Good Morning - Vietnam?

Much fuss and hullabaloo here last evening, as the toddler from the farmhouse had gone missing. I could hear them calling, and I must admit at first I thought they were looking for a dog. The woman arrived here in a panic to ask whether he had slipped in here, and when she described him I realised it was a boy they had lost. They were worried he had fallen into the pond in the dark.

It didn't seem like a good time to question why you would have an unfenced pond if you had toddlers.

We put the car headlamps on to shine them across the pond. The baby was hysterical, frightened from all the shouting I expect, so I volunteered to hold her while they went to check. I didn't want to go with them to check the pond. I was too scared. Don't look now.

Turns out the lad had felt tired after a major bout of trampolining, and had put himself to bed. How he didn't waken in all the yelling and upset is a cause for wonder.

My adrenaline was up a bit, so I worked late into the night as my time is my own here. To be honest, that's such a novelty in itself, it's tempting not to do anything at all other than simply - luxuriate.

My long and lovely lie-in was one of the first I've had in absolutely years. However I was rudely awakened by an enormously loud noise and the whole structure of the building vibrating voilently. Rubbing my eyes, I watched a police helicopter land right outside my door.

I looked in horror towards the pond, but they were headed next door to the barn. I'd seen the people arrive there yesterday, doddering out from their cars with zimmer frames. It seemed extremely unlikely they could be doing anything illegal, but perhaps they were on the run? Perhaps one of the old boys was a Sicilian Mafia don, or an East End gangster?

I come from a town where we have a natural suspicion of the police, having grown up with the the experience that coppers are all nasty southerners who will ride a horse through your garden and club you on the head with a truncheon just for being a local lad. I didn't want to get fitted up for anything, so I stayed inside and watched through the slats of the venetian blind, feeling like someone in a movie.

Lo and behold, another helicopter was landing! I wasn't sure that the agricultural timbers of my funky granary conversion could stand that much turbulence. This time it was the air ambulance. Maybe the old folks had been having a sex game that had gone wrong, and one of them had killed the others? Or perhaps someone was ill.

Frustratingly, I never found out. It seemed a little tactless to lurk around watching, when I was the only person here. A crowd of lurkers, or even a small knot, that would have been OK. But just standing by myself, staring: that seemed rude, even for me.

The medics were in there for quite a while. The couple that run the farm sneaked out at that point to take photos of the helicopters. Then all the helicopter people came out and flew away. No one was brought out on a stretcher, no one was taken away later in a hearse. A few hours later the 2 cars had gone and the place was all in darkness again, so we'll never know.

Writing my novel, I'm concerned that my characters, my events, will be believable. Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.

A Room of One's Own

The rain is hammering down, but I'm cosy indoors in my moss-green cashmere hoody.

For company I have a cold glass of Chablis, a Diptyque Feu du Bois candle, John Coltrane's Favourite Things on the CD player, and my thoughts.

I am writing.

I am happy.

Burn It

Let's suppose, just as an example, that you were sick of your wife - and then a man came along who would buy her off you. She's happy to go, and your life would remain completely unchanged but now you'd be a free agent. There is no visible downside to you in the situation.

Would you:

(a) sit down sensibly for a three way chat to conclude the deal?

or

(b) refuse to sit down sensibly even though the meeting had been in your diary with red flags all over it for over a month;
arrange for lots of other people to be there having meetings with you at the same time;
bounce in and out in a casual manner;
take calls on your mobile phone;
talk your wife down to the point where the suitor is wondering whether he's still interested;
talk yourself up so he now wants to buy you as well;
shout at him when he has the temerity to propose this;
shout at your wife till he is so embarrassed he pretends he needs to use the bathroom;
take the lunch that was ordered for him and give to some other visitors;
take your wife's car so she cannot take him back to the station at the end of his sorry visit;
send the PA out on spurious dry cleaning errands so she can't take him either;
ensure that the only other staff car in the carpark is boxed in by your visitor's car (who has now gone someone in your wife's car with you);
ring your wife and tell her she mishandled the situation?

It's just a fr'instance. Idle curiosity.

Inoculatte

Hook me up.

I've been drinking so much coffee I'm tripping out. My heart is pounding, my gut is churning, my wrists and ankles are swollen and my tongue is going brown. But my GOD I have energy now!

