Herald

For Christmas, she gave him the city
Wrapped in a tinsel of fairy-lights
Bank baubles twinkling at the wharf
The Shard above as a guiding star
In a firmament of planes and satellites.


Pigeons can be puff-chested angels for today
As the river rolls its slow deep carol
Pumping a hundred hydraulic hearts
Energy flows beneath the pavement-skin
In tunnels tangled with candy-twist cable.


Music is in the bow of every crane
Tube tracks click out the Morse-code beat
A rhythm of barges along the canals
In the noise of streets, the quiet of empty churches
Just for him the city sings its joy.

Comfort and Joy

Sometimes too much contemplation doesn't do anyone any good. The easy joys, the simple pleasures, get lost to view.

It's all very well to think about the sweep of time, the trajectory of a life, the arc of time passing  -  but there's a different way to look too.

Am I smiling? Right now this second? The answer is yes. And maybe that's all we need to know. It's actually really ridiculously easy to make me happy.

Last Dance

If you thought it was the last time you would see someone, would you do anything differently? Would you say things you wouldn't normally say? Or would you carry on as if everything was normal, and it was just an ordinary day?

I'm never good at goodbyes, not even au revoirs  -  I'm so concerned I'll get over-emotional that I tend to end up rushing off without really leaving properly. And I never look back: you mustn't. Who would want to turn into a pillar of salt? Or even worse, a person with regrets, who questions their decisions and keeps turning round to contemplate the roads not taken.

I reckon it's best to say the things you've got to say at the time they should be said, in the instant they come into your head (or your heart, or whichever part of the anatomy is running the show at any given juncture).  No point in storing things up for a right moment that might never come  -  as soon as you think something and don't say it, you've probably already missed the right moment.

Don't wait - in this stage of our lives, there are too many reminders that it's later than you think.

Whispers

If you listen carefully, you'll hear all the things I don't say. It's in the words I don't utter, the emails I don't send, the stories I don't tell.

Silence is a girl's loudest cry.

Factual Attraction

Speaking from the heart is not necessarily a good idea, particularly if the person you're speaking to is listening from the head. 

It's a risk after all. You go out there on a limb and   -  yes, there you are, out on a limb. Like a snail without its shell, like a baby bird with no feathers, while the chilly winds of reason whip about you.

Poets need to remember, I suppose, that not everyone is a poet.  That words don't count, or can't be nearly precise enough to take us where we want to be. As Margaret Attwood said, "the Eskimo have fifty words for snow because it's important to them; there ought to be as many for love".  But there aren't, not even for Margaret. So what hope is there for the rest of us?

Let's stick to the bare facts, then. Stop that romanticising claptrap right now. Bring on the maths and physics, the evaluation and the objective test.

And don't gaze into her eyes like that  -  it doesn't mean anything. The eyes are not the windows to the soul: they are organs for converting light into electromagnetic impulses.

Simple

"Life is short. There is no time to leave important words unsaid."

Paulo Coelho

Be

Life is a series of moments all called now.

We don't know how many of these moments we have left. How many of them do we miss, thinking about the past, worrying about the future? How many of them do we waste doing nothing worthwhile? How many are ruined with unkindness, unpleasantness? Ticked away in boredom?

I know I'm alive when life takes me by the hand, grabs me by the throat, makes my heart skip a beat, kicks me in the guts, looks me in the eye and says: game on. I want to feel the blood rushing, the world spinning, to stay up all night, to stay in bed all day, to be all used up when I go.

I want to live rather than exist. I want to sing not whisper. I want to be the flame, not the moth. Dance with me.

Tumble

Thirteen years since she died and I still miss my Granny.  She was wise - not in a mysterious way, but with a straightforward, olden-times, common-sense approach which seemed hard-wired to fundamental truths.

I was thinking today about some advice she gave, a long time ago now. "Never", she said, "fall for someone who isn't there to catch you".

I didn't listen to her, and look where I am now. So would anyone listen to me, if I dispense some good old-fashioned wisdom myself?

Neolojism

So it turns out that Brian Sewell (who according to the Daily Mail is "posher than the Queen") is not as one might think a sexless neutered artwerk who lives entirely in the realm of the cerebral. In fact he claims to have shagged more than 1000 different partners in a quinquennium. He's the king of the casual pick-up. Who knew?

I also learned a new word from this article. Quinquennium. Words like this are the stock in trade for Mr Sewell, who I am sure bewildered his bus-drivers and engineers and hod-carriers with such pretentious and abstruse vocabulary before inviting them up to see his etchings.

Quinuquennium isn't a new word, it was just new to me, but I could guess its meaning due to my useless, pointless languages degree.  I also came across two new and easily-guessable words this week. Oh how I love new words! And I particularly love these two.

They're two of the one-day courses we offer at the college where I'm a governor. And before you get excited, they're sold out until Easter. We already had a thriving beauty treatment curriculum, and a great line in henna hand-painting for weddings, so we've jumped on the latest bandwagon to offer sessions where one can learn how to vajazzle and twattoo. Popular for honeymoons, holidays, parties (....?) and first dates. This makes dating sound quite scary these days, if that amount of effort is required to get ready.

I looked up these terms on the internet to see if there was a suitable picture for the blogpost. Trust me, there wasn't. Imagine a plucked turkey with some biro drawing on it, and a few stick-on sparkles. It's not very nice - you'll only upset yourself.

