Extraits

My name is Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick and I am eighty-one years old. I want it on the record that I don’t look eighty-one. Not because I’m particularly attractive or youthful-looking – on the contrary, I’ve seen hairless mole rats more attractive – but because if storybooks are anything to go by (and I, for one, believe they are), eighty-one-year-olds are frail, birdlike creatures with silver hair who call people ‘dear’ and go inside the bank to speak to an ‘actual person’ rather than use the much more convenient ATM. At six feet tall with broad shoulders and a sturdy backbone, no one would ever accuse me of being birdlike – unless the bird in question was an ostrich. My hair is reddish-grey, and I call people ‘dipshit’ with far more regularity than ‘dear’. Most importantly, I adore the ATM. Who wouldn’t? I’m eighty-one years old, and I don’t want to spend the precious time I have left in a stuffy, air-conditioned room talking to a power-tripping branch manager called Barry through plexiglass.

I digress.