It's all articifial of course. Having lived on diet of carbs alone for the last few weeks, more or less, I am stupefied by my own blood sugar levels and am having to kick myself out of it with caffeine. It's a vicious circle, or at least it would be if it wasn't too lardy and flabby to be vicious in any meaningful sense. Sandwiches, cereal, toast, crisps. Bit of pasta. The odd jacket spud. It's a fatal combination of stress and weather. Then alcohol or caffeine to cut through the stodge.

I read a magazine article in the hairdressers that said "if you are using something to alter your mood or change the way you feel, that is an addiction. It could be drugs, nicotine, alcohol, food or even sex". All of these at once, how about that? It would certainly cheer me up. Self-medication with food. Hmmm. Uppers and downers, coke and weed, they do not have any calories.

I plan to change my mood by going away for fresh air, relaxation, breezy walks and writing. Cottage booked. Just need to survive this week first.

Weird Weekend

Louis Theroux? He's got nothing on me.

Unless you think it's normal rather than completely ODD for two fully grown adults to refuse a dinner invitation because they have just bought puppies?

Surely when you finally clear out your various teens, step-children, boyfriends, girlfriends, sofa-surfers, mates and hangers-on you then spend your whole time having weekends in Morocco, lolling in bed till lunchtime on Sundays reading the papers and eating insanely spicy or exotic food that is totally not child-friendly? Surely you would not immediately paint yourself back into the just-had-a-baby-can't-go-anywhere corner by getting dogs? Unbelievably expensive dogs at that, and needing all manner of specialist equipment, sheds, subdividing of vast gardens, the list goes on. Probably cheaper in the long run to have a baby, I reckon.

Anyway, long story short. We invite this couple over for dinner as they bought us a case of rather splendid wine last year, and the plan was to cook them a meal and crack open a couple of bottles. However, they couldn't come due to aforementioned canine ankle gnashers, so we went to theirs instead (and took the wine).

Not necessarily a bad idea, as she is a fantastic cook, they have a totally cool house, and (dog-purchase aside) they are great company. However, when we arrived, there was unexpectedly another couple there. People we didn't know. Don't you just hate that? Sudden enforced social niceties when I was expecting to kick back with the Chateau Margaux in their fearsomely stylish black and acid-green kitchen and chill out.

Sour old bitch, aren't I? Who's to say they wouldn't be great company? Many a great friendship has of course been struck in such a situation. This did not look promising as I did not like her make up, and her whole bone-structure was visible, even her arm-bones. He was showing off his knowledge of the correct way to decant wine. However men often show off when they're nervous, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

She was soon telling me about how she was training up for her seventh London Marathon. Not that she really has to train as such now, she's proud to be in permanently good shape. "You don't look like you're a runner", she said, smiling.

"I'm more of an intellectual, I guess" I smiled back. "You don't look like you're a mum, with a lovely flat stomach like that". Don't think I can't hit below the belt. Literally. "No.... no children...... I work in hospital administration".

I made an effort. He made an effort. And trust me, it was an effort. Then, nightmare, they turned out to be dog-people too, and asked for the puppies to be brought in. One of them immediately jumped up, laddered my tights, snagged my new black cardigan and did a bit of wee on my leg. Dog-cuddling and dog-talk ensued. I read a Homes and Gardens magazine while the dog-stuff went on.

Finally they put the pups down. Only for the night, sorry to say, not permanently. The Awful Couple talked a bit about Eastenders. I said I hadn't watched it for ten years, but they were confident we'd still be fascinated. There's been a murder, apparently. And a rape, and incest, and a nobody-knows-the-father pregnancy, oh and a wedding. Whoever would have thought it.

"Hey let's watch it right now on Sky Plus!" Oh god. Hey, let's not. But we did anyway, right in the middle of dessert. Lots of scrubbers shouted at each other and someone called Bradley fell off a roof. The really odd thing was that having not watched it for ten years, I felt like I could still follow the story and recognise half the characters. Maybe real life is like that too? Things change less than you think.

We were all drinking pretty steadily and the disagreements mounted. When Skeleton-Woman explained that the NHS was "wasting" money on cancer treatment for people who had terminal conditions "just so they can spend a few more months with their families or whatever" it turned a bit nasty (my brother-in-law being a cancer surgeon and all). If people ran marathons all the time, and picked over their food and made their hosts cook something entirely different just for them and their weird diets, no one would get cancer, apparently. You losers, it's all self inflicted.

