Year's End

For last year's words belong to last year's language

And next year's words await another voice.

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

~T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

I have a flourescent green Post-It sticking to the side of my screen at home. It's been there for over two years (I have very messy office - "creative", I like to think). Scribbled on it, very small, is a list of ten things I jotted down on a train, thinking about what I'd like to have achieved before I die.

As it's the time of year to be thinking about resolutions, I thought I might consider this list as one inspiration. For in 2010 I do intend to be inspired rather than ground down. The signs are already good.

So here it is, to be pondered.

1. Learn to tango
2. Visit India
3. Visit Venice (done this now, so I need to replace this one)
4. Play Lullaby of Birdland on the piano, no mistakes (getting there...)
5. Write a novel
6. Be size 12
7. Be on TV
8. Visit New Zealand
9. Learn to do tumble turns
10. Own a Chagall

Which of these should I focus on in 2010? Number 10 is going to be highly unlikely in the current business climate. Numbers 2 and 8 also look unlikely. I refuse to acknowledge that the recurrence of 5 and 6 for a number of years now indicates anything other than work pressures....

Crush

Schadenfreude is an unappealing emotion, I freely admit. But I couldn't help feeling a frisson of excitement at the news that Susan Sarandon is unexpectedly back on the market.

I have had a crush on Susan for about 25 years now. At first it was silent, guilty. Girls don't fancy other girls, right? Not if they like boys too? Everything was very clear cut when I was younger. You were straight, or you were gay. Or you were David Bowie.

I like the fact that these days it seems to be far more acceptable to blur the edges. I could rave on poetically for hours about her creamy skin, her lovely eyes and smile, her fantastic breasts, how she exudes sex....but such an ode might be in poor taste. And/or unnerving for those people who have categorised me into a different, narrower box.

So I'll just confess that she has featured regularly in my fantasies since a weekend of impressionable coincidence when I saw her one evening in her full splendour in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, followed the next day by watching her being seduced by Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger....... (oh to be in that scene....)

If you're not sure what to do in this flat dead period between one party and the next, a day in bed with Susan isn't a bad option. You could try Bull Durham to complete the set (Susan and a younger Kevin Costner, on the kitchen table....).

Anyway. I had resigned myself to merely aspiring to Be Susan when I grow up - but now it seems she's single again, who knows?

Surreality

Ever have that feeling you're adopted? Sometimes it's less of a feeling, more of a vain hope. In many respects I'm too much like my parents to pretend they picked me up from a church doorstep an hour after I was born. Although when I was about eight, I did go through a phase of pretending this, and telling my friends, and claiming my name was Perdita - the lost girl.

I am thinking of pretending this again, based on the conversation we've just had.

"You still like books and reading, don't you?"

Yes, I do. (Does anyone stop liking reading, I wonder?)

"There's a book we were thinking you might like. You said you liked that book about the place up in Yorkshire at Sutton Bank, and we thought of another one you might like".

Well, could be interesting.... cautious curiosity.

"It's by a lady dad knows. And she's from Yorkshire. So you'd like that."

Hmmm. Possibly.

"It's about butterflies. Someone in the shop said it was good".

"Yes, and you like supporting Yorkshire so this is a Yorkshire book. And it's by a lady dad knows. She writes a lot of books, they have names in from right round Sheffield".

Scared, now. Buying a book on the strength of that? Hmmm.

I unwrap the scary, parent-recommended, lady-that-dad-knows book.

It is The Peppered Moth, by Margaret Drabble. In case you hadn't already guessed.

Poptart

Miley Cyrus is a replicant. She was invented as part of a joint marketing project by Disney and Harvard Business School, and is genetically cloned in their Innovation Centre.

Focus groups have developed the optimum snub of her nose, curliness of her curls and the length of each eyelash. Her voice, however, has been taken from a forty year old soul singer, and the springiness of her dancing is due to the injection of a very small amount of Tigger DNA. This also accounts for her constant cartoonish cheeriness.

Her support act last night was her big brother's band. Her little brother was playing rhythm guitar in her set. Her dad is in the TV programme. The middle part of the show featured an extract from her film coming out next year. A long extract - about ten minutes. And it formed the backdrop to two subsequent songs. I'm suprised they weren't selling advance tickets there and then - text this number now.

We'd paid £250 for the tickets, but they'd had another £80 off us before we sat down (T shirts, programme, parking, hot dogs). It's a sophisticated machine, for sure.

They are grafting hard to get it right this time, after the Britney/Jamie-Lyn Spears family extravaganza crashed and burned so horribly. They are working on cloning a V2 Britney (going back to the plaits and mini-skirt jail-bait look which made the dads google her as often as YouPorn) whilst in the meantime, Terminators and Blade Runners are hunting the V1 Brit across the trailer-trash wastelands of America to take her out before she does any more damage.

If you don't believe it's a sinister cult, try watching 10,000 little girls, mesmerised and with shining eyes, line dancing in synchronisation.

Pop it, lock it, polka dot it,
Countrify and hip hop hip.
Put your hawk in the sky
Move side to side,
Jump to left, stick it -
Gliiiiiiiiiiiiiide.

Terrifying.

Blades

Hold on......don't go for the early bus just yet....

In the style (?) of the northern teams we know and love so loyally, I am attempting to pull it out the bag in injury time. It looks as if it may even go to penalties, but that might be exciting.

The brainchild and its scummy mummy are possibly sturdier and more resilient than they might look after all - momentary crises of confidence nothwithstanding.

Brainchild

The brainchild is in a bad, bad way.

Which also makes me wonder what the point was, of neglecting my otherly motherly duties to nurture something which is now so sick and brings no benefit.

Touting this thing round for adoption is more than heartbreaking. Who would want such a ruin, such a shadow of its former glory?

I simply do not have the confidence for a confidence-trick like this.

The market has fallen to pieces. I am exhausted, just exhausted with the haul of it. I am too old. I am too tired. There is no work to be had.

However. I guess my job now is to go down with the ship. Fuck.

Bedrock

Some things, you can't collect later in life. You had to be there, grow up in a particular kind of place, go to a certain sort of school, see a sky the hard grey of the limestone, the sheer stretch of a windy beach washing, washing away.

The words of anger, sorrow, love even - they don't have a resonance until I hear them spoken with soft, short northern vowels. And where we come from, understatement underlines the sentiment.

I'm becoming ever more conscious of the spaces in between, the silence as well as the words. Some things we say, some things we don't. I hear them all.

