ELVIRA …

Elvira at her sister Dilys wedding some way back in the ‘70’s

It is always the same… White sticky address labels stuck at an angle on brown C5 size envelopes. The white address label typed in bold black, with my name & address, each line starting & finishing at different places. Then there is the tell tail sellotape, stuck firmly over the entire white address label, I presume this is because she does not trust the efficacy of the stickiness of the address labels.

I know who this letter is from, but I flip it over, just for good measure; another white label cut in half, stuck at an angle with her name & address in bold, & just in case, her email & land line number also very visible on the label, sellotaped to the opening flap of the envelope. If you didn’t know better you would assume that this envelope contains some really important documents. But I know different, this letter is from my aunt Elvira.

Elvira, the only constant elder member of my family that has been in my life, she is my father’s sister. I spent many happy summer holidays at her house. She is the archetypal British eccentric, from a long line of them.

Pronounced EL-VI-RA. My mother-in-law used to love telling me that we were not pronouncing it correctly, “It is Ell-veer-a, Natalie! That is how you pronounce it!” I didn’t take any notice, I assumed that my grandparents knew how they wanted her name pronounced… My mother-in-law Renée, was prone to giving her opinion on things; she delighted, usually after a few whiskies, which could be from any time after 10:30am, on telling me that my parents were ‘up-starts’ as my maiden name was hyphenated! Certainly my parents were part of the new bourgeoisie.. I went out of my way not to introduce my parents to Renée, despite living with my now husband for 11 years at the time, which irritated both my parents & my mother-in-law, which now I think about it was a bit of a result! However my parents being my parents, decided to boycott my requests, I mean really what business or point was there in them all meeting? My mother & Renée, would exchange Christmas cards, for what reason I have no idea? In these cards they both put their telephone numbers & thus a meeting was organised. My mother to Renée’s, home… I found out about this meeting, not from my mother as she likes secrets but from Renée, who after a few more whiskies announced that my mother “was a social butterfly”. I was therefore to take from this that she was not to Renée’s, tastes as she was a former teaching & an intellectual! Somehow Trevor, my father also arranged a secret meeting with Renée, this time at his house, a chauffeur was dispatched to pick Renée up & deliver her to Trevor’s house Dutch Gardens. The chauffeur was a good idea, because by lunchtime Renée would have had at least half a bottle of whisky whilst she read the morning papers & did the cross word; so not surprisingly by lunchtime her driving suffered under this influence! Renée once turned up at our house complaining that her car was making a dreadful noise, blaming her daughter’s boyfriend Eric for the offending noise as he had been doing some work on her car. I looked at the car & the metal trim was at right angles to the car & there were scratch marks all the way down the side of the car. “What have you done Renée?” She glanced at the damage, “Oh don’t worry about that - that is Eric’s bad handy work!” “Renée that is not Eric’s fault you have crashed into something & ripped off the trim.” “Yes!” She replied, “I had to avoid hitting the bus so I veered off the road into the hedge then went back on the road & hit a few bollards where the men are working on the road.” I looked under the car – there was the source of the loud scraping noise, a cone jammed under the car!” Never a dull moment…

She meet Trevor at Dutch Gardens, Renée turned up as she always did with a glass bottle of Coca-Cola filled with whisky, for some reason Renée thought that the disguise of a soft drink bottle would hide the fact, mostly from her daughter that she was drinking whisky, no-stop! Why I have no idea as we all knew that she drunk whisky! On this occasion she mixed the whisky with generous portions of Trevor’s wine, thus got more *pissed* than normal, spilled all her families secrets, which Trevor duly noted for his own possible use in the future…… When Renée told me she had met Trevor, she told me he was a dreadful Svengali [something I think that he would secretly like to be called], none of them ever met each other again! For the record, Renée liked to be controversial, on most topics, which at times made her extremely unkind but at other times a riot to be around! I digress!

Back to Elvira’s document. You can’t easily open her envelopes due to all the sellotape! Sitting down with my cup of tea & a knife I prize open my brown envelope which buckled under the strain of its confinements. Pulling out the content which was a bundle of selected magazine pages taken from The Sunday Telegraph paper, which is Elvira – ‘must-have’ newspaper, it is a religion to her, she collects them & bundles them together in piles all over her house, 1000’s of them & whatever is said in them is gospel, except she is not keen on the Sunday Telegraph magazine attachment, I think it would all be a bit too modern for her! Elvira, on regular occasions will find an article from one of these newspaper piles of something she thinks of interest or relevant & sends out the copy with added notes to the recipient, something that incenses her children! …. Today was my turn … The tatty tear sheet pages stapled together at the centre to act as Elvira’s own publication to me. On the first page attached at an angle is two yellow post-it notes, which states; “COVER – Special STel Mag usually aimed at people with funds.. Usually flipped thru & angrily dumped. However Interest for you – my specific discussion area  MORGANE PULANSKI Probably a future in films she is fresh ----- untainted by the past. Xx E Now Thursday 8/4/21’  It is not immediately comprehensible what she is trying to say or what I am supposed to be interested in, but then these missives from Elvira rarely are, I plough on!