However, if you'd like to join a waiting list for one of the courses, let me know and I'll book you on...

Desolate

So finally we have a diagnosis for my nephew, five years after he lost the ability to walk, then to speak, then to swallow, then to move at all.  We were hoping for...... I'm not sure what we were hoping for exactly, other than we were hoping for some hope.

What we are offered is a scenario devoid of hope, and yet also devoid of certainty (bar the eventual outcome). What will happen next? And when? And how fast? And how long might it all take? Will he live until his next birthday? Will he make to 10, to 18? And with what sort of quality of life will he have?

I'm the oldest child of the three of us. I'm supposed to sort things out, support everyone else. And there is nothing I can do to fix things, nor to console.

We are inconsolable.

Gastronauts

"The first time I ate testicles was in Afghanistan".

I'd only just switched the radio on, but already I was gripped. Turned out he was talking about lambs, rather than Abu Ghraib.

Apparently meals should be an adventure (snail porridge, anyone?) you should eat olives whilst stroking a pieces of silk ribbon, and have oysters whilst wearing headphones that play sea-sounds.  I was about to turn over to Kerrang when they started talking more seriously about Marinetti's Manifesto of Futurist Cooking. Now this was really, really interesting. You might not admire his politics, but his fellow Italians hated him much more for his assertion that pasta should be abolished as it causes lassitude, pessimism and a lack of passion.

The presenter introduced a fatuous food-freak who said that children would find meals more exciting if they had made a custard-powder flame thrower first. Maybe so, but I know quite a few kids who would not eat custard as they already know it will kill them for certain, flame-throwing or no.

I couldn't wait to get home and consult the interweb to find out more about Marinetti. I found this description of one of his meals, and wondered if there is anywhere one could try it.

One Futurist dessert, called Italian Breasts in the Sunshine, features almond paste topped with a strawberry, then sprinkled with fresh black pepper. This is one of the few palatable dishes in Marinetti's Futurist Cookbook.

Another entry in the cookbook describes a Tactile Dinner. Pajamas have been prepared for the dinner, each one covered with a different material such as sponge, cork, sandpaper, or felt. As the guests arrive, each puts on a pair of the pajamas. Once all have arrived and are dressed in pajamas, they are taken to an unlit, empty room. Without being able to see, each guest chooses a dinner partner according to their tactile impression. The guests then enter the dining room, which consists of tables for two, and discover the partner they have selected.

The meal begins. The first course is a 'polyrhythmic salad,' which consists of a box containing a bowl of undressed lettuce leaves, dates and grapes. The box has a crank on the left side. Without using cutlery, the guests eat with their right hand while turning the crank with their left. This produces music to which the waiters dance until the course is finished.

The second course is 'magic food', which is served in small bowls covered with tactile materials. The bowl is held in the left hand while the right picks out balls made of caramel and filled with different ingredients such as dried fruits, raw meat, garlic, mashed banana, chocolate, or pepper. The guests cannot guess what flavor they will encounter next.

The third course is 'tactile vegetable garden,' which is a plate of cooked and raw green vegetables without dressing. The guest eats the vegetables without the use of their hands, instead burying their face in the plate of vegetables, feeling the sensation of the greens on their face and lips. Each time a guest raises their head to chew, the waiters spray their face with perfume.

Between each dish the guests finger the pajamas of their dinner partner.

Play with your food. Want to play with me?

Alternative Armour

I'm a small, nervous person hiding inside someone else's body that I don't even recognise. How did that happen?

Desperate measures are required. Plans are being laid. I am running out of time for everything, everything.

Elastic

I like to say I have no regrets - that I am the sum total of my collective experiences, and that the choices I made have made me who I am. 

But I guess I do regret one thing - and that's the way some things turn out to be choices, without me ever realising I'd chosen them. There are things that happened by default, by accident, that I never would have chosen if someone had asked me to.  This is the story of the main one.

It's about a boy. Isn't it always? 

We were at school together. We were chalk and cheese, in a lot of ways.  He was rugby, I was reading. He was bravado and I was was brains. Yet there was something there, always something.  We liked each other, we really did.  He was cocky, funny, popular. I was none of these things. Heaven only knows what he saw in me, but we had a connection.  Any chance we got for a snog, we'd grab it.

He was easy to spend time with, in the boring days of summer when we had no money and all we could do was lie on the grass at the edge of the cricket pitch next to the squash club, talking shit and smoking with the rest of them. I didn't go out with him - he never asked me. I'm not sure I would have done, at school, for the simple stupid reason he was a few months younger, and therefore in the year below. Even in my nerdy swot uncoolness, I understood that a younger boyfriend might be social suicide.

It was ok because I was saving him for later.  I was saving him for when he left school. He was leaving before me, going into the army. After that it would be ok to go out with him. I was just waiting.

Stupidly, I didn't account for the fact that once he was in the army, he wouldn't be around any more, and that when he was around he would need to do family stuff. Stupidly, I didn't account for the fact that once he was in the army, and I was at university, his leave would not match with my end of term dates.  

I liked him even more after a few years. We wrote to each other a bit. We saw each other, Christmases mostly, when everyone else was around too. There was a sexual connection sparking between us, sometimes you could almost see it like a Ready-Brek glow, I was sure, but we never had much chance to follow it through. 

