You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February, 2008.
1) Been thinking about twins. Somehow, and for no clear reason. Except that weeks ago I saw what appeared to be twins (women) both running (separately, one behind the other) for a train in Charing Cross Station. And that day before yesterday I thought I walked past two shopping twins (women again), one with a young child, looking at face creams. And today I maybe saw the same two maybe women twins on Canterbury High Street, walking briskly. Maybe not. You’d think I’d know for sure. But I don’t. I’m wondering if it’s not unusual for me to be in an almost constant state of double take.
2) The number of people working on the house today all at once: 6
3) The number of posé turns I did across the floor in ballet: at least 50. No wonder I’m seeing twins.
4) Hauled a chest of drawers up three steps on my own. Last time I did something like that was 15 years ago, when I carried a different set up an entire flight single-handedly. Nevertheless, proud of myself. Even if R, E, and M might not like it in the sitting room.
5) One of the six men in my house today fixed the tumble dryer. He’d been round to fix the oven last year, and the washing machine several years before that. You’d think therefore that we had a relationship of sorts. Well, no. Despite five others being in the house — in the same open space indeed, talking and joking — I couldn’t entice him to a single off the cuff remark. He did inform me though that the thermostat had gone, in his opinion, because the filter was bunged up. He lifted it up to show me: should be able to see through there. Oops. I tried to tell him, my voice no doubt trailing off, that I did sometimes carry it up to the shower…I did, um, try. He remained unmoved.
6) Another of the men in my house today was the template person. Whenever I asked if something were possible, he replied with a resounding yes. I liked that. We should all be so lucky.
The end of the line is actually within our grasp now. No, no dying involved, no last wishes, no final farewells.
It’s at last the kitchen. Paint. Cupboards. Oven. Sink. Refridgerator that doesn’t conk out with no warning.
Never mind the ubiquitous plaster dust, the ruined kettle from so many cups of tea. Never mind the tears — tears – from the children at yet another microwave meal. Yes, we have had only a microwave — no sink, no hob, no oven — for 4 weeks. We are all fretful, and now begin to feel our lack of 5-a-day. Our moods are all over the place. Our hair(s) have lost condition. Seriously!
This was all my idea, as R hastens to remind me. He’s right. Almost a year ago exactly, I decided this was it. We’d been thinking about it for 4 years, but no physical solution could be reached. Suddenly the physical solution presented: block up a door, knock through another, change the entrance…It grew like bread rising, a little package in a warm place.
We punched it down for six months. Followed it by 3 months’ work just for starters. I have to be frank: I had no idea of the upheaval, the disruption.
But my eye’s on the ball. I daren’t take it off. Otherwise I might decide to sell up. I look to Tiffany in Grand Designs as my role model. I imagine the time when we can actually all stand in the kitchen at once, when we can all cook, all talk, all taste. It’s really that simple; that’s all I want.
It all arrives next week. Tuesday. Today at Sainsbury’s I could not even bring myself to buy another meal in a horrible brown pot. We are eating at friends’ for the next two days.
I’ve never been able to figure: does something become positively unbearable just as it ends — or was it that way all along?
A burst of these, and I am multi-coloured with longing for one of my very own. Really, really COOL. In every sense of the word. Check out me sidebar if you don’t believe me.
I’ve been thinking a lot about these the last few days. For a number of reasons. It’s just that there are so many different types. And I seem to be awash in them, with them. The acceptance of a gift brings responsibility. And openness. The giving of one, in the best world, means letting go. And a sort of hope.
There must be a small but determined fleet of these gift bubbles — I can’t help but see them as such, blown from one of those plastic child bottles, in surprising and joyful profusion — taking to the air over our double-glazed lives. This morning there’s a hard frost, but the urge to strike out and join them is almost overwhelming.
First there was Your Messages. Now there is Disraeli Avenue, by Caroline Smailes. I met Caroline at the Your Messages launch. But sort of knew her already, as she’d kindly reviewed Losing You.
She was lovely. I liked her piece. I’m embarrassed to admit that I haven’t read her novel In Search of Adam yet (because I’m not the best in the world at doing exactly what I want when I want, believe it or not; hand on heart though it is actually right at the top of my list).