Sister Act

Today I’m headed off to carry out condition surveys with the Head of Maintenance at my client’s main site. Despite also being the principal trade union representative for the whole organisation, and therefore the guardian and upholder of right-on-ness, he finds it impossible to imagine that a girl can do this job. He fails to mention any technical issues (lifts, boilers, electrical systems) and looks disgusted if I ask questions that display any degree of knowledge of his team’s work.

The lads on the tools are embarrassed when I visit by the tit posters in their work area. Since the organisation whose buildings and systems they are maintaining is a beacon of women’s emancipation, I should think so too. However I expect this is the least important reason why the team is exclusively lads and no lasses.

Unfortunately my latest accolade does not help me here. I was voted one of the most Influential Women in my profession. I am confident that the handful of other women in the profession were the only people voting, the men pausing only to roar with laughter at the absurd oxymoron before returning to their golf, freemasonry and lap dancing bars.

It’s becoming more of a problem in our field as time goes on. When women of my generation were starting our careers, we knew there would be an element of struggle to be taken seriously, to get on. Cosmo had prepared us to challenge discrimination head on, insist on being taken on our merits, fight the good feminist fight.

Girls these days, fresh out of university, really aren’t expecting it. Often don’t recognise it for what it is, are not equipped with any tools to tackle it, and therefore in my field often fail to make the progress that their talent would pre-indicate. The most common reason for women leaving our professional institute is “leaving the profession”. Only a tiny handful of us are concerned (yes, all women).

More, much more, to come on this topic.

Smile

Yes, I know it's unseasonal. But doesn't it make a pleasant change from the wrist-slitting, throat-slashing, generally-despairing tedium of this time last month?

I can be happy, yes I can. Even exhausted in December with the shortest, darkest day tomorrow and a stinking cold.

There are lots of things that make me smile. Today I'm listening to songs that make me laugh.

1. I Bet You Look Good On the Dancefloor (Arctic Monkeys)

2. Common People (Pulp)

3. United States of Whatever (Liam Lynch)

4. You're Fit But You Know It (The Streets)

5. Gold (Spandau Ballet)

You might be wondering about Number 5. It's not supposed to be funny, I know. It's just the way that line ("you've got the power to know, you're indestructible") is several syllables too long for the music. The way he has to rush to cram it in, all piling up at the end of the phrase cracks me up every time. I suppose if I was trying harder, I'd insert little hyperlinks to YouTube, but if you're interested, the internet will know.

And if you're feeling too Sunday-afternoonish for googling, here is something else to make you smile. Vote for your favourite.

The Worst Album Covers Of All Time.

We Are the Children of Our Landscape

Consult the genius of the place in all;

That tells the waters or to rise, or fall;

Or helps th' ambitious hill the heav'ns to scale,

Or scoops in circling theatres the vale;

Calls in the country, catches opening glades,

Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades,

Now breaks, or now directs, th' intending lines;

Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs.

Alexander Pope

I dreamed last night that we walked up to The Plot.

The vivid descriptions from the book melded seamlessly with my own memories of our car struggling up the hairpins of Sutton Bank, powered chiefly it seemed by the willing-on and urging of three scruffy ginger-topped kids, our freckly legs sticking the hot vinyl seats of the Rover.

I'm not sure whether I've walked there or not. We knew our OS symbols, might have thought the chapel, the drover's road, the fort, the observatory would make some for interesting stopping points. We also knew how to read the contours, and that might have deterred us from the climb. The picnic spot along the ridge from the odd short-tailed white horse would perhaps have been a more likely stopping point.

I dreamed that we walked to the chapel along the drover's lane. It was spring, that time of year when the bright green bracken is just unfurling like a new baby's fingers. We walked inside and looked at the sculptures - and in my dream they were like the Broadbent Wings Over The World and the Gill reliefs on the London Underground Broadway building at St James's Park.

we sat in the lee of the wall and ate a picnic, drank tea from an old plaid-patterned flask my parents had in about 1972. We didn't say much - we didn't need to. I didn't know where we been, or where we were heading at the end of the walk. We turned our faces to the sunshine and enjoyed the perfect happiness of the moment.

We are the children of our landscape; It dictates behavior and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it."

Lawrence Durrell

The Two Rs

"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read".

If you know me at all, you know that I'm not exactly a lover of dogs..... to say the least. But I am a big lover of books. You're no better off, in many respects, loving books than you are loving men. They can both disappoint you and fail to meet your expectations, and seem full of promise at the start but fizzle out badly towards the end so that it hardly seems worth the bother of limping through to the final page.

Anyway I'm trying to write about reading, so let's come back to the point here.

One reason I originally looked into blogging was so that my "Virtual Book Group" could communicate about the books we were reading without sending 50 circular emails a day (my Inbox was collapsing under the strain). Now I'm a GoodReads junkie and the problem is solved.

Now, my reading choices are ecletic (if we're being pretentious) or to be more accurate, randomly voracious. Some books I have read for pleasure, others I've read for work or learning. Some I've enjoyed tremendously, others I've hated, some left me cold. I'll leave you to ask if you're interested. I think books are like food - junk, sandwiches and late night kebabs all have their place just as much as haute cuisine or a Nigella extravaganza. Unlike food, a book will not add to your waistline, and indeed I saw an article today which said that exciting and/or sexy books burn off around 900 calories due to the adrenaline which temporarily increases your metabolic rate. Excellent!

For my new diet, I am going to lie in bed reading Anita Blake books until I am a size 12. I imagine this will be no more unsuccessful than any of my previous diets. (Actually joking apart I am WAY too busy to be doing self-indulgent stuff like eating or sleeping, so all my clothes are too big for me now).

I would appreciate suggestions about what to read next - and whether it's in the bag-of-crisps or Michelin-star category. And obviously a few calorie burners too, to help me along.

I chose this photo because of my friend/writing coach who told me about Philip Pulllman's wise advice which I hadn't heard before. Almost as good as the quote at the start (Mark Twain - if you're interested).

"Read like a butterfly. Write like a bee".

Message received and understood. I think I have been getting these things the wrong way around.

Unsaid

I used to think I was a good communicator.Sure I’d be the first to admit I talk better than I listen. But I listen more carefully than you might think.

The linguist in me hears the words you choose, and the weight of history and association behind them. The counsellor in me knows that at some level you chose those words, rather than other words, for a reason. The musician in me hears the rhythm and pace, the tone and inflection, the cadences in your voice. The consultant in me watches your body language, the correlation or conflict between the words you say and the way you feel.