I wondered how much money the NHS "wasted" on fruitless repeat cycles of fertility treatment.

She went to the bathroom for a long, long time, and when she came back she wouldn't talk to me. We shared a taxi home in stony silence. - they didn't chip in for the fare.

And still it was only Friday. Went to friend's 50th birthday party on Saturday. It didn't seem like 5 minutes since her 40th. My nothing-changes-in-ten-years theory was further supported by a conversation I had with a couple I met at NCT and hadn't seen for ten years. They had the same jobs, lived in the same house, went to the same places on holiday as they had done before. So did we.

I thought about the possibility that I was as boring as them, and that if someone met me ten years from now, I still wouldn't have anything new or interesting to report. She also looked horribly a lot older and had gone completely grey (why?!) which made me realised I probably looked horribly a lot older too.

On Sunday I walked round and round and round the park for four hours with the girls on their new bikes. My life feels like that sometimes, the same loop over and over and over again, just getting colder and older and more and more tired with each circuit.

Worst Fears

When I was a kid, I used to fantasise all the time about running away from home.

I can remember as early as 5 years old, waking up early and climbing out the bedroom window with a little bag containing a spare pair of pants and a toothbrush. Fortunately we lived in a bungalow. I would run away to Mr and Mrs Holden next door, a retired couple who would cook me egg on toast, pour me a drink of milk from the jug that was shaped like a cow, and keep me entertained until 8am.

I stowed away once in the back of the laundry van, hidden under the sheets. I got as far as Jacques Hair Salon, where mum had her interminable perms, before I was spotted and taken home for a good hiding.

She got so fed up with this lark that she packed a suitcase for me, took me in the car to the big Dr Barnados children’s home in Westcliff on Sea and turfed me out at the end of the drive. As I tripped off merrily with a spring in my step towards my new friends and kindly matron in the big house, she had second thoughts and yanked me back into the car. Home again for another good hiding. Funny how that low-level violence meted out so casually made not one bit of difference to our behaviour. I can never remember deciding not to do something in case I got a smack.

(I’ve a good mind to reintroduce smacking as part of my new upcoming totalitarian regime).

When I was older, I still hated living at home. However a couple of meaningful chats with my headmaster at school and a drive down the Cambridge Backs with the daffodils in full spring glory showed me there was a smarter option than living rough mainlining heroin round behind Kings Cross. If I studied hard, I could get away good and proper - and they’d pay for everything! Top plan.

I left home aged eighteen - with oh such excellent grades - to go to university, and never lived there permanently again. And we get along fine now. Well, as fine as anyone our age gets on with their parents, I guess.

Now I’m a parent myself. And I still fantasise all the time about running away from home.

Failure

When I found out I was pregnant, I cried for weeks. Not because I didn’t want a baby, but because I was scared. I was scared that I didn’t know how to be a mum. Terrified I would get it wrong. Worried that I would be like my own mother. Afraid that I would raise a child that would grow up feeling like me - I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

I tried to find out what would make a good parent, a happy child. Read up diligently. Applied the things I learned, consistently and calmly. I made sure I had a fantastic nanny to help me, a constant positive presence for the first seven years of their life - a reinforcement of the values, behaviours, support, love that would prepare them for life and make them happy and confident.

I didn’t want my children to go to a school where they were bullied for accidentally being clever, or playing a musical instrument, or liking reading, or having red hair: so I worked hard to pay for them to attend an all-girls school – small classes, traditional values.

But there was one thing I never worried about, even me, the all-time top worrier of the century. I never worried about them learning how to be a good friend. I know I set a good example here. My loyalty, commitment, discretion, support - all absolutely without question.

Last week the school called me to say that Daughter No 2 has been setting the girls against one another in her class to the extent that several of them had to be picked up by their parents, they were so upset. And then when asked about it, lied her head off until she was caught out, then lied some more. I am summoned to a meeting with the Head after half term.

And today Daughter No 1 has been found out sending a horrible, mean email circular that manages to incorporate swearing, threatening, bullying and ganging-up, all in one paragraph. Several parents have already contacted me to complain, explain they are blocking her from their daughters’ email and MSN, and asking me what I plan to do. I asked her about it, and she lied too.

I don’t know what I plan to do.

