Ummm…hi? If anyone's there? I haven't been here in a while. Like, three years a while.
I've been on a 'dinnerladies' binge watch over the school half term and had the idea for more vignettes, since the first installment is one of the few pieces from my back catalogue I'm proud of. So, seven and a half years on, please enjoy the second installment! This is also a bit sadder than the last one (especially Dolly, Twink, Tony and Anita), so apologies for that!
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue. RIP Victoria. Discussion of abortion in Twinkle's section so if that's not your bag, feel free to avoid and don't shout at me. Further notes at the end.
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Dolly – You Don't Have to Say You Love Me (Dusty Springfield)
Dolly sinks into her armchair by the window, tea on the side table next to her. She shouldn't really have another cup after her half Mars bar this morning (her calorie budget will be falling to pieces) but it's been a strange sort of a day. Jean's finally broken through the anger she wore like a blanket for nearly two weeks and is off to her sister's place. If nothing else, Peggy will coordinate her into some sort of routine. Peggy is good at coordinating people into routines – usually while they're stunned by the force of her personality. And to be quite honest, any encounter with Jean's sister usually needs a cup of tea to recover.
The entire debacle with Keith has set her thinking – if a seemingly normal relationship like Jean's can fall to bits, what does that say about her relationship with Bob? Has she let the romance die? Their daily bickering about his selective deafness, her continual dieting, not putting mugs down without a coaster isn't exactly straight out of Jean's perennial Catherine Cookson, but it's what their life is after thirty-one years. Comfortable, predictable and full of habit. But even if they've never been terribly demonstrative, she loves him, and he loves her. They just aren't in the habit of saying so.
But when Bob comes in from the shed with a bunch of flowers for her ("because they were nice" he grunted in his undemonstrative way), it almost makes her cry. Maybe it has been preying on his mind as much as it has hers – they've been friends with Jean and Keith for years and it would be strange, but Bob is also not the sort of man to dwell on things like that. This little gesture makes her hands shake and her eyes fill as she stretches over to kiss his cheek. When they have dinner that night, she puts some extra oven chips on for him and they talk for hours about the cruise holiday, full of excitement and plans. It's important to keep the romance alive, after all.
Twinkle – Walking on Broken Glass (Annie Lennox)
The first day her period is late, she doesn't worry too much. A day or two either way is normal for her. She puts it out of her mind and goes out that night with Tiffany. By the end of the first week, there's definitely a pinch of worry every time she thinks about it. And then, as the days become two weeks and then three, she's definitely terrified, because there's every chance that this is A Thing. She could be expecting a baby. She could be a mother.
Her saving grace is that there's no real morning sickness, but the first time that thought about being a mother occurs to her, she almost throws up on the spot from fear. She's late, bloated, tender up top, smelling weird things (although that might just be Anita's horrible perfume) and she's too scared to put into words.
The thought of getting rid of it never occurs to her, for some reason. It might be the thought of her mum, and it being just the two of them growing up while her lorry driver dad was on his latest long distance drive across Europe. Wheelchair bound since Twink was fifteen by her MS, her mum had been nineteen too when she became pregnant, and she dealt with it. It might be her own stubbornness, and the pride she takes in always facing up to whatever's gone on (the schoolbag accidentally thrown through the science block window, failing the first module of her catering course, her consistent warnings for lateness, falling into skips). She got that from her mum too. They don't run away from their problems.
But she needs advice. She can't bear to disappoint her mum by throwing her life away and being a teenage mum too – because she knows that would break her heart. In her panic on the way to work (late as usual and in a foul mood) she comes up with the idea. Someone who won't judge, who'll give advice and won't panic. Bren can do that. Even though it means speaking about the Missed Period to someone else, she's terrified out of her wits, and she can't do it all on her own.
