Sandwiches

"You English, with your sandwiches, on the bread which is so limp and the edges, so square. You are obsessed with these foods but they are so horrible! Ugh."

That wasn't a real person, saying that. Or at least maybe it was, very likely it was, but they never said it in range of my ears. No, that was said to me by one of the imaginary people that live in my brain. They follow me round and talk to me. This one was French, and was berating me as I drove down the motorway with a sandwich on my knee and a song in my heart.

For I happen to think that the sandwich - and particularly the British sandwich, with its neat square edges and nice soft bread - is a rather wonderful invention. Because I'm one of those weirdos who can't be doing with complicated tasty food that takes ages to make and more ages to eat. As Tom Robbins once said, it's the maintenance that gets me down about being human. And eating is just maintenance. Refuelling. It gets in the way of living. So you can go away with your crusty bread that needs two hands, sixty teeth and an oblivion of crumbs to eat. I want my food conveniently packaged. I like my eatables formatted in a way which allows for variety (so many different flavours of sandwich) (but OK, I might nearly always plump for ham, tuna or chicken) (and salad) (a sandwich isn't a sandwich without a little bit of something crunchy), but can be eaten with one hand. On the go. Without making a mess. Or losing half of it down some crack or other. Or cutting your tender mouth on sharp unfriendly crustiness. And can be made for yourself, cheaply and quickly, as a last minute thing, when you realise you're off out the door again on some errand or other, and you haven't got any money and you've forgotten to eat.

My handbag often contains sandwiches. And nearly always a cereal bar, or flapjack, or some emergency snack or other. Number One Son said to me today, "I think we should call your handbag The Magic Handbag, because it always has food in it." And what if you're caught on the hop, with no sandwiches in your handbag? Why, you can visit almost any shop in Britain and find a fridge in the corner containing sandwiches!

They are magic. I like them.

Can you tell?


___

Always look on the bright side...

This is a terrible cheat of a post, copied as it is from what I said in Bete's comment box. You're all reading Bete's blog by now, right? You should. It's good. I'm addicted. But anyway. He was talking about morbid fears and worries, and this is what I said... and I liked it, so I'm copying it here. Pollyannaesqueness an' all.

Two of my closest friends lost their fathers this month. Both were particularly stressful deaths. Another close friend is languishing on a sofa after major surgery.

Me? I'm pretty good. OK, so I'm poor and lacking in a much-awaited book deal, but I have the wanted child I went through hell to get, and I'm a full time writer looking forward to three (yes, three!) planned books to write in 2009, and I don't have to go to a job, and I have all I ever wanted. So I'm happy.

I learnt a long time ago that it really fucks you up if you allow other people's misfortunes to get you down. It also does them no good whatsoever. It's singularly unhelpful to everyone. So I don't do it any more.

Here's the way I look at it: I don't want my friends to be unhappy. I don't really want anyone to be unhappy. I want the whole world to contain as much happiness as is physically and philosophically possible. And this is a ridiculous position to hold unless I also extend the principle to myself. Because I'm human too, and just as I want my hearest and dearest to go well, they want the same for me. And I care about them. So I owe it to them to do my damnedest to raise my head and not dwell on stuff.

As for my own mortality, I don't think much about that. What's the point? When I'm dead I won't care. And impending bad luck? Of course bad things will happen to me. Whether or not I anticipate them. So why bother? Why not just continue blithely on, assuming that everything will be fine? And when the shit hits the fan, why not look forward to when the graph bends back on itself and good times come again?

I don't always manage this. I am by nature a worrier. But this is what I tell myself: When my head snaps up and I think, oh God, what if my son is dead? What if he has been hit by a car and nobody has told me yet? Well, if he's dead, he's dead. I'll find out soon enough. There's nothing I can do about it. Ignorance is bliss. At the moment I'm happy because I haven't yet been informed of his death. The misery will come soon enough. I should make the most of this state. And more generally: When the misery comes, it will be miserable. But as long as it's not here, I should make the most of its absence. My job, everybody's job, is to maximise global happiness. And that job starts here, in this chair.

PS I'm also drawn to death, darkness, gloom and despair. In a [whisper] kind-of-revelling-in-it sort of a way. I was brought up by a woman whose idea of a good Sunday out was to visit random churchyards and read the gravestones. And wrote children's books about necromancy. That's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. Each to their own. Melancholy can be beautiful. As long as you remember it's just a hobby, and doesn't mean you have to be miserable.

P.P.S. Happy Christmas!


___

Is this how rich people do it?

I've made about £200 in the last week, by sitting still. I'm due some money from my German publisher, and the pound has been plummeting against the Euro. Overall I'm £700 better off than I would have been if I was paid when the deal was first struck, back in the spring*.

I feel a bit guilty about it. Faintly uneasy. And slightly naughty. As though I'm involved in some kind of scam.

Life is weird.

Of course, some other tits-up economical happening will occur before I actually see the money, and it'll be worth ten pence. Maybe eleven.

Speaking of which, is it not one of the most annoying things when the bank pays you interest on your current account? You can be over a thousand pounds in credit, and then the statement arrives.

"Oh wow, really, you're giving me 9p? A whole nine pennies? A fifth of a packet of crisps? A tenth of a quart of milk? A millionth of a car?"

Why the fuck do they even bother? It's not pleasing. It doesn't make me happy. I'm not bowled over by their munificence. I'm just pissed off.


* [NB. If you are planning to make money writing books, factor this in: It's not unusual for the money to arrive twelve months after the news]


___

Ectopic

No, don't worry, not an ectopic pregnancy. They're horrid. That would be horrid. I'm not having one of them.

But for ages now I've noticed that sometimes when I get uber-tired, late at night, I get a weird fluttery sensation in my throat.

With hindsight I'm very surprised that my hypochondria hadn't kicked in yet. I would have expected me to self-diagnose everything from cancer to subcutaneous egg-laying spiders by now. But for some reason I'd just noted it and then forgotten all about it. It's just that funny thing that happens when I'm tired.

Then last night I suddenly decided that actually, it wasn't exactly in my throat. It was more like upper chest, and oh my God, is it my heart? So I tried taking my pulse while the flutters were going on, but Oscar was being skrikey and distracting so I couldn't get any kind of obvious conclusion. I tried again while I was singing him to sleep with The Endless Lullaby, but my own singing somehow prevented me from feeling my pulse properly. Then finally he was asleep and I could focus on what I was doing and hmmmm, somehow my pulse seemed to miss a beat every time the flutter happened.

I still thought I was probably imagining it and it was probably indigestion or something, but I went to bed before I was intending, then got up early and rang the doctor in the five-minute window you get between 8am and 8.05 if you want an appointment that day.

And there I am in the surgery, feeling silly, because I seem to make doctor's appointments every five minutes and it's never anything serious, but anyway describing my symptoms and thinking how laughable they sound.

"Oh yes," he says. "It's called an ectopic beat."

What? You mean it really is my heart?

"Yes, but it's nothing to worry about and they probably wouldn't do anything to treat it anyway."

So, we decided I should give up caffeine (again), as I think that's when it happens: When it's late at night, I'm super-tired and I've been drinking coffee or my super-strength fair trade cocoa what is simultaneously comfort-drink and a stimulant.

If the caffeine-free-ness doesn't get rid of it, there'll be ECGs and stuff, but it's still nothing to worry about.

And of course it's only after I leave that I think of all the useful questions. Like, I can handle living without coffee, I've done that before, but my lovely hot chocolate? I mean, he said it doesn't really matter, right? So maybe I can just carry on drinking and fluttering and everything can continue as normal? Or do I have to never have caffeine ever again? And do I officially have a heart-thingy? Do I have to announce it to people like yoga instructors and aerobics teachers and aeroplanes and other people who ask about these things?