“AMPLE BODIED ROUND MODEL”

Under the yellow post-it note inscription is a picture of a beautiful black model in a midnight blue low buttoned dress with a fine ample bosom on show. Next to her written on the magazine, upside down & at an angled in Elvira’s handwriting with an arrow pointing at the model in blue biro, “AMPLE BODIED ROUND MODEL” – There of course is no particular relevance to this comment, but it is clear that my beloved aunt thinks that I might not notice the picture & what she believes is the relevance, so it is necessary for her to scribble on the image for my clarification. Elvira is not up to speed with the general trend in magazines to use models of all types, to ‘level-up’ the fashion industries stereotypes. She clearly thinks that this is a revelation that I must immediately be informed of? Elvira always likes to think that she is ahead of the curve & the first to notice a trend! Once sitting in her kitchen, when I was young, she exclaimed that it was amazing that platform shoes were ‘on the way out’ – This was news to me as my mother was/is a fashionista of the class ‘A’ type. Platform shoes had in fact gone out of fashion at least two years earlier! On another occasion Elvira was trying to explain to the French au pair, how to body board, she jumped up from the table, announcing that, “you must make yourself into a complete ‘flotation’ – in order to balance!” & then, as she often did, went into the ‘arabesque’ ballet poise, which instantly irritated her children, who complaint that Elvira had never even been body boarding! Reality or truth of these things never really bother Elvira, any opportunity to announce to any person whatsoever that she was a dancer was always at the top of her list; you see according to Elvira if you are a dancer you can do anything, even of course if you have never, as in Elvira’s case! “If you are a dancer Natalie – You are a medical phenomenon! Doctors ask me to advise them”…. Once much to my cousin Sarah’s utter horror & embarrassment on school sports day… Elvira took to crawling on her hands & knees after her baby son who was also crawling down a nearby slope, wiggling her bottom in the air as she went, whilst wearing the shortest mini with blue frilly knickers which were on full display for fathers! I thought it funny, my cousin was mortified.. The difference here being I am not her daughter – I am her niece!   

“LAST LOOK - TOP OF THE WORLD…”

I opened up the stapled pamphlet to the next page, the title was, LAST LOOK, this article was about a 17 year old schoolgirl who won a beauty contest that changed her life. To be honest I am not really sure what the relevance of this page is as there were no scribbled instructions or post-it notes advising me? I flipped the page again; my heart sank! ‘SHOW BREAST IN … nipple enhancing ‘tweakments’ are on the up, reports Sarah Kennedy… Was the story line – ‘MAKING NIPPLES LOOK PERMANENTLY ERECT IS A REQUEST WE RECEIVE OFTEN’!! Next to this bold statement Elvira has written in red biro, obviously this is the key article! ‘Been there!’ E x I am totally unsure why my aunt felt the need to send me this article – or why she needed me to know that she needed pert nipples, all the time? She is after all 83 – But hey who am I to be ageist! I must tell you; it has never ever crossed my mind that it might be useful to have permanently erect nipples? If anything it sounds rather uncomfortable & more than a little unbecoming, particularly if you are doing the weekly supermarket shop. The article continues – ‘When it comes to shape & size, some clients have very specific requests’, below this quote are pictures of a ten pence coin, a strawberry & what looks like clay cooking beans… ‘Dear God!’ I have just had another glance at the pictures – Please tell me those are not hard boiled eggs? To be frank, I now feel a bit revolted at the thought of having cork stop nipples at all times! Why? I have, for a person of short stature a more than ample bosom that can enter the room before the rest of me, how terrifying would it be for the occupants of that room to have to suffer a ‘Carry On’ comedy pair of breasts entering the room, ‘avec – Oeuf’ or for that matter with nipples the shape & size of strawberry’s! Revolting!

“SHOW BREASTS! - IN!!!!”