It was ok because I was saving him for later. It was ok because I fantasised about him. A lot. Not that he knew, but it kept him in scope.  I wanted him so, so badly.  That part he knew, that part he felt too, at that time. We only managed to get it together on one occasion. I say that casually but I could still tell you every moment. I could tell you the smell of his neck, the weight of him pressed against me, the cold at the small of my back on the cold hard centre-circle of the playing field. 

Then suddenly it was later than we realised. He was going out with a nurse. It was serious. Everyone said she was lovely. Well fuckit. I decided to marry one of my friends, and the last time I saw him was at my wedding. He brought a basket of flowers to the evening do.  It was a shame to leave them behind so we sat them on the dresser of the honeymoon cottage in Cornwall. They stared at me in silence and I already knew I had made a mistake.  Not because I should have married him instead, that isn't what I mean. Just that I shouldn't have married a man who couldn't eclipse my fantasies of a different man, even on our honeymoon. 

Then we were barely in touch. Maybe there wasn't a connection at all any more. I heard where he was stationed - Belize, Kosovo - and I always managed to find out that he had made it back ok. I wondered whether he thought of me like I thought of him. Pretty often.  He was my favourite fantasy. I wondered whether he sensed I was thinking of him, whether he got a brain-itch, a cock-twitch? I got divorced, but he was happy, married, kids. I left well alone.

We had a little flirt by email, for a couple of weeks, a few years later, then he disappeared off the radar. Lately I've been thinking about him more, since a strange coincidence put me back in touch with his brother. I didn't ask about him - I was afraid to give myself away. Only knew that he was "doing all right". I scoured the internet but he wasn't to be found. What would happen if I tracked him down?

1. He wouldn't remember who I was. I'd imagined a connection, an attraction that was completely one-sided. That would be awful.

2. He would remember who I was, but not remember any connection. He would have forgotten all that flirting and kissing, the superb once-in-a-lifetime sex. That would be awful.

3. He would remember who I was, and be angry I'd got in contact, tell me to leave him alone. That would be awful. 

4. He would remember who I was, and it would all be there, just as it was.  And we would be older and bolder, and determined to follow through. That would be awful.

Actually I'm lying, that would be brilliant, I expect, that last option, but you can't save someone else's husband for later, can you. Can you? 

He's the one that got away. He's the one regret. And for that, if for nothing more, he holds a special place. 

Love in a Minor Key

George moved to America after the war.  He moved there with his friend David - they played together in a band and wanted to find their fortune.

David eventually married, although George never did. He worked in a series of dull day jobs in Philadelphia, the city where David lived. Then moved to New Jersey when David's moved there, and worked in a sugar refinery until he retired, playing jazz piano in clubs in the evenings.

George lived alone until he retired. Over eighty now, he resides in a nursing home after a stroke last year, the last-but-one of the seven brothers.  Dad, the youngest, goes regularly to visit him and has arranged for him to play the piano every day for the other residents.  Dad was clearing out the last few things from George's apartment - only a few cardboard boxes of items to show for a life, and mostly records.  A few of them were George's own recordings from before he left England, with his trio.

"What's this?" dad asked, holding up a big old reel of tape.

"Oh yes," said George. "That's my Songbook. I haven't been able to play it since about 1975, it needs a reel-to-reel player and no-one has one any more".

Dad brought it back to Britain, took it to a specialist company who made it into a CD: George singing and playing 25 original songs. It's recorded in someone's living room but the piano, and the quality, and sound balance are good - it could have been recorded yesterday.  Heartbreaking lyrics, imaginative composition, faultlessly played. Go back to the 1950s and remember this is a man who played sometimes with George Shearing, who jammed at Ronnie Scott's.

Some of this music is just too wonderful to sit on a CD in my house, and the untold story behind the lyrics of unrequited love makes those minor chords even more poignant. What shall I do with it, I wonder?

Season of Mists

Maybe it doesn't have the bright-green, brash optimism of spring, but autumn is perhaps the most beautiful season after all.

Five geese are flying in perfect formation alongside my train as it rolls through the green and gold of the Chilterns, and I stop my thoughts to notice this, the purposeful dark V through the orange of the leaves against a clear blue sky.

Every regret, every "that was the last time I....", every "now I realise I will never...." will be exorcised with a new, good thing to look forward to. I will have to manufacture these, conjure them from my imagination and hope that with an alchemist's spell, with a magical sleight of mind, I can convince myself that a trip to the Thames Barrier is just as good as a month of Caravaggios, pasta and horny sex in Venice with the Man Of My Dreams.

This could work, right?

Five things I will do this autumn.

1. Walk the path in the Chilterns
2. Have a drink at the Prospect of Whitby
3. Use my voucher for a farmhouse breakfast
4. See Little Venice and walk along the canal
5. Visit the church where my dad was a chorister

Lots of good things are yet to come.

Diminuendo

I suppose we have to reduce our expectations. I'm no mathematician, but I understand the Law of Diminishing Returns and I see that life slips past the point of the curve where things are going to get better.

We have to find a way to live with the fact that the best is not yet to come - it has already been and gone. Hope to goodness we enjoyed it at the time, even if we didn't recognise it for what it was.

