Map of the Human Heart

Opinion was pretty conclusive on this week's quiz, wasn't it? 

How to find the way to a man's heart? If he wants you there, he'll show you.  So to follow that logically through, if he doesn't show you, you'd better conclude he doesn't want you there.

And to follow through my no-effort film-title theme going on here, I refer you to the film illustrated above. A vacuous and shallow piece which spend 100 minutes or so conveying the message that if a guy acts like he's just not that into you, you can spend ages with your girlfriends trying to interpret his message, but it will turn out to be that, quite simply, he's just not that into you.

Unfortunately, as I've pointed out before, I'm a slow learner.

Bitter Pill

Ash in my mouth. Every millimetre of the surface of my tongue blotted to dustry dryness.

I have swallowed some hard medicine these last days. Choke it down, choke it down.  How much is a thirst for things I cannot have, and how much is the pills?  How much is it the gulping back of tears, a hollow in the pit of my stomach where part of my inside has been blasted out, imperceptible to the outside world?  How much is the dry mouth of fear at the prospect of walking on with the ground cut from beneath my feet?  This is the sour, metallic taste of humiliation.

It is hard to tell the poison from the cure, sometimes.  Meanwhile I try not gag on this bitter pill.

Geography Lesson

Rutland Water, resting gently blue in its valley of soft greens and early golds, is completely man made. The triumph of creating something that looks so natural seems not just a feat of engineering, but a trompe-l’oeil that compels you to look ever more closely until you can find the artifice. On the Sunday afternoon, I drove to the dam: even right there, I couldn’t see it. Bounded by a ruler-straight edge of water, it was plain on the map; but from the road alongside, it appeared just another rolling slope of grass and trees amongst the others.

There was nothing to give a clue that this is an immense, carefully built structure of clay and stone, with underpinning and escape drains and tunnels and inner strengthening. This hillock, imperceptible in the landscape, dams back hundreds of thousands of tonnes of water yet sits calmly under the weight of the enormous pressure, holding back, holding back, holding back.

People are like this, by the time you get to our age. You can only guess at what they were like before they had created the complex structure of dams and berms and fences and boundaries that get them through. Traffic is re-routed to skirt areas which may not withstand incursion. After a while the raw scars settle down as a new landscape and then it is hard to tell how the original map might have been.

And as adults, we recognise the delicate structure of some else’s geography. We want to be close, but we want to do no harm, breach no carefully-woven hedgerows, burst through the walls of none of the lagoons where pain has been so carefully dammed up.

Delicate as dentists, we are able to keep - with oh such attentive care - to the narrow paths. We can talk, just talk, with no shouting or crying or reproaches or anger. We can find a way to read one another’s maps, to see the expert construction and landscaping skills that were needed to create a human being that can make it through the days, through the long dark winters. Gently guiding, hand-in-hand or arm around the shoulders: look here, but don’t go in. Don’t press here, it will hurt me. Steer away from there, it will hurt you. This is an old part, I’m so used to it now, I almost forget I made it. This a fresh wound, it needs to be left for the grass to grow over: not yet.

Quietly, carefully, we talk, we learn. We don’t expect, at this time of our lives to run free, to ride roughshod, over someone else’s inner landscape. And therefore we can afford to unfurl our maps a little, understanding this can make things simpler rather than more complicated.

We can cope, nowadays, with the contradiction, and the paradox, and the loose ends. We realise that life is untidy and ragged, and we can embrace its messiness. We can allow people the right be exactly the way they are, and gladly accept what is offered, and walk the path together for a while.

Route Map

your name here

So if you wanted to find the way to a man’s heart, how would you go about it?

I suppose it would be sensible to start with a man who you know has a heart in there somewhere to begin with, a capacity for warmth and tenderness, for passion. That’s already ruled out a few chaps we know.

Then the exploring would begin. It’s a blindfold journey with only a few clues along the route. Perhaps it’s the way he listens more carefully to a particular story, the way his eyes light up when he talks on a certain topic, the catch in his voice when he tells you about a memory. The way he softens in your arms at a particular touch, his look when his eyes meet yours at a certain moment.