And what is it with me and caffeine? I gave it up a long time ago cos it give me heartburn and I was also suffering from anxiety. Then I developed a bit of a thing for it during pregnancy cos I was getting so very very tired, and one cup of strong filter coffee each day really perked me up... but it exacerbated my IBS. Gave me diarrhoea and stomach cramps, in fact. And now it's fucking with my heart, on only one cup a day? Caffeine really doesn't like me, does it?

My body's behaving a bit like my car at the moment: Showing its age, frequently breaking down, full of little quirks and foibles so that simple tasks have to be approached from oblique angles and a lot of maintenance is required. Just since Oscar was born I have had sore/tingle wrists, forearms and knuckles (carpal tunnel syndrome), a weird-shaped stomach (muscle diverification), painful knees (worn joints), a hurty back (heavy baby, general wear and tear), leaky bladder (weak pelvic floor), and now this. Pah. I want a refund.

But the weird patch of ouchy skin under my thumbnail is apparently not cancer, as I thought, just a wart.

So that's all right then.

Update: According to this site here (I know, I know, never trust anything you read on the internet, but still...) the ectopic thing really isn't anything to worry about and I don't even need to give up caffeine, except that they seem to imply it should be more random than my experience, but still, probably nothing to worry about. And my pulse, BP etc are all fine and the flutteriness isn't painful or even uncomfortable so it really isn't anything to worry about.


___

Fairy Tales, Part Five

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

That night, I went to bed at a decent time. So when I visited the following day, I was more composed. And there were no birthday parties, so the place itself was much more relaxed and relaxing.

Barbie knew who I was straight away, and remembered that I had visited the previous day. The staff brought them some afternoon tea - toast and jam, and biscuits. Barbie was determined to give me hers. I tried to refuse, but in the end we compromised, and she sent for a knife so we could cut it in half and share it. This had always been her job - to provide for those who visited - and she wasn't giving it up lightly.

We went upstairs to their room, and Oscar gurgled happily on the floor while Felix showed them his gymnastics and then played hide and seek under one of their beds. We looked at an old sketchbook of Bill's, containing sketches of Barbie, her brothers, Bill's sister, when they were all young. I helped change the settings on Bill's mobile phone. I felt useful, and the conversation wasn't stilted.

I drove back to their house - the one that was only mentioned in code, the one Barbie couldn't remember ("What is my home, I wonder?") - much happier.

We lit the fire I had laid that morning, toasted marshmallows and had bedtime stories by the hearth.

That night I looked through a giant box of photographs and picked out my favourites to put on the mantelpiece. There was one of Barbie and Bill on their wedding day - late thirties, I think. Barbie is wearing a printed silk day dress covered in tiny leaping deer. I have this dress in my wardrobe. I loved vintage clothing when I was a teenager, and Barbie gave it to me then. My mum remembered how during her own childhood, she loved to look at the deer. It felt very odd, she said, to see me wearing it. But I wouldn't fit into it now. My grandma was a very thin young woman.

I had long phone conversations that night with my mum and my aunt, describing the visits and all that I had found in the house. I admitted to reading Barbie's diaries and was reassured that she had always said people could read them. They were not hidden away. My mum told me how Barbie liked to have her daily "Quiet Time", when she would read her Aldous Huxley and various other writings on theology, philosophy, psychology. We discussed the possibility of taking The Perennial Philosophy into the care home. Barbie couldn't really read it any more, but she could hold it. She would probably still remember that it had meaning for her. She could leaf through it and see the cuttings, carefully inserted between the pages. She could place it at the bottom of her clothes drawer.

I created a Visitors' Book for subsequent visitors to the house, and wrote a great long entry describing my stay. I packed, making the most of the time when my boys were asleep. I stayed up late again - 3am this time - and again was discombobulated the following morning through lack of sleep.

At the breakfast table I finished reading Elaine (their live-in carer)'s diary. Her last entry described the day she took them to their new home. How Bill sat upright in the front seat and stared ahead, not looking back. How Barbie sat in the back, crying, with Elaine's dog's head in her lap, saying, "Is this the last time I'll see this house? Is this the last time I'll see this garden? Is this the last time I'll see this gate post?" When Elaine said her final goodbye at the care home, Bill cried. Elaine described it as one of the worst days of her life.

I sat there, looking out of the window at the beautiful autumnal fell, and cried yet again. Such sad, sad images. And of course I'm crying now.

It's possible for them to be taken out for day trips. If they wanted, they could revisit their house. It's not on the market yet. But everyone seems to agree that it wouldn't be helpful. It's already part of their past.

While I was there on the second visit, Harold, the previous day's birthday boy, stopped for a chat. He was very interested in, and appreciative of, Oscar and Felix. He told me about the cat and the puppy that live in the home. He told me about his great-great grandchildren. It was an animated conversation, and at one point I glanced at Bill. He was beaming at us all with unmasked delight.

I asked Bill how he was settling in. "Very well," he said.

"Fewer worries now, I suppose?" I said.

"No worries at all," he said.

"No worries at all."


Vigil of Nuptial Mass
by Barbie

I see now on the eve of our new love,
Our days together as a shining stream,
The turbulence of our discoveries -
The moulding of the pattern of our dream.

With a new tenderness I now look back,
And see with older eyes our flaming days,
And smooth them with faint fingers of farewell,
Knowing our love will flow in different ways.

All that I lose, I know I will receive
In different coin - I will learn with use,
And with surrender let me not regret,
My obligations let me not refuse.

Help me to give for all your freedom lost,
A new companionship - a patience new,
A free dependance and a loyalty,
A love that strengthened, will itself renew.

May we be blest in our new way of life,
May we each help the other to be strong,
And in the consummation of our love,
Find how completely do we each belong.


___

Fairy Tales, Part Four

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

They were both in the lounge, where the residents were lined up in chairs around the outside of the room, waiting for a party to start. It was a 90th birthday do for Harold, one of the other "inmates" (Bill's name for them).

There was no space for me and my sons to join them, so they moved to two armchairs in the hallway, where apparently they spend most of their time. In what was once a mansion this hallway is the hub, with a giant sweeping staircase, a huge arched window and doorways leading off to all the other parts of the house.

Barbie didn't seem sure who I was. She repeatedly asked for Oscar and Felix's names, and whether I had any other children. Bill had no such difficulties. He is the older and more physically infirm of the two, but his mind is still sharp. Felix drew them both a picture of a ship, and they took it in turns to hold Oscar until he needed feeding. Barbie was pleased to see me do this. And finally, when I explained that I was Ally's partner, she knew who I was.

I tried my best to make conversation. I had been told that Barbie didn't easily remember their house in the Lake District and that Bill preferred not to talk about it, so I tried to avoid that subject. But I told Barbie how I had found the 1927 school magazine, and she was pleased and knew what I meant. Also the photos of she and Bill in their bathing costumes at Mevagissey, in the 30s. I tried to think of other things to talk about. I had thought that I could ask about their youths, about what it was like to be a young couple in the 1930s, but neither of them could remember details and I felt mean for drawing attention to their failing memories. The 90th birthday party was in full swing around us, Oscar was fidgety and kept wanting fed, Felix was bored and restless, and I was exhausted after only four and a half hours' sleep.

The plan had been to stay a little longer and be shown their room, but I didn't want to rush them into moving when they clearly weren't ready yet, I had run out of conversation and my nerves were jangling, so I made my excuses and left. I tried to stay jolly and light, but my face wouldn't obey my manners, and as we left my eyes met Bill's and I'm sure he understood how desperate I was feeling.

