Vaut le detour?

Everything happens for a reason, they say. 

I'm beginning to wonder whether all the multiple problems and difficulties I'm experiencing in my attempt to buy a house in France might be the universe's way of telling me I'm making a dreadful mistake. 

I thought I wanted to be here. I love it here. I thought I would be calm here, and centred. I thought I would be able to relax, write, be myself. 

But now I think perhaps this is not my place. I will have to rely on other people to help me - all the time.  I will be a drain on their time and a drag on their goodwill. I'll just be getting in the way of other people's lives. I don't have anything useful to contribute. All the skills and competences I have developed are pointless here, they will be of no value or use to me, and of no interest to anyone else. I will be an outsider.  I will be an interloper. I will be a laughing stock. 

I was brimful of ideas about the house, the garden, the things I might do here. But it turns out these are all wrong. There are all sorts of sensible reasons why they won't work out - and it just makes me realise I will be out of my depth and making a mess of everything. 

At least in the UK I seem to be able to muddle through the car-crash of my life, pulling it off most of the time with a reasonable amount of dignity and sometimes even with panache.  Here I will be a novice at everything. I might be able to appreciate the finer points of French poetry but I don't even know how to ask for my cheque book in the bank or explain my own mortgage. 

I think perhaps I am too old to make a fresh start. What is the point? It's not as if there's anything to head towards, any meaningful milestones along the way.  

I thought that a place in France would help me improve my writing: but I don't seem to have anything to say. 

Absence

When you were ill in hospital, you said you didn't want any visitors. You said you would be home soon, getting ready to re-book the holiday in Cuba that you missed. You were healthier than the rest of us, with your badminton and your pilates, your diet of fruit and veg, your breezy walks with the dogs every day.  

You had a great life. You travelled the world, trekked in the heat of the Sahara, the cold of Everest base camp and all the spaces between. You loved animals and the beauty of nature. You played CDs in the office that ranged from the Stones to Amy Winehouse to birdsong. 

But if I had known I wasn't going to see you again - ever again  -  I'd have visited you anyway. Just for two minutes. Just to thank you for everything you did in the 15 years you worked for me. Thank you for all your hard work, your loyalty and discretion, your tact and diplomacy. Thank you for helping me to build my business while I was raising my family: I couldn't have juggled like that without you behind me every step of the journey to pick up the things that slipped through my fingers. 

You were probably the only person who really understood the full picture that makes up the crazy mess of my life. I can't believe you're not going to be here any more. I wouldn't have made it through these last few years without your hugs, your calm words of wisdom, your confidence in me. 

I hope wherever you are now, there is birdsong and sunshine, mountains to climb, dogs to walk, cats to stroke and some great music on the radio. Rest in peace, you lovely lady. You will always be missed.

Pandoratory

Repel Boarders

“You need to try and work out”, she said, “why you feel so uncomfortable about expressing your emotions”.  It’s the boxes again. I don’t like leakage; I don’t like stuff coming out.  Everything has to stay inside, where it’s supposed to be. All sealed in, watertight. The kitten in the submarine.

I wonder, though, whether the reason I don’t like leakage is not because I don’t want things to come out – but because it’s a sign that the surface has been broken, the defences have been breached, the structure is not watertight. If something can get out, that might mean something can get in.

It’s a Donald Trump-style Mexican border. It’s the Berlin Wall. It’s the 13 foot high welcome we’re extending to refugees at Calais.

Interesting images that sprung to mind there.  I’m not sure the writing part of my brain likes the idea of defences.  Perhaps they are not a good thing. 

Who’s that Trip Trapping Across My Bridge?

I have a vivid memory of my childhood Ladybird book The Three Billy Goats Gruff.  All these fairy tales have been changed now, watered down and sanitised. Red Riding Hood’s 21^st century wolf does not kill grandma, she hides under the bed. And the woodcutter, sans axe, chases him away – probably to a wolf sanctuary.  But in my early Sixties story, the troll ate the billy goats, and then when he was asleep, the littlest billy goat cut open his stomach, the goats jumped out. They filled the troll with stones and stitched him back up. Then when he woke up and paddled in the river, he sank to the bottom and drowned horribly. This was all illustrated in finely-executed water colours.