I am now reminded of sitting watching the TV at Elvira’s house with my many cousins, Elvira had been out & had drunk some wine & Elvira does not drink. It was a light summer evening, with a torrential down pouring of rain. In a fit of pique – Elvira said to us all watching TV that if we gave her a £1 fee each then she would run down to the lake & back in the nude. To most children particularly these days I think this would have caused great alarm & embarrassment, if not a bit of terror, for an adult to be making such a strange offer, but we children just glanced up at her & then continued to watch the TV. Later that evening she had us all outside running in & out of the muddy puddles in the rain, which I can assure you was more entertaining to us than her previous offer & less expensive!   

WHAT CAN I SAY????

– But to Elvira, it is all about being sexy at all times, I think that working in the Film industry all those years means that she thinks that women have to look permanently ‘on heat’ – It is really important to her, I don’t know if it is a generational thing? As my mother once told me that she felt invisible now being older when she walked into a room of men & they don’t all look at her – Which I think is quite a sad statement in its self – That the only thing that is important to her is that all the men are looking at her? If not these days a bit creepy!

Flicking the switch on the kettle again – In slight trepidation, I flipped to the next page, the next 3 pages had been stapled back to front starting with the back page first – This article is about Roman Polanski’s actress daughter Morgane. Here Elvira for ease of my comprehension had slashed the article with red biro, quite randomly as none of the so called high-lighting actually hits the words she is trying to high-light; I glance through the article – it really is not my thing – But I show willing… I closed the pamphlet. On the back page is a further ‘nonsensical’ message this time like the front page in blue biro; “IGNORE ALL RED MARKS – TRYING TO FORCE ME TO CONCENTRATE - X E X”  I know that this is not true, Elvira has just decided that she has perhaps over-egged what she thinks should have been important to me… I stuff the content back in the ripped brown envelope…

I HOPE THEY ARE CLAY COOKING BEANS NOT EGGS!!

I received periodical a few weeks ago, I have not read any of the pages, to be honest they are not really my kind of thing – Not to mention that when it comes to reading matter - I have a daughter who’s favourite thing is books, which she brings to the house in their hundreds, each day she will turn up with some new books, like she has found a little lost puppy to play with …

RED HIGHLIGHTS - MORE IMPORTANT THAN BLUE!!

Today I have received another none-seneschal email from Elvira – with the note stating that when I call her – we simply must discuss the topics sent to me in her recent correspondence… My heart sinks a bit! I have already dodged that bullet once in a recent call. Elvira lives by herself in an enormous house that is falling into disrepair – But she refuses to leave despite many urgent requests from her son. I think we have all come to the conclusion that she is going to stay there to the bitter end. I have written this piece, which is just a snap shot of some of the things my aunt has done & it is written with much affection & love for my aunt, she has been very ill with ‘long covid’ for almost a year and she has been very difficult to help, she refuses medical help & thinks she knows best about everything – At times she has been very confused, which has been difficult to deal with, but when I received these magazine articles with the mad comments, I know that she is back to her old self, so although the content is quite bonkers it is just as it should be with her. She has been a thread through my life & she never turned her back on me. We are as opposite as could be in many ways. When I was little, she would laugh at the fact that I was the most like her in terms of colouring, light skin, mine for the record is almost porcelain & my hair was light brown at the time, Elvira is pale skinned & blond, where as her beautiful children were/are all darker skinned have beautiful brown eyes & hair, like their father. This made me, the little ugly duckling of all the family very pleased. When Elvira went to the Royal premiere of ‘Entertaining Mr Slone’ in April 1970 so beautiful was she that she knock Princess Margaret off the front of the Newspapers – This was quite some achievement!

WELL AT LEAST SHE IS ON THE MEND!

Some years later in the summer we were sitting outside at Elvira’s house with an unrealistically huge bowl of broccoli in front of us covered in butter, with the normal, what my mother calls ‘plastic bread’ & butter as an accompaniment - Elvira is not known for her cooking, the broccoli was also covered in angry wasps from the nearby wasps nest. Suddenly Elvira jumped up, picked up the enormous serving spoon & started to smash it down on the offending wasps smashing the overcooked broccoli to a congealed palp, scattering shards of grey-green broccoli everywhere, including splattering my cousin Sarah & I with the green mush. Once she had finished this outburst she sat down again & expected us to eat the remnants, of the mush now added to the dish were the dismembered bodies of wasps – I hated broccoli for years after that!   

Left to right, Trevor, Elvira, Taller boy Laurie, my brother, Tall lady with beads, my mother Josephine short fat bridesmaid with ringlets not looking at the camera pulling my bloomers up - Me! What was my aunt Dilys thinking of with those outfits?