One way to manage down the hopes, but without spending the next 25 years sunk in grey despair and disappointment, might be to recognise that perhaps the very best times passed unacknowledged, but there are still good times ahead. We will appreciate smaller joys much more than we did the greater ones, as our wisdom - albeit acquired too late  - has shown us that these moments need to be savoured and cherished.

Perhaps the art is to find happiness in the small details?

The Knowledge

I was thinking.

To get to know someone, really know them, takes a lot of work, and thought, and time.  You'd have to concentrate, listen and be interested, stay close. You'd have to make bonds and keep them tight, you'd have to touch and hold, walk hand-in-hand, dance cheek-to-cheek, lie nose-to-nose.

You'd have to talk, and tell. Confide and open up. Tell your hopes and dreams, your secrets and shames, your fears and despair.

So I was wondering. If very few people really know me, is that because they didn't try? Or is it because they could already tell I wasn't worth the effort?

Inside Out

We sat in a coffee bar near Blackfriars. It's closed down now. He was telling me he had starting seeing someone else, fallen in love with her: it was the last time we met.

"The thing is" he said bitterly, "I never really felt I knew you. You never let me get close. We had some fun times but there was always a barrier that I couldn't seem to get through".

The truth can cut right to the bone, can't it.

But how well can you ever really know someone? How close can you get? Maybe there would be a series of tests a person could progress through, like levels on a video game. What newspapers do I read? Am I right or left-handed? What colour are my eyes? What would I order in a restaurant? Where did I grow up? What do I like to dance to? How do I like to be touched? Could you recognise me in the dark, just by the smell of my skin?

Do we ever really know someone else?

Shame

I knew she was upset about the fight with her friend, but she wouldn't say much about it.

After she'd gone to bed, I logged on to her Facebook, to try and work out what had happened. Seems weird to me, having an argument on-line, but I guess if you can fall in love on line and have sex on line, then having a cyber-row is relatively run-of-the-mill for Generation Tweenager.

"No one likes you", it said. "Everyone laughs at you because your mum is so ugly and so fat.  She looks stupid and old and really boring. She wears mum clothes and she is just GROSS".

The Lost Picture Show

I stayed in an apartment opposite here last week. Britain is full of buildings like this: none of them cinemas any more but still thronged with the glamorous ghosts of the glory days of film.  Redolent of the cigarettes from the time when everyone smoked, and wore hats, and went to the pictures.

These buildings are too big to demolish, so they sit in the midst of the old high streets  -  streets themselves that have been overtaken by retail parks and out of town stores and precincts.  Mosques, bingo halls, gyms, or possibly nightclubs, they still serve as places where people go to have fun.

I've travelled widely in this country with my work, and most towns, even small, can muster a masterpiece like this - a Gaumont, a Roxy, a Ritzy.  One day I would like to find the time to photograph these buildings. I'd like to capture them in a book, or perhaps a blog, with a photo and a piece of creative writing for each one.

I do not want to run out of time to do the things I promised myself I'd always do.  And I need to reconcile myself to the fact that if I want to do these things, I must do them on my own otherwise I won't be doing them at all.

Missing The Point

I am Ravenspurn: once of importance but now eroded away to nothingness.  I am having so much of myself lasered away that soon I will be hollowed out, delicate as a blown robin's egg.

The looming sensation of dread at the resumption of healthcare indignities various is something I am trying to fend off - I imagine it like a shadow falling over life, a blocking of the sun.  And I'm not the only one, of course not. All of us are beginning to crumble, one way and another. Our Achilles Heels are showing themselves.

Parts of the coast are falling away, but East Yorkshire will still be East Yorkshire even if Spurn Point becomes Spurn Island in the end.  Ravenspurn that town of old is now reinvented as an oilfield. So I suppose even with parts of us cut out - cervixes, knees, gallstones, breast lumps, lengths of intestine, whatever  - we're still who we are.

Whoever we are. Whoever I am.

Ache

I try to live in the moment, honestly I do.  I try to be still and present and mindful, to concentrate on the here and now.

Sometimes I do this so well I lose myself. There is no sense of time passing, just a feeling of now, and now, and now.  And I wonder whether that is how to be happy: not to analyse, or reflect but simply to smile and say "now, I am happy", not wanting to be anywhere else.

It's the in-between times that are the trouble.  When there is nothing happening. When mindful turns to mindless. When the worries start creeping in. What if that was the last happy moment? What if that was the last time?

Is it ageing, this fear of the last time? Or is it a different angst?

My happy moments seem afterwards unsubstantive.  Are they the last rays of a sun setting to grey dullness and a slow fade to black? If I held those moments, turned them over in my hand, would they crush to nothing? If I laughed too hard, shouted with joy, sighed with regret, would they blow away entirely?

Was there anything there at all? How could I be sure?

I want to mark these moments when they come now, recognise them. I don't want to be too shy to speak the good things, while there are any good things to speak.

Escape Route

Can you imagine it? A situation where a wild, passionate, adventurous, free-spirited poet somehow becomes trapped in the life of a boring management consultant. It's like a sort of modern-day Grimm Brothers fairy-horror.

If it happened to me, I know just what I would do.

It would be important not to get found out otherwise disaster of an unspecified nature would strike. So I would button myself tightly into my business suit and play the role to perfection. Then every time something happened that seemed as if it might elicit an inappropriate response (anger, tears, falling in love, belly laughs, multiple orgasms, writing, getting drunk, dancing) I'd wrap it up quick and put it in a box.  Lock it up, lock it down, file it away.  Then get back to being Appropriate.

