Call the Midlife (10 page)

‘A problem shared is a problem halved, we know, but a plan shared to ring-fence some “you” time is foreplay personified. Even by merely logging on to the Internet over a glass of wine, you’ll find yourselves giggling like teenagers planning a clandestine rendezvous.’

Michelle says couples are never better together than when they’re on a joint mission to have fun together.

‘To plan, we have to communicate, and communication, communication,
communication is the key to couples remembering what they love and like about each other.’

Once a couple begin holding hands they should never stop.

‘Show me a couple holding hands and I’ll show you a couple together for a good while yet to come. Whether it’s walking into the sunset on a beach in paradise, or dawdling down the frozen foods aisle of the local supermarket.’

Is there a joint, low-key, unofficial mantra couples can adopt?

‘Absolutely. A good general rule is, always have a shared something going on. Whatever it may be and even if it’s a good while away, start talking about it now. Bring it to life on a regular basis. Chart its progress from field to fork and then catalogue the memory of it once it’s been and gone.’

And so we effortlessly segue into one of Michelle’s absolute favourite topics: the bedroom.

‘It’s very simple. Bedrooms should be designed for sleep first and sex second: everything else can go whistle. And as for computers and telephones, a blanket ban I’m afraid. Forgive the pun but no, not at all. These are just excuses to avoid intimacy masquerading as essential technology and importance. Nothing should take priority over us letting our partner know how much we still love, cherish, respect and most of all enjoy them. The outside world should cease to exist the moment the bedroom door opens and the bedcovers are thrown back. Or even before that, when your foot first steps on the bottom stair of your staircase. LEAVE IT ALL BEHIND, all the nonsense. I implore you!’

Michelle is adamant that none of the nonsense we insist on surrounding ourselves with nowadays is of any use compared to what we can give and do for each other simply by offering physical love, affection and attention.

‘Every night going to bed should feel like chucking the suitcases in the back of the car and sneaking off for a couple of days away without anyone else knowing. Why the hell not? We become geniuses at forgetting how bloomin’ simple and inexpensive it is to enjoy what we’ve got right in front of us. We’re all gorgeous and
marvellous and sexy, if we allow ourselves to be. It’s actually what we’re all best at.’

Michelle is on fire. ‘Jump in bed and shout, “Phew, thank God that’s over. We made it through another mad day. Now come here you . . .” Why would anyone in their right mind pass that up in favour of, “Right, I really must check on those emails.” ’

She has a parting message for us all.

‘Go to bed TONIGHT after purposefully leaving your phone on charge downstairs and see what difference it makes.’

However, Michelle does go on to point out that all the symptoms of space abuse our bedrooms suffer from are abundant in every room in the house: the living room is for living, the kitchen is for cooking, eating, drinking and socializing, the garden is for relaxing and yet THAT BLOODY PHONE comes everywhere with us.

‘Treat any electronic device as the unwelcome lodger who you wished you’d never said yes to but has unexpectedly given you a get-out clause. Get rid while you still can.’

Michelle my belle, does sex have all the answers?

‘Well, I’m not so sure about that, but it’s certainly a useful metaphor and counsellor to help identify what might be wrong.’

‘And for SEX see also stroking the back of your partner’s neck at a dinner party, or a spontaneous kiss on the cheek as he or she is concentrating on driving. Just LET THEM KNOW. It’s all about the constant hovering cloud of I LOVE YOU, I CARE ABOUT YOU, I want you and I want you to want me.’

And the single most important thing?

‘The now-ness of now. For some reason business, the government, education and medicine have all forsaken the now for the future. Future goals, future targets, future everything. While planning and organization are important and can be fun, as we’ve talked about, it has become too much of an excuse for avoiding the now.

‘You can’t be wrong in the future because it never comes. Living in the future therefore has become the new safe haven for the avoidance of fear and failure. But it’s hijacking everything we have fought for over centuries. If we were imprisoned, we would do all
we could to imagine and taste what it would feel like to be free. Yet here we are, already free, in constant peril of doing the opposite.

Make love not phone calls?

‘Absolutely,’ enthuses Michelle.

Michelle, we LOVE you.

Michelle rocks.

Love

Top Ten Best Things Love Makes Us Feel:

When I was in the final stages of writing this book I went to stay on a friend’s sailing boat in Lymington. During my second morning on board, another yacht silently slid into the mooring alongside.

She was a lovely young thing, navy-blue hull and as sleek as could be. Turns out she and her crew had just taken part in a race all the way from New York.

Bloody NEW YORK!!!

Pulling up to the pontoon were the last few feet of her epic journey. Incredible to think no one would know unless they were told. No crowds, no banners, just Arnie from Lymington Yacht Charter grabbing a line as she made her last turn of thousands gently to starboard.