As I was driving away, I cried. Because Barbie remembered my boyfriend before she remembered her own granddaughter. Because of all those diaries, meticulously kept and for what? To be read by whom? To be forgotten by their author before she was even dead? Because of The Perennial Philosophy and a thinking thoughtful woman who could no longer even read. Because my grandmother was still there, was still a lovely sweet woman who loved children and babies and kept saying what a fruitful lot we were, but was only half there.

Felix said he wanted to go back to Manchester, and I cried.

[to be continued here]

INVASION
by Barbie

There are dim realms of my spirit crowned
With airy filmiest fancies of my mind;
And there I go adventuring, along
White paths of introspect that slimly wind
Away into deep shadows of my thought -
By all the tended shrines of little loves,
Serene each one in separate place apart,
- Secret and lovely - where the spirit moves
Contentedly, dreaming and slowly-going,
Through the quietness there ...
always I have kept
These inner places jealously apart;
And these have tended and these loved, cleanswept
With draughts of pleasure, and of pain.
And in my times of pain the thought of these -
My little loves - would come with gentleness,
And the sweet air of them, and peace would ease
The tiredness that I felt, and dustiness.
And I've been rich in treasures as a king.
Proud in the beauty that I held secure,
Knowing the pleasure that my thoughts could bring.
And then you come - and through these ways you press
In sudden ownership: .... and yet there seems
To be a still more perfect harmony
Smoothing and lightly touching all my dreams
And so completing them .... and I have found
That there's no shrine that I may keep apart
For you - you wonder hand in hand with me
At will - through all the valleys of my heart.


___

Fairy Tales, Part Three

Part One
Part Two

Barbie and Bill are in a care home, but their house in the Lake District hasn't yet been sold. I decided to take Felix and Oscar with me, to stay there for three nights, visiting them during the day.

Whenever I'd thought of them leaving, tears had threatened. They valued their independence for so long and so well, and neither had been keen on the thought of leaving. Their home and most of their possessions, left behind, probably never to be seen again. But it wasn't until I got out of the car and let myself into their empty house that it really hit me. Such a well-known place, with all its familiar smells, but the key ingredients missing.

We had been eating fruit in the car, and along with bags of food and belongings I found myself carrying two banana skins into the house. I looked around for the compost bin, and that's when I lost control of my eyes. The composting of vegetable waste is deeply ingrained in me, and all because of Barbie. As soon as I had a garden of my own she lent me a book on how to create compost, and yet here I was in her house, adding skins to a heap that she would never make use of, that probably nobody would ever use.

Felix was nervous of the big empty house, wouldn't go anywhere on his own and made me change the sleeping arrangements so that he, Oscar and I all shared a bedroom, and I had to sit at the end of his bed with Oscar feeding on my lap until he went to sleep. But finally both he and Oscar were in bed and I had the house to myself.

It smells of books, old paper and old wooden furniture. The staircase smells of Digestive biscuits. The staircase at Whitewells smelt the same, I don't know why. One of the first things Felix did when we arrived was to look for the Digestives tin ("I like my great grandma, she gives me biscuits"). He was so disappointed to find it contained only water biscuits.

My mother had fished out a manuscript, the very first novel my grandmother wrote. When she was told the house would have to be sold to pay the nursing home fees, she wondered whether this book could be found and sent round the publishers again. It was a carbon copy and covered in crossings-out and edit marks, making it hard to read. There were also carbon copies of three other unpublished novels (she had five published altogether, I think), and my mum had been wondering what happened to the top copies. I'm good at finding things, so my mission was to find these missing manuscripts.

I'm also incredibly nosy. I looked everywhere, becoming increasingly aware that I wasn't just looking for manuscripts. I was looking for... well, I'm not sure. Insight? Intrigue?

I looked in clothes drawers, in wardrobes, under beds, on top of cupboards. I found journals everywhere. The most recent were written on scraps of paper and the backs of envelopes and bundled together with string, but it seemed that up until a year or two ago she kept a diary every day of her adult life. And I read them. Well, I dipped into them. And felt guilty. But did it anyway. Somehow, now that she can no longer write...

I wouldn't have even considered it a year ago.

I found so much. Not just the journals, but letters and photographs. Cuttings kept, favourite and interesting passages from books, carefully transcribed. Articles, poems and short stories written by Barbie. A letter to Santa written by my sister and kept with Barbie's handkerchiefs. A letter written by a fictional character created by my mother and/or her sisters as a child, and something about a "Lovers' Gang". Stories and articles written by my mother. Letters written by myself as a teenager. Letters written by my aunt when she was briefly at boarding school. Photographs of my grandparents as a young couple in the 30s, on the beach at Mevagissey, larking about. A copy of my grandmother's school magazine from 1927, containing a poem about violets by one Barbara J.

Dipping into those journals, various themes recurred. An interest in theology and philosophy. Several quotes from The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley, a copy of which I found at the bottom of a clothes drawer, tatty and spineless and full of clippings and letters. Careful notes of piano lessons and piano practice from a 1951 diary. Details of housework and gardening and what she cooked for tea. Constant mention of her children and grandchildren, how nice it was to hear their voices when they rang. In a 1979 diary, a description of a visit from my mother, my sister and me. She would have been in her sixties then, and I suddenly appreciated what a lot of housework and cooking she did when we all went to visit. It must have been exhausting, and she describes being tired, but she wouldn't have dreamt of avoiding it as long as she was capable.

She describes one meal, cooked for us all, with Golden Cap for pudding. I used to love Golden Cap. It was an upside down suet pudding, with golden syrup on the top / bottom. A bit like sticky toffee pudding. With custard (I didn't like the skin). Yum yum. And fresh buttered artichokes, from the garden.

The other weekend I visited my friend Rachael's allotment, and she dug me up some artichokes, which I boiled and ate with Lurpak butter (slightly salted), and thought of Barbie.

And after I had searched through the house and created a pile of things to look at later (letters, photographs, poems, short stories) and things to take home and read (manuscripts of three novels) and even some work (the manuscript of her first, semi-autobiographical, novel, which I am charged with editing according to her notes and making readable for the rest of the family), I sat down and read Elaine's diaries.

Elaine is the woman who lived with them, approximately two weeks out of every four, in the last eighteen months in their own home, and took care of them. She kept a diary of her visits and has left it behind for the famliy to read.

It gripped me. It was beautifully written, witty, and very honest. Some days she had to escape to the neighbour's house or to the beach with her dog. Sometimes she hid things from them, or locked Barbie out of the garden, and all of it faithfully recorded.

I didn't go to bed until 2.30am, and then under duress. I wanted to keep reading, keep looking. I was woken at 7am by my eldest son. The usual trick of sending him downstairs to watch telly on his own wouldn't work in this big old empty house ("It's like a castle!"), so I trugged down after him, bleary-eyed.

Later that day, tired and slightly overwrought, with a son who was missing his dad and asking to go home, I pulled up in the drive of my grandparents' new home.

[to be continued here]

High Vocation
by Barbie

A day of tasks all dovetailed in,
Each following one from one,
Dictated by necessity, -
Things clamouring to be done:
The dishes swimming in the sink,
The kettle's urgent noise,
The black and sluggish-drawing flue
The floor dust hid by toys -
It seems at whiles there isn't time
To stop and know one's mind;
Explore the Spirit's plenty
A quietness to find.