Boy oh boy there would be a lot of boxes stacked up there by now, if it were me.  I'd bet some of those boxes would have stuff banging away, rattling about, trying to break out. Keeping them all nailed down, that would take some time and trouble: all that authenticity, that vibrant, messy, noisy lifeforce,  wanting to escape and see the light of day.  It would be some job, holding it all in.  I'd get tired of it, I expect.

And then what would happen?  I don't know the rest of the story.

Go Figure

So eventually, after much to-ing and fro-ing, the Brainchild returns. Sixteen and a half years I've been running this business now. Whoever would have thought I'd have the tenacity to stick at anything for that amount of time? Not me, that's for sure.

I was wondering how many people I've employed over that period. How many hours billed, how many pounds spent with suppliers. I feel I've done my bit to contribute to the economy (parlous state be it in these days).

As I am a smallbusinessperson, I won't be getting an MBE or a lucrative government advisory post - although I have played my part just as much as the next guy. Half the economy is made up of businesses like mine, although you don't read about us often in the press, or see us on tv or hear us on the radio. We sit uneasily, not coalminers yet not quite fat cats. Not worthy of the FT, yet subject to the same tax-regime as venture capitalists, for the relatively modest rewards.

I'm not complaining - I have a nice life. I've earned it all honestly myself, at no one else's expense and to no one else's detriment. I am quietly proud. Quietly too I've given away 10% of my time and 5% of my income every year.

And all my tedious training and work in the City, that I felt was the soul-destroying career-gulch of my early twenties, taught me enough after all to enable me to sell my business at the top of the market and buy it back at the bottom just like the text books said.

Now all I have to do is sell it again. The infernal roundabout keeps on turning.

Beavering Away

She watched him from beneath her fringe with a steady gaze. He was cleaning his brushes on a white rag, and the bitter tang of turpentine caught in her throat as the reds of lip and hair, the green of eyes and the pale rose of skirt blurred together into a thick smear of dull brown on the cloth.

He never looked her in the eye, although he would stare intently at a wrist, or a nipple, or a wrinkle in the rough woollen stockings; then down to his work, the brushes delicately caressing the taut canvas.

He touched her from time to time in an impersonal, detached manner - to adjust a piece of fabric, or lift a section of her hair to fall across her cheek in a particular way. Once, he pushed his thumb between her lips to part them and show her teeth. He tasted of paint and salt.

He had rarely spoken to her, and only then with instructions on the pose. He had not asked her name, after all these weeks.

"I'm Anna," she said, quietly.

He frowned, came over and tilted her head downwards slightly, taking her chin between his finger and thumb.

"It doesn't matter, your name". He stared intently at the pot of brushes, stroked a flat-ended sable across the back of his hand. She knew his, of course. Everyone knew. She wondered who bought the paintings, where they would hang. She could not imagine what sort of house, what kind of room, would have on its walls a large image of a half-naked girl in rumpled wool stockings. No other man or boy had ever seen her naked, no hand apart from his had touched her skin beyond a handshake.

She watched the painter mix his colours with a scowl of concentration, care for his brushes with the tenderness of a lover. He painted with sure, confident strokes although he did not allow her to look at the work. She pictured him running his hand across the jut of her collarbone and into the shadow of her neck, and felt her cheeks suddenly blush.

(20 minute writing workshop exercise)

Typical girl - all foreplay and action? Answer my quiz of the week.

Make it stop
Please don't stop
Wake me up when it's over
Oh you tease - where's the rest?

Ripping Yarns

I skived off work this afternoon and went to a workshop: How To Write Erotic Fiction.

It's pretty much exactly two years since I went on a writing workshop - the first one I'd been to since university. I determined to start taking my writing seriously - and started this blog to exercise my writing muscle.

Now I've been published twice in anthologies, done a number of readings, and feel able to introduce myself (in certain circles anyway) as a writer. This is where I was going.  This is where I am supposed to be.

Although I'm not entirely sure that erotic fiction is exactly the correct destination  -  it might be more of a fun diversion.  The woman running the workshop was called Mitzi (my porn-starlet name, how funny....), an American who writes mixed-genre fiction, including the erotic (and with a call out right now for submissions to her new anthology). 

She had some useful reflections on this kind of writing, and the differences between the horny (=good) and the porny (=bad).  I remain to be convinced about this distinction, as sometimes real life scenarios can be very exciting precisely because they are porny. Nonetheless, I did agree with her that a writer should be clear at the outset whether she is aiming for a two-handed or a one-handed read. So to speak.

Personally, I feel there's a time and a place for everything.

We had to do a couple of writing exercises, then read them to the group. Writing something erotic is one thing. Reading it out to a group of strangers in a genteel county-town hotel in the middle of the afternoon is another thing entirely. However I did not find it as embarrassing as I still do to read my poetry in front of friends. Isn't that strange?

I realised with both the exercises (one inspired by a postcard of an Egon Schiele painting, on a write-up of someone else's fantasy picked out of a hat) that I was taking longer than everyone else to get to the money-shot.  I am not sure whether that made it more exciting, with more of a sensual build-up, or whether that just made it rubbish.  I might write up what I wrote, and seek e-verdicts, what do you think? Horny? Porny? Or just dull dull dull?  I mean, obviously I've written about sexy stuff before, but is it sexy? And who gets to be the arbiter of that? (Now there's a job...)

