Kiss Myself Goodbye: The Many Lives of Aunt Munca

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Mount's writing style is reportage turned up a notch - simple facts clothed in delightful and witty phrasing. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. Fortunately, before their friendship broke down, my father photographed Georgie across four decades — images that show her at her happiest. The idea that Greig was a heterosexual gripped just once, and only once, by a momentary and inexplicable gay compulsion, is far less plausible.

I’d want to pinch myself, revelling in my good fortune at having Georgie in my life, someone who shone so generously she made other people shine. Now and again, the way in which Georgie’s parents had barred her from normal formative experiences would become apparent. After all that childhood conditioning about perfection, no wonder what seemed like a miraculous recovery to her friends was nothing of the sort to her. The Financial Times and its journalism are subject to a self-regulation regime under the FT Editorial Code of Practice.With more resolve, perhaps Greig might have mitigated some of Munca’s cruelties to Georgie or thought about correcting the final one: the will.

You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Ferdinand Mount is a novelist, essayist and former editor of the Times Literary Supplement from 1991 to 2002. I didn’t yet understand that people could be more than one thing and if it was a choice between ‘godmother’ and ‘friend’, then Georgie was ‘friend’. It mortified her to be taken out of boarding school by limousine once a week to have her hair professionally washed, treated, and styled at the age of 11, inviting envy and mockery among class-mates.Under Margaret Thatcher, the gay liberation gains made in the ’70s were gradually reversed, to the point where the government and the newspapers that supported it were starting to agitate for the re-criminalisation of homosexuality. Not only does she look too old to have a child (she is 47, but pretends to be 10 years younger), but she has not apparently been pregnant. Their coupling, based on fellow feeling and expediency rather than true passion, endured to the death. While Georgie’s adoption was the first of the Mounts’ deceptions to surface, it was merely one of an intergenerational network of falsehoods spun by Munca and then given succour by Greig. So - while she can come across as utterly ruthless and self-serving, he does acknowledge she was also capable of great love and generosity.

But if readers are going to meet Ferdinand Mount’s Georgie, the broken mannequin, then I’d like them also to meet my Georgie, the sparkling, smiling, caring, loyal, life-loving, and generous friend. Mount unpeels the layers of this mysterious life with the tenacity of an experienced detective and the excitement of a fresh-eyed enthusiast. As I read on, I noticed that these scenes had been described in meticulous detail, but I’d been erased from them.

No wonder her career briefly had a second wind when she became a crossword setter and found a new pool of friends in the cryptic crossword online community. I loved it, and (due to my own ignorance) had no idea of who the author was until after I had read it, and the book wasn't spoiled for the fact.

So when, in 1973, their situations were reversed and my mother was expecting, there was only one choice in her mind for Godparent: Georgie. The 1930s popular song which he has taken for the title of his book opens with "I'm gonna kiss myself goodbye / goodbye, goodbye / I'm gonna get my wings and fly / Up high, up high".Aunt Munca flees the streets of Sheffield for a suite at Claridges, getting younger by the year and leaving behind her a trail of brazen lies and shattered pieties.