But when the evening lamps are lit,
The fire burns clear and bright,
And curtains with their gentle folds
Are drawn against the night;
The bustling voices of the day
Are quietened and stilled,
And languid hands lie in the lap -
The heart with peace is filled...
The body's tiredness frees the mind
Relaxed - and lights the way
To know itself, and find anew
A purpose in the day.
Then comes that lovely certainty,
One to one's task belongs -
The work is worthy of the way,
The singer of the songs.


___

Fairy Tales, Part Two

Part One

Twenty years ago, when my grandparents were in their 70s and I was in my late teens, they decided that Whitewells and its garden were too much work. They sold up and moved to the Lake District.

It was hard for the extended family. Two generations of childhood had played their way through that house and garden, and we all made pilgrimages to take photos, snatch souvenirs and say our goodbyes.

But the new house was lovely too. Half the price but not half the size, built three hundred years ago, with giant 18"-thick walls and hardly any neighbours. It was even more remote than Whitewells, but the garden was mostly lawn and much simpler to maintain, and the house was solid and warm. Their move coincided with my leaving home, so Whitewells became part of my departed childhood, and I visited my grandparents in their new home as a freshly-hatched adult. But the furniture was the same, the books were the same, and I quickly learnt which drawer to look in if I wanted to play Solitaire or Happy Families with the ancient and well-loved packs of cards. And the new house had its own special charms. Red squirrels in the garden, an owl in the outhouse.

In recent years it became harder for them to manage the weary business of playing host. I had a child of my own, and we stopped staying overnight. We stayed nearby instead and dropped in for cups of tea. Then last year my grandmother's Alzheimers became apparent and I went on my own, to stay for a weekend and do some odd jobs. I installed a phone extension so that Bill could answer the phone from his armchair. A white-board to write up lists and reminders for increasingly-confused Barbie. And I weeded one of the flower beds.

I set Barbie up in a deckchair nearby and she watched me happily, only asking anxiously whether I was all right when it started to rain. She was restless that weekend. She followed me around the house, asking what she could do to help. Asking also whether I could help make "her work" easier. Her work was the business of running her house, and she couldn't grasp that other people had stepped in, that really it was no longer her work.

Their neighbour had picked some blackcurrants, and I gave her the job of sorting the good ones for a pie. That made her happy. She still knew who I was, was still herself, still cared about all things living.

It was a poignant time. I became her carer, but she was still caring for me. I became obsessed with my flower bed. I wanted to leave it clear of weeds, which I could only do by working manically through rain and darkness, and leaving much later than I should have. It was a symbol, of something. My care for her. Making things right.

And then I got pregnant and ill, and couldn't visit any more. Barbie and Bill became so infirm that they needed 24-hour care, which their daughters took it in turn to provide, along with a wonderful paid carer called Elaine. Everybody worked so hard to keep them in their own home.

Finally I had my baby, was able to travel again, and took Oscar to meet his grandparents. Barbie was unsure who he was and kept thinking he was a girl, but it didn't matter. She was so happy to hold him, kept remarking on the smiles he made in his sleep. She still knew who I was, with some prompting, and remembered Ally with no help at all. She always did have a soft spot for him.



They are quiet people, my grandparents. They have always lived in out-of-the-way places. My grandmother lived in fear of nosy neighbours and busybodies, had a horror of village life. They clung to their privacy and independence for as long as they could, but a few weeks ago they left their house for good, and moved into a care home.

[to be continued here]

Reverie
by Barbie

Ensconced in chair enveloping
Before a proud wood fire,
Flamboyant flames lift splendid heads,
And questing thoughts inspire.

The sober logs rest quietly
On wood-ash soft and grey,
But in their lovely golden hearts,
One sees what things one may.

And thoughts half-formed and nebulous,
Find clothing rare and strange -
And with each sighing whispering stir,
Inconsenquently change.

The languid look - half-curious,
Soon sharpens, there to find,
Robed with such airy phantasy,
The children of one's mind.

Strange fruit of this chance union
Of liberated thought,
That meeting life inanimate
Conceives there what is sought.


___

Fairy Tales, Part One

When I was a child I read a lot of children's books about countryside adventures, and grandmothers in pretty little cottages with roses around the door. I was always rather smug about my own grandma, known to us all as Barbie, who was straight out of one of those books.

She lived in a house called Whitewells, in the middle of the Derbyshire countryside, with a large and beautiful garden which she and my grandfather Bill took great pride in cultivating. As a child I would do gymnastics on the striped lawn, or climb the flowering cherry tree and sit in its boughs reading about Jennings or the Five Find-Outers and Dog. Or I would sit on the fence and gaze out over the cornfields at the forest on the hill, or help my grandma pick home-grown blackcurrants, gooseberries, redcurrants or brambles and use them to make jam.

In the twilight she would send me out slug-collecting. I would fill my bucket and then rehouse them in the nearby fields. They were always displaced, never killed. My sweet little grandma couldn't bear the thought of death or suffering, not even for a slug.

For dinner we would eat home-grown lettuce, Jerusalem artichokes, tomatoes, courgettes, potatoes in mint, onions, chives, rosemary, marjoram... and so much more. The vegetable garden was immense, with two giant compost heaps on permanent rotation.

My mother grew up in this house and garden, and I would gaze at the shed with the pint-sized door and imagine the days of her childhood, when it was a chicken coop and the surrounding garden also housed goats, ducks and bees (even though Barbie was so allergic a single sting could kill her - but they never did; not even the bees would harm dear Barbie).

I remember one summer holiday when I visited on my own and was paid to weed the many flower beds. By day I sat there in the earth and watched the spiders. They would sit for an age in shadows cast by clods of earth, patiently waiting for a clear coast, before scuttling through brightness to the next shadow. In the evenings I revised for my A levels. This was the real point of the visit: To get peace and space for the revision I never managed at home. Because at Whitewells life was perfect and so was I.

Inside, everything was made of wood. Walls, floors, doors, beams, and even the toilet seats were made of mahogany.

They first moved there in the 40s. Their house in Essex had disappeared under a bomb. A direct hit - one of the last bombs of the war. They picked over the rubble and found a few odd things - a teddy bear, a teapot, a coffee grinder. "That came through the bombing," they would say.

The house - large, detached, with five bedrooms - was cheap because it had no electricity or gas. They bought some extra land from the farm next door and gradually cultivated their little slice of paradise. My mother grew up with paraffin lamps, and even after they finally got wired to the mains all the cooking was done in "the Aga room," which was warm and cosy with its namesake snug in the corner, and when I remember my grandmother in those times it is always standing at that solid-fuel cooker, filling my hot water bottle from a giant cast iron kettle.

My first camera was given to me at a family Whitewells Christmas. The very first photos I took were of a Christmas tree set against wooden walls, and cousins standing on their heads in Dennis the Menace pyjamas.

One Christmas we woke to find snow outside on the lawn, and the message "HAPPY CHRISTMAS" spelt out in drunken adult footprints. One Easter we had an Easter Egg hunt, and the eggs were finally found on a haystack built from scythed grass on the edge of the meadow. My grandfather loved his scythe. He was a draughtsman at a nearby iron foundry - he designed the Parkray fire - and I remember how excited he was when he retired and went freelance and bought his very own fully-adjustable drawing board / easel, with all its knobs and drawers, which we children were forbidden to touch.

I could write about Whitewells for hours. The oak tree, the apple trees, the piano, the real fire, the surrounding countryside, the cat (Whiteypuss, half-wild, who made you feel blessed if she deigned to let you stroke her, and who was fed on a home-made mixture of dripping, bread and plate scraps), the uneven stone terrace, the black-and-white tiled bathroom, the scary pull-chain cisterns, the wooden highchair and cot, the suitcase full of tiny dolls and cars from my mother and her sisters' childhood, known only as "the Little One things", the cast iron bed with its sagging mattress and cracked black bedknobs, the chipped china knick-knacks, the half-embroidered antimacassars, the little-girl statue in the rockery, the rowan trees and their berries, the fresh-picked posies on the bedroom window sills...