So why do I find it so hard to get other people to understand me? I should be able to do this easily. Indeed in several languages. Yet I struggle to express myself. Often I feel that, sitting in the other chair, there is an invisible scrambler hanging in mid air. I say one thing, something happens in the space, and a different message is heard.

Sometimes I chatter about little stuff because I don’t know how to talk about the big stuff.

Sometimes it’s the things people don’t say that really count.

Sometimes a touch or a look or an action is worth more than a thousand words. It’s the unsaid things in the silence that you should listen out for.

That's Not My Name

I have been cursed with a label that suited me too well. It chimed with a voice in my head, a whisper that suddenly grew loud and strident, sure in its truth.

I found, by chance (by fate? by devilish design? or maybe sought them out on purpose?) a series of men who agreed with the label. These were smart men - because they saw me for what I was. Were not fooled by the outer wrappings, the window dressing, the glossy competence of the carapace. Recognised the inner me and sang in harmony with That Voice.

At first they sang it with wry delight. Later they yelled, roared, raged. Then, generally, they stopped mentioning it. After all, it's only a small step from "hard" to "too hard" but the effort would have to be worth it, right? Ne vaut pas le detour.

There's a comfort, a familiarity in patterns, isn't there? Hear the same things often enough and the ritual might almost be soothing in its repeat. Perhaps it's the route of least resistance to play the role in which you're cast. And in the end, maybe the feeling you've become trapped in the wrong film might fade away and you might ...... settle.....

There have been people who have been close to penetrating the armadillo armour: The Voice tells me they still only see the edited highlights. If no one gets right inside, really close, they won't see what's really there. Or they won't get close enough to want to disprove the theory in the first place.

So what would happen if I decided to strip away every element of artifice? Just be - myself?

It looked for a moment like, after all this time, years of treading a groove into the same old familiar step, my label was going to be - wrong! A nervous, tentative excitement began to emerge, blinking in the sunshine, faltering like a bambi, wide-eyed and gullible.

Then it hit me. Slam. The whole situation is new, and shiny, and wonderful. But the label is the same. Different factors, old familiar outcome. All roads lead to home, after all.

Slutz

Someone, I can't remember who, once told me that the world is divided into two sorts of people. The sort of people that like to divide the world into two sorts of people, and the sort of people that don't. I liked that. There are all sorts of divisions, aren't there. The tongue curlers (I can); the left handed (that's me - or the cack-handed as my mum used to say....as a linguist I so love the origin of that phrase....); the believers and the infidels; horses and currant-buns in the National Portrait Gallery; the sheep and the goats. Course my favourite division-game is the legendary three-category Shag Marry or Kill which I feel sure could be the topic of a blog entry all of its own.

These days it's between the Bratz and the Barbies. I never imagined a time when I would be encouraging the girls to play with Barbies. I mean they're hardly striking a blow for the sisterhood with their simpering blondness and girly part-time dog-walking careers and their body-fascism, are they? But they are positively appealing in relation to the sinister new alternative the Bratz.

The Bratz are slutty creatures that were probably the school bullies. They wear tons of lurid make-up and are dressed for a cheap night out in a provincial nightclub. They buy their clothes from the market - or Lakeside if they're feeling flush (or nicked a handbag). They have spray tans and tattoos. They smoke (I bet). They binge-drink and get into girls fights, throw up over their own shoes on the way home and always fuck on the first date (they don't do second dates). They are enjoying their brief flowering as they will all have two kids and be on the social before they are 20.

The Barbies are American, probably staying in the UK with their mother's childhood penfriend so they can do some sightseeing and train to be kindergarten teachers or veterinary nurses or air hostesses. They are clean and wholesome and always have fresh white underwear. They have lovely manners and always keep their rooms tidy and make their beds as soon as they get up. They have steady boyfriends and are saving themselves for someone special.

Think Rizzo versus Sandy. Amy Winehouse versus Katherine Jenkins. Angelina Jolie versus Jennifer Aniston. Kate Moss versus Gywneth Paltrow. I reckon most girls fall into one category or the other. (If you're not sure - see if the girl you're trying to categorise has to take her feet off the ends of her legs when she wants to change her shoes - then you know she's a Bratz).

Which would you rather be? Take the question seriously: there's a battle going on in the playroom for the hearts and minds of our daughters.

I'd rather be neither. Dolls I would like to be:

• Any of the Thunderbirds (with the exception of the girls who are all crap)
• Aquamarina from Stingray
• Action Man With Gripping Hands
• Stretch Armstrong
• President Barbie (with Johnny Depp as my call-me-Monica intern)

Thoughts?

The Fat of the Land

I've been thinking about lard. Then lo and behold, I receive an email about it - an announcement, in fact. How spooky is that? "I need lard".

Not many people do need lard, nowadays, do they? Is it a dreadful mark of old age that I can remember when it constituted a core element of the weekly shop? The soft white block in its crinkly white-and-blue paper wrapper was an indispensable ingredient for pastry (no vegetarians or Jewish friends or halal issues to worry about back in Yorkshire in the 1970s, not where we lived anyway). I'm definitely giving my age away now, of course, referring back to the time we used to make pastry, rather than buy it ready-rolled, trimmed into neat circles in the chiller cabinet.

Lard was also used for the roast potatoes. I loved putting a chunk into the smoking hot roasting pan and seeing it disappear into liquid the very second it hit the blackened surface. Raymond and his ilk favour goose-fat now for their roasties (Tesco Value Lard is 28p for 250g, Tesco Finest Goose Fat is on special offer at £2.00 for 200g....) We fried our breakfast in lard, even the bacon and sausages. We fried a couple of slices of bread (white, Mother's Pride) in the pan afterwards, so as not to waste all that lovely fat.

Do you remember, we fried our chips in it? And it would harden in the chip pan, with little brown crumbs embedded in it, until it was time for the next batch a few days later. I never liked the look of it, with all those sinister dark bits and pieces, and the basket embedded at a slightly crazy angle like a ship in the ice. It made my stomach shiver. I didn't stop eating lovely home made chips though - just stopped looking at the pan.

Lard is deeply unfashionable now. We wouldn't have used olive oil - because we didn't like olives. They were Foreign. We actually used to talk about going out for a "Foreign Meal". Sesame oil, ghee, bouillon even - all indescribably Foreign. Aren't we cosmopolitan now?

