I had some more tests the other week when a young GP did a full examination. He finished by putting his gloved hand up my bum and announced I had an enlarged prostate. In fact, it was so large he feared it might be cancerous. Thanks a lot. Glad I dropped by… In the last few years, I have started getting up for a wee as much as four or five times a night, which is apparently a sign of prostate problems. But I have always got up in the night, so it did not worry me. It’s hardly surprising, given the amount of wine I drink – a bottle a day, though of course I lie if the doctor asks. I had to have blood tests, which were inconclusive. So that was good news, I suppose. But then the doctor insisted on some different tests. For a couple of weeks, I was in and out of the surgery all the time. At least it was the practice nurse who was doing the tests, and I didn’t have to drag myself over to the Royal Free. The upshot was that my prostate is enlarged but is not cancerous, so far. I was told there are two types of medication I could take to reduce the size of my prostate, each of which can have side-effects. I said thanks, but no thanks. I will live with having to get up to pee in the night for the moment. And await events.

  So that is it, really, my medical highlights of the last six years or so. You are now up to date.

  Enjoy. I am only telling you because you are my age. Well, two years younger. I have this rule never to go on about my health with any of the younger generation. They don’t want to hear. They can see you are old, so what do you expect, at your age? If anyone asks me how I am, I always say fine thanks, still here.

  The tally of operations I’ve had is fairly modest, I think, for someone in their late eighties. I have recovered from all the dramas and alarms so far. I consider myself pretty fit for my age: I walk about four miles a day and swim three times a week. My walking, though, is getting worse, I’m staggering all over the place; my limbs creak and crack and groan. But really, I can cope. I feel I can still look after myself on my own and do most things I want to do, whenever I get the chance to do those things I really, really want to do. No need to spell them out. You will just be appalled, like Caitlin and Flora are.

  I know I go on about being a bit deaf or about my back aching or staggering, and about how I hope one day soon to find another girlfriend, but, dear God, I should not be moaning or complaining. I am so lucky to be here, at the age of eighty-six, fairly fit, and still working and rushing around.

  Have you heard about poor Johnny? Compared with him, my life is a doddle. I mean Johnny my brother, who, as you know, is five years younger than me, taller, handsomer, fair-haired, fitter. You were most taken with him when you first came into our family life some sixty-five years ago. Johnny was then a young apprentice electrician, and he later moved into social work. He retired about fifteen years ago. Still lives in Carlisle with his wife, Marjory.

  You will be horrified to hear he has just had both his feet amputated. I know, I could not believe it either. In this day and age, with all our so-called miracle operations, wonder treatments and transplants. He appears to have had circulation problems exacerbated by diabetes. The result was that both his feet turned black and blue, giving him constant pain, night and day. He had endless tests and medications, but in the end they decided amputation was the only way to stop the pain in his feet. It sounds medieval, like something from the Dark Ages. I rang him yesterday to see how he was. He sounded remarkably stoical, even cheerful, saying he is so pleased the pain is over. The best thing is he can now have uninterrupted sleep.

  For Christmas, I am going to buy him an electric wheelchair. One of those nifty modern ones, sleek and red, like a racing car, so he can whizz into Carlisle whenever he wants a pint.

  At least he is still alive. Unlike you…

  LETTER FOURTEEN

  Christmas card, 1972. The Davieses dressed as an Edwardian family. Flora had just been born. A posed picture taken by our friend Frank Herrmann.

  Online Dates

  Shield your eyes, pet.

  I’ve been on my first blind date. The first date since I split with the girlfriend I had well over a year ago now. Yes, I know, pathetic and sad at my age, Caitlin and Flora both think. But a year on my own, without a special female friend in my life, just to talk to, walk with, tell things to, has been pretty dreary. I have loads to do, loads of chums, including female ones, as I have told you, but they are either married or have made it clear they just want to be platonic friends. In my fantasy, I want to find someone in the next few months, sympathetic, amusing, interested, affectionate, compatible, who I can invite to the West Indies in January. I am desperate to get away, while I still have the energy, even if I have to go on my own. Several female friends have said yes, lovely, I’ll come, you can treat me, but of course separate bedrooms.

  I had high hopes of an attractive lawyer, someone I had met years ago, who wrote to me, suggesting a drink, and then came for a meal. She seemed very keen. She mentioned she had been married, which was hardly unexpected for an attractive woman of her age, around sixty-five. Then it came out she’d been married to a woman. Who she still shares a house with, though they now go their separate ways. I was rather taken aback. Nothing wrong with women marrying women, or women living with women, of course – my sister Marion did that for many years, very happily. But since the woman had made the first approach, her lesbian history took me by surprise. She did not appear to be the person I was looking for.

