Rescuing Rose. Isabel Wolff

sent to me by publishing P.R.s all desperate for a plug. I rarely oblige but can’t blame them for trying – I have three million readers after all. How to Start a Conversation and Make Friends announced the first one. Helping People Cope With Crime, How to be a Happy Homosexual, and Breathe Away Your Stress. I put them in the cupboard, arranging them neatly by height, then felt ready to face the day’s post. In my column I answer letters on any issue ‘Moral, Medical or Miscellaneous’, but I knew more or less what I’d find. At this time of year it’s failed holiday romances, dreadful second honeymoons, and disappointing exam results.

      Dear Rose, I read, as I switched on my computer, I am 19 and have just failed my GCSE’s again…Dear Rose, last month I went to Ibiza and met this wonderful man…Dear Rose, I’ve just come back from a purgatorial cruise with my wife…Then there are the hardy perennials like low self-esteem and of course, Am I Gay? And I get so many letters from cross-dressers I can never meet a man without checking his feet for high heels. Then there are the weird sexual problems – this looks like one – I’m never judgemental, of course. Oh Christ that is so disgusting!! Dear Rose, I read, appalled. I’m a farmer, I’ve been married nearly twenty years, and to put it bluntly, I’m a bit bored in the sack. I’d like to ‘experiment’ a bit, shall we say, but my wife won’t oblige and this is causing a rift. She says it’s just ‘not on’ and that we should leave Grunty alone. Could you give me some guidance please?

      Dear Jeff, I typed smartly, my fingers stabbing at the keys with distaste. All sexual activity with other species is illegal. I agree wholeheartedly with your wife. Interfering with animals is, moreover, an abuse of their rights – I suggest you stick to eating them instead!

      I have my principles you see. Agony Aunts tend to be liberal, but we all have certain bees in our bonnets. Mine are zoophilia (gross) smacking (unacceptable), and infidelity (absolutely ditto). The number of women who write to me asking how they can persuade their married boyfriend to leave his wife! Take this letter here for example. Typical. Dear Rose, Please could you advise me what to give my lover for his birthday? I’d like to give him something personal rather than aftershave or a tie which his wife might spot.

      Dear Sharon, I typed energetically. Thank you very much for your letter. I know the perfect birthday present for your married boyfriend – may I suggest that you give him the boot!

      I mean, what do these women seriously expect me to say? Sleeping with someone else’s husband is the pits. Why can’t they find themselves a single man – God knows there are enough out there. And now I mentally pushed Mary-Claire Grey off the top of Tower Bridge before ploughing through the rest of the mail.

      I get, on average, a hundred and fifty letters a week. I type half the replies then record the rest on a dictaphone and give Serena the tape. She also leaflet-stuffs the envelopes, shreds the old letters – so important – and organises the helplines which appear on the page. We ring the changes with these but we usually have five or six on the go. Fighting Phobias is a popular one, as is He Wants Me To Dress Up. We also have helplines on Prostate Problems, Impotence and Bad Breath. Obviously we have to be careful not to mix up the phone numbers alongside each one. Dear Rose, I now read. I am f**g pissed off because yesterday I phoned your f**g Hair Loss helpline and got Haemorrhoids instead! Those lines cost a pound a minute so I wasn’t f**g impressed.

      I wrote back enclosing a conciliatory fiver and my leaflet on Self-Control. And now I tackled my e-mails which account for about a quarter of my mail. I find e-mails much harder to analyse than letters. There’s no handwriting with all its tell-tale signs and the language is cold and concise. You can see the problem itself very clearly, but not the person who’s having it. Because the main thing about the problem page is that the letters are often not quite what they seem. You have to work them out, spot the clues – like a crime novel – or deconstruct them like a piece of prac. crit. For example, someone might spend sixteen pages whining on about how they’re not getting on with their partner any more and how he’s always shouting at them and picking fights, blah blah blah. But then they’ll add, in the very last line, ‘but he’s only like this when he drinks.’ At which point I am frantically digging out my Alcohol leaflet and the number of their local AA. And that’s the real skill of being an agony aunt – you have to read between the lines.

      At parties people often ask me what other qualities are required. Curiosity for starters – I’ve got that in spades. I’ve always loved sitting on trains, staring dreamily out of the window into the backs of people’s houses, and wondering about their lives. You have to be compassionate too – but not wet – your reply should have a strong spine. There’s no point just offering sympathy, or even worse, pity, like that dreadful Citronella Pratt. What the reader needs is practical advice. So that means having information at the ready: information and kindness – that’s what it’s about. Having said which I’m not a ‘cuddly’, ‘mumsy’ agony aunt – if need be I’ll take a tough tone. But the truth is that my readers invariably know what to do, I simply help them find the answer by themselves. Take this letter, here, for example. What a nightmare. Poor bloke.

       Dear Rose, in 1996 my adored wife died in a car crash, leaving me distraught. Three years later I met someone else and, after a short courtship (too short I now realise), I married again. Although I don’t claim to be a saint, I believe I have treated my second wife well. She is a pleasant-looking, but unfortunately rather aggressive woman in her mid forties – she broke my finger very badly last year. I can just about put up with her mood swings, what I can’t put up with is her affairs. I know that she’s had at least two during our marriage, and now have evidence that she’s on her third. And please don’t tell me to get marriage guidance counselling because she flatly refuses to go. All I know is that I’m miserable: I feel so lonely and I don’t sleep well. I often fantasize about being free (we don’t have children). What do you think I should do?

      Dear John, I typed. Thank you for writing to me and I’m sorry you’ve been having such a hard time. I know from my own experience that infidelity is unacceptable – it’s humiliating, it’s corrosive and it hurts. Any kind of physical aggression from your partner is also beyond the pale. You’ve already been forgiving twice, so maybe it’s time to say ‘no more’. John, only you know if your marriage can go on, but it does sound as though you might be at the end of the road. Then, because I always try to add some kind words, I added: You’re obviously a very nice man, and I hope you find the happiness you deserve. Now, I don’t really know whether he’s nice or not because we’ve never met, but because he’s placed his trust in me I want to lift his morale a bit. Note that I didn’t actually tell him to start proceedings; that’s something I never do. In any case it’s pretty obvious that he’s coming round to that idea himself. What he was doing – and I often get this – was seeking permission to go ahead. Basically, he was asking me to sanction his decision to divorce and so, indirectly, I did.

      Then there are all the sad letters – some so dreadful it breaks your heart. Letters with cheerful smileys all over them from children whose parents drink. Letters which start, I’m so sorry to bother you with my problems, but I have cancer, and have three months to live…Occasionally, there are the begging letters – like this one. I read it and sighed.

       Dear Rose, My three-year-old daughter Daisy needs a heart and lung transplant – she’s been desperately ill since the day she was born. The doctors here say she’s inoperable, but we’ve just found a surgeon in the States. But the cost of the operation is thirty thousand pounds – money we just don’t have. Please, please, Rose, would you print this letter, as we’re sure you have many kind-hearted readers who’d help?

      I heaved a sigh. I couldn’t print it because that’s not the function of my page and in any case it might not be true. But if it were true I couldn’t forgive myself for not having taken it seriously. So I wrote back enclosing the numbers for five children’s medical charities, and a cheque for seventy-five pounds. Ed used to get really cross when I did that so I stopped telling him after a while.

      And now I read a letter from one