 30 copies of this.

FINAL HOME: keeping, in fa%ct wer&aing thim a I type%6g

LEFTOVERS. Every Thursday on astridronningking. The Full Story Behind Leftovers

18, July 2013

THE MOM:

I sit here in Massachusetts sweating in 95 degree heat and humidity waiting for the woman who loaned my mother a seven-year-old collie dog last April to arrive to take the dog back, because the dog for the last month has been relieving itself all over the downstairs and my mother has not been reprimanding it, she has been cuddling and kissing it, so of course it continues to relieve itself on the porch rug, and the dining room one, and the kitchen ones, and what’s more, is teaching the other collie dog to do the same. The whole place reeks. The first thing Alex and I did upon arrival was to get the windows open and the screens in.

Four days later:

The next thing we did was to unload the rental car, which was not only full of suitcases and golf clubs, but a three course dinner for 12, which I had spent the day before—in other words my first day in the States after arriving in Connecticut at midnight the night before—cooking, because my mother was giving Alex and me a “Welcome Home!” party. This has happened before. How it works is she invites a lot of people she wants to see, most of whom I don’t know, and I get to do all the work.

So we get here to find the kitchen and dining room not only reeking but the counters piled high, stuff everywhere, the house not looking remotely like a party’s happening in two hours. Stacks of magazines, socks, fly swatters, dog food, clothes, Fixodent, dead boxes of Entemann’s coffee cake, Norwegian hunting tankards that belong in the den, coupons from Price Chopper, a fish-shaped smoked salmon serving platter that belongs on the wall, silver vegetable bowls that belong in attic, an electric hot tray for keeping food warm (on the hottest day of the year), so next thing is I’m having to shovel out the place plus get the food sorted for this fun party I didn’t ask for, then race around with Lysol Room Deodorizer and light scented candles which normally make me gag, and I’ve just gotten upstairs to collapse at 5:00pm thinking oh thank Christ, I can have a good 45 minutes of jet lag moment on the bed, when the doorbell goes, seems the first guests have arrived. My mother had told them 5:00, not 6:00.

By today, the downstairs is at least habitable without retching, which is good because over the next week we have a million people coming from all over, most of them to interview and video my mother about her illustrious career in radio and TV. I’ve had the remaining dog shampooed, got Servicemaster carpet cleaners out here, and took three rugs to the dump, after cutting one up (with gloves on) in order to get it out from under the grand piano.

My parents do not notice any bad odour whatsoever and resent being told the house smells. My father had not had a shower since April, by my reckoning, so this had to be arranged, nor had he had his hair cut, and for some reason had shaved only the left side of his face, the right was just one long mutton chop. My mother has had a catheter for a year. Does it leak? I lean over to kiss her and recoil.

I love them both. So much. It’s so sad. I feel so sad here. Or would, if I had time to be sad.

Would write more but nature calls. May just go squat in the living room.