Madame Vodka

When I was at junior school, our teacher asked the class to work out how old we would be in the year 2000. The answer in my case was fifty-three years of age. At that tender, pig-tailed age, fifty-three seemed ludicrously old. Hardly human. When I allowed myself to think about a fifty-three-year-old me, I imagined myself as a type of space creature, similar in looks to the bulging-brained Mekon, but wearing a silver all-in-one suit with the obligatory pointy shoulders. I saw myself living in a glass tower in the sky, my transportation being a flying version of the Morris Minor.

As you can probably tell, I picked up most of my futuristic imagery from the Dan Dare comic strips, which I read surreptitiously, believing that they were written to be read only by boys. As a child I was full of such mad misconceptions. I constantly misread signs that read ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’, reading instead, ‘Trespassers will be persecute’. For years I believed that if I accidentally strayed on to private property I would be captured, taken away and persecuted (i.e. tortured) by the indignant landowner.

Comics of the Fifties were full of stories about adult wickedness. I remember ballet mistresses and lighthouse keepers being particularly malevolent characters. However, my husband, who has just brought me a cup of tea and glanced at this page, insists, with some emotion, that the lighthouse keepers of his literary boyhood were entirely benevolent old blokes with white beards, Guernsey sweaters and wellingtons. I say that he is mixing up his wicked lighthouse keepers with his entirely trustworthy sea captain types. I defend my memory of wicked lighthouse keepers and he challenges me to produce a single example in children's fiction of a wicked lighthouse keeper. I rise from my desk and make my way to the room where the children's books are kept. However, I stop outside the closed door and remember that I have promised the youngest daughter that I will not go into this room. The reason is complicated, and involves two cats and a litter tray. I turn away from the room and go back to my desk.

My husband is in the living room, watching my favourite American sitcom. He is laughing and has obviously forgotten the lighthouse-keeper argument, whereas I am now obsessed with lighthouse keepers. Doubts set in. I consider calling friends. Am I confusing white-bearded lighthouse keepers with black-bearded smugglers?

I go into the living room to find my husband and Bill, the dog, asleep on the sofa. He jumps down guiltily as he hears my footfall: he is not allowed on the sofa. (The dog, not my husband. My husband is allowed on to the sofa in the evening, providing he has completed his household tasks.)

Perhaps I am on safer ground with ballet mistresses. They were certainly wicked, and figured pretty highly in the Bunty comic that I devoured each week. The ballet mistress always had a short Russian name prefaced with, of course, Madame. Let us call her, for the purpose of this article, Madame Vodka.

This severely elegant woman, her hair in a chignon, was only ever seen wearing a little black dress and carrying a stick. Nearly every week Madame Vodka would lose her temper and shout, banging her stick on the rehearsal room floor. ‘Vi vont you dance, Engleese girl?’ she would scream at a plucky ballerina with a secret broken ankle.

Occasionally Madame Vodka would be pictured in a private moment, quietly weeping over a photograph of a beautiful young girl in a tutu and a swan headdress. ‘Olga! Olga! You ver ze best!’ she would sob. Was Olga her lost, or perhaps dead, daughter? My schoolgirl heart would warm to Madame Vodka, until the last frame, when it would be revealed that – gasp! – the photograph was of Madame Vodka herself at the height of her triumph, before a broken ankle brought her career at the Bolshoi to a calamitous end.

The year 2000 is looming and I'm thankful that I escaped the pointy-shouldered silver baby-gro fashion as predicted in my youth. However, some change of style is demanded by the new century. I feel I should start planning my new image now, in the spring, ready for next year.

I'll need to grow and dye my hair for the chignon. I can easily buy a little black dress and the classic black court shoes. I'm quids in with regard to the angry expression and the walking stick. I wonder if I can persuade my husband to call me Madame Vodka? Just the once.