The other out-of-fashion foodstuff I was thinking about, a cousin of lard, is suet. How would we make dumplings, jam roly poly, steak and kidney pudding without it? Oh, I remember, we don't eat those things much any more either. Which is a shame, really. Suet is mostly found in the animal feeding section at the supermarket now, tastily blended with linseeds and suchlike for the birds, although Atora Light Vegetable Suet (vegetable suet???) is still a seller. Albeit rather a contradiction in terms. What Light dishes are made with suet, I wonder?

I was in Melton Mowbray as I pondered these matters, considering the fate of the humble pork pie. Snack size pork pies are a great way to get your fat allowance for the day all in one go, and therefore appeal to my sense of efficiency. They are made from fatty cuts of pork (the pink parts), mixed with pork fat (the white parts). That jelly round the edge of the meat, that's fat. And the pastry contains both lard and suet. Job done.

Pork pies are enjoying something of a resurgence, and bucking the healthy eating trend, big time. The UK market is worth £130.9m with potential for further growth (she discovered, nerdishly, here). Along with pasties, their status as a historic artisan local food is seeing them served on the menu at some of the very finest restaurants.

It's just not right. Pork pie, a slice from a big one, should be eaten with a big pickled onion and a half of bitter in a Yorkshire pub after a long breezy walk. Followed quite possibly with jam rolypoly, home made custard and a little snooze. Ah, those were the days.

Precious

I might keep busy stealing watches, year after year, but time isn’t absolute. Some days it barely flows, lagging lazily like treacle from a spoon. The very hours we don’t want it to, it whips by in a blur - our perception of time is our reality.

Is it possible to savour the golden evenings, catch the drips of them in their amber glow and string them into a beautiful necklace of moments, to run through the fingers when time is creeping lonely-slow again?

Is there a way to freeze-frame the speedy flash of joy, to hold the hands of the clock while each instant is drunk to the last drop?

The scarcity of pleasure, the rare treat of stolen happiness, snatched from the gloom of these cold, dark days. Who knows how many hours of wonder are still to come, and how many are already crushed to dust in the pepper-grinder of the everyday humdrum?

Never has mindfulness, the stillness of living in the moment, struck such a powerful chord. These will be the golden days.

Unexpected Gift

Eleven years ago, almost to the minute, my new born little girl was placed in my arms. She was unplanned, unexpected and undiscussed - but very welcome. All night she laid beside me in the transparent cot, sometimes awake, sometimes asleep. She never cried, she was calm and relaxed. All night I looked at her and marvelled. And that's when I fell in love.

No-one told me that you fall in love with your children. That feeling of looking forward to seeing them every time you've been apart, the joy of waking up and smiling hello, the urgent need to press your face right against their skin and soak up their soft smell - it doesn't wear away with time.

I have loved the way that becoming a mum has changed me, opened up a softness that I didn't know was there, given me a sense of purpose and a sense of worth even in the darkest times. I love the pleasure of giving, helping, caring; of kindnesses welcomed.

I was told, by own my mother, that right from the outset I was difficult and hard to love. Hard to love. That's a tough label to wear, but the best way seemed to be to embrace it by being wilful, maverick, awkward, contrary. And to find a series of boyfriends, partners, husbands, who seem to strike a chord somewhere nasty within me, finding me difficult and hard to love.

And this is where being a mum has saved my soul - because my girls find me utterly adorable in every way. Lying with one cuddled fast in each arm, singing the mermaid lullaby we invented together, I can sometimes consider the possibility that they are right, and the rest of the world is wrong.

I was terrified of becoming a parent. All through my pregnancy I was distraught - knowing that the model I had was one I definitely didn't want to follow (my mother, an only child of odd, solitary parents, born in 1939 and didn't see her father for years, had struggled to create a family environment in any usual sense of the word). I still worry now, worry endlessly about the choices I have made - and not made. The expectations I might place on them, and limits I imply by not expecting enough.

Lately I worry, as girls growing into young women, about what I am teaching them to expect from a relationship.

There are lessons for me too. Learning to deal with two strong-willed feisty madams, living proof that Larkin was horribly right. Understanding that you can't make people, even little people, into something that they're not. I hadn't expected a child of mine to score 52% in the Eleven Plus mock and be advised not to enter. Equally I hadn't expected a child of mine to win dance awards, performing arts scholarships and Most Improved Player in her rugby team (the only girl).

They talked about this on a course I went on recently - a course where I've been a bit of a slow learner, and where some points are only just beginning to sink in. The course said, consider embracing people (not accepting them - too passive, but actively deciding to choose them) as they are, and as they are not. For heaven's sake, choose your children as they are - love them for their actuality and not their potential. I think I do that.

The point I'm slower to pick up on, is to embrace myself - as I am, and as I am not. To stop trying to be the New Improved Version (the route to being internally inadequate). It's all a bit Bridget Jones. The girls, however, love me just as I am, and they don't find it hard at all.

Autumn Crocus

Even in the grey and rainy gloom of the last day of November, some plants still find their way out of the cold, wet ground and push themselves up in a cheerful, devil-may-care burst of brightness.

These are nasty times, but down in depths, right at the bottom, the only thing left in the broken box is hope. A glimmer can become a spark; that spark could become a glow and even a flame. In the right set of circumstances, all sorts of things are possible. Maybe those black broken branches and dark drifts of leaves are a bonfire waiting only to be lit.

From the Archive: 8.05.2007

Once upon a time I had another blog. I wrote it for eighteen months and then I stopped (the reason I stopped would be a novel in its own right). I found that I missed writing it, and the feeling of missing it didn't abate. So I started again, somewhat different, somewhat the same. I'm going to re-post now and again a few of the old entries, the ones that fit it all together. This one (kind of) explains where I was at, and how I'm trying to break out.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

Down at the bottom of the mysterious, swirling ocean lies a submarine. Its thick red-black iron sides are crusted with rust. Its hatches are firmly closed. The salty currents have crept their cold way into the tiny gaps at the edge of the bolts and you can hardly see where you might grip to undo them.

The submarine is strong and solid. It can weather high seas and fierce storms. Even the teeth of a shark would glance off with hardly a scrape. The colder the water, the more the bolts tighten in their threads. When the submarine dives and the pressure builds, the hatches tighten in their casings. Nothing could get inside this submarine. It has nothing to fear as long as it stays under water.