But behind it all is my grandma, in her apron, smiling, asking if I'd washed my "paddies" (hands), and telling me at bedtime every night that there would be "another lovely day tomorrow with lots of lovely things to do." According to the blurb in the flyleaf of her children's books, she never tired of the company of children. I'm sure this is true.

It was unbelievably idyllic. It always felt like a dream, and even though they moved away twenty years ago I can still smell it, still see it, as though I had dreamt it only last night. And I still miss it.

Barbie has Alzheimers now. She is 94 years old. A few weeks ago she and Bill, who is 98, celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary. Not long afterwards, they moved into an old people's home. I've just come back from a visit.

[to be continued here]

First Memory
by Barbie

Backward looking through the ages
Into childhood's distant scene,
Turning mind's old musty pages
Finding things that once have been

Wandering through long distant summers
Scent of flowers forgotten now
Legs abathe in luscious grasses
Neath the cherries driven snow

Froth of blossoms laced with blueness
Of some vivid windblown sky
Only loveliness remembered
With unconscious subtlety.

All the tranquil life of childhood
All the half-forgotten dreams
All the urgent aspirations
And the mad ambitious schemes

How in all the wealth of memory
To select which stands apart?
All is richly interwoven
And one cannot find the start

Source from which the others come
First impression on the brain
One can only half remember
With a faint nostalgic pain.

[NB The handwriting was hard to decipher on this one; I may have got some words wrong]


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Somebody Else's Problem

Speaking of SEPs, I did a terrible thing a few weeks ago.

Felix had a friend round after school. The first thing he does when he gets home from school is demand a snack. Fuck knows where he gets that from. *cough*

So we had a look in the fridge, and his friend spotted some cheese triangles (small cheesy snacks). Felix doesn't like them but his friend scoffed happily away. And after they'd eaten about half of it, they commented that it was kind of wet. And it was then that it occurred to me to check the Use By date. Which was February 2007.

Oops.

So I had a bit of a sniff, and it smelt fine. And those things are packed with preservatives, right? And it had been in the fridge all that time? And... er...

Well, you see, and this is where I do become very ashamed, honest I do, but what I thought was... if they get ill, it won't be me who has to clear up the vomit. And anyway, if I make a fuss I'll only plant the possibility of psychosomatic illness in their head.

So, rather than take the cheese away from them instantly and alert their parents, I let them eat it. And kept quiet.

And spent the next few days worrying they were going to die of food poisoning and it would all be my fault. And wondering whether to dispose of the evidence (remaining cheese triangles, now relegated to the bin) or keep them for the health inspectors. And forgetting to ask my son whether his friend had been in school or not, despite setting myself several reminders ("Ask F: X still alive?") in my phone.

They're not dead, by the way.

So that's all right then.


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Time Takes Time, and Love Makes Love

Note that the most recent Girls' Fun entry journals the sort-of-almost-maybe loss of my virginity, back in 1985. I never was sure if it counted or not. It continued for a while, the not-quite-losing-it thing.

But isn't it quite synchronicitous, what with me about to give birth and all that? No? Oh. I thought it was.

Other time-related musings: I have lived in this house for nearly twenty years now. TWENTY YEARS! Blimey.

When I moved in I was on crutches, what with having been run over by a bus a couple of weeks previously. In the same way that I insist on redecorating bedrooms single-handledly, climbing ladders, putting shelves up and generally being hyperactive when 9 months' pregnant, I found myself that evening, balanced on one leg on a rickety chair and piling boxes on a high ledge above a built-in cupboard. Nineteen years old, one bedroom in a shared flat.

And then the flatmate moved out and I got the place to myself. And then the house came up for sale, and I bought it (for eight thousand pounds!) (I know!). And then I bought the yard next door and turned in into a garden. And then we converted the attic. And now I have moved, in 20 years, from a single room in a shared flat to a five-bedroom house... without moving house.

But anyway. That room, my old bedroom, is now Felix's new bedroom, and I am having another baby. I wish someone could have played me a video of the future, that night I moved in. Look! In 20 years you'll still be here, and this will be your 6-yr-old son's bedroom, and you'll be popping another one out!

If someone had showed me a video of this house, or if I could have been transported here without being told where or when I was, would I have recognised it as the same house? I suspect not. In many ways, it isn't. But this house and I share so much history. It's 136 years old, so approximately 15% of its past belongs to me. Or partly to me. And over 50% of my past belongs to it.

I was at Uni, it was typical shared student accommodation, the walls were mouldy. The bathroom floor collapsed into the flat below the day I moved in, and I had to use the woman-downstairs' bathroom, on crutches, navigating the pile of rubble and looking up through the hole to our toilet above. I wasn't anticipating longevity. Things just happened.

I like that.

Things just happen. The future is an adventure.


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Breast Holes

I heard something on Radio 4 yesterday which fascinated me. I was on my way to a midwife appointment and filed it away in my head, thinking the midwife would find it as interesting as I did. But there's a hole in the back of my head and the story fell out, until I found it on my shoulders just now.

The presenter was being taken round an old mill, where she was shown a small arch-shaped hole in the wall. She was asked what she thought it might be. "A doorway for elves?" she asked, astutely. The role played by elves in the industrial revolution is of course well known.

But no, it was a breast hole. Because the women who worked in these mills would return to work within days of giving birth, leaving their babies to be minded by grandparents, or informal community creches. But the quality of non-breast-milk was very poor, not to mention the minimal sanitation available for cleaning bottles and the like, so the mortality of non-breast-fed babies was high. It made sense for the capitalists to safeguard the lives of the future working generation, as well as the productivity of mothers who were not bogged down by bereavement, and were benefiting from the mild contraceptive effects of breastfeeding.

So, they provided a hole. So that hungry babies could be brought to the factory gate, there to take advantage of the exposed mammaries of their poor hugless mothers.

Suddenly the torture of breast-milk-expressing contraptions, used in the toilets at work whilst baby is gurgling happily on some nursery floor, seems slightly more bearable.


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My Name is Clare

Clever Sarah (who can claim Neil Gaiman as one of her fans, something which impresses me every time I'm reminded of it) has been doing a series of posts about names.

Yesterday she wrote about Clare, and included a big quote from me about how sheep regularly talk to me. They do though, they do it all the time. And in such plaintive voices, too. "Claaaare," they call to one another across the fells.

I put something in her comments box about the record Clair, by Gilbert O'Sullivan, too. I've been meaning to write about that. It's the lyrics, you see. They're a bit questionable.


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I Took my Clothes off, Mummy

I was just reading this, during which the writer describes one of those memories, of a moment. When your child is crying, and you know it is all your fault.

I have one of those memories, one of those moments. It's incredibly strong. I doubt I'll ever forget.

It was such a small thing, and I doubt my son shares the memory. I hope he doesn't. He'll have others of his own, no doubt. That he remembers, but I forget.

Like me and my mum. When I was a teenager, my sweet tooth was strong, just as it always had been, just as it still is. And I knew where my mum kept her secret chocolate stash. In a drawer, her drawer, that contained only her things, that I was not supposed to enter. I don't remember what else was in that drawer. I don't know how far I explored (I've always been nosy). But I know that now and then I would steal her chocolate. When the urge to binge was strong, and I had no money or couldn't be bothered to cycle the half mile to the corner shop.

