I sense a theme

Why even do a Female Heterosexuality Project if Victoria Wood said it best?

When you start typing “Victoria Wood” into YouTube, the app thinks you want Victoria’s Secret. This is great because it’s kind of the opposite.

I’m getting really into the songs lately. This could be a worshipful post about all of them but instead we will focus here on “Reincarnation,” a song about wanting to come back as random (fictitious) contemporaries. Wood was basically Balzac but British, 20th century, and hilarious. She describes all these different types, but “describes” does not do this justice. And then there’s the subtext: Wood ought to have lived forever but died several years ago, in her early 60s. And the other subtext: she sings, “I’m following my dream tonight,” and you know, as she’s performing, she is.

One of the characters is Pauline Park, an invoice clerk (Park and clerk rhyme in British English). Reincarnated as Pauline, sings Wood, “I’ll sit and I’ll fantasize / about cruel men with piercing eyes / then I’ll microwave two mince pies and have them with a cup of tea.”

So. Where to begin. Because it’s everything. Pauline is the Barbara Pym protagonist. The femcel (?). She’s Jane from “Waiting for God.” She’s the spinster frump as only the British, with their long, shapeless floral dresses, can make them.

Wood is able to create vivid characters with fewer words than maybe anyone. Pauline is particularly fun though, partly because of Wood’s delivery of “piercing eyes.” It’s a bit ironic, a bit knowing, a bit like this is a quote from one of Pauline’s (implied) romance novels. And there’s the contrast between the masochistic fantasy (the man is not gallant, he’s cruel!) and the cozy scene. Cozy but a bit modern and pathetic, due to the microwave.

Is Pauline unfulfilled? Or maybe she prefers the fantasy to the reality, the microwaved version of the mince pie (whatever that is, sounds disgusting, British television yes, British food no thanks) to an antipasto platter.