  So what am I looking for? To find out, I decided to go back on Saga dating. You may remember that I did that three years ago and found it fascinating and productive. One of the attractions this time was that it was going to be free. I do a column in Saga magazine – have done for two years. I love doing it – it’s actually my best-paid column, pro rata. I write about personal things, trying to be amusing – you know, the sort of stuff I have done for ages. It is mainly about Love in Old Age, but recently I have been struggling to find things to write about it, since I have not had a regular girlfriend for quite a while. One of my Saga editors suggested they could arrange for me to have three months free on Saga’s dating site. You know how I am a sucker for anything free.

  Unlike you. You hated anything free. You would refuse things in shops, on the street, if someone came up and offered you something free. Whereas I would always grab it. Any special offers, deals, three for the price of two, have me slavering. When you became seriously ill and I had to do the shopping, you always wrote NO BARGAINS at the top of the list. I still have copies, in your immaculate high-school handwriting.

  I revealed my true age and used a photo only one week old. But I somehow mucked up my list of requirements about what sort of woman I was after. By mistake, I ticked a box that stated I was looking for a wealthy woman. Silly me. At my age, I do find it very confusing, filling in forms online. Perhaps I need a PA, not just a partner. After a lot of faffing around, I finally managed to set up my Saga profile, and the offers came flooding in. Oh yes.

  The first woman I met had not included her photo in her profile, which was a bit worrying. Did that mean she was famous, or that she was married and did not want her husband to know? Or was she so stunning she would be besieged with offers? Nor did I know her real name. She answered to the name ‘Petal’, which I also found a bit worrying. I didn’t know her age either, but assumed she must be between sixty-five and seventy-five, which is the age range I said I was interested in.

  In fact, I am not sure why I agreed to meet her, when I knew so little about her. But she had sounded nice and friendly and bright in her messages and in our phone calls. She had been some sort of businesswoman. At my age, you can’t muck around, or spend too much time in idle chat-ups. And she suggested meeting for a coffee in Hampstead, which was ideal, as it saved me having to trek into town or out into the suburbs.

  Last time I went on Saga dating, I’d met a nice woman who lived miles out in the wilds of Hertfordshire. It took me ages getting there from Marylebone station when she invited me to her house for lunch. It is partly snobbish, not wanting a lady friend who lives too far from NW5, NW3 or N6. But it’s also my age. I can’t be doing with long journeys out of my comfort zones anymore. Then she moved to Cornwall, so that settled it. I never contacted her again. Oh, it is a cruel business, online dating. You have to make instant suppositions, agreements, decisions.

  I told the woman who called herself Petal that I would be wearing a red scarf. Petal said she would be wearing a pink sweater. I hoped the café wasn’t full of women of a certain age wearing pink sweaters. Could have been embarrassing if I went up to the wrong one.

  But Petal came over to me the minute I entered the café. She had of course seen my phizog in my profile photo, and had spotted my red scarf. She led me to a small table with two seats, the only ones vacant. It was a Saturday morning in Hampstead and the coffee bars are always busy. She started fussing that the table was too small and the seats uncomfortable. She preferred her usual table, but someone had bagged it. She glared around, trying to see if anyone was about to leave. She then spotted a man at a table on his own. She went over and asked him to swap with us, saying he was sitting at her favourite table, awfully sorry, did he mind moving? Oh my God, what a palaver. She was charming enough, smiling at the poor man, but did this mean she was a fusspot, a Bossy Betty, always wanting to get her own way? Or was she really a kind, caring person, thinking only of my comfort?

  We ordered our coffees and eventually she settled herself. After some idle chat about how busy the caff was, and how often she came here, I asked her some personal questions. One of the many good things about online dating is that you know people are looking for some sort of relationship. Otherwise, why would they be meeting you? But what kind of relationship? Ahh, that is what has to be slowly discovered.

  I asked her how long she had been online dating – and she was immediately off, telling me about all the awful men she had met over the years. ‘They tend to want one of three things: sex, someone to look after them, or they are looking to move in.’ She had apparently recently met a sequence of men – well-spoken, educated – who had gone through expensive divorces and were currently living in rented accommodation. They had clearly worked out from her profile and brief chats that she had her own house in Hampstead, which is what she had told me in our warm-up phone calls. When they found that out, she said, their main object was to move in with her. And of course not pay any rent. I could not believe she would ever fall for that. She appeared too smart. She had been married, to a professor of medicine, but he was a geek, interested only in his work, and not in her. He never sympathised when she had had a hard day at her work. He just thought about his own day. She was talkative enough, telling me about her life and work, but I began to have a headache, listening to her chuntering on. We clearly had nothing in common. I was not interested in her interests, such as playing bridge and going to classical concerts. She did not listen to Radio 4 or read any of the newspapers and magazines I read. She was neat and attractive enough, with dyed blonde hair, but I did not fancy her. There was clearly no chemistry between us.

  After forty minutes, I paid for the coffees and said I had to go home as I had some work to do. She did not look too disappointed. Oh well. It was a start, of a sort, getting back into the dating groove again. Can’t give up now, can I, after just one failure?

