I’M ONE of the newest members of the Ws’ Club.
I did not want to join and I do not like being in it one little bit but I had no choice: but actually none of us Ws’ Club members has.
Now I am in it I feel I should abide by its rules…or should I? Should I have gone to the hairdressers the day I joined and said ‘Don’t talk to me: just leave me a corner with the newspaper’.
Should I keep my red nails and make up and carry on wearing my usual colours instead of changing to black.
Should I spend hours on the phone telling friends I have just become a member of the Ws’ Club – sobbing – or should I lock the door, take the phone off the hook and hide in the bedroom when people call?
Should I now learn to play bridge, go for a pub lunch on Fridays and meet for coffee in a local café with other Ws?
Since becoming a member of the Ws’ Club I have taken to using initials instead of the full words, words I do not like saying. I had to go the bank soon after I became a W.
“Have you brought the D.C?’ asked the clerk, sneezing and coughing. “You don’t sound very well,” I observed, handing over the D.C. “Should you be at work?”
“We’re short staffed”, she snuffled and disappeared with the D.C. for ten minutes. “Sorry about that. We’re so busy with a lot of people like you; it’s that time of the year,” she added and stared at the screen as though I was invisible then, several hundred clicks later, “It’s amazing what people tell you.”
Well I told her nothing, grabbed my D.C. and left, tears streaming down my face all the way home along the towpath. It was snowing, windy and cold. No one noticed.
You get elephants in every room when you become a Ws’ Club member. They are incredibly difficult to shift because you don’t know how or when to approach them.
In the bedroom they take the form of wardrobes full of shirts, suits, sweaters, shoes. In the corner of the lounge, it’s a box overflowing with cards, letters, newspaper cuttings; kind words and generous, loving thoughts. In the kitchen hangs a ‘Grumpy old Man’ mug.
In the conservatory it’s a pile of magazines for cruises we could never agree on.
I booked a holiday with my two sisters the other day. As I left the travel agency, the boss slipped a brochure into my hand. “You might like to consider one of these – now,” kindly suggested.
When I got home I looked at its title: Just You. Holidays for the Single Traveller
Is this the next ‘must-do’ for a W?