Tony – Waiting For the Worms (Pink Floyd)
It's the smell that gets him every single time. That particular type of disinfectant that only hospitals seem to use, the chemicals that float around the oncology ward, the disgusting coffee from the machine that tastes like anything but coffee – he's never smelled anything like it in his life. The sort of smell that sets his nerves on edge, hangs around in his clothes so it follows him even after he goes home, and reminds him relentlessly of his purgatorial stint, tied to the chemo machine and feeling like Death was sitting across from him, staring round the ward to see who was next.
He's grateful beyond words that Bren has come with him. It's still weird seeing her away from the till and the toaster after all these years but she's just the same as ever, telling him bits of film trivia and mixing her words up. She offers to sit outside while he chats to the oncologist but he wants her in there because that's the bit that makes him the most nervous of all, when he gets the prognosis. It's worse than waiting for his decree absolute. And when the verdict is in (doing good, stay off the cigarettes, see you in June), it's like his tongue is unlocked and the words come tumbling out, through the journey to the car park, the jump start on the car, the drive to his flat and the frying eggs. It all comes out, the fear that the consultant's cautious optimism was misplaced, how the chemo almost made him wish he was already dead because nothing could feel worse than this, the quietly planning his funeral in the worst moments to ease the burden off his mum just in case and the renewed vigour when the all clear came, to make sure that he did something with his life beyond dishing up sausages and pies.
The item at the top of that list is sitting across from him on the sofa, wiping her plate with a bit of toast and reminiscing about the royal visit fiasco last year. In the halfhearted light of the Christmas tree , her eyes shine and she's still grinning, and he thinks that, even in her leggings, she's never looked more beautiful. It makes him feel as though Death has finally let him go and pushed him back to the land of the living.
Bren – Make My Heart Fly (The Proclaimers)
Manchester Airport has changed quite a bit since she visited with her social worker to watch the planes taking off. Security is tighter, it's more hi tech and there's people everywhere. She's still in shock from everything that's gone on today – the crushing fear that Tony was fed up of her followed by the unbelievable surprise of the brass band, the new anorak, the plane tickets, the Etch-A-Sketch and Tony. For the first time in her entire life, she's got something she wanted, with no strings attached.
She is terrified though and her hands are shaking as they check in, go through security and board the plane for Aberdeen. There's such a mix of people, accents, skin colours, outfits – it's making her dizzy. And Tony is sat beside her, hand in hand, and that makes her dizzier still.
She isn't expecting it to go suddenly up like that, gravity pinning her back to her seat and watching Manchester disappear far below her until it looked like a model village. She can't believe it, the transformation of the bustling city into the doll sized display below. Somewhere down there, Dolly and Jean and Twinkle and Anita and Stan and Philppa and Jane are all going about their Christmas Eve business while she's flying in the clouds, next to Tony and with a little bag of peanuts in her hand, for a Christmas unlike one she's ever had before.
Tony turns to her, still staring out of the window through the cold, cloudless night. She's still a bit freaked out by the flying – she's hardly been on a train before and the closest she's ever been to a plane before is when the social worker brought her, and they would sit in the café, the social worker with her coffee and she, a plump, unprepossessing teenager with curly ginger hair and no confidence with a Horlicks, watching the planes take off for exotic destinations. This is quite different and she's almost overwhelmed by it all.
"Hey, look down there Bren," he grins, pointing out of the window to the last visible bit of Manchester thousands of feet below. "There's Strangeways!"
Somehow that breaks through the last little bit of her nerves and the feeling that it's all a dream. Strangeways is the key that brings it all back down to earth and reminds her that it's real, it's really happening and it's really happening to her. She's half laughing, half crying into Tony's shoulder and she can't stop, filling up with giddiness and excitement like champagne as they fly north through the clouds and to the stars.
She's spent her life escaping into movies, but this is almost better than that.