Sometimes you can find the way. Sometimes you can get close. Sometimes it's like the centre of a maze: tantalisingly slipping into view and then as suddenly away again.

Some men want you to find a different part of the body, lower down. Some men want you on the outside: they don't want you coursing through their veins, echoing their beat. Some men have an invisible tattoo on their heart that says "Closed". Some men have a heart that's open for business, but with a sign out saying "No Vacancy".

To assist with the unravelling of this mystery, I've made it the new Quiz of the Week. Safe for anyone to take part. Even Americans.

Clarity

The buried church at Rutland Water

Sometimes I dig myself into such a place, I wonder how I'll ever get out of it.

But today I feel that expecting less is probably the key. Accept what is offered, while it is there.

And accept (this is the hard part) that in the face of irresistible competition the only way I can maintain my dignity is to lose gracefully.

I wept, I raged. Oh god, you don't know the half of it. Tore myself to pieces inside, took myself to the edge of insanity  -  or maybe even over the edge, we'll never be sure.

And then I thought: the universe will not shift its ways for me. I sit where I sit in the pecking order of life and love. If the waters are rising around me, all I can do, rooted to my spot, is shore myself up.

You're not the only one who's counting down the days, you know.

Lost

"Listen", she said softly, "I don't like to
speak out of turn".

She sat down opposite my desk, closed the door.

"I've seen you every day, worked for you, it's eight years now". Time flies... "This person who comes in here with red eyes every day and goes upstairs and closes the door so we can't see her crying, this is not you. We've lost you. Where are you?"

"Oh don't worry," I warbled cheerily. "I'm fine when I go out to meetings. I'm not like this when I'm out representing the public face."

"I know", she said. "That's not my point. You are suffering from depression: you are ill. You are worrying about things you don't need to worry about. You are thinking in ways that don't make sense. It's not as bleak as it all seems - it's only inside your brain that it's dark".

I didn't say anything. Inside my head it was too dark to see.

"You're going to the doctor", she said. "And not that stupid Yvonne woman". That's a relief.

"Try not to worry. Everything will be ok. You are a good, happy person. We'll get you back".

Maybe everything will be ok.

In the meantime, a promise to myself. I will triangulate my list of worries with the tiny list of people who give a shit, and I will only worry about the things they tell me are worth worrying about. There are good things,I know. Just hard to see them in the dark.

Reassurance

"Are you fishing for reassurance?"

Heck, isn't everyone?

I don't imagine I'm the only person in the world who wants someone to put their arms around me and tell me everything is going to be ok.  Cautious, sensible people won't do that, I suppose.  Too rational to make promises about factors completely beyond their control. Fair enough.

But how about "this particular thing will be ok"? Or how about "if things aren't ok, I will put my arms around you"?  Or something?

I'm scared about lots of things at the moment. I wrote them down to confront my fear head-on. They looked even worse in harsh black-and-white, winking malevolently at me from the screen.

I don't seem like a person who is scared, or like someone who needs reassurance. I'm like a hedgehog. I'm like a conker. I'm like a kitten in a cold hard submarine. I know.

Even just the arms round me, I'd settle for that.



Fishing

River Len where it flows into the lake

Tries harder.

I've kept every personal letter anyone has ever sent me.  Even the only one I ever received from my mother (which told me she thought there were fleas in my carpet).   Some of my favourites are from my cousin who lived in Maidstone -  she's kept all mine too.

Dear Freckles

I am sorry you have all gone home now and it will be boring again.  Mum did another one of her special recipes (errrr) it was a berlati (?) bean bake and it was horrible. We fed it to Fred when she wasn't looking and later he was sick on one of her cushions, the new ones with the ribbon. Cathy had put it on the floor for doing headstands. Well she went mad. Her and dad had a screaming row and we couldn't even watch Doc. Who. She realized what we had done because of all beans in the dog-sick!

The fishing was fun again wasn't it? I saw those boys but I was on my bike so I just rode off really quick. Next time if you can get nets from the beach shop that would be better because the thing with the tights gets all sludgy doesn't it. Greg said he caught an actual trout but we don't believe him.