Sometimes the submarine can hear the mermaids singing. It comes up to the surface and the sun warms its back. But when it comes ashore, a submarine is foreign: it’s a fish out of water. There’s no point to a submarine when it’s out of the sea. So the submarine dreams of the deep, heavy peace of the ocean floor, and slips silently north to rest under the ice caps, chilly and quiet.

Inside the submarine it is clean and empty.

But wait! What’s that? There’s something inside! Through the salt-smeary lens of the tiny porthole peeps a feline face.

There’s lots of space inside this submarine for a kitten to romp around. Within the armour-thick casing it’s another world. The kitten is at home. There’s enough of everything here to last a lifetime, and all within scampering, scrambling distance. It’s very safe.

The kitten is convinced there is nothing outside the submarine apart from danger. Kittens are not fooled by siren songs. The kitten does not have nine lives left.

The kitten has dreams. But what do they mean?

Glimmer

Is it possible, just possible, that the wrist-slitting, throat-slashing, lying-down-on-the-railway-tracks feelings are abating slightly?

I had to drive across country, 6am, for a workshop somewhere east. I set off in complete darkness and drove through misty fields of dew into the sunrise. I love England. I love the way we have proper seasons, the folds of the hills, the hedgerows, the little fields, the magpies. I felt still, and calm, and alone but not lonely.

I think I can make a connection - I do believe that's possible. Believing in it is probably half the secret, of course. I am trying to keep in mind the insight I reached a while ago, that I need to go out on a limb, go outside my control zone, if I want to get to a new place. I know what I want. And as someone said to me only yesterday, "if you don't ask, you don't get".

Asking......hmmmmmmmmm... would that be like, asking for help? Me, have needs? Surely not. Actually admitting that things were less than perfect? Less than fine, even? Oooh. That's an out-on-a-limb feeling already. Being myself, as opposed to being one of the pretend better-versions of myself, that couldn't work, could it? Doing things I really wanted to, saying things I really thought, confessing that I'm lonely, sad sometimes, frustrated (oh GOD), wouldn't that fall right into the dreaded category of Acting Like A Loser? I doubt it's a good look.

Maybe I could consider the possibility that I'm a complicated person, like everybody else. That I am all of those things, and also friendly, warm, loyal, committed, funny, clever, busy? Hell it's difficult. I'm no further on than when I was fourteen. But I'm smiling today.

Purpose

Much as I sometimes secretly wish it wouldn't, life still goes on.

I am trying to settle down and find my equilibrium again. Things will be fine - they always are. I never quite break - I can't, I'm a mum. I got little people counting on me being there when they wake up with nightmares.

So on it goes. Get up. Go to bed. Get up. Go to bed. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.

Put on a brave face. Keep cheerful. Mustn't grumble. Work so hard there isn't time to think. Stay up until the small hours, filling the empty night. Holding off the inevitable moment of staring into the darkness and thinking "Fuck, is this it, now?"

Arromanches

Suddenly, I don't think I can cope. Feeling this ill, for this long, has ground me down. It's bringing things forward that have been pushed, jammed, crammed to the back. Compartments that should be kept closed, sealed, shut away. I'm scared about how I'm feeling.

Last time I was ill like this was in France. The first proper holiday with our 8 month old daughter. We'd just moved house, been busy, had the rush on at work before going away. I'd been back working full time since a month after the birth. As I wasn't travelling away so much, I was supervising the installation of radiators and a heating system in our near-derelict new home. And I was pregnant again. Unplanned, and sooner than we had thought possible. A bit of a shock, but a good few months to get used to the idea.

In the run up to the holiday, I hadn't been feeling too good. Only to be expected, really. Didn't take too much notice - probably needed a holiday, a rest. We drove through the Tunnel, and towards Bayeux and the Normandy Beaches. A pretty active holiday, lots of things to see and do and explore, not to mention a baby to keep entertained. So developing some kind of awful stomach flu was not the most convenient start to the fortnight.

With monotonous regularity, I would be doubled over with stomach cramps and desperate for the loo - not a moment to waste. I went in bushes, in fields, beside the car, dashed in to cafes, used stinking public facilities. He was appalled. "For god's sake, this is disgusting, absolutely disgusting". I was embarrassed, humiliated. Trying to press on with the holiday, rather than confine us to our small cottage and a bored child.

After a couple of days, he started sleeping in the other room, a floor away at the other side of the house. I was left with the baby, and the en suite bathroom. He would emerge periodically to yell at me for flushing the loo when he was trying to sleep. As I couldn't have alcohol, I drove and he laid into the wine, a bottle with every meal. He's not a friendly drunk, so the shouting got worse as the day went by. Usually I'd give as good as I get, but I was feeling run-down and didn't quite have the energy to mount a spirited defence.

Towards the end of the first week of this lovely relaxing break, we went to Arromanches. I needed to go to the loo, and sort out a nappy change and a feed, he didn't want to hang around. So I agreed to catch him up afterwards, shoving the pushchair, and the bag, up to the peak above the town, in the rain and against a strong head wind. It's always raining when you visit the Normandy beaches, it adds to the feeling of bleakness and loss.

It was so cold we went home before dinner, I said I knock together some pasta a bit later, but I really didn't feel too good and needed to lie down. "Acting like a loser again - you need to be careful, it's becoming too much of a habit". I was feeling so rotten I didn't even really mind.

He came down a couple of hours later, to demand answers about why the baby was crying, a meal was not even vaguely on the way, and the toilet was flushing incessantly. "I know you're doing this to piss me off", he was saying, even as he came through the door. He had to come into the bathroom to find me - looked around.

"Fuck's sake! Is there nothing you won't stoop to, with your attention-seeking?" Blood on the floor. Blood in the sink. Blood on the towels. Blood trailing between the bedroom and the bathroom, smeared across the white tiles, pooled on the floor, dripped on the rug, puddled on the sheets. He grabbed my wrists furiously, pulled them in front of my face.

Nothing.

"I'm having a miscarriage", I said dully. The stomach cramps had settled into contractions, every 4 minutes or so. I was only 13 weeks gone, but they were stronger than when I'd been in labour before. I had imagined an early miscarriage was like a heavy period. I did not realise about the contractions - which I knew had been there for days, if only I'd recognised them, the doubling up, the gripping band around my abdomen. I had not realised how much blood there would be. I had not realised how much stuff would come out, chunks of gore the size of a fist tearing away and dropping into the bowl. I knew there was no hope, no point in going to hospital until the morning. Too messy to travel. Too agonising to sit in the car. Too difficult to translate, in between the waves of pain.