I replaced it always, as soon as I was able. She was a hoarder, a nibbler, a saver, just as I am now. She didn't dip into her chocolate supplies as often as I did. I wasn't found out.

Until I was.

Maybe there were other things going on. Maybe I'd annoyed her already. I'm sure I was generally infuriating. That the parenting of me, as with all teenagers, was at times distressing and difficult. Not to mention my twin crimes of both theft and invasion of privacy. But anyway she found out, and confronted me. And slapped me across the face, six times. Left cheek, right cheek, fronthand, backhand, one, two, three, four, five, six. This was the only hand she laid on me, apart from the occasional slap on the back of my legs when I was little. It was shocking, arresting, I remember where I stood. In the hallway, my back to the front door, the Forbidden Drawer in my sight.

And she has no memory of it.

And so to this other moment, my parental shame, the memory I hope is mine alone. Not shared.

It was bedtime, and my son was small. Two years old, I think. Maybe three. I was tired, grumpy, wanted to sit down and chill out. The bed needed making. Possibly I expected my partner to have done it and I was in a mood about that, I don't know. That's conjecture.

My son was mucking about. I'd asked him to take his clothes off, but instead he was jumping all over the bed I was trying to make, leaping on my back, being silly. I got stern, told him to take his clothes off. Let it be known that now was not playtime. He paid no attention. I lost my temper. I shouted at him to take his clothes off. I kept my back to him. I ignored him for some time.

Until I heard his little voice.

I took my clothes off, Mummy.

I looked round, and there he was. Shivering, crying, naked.

I took my clothes off, Mummy.


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People Whose Heads Are Full of Stuff

I'm reading a Tom Robbins book at the moment - Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates* - and boy, has that man got a lot of stuff in his head.

I periodically get paranoid about how little stuff I have in my head. This last fortnight or so I've had a spurt of such angst-ridden meanderings, for five main reasons:

(1) Mr Robbins' book, as mentioned above. My work was once compared to his, and I read Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas as a result. And loved it. And happily repeated the comparison a few years later. But now that I'm reading him again, I'm embarrassed to have claimed any such connection. His head, his words and his writing are all much fuller than mine.

(2) Reading my 1985 diary. This was written when I was 16, and was first discovering 'extreme' politics - as well as getting the inspiration for my subjects at Uni (maths and philosophy, joint honours). I don't know if my head was fuller then, but I did at least make the effort. For a few years.

(3) That article I wrote about popular culture the other day. I stand by everything I said, but one of the reasons I get defensive about my lowbrow cultural tastes, and my tendency to give up on dense prose (not in the case of Mr Robbins though), is because of this angst I have. About my head not being full enough.

(4) Him Indoors, who spends most evenings at my side on the sofa, tapping away furiously on his laptop, reading political articles and thinking / arguing vigorously about, well, serious stuff.

(5) Writing my third book, and getting all the usual angst about whether it's any good. It's probably not bad at all, will stand up as a goodhearted entertaining read and might even be the making of my career. But, I suspect, it's the least thoughtful of my books. It's not exactly deep. And this trend worries me, helps to smash this idea I have of being an intelligent, thoughtful, philosophical person.

Theoretically, supposedly, I'm clever. I know a lot about politics and philosophy. I can, when pushed, hold my end up in discussions. And I think of myself as being interested in it all. But in reality... I run away from it. Fast, and far. And often don't hold my end up in conversation, unless things are confined to the strictly abstract. As soon as I'm required to know / remember any facts, I'm buggered. I can't remember a thing. And anyway, I'm generally too busy running away to get into conversation in the first place.

Why do I run away? It's partly because, although I love abstract rumination and open-mindedness, hate assumptions, love to question everything... I hate the up-its-own-arsishness that often goes with it. I speak plainly, I write plainly, I hate obfuscation for obfuscation's sake. But it's also because, oh, I just can't be bothered. It's hard. I might get shown up for being stupid. I'd rather watch Coronation Street.

And when it comes to politics... I know we're all surrounded by shit. I still believe, in theory, that the world can be changed, but... not by me. It's too hard. I don't want reminders of how crappy everything is, don't need to be convinced that things could be so much better. But I don't want, personally, to be responsible for making those changes. And I'm deeply ashamed of my apathy, my demoralisation. So I avoid political discussion, avoid being reminded of how useless I am, as well as how ignorant and prejudiced and downright wrong so many others are.

I could blame it on motherhood. It certainly encourages my tendency to be inward-looking, to be tired, to focus all my energies on my own small orbit and my own small son, and sod the rest. But the rot had set in long before I gave birth. Indeed, far from resenting the constrictions parenthood placed on my life, the reason I finally took the plunge after putting it off for so long was that I was ready. I was bored of thinking, bored of partying, didn't want to look outwards any more.

In some ways, I've never been any different. I may well have been thinking about these things when I was 16, but you only have my word for that. There's barely any mention in the diary. I've always tended to skim the surface. I've always, for instance, preferred to absorb information through one-to-one teaching, through lectures and documentaries, through conversation. I've never enjoyed weighty academic tomes and my worst memory of being a student was having to read Kant's bloody Critique of Pure bloody Reason, which was torture from beginning to end. Wittgenstein, on the other hand, I loved. He was snappy and to the point. I knew what he was on about.

And when I'm feeling good I defend myself on the basis that I'm not stupid, I just like simplicity. Elegance. Straightforwardness. And am not impressed by the stultifying atmosphere that can exist in academia, where people... well, like I said above. Obfuscation for obfuscation's sake.

But oh, my head. Is it too empty? Maybe. And do I want it to be fuller? Well no, that's just it. I'm impressed by the idea of it, but...

Ooh, look! The cats are playing in a cardboard box!

Aw. Cute.



* That's a fascinating interview, I recommend it. As I was reading it I kept coming across great lines that I wanted to copy and paste here, but in the end there were too many and I gave up. Here's one, though:

"At the end of every writing day I feel like I've been wrestling in radioactive quicksand with Xena the Warrior Princess and her five fat uncles."

It was also a reassuring thing to read, as I'd imagined him writing super-fast, with all these ideas tripping over on top of one another. But it turns out he writes very slowly, and thinks long and hard about each individual sentence. And I refuse to go up yet another oh-I'm-so-rubbish avenue by concluding that I don't write slowly enough...


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Funny Time

I'm supposed to be editing a review I wrote, of the Alabama 3 gig I went to the other week. But I'm putting it off because when I got it out and looked at it the other day, it looked rubbish.

So instead I've been meandering around the internet, catching up on blogs I haven't visited for a while. And I found this interesting post re genealogy, on Hydragenic's blog. And ended up writing a comment so long, it seemed worth creating a blog post all of its own.

It's fascinating to think of all those generations of blood, stretching back in the past to incomprehensible times - yet having some connection with yourself.

But it gets particularly engrossing / meaningful when you turn it on its head and think of it the other way around. Six generations from now, there will (maybe, probably) be large numbers of people who can trace their family tree back to me and my kids (amongst others). Their lives would be incomprehensible to me, and yet in some sense they'll have come from me. And then I get a bit of a jolt. I think I live in modern times. I imagine those ancestors of mine, and how confused they'd be by my life and experience, and there's a patronising edge to my thoughts. Poor unsophisticated old-fashioned folk, bamboozled by me and my future.

I imagine them living in sepia landscapes, where nothing was as colourful as now. But of course it was. They thought of themselves as modern. They will have teased the older generations, taken advantage of their slownesss. And will have seen things around them as bright and new, not faded and old.

Time travel is one of those unobtainable things, but oh how I would love it if it were possible. Both forwards and backwards, near and far, to visit ourselves and our relatives, as well as strangers. I used to fantasise about a 31-yr-old future self turning up on the doorstep when I was 16, and wonder whether I would recognise her or not.