After a couple of hours, six of the seven crew on board had departed to go home, or have a drink. Only one soul remained, a lady by the name of Basia, a resident New Yorker who’d been
enlisted as local crew a few weeks beforehand, happy to sign on the dotted line for this her latest adventure of many.

Super intelligent, super fit, slim but not at all skinny, with tousled, shoulder-length, slightly wavy brown hair, dark skin and dark eyes; not beautiful but certainly attractive.

We got chatting. Born in Poland, she had moved to New York to go to university and had since forged a successful career in the pharmaceutical industry. As well as being a fascinating human being, she was an experienced yachtswoman with a deep-seated will to win.

But I was more than a little surprised to learn that sailing was not her number one passion.

‘Ah so it’s your work then, sailing being the release for that. Your escape. Your solace?’

‘Actually no, what I really love to do is dance. I originally trained as a ballerina.’

Wow? She really was a super woman.

By now it was mid afternoon. Since she didn’t appear to have any plans or any idea about the local area, I could only conclude that she was planning to spend the evening on board, on her own, with a takeaway and perhaps a well deserved cold beverage. But surely that would never do. How could a woman who had just crossed the Atlantic spend the evening alone, not celebrating?

After mulling it over for a while and considering whether or not it was appropriate to invite her for dinner, I concluded it was the decent and proper thing to do, especially as I was not going alone but with a couple of pals. Besides, selfishly, I wanted to hear everything about what she had experienced over the last sixteen days. What was it like to successfully navigate over three thousand miles in fewer than three weeks in a boat a little over fifty feet? We would be keen listeners if Basia was keen to talk.

I asked the guys first and with their approval extended a friendly invitation to my new pontoon pal, the Polish Lady. She accepted in a heartbeat, with a smile. A couple of hours later Arnie was ribbing us over to the Isle of Wight at 40 knots-plus to a brilliant beachside
restaurant called The Hut. The Hut is an old pre-fab building that used to be a café and has since been transformed into a supercool half-in/half-out brunch, lunch and dinner venue by a couple of young dudes from Chelsea. If you get the chance, go, it’s idyllic.

After casting the anchor, and cadging a lift ashore, Arnie, Hugh and I sat spellbound for three hours as Basia had us misty-eyed one moment and gasping with wonder the next via her salty tales of transatlantic hell and high water. Of course, by the end of the night we were all a little bit in love with her. The thing that captivated us most was how extraordinarily matter-of-fact and modest she was about everything.

After toasting her success more times than I care to remember with white wine and red wine, champagne and even tequila (which I never normally touch nowadays) it was time to settle up, jump back in the rib and head for the mainland.

A truly great night.

The next day we met up for coffee at The Haven, the bar I have an interest in that looks over the marina.

‘So what are your plans today?’ I asked.

‘I would like to see something typical of the area. I have two days before I have to go home and I would love to see as much as I can.’

The way I write is in three two-hour sessions with a break and mini celebration after each. As the day goes on, the celebrations become ever more extravagant. The rhythm goes like this:

Write

Break

Write

Break

Write

Cake

Cake, eh? Crazy, I know. It might not sound all that celebratory but the thought of a slice of Francis’s home-made Victoria Sponge with a robust cup of tea is more than enough to keep me going with the home straight of a day of writing ahoy.

As I can write anywhere, my schedule allowed me to offer to taxi
my new friend to various locations that I thought she might like. I suggested she could go off and do her own thing while I holed up at various nearby cafés and car parks doing mine. Then when she was done I could drop her off at the next port of call.

Over the ensuing thirty-six hours this arrangement worked a treat. Basia got to do what she wanted to while I got to do what I needed to. Enjoying a bit of fresh air and several changes of scenery into the bargain, and getting to know each other a little bit more with every mile, one of the things she told me was that she had now been divorced for longer than she was originally married.

‘I walked down the aisle at twenty. Mum told me I was too young.’

Not wanting to admit defeat, she’d hung in there for ten years, until she was thirty. Now forty-five, she’d had several boyfriends but no one who was ‘The One’. None of them were able to accept or understand her ambition to dance or sail her way around the world.

We also discovered we’d read a lot of the same books on philosophy, which then became a recurring theme of conversation. As did this book, the book I was writing then.

The more I explained what it was about, the more her interest piqued. She was dealing with a lot of the issues I’d been researching and thinking about. Immediately I wanted to record everything she was saying, heartfelt, intensely thought through, intelligent, some of it brilliant.

She even wrote me a recommended book list before she left for the airport.

During our last taxi ride together after a few moments of rare silence, which could have been a few seconds or ten or fifteen minutes, I really have no idea, she turned to me and said softly,

‘Is there a chapter in your book about love?’

To which I replied:

‘Actually, no.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it fries my brain.’

It always has and it always will.

Ten Things Love Can Be:

See what I mean?

Give me death to think about every time instead. Far easier to get your head around.

Death

Top Ten Certainties About Life:

We are all going to die yet it’s the one thing most of us like to think about least.