He went off to make some supper and feed the baby. I tried to mop up the Hammer Horror bloodbath, put towels in the washing machine. Normality of a kind was restored. I lay on the bed, curled in a ball, trying to breathe through the contractions, which carried on and on and on, even hours after the bleeding had stopped. "She won't sleep if you're going to make that kind of noise". So he took her upstairs to sleep with him, huffing and puffing with frustration as he dismantled the cot to take it up the narrow, twisting staircase. While he did that, she laid on the bed beside me, gazing sleepily into my eyes. I looked back. I had a baby, I had been blessed with this beautiful girl, this unexpected gift. I would be grateful for what I had.

The next morning we went to hospital. I was still calm, cold, under control. I kept busy explaining, translating, being examined, scanned, tested. They told me what I already knew - that that there was nothing there now. They said the contractions would stop on their own, in time. How much time, they couldn't say. Maybe 24, maybe 48 hours. No reason why we shouldn't carry on enjoying our holiday. Quite so. This happens frequently for women of my age. My babies would have been close together in age so maybe it was for the best. Indeed. I was lucky to be blessed with a beautiful girl. Yes I was blessed. Lucky, I wasn't so sure.

I never cried a single tear on that holiday. It was too big for tears. I stopped crying then, I've hardly ever cried since, maybe twice in ten years. I felt like I swallowed a stone, and it lodged in my chest. Hard, cold, too big to be washed away, not for centuries.

Today, you can still see the remains of the mulberry harbours at Arromanches when the tide goes out. All the salty tears in the sea, to and fro across them, day after day, night after night, fifty years and more, lashed by storms, baked by the sun, and there they still are. Across those wide, lonely beaches you can almost hear, almost feel the echo through the years of all the lives lost. No one but me notices another tiny whisper, added to the rushing winds across the sand.

Karmageddon

I'll start by issuing a health warning. This post should only be read by those wearing a bio-hazard suit.

I have been horribly ill for well over a week now. And thinking back, intermittently for a couple of months at least. My GP thinks I have a bacterial stomach infection - although this is based on a quick crackly phone call between me (on hands-free in the car) and him (bizarrely locked inside his own house by his son, who went out and double-locked the door, thinking there was no one home). He reckons I have had this for some time, and will need a 10 day course of antibiotics to clear it. To get these, I need to come in to the surgery. Which puts us back where we started - me too busy to get into the surgery during the times it's open.

I'm actually ok - as long as I don't eat anything. This isn't as much of a problem as it might be for some, since I am not exactly going to waste away. Although I'm giving wasting away a damn good try (silver linings and all that...)

I'm not getting much support at home (there's a surprise). It's "disgusting and vile" apparently. I'm not disagreeing. Having run workshops, travelled the length and breadth of the land, flown up to Glasgow for a meeting with the Overlord and a grovel to the bank, a bit of tea and sympathy upon my return wouldn't go amiss. Being told I'm "acting like a loser", that isn't really helping me feel better.

If I were him, I'd be a little more sympathetic. After all, he's going into hospital next week for a major knee op. You'd think a person who was about to be entirely reliant on their partner would be, well, more partnerly in these matters....

Settled For

I don't feel sorry for myself (well, not usually). I'm an adult and I must accept the consequences of the decisions I make.

The biggest decision I've made this year just kind of slipped in there, a move not made, a choice not taken that then opened up the board for the next twisted round of this game we play.

"Do you think it's acceptable," asked the earnest, well-meaning Couples Counsellor, "for him to say that you are stupid, lazy, uncommitted to your job, boring, unattractive?"

"Yes, I do", I replied. She look confused. "I feel it's unacceptable. I insist it's unacceptable, that I refuse to accept it But I'm still here, so I guess the answer can only be yes".

I thought about this a long time. More than a year went by. We rubbed along in our state of benign indifference, interspersed by bitter skirmishes where hostilities flared, rockets were fired and more things-that-should-never-be-said were yelled, or sobbed, or wished for. Deadlines were set: they passed and no one died.

And in the New Year, I found a flat. Just across the road, so the children could be near. They could be at home and I could be there until they went to bed, then go to my flat, come back in the morning to get them up. Two bedrooms in the flat, so they could stay with me, bunk up, when dad was away. No need to move them out of their lovely home, just because mum doesn't feel at home there any more. Saw the particulars, paid the deposit, signed the lease.

Told him. He was absolutely stunned. "This is completely out of the blue!" All those conversations, deadlines, pleadings, tears, the counselling, all ignored. " You can't leave - you have a job to do". I explained how my Job of looking after the children would still be correctly undertaken, my Job at the office still competently exercised. My Job of being his partner/secretary/mistress/nurse/housemaid/driver/punchbag - that Job: I was resigning.

Told the children. They were oddly fine about it - on the surface. "You shouldn't stay just because of us, when he is so horrible to you". Out of the mouths of babes..... Underneath though, they were upset that their very greatest fear was in fact now coming to pass. They could see that the plan of the flat across the road would work better than anything else, in the circumstances, and they started to get curious about what was over there, who would sleep on the top bunk, could they see me out of the window when the leaves grew on the trees in spring.

We never found out, because I never went there. Not even to look at it, never mind move in. I carried the keys in my handbag, I thought about what I would take that would not leave frightening gaps for the children at home, blank patches where pictures used to be, spaces in the cupboards, holes in the books. This time I was really leaving, no buts about it.

But I never left. I didn't decide not to, I just didn't go. And I realised after a while that this must mean I had decided to stay. So here I am.

Spin Cycle

I'm not sure when weekends became something to be endured rather than enjoyed.

I still have that sense, towards the end of a week, of Something Nice on the way, the prospect of a rest, things to look forward to. This doesn't tally whatsoever with the way I spend my time between Friday evening and Monday morning, but it's still there, for historical reasons. And there is a pause, at least momentarily, from the unrelenting onslaught that is work in a small company in the middle of a recession, with slightly fewer people than there should be.

I had worked away since Tuesday morning. Missed the children - horribly, wrenchingly - but secretly took pleasure in the quiet calm of a hotel. No mess, no meals to prepare, the absence of any domestic responsibilities. Keep the light on to read when I want to, no running out of hot water, no sport on the TV. No-one sneering contemptuously at me. No-one telling me I'm boring. Stupid. Unattractive. Not working hard enough.

I have all that to look forward to when I get home.