She never came, or at least I didn't see her when she did. She's there now in fact, but she can't see herself.

Funny old thing, time.


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School Soup

My days are like soup.

School soup.

Soup that smells of canteens and sounds like a hundred spoons banging, chairs scraping, voices grating.

My mouth tastes of it. Everything I raise turns to school soup between my lips. My saliva creates it, at night when I wake and shove bread-turned-soup in my gob and lie there, waiting, for the school soup aftermath to subside.

I am a school soup factory.

By day my legs, my arms, my mind move slowly, blearily or not at all. Through the soup which clings to elbows and synapses, clogging and clagging, preventing thought or creation or smiles.

School soup sticks in your throat. It pulls acid from below and fear from above and places a veil before you, blocking you from the future and into a neverending school-soup now.

I hate school soup.


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Fluffy the Bear

We have a teddy bear called Fluffy. She's a pyjama case really, but she's well disguised as a bear. She's called Fluffy because we acquired her at around the time there were big demos against the Criminal Justice Bill, and everyone used to argue about which protesting approach was best: fluffy or spiky. I came down a little more on the spiky side than Ally, but we were both pretty spiky really. And fluffy as well. We had a band called Fluffy v. Spiky. I was the singer, he was the guitarist. We were pretty rubbish but we enjoyed ourselves. We wrote our own songs and defined our own genre: techno blues. And we had a teddy called Fluffy. Who was really a pyjama case.

Anyway, Fluffy lives in our bedroom these days, just in case we ever need a pyjama case. Which we don't because we're not that type of people. We don't wear pyjamas, and even if we did we'd throw them on the floor or if you're really lucky stuff them under a pillow. We wouldn't tidy them away in a case. But Fluffy doubles up as a hot-water-bottle warmer, as long as it's only a small bottle, so we keep her handy. For those times when you fill a bottle with water too hot, and it becomes uncomfortable to cuddle and makes big red patches on your skin.

I'm the same with cups of tea. They're always either too hot or too cold. If I make a cuppa I want instant gratification; I don't want to wait. But I have a stupidly-soft mouth that can't cope with either type of hot, so I add cold water to get it right. But then I get distracted and suddenly it's too cold again. At least with Fluffy you can remove the bottle when it stops being warm enough and - hey presto! - it's warm enough again. Except of course by that time you're probably asleep. And we have decent central heating now and don't need them any more.

Felix (our 5-yr-old son), when he spots poor old Fluffy, lying dusty under the bed or forgotten under a pile of unworn pyjamas in the corner, brings her to us helpfully. He thinks we must surely be lonely in our big bed with no cuddly toys. He says we can borrow some of his if we like. He brings them up to us, making us promise to give them back and getting hurt and bewildered when he finds them dusty under the bed a week later.

There is also a teddy bear called Sarah, who is only five years younger than me. She lives on a wide arm-swivel-chair in my study, which I never sit on, even though it's in a good spot with a good view. Sarah sits there instead.

Sarah's called Sarah because of Margaret Thatcher. Sort of. I didn't like boys much when I was five, and I believed fiercely in women's lib, although my sister said I didn't because if I did I would think girls were equal to boys, rather than vastly superior. Me and my best friend Mandy Berkeley would march around the infant playground arm in arm, shouting "Boys are rubbish, put them in the dustbin!" I made that chant up myself. I was very proud of it. And I was very pleased when Mrs T got in, cos she was a woman and therefore brilliant. And I didn't see why teddies had to be boys. I still don't.

Felix doesn't understand why cuddly toys live dusty under beds or on their own in studies. I think he worries for them.

Poor Sarah, I've always felt sorry for her. She never quite looks happy. I used to give her a cloth doll called Belinda to snuggle up to so she wouldn't get lonely, but she never looked very happy about that either. But she's only a toy, so she's probably fine. She's very cuddly, although Felix doesn't agree. He has very exacting standards of snuggliness. He's spoilt. He has a million snuggly toys (for heaven's sake people, try to be a bit more imaginative when your friends have babies - those bloody snugglies were the bain of my life. What on earth was I supposed to DO with them all? Clothes would have been much more useful. Or biscuits.) (Then again, Felix loves all his snugglies now, it's just when he was an oblivious baby they were all rather pointless) (and how the hell was he supposed to choose a favourite, with so many?), yes, thousand upon thousand of them, and many of them are made of Superior Modern Stuff which is a million times more snuggly than anything we had when we were kids. Which is why I was surprised when he took Fluffy off to bed with him the other night and announced she was the snuggliest thing he had ever snuggled.

And that's why I'm snuggling her now, which was supposed to be the point of this post. And is. I just took longer getting there than I intended. I'm cuddling Fluffy and thinking about how it turns you into someone else, when you nuzzle up to a Very Snuggly Thing. You become a young child again.

It's very nice. I recommend it.


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You're Not My Friend Any More

Right. So, this post here got me thinking about the whole people-being-nasty-to-each-other-on-the-internet thing.

The thing is, people say nasty stuff about each other all the time. It's not restricted to the internet. And yes, some examples are more extreme, so much so that police intervention is required, and I'm not talking about them.

It's hard, but if you're going to survive in the world of the public-access internet - which is a world where everything that anyone says (including you) gets broadcast indiscrimately to the whole fucking planet - it's vital you get perspective and a sense of humour, or you'll drive yourself mad.

Because the internet isn't that different from everyday life. People bitch and snark and complain about each other constantly at work, in their homes, down the pub, on the radio. And you know it happens, and unless you're super-insecure or paranoid you put it out of your mind and don't let it bother you. And that's easy enough, because normally it happens behind closed doors and you don't get to eavesdrop.

On the web you get to listen in on every single fucking conversation people ever have about you, and that's hard to deal with UNTIL you remind yourself that this is what we all do (and I don't believe there's a human being anywhere who doesn't occasionally bitch or whinge about their fellows, in a way that would be hurtful if the target were to overhear or be told of it). It's normal, and the best thing is to ignore it and move on.

Or laugh! Occasionally the snarkiness is funny and astutely observed, and being able to laugh at yourself is an enormously useful skill. Or laugh at the insulters, or at the whole bloomin' situation.

Sometimes a silent deletion of a comment is a judicious move, because it stops other people from wading in and the comments box turning into gang warfare. Sometimes there are extreme examples which require different handling. But try, try really hard, to step back and imagine whether anybody really means you harm, or whether they are being, well, just a bit stupid. And forgetting, like we all do, that the internet is not the same thing as the pub.


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Arguments With Myself

I've been trying very hard to foster this new living-in-the-present attitude. It's difficult. But necessary. All my attention is so focused on the future and I'm missing out on all the positive stuff that's happening right now. Instead of noticing the beautiful autumn sunshine as I walk the dogs, for instance, I'm always thinking about what's going to happen next. What will be in my email inbox when I get home? Will I get published? Who by? Etc etc.

But the result of my new efforts is that I'm now possessed by two warring factions. There's "Relax, chill out, have fun" Clare and there's "Get busy! Sort it out! Plan! Panic!" Clare who keeps giving Relaxed Clare big Tickings Off for not paying enough attention to the future. In practice it goes like this:

"Oh help, I feel so stressed out, I don't know what the future holds, I don't know what I'm doing with my life, I can't bear all this waiting, help!"

"Stop worrying. Everything's fine. You've got loads of fun stuff coming up, you don't have to go to work, you have an agent and several potential book deals in the offing, and THIS IS WHAT YOU'VE WANTED FOR AGES. Stop fretting. Enjoy it."