  But online dating does take up a lot of time. It can become a full-time occupation. You have to keep an eye on the dating site all the time, looking out for new clicks, matches, messages, and then send suitably appealing comments back, with enticing details and amusing comments, if somebody appears to be vaguely interested. When you are sent matches telling you Pretty Polly or Sexy Sue is interested in you, and would like to hear from you, you can then send them a one-line personal message. It does not go direct to them at this stage, but via the site. So they still don’t know who or where you are. If they then reply to you, at this stage you can give them your real email address and phone number, so they can ring and chat. If that goes well, you can arrange to meet, for a coffee or whatever.

  I was contacted by several women who appeared to have been online for ages – though they rarely admitted exactly how long. But it soon emerges and you suspect that online dating is their hobby, their daily routine – even their full-time occupation. Yet they never seem to get anywhere, otherwise why are they still online? I asked one or two of them on the phone why they had apparently had little luck so far, and they said, oh, they were too choosy, too picky. That is another good thing about online dating – it gives you licence to put cheeky, personal questions to people you do not yet know. Not that it has ever stopped me asking cheeky, personal questions in normal life… You were always telling me off for asking people intimate things. And I always replied: they don’t have to answer, I am just showing interest in them. With online dating, that is the whole point of the first meeting, in the flesh – to find out things about the other person. Okay, it is not the very first thing. The very, very first thing, for both parties, is to decide if you like them or fancy them. Is there any chemistry between you and them? This can happen quickly and at any age, oh yes it can, don’t argue. That desire to get to know someone better, to be with them, never goes. And of course the opposite is also true. That can happen just as quickly as well. You can be repelled just as quickly as attracted.

  What you hope is to feel a warmth. Physically speaking, I think it is important to like not just the look of the other person but their skin. And to want to touch it. I think that really is the clue to desire. If the skin attracts. While I am trying to work out whether I am really attracted to a person or not, I always want to find out as much about them as I can. I never think I have wasted my time if for an hour I have been able to look into another person’s life, learn about their background, their family, where they have lived, what they have done, even before you get on to why their marriage collapsed, or how their husband died. I love all that. I feel enriched by learning about a total stranger. Even when I already know I am never going to see them again.

  I then agreed to another date, with a likely-sounding woman who suggested lunch in a brasserie in Camden. She was seventy-five, or so she had said, and seemed very fit, having walked right across Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill to meet me. Or so she said. She was a retired solicitor and had gone to a very good university. I do like clever women. Always have done. She was divorced, and had two daughters. ‘I have two daughters as well,’ I said brightly. I went on: ‘What do your daughters do? Are they married, do they live near you?’ All harmless, routine questions, or so it seemed to me.

  ‘Why are you asking me this?’ she barked, glaring at me. ‘You are supposed to be asking me about me.’ ‘But your children are you,’ I replied. ‘I will get a picture of you and your life by knowing something about them. I mean, do they live far away, perhaps in Australia? Now that can be tough. Or do they live near you in London? Even round the corner. That is always nice…’

  I chuntered on about how one of my daughters had lived for fifteen years in Botswana… and what a drag it had been getting there. But now two of my children live locally and one on the south coast. So they are all quite close by, which is lovely. So tell me more about your own daughters? But again she glared at me, as if asking innocent questions about her daughters was out of bounds, private and personal. I usually find that imparting personal stuff about my own life and family encourages others to do the same. I often reveal really rather personal things before they have even asked me any questions. But this time it did not work. For some reason, her children were off limits. And she never told me why. So that was it. If she was not going to reveal totally harmless stuff about her family, I suspected I was never going to get to know her, far less want to touch her skin.

  That’s it, I decided. I think I will give up online dating forever. Takes too much time and is unlikely to lead anywhere.

  Caitlin and Flora are right. It is pathetic, someone of my age looking for a girlfriend…

  Pathetic… but fun. Sometimes.

  LETTER FIFTEEN

  On holiday at Windermere, 1980s. Windswept but awfully rugged.

  Meeting Miranda

  Who is she? Read on…

  In the late summer of 2022, I decided to go to the Isle of Wight for four weeks, the longest time I have ever spent there, as I had so many events on. I was still wondering what to do about the house, now I was single again. I felt guilty every time I left it empty, as I do love it so much. In just two years I have acquired so many good friends and discovered so many lovely walks, places and people all over the island.

  The book I had written about the island, finished a year earlier, was at last coming out, so I had several publishing events lined up. One was the launch party on the actual publication day to be held in Monkton Arts, right behind my house in Ryde, so very handy to get to. Another was a signing session at the Medina Bookshop in Cowes. That would be harder to get to as I don’t drive and for some reason the local buses, brilliant though they are, do not go direct from Ryde to Cowes. You have to change at Newport. The third and most important event was the first-ever Isle of Wight Book Awards. I was deeply regretting starting this. In the first flush of enthusiasm for the island, I had decided to give something back and had mentioned the idea of a book festival to the owner of the Medina Bookshop, who had been most enthusiastic and said that they would support it. The island needed something like this – there was so much literary talent around.

 

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