Stan - You Only Get What You Give (New Radicals)
Stan Meadowcroft doesn't desert. What his father started and the army finished, he's always been aware of necessity of staying in a situation, not running away, and most importantly not abandoning his friends. And yet, this upstart of a woman who came storming in to replace Tony while he was off sick has driven him to commit the ultimate sin and he doesn't feel the slightest bit guilty about it. Well, almost. He hates to leave Bren on her own, and he knows it's an emergency situation, with the factory only just clinging to life after the machinery had to go back and there's no chance of her being able to run the full canteen on her own to feed four hundred people. She's already more stressed than he's ever seen her before in all their time working together, but she plasters over the cracks like he fixes the loose plaster in the factory. It's that tricky time right before Christmas, the nights are long and dark, the girls are all down, and aside from having to run the canteen in Tony's illness related absence, he can see how she feels about Tony and the worry that it's not going to sort itself out is one that his friend carries on a daily basis.
And so, he should be ashamed of himself for abandoning his post, because it goes against everything he was taught and everything he believes in, but he's not. He's willing to put up with a lot – the removal of a free brew after spending two hours in the cold hosing the bins down, the ridiculous items getting added to the menu to the disgust of the factory workers and the girls, the rigid insistence of working exactly by the book and no flexibility of any sort – but bullying the girls until they refused to work was pushing the envelope too far. Blaming Bren for it all and refusing to see her own faults, that got his dander up.
Jean said it best of all – Tony gave them a bit of breathing space and in return, had a workforce who would grumble, complain and discuss their health, their HRT and their reproductive cycles in too much detail but who knew how to put that all aside and rise to the challenge of what came along. And if they've all walked out, that's a sign that things have deteriorated too far.
If he felt so inclined, he would point out that this is the result of bullying, belittling and forcing beetroot down the throats of the workers, and that this is that Nicola reaping everything that she sowed over the last few weeks. That's the other main principle in Stan's life began by his father and cemented by the army – life is like a sewer and you only get out of it what you put in.
Philippa – Georgy Girl (The Seekers)
For the first time since she moved to Manchester, she's feeling happy. For the first time in a very long time, actually. She's off her antidepressants, she's out of the relationship with Mr Michael and she feels free. Tom is a huge part in all this. She cried on his shoulder in the pub about the escaped prisoner fiasco and he was marvelous about it. And when she had recovered with the help of a white wine spritzer, and he told her that he'd wanted to ask her for a drink for ages, well, that was when she felt her entire world shift on its axis. It was a new beginning. A new Philippa, just in time for the new millennium.
And it's one morning the week before Christmas when she realizes. A new Philippa needs a new image. She's been pouring over her wardrobe in despair, and dreaming of how best to complete her remarkable transformation when she comes across an old picture of Twiggy. It is an old picture – it adorned her bedroom wall as a teenager, and somehow has survived all her moving around in one piece. She picks it up and stares at it. That haircut could work well on her; she could get rid of these unruly curls and live up to her adolescent expectations.
In the hairdresser that afternoon, the stylist works her magic and she feels as though scatty, disorganized old Philippa has slipped away. In her place is a new Philippa, with a new haircut, new wardrobe (no more patterned blouses, she's all about the sleek trousers and jumpers) and a new outlook on life. She can't believe it's taken her this long, and for the life of her, she can't understand why.
Well, in a way she does. It was the old Philippa that Mr Michael was so enamoured with and even though she could feel herself outgrowing the relationship, she kept herself looking the same. Every time she aired a thought about a new haircut, he always managed to talk her out of it, saying that it wouldn't suit her before turning back to his sponge pudding and custard jigsaw. And when she mentioned it to Tom, he only said she'd look fabulous whatever her hair was like, but that maybe a change would be as good as a rest, so to speak. She's bubbling over with excitement as she walks up the high street to meet him. She's looks fabulous, she's got the most exciting Christmas planned (with Tom and lots of sex and no sprouts) and there's the chance that Tony and Bren are finally going to get together over Christmas. This is the most she's had to look forward to in years.
Anita – Turn Back Time (Aqua)
It had eaten away at her for nearly four hours now. She had wrapped him up in blankets, and his snowsuit and the little hat she bought months ago before he even existed. He was newly fed and changed and fast asleep and it broke her heart into pieces to leave him there but she had her family to think about. Her family were still shellshocked over his sudden Christmas Eve appearance and all she could think was I've let them down, I've let them down, I've let them down, over and over like a stuck record.
