STRESS AND UNSTRESS

Several articles in the papers this week invite us to say whether we are Type A or Type B when it comes to organising our day. Type A people rush around in a frenzy, apparently, like the White Rabbit, constantly checking the time and hyperventilating if they become caught in a queue.

Type B people, on the other hand, are much more laid back. They drift through their days with the principal object of keeping out of the way of the Type As, though not always with great success.

I confess to being a bit of both. Much of the time I am rushing around, but then I get distracted and disappear into a world of my own for half an hour, thus necessitating a further stressful bout of Type A activity to catch up. As in so much else, I am a mixture; indeed, I sometimes wonder why I wasn't christened 'Trifle.'

It was to recover from these bouts of stress that I first started going to Anne. She is an aromatherapist of the highest order and now a close friend. Some of my happiest moments have been spent stretched out on Linda's couch, anointed with Lemon Grass or Bergamot while she pummels, prods and skilfully massages me from head to foot.

She chides me gently - yesterday it was for leaving specks of nail polish in the crevices of my toenails - and we quizz each other about our various ailments, hers sadly real, mine mostly imagined. She has had an outbreak of arthritis; her hands inflamed. Not a happy position for someone whose livelihood depends on the suppleness of those probing fingers.

I promise to lend her my book 'A Doctor's Home Cure for Arthritis' - bought, I tell her, in anticipation of contracting the infliction that has befallen so many relatives.

Afterwards, contrary to best practice, she always insists I take a glass of wine. Anne is rather devoted to her wine and has the best cellar (if indeed it can be called that for she keeps it in racks that grow like triffids up the walls of her kitchen) of anyone I know.

"It's Californian," she says, a little apologetically, "I don't think it's very good."

"All wines are good," I countered. "It's just that some are better than others."

Yet it was true. The wine, though silky smooth, had the pneumatic body of a Bay Watch starlet and a corresponding shallowness of character. For me, wine made by English speakers is always, at bottom, uninteresting.

On the way back, I pass my neighbour, also a keen thespian, watering away in the gathering dusk. The beautiful scent of lilac wafts out of the tree by her gate. I tell her I am trying for the part of a cantankerous old woman called Helen in one of Jean McConnell's series of playlets 'Deckchairs.' Though the only reason I can think of for wanting to play such a cruel and desiccated character is that she reminds me of one of Saki's aunts.

We have been treated, for some reason, to a minor rash of programmes about Saki recently. Some dramatisations of the stories were even playing on the television when I returned.
I adore Saki, he is one of my favourite authors. I love his surreal quirkiness, his juxtaposition of the banal with the improbable, his sense of humour, the verbal pyrotechnics. Some tales have a dark side, too, on which I am not so keen - tales of revenge, the macabre, death. He is also not very fond of aunts.

But he is not a misogynist. Indeed his stories are remarkable for the intelligent way in which he treats women, who are often the protagonists. If we exclude the aunts, it is the men, who on the whole, are caricatured and satirised.

Where else but in Saki would you find such a delicious opening as this (The story is 'Laura'):

"You are not really dying, are you?" asked Amanda.
"I have the doctor's permission to live till Tuesday," said Laura.
"But today is Saturday; this is serious!" gasped Amanda.
"I don't know about it being serious; it certainly is Saturday," said Laura.

When I am writing I sometimes like to picture him, sitting in an elegant silk dressing down, a fountain pen effortlessly flowing over the notepad on his knee; rarely pausing, rarely changing a word or crossing out. Sometimes I ask his advice.

"How should I end this piece?" I feel like asking him today.

"My dear Fenella, you could always try an invasion of the Visigoths and end it that way or perhaps you could seek out the gardener and borrow some arsenic. On the other hand, you could, you know, simply end it with a full stop!"

Precisely.














.