The weekend began more frantically than I'd like with a pick up from the train station and straight out to dinner at a gastro-pub. The other couple are in the first flush of second-time-around, inordinately pleased with themselves for having managed to snare each other before the the looming milestone of 50th birthdays. They are still in the Trying Hard phase - he in new shirt with packet-creased not quite ironed to invisibility, she in tottering cerise suede heels (despite the rain), a slightly-too-low sparkly top and some glittering eye shadow. I, just from London and tired in my work suit, could not hold a candle to her. As was pointed out to me, later.

The food was rich, sickly, over-complicated. They were desperate to impress us with their fascinating cosmopolitan lifestyle. Including, this week, a trip - London! - no less. Woop. Suitably bowled over, I obediently listened to their story of a Having A Drink In Guy Ritchie's Pub. It's just like an ordinary pub, you know.

Yes, I do know.

The men moved on to What's Wrong With The NHS, while I was doomed to endure Did You See The Woman On Oprah Who Had Her Face Torn Off By A Pet Chimpanzee. You have to feel, really feel, for the chimpanzee, don't you.

Well, actually, no. I'd be more inclined to be on the side of the woman who has no eyes, no nose, no lips, because an angry animal tore them off in a terrifying attack. However the whole episode has such a ridiculous only-in-America feel to it that I'm ashamed to say I don't feel, really feel, anything much at all about it. I realised when I got home that I'd left my coat at the pub, and haven't had time to go back this weekend and collect it.

Saturday comprised the usual driving/laundry/tidying-up/cleaning combo. Working away is something to be enjoyed in the moment, as it also means not being able to keep on top of everything at home, so that was Saturday gone. I worked hard, bloody hard, to return the house to something approaching a normal state for a family home. I did this by myself as an invitation to corporate hospitality at the England rugby game had beckoned. "No point in both of us going". Quite so.

Today was even worse. It seems that I don't properly understand our sector, or indeed our own business within it. That when I am at work I am not managing my time effectively or focusing on the right things. That when I am at home I am not keeping it nice, and not being warm and welcoming. You bet I'm fucking not. Could be something to do with the 80+ hour weeks I'm working at the moment.

I don't like the way I behave when I have am listening to stuff like that. I am afraid of the emotions I feel - the anger, the rage, the distress. Most of all, I am afraid of the fact that I feel like this and I am still here. It's worse than a hamster in a wheel - I'm a rat in a trap. I try to blank the way I feel because I can't see a way out.

Meanwhile, since returning from holiday in August, I am doubled up several times a week with cramps, tummy aches, upsets, sickness, dashes to the loo. Maybe it's some kind of infection. Or maybe it's my body trying to tell me it can't stomach this situation much longer.

Dull Girl

How many explanations do you give yourself for someone’s bad behaviour, before you accept that sometimes there really isn’t any excuse for it? How much is too much? How far is too far? I’m losing sense of the boundaries, of what’s reasonable.

If it’s black eye, a push down the stairs, it’s easier to draw the line, to see where Wrong begins. Other less obvious, more insidious things, it’s harder to say.

I thought I’d do some lists. Factual. No grey areas, nothing to be open to interpretation.

Five crap things I did this weekend:

1. Laundry
2. Nit-combing
3. Trying to catch up with work
4. Tidying up
5. Bickering

Five great things I did this weekend:

1. Sat in the hot tub in the sunshine
2. Bought 2 pairs of shoes
3. Had coffee with a friend
4. Went out for Sunday breakfast
5. Cuddled the girls

Five things I didn’t do this weekend, that I was supposed to:

1. Tidy up paperwork
2. Diet
3. Gym/body pump
4. Writing
5. Design thank you cards for wedding presents (again)

Guess what else I didn’t do this weekend. Oh so many reasons...... Five men I would have sex with right here right now:

1. Sean Bean
2. Clive Owen
3. Andy Garcia
4. David Tennant
5. Johnny Depp

None of these people have actually asked me. Yet. But I’m sure they’re avid readers of my tedious blog . Form an orderly queue, boys.

Mission Control

There's been a strange tilting of the balance in the last couple of years or so, I've noticed. I'd spotted an inkling of it before the recession, so it's not just about that - although global economic grimness is exacerbating it. I expect someone has thought up a sexy name for the phenomenon and written about it in G2 or something, but I'm speaking from very personal experience.

It's about polarisation. The growing gulf between people who don't have anything to do (one of my team, a brainy and personable astrophysics masters, was unemployed for seven months and couldn't even get temping work before she came to us); and the people who can't get their heads up for long enough to whimper with exhaustion before the next wave hits them.

I and the people I want to spend time with all seem to be in the second category. Everyone seems to be crazy-busy - and I'm not talking about the kind of pretentious "I'm-soooo-busy" rushing about that we sometimes come across (mainly those Full Time Yummy Mummies). I'm talking about friends who haven't been been seen in weeks. Only the odd brief text to confirm they are alive (just barely). Plans that have to be changed to due to midnight working commitments (mine, theirs, everyone's). Meeting up with anyone at all is like a organising a full military campaign. Diaries, emails, PAs, other parties to be consulted, last minute changes.

I'm approaching my fourth 18-hour day on the trot. We can't carry on like this. Can we? My weeks seem to comprise being bored, tired and lonely in a variety of different venues. My weekends seem to comprise of doing a lot of laundry, cleaning up after people who could do a bit more for themselves, and therefore being in the utility room/supermarket/recycling centre/school uniform shop while the others are enjoying the hot-tub/trampoline/tv/Sunday papers.

This week, I have run workshops, facilitated sessions, held meetings, with probably 100 people, from one end of the country to the other, Bristol to Edinburgh. And yet............and yet.......

.......

November. Monday.

Serendipity

Yesterday it was Halloween. A mild autumn afternoon, we carved pumpkins, planned our zombie and witch outfits and made spooky cakes and biscuits for our kids-and-parents party set to take place at nightfall. I love those days with the girls, when the three of us are working away at something, chatting, laughing, helping one another out.

While we were making our dead-finger biscuits, having a cup of tea and discussing the relative merits of green, black or purple nail varnish, someone was outside in the street vandalising our cars.

My beautiful new shiny BMW now has a gouge right the way across the bonnet, down to the metal. Likewise across both panels of the roof, and the passenger door. The Alfa got away relatively lightly, with the same damage to the bonnet only.