Which takes me directly to Virginia Woolf – because this is how our fascinating brains work.  She longed for a room of her own and financial independence, so she could write. She was an amazing writer, but she had an unhappy ending, walking into a river with her pockets full of stones.

When I choke down emotions, it feels like swallowing stones.  It’s a physical sensation I’m talking about, not a metaphor. I feel them stuck under my breastbone and sometimes I have so many stones sitting there that I can’t swallow anything else at all. Food gets that far and then I have to sick it back like a colicky baby.  Life can be too hard to stomach, sometimes. 

Better Out Than In?

I was talking to a friend of mine about my inability to express my emotions. He’s a sensible person and he’s known me a long time.  “You have to make a choice,“  he said. “You can get these things out – or you can learn to live with them inside you. If you’re keeping them in, you’ll have to accept them, make them a part of you”.

I instinctively didn’t like the sound of this.  I knew he was right – and I felt that the idea of keeping these things inside, incorporating them permanently, would not be good. So the quest continues. How to get it out? Maybe it will be like lancing a boil. Squeezing a spot. Vomiting cherry stones like the Witches of Eastwick. 

You’ve got to wonder what’s in there, the metaphors that come to mind.  Doesn’t sound like anything good, does it?  (Not too depressed to slip in a photo of Susan... there is still hope for me).

Disorderly

When my sister was a social worker, she had a client who could not let go of any part of his body. He kept his toenail clippings in jars. He kept all the cotton buds he used to clean his ears. He had jam jars of bogies and scabs.  I wondered what happened when he went to the toilet, or when he was sick, or when he got his hair cut. Turns out he never got his hair cut. I don’t know about the other stuff.

There is a man called Richard Gibson in Lafayette who has kept all his nail clipping in a jar since 1978. There is a photo in the Huffington Post. It’s vile.

I expect there is a name for this, I’m sure it’ll turn out to be a recognised disorder. Holding on to stuff can seem very, very wrong. 

Everybody Hurts

So another teenager in our little Smallville circle has taken an overdose.

She decided the first thing to do after she’d taken the tablets was to text my daughter (yes, the one who did this herself a couple of years ago) and say goodbye. Daughter, in huge distress, rushes round to her house. Teenager is hysterical and explains to daughter what she has done.  Daughter calls an ambulance, teenager is rushed to hospital. Daughter has gone home distraught. I am rushing home from the city to see what I can do to console daughter.

I can’t tell her everything will be ok, because maybe this time it won’t be. The teenager in question is very troubled and has tried this a few times before.  Even if it’s a calculated gamble that she’ll pull through, I imagine that repeatedly putting your system, your kidneys, your liver through this poison and its equally toxic antidote, must weaken it over time – so your calculation might be few points wrong, and then… flatline.

As a parent, I’ve done the frantic dash to the hospital. I’ve sat and waited for the bloods to come back every half an hour to see whether she’s going to make it (paracetamol has a progressive effect so you can feel ok at first, but it’s doing irreparable damage to your liver, and so no-one knows at first whether the antidote is too little to late).  I’ve sat through the night in the adolescent psych ward and it was the most terrified I’ve ever been.

So I was pretty surprised that in all of this, the teenager’s mum has found the time to track down my number and ring me to complain about my daughter interfering in their private family concerns.

I explained that she felt she had no choice. She was told about the overdose and she immediately dialled 999 because time is of the essence.  She knows this from bitter experience. She loves her friend, perhaps she has saved her life.  The fact that the parents were downstairs in the house watching TV and the teenager did not talk to them but contacted my daughter instead is not our fault.

What is the world coming to? So much pain and so much anger everywhere. 

Impending

Oh shit - it's coming. I can feel it coming. I can feel it in my bones.  

This morning when I woke up, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling for 45 minutes. I had to run an all-day workshop for a client so this was not supposed to happen.  

I made it to the workshop (of course). I ran the workshop and it went really well (of course).  But I can feel it massing up behind me.