"But what about all these things on my To Do list? And what if I get a full time IT contract starting the week after next and don't have time to do all these things I'm supposed to be doing? And what if I DON'T get an IT contract but I DO get pregnant and then I get ill and then I don't get any publishing deals and we plunge head-first into a big pile of debt?"

"There's nothing you can do about any of that. Let go. Chill out. Have fun."

"But I've got so much to doooooooooooo!"

You get the picture. I've been focusing on a supposed future containing Baby II and Publishing Deal II for so long now (at least three years), God knows what'll happen if either of them arrive. I'll probably implode - pop! - and all that will be left is a little puddle. So. Down with that sort of thing, and up with Clare Here And Now, as long as she can stab Clare Tomorrow firmly in the back.

In other news, this post here got me thinking about the whole people-being-nasty-to-each-other-on-the-internet thing.

The thing is... oh hang on, maybe I better make that a separate post.


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NOW

But never mind all that what's-going-to-happen-in-the-future rot, what about NOW?

Right now I'm sitting in a relaxed fashion at my desk. I've just taken the dogs for a walk through a lovely autumnal park. I don't have to go to work. I have a literary agent. I have a home, a gorgeous boyfriend, a lovely son. And biscuits. I have biscuits.

I have a new plan. It won't be easy, because there is so much of me embedded in the future that if I try to pull myself back, bits of me might snap off. I'm not as elastic as I used to be, and my Tunnel to the Future is all jammed up with rotting former plans, which are wedging me in. But still, I'm going to try and pull myself back to the here and now, or maybe the bits of me that aren't so tightly stuck. An arm, maybe, and a leg.

Sod the future. The present's where it's my arm and leg are at.


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Do They Think What I Think They Think?

I've never been a shy person. I’ll happily march unaccompanied into large groups of strangers, and don't worry in advance about how things might go.

It's afterwards that the doubts creep in. When I analyse the events of the day and wonder why this person didn't laugh at my joke, or what on earth possessed me to say that to someone else.

And so here I am, thinking back over the week I just spent on a yoga and meditation retreat in Andalucia. And instead of remembering the blue skies, the yoga on the rooftop with stunning mountain views in the background, the incredible thunderstorm, the lizards and wild boars or the glorious food, I pick over the less successful of my social interactions.

Not the shared hugs or laughter, the moments of intimacy or the entertaining tales of interesting people's lives. No, I think about the time when I heard laughter and went to seek its source, only to find a small group of people engrossed in a conversation I couldn't join. At first I tended to my own business and left them to theirs, but then I sidled closer and made myself available to be included. Except that I wasn't, so I drifted away again. Apparently nonchalant, but feeling ostracised.

And it didn’t stop there. Once I'd given up and removed myself altogether, I started to stew. Did they ignore me? Were they purposefully cruel? Did they hate me? Did they laugh about me behind my back?

Did they find me irritating and transparent? I've been there myself: Happily enjoying a conversation when a new person arrives, someone who isn’t party to the things we discuss. But they hover and look hopeful and I think, argh, come on. You can’t be part of everything. Take your blatant requirements elsewhere.

Naked need makes everyone uncomfortable.

Or maybe they had no thoughts at all, took my presence at face value, assumed I would understand that the discussion was about things I knew nothing about, and therefore why should I be included?

This is the most likely interpretation, particularly when you know how I’ve edited events. I wasn't ignored. There were various small interactions with me, pleasant ones, friendly ones, ones which I choose to forget.

But I liked these people, and I wanted them to like me too. Approve of me, seek me out as their friend. Because although they weren’t unpleasant, they bonded with others more than me. And that's just the way life is. And what about the conflict between my desire to make friends and my need for my own space? The fact that I kept disappearing and sitting on my own with a book? The pre-emptive strikes, when I assumed I was going to be excluded so removed myself before it could happen? Maybe people thought I was stand-offish, or that I was rejecting them?

Another time, we arrived together in a place but they quickly moved away. They walked ahead, but they were still visible, still within reach. What to do? Pretend / assume it was an accident and chase after them? Melt away on a different path? I caught up with them. There were some awkward moments, until finally I excused myself. Alone, I brooded again. Did I imagine it? Was there a sigh of relief when I left?

I found myself a seat and sat down, and angsted and stewed some more, until I was crying, alone, in public. Torn between grief at my loneliness, frustration at my hypersensitivity, anger at their insensitivity, confusion at what the hell just happened and who thought what and who did what and wasn't I just being silly and stupid, all over again? I wanted them to return and find me like that, to realise what they’d done (What? What did they do?), for it all to be resolved in a giant hug. I thought about passive aggression, something I've often been accused of and always struggled to define.

One of the messages repeated throughout last week was, "Be kind to yourself." But how should I do that without sinking into self-indulgence? Would it be kind to tell myself, never mind, they're not worth it? Or to say, you imagined the whole thing? Or you're not stupid, you're just human?

It's bloody complicated sometimes, this being human lark.

I'm coming back as a pig.


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On Being Me

I had an email from a very well-meaning person recently, who was worried about this page here, which is my new home page.

Previously claresudbery.co.uk just pointed straight at this blog, because this is where all the action is and I so rarely update any other parts of my site. But now that I'm attempting to make a living as a writer, it makes sense for claresudbery.co.uk to be, first and foremost, a place to advertise all the clever things I can do.

To be fair the website changes have happened sooner than I intended due to technical complications, so the home page is still pretty rough. There are loads of ways it can be made better, and more appropriate for its intended purpose.

But one of my well-wisher's concerns was about the picture in the background, and the link to this blog, and the fact that erotic fiction is mentioned, and various other things which might not be suitably businesslike.

Since receiving that email I've changed the background picture. It was me and my boobs (the same as Boob Pencil), but now it's some innocuous jumping fishies.

But I've been thinking about it, and the wider attitude it represents, which is that as soon as you start touting for work or doing anything businesslike, you must remove personality from the equation. When you go for a job interview, you wear bland clothes that don't make you stand out too much. Suits, black shoes, maybe a flash of colour here or there but nothing too outrageous. And the same goes for CVs. Make yourself look trustworthy, serious and reliable, and the way to do this is to edit out huge swathes of whatever makes you who you are. Of course, you list your "interests" and, ironically, you want these to make you look "interesting"... but not too interesting.

And then I remembered the quandary I had in the last two jobs I applied for: I wanted to work a four-day week. This kind of thing is unusual in IT, where traditionally the hours are long and the overtime is unpaid. But I thought sod it, and explained at the outset that I wanted this unusual arrangement, and I wanted it so that I could write a novel. I was always myself in interviews, and this means loud, with a big laugh, a lot of honesty, and a tendency to interrupt and go off at tangents. And I got the job, each time. Not only that but I was explicitly told it was my "unusual personality" which landed me the job.

Some employers want employees who don't stand out, who always do as they're told, who are safe and nice and boring. But some don't. And they are ones I want to work for, or with, and should be given the chance to find me.

I did change the boobs for fishes, and I will need to lay things out better, with more info that's easier to find depending on the needs of the browser. And I may need to eat my words... but for now I'm happy that www.claresudbery.co.uk leads quickly to the real Clare Sudbery, and not some sanitised version of me.

Hmmm. I just read this post back and it sounds horribly big-headed. Well, that's me too I suppose. Or at least, it is when I'm not hating myself. Hating myself for loving myself, that is. Hmm.


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More "Philosophisering" Stuff

There's more! The posts on this page aren't the only "Philosophisering" posts.

For all posts labelled "Philosophisering" and posted before September 2007, please go here.


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