Apparently this is a popular way to celebrate Halloween in the 21st century, going about ruining cars. Also on the list: shooting at passers-by with air rifles; standing on motorway flyovers and chucking stones at vehicles; tying fireworks to the tails of cats and dogs; pushing lighted pieces of paper through letterboxes. What a world. The police were clearly already having a terrible day and it was only 4pm.

Normally I'd have been angry - very angry - and upset. I have worked hard to be able to afford nice cars and I treat them with respect. The gouge on the bonnet of the BMW is raw and shocking, like an open wound. Neighbours and people walking by were stopping and looking in horror. It will be expensive and inconvenient to have the damage rectified, and to my perfectionist eye, the Alfa will not look right if only the bonnet is resprayed. The other panels will have faded from the original after all this time, and I'll end up getting the whole car done, I just know it.

But here's a really odd thing. Only yesterday I had been reading a fellow blogger's post on damage to his car (even more oddly, looks like the same Alfa as mine....I think it was after a Halloween party....how spooky is that?) He talked about the way he dealt with a similar incident, his philosophy on life and its ups and downs. It was a well written, thoughtful piece and I'd been pondering it anyway.

And now here I was, facing the same situation. I decided to try out the philosophical approach - here's an issue to be dealt with, don't let it tip me overboard. I stayed calm, phoned the police to get a crime reference number, checked the other cars in the road to see if others had been damaged (no, just mine). Did not rage, shout, weep or gnash my teeth with frustration. Sorted it out then carried on baking, tidying up the house, chatting with the girls. The most notable thing that happened was that He was also much calmer, we didn't whip each other up like we might usually have done. He sulked upstairs because I wasn't angry enough, but I didn't take any notice of that. I had a nice friendly chat with the policeman (not his fault, after all, so no reason why I should yell at him just to let off some frustration, right?) And the afternoon was not ruined, the party went ahead, a good time was had by all.

Coincidence? Serendipity? Synchronicity? Call it what you will. Funny how someone can be a positive influence from 100 miles away and 4 years ago.

Guiding Light

Where do you look for guidance if you don’t believe in anything other than free will and self determination? Who do you turn to for advice? Who do you whisper to in your head or maybe even in your heart?

Girls, we know the answer. Simply ask yourself: “What would Ripley do?”

Ripley gets mad. Then she gets even.Ripley sometimes feels sad. Things go wrong that she can’t change. Then she channels her emotional energy into fixing what she can fix.

Ripley is brave. She feels the fear and does it anyway. She is composed under pressure. She is strong and she is smart. She is practical and resourceful. She gets things done and makes things happen. She is bloody but unbowed.

Ripley is cool and beautiful and takes no prisoners.

Open your heart to the ways of Ripley. Follow her path and she will guide you through the toughest of times.

Own Goal

Everyone is supposed to have goals, aren't they? I became disturbed that I didn't seem to have any, so I bought a book, a few months ago. "Be Your Own Life Coach!" it exhorted enthusiastically. It promised me that in seven days I would have a compelling action plan, covering all the key areas of my life. Hurrah.

It divided life up into several sections, shown in a neat pie chart (no, I can't remember what they were - probably family, health & fitness, friends, career, all that..) I had to rate how satisfied I was with my life in these areas. My chart when I drew it was hideously mis-shapen and asymmetrical. Now there's a surprise. At first I was upset. Oh no, my life is all out of kilter - then I thought, hey I knew that, that's why I bought the flippin' book.

Pulled myself together and I set down some goals in each area. Wrote them in the neat little charts that were in the book. Drew up steps, how to make my way towards achieving them. Put them on a little card to carry around with me. I pursued these goals, half-heartedly, listlessly, for a while. If I was honest, they did not speak to me - I didn't really care whether I achieved them or not. I had created the sort of goals I thought I ought to have: I didn't know what I really wanted, couldn't find anything that mattered enough.

I still don't know now. I'm wondering if it's to do with the fact that a lot of the things I might want, underneath, I can't have unless there are earth-shattering changes that make me feel weary even just allowing them to creep into my peripheral vision. Everything staying the same is a dispiriting prospect too: I feel I'm between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Saw a great article the other day about how women in their twenties fantasise about meeting Mr Right and moving in together, the wedding, children, all that. Women in their thirties are too busy balancing family and career to fantasise about anything other than getting a decent night's sleep. Women in their forties, we fantasise about living in a small, uncluttered house with evenings free to read, chat to friends, take up forgotten hobbies, flirt on-line - and alternate weekends blissfully empty of children and available for hot, dirty sex with Sean Bean.

My newly-single friends however are finding that, as I have long suspected, all the nice men are hooked up with nice women, living in nice houses with nice children, nice holidays and a nice life. Even Sean Bean. They might be kicking over the traces just enough for an illicit skirmish, but they are staying where they are. The nice men are sticking it out for the kids, or staying because that's what they promised, or better with the devil-they-know.

So here I am - drifting, aimless, often lonely, busy oh god yes, but without any clear goals. Apart from one. There's one thing I'm pursuing relentlessly, with focus, with commitment, with enthusiasm. No matter the work commitments, the mounting ironing-basket, the taxi service, I am finding the time for this. You'd never guess it - unless you asked the girls. They know.

I want to play Lullaby Of Birdland, no mistakes.

I grew up to a soundtrack no one hears these days. Deeply unfashionable. Frank Sinatra, ok. Mel Torme, Peggy Lee, Julie London, Georgie Fame.... and I want to play the piano like George Shearing. (Who he? Shame on you). All those lessons with Mr Fenwick's wrinkly hand squeezed between my thighs till I told mum, the Beethoven, the fucking Goldberg Variations (music to prompt OCD and a nervous breakdown if ever there was an accompaniment to that) it doesn't help you play like George, no way, no how. My Uncle George, he's a jazz pianist too, had his own quintet, played with George Shearing sometimes, before they all went off to America.

It's a bloody hard piece (if you're a grade-5-at-school piano player like me). Every chord needs to be mapped out note by note. It's in a weird key to start with, and then all sharpened and flattened. And when you play it slowly, to learn it, each individual chord sounds wrong: they only make sense in the progression of the phrase. Undeterred, I am making my way through. It's been taking me ages, months. The commitment I'm showing, the time that I'm carving out for it, the slow but perceptible progress...... maybe anything is possible......

(Well maybe not playing it like this... maybe that's not possible. But certainly something worth trying):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1CAgSbNDLc&feature=PlayList&p=2C3EE439D886B3D3&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=47