There are things I should do to stave it off. I should be downstairs right now pedalling it out on the bike. I should be out for a walk, a run, a swim. But already I can't.  I have seen friends, as many as I can - but my stress is at the house, in the place that should be home.  
A house stops being a home when any one of these things happens:

• You come home to find your husband fucking your friend in the house
• Your work is based at your house so work-people come in and out all the time with their own keys
• Your work is based at your house so when it's time to go home, your work is still there, blinking reproachfully in the office
• Your work is based at your house, so when it's time to go to work, your housework is still there, the Cyclops eye of the washing machine staring balefully at you over the piles of laundry
• You have already decided to sell the house so it's on the market and looks like a showhome with all signs of actual inhabitants removed
• You have already decided to get divorced and have allocated each piece of furniture in a horrible game of His'n'Hers

Since all of these things have happened in the house, it doesn't feel much like a safe haven. 

I was looking forward to getting a new house. 

Happy Anniversary

There wasn't anything much to celebrate about today. He forgot. But then again he always did anyway, so that was nothing new. 

I went for lunch with my daughter, I went out for tea with my friends. The sun shone - and I tried not to think about the fact that no-one wants to buy our house (or any house) at the moment because of the Brexit and so we are still glued-together in a situation that goes from benign indifference to thinly-veiled resentment to shouting and crying. Actually I'm the only one who cries, even though I think overall it's the right thing. 

So why am I crying? I cry for the wasted opportunity. We had such a great life. We had everything going for us. We had fun together, we had a lovely family. A lot of effort went into making that possible.  And therein lies the problem. 

Our fundamental disagreement is that he thinks I let him down - at home, in the business, in bed. Basically I drove him into the arms of other women. Few women are likely to be able to provide the full 5* service offering that I did, but hey good luck with that one mate. Strangely enough I disagree with his view of the situation. 

So on we trudge, still shackled unwillingly together. I am now facing the prospect that all the plans I made will come unstuck and I'll be back to square one. I am really struggling with this. I see a cloudbank of despair on the horizon and I am doing everything I can to outrun it.  Let's hope the wind will change. 

Limbering Up

Well folks, this is it. 

After all the angst, the drama, the arguments, the tears - I am finally calling time on this toxic, hurtful, heartbreaking relationship. I don't see that there is anything more I can do, anything else I can try. 

We have sketched out a financial deal. I have filed a divorce petition ("separation for 2 years") and he has signed the paper. The lovely house we restored together and made into our home is on the market.  I have made an offer on a new house - in a different part of town, thought that would be best. 

My Big Birthday passed without a big trip or a big celebration - drinks with friends, some nice meals out. He bought me a scented candle. I think you could divorce someone just for that.  I'm buying myself a house in France. No excuse not to follow my own dreams now, right? 

The Big Plan had been to wait until Thing 1 and Thing 2 were safely off to college but in the end I just couldn't hold out another two years.  We have just come back from our last family holiday all together (went OK actually, only one major argument). 

Sometimes I feel excited about what the future will hold. Sometimes I'm apprehensive. This is mainly because we plan to carry on working together and I'm not sure how that will pan out. It's also partly on account of the Brexit, the economic situation and what will happen in the business. 

One thing I have learned is that whatever I am feeling, writing always helps. So here I am, back on the page, strolling around at the jumping-off point. Another thing I'm learning is that there isn't one-big jump-off. It's a series of small mundane actions. There ought to be something that's like a wedding or a funeral, an occasion to mark the finish. Maybe I'll have to invent one.

Token of Affection

I went to the Foundling Museum yesterday. It's the place where the orphans, the abandoned children were taken.  When mothers took their illegitimate babies to be cared for, they were asked to leave a token to identify the child in case their circumstances changed and they were able to reclaim them later.  They left coins and keys, hairpins and pebbles. When they had nothing to leave as a token, they snipped a piece of fabric from their skirt or from the baby's robe. So many babies were taken here that the Museum's squares of everyday dress material now comprise the largest collection of 18th century fabrics in the world. 

The displays of these small, poor items are heart-wrenching. So little, yet covering every meaning of their word. 

