No! I Don't Want to Join a Book Club: Diary of a Sixtieth Year Read Online Free PDF

cooker features a warning: “Turn all gas off before going out or going to bed!” On the floor by Pouncer’s food is one with an arrow pointing to a bowl. “Pouncer’s water! Keep filled up!”
    And on the kitchen table is a huge list of the phone numbers of Hughie and James (ex-half-brother-in-law), Penny, my mobile, my number in the country, the vet’s number, the emergency vet’s number…plus various other bits of information about where the burglar alarm is situated, who to ring if it goes off, where the fuse-box is…The house looks as if it’s all set up for a treasure hunt.
    Finally got off at midday, utterly exhausted with ironing clothes, putting things in my suitcase then taking them out again, worrying about whether one bottle of champagne was a good enough house present or whether I should take two or whether that would look flash.
    I drove off, and on the way down decided to look in on my father’s grave. It’s in a lovely village churchyard.
    Whenever I tell people that I’ve been to see his grave, they usually get very serious and mournful and say how “brave” I am, or how moving it must be, or some clichéd bit of nonsense. But when I visit, I don’t just think of him, and how I miss him. I also think how incredibly grateful I am to him for popping off reasonably early. He was seventy when he died, but unbelievably, I know a man of seventy-five who’s still visiting his ancient, confused mother. It must be such a burden. Staggering up to some old people’s home, riddled with arthritis yourself, to visit a living corpse who doesn’t even recognize you. What a life. Or, rather, what a living death.
    Both my parents are dead, luckily missing the “live forever” generation from which I also hope to escape with a mixture of bravery and cunning. And sad as it is that they’ve gone, it’s good, too. After all, I don’t think you ever really become yourself while your parents are alive. Until they go, you’re still, at some level, someone’s child.
    When my father died, I felt sad, but I also felt like some plant that had been struggling to survive under a giant rhododendron bush, a bush that was so abundant and magnificent, that flowered so richly every year, that spread its beautiful great green glossy leaves so broadly, that there was hardly any place for me to breathe.
    So when I went to see him in his grave, it was really to say thanks for dying. It’s when I know how he’d laugh if he heard me that I really miss him.
    Lucy lives in a cottage deep in the country. She’s a wistful-looking person, tender, funny and deeply compassionate: She runs a charity for asylum seekers, and spends her entire life, as far as I can see, visiting wretched Rumanians—or Romanians, as they appear to be called these days—who live in frightful compounds all over Britain, and helping them fill in forms to get them out. Or fund-raising. Or campaigning for their rights.
    Anyway, during the weekend Lucy told me she had been made a Member of the British Empire, and when I asked how she was planning to celebrate when she came to Buckingham Palace to receive the award, I was horrified when she told me that she was simply going to “come down to London, get the award, have a pizza at Pizza Express and go home.”
    I couldn’t believe my ears. “But we must have a party!” I said. I’m terrible about parties. I love going to them and giving them. Any excuse. “I’ll give one for you!”
    November 14
    Now, as I start writing invitations to total strangers—Lucy gave me a guest list—I begin to feel slightly anxious. It’s bad enough giving a party oneself, but giving one for someone else—everything has to be immaculate. Was this, as my father used to ask, wise?
    Nov 18
    Came downstairs to find Maciej, my gorgeous Polish cleaner, sobbing his eyes out over the kitchen table. Turns out his pregnant girlfriend has run off with his best friend. I really love Maciej. He has fine features, like Chopin, and