Motes

I went swimming this evening. In a town I had not visited perhaps twice in my adult life, and could not remember. As I drove past the main entrance to the park, with its stone gate posts and tree lined avenue, I realised. "I've been here". Not to the town, I knew that. Right here in this spot.

I parked and had a walk around. To the bridge. We fished for sticklebacks here with Mairi and Cathy, before the little ones were even born. Nylon stocking on a hoop of coat-hanger at the end of a bamboo-cane rod. Those long summers that seemed to last forever. They had a house with a crazily steep drive. I couldn't remember the name of the road, several houses back from the ones I recalled more clearly.

I walked around in the evening sunlight. The shadows were long on the ground and I thought about their little dog, eating all the duck a l'orange, so carefully prepared, that we children didn't like but knew must be ooh-ed and aah-ed over. Exotic. I'd never at that age eaten avocado, or brie, or Parma ham, or frilly lettuce, or yoghurt. Never slept under a "continental quilt". Never met a vegetarian, or anyone who's skin was brown. Never been abroad. Probably would have had a nosebleed if I'd gone north of the Blackwall Tunnel.

In the pool as I swam up and down, I was still feeling a sense of deja vu. Wasn't sure why. I stopped thinking about it, and my mind drifted pleasantly around the edges of nothing in particular. They were putting a girl into a hoist to lower her into the water. I remembered this is how Diana Adams got into the pool too.

My goodness! I think I learned to swim here! Of course, growing up at the seaside we were constantly in the water and the combinations of shallows, confidence and the buoyancy of the salt meant that we all swam after a fashion by the age of three or four. However, our after-a-fashion swimming was not deemed good enough by the school, so for a year we were taken in buses to The Big Pool. Quite a long way away, as not many places had a pool at that time.

But could it really be here? Obviously not that big modern extension, but the original pool, and its diving pool alongside - that seemed very familiar. But then surely all pools looked a bit like that. I swam some more, tried to work out if the pool could be old enough. I even asked at the reception desk when I'd got dried and changed, but no-one could remember when it was built.

As I came out and walked to my car under the tall dark trees, the last rays of sunshine touched the park on my right, and the grass shone a luminous green between the black trunks. I'm sure it was here.

My past is leaping out at me unexpectedly, unbidden, with alarming frequency these days. I am going to the sea tomorrow evening so I'm preparing myself for a possible memory-surge. Just in case.

Fix

I know myself well enough by now to understand that I have a tendency towards an addictive personality (see, I've been watching my Oprah).

The last week or two, I have been trying to harness this by attempting to get myself hooked on exercise. I have been walking, swimming, body-pumping, working out at home, doing my pelvic tilts during difficult meetings. I am still waiting to feel the mythical buzz - let alone develp a full-on addiction - but I feel it's worth a try, if only for the attendant health benefits.

Other habits I've had in the past include:

• cigarettes
• carbs
• painkillers
• caffeine

All present their challenges. I'd like to be addicted to sex - certainly I crave it with a hungry urgency that nothing can dull (apart from sex itself, of course) but it doesn't happen often enough to allow me to develop a full-on dependency. Which is a shame, as nothing can beat the feeling, not even Pepsi. I'm an every-day kinda girl, in an ideal world. Morning, afternoon and night quite possibly, or at least I'd welcome the chance to test my theory to destruction.

Addictions I have not yet developed include:

• alcohol
• sugar
• banned substances
• shoplifting
• shopping
• running

Thank heaven for small mercies, I guess?

A la Recherche du Temps Perdu

I am looking back so often now because there might be nothing to look forward to: it seems likely that my finest hour has been and gone.

I am searching for relevance and meaning, importance even.

It's not going very well.

Election Fever

I'm staying up to watch the election. It won't be as exciting as 1997, which notwithstanding the way things have turned out more recently for Labour still counts as a great milestone on the timeline of my life.

Having made my decision based on a reasoned assessment of the policies, and ignoring the personalities for now, I thought I would find out how my littlest little girl would vote. She's watched a bit of the debates, and her Golden Sunshine party at school won their election this morning. She thought carefully.

"Well. I wouldn't vote for Gordon Brown, because he's blind".

Aaargh! I'm raising a monster! Why couldn't we vote for someone who is blind?

"He won't be able to read any of the papers so he won't be able to make good decisions".

I reminded her that Gordy is only blind in one eye, and has already been prime minister for quite a while. We had a little try at reading with one eye covered up and found it was still possible. I also explained that he would have a team of people to support him.

"But he shouts at them and throws things. He's grumpy and mean. We wouldn't want a leader who is grumpy and mean because other leaders won't like him then we'll get left out of stuff".

We considered Nick Clegg. Not a viable proposition apparently. "He interrupted too much on the television. Interrupting is rude. And he looked a bit orange. Fake tan, fake man." That was the end of the Lib Dems then.

"David Cameron is the best. He went to a really expensive luxury school and university where kings and leaders go, to get trained up. And he is really posh. So he will be the best person to be in charge".