She didn't know what the breaking point was. Maybe it was the third go around of the Spyro Gyro tape, the sitting in traffic, or the sudden discovery of one of his dummies in her handbag, but she leapt out of the car and in amongst the stationary traffic. She heard Twinkle yell behind her and scramble out, leaving Tom stuck with the pea soup and roasted vegetables.
They're reasonably close, her and Twinkle, and she spills out the entire story, only belated realizing that Twink had been involved with Paul the decorator too, but Twink didn't say a word. By the time the entire story has come out, they were back at the factory, it was nearly midnight and she was sobbing hysterically. Tony and Bren were waiting for them there, with her baby at the hospital.
The four of them made it to the hospital with the aid of a police escort, and she was still in tears. Single motherhood was bad enough but what would her family say at the thought of the police involvement? Her eyes burned, her head pounded and her heart ached with the pain of wishing she could change everything. But nobody seemed to blame her was the weird thing. Not Bren or Tony or Twinkle, the sergeant who met them at the door of the hospital or the nurses who had been looking after him. He was just starting to fuss until she almost pushed them out of the way and lifted him out of the car seat, and he quietened down immediately, snuggled against her chest.
Tears streaming down her face, she whispers over and over into the top of his fluffy little head I'm so sorry, I love you so much, I'm so so sorry until one of the nurses makes her sit down and makes her a cup of tea. The hot, sweet liquid calms her and gives her resolve. It's a new millennium. She's got her perfect little boy back and her family are going to have to deal with it. Tonight is going to haunt her for a long time to come but she's going to make sure they get past it. If it means it's just going to be the two of them, then that's the way it has to be.
Jean – Just Like Starting Over (John Lennon)
It's all done. Twenty seven years of marriage written off thanks to a vegetarian Welsh dentist. The decree nisi has arrived in the post, Lisa and her husband have helped take the last of Keith's belongings to the charity shop and she's left to begin all over again. She's getting used to the silences in the house, setting the table for two, starting a conversation and not getting an answer. Even though they had long since stopped having much by way of meaningful conversation, at least when he was at home there was a chance of an answer.
After her return from Peggy's in mid September she manages two weeks of complete silence in her house before deciding enough is enough and that something has to change. She reads the lonely hearts column, she tries speed dating, she drops hints to people at work that she's back on the market if they know someone who's looking but it all comes to nothing. It's only when she stops in Safeway one day after work (average day – Stan grumbling about a hen party and his rubber gloves, Anita burning mushrooms beyond redemption, Twink in the throes of pre menstrual tension and Norman hyperventilating over his agoraphobia) that it all changes. She's forgotten her HRT that day and her concentration and memory has been rubbish, so it stands to reason that she puts her handbag down to check the sell-by date on a tin of peas and forgets to pick it up again. The man who spots it and stops her to hand it back is not conventionally handsome but he's got something. Before they know it, they're talking away (his name is Barry, he's thirty eight and he's a security guard) and in the café sharing a pot of tea.
When they first sleep together it's nearly a week later and her long forgotten sex drive has reawoken after nearly a decade. Barry is recently out of a long term relationship that ended much the same way as hers and that's maybe why they work so well together. Or maybe it's just the fact that Keith had so little interest in sex that for once in her life she is actually able to enjoy it. The opportunity to actually start over again and to get a second chance so late in her life is a rare gift and it's more than worth all the teasing from the others about her cradle snatching. After all, she's the one having sex multiple times a night so that's a huge win in her book.
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I hope you enjoyed! The songs don't necessarily relate to the characters but to the theme of the vignette.
Some notes on the stories:
I can see Twink being too proud to consider an abortion and we know from her saying her mum is thirty eight that she must have been pregnant young. Additionally it was also in the half term binge watch that I realized after Philippa asked Tom out, her wardrobe started to change along with her hair.
Anita's story is more or less on the same theme as the last one but I wanted to get more out of it.
Reviews are extra portions of chips!