I have a new plan. At exactly precisely 7.00pm on Monday night you pinch Soppy Sister W and I will pinch Soppy Sister C. We have not finished getting them yet, no way.

I have asked my dad and the thing about the Free House is definitely not true, so that is the end of that plan.

See you in two weeks, countdown 14 and backwards.

M xxx

We used to fish in the stream by the waterfall in Mote Park, just around the corner and over the road from their house. We made fishing nets by threading a metal coathanger through the top of a nylon popsock (American Tan, no doubt), twisting it into a loop, and then ramming the twist of metal into the top of bamboo cane.  These nets we dragged endlessly in the mud and occasionally caught a stickleback.

Sometimes we would look down and realise that a leech had attached itself to our skinny ice-cold calves. We knew the remedy and had already pinched a couple of cigarettes and a box of matches from my dad. Light up, take a couple of puffs to make the end nice and red, then touch it onto the leech: taking care not to touch it onto your own skin in the process.  Then pretend to smoke, by putting the cigarette in between your lips and trying hard not to breathe whilst looking as if you were.

The places are all still the same. Maybe kids still fish for sticklebacks in the park? Or maybe that's so last-century. I don't suppose I will stand in a stream again, fishing with an old stocking until my feet turn blue with cold. These days feel like yesterday, and a lifetime ago.

Half of life has passed, maybe, likely, more. And maybe there will be less first-times, and an ever-growing proportion of last-times. And for some things it's already been the last-time, even if we don't know it yet.

I struggle to accept this. I do.

Sunday

My neediness is repellent. I make myself feel sick.

Gloom

Strange that a feeling so grey and drear could be woven from these threads.

An ache that echoes someone else's pain.
A knowledge that I couldn't make things better.
A lurch of recognition of all day saying the wrong words, the wrong way.
Bed on my own, early even after a night out.
Painkiller doses creeping into red.
Clouds and rain and darkness. October.

Keep me company?

Paradox

Not entirely without self-awareness, I do realise that I would be so much easier to love if I didn't want it so much.

The Anniversary Waltz

If I had stuck it out with Husband # 1 I'd have just passed my 20th wedding anniversary now. What a strange thought  - for many reasons. I don't feel old enough to have been doing anything for twenty years, although actually I've been running my business for more than fifteen so I guess it must be true. That first wedding seems a world away  -  I'm a completely different person now, and so, I imagine, is he. No wonder we're not still together.

But lots of people still are, aren't they? How many of them, do you think, choose to stay together because they have grown up and outwards in the same direction, and love each other and love to be together? 

And how many are together for the children? Or, children up and gone, are still together through inertia? Well, these are the questions we don't ask. Facades must be maintained at all times, otherwise our nice middle-class professional world will implode.

My twentieth wedding anniversary should have been celebrated with the gift of China. I imagine after twenty years you've stopped giving each other decent, touching, personal gifts. Or maybe you are chucking so much china around that a replacement batch would be timely.  Luckily I scored the Royal Doulton in my divorce settlement. However he got the cutlery so I had to wait till my second wedding to get some decent knives and forks.

I'd be in the run-up (miserable slip-and-slide?) to my 25th, my Silver Wedding, now.  21 years is Nickel or Brass apparently (so old now that you are collecting crappy fireside ornaments?) 22 is Copper (likewise, maybe a little pikey kettle to go on your hearth?) 23 Silver Plate (replacing your wedding cutlery, I suppose?) 24 is Musical Instruments (nearly at retirement, time to take up a new hobby?) and then your 25th which is Silver, as any fule kno.  Maybe a trophy for having made it to a quarter of a century without killing each other or yourselves.

Are you gonna make it that far?

I of course am on the second spin of the roundabout, and only recently. Talk about the triumph of hope over experience.  My first anniversary, which passed in the summer, was Paper. Since the whole shebang was prompted by tax and inheritance issues, and was therefore a business deal, how very very appropriate.  My second will be Cotton. Bandages, maybe? 

