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The baby I lost in France would be eleven today.
That's the sort of thing I don't know whether it's better to remember or forget. I don't want to keep remembering it, but trying to forget seems wrong, careless, disrespectful somehow. And of course, trying to forget something is a guaranteed way of always remembering.
It doesn't feel like a terrible tragedy, because I was lucky and I fell pregnant again very quickly, so my daughter who came along later (instead? as well?) is eleven in July. And I don't feel as guilty as I used to for cursing the fact I had become pregnant when I had a three month old newborn and feeling afterwards that I had wished that other baby away with my curses.
So I don't think about it much, only when something pricks me. But I saw this on www.postsecret.com, my very most favourite website, and I thought: yes. So here it is. Not nice, but striking a chord.
Coughing all night. Saturday morning. I am woken at 5.45am by a child who has struggled to get up in time for school all week.
"Mummy I am wondering about some things. You have to tell me". A bleary OK.
"How big is Pluto?"
The cartoon dog or the planet? Ah yes, good point. Every one does know a dog is dog-sized. Well. Pluto is smaller than the size of a planet. No I don't know what the Official Size of a planet would be (although I do know a girl round the corner who is a Space Fact-File and undoubtedly does). But yes, it is indeed bigger than a sofa. I think it must be larger than the moon but smaller than the earth. No I don't know how big the moon is. Or the earth. Yes the earth is larger than America. Obviously.
"Tell me again, what is a prostitute?"
I've told you this before. It's a person who has sex for money. No, it's not someone who works for the government, that's a politician. Yes I know dad said they were the same but he was being ironic. Well, it's when you say something but you mean the opposite. Yes, it can be confusing, can't it.
"Why do so many girls like Justin Bieber and vampires?"
No idea. Really. I'm very tired. I don't feel very well.
Frustratingly, she still wasn't ready to go to Stagecoach for a 10am start.
It was the sort of week where I woke to a text informing me bluntly that Stuart will not be attending your meeting today as he died last night. Goodness, I thought to myself, might we perchance still be in the Period of Shittiness? Whoever would have thought it.
It was the sort of week where Ms Capable had an afternoon off sick, and another day when she asked for help. Heavens. The sort of week where YogaMan, the soul of calm and cool, swore and got angsty and lost his yin-yang equilibrium. It was the sort of week where NorthernBoy is too tired to go out for a drink on a Friday.
It was the sort of week where the Pet Poet, usually wreathed in smiles and extensive vocabulary, was reduced to shouting what the pissing hell? And the sort of week where Ms Superwoman had to go home at 6pm and lie down because she felt poorly, and then in a never-before instance of crapness, missed the fast train and will consequently be late for a meeting.
What is the world coming to?
Ladybower Reservoir is absolutely beautiful. This Y shaped lake nestled in the Pennines just like it has always been there was one of my favourite places when I was growing up.
You turn off the A57 Just by the sign for Hope, and there's a road runs right along the edge of the water. It hugs the side of the shore on your right, and the wooded hill rises up sheer at your left. There are several places to stop, and a pavement too so you can get out and walk. Such a lovely road, through such a beautiful place, must surely lead somewhere wonderful?
"It doesn't lead anywhere", my dad would say. "It's the longest cul de sac in Britain, I reckon. Why on earth would you make a lovely road like this, to nowhere? We paid for this magnificent highway through our flipping taxes, and I mean to get my money's worth".
You'd never guess it was a dead end. You'd never guess under that serene stretch of water is a drowned village, church tower and all. Memories and cottage gardens and footpaths only trodden now by trout. There's just a locked gate at the end of the road, no track beyond, only thickets and copses.
And you just have to come back out again and get yourself back onto the humdrum lorry-grinding A57, and drive on from Hope through Hollow Meadows. As if when they named the places, all those centuries ago, the valley's fate was foretold.
It's been a while since we've had a Quiz of the Week. Let's give it a try.
It's deadly serious this week. Well, more serious than some of the others you may recollect, including the obscene one which so offended our American reader. Ho hum.
So I need your opinion, whoever you are, regardless. I'm coming to the end of my four month course of anti-depressants. And I'm still a right miserable cow. But maybe that's just me, and the winter, and the recession, and the brief-but-lost-ability to write good poetry, and the disappointment of involuntary celibacy and oh god, you know the rest...