Noun: a thing serving as a visible or tangible representation of a fact, quality or feeling.
Noun: a voucher that can be exchanged for goods or services. 
Adj:  done as a symbolic gesture.

A token is an item that stands for something else. Once you know what it stands for, the item can be anything at all. In this way, shells or small discs of metal become a currency, a slip of paper can be exchanged in store for a gift, a small white stone is a declaration of love. 

We all wind up as orphans sooner or later - this is the way of the world. We are of an age now where, one by one of us, we are losing then burying our parents. As adults, as parents ourselves, we are wise enough and weary enough to know how this is done.  The phone calls, the paperwork, the practical tasks, the triage of items that made up a life. The tokens we choose to keep are not the important things, the valuable things. They are chosen not for merit but for meaning - a meaning that we have created for ourselves. 

And although we are wise enough, and weary enough, and old enough and adult enough now to haul ourselves through this time - we are still children, their children. Whether they leave us at 5 months or 5 years old or 50, no one is quite ready to be an orphan, to hold that token and know it can't swap back for the person who is gone. 

All There Is

Sometimes small things happen, and they get blown up out of all proportion. And sometimes big things happen - but they feel really underwhelming.  Big news comes, and all you can think is - "is that it?"  

Perhaps it comes with age, this ability to incorporate tough stuff and make into the new-normal with barely a flicker of the eye. Is it a skill, a competence, a gift, to be able to recalibrate, just like that? Or does it make me a psychopath, a nihilist, a deadhead? 

I'm pretty certain I might have posted this before, but anyhow here's my take on it all.

https://youtu.be/LCRZZC-DH7M?list=RDLCRZZC-DH7M

Lemon

Once upon a time, I was sad if life served me lemons. Then I learned to make lemonade and that was fine. Just dandy in fact.  

So if on a day that deals you lemons, it dishes you a late-night grand finale of salt to rub into your wounds, I guess the right thing to do, maybe the only thing to do is SLAM. 

Slam around the house. Slam the door of the dishwasher with a resounding ring of glasses chipping against each other. Slam your bare fist into the punch-bag when you pass it on your way to the utility room. Slam out your bitterest version of The Way You Look Tonight on those poor neglected piano keys. Slam your hand in the lid of the piano - on purpose, just so that something else hurts more than the thing that is hurting you inside. 

Desperately Seeking

The producer of the Rocky Horror Show died this week, and newspapers did that thing they do where any story even vaguely connected with the film gives them an excuse to publish photos of people in their pants. 

I'm not averse to this - on the contrary - due to my lifelong girl-crush on Susan Sarandon. Not only is she smart, cool and beautiful, but I really admire the way she has lived her life.  She campaigns on the issues she believes in, she only dates younger good looking men, and she doesn't give a shit what people think of her. 

I like the fact that she is naturally beautiful and she works it. You don't get the impression that she's putting her amazing breasts out there, over and over, because she's the victim of the system, or wanting approval.  She knows she looks gorgeous and she gets 'em out there with confidence, with defiance, with panache.  She was courting controversy again at the start of the year by turning up at an awards ceremony dressed like this: 

She's 69 years old. She's stunning - and she's till full of mischief. She knows she's going to upset a lot of people with this outfit, but it secures her continued position in the spank-bank of a lot of others.  

See her - want to be her. 

Sisterhoodlum

It was International Women's Day yesterday. At the current rate of progress, if we are to achieve social, economic and politic parity we only have to wait another 117 years. That's not a global statistic, that's just in the UK.  It seems hard to believe doesn't it? And it's a fact I want to ram down the throats of all those young girls who say there is no need to be a feminist because women are equal now. 

Women are supposed to help each other, work together to raise one another up. I think over the last 30 years or so, a great many women have forgotten this (if they ever knew it).  There is so much judgement, so much running--down of one another. Women like Katie Hopkins are the 21st century wicked witches. 

I feel I have a responsibility not just to make my own path, but to make it wide enough and solid enough for others to come with me on the journey, not just behind me but alongside, arm in arm. Taking up the whole pavement like the Sex In The City girls. They were good friends, weren't they? All different, but tight, loyal. 

