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.

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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.