Anyhow. Should I stop, carry on, have more, have less, cut my throat, self-harm, jump off Beachy Head, go postal with an AK47, lose control and go loopy or what? Please answer my quiz. I'm begging you. Over there, right hand side.
The Giant Pacific Octopus is an ugly bastard. It can have a span of 3 metres (if span is indeed the correct term) and every one of its suckers is can work separately.
You wouldn't think something so big and limber and sucker-y would have superpowers, but it has these on top. Not a mere one, but two.
Firstly it has the ability to change colour. There's a proper scientific word for this, chroma-summat, I'd look it up for your education if I wasn't so damn idle. It's not so much about blending in for disguise, it's about psyching out your enemy, it's about shock and awe. It can turn bright red when it gets mad. And that's odd, because under the sea the red end of the spectrum is all leached out, usually.
They told me this when I was on a submarine journey under the Atlantic. Yes, really. Whilst on holiday in Tenerife, of all places. I mean, I just had to, didn't I? I didn't spot this octopus, because they live in the Pacific. Duh. Although I looked out hopefully, in case they go on holiday like we do.
The second superpower of the Giant Pacific Octopus is infinitely more interesting than the chroma-whatsit colour-me-beautiful thing. It has the superpower of Squashing. This tentacular spectacular, with its wingspan measured in yards, has a beak of around one and a half inches. This is the only solid part of its body: made of keratin, like lots of other interesting things (hair, and shark fins, and deer horns and suchlike). It can squeeze its whole body through any gap where the beak will fit, by squishing its internal organs into an almost eternally long drawn out string, brain and all.
It can squidge through the tiniest hole into the hollow centre of a beautiful sharp and spiky coral reef, with only its malevolent beady eye peeping back out. You would never know that something so dangerous was in there.
It was a writing workshop, in a photographic gallery. We had to choose a photo, look at it, make some notes about the picture. Then tell the story. This is how it went.
You can't tell if its' in black and white or not - it could just be a day with no colour.
Cold, so cold the snow didn't melt all day, not a drop had fallen from the lower branches. Maybe higher, where the sun touched it.
The sun would have been low all day. One tiny bird.
When the sun drops behind that break in the cloud there will be no more light today.
Only a few leaves hanging on.
A knot of children, cold feet, arms limp now, were playing but now they're not. One boy heading off in a different direction.
They are so close to home, you can see the houses on the other side of the hedge.
----------------------
He was watching, enjoying the children playing in the snow, enjoying the noise after the quiet of his house with just the clocks and watching TV in black and white and nothing left to say to each other. It was just before the time when an old man couldn't stand and watch a group of children any more without them being afraid, or calling him names or running away. Not so long ago.
And it had been such a beautiful day, so few cars on the roads, so quiet. Look up to the sky and it was an almost Mediterranean blue, cold and dry, crisp, and the blue sky and the sun making the world glisten as it reflected off the ice crystals dusting the branches like icing sugar.
He was wearing his old man's clothes, still the suits he wore for work, but twenty-five years later - and the shoes, and the scarf, and the hat with a small feather in the same colours as the tweed and a scarf which we called check but he called plaid - clothes don't last like that now. Even his name is old-fashioned: Ernest.
He doesn't have to go home yet because it's still early, and he will wait to see the sun drop behind those last few clouds and tea won't be ready until five, and anyway he is waiting to make sure that the boy turning away will not be left behind and lost. Because he is a father too, and although that was long time ago, he never saw his little girl at that age because he was away writing his lists of tinned food and socks as if we could beat the Nazis with the neatness of our inventories.
So he sat for a moment on the bench already cleared of snow by someone else earlier and daydreamed about the line of dogprints in the snow, and the boy and the dog... and the boy and the dog in Germany, in Berlin, in the snow, on a cold day just like this, and that boy was the same age as his Marion.
Then it was dark quite suddenly, and the way back wasn't clear, and he thought it best to stay on the bench and wait until morning. When the man came back with his dog at first light, he could speak his name, but he was so cold they could not warm him back up.
We were glad he had seen such a beautiful sunset on his last day.
