Monday, 24 September 2007

Many of you will remember my dear friend, Christine Andrews, aka Lucy, Countess of Bedford (because of her strong resemblance – IMHO - to that lady’s portrait on the cover of Peter Ackroyd’s ‘Albion’.)
Christine’s three year battle with cancer came to an end yesterday (Sunday, 23rd September) shortly before 4:00AM Californian time. I believe the end was relatively quick as the last email I had from her which she sent herself (dated 16th September) said that that at that point the cancer had not spread to her vital organs, and she was discussing taking part in a clinical trial. Her husband, Peter, emailed me on Wednesday to say she had been taken into hospital. The main problem she had over the last few months was that the cancer was in her lymph nodes, causing pain and swelling across her chest and a build up of fluid which rendered her right arm useless. Typically, she had voice recognition software installed on her computer so that she could continue to send emails, amid frequent acerbic comments about its spelling and interpretation of her English accent.
I first met Chris in January 1986, when we were both English ex-pat wives living in Dallas. I was pregnant with my first child, and her eldest had just had his first birthday. A few weeks later, she told me she suspected she was pregnant again, and her daughter was born exactly three months after my son. I always felt it was