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The Mother of All Disgust
What we inherit when others cut to the quick
My colleague, Roz, is at it again.
“You really shouldn’t bite your fingernails,” she’s telling me, on top of all the other things she likes to tell me (how to wear my collar, how to speak, how to write an email, how to basically be exactly like her).
She is at it again and she is wrong again.
I don’t bite my fingernails.
Not then. Not now.
They are, however, cut very, very short, as close to the quick as possible.
Why?
Disgust.
“They’re filthy. Filthy, filthy, filthy.”
And there’s the Woman Who Called Herself My Mother. At it again.
I’m five years old, or younger, sitting on the end of the bed, and it’s about ten at night.
I know that because Minder has just finished on ITV.
I went to bed at the same time she did. With my father working nights — or whatever he did in the hours of darkness (some of which we knew involved local women) — she needed the company.
And the nails — my nails — were part of the going to bed routine.