Right now, I have penned an apology to the girls and their parents, explaining the rules we have and how they were broken. She has sent one of her own too. I have confiscated her laptop and I have disabled the wifi on the home computer.

I am ashamed. Appalled. Embarrassed. Humiliated. I don’t know where they have learned to behave like this. My immediate plan is to drink a lot of wine, cry, and wonder what I did wrong. Not constructive, but I’m too upset to care.

Lord of the Dance

Who says the devil has all the best tunes?

The Vatican has issued a list of its top ten favourite albums (yes, really).

It's a little light on women (unsurprising) - Stevie Nicks makes it but not the Singing Nun. It does however (more surprisingly) include drugs, zombies, profanity, guns and a fair old bit of sex.

I think the Pope has good taste in guitarists. I'm delighted to see the much-underrated David Crosby album on there. To see the others in the Top Ten click here.

What next? How about Top Ten Holiday Spots? (No 1: Bethlehem). The Pope's favourite cakes? (No 1: Hot cross buns). Top Ten sexual positions (No 1: Missionary).

Much fun to be had here.

She Was Asking For It

We worked so hard for this.

And now it's a joke slogan for a fucking t shirt?

I alternate between two responses.

Weep. Rage. Rage. Weep.

Something must be done.

A majority of women questioned in a survey said they think some rape victims should take responsibility for what happened.

Up to three quarters of women said if a rape victim consented to getting into bed with the assailant before an attack took place, she should accept some responsibility.

One third blamed victims who dressed provocatively or who had gone back to the attacker's home for a drink.

The survey questioned over 1000 people in London, marking the 10th anniversary of the Haven service for rape victims.

Over half of the people questioned, from both sexes, felt that there were circumstances whereby the victim should burden some of the blame.

Valentine Poem

A BIRTHDAY
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a daïs of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.

Not on the Radar

I thought it was a big deal.

I've never been asked to do anything like that before. It might not sound like anything much, but in my sector there are a group of people that are invited to do this kind of stuff - and I'm not in it. Actually no women are in it. Of course.

I was proud. I was excited. I was nervous. I was honoured. I prepared carefully, and on the day I felt I did a good job. Afterwards, all pumped up with adrenaline, I wanted to to be asked all about it. Say how it was, how it went, who was there, what was good.

All quiet on the email front.

I got home and everyone had gone to bed, even though it was only 9.15pm. If it had been the other way around, I'd have waited up. Not that 9.15pm would even count as waiting up, unless you're about five.

I'd bought food for a nice English meal, as the au pair is still finding her feet. He and she had prepared it together, earlier. I looked in the oven for mine, but they hadn't made any for me. I've never made a meal just for myself.

I went upstairs. The light was off. The girls were each asleep in their own rooms, and the au pair's room is occupied now, so I crept into mine.

My phone rang. Mum! Someone to tell about my day! She won't understand much about it, but she'll make the right noises, be pleased to talk to me.

"Turn. That. Fucking. Phone. Off."

She heard him, and then she was worried, thought she was in trouble, didn't want to talk, wouldn't say why she had rung.

Some days I feel very lonely.

My Wings Are Not Of Gossamer

It’s not something I tell many people, obviously.

It isn’t because I find it upsetting to talk about - I mean, obviously I still get upset about it, sometimes, but I’m generally ok to talk about it. It’s because often the other person in the conversation finds it upsetting. They don’t like the story, they don’t like the words, they don’t like to face it.

“You don’t have to talk about it”, they say, with a pleading look, willing me to stop, wanting to put their hands over their ears, run away.

Another reason I don’t like to tell people is that I’m afraid. I’m afraid of how they will respond: I have been let down on this front. “Let down” is in fact too mild a term - I’ll have to invent a stronger version. Something along the lines of “betrayed” or “abandoned” or “denied” but none of those are quite right. In the long run, the responses from the people who were supposed to help me were nearly as upsetting as the event itself. Quite rightly, I expected more.

Nowadays, I don’t expect anything, I just wait and see. On the one hand, I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. On the other hand I refuse to be ashamed. “You shouldn’t tell people about that”, said one guy I told. “It kind of taints you”.

I thought that conversation tainted him more than it tainted me, actually.

Women always respond in the same way. Always touch you. A hug, a hand on the arm, a stroke of the cheek. And affirmation. “You are brave”. “You were strong”. “You have come through so well”.

