Info about Candy
Grace in the Face of Unpleasant Noises
I haven't mentioned grace in my other articles, yet you should acquire it even before refinement as it is a transcending quality which will enable you to rise above many awkward moments. It doesn't come naturally to me which is a crying shame. In this case, you must do as I say and not as I do.
By grace, I mean easy and sensitive behaviour in the face of adversity when loud, brash and unpleasant behaviour will only embarrass everyone. Loud, brash and unpleasant is home ground for me, as is the coarse and profane route through social handicap.
Don't for a minute imagine I am incapable of feeling silly. I just pretend I am to make myself feel better. Perhaps you will work at grace if you understand how badly I have wanted it.
• An anecdote illustrating stupid then loud
When I first came to London aged nineteen, I was given some casual work on the news desk of the Mirror which was in those days a proud newspaper. I was given one story only, about a woman from Boulogne who was doubly incontinent. Maybe it was a joke. How was I to know? I was new. I thought Boulogne was pronounced Bologna and I didn't know what incontinent was.
I said to the man next to me, 'Where is Bologna?' He said, 'Italy.' Then I said, 'What is doubly incontinent?' He said, 'Well, you know singly incontinent?' I thought I was writing about an Italian woman with two passports. And that's not all. In my confusion, I spotted a familiar face across the newsroom, a subeditor from Australia whom I greeted with a gusto that took his breath away. I talked to him with such animation, he could only stand It for three minutes. When he backed away, I was so overcome by emotion that I turned to a senior reporter who had been watching us distractedly and cried affectionately, 'What are you looking at, silly bitch?' She didn't know it was affection. She never spoke to me again.
• This is a wretched story. Every time I think about it, I pray for grace.
Should your knickers fall down
I should have some because your grandmother has. When she was a young woman she would walk to work along a very busy road in the middle of the city. One day, on her walk, she found that the elastic in her knickers had snapped and the knickers were wending their way towards her knees. She tried to jam them between her thighs but she had many blocks to go and this was determined underwear. She entered a store with two adjacent entrances, stepped out of the knickers in one doorway and left by the other without so much as a downward glance. That is grace.
• Noises
I have told you before about the wind crisis during my third pregnancy. I wrote about it once and received a letter of outrage from a woman who wanted to know what was so clever about describing bodily functions for public consumption. That woman will be shot through with grace.
I'll tell you again just in case my position improves with the telling. In the latter stages of my last pregnancy, I was cruelly overtaken by wind. There wasn't a thing I could do about it. Clenching everything failed. Avoiding gaseous foods was a complete waste of time. One night, we had to go to a dinner party but I thought I would be all right if I didn't move very much. This was madness. As I reached for the pepper, the sound of a punctured feral balloon escaped me.
'I'm sorry,' I said. That was me.' Everyone stared hard at their plates. Embarrassed by the silence, I spoke up with verve and candour. 'That was me, that noise,' I said. No one spoke. For the third time I said, 'Ha! Just farted!' And when I was ignored for the third time I came to understand that the graceful thing would have been to ignore it myself. Pregnant women are like the Queen and assumed to be above bodily functions.
The same does not apply to non-pregnant women. Then a simple excuse would suffice rather than a prolonged explanation. Laughing like a drain is out.
I would like to offer many more suggestions for graceful behaviour but they are not within my gift. Would that they were. Walking quickly and smiling into mid-distance would seem to work for most things.