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.