I was slightly taken aback at her rationale, but I fear it's no worse than many others within the electorate. According to a number of articles I've seen lately, as a woman I will apparently be making my voting decision based on the wives of the party leaders.

On that basis, how would I vote?

Gordon's marriage is as genuine and heartfelt as Prince Edward's (and both of them married to PR consultants - interesting...) I quite like Sarah but I do have a problem with the overall sham and duplicity of it. Come out the closet, both of you. No one cares nowadays.

Samantha seems unutterably horrible, in many ways. Her frocks. Her flimsy but ludicrously expensive stationery (blue, of course). Her "discovered" modelling photos (oh god....) and of course her immaculately-timed pregnancy. Bleargh. Retch. Heave.

I'm voting for Miriam. They're the only couple who married for love not for social expectation or show. And let's face it, he's comparison-shopped, as he said. She's brainy, cool, European and has good clothes. She's got small children and yet holds a down a hardcore highflying legal career. And she completely refused to engage in the whole pre-election spouse thing, saying it was demeaning. Respect.

Let's see what the morning brings.

Hoist By His Own Petard

The former UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage has been injured in a plane crash in Northamptonshire. The plane carrying two people crashed at Hinton-in-the-Hedges Airfield at Steane, near Brackley, at 0759 BST.

The aircraft came down an hour after polling stations opened for general election voting and it is thought it was caused by the trailing banner.

I was wrong.

God does exist after all. And has a great sense of playful irony.

Rolling Back The Years

Blackheath

Boots Scribbling Diary, 1 July 1989

Walked down from Lee into Blackheath to meet C. It's nice to be living near a mate now that everyone else has gone all couple-y. Actually he might come and temp at our place for a bit now he's back. He is trying to persuade his dad to buy an albino fox from the weird stuffed animal shop in the village, who knows why! Went to his parent's house to scrounge some lunch as his mum is cordon bleu cook. Lolled by the ponds smoking spliffs all afternoon. It was hot. Even though we are both skint we had a couple drinks at the pub (saw Heather) and a curry at the place with all the leaves stuck on the walls. He has a crush on an impossible girl. Also I wish I had a boyfriend.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"How far back would you have to go", I wondered this evening, "not to end up right here?"

I wonder this a lot.

"Conception", said my friend G, with certainty. "Maybe even before".

Wow. That's a long way back. He didn't hold with the idea that there are several possible routes to here, only the actual routes that were taken and the specific choices that were made to bring us here. That's an interesting angle.

"No. You can't end up in the same place. It might seem similar but it's not the same".

I ran through my theory, that you don't make these particular choices, but you would still end up making other similar choices that would bring you to a place similar to here. Still marry a graduate, still have a family, still do the same kind of things, jobs, hang out with the same kind of people, go on the same kind of holidays, all that.

"Yes. But you might be having really hot sex with them all the time".

That would indeed be nice. However according to his theory it was already decreed that this would not happen - from birth or even before. How crap is that?! There's one good reason not to believe in God, regardless of the singing and the ecclesiastical architecture.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
14 months after that diary entry I married a friend. I knew we weren't 100% suited but I was lonely and it felt like everyone else was getting married except me. I was worried I wouldn't ever meet anyone else who would marry me. I was 24.

C's wonderful charismatic talented parents took a one way trip to the Dignitas clinic last summer. Fortunately it's recently decided he will not be prosecuted for booking their travel and going with them on the journey (well, not quite the whole way). My cousin Heather is dead too: cancer last year.

Sometimes loafing on the heath feels like a lifetime ago. Sometimes it seems like yesterday.

Importent

“Dear Mummy. When you come home please come upstairs I have something to show you and it is IMPORTENT”.

Oh what a great word! I went upstairs as instructed. I was shown a collection of cracks. Up by the ceiling, running across the two angles, cutting through the coving. Of course I had noticed this before. I had ignored the ever-spreading, ever-widening network of dark fissures. As you do. When they had become too widespread and open to zone out of my vision, I bought a painting and hung it over the worst area. A rather lovely French Colourist piece, as it happens.

“I’m worrying because it looks like the corner of your bedroom is falling off. Then it would be just sky and cold, and all the dirt coming in.” Hmmmm. That is indeed eerily importent.

I looked out the window at the trees, in case I could glimpse out the corner of my eye that Burnham Wood was moving to Dunsinane.

When I sold the brainchild, I bought myself a present. No, not to the value of an Aston Martin – although I would have been entitled. Instead I bought myself a ring. It is the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought for myself that has no practical use and is purely for my own selfish pleasure.

I chose the ring carefully. I wanted something crafted, handmade. I wanted something unique that had taken work and time and care. I wanted something unusual and quirky and unlike any other ring I’d seen. I wanted something I would see every day that would remind me of how hard I'd worked to build the business, and what I'd achieved. And I wanted a bloody massive diamond in it, with a few smaller ones to set it off. Because I'm worth it. Literally.

It's a beautiful ring. But suddenly a section has fallen out of it. Not a stone, or a piece of the working but a whole section, about 2mm at the back opposite the stone. It must have been inserted to resize it at some point. And now it's not a ring any more: the circle is broken.

This feels importent too.