Taking me up to the Seven Year Itch (otherwise known as Woop!!! The moment when Child # 2 goes to college and I am free!!) we can celebrate year 3 with Leather (interesting....), 4 is Fruit or Flowers (see, giving in so early with crap gifts  -  banana, anyone?), 5 is Wood, 6 is Iron and 7 is Wool or Copper. Enough said.

Child #1 asked me the other day "Mummy, next time you get married, I will be your chief bridesmaid, won't I?"

I explained that I wasn't thinking of getting married again (oh so many reasons).  "But you should, you really should!" she urged.

"Oh look!" I exclaimed. "I think that's a chaffinch on the bird-feeder".  Sometimes it's best just to change the subject.

Sex Lives of the Americans

How fascinating! A survey which appears to indicate that Americans aren't prudes after all.  

The results show dramatic differences from previous such studies: this is attributed to the fact that the survey was completed on line.  Unlike being questioned by an interviewer, they think an anonymous computer response mechanism makes it easier to tell the truth.

Possibly...... But I reckon it also makes it easier to lie.  With no lady in a white coat to raise an eyebrow when you make your outlandish claims.  I mean look, just LOOK at some of the results, then extrapolate them out to the Americans you know. It doesn't compute, does it?

I realise it's a generalisation, yes. But I also reckon the Americans I know are not gonna do some of that stuff in a million years.  And they're the enlightened, travelling-in-Europe ones who have been prepared to adopt many of our racy continental habits. Just not all of them.

I've only had one American boyfriend, but it was an experience that made quite a significant impression on me, and I couldn't help but think of him when I saw this survey.  He was my fourth proper boyfriend (ok, lover) and we'd been getting along just fine. Wine had flowed, fun had been had, sex had been achieved on several evenings without too much embarrassed fumbling or unexpected setbacks.

So there we were, fooling around Bill-n-Monica style ;-) Actually I'm so old that Monica Lewinsky probably hadn't even been conceived at that point, but hey you know what I mean.  I looked up at him in what I like to think was a sultry, sexy fashion and asked "do you want my finger in your ass when you come?"

I thought that was a reasonable question. After all, my first two men had specifically asked for this, and the previous one had not asked me to stop when I'd headed that way. Not so with this chap though.  He pulled away with a look on his face like I'd asked him to eat dog-shit. "That is absolutely disgusting" he said coldly.

"I think some men like it..." I said, suddenly feeling embarrassed.  "Not Americans," he stated categorically. He put his clothes on, left, and then put a note in my pigeon hole saying we were fundamentally incompatible and he didn't wish to see me any more.  However as it was a small college he did have to see me pretty much every day for the next two and half years. He never spoke to me again.

I wondered with horror whether the three men I'd slept with were the only men in the whole world who like this after all, and that in fact I was a depraved filthy slut.  Praise the lord for the electronic porn-highway otherwise known as the internet, which has reassured me that is not after all a totally outlandish practice (and that depraved filthy sluts are actually in high demand).   I never dated another American though.

The survey says there are five "basic acts" which may be included in a sexual encounter. These are

• "PVI" (penis-vagina sex)
• Solo Masturbation
• Mutual Masturbation
• Oral Sex
• Anal Sex

Inexplicably they missed out two more (or am I a depraved filthy slut for including these on a list?)

• Sex toys
• Porn

I have a poor understanding of statistics but I seem to recall that to work out all possible combinations of seven possibilities you'd do a big hard calculator sum that goes 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x 7.  By my reckoning that makes over 5,000 combinations.  Is that right?

Suddenly the upcoming prospect of a dreary seven-month long winter seems like a lot more fun! Assuming of course the availability of a willing playmate.

(Listen carefully to hear the sound of hands rubbing together with glee).

Before I Sputter Out

Today for the first time ever, I have given in. I couldn't think of a single reason to get up. So I knocked back a glass of 600mg soluble Brufen (only available in Spain, the connoisseur's painkiller of choice), chased it down with a sneaky CoCodamol and pulled the covers back over my head.

2 hours of oblivion and now I'm already awake again.

Novocaine for the soul - where to find such a thing?

Party Conference

Beautiful Roast Sunday Lunch

Enjoy it. No-one else did.

Just Like Forever

Yep. It's official.