I've got another workshop on Thursday, and a reading of my poems on Friday.  Some of the poems are quite sexy, but I've not had the chance to read many of these in public - it gets complicated. A genteel tearooms in the middle of the afternoon is not the place to start, either.

Gentle

We live in such a beautiful country.

I woke just before it was light on Saturday morning and decided to go for a run along the path around the golf course as the sun came up.  This wonderful, unexpected Indian summer dawned with a perfect clear sky and a mist hugging the fields in the valley down by the river.

Even the golfers and dog-walkers were not out yet, as I jogged along crunching the leaves under my feet with squirrels, rabbits, a hare and two dancing foxes in the far field to keep me company. At the top of the climb the spires were caught by the first rays while the rest of the town was still grey and sleeping. 

As I run this route, I can see the season's change in every vista, every tree. I began in the bright greens of early summer, and yesterday leaves were falling all around me as I passed. In one place, I thought a strip of sun had slit through the trees onto the path ahead, but when I came closer it was a vivid orange stripe of tiny fruits which had dropped in the night.

"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy." (Apollinaire).

Fingers On Buzzers

There's a new quiz. A kind of can't-be-arsed, yet musical, theme. Answering is both undemanding and anonymous. How fortunate.

Several questions. Go on.

• Are we human, or are we dancers?
• Are you experienced?
• Is this the way to Amarillo?
• Do you know the way to San Jose?
• Should I stay or should I go?
• What have you done for me lately?
• Is there life on Mars?
• Don't you want me baby?
• Do you wanna touch me?
• What difference does it make?

Be philosophical or factual. It doesn't make any difference.

Film Review 2011 #04

"We thought we'd watch a film while you were away. Jennifer Aniston is my most favourite actress and we liked this film when we saw it on the plane.

"Actually we stopped watching it before the end and went to bed early. OhmyGOD that dog took a long time to die! We just got bored waiting".

Defining Features

  

To what extent do we define ourselves by the things that other people tell us? If we hear the same stories about ourselves often enough, they sound so familiar they start to have a ring of truth. And when they come from a voice of authority, they arrive even the first time we hear them with the stamp of firm fact rather the fluff of opinion to be taken or brushed aside.

Of these tales we hear, what do we decide and take on board and what do we ignore? Do some of them strike an immediate chord, so we allow them to strike home and set up residence in our definitions of ourselves? Or are they insidious, creeping under the carpets, fingering their way through the patches of soft mortar in our self-protection, winding their way in to our minds like poison ivy?

When you know a little bit about people, the truths they tell you about themselves don’t always seem to be quite right. It makes me wonder.

“I’m unlucky in love”, he frowned. Doomed to be unrequited and never get the girl I wanted. Did he believe his own story so much that he married a girl who wasn’t The Very Thing, having convinced himself that what he wanted was out of range? Did he meet the right girl, but still feel dissatisfied because if he had managed to snare her, she must by definition, be wrong?

“I’m never satisfied”, he said. And it became a self-fulfilling prophesy, as what he had never felt like it was enough, because he couldn’t recognise contentment when it wrapped its warm blanket around his soul.

“I’ve never really loved anyone, never been in love”, he confessed. He gave it lots of other words: infatuation, fondness, friendship, affection, respect, lust. Madness, even. A rose by any other name never smells quite as sweet, after all.

“I don’t love my stepson as if he were my own blood-child”, he told me. He didn’t expect to, because he was told he wouldn’t. Love only blossoms in your heart when you give it permission to grow, after all, when you acknowledge it and welcome it and nourish it.

“I’m hard to love”. Accepting this as fact, she has formed relationships with a series of men over her life who are (pick one or more from this list):

• Too logical and scientific to fall in love with anyone
•  Too much in love with themselves to give any of it away
•  Too convinced they can’t fall in love to consider the possibility
•  Too careful to run the risk of opening themselves up to a complicated love-affair
•  Too in love with someone else
•  Too shy to talk about their feelings

Is it possible to write new stories for oneself? I’m a writer, after all, how good would I have to be to convince myself? I know I have the power to convince other people to believe new stories about themselves – but only because these stories are true anyway.

Tell a man he’s fantastic in bed, and it makes him hard. Tell him he’s hard, and feel him get harder. Tell a man he’s interesting and he will open up and fascinate you with things he’s never talked about to anyone before. Tell a man he’s funny and he’ll relax and make you laugh.

Tell yourself you’re easy to love, though, and it’s still subject to supporting evidence. Isn’t it. No-one will fall in love with a darky, rusty, undersea machine. Better never to find out.

Isn’t it surprising the lengths that people will go to, to fit into their own story? Well, me at least.

Top Billing

I told the counsellor it was becoming ever more frustrating to me that I seem to play a bit-part in the Great Biopic Of Him, when I really should have my own movie. I think every woman should have the chance to be her own leading lady (I'm sure I've blogged about this before, there's a cheesy line about this in that cheesiest of girl-films, The Holiday).

I then realised. Oh god. "I think I have become Miss Melanie, when I always wanted to be Scarlett".

"Why is that a bad thing?" she asked.

"Melanie is soppy. She gets walked all over, she thinks the best of everyone and they let her down, and she's all mumsy".

"I think you're wrong", said the counsellor, thoughtfully. "Melanie is strong. She's calm and kind. She loves her family fiercely and she is loyal to her friends. She recognises that everyone is different and she allows them to be who they are. She is happy."

I am still pondering this. On the plus side, Scarlett has adventures and some horny sex with Rhett. She is fearless and beautiful. But she is troubled and flawed, always convinced that the next thing will give her what she wants. And she ends up lonely.

Maybe I should be Rhett Butler? Rich, sexy and able to make money regardless of the economic climate.

Barrier Method

It's about protection. I can't get hurt in here. It's lonely, frolicking around in a submarine all by yourself  - but it's very safe.

I'm a an optimistic, smiley person. Look, can you see me smiling? No, of course you can't. Not with the visor down.  I'm passionate, I'm sensitive.  Can you tell? Of course not.  I'm warm and friendly. Take me by my steely hand and listen to the mechanical tick-tick-tick of my artificial hand-grenade heart.

Blogging is one way of opening up, I suppose.

Although the tiny handful of people who can match the girl with the kitten are the ones who have managed to get close anyway. Its a tough job, getting to know me.  And in any case, why bother? I doubt I would merit that amount of endeavour. Inside the submarine, it's mostly hollow rattling around, and sitting by the window watching other people fearlessly forging meaningful connections, and appearing to survive the process.

I am trying to be honest, to be authentic, to be myself. It's hard though. And I'm worried that I'm actually just developing ever more sophisticated techniques to avoid making connections. Better safe than sorry?

In Between Days

If you know the songs, you know the girl.

Some people just get it. Some people just don't. I'm complicated  -  but so are all the interesting people. There's always a soundtrack running in my head. Sometimes I'm singing the songs, sometimes they're singing to me.

Utopiate

How likely is it, at our age, at this stage of life, that the best is yet to come?

Doesn't seem all that likely, does it. Although perhaps I am basing that on a bad combination of ageism and hunch.  Maybe we should interview some really old people, and see what they reckon.

But if the best has been and gone, is it worth bothering? Chasing dreams and following rainbows, wanting love and laughter, passion and adventure, is that crazy? Aren't we all supposed to be mellowing out by now, settling down with pipe and slippers and beginning in earnest the slow alcohol-blurred slide towards hazy blandness?

Well, I have news. I am still kicking.

It may be the final death-throes of my high spirit, but I am making an attempt to do some new stuff and refresh things. Because one thing I'm certain of is that the best of my life as it currently stands has been and gone. So I'd better go stand somewhere different.

How does this manifest itself? Well, the running, for a start. I'm up to 28 minutes a session now. Ponderously slow, but I can speed up as I get better.  I've signed up for an erotic fiction workshop, got another reading coming up and a poem coming out in an anthology next month. 

I am working with the Pet Poet on a new set of material which will include singing, dressing up and burlesque (yes, we're signing up to learn that too...) Boggling. I know. Our plan is a simple one: to develop a set of material to sell to festivals, then spend next summer lolling in tents and hobnobbing in the backstage areas of various muddy places.

I am thinking of signing up for some advanced driving lessons, and have two night-time sponsored walks coming up in the next two weeks. After that, walking plans include the Grand Union Canal, the Pilgrim's Way (with the Poet and a new set of Canterbury Tales written on the way), and then why not the Via Compostela, or the Appian Way?

Rage, rage against the dying of the light...

Here Be Dragons

I'm in uncharted territory now. Places in a relationship I never thought I'd be. Places for which there is no guidebook.

You'd think asking around might help. After all, I'm hardly the first person to find myself in this situation, any of it.  But when I speak to other people, the best they can offer  -  for all their good intentions  - is something along the lines of: "I was there. It was shit".

What to do for the best depends on your perspective. A kick-ass feminist workbitch like myself wants to be independent, lead a life of integrity, hold out for someone who thinks she's The Very Thing.  A kind concerned loving mum like myself wants to do the best for her children and see if they can make it through childhood with their family life intact, and without too many emotional scars. You see the problem.

I've had my Period of Shittiness. I've resigned myself to the shitness of things, and got through the Period of Resignation. I went through the phoney-separation and the Period of Bridget. And now, well, I don't know what period I'm in.

I think it must be a sort of Captain Cook or Christopher Columbus sort of period. Should I find out more about them before I name my latest life-stage after them? And even then, I'm not sure. I feel they set out with more excitement and optimism than I have.  Maybe I'm more like someone who's forced onto a journey. Convicts condemned to Australia? Irish people sailing to New York during the potato famine? I'd like to think of a journey into the unknown that has a reasonable likelihood of an eventual positive outcome.

I know. I'm going to call it the Period of Map Making. What do you think?

Whippet

Sitting in Battersea Park watching the runners pass by, it is hard for me to believe that I am one of them now. They are faster, and fitter, and thinner. Nonetheless, I too am now a person who runs.

I've have put myself in the hands of my Get Running app, which is apparently going to take me from "Couch Potato to 5k" in ten weeks. I'm on Week 6, and have gone from a huffing, puffing person who was struggling to run for 1 minute to a huffing, puffing person who struggled through a 20 minute plod at the end of Week 5. 