I've got girlfriends like that. Without them, I'd never have survived. I can count them on the fingers of one hand - but who needs more than four corners anyway?  I am truly blessed. 

Motherlode

It's Mother's Day. And my mother, who is in good physical health at 76, is slipping away from us with dementia.  I went home last weekend to work on a memory-book with her, to try and capture some of the history before it's too late - and it will soon be too late. I've been horrified at the speed of her deterioration, and we will have to start working on some concrete plans for the next stage (whatever the next stage is). 

My dad, who is not a patient man at the best of times, drinks heavily every evening now, which must affect his mornings too. I imagine a person more confused than my mum might need a lot of help going to bed and getting up.  Neither of them really ought to be driving anywhere, but both of them still are. There's a high chance they will hurt or kill themselves - or god forbid, someone else, in an accident so that needs to be addressed too. 

I don't know quite how this help and sorting is going to work out - other than that it will fall to me.  My brother is busy with his terminally-ill child and my sister lives in Australia.  And I'm the oldest, so I am kind of in charge I suppose. 

I've had a difficult relationship with my mum from my early teens through to my thirties, but it's much better now. Becoming a mum and finally growing up myself has helped me to forgive and even understand some of the things she said and did so they don't matter so much now.  She has been a lovely granny to the girls and I know that she loves us all, in her own strange only-child way.  She will be gone while she's still here, like her father before her, so I kind of know what to expect.  It won't be fun, but we will still find the fun in the days that we have, just as we have learned to do with my nephew.  Where there is love there are always smiles. 

I don't usually post poetry on here, but as it's Mother's Day, here's one from a couple of years ago that I'm editing at the moment.  It's not quite ready for submission, in my view, but it's getting there.  I was thinking about it when we were doing the memory book, and she was talking about all women in her family who were named after flowers. Her parents were not in favour of showing emotion, and it must have been a funny old life, just the three of them. As my granny often used to point out, my mum stuck out like a sore thumb - an exotic looking child with her striking red hair in a family of mouse-brown. 

Marion: I

Born in the summer of the gathering storm,

Soothed each night by the rhythmic thud

Of bombs falling on the Glaxo plant
She Listened With Mother
All dozy and cosy in the Andersen shelter
Watched over by the eyes in the potatoes
Studding their soil sky like stars;
Spiders were her night time friends.

Endlessly re-knitting jumper into scarf
They also served who sat and waited
Picking balsa-wood pips from their teeth
In the pretend-jam sandwiches of birthday teas
Barrage balloons hung cheerily along the Thames
Just for her – bomb-site fire-flower

In the family bouquet of Rose, Daisy, Violet & May.

  

Marion: II

Ernest as his name, father was away
Beating the Nazis with the neatness of his inventories
Seasick, then homesick, then sick of it all
Counting the cost of the ruins of Germany
Lodged with a family just like his
Where another girl with plaits and a too-small dress
Knits the same scarf, thumps the same piano scales
Laughs at spiders and the same stained moon.

Then victory was ours, and he came back
A stranger to his daughter
"When's that man going home?" she hissed.
He was not a one to pull her to his knee
Throw her in the sky and catch her in his arms
With a joyous shout; she held the basket
As he pruned and told the names of all his roses,
Secateurs held gently as a child’s hand.

Recovery Position

So at last I have found my way back to myself.  It has been a hard journey and a long haul. Looking back I can see that I dropped gradually down to rock-bottom like a diver floating down to the sea bed – no tumble or sudden screaming plummet to tell me that my fall was the equivalent of a terminal-velocity Twin Towers swallow-dive.

In the depths, I was smashed. But only on the inside, so nobody else could see.  Slowly, so slowly, I have put myself back together, and clawed my way inch by agonising inch from the bottom of the abyss back up to the sky, and a safe distance now (I hope) from the edge of precipice.

What I want is still the same.  Which means I’m still not where I want to be – wherever that is. But time moves on, and that isn’t always a bad thing. The outlook has improved. And you never know - I might still get to be The Very Thing.