About Disraeli Avenue: a novella by Caroline, downloadable, by donation. In support of adult victims of sexual abuse. Remember openness? Remember hope? Some days that’s all there is. When the bubbles disintegrate, we’ve got to make sure there are decent landings. Get this book. And give generously.
Okay, here’s the family take on the whole kaboodle…
1) my mother: Feh!
2) E: “all a bit pointless, isn’t it?”
3) R:
4) M:
5) Me? Too busy taking note of everyone else. Snuck up on the raft of men around the Sainsbury’s card section, who seemed to be rather adrift with good intentions, clutching coloured envelopes. Saw a girl with a huge bouquet stuffed in a plastic bag, about to cross the road. Boy next to her. Was it from him, or someone else?
How about you?
But here goes… Apparently Losing You is now available to download onto your very own mobile phone, for a fiver (GBP that is!). What you do is text ‘losing’ to 64888, hand over dosh, and the whole entire book is at your disposal: read it at your leisure, gawp on the train, purse your lips at the chemist’s, wipe your fevered brow…in bed? Race through screen after screen, ignoring every other commitment in your life….
You know you want to.
I haven’t tried this yet, but will. If someone gets there before I do, let me know how it goes!
It’s the time of term when things naturally — or rather, normally — start to disintegrate. All of the best laid plans, the thought-through teaching objectives, the pastoral care (you really do care, after all) look distinctly frayed. And not just around the edges. Monday saw me very nearly just put my head down and ask for a nap — in the middle of class. Times like these students really are worth more than I can give them. Forgive me.
However. After a morning in heated discussion over Sharon Olds and Michael Laskey — lots of heat — and an afternoon rather revelling in student accomplishment in the form of MA portfolios, I am exhausted yes, but more than that, somewhat disoriented. I look to small things again to keep me focussed: the fine new threshold that Wonderful Builder put in the outer lobby today, the way that E set to his homework without being reminded, the way that M went for kitchen towel to clean up the milk the cats spilt — without being asked.
And now I remember with unadulterated pleasure the highlight of a short hour’s last minute wander around TK Maxx on Sunday:
Sometimes the shoe fits. Really fits. And so there’s a bit of a toehold.
We have a shed. Oh yes we do. And it’s been completely life-changing. Oh yes it has.
Did I jump on the chance to write about it over on shedworking? Oh yes I did. Because in the middle of MA second marking and Certificate moderating, what could be more urgent?
Just a quickie to note that 30 pages of said novel are now where they are supposed to be, in the Fiction-Novel section of this site. Something about pdf formats meant that I couldn’t use the one I actually had…Or something.
Feel free. And be tempted. Be oh so tempted.
Okay, the truth can now come out: the night of my last post was the actual launch of Messages and Your Messages…only I couldn’t say it because the event was mega-oversubscribed and even one more person would have popped the place like the fabled ‘wafer thin mint’ (it would have).
What a night. Buzzy from start to finish, and the work was top notch: hilarious, thoughtful and moving by turns. Thank goodness I wear waterproof mascara, let me put it that way. I was particularly struck by the pieces read by Oz Hardick, Caroline Smailes, Bob (erroneously Bill!) Merckel, Clare Grant, Mary Rose Rawlinson, Gina Benson, Ken Elkes — and of course Alex Johnson (of shedworking)’s final Your Messages riff. And actually, now that I look at the book, I know there were others I thoroughly enjoyed, and many more fine examples held in the pages. Once again, well done to Lynne and Sarah. A hugely successful and generous project, a catalyst for so many.
Gina Benson had come all the way from TEXAS for the occasion. It was her first published piece and by common consensus, a doozie. She and her friend were wonderful, as was Bob M, another American…We exchanged home thoughts, raining-in-Britain observations etc, and, as always happens in these situations, my all-time favourite Texas bumper sticker spread itself across the backwall of my brain, like some kind of flypost. I saw it the last time I landed in Houston, on the freeway back to Beaumont:
As a native Texan, my heart thrills to this. It encapsulates everything but everything about that simultaneously overblown and self-deprecating state. Love it.