I fondly imagine that running will change my physique, change my metabolism, indeed change my approach to life. One thing I think it might do is give me an acceptable reason to leave the house (rather than slamming the door and driving around aimlessly, hyperventilating with stress).  Having left the house, running may help me calm down, I figure. And even it doesn't achieve that directly, it hurts so bloody much in so many places that I can't really think about anything else.

Obviously I would lose more weight if I didn't drill a bottle of wine every evening.

Bringing Home Baby

And so finally, after many a twist and turn, the brainchild is coming home again.

Just like any other child, I imagine it will feel sometimes like a marvel and sometimes like a millstone.  It will cost a bomb and cause sleepless nights. Hopefully it will grow into something good - and if not, well you can blame the parents.

Playing With Myself

“Are there going to be any more?” he asked. “Postcards? Is it finished?”

No, it’s not finished. I just didn’t have anything to say.

I won’t bring you up to date with events since the last postcard. Let’s not go there: wish you weren’t here. Suffice to say that anything you could have imagined wouldn’t have been as bad as the actual reality. And I’m not ready to lift the bandages just yet.

Alors, me re-voila.

I’ve been doing a lot of driving recently. The mum-taxi has gone long-haul over the summer, which provides me with some quality chat-time with Thing 1 and Thing 2 for half the journey, and a long time to myself for the other half. I don’t want to run any risk of becoming contemplative, so I play games with myself. Really, really embarrassing games but I’m going to share them anyway. What the heck.

The first game I play is called PopStars. This I may have mentioned before. Turn on the Carpenters and pretend to be Karen (although without the anorexia and tragic early death). Sing my little heart out. Whoah I’m good.

If the radio is on, I play RadioShow. Join in the conversation, talk over the other people. Insult them, argue with them, vigorously assert some made-up facts. Flirt with them, tease them, laugh uproariously at their jokes. No matter if the subject is the history of the Congo or Latvian monetary policy, just get in there.

In the Honda, the radio is bust. I have to entertain myself. I’ve got three games for the no-radio car. TomTom is good, but only if I know where I’m going. “In two hundred yards, bear left. At the roundabout, take the third exit”. Sometimes I do this in different accents (Cheryl Cole, Steve Irwin maybe) or for a challenge I’ll try different languages.

DrivingTest is very good for concentrating, and not speeding in built up areas. I tell myself how to drive (always good to be reminded). “Mirror, signal and now move forward. Change into second gear. Slow down, we’re approaching a crossing”. There is actually a harder version of this game, that they make you play on the Advanced Driving Course. You have to say out loud, verbally describe, everything you need to be aware of. "Car turning out from the left 50 yards ahead. Child on a bike could veer into the road. Traffic lights ahead. Dog not on a lead. Lady in blue Honda driving erratically. Road narrows. Left bend". This is supposed to improve your road awareness and make you drive better. Don’t let your friends play it while you’re a passenger, unless you don’t mind being terrified by all the things they haven’t noticed.

Less random and more authoritative is Documentary. They’re making a film of this journey and I’m the presenter. I’m going to tell you all about the places we’re going through, their history, geography, interesting facts, demographics and so forth. Whether I know or not.

Am I mad? Am I lonely? Or do I just have a really low boredom threshold? Answers on a postcard :-)

Avoidance Tactics

One of my friends has been given a piece of advice that has really set me thinking.

HALT, they said. Stop, look and listen. Watch out for situations where you are Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. This is when destructive behaviour patterns can set in.

Hungry, angry, lonely and tired. It sounded like a description of how I've been feeling over the past ten years or so.  Pick any two (or three) and there you have it. I've thought about this a lot, these last few days.

I can change, I do believe that. But it will probably take a long time of hard work. However, something I could address relatively easily, straight away, would be to avoid these trigger situations. That will be one of my first tasks on the list.

Right now it is 12.30am. 

Am I hungry? No. I've just been out for a curry with my friends. Sensibly chose all veggie things, so I am full but not uncomfortably stuffed.

Am I angry? Not right now. I was angry earlier this afternoon, but I've let those feelings pass through now.

Am I lonely? Not right now. I've spent an evening with 3 of my best friends, so I'm reminded I have good people who love me close by. But when I get home to the empty house, and when I wake up in the empty house, I think that will be lonely.

Am I tired? Oh god yes. I should have been in bed hours ago. However I'm working (and writing this...) now because I decided to have the nice, spontaneous evening earlier so it's a good trade.

I ought to go home and go to bed soon, though.

Watershed

I've been doing some thinking. A lot of thinking. There have been a lot of things to think about.

And then when I was done with the thinking, I did some deciding. That part turned out to be easy in the end. I reached a turning point  -  last night, actually. It's time to move on, and leave behind what's holding me down.

I said I was not waving, but drowning. Further out than everyone thought. I should have added that I was drowning because I was being pulled under by a person I was trying to save.

All I have to do is decide to swim away. Not a hundred miles away, just beyond arm's stretch. A few strokes will do it. And already my head is free and I can breathe again.

Meanwhile, there's inner re-branding going on.  I'm not going to be Hard To Love any more. I'm going to be adorable, gorgeous, sexy, warm and fun to be with. How's that for a start?

Happy birthday to me. Here endeth the Period of Bridget.