Men, well you never can tell. Of course, I’ve only told a tiny few. And after the “tainting” conversation, I was afraid to tell men I cared for, in case they said something equally crass that diminished them and things would never be quite the same between us.

In my experience, men don’t say anything at all. Not then, not later. I can’t believe it’s that they don’t care. I think perhaps they don’t know what to say? Suddenly in that instant I seem as delicate as a butterfly’s wing, and a wrong word would crumple and break me, maybe? Men never hug, stroke, touch. Maybe the men I told, four, five in all those years, maybe they all shrank silently from the taint, but only one of them was bold enough to say?

It’s not a trick question in a test. If we are not to be ashamed, if we are brave enough to find the words and fight the fears and carry on with our lives - then you must be brave enough to hear them.

He looked at me for a moment as if I were made of spun glass, said not a word. And what he thought, I have no idea.

Sea Change

Skagen: where two oceans meet

I have had a breakthrough.

As of tomorrow, I am going to stop not-writing by thinking of writing as a treat I don't deserve, and start working-at-my-writing.

Seeing that beautiful, lyrical, moving poetry can take shape in an office, using flipcharts, and Post-It notes, and plans, has shown me that I knew how to write all along.

It looks like planning and hard work. I know how to do that.

Valentine's Day 1: Sweet Sixteen

I remember the planning, the plotting, the trepidation.

How to get a card to the boy of your dreams without him ever suspecting it was you? (A pointless endeavour if ever there was one). And then in the morning, waiting for the postman, sisters punching one another most unalluringly on the bristly doormat to be first to shuffle through the envelopes.

At school perhaps, something slipped in through the edge of the locker door? Or in the evening, dark early, a furtive shuffling of feet outside and something drops through the letterbox. In my most outlandish imaginings, a ring at the bell, no-one to be seen - but a bunch of roses standing proud against the doorstep.

I am reading my 1982 Letts Schoolgirl’s Diary. It’s the year of my O levels and Grade 8 violin, although these important events only merit an occasional passing mention. The year dragged agonisingly by in a series of mostly unrequited crushes (“Dave B. told me stop watching him at football practice. Could feel myself blushing like a beetroot and felt like crying”); boyfriends who let me down (“waited for John to come over but he never did”); desultory skirmishes with lads that weren't worth it (“snogged Mark C. But I don't really like him”); and concern about my weight (“oh no, I weigh 7 stone 7!!!!!! You pig!!!!!”)

I never received a Valentine card from a secret admirer.

And I wouldn’t be sixteen again for all the world.

Just Hold Me

Spring is coming and we will be alright.

Conditional: Tense

Long ago, in a land far, far away lived a girl who liked to play games. They were private games that she played alone, in the weird, wild, wonderful landscapes of her mind.

One of the games she liked to play was deal-making. "If you finish this, then you can do that". "You can have your fun after the washing up". It was a game for getting things done. She didn't trust herself to get anything done at all without the games.

Life for the girl became a series of Pavlovian dog-munchies.

The way to get the really hard things done was to hold back something very desirable. "You can't do that until you've done this". The girl thought she was lazy, couldn't be relied upon to cross stuff off the list under her own steam. So she withheld what she loved, to keep her moving.

Boxed were ticked and time tocked by. Sad and missing her favourite pastime, she cheated a little at the game and sneaked it in under the wire. "If I do it like this, it won't count".

Now she is applying her ingenuity to finding a new deal that starts with the pastime, and ends with a different reward. Clunk, clunk, clunk go the cogs of her conditional deal-making machine.

She is running out of excuses.

Lullaby

The mermaids swim in the turquoise deep

And I will wish you a beautiful sleep.

The mermaid world is not all it seems

And I will wish you wonderful dreams.

The mermaids swim under starry skies

And I will sing you lullabies.

The mermaids swim in a silver lake

And I will kiss you when you awake.

Every night to a watery mermaid tune I sing my little girls to sleep.

Unravelling

Some days I feel as if I might come apart really easily.

I hang by a thread. I am made of dust and shadows.

I am the spaces in between, the silence before the song.

I never found April to be the cruellest month, but this one.

Twenty-five years and still the nightmares can terrify as fresh as yesterday.

Today I pitch and yaw crazily, lose my bearings.

Momentarily as I right myself, I wonder at my mind's refusal to forget things I never want to remember.

Would that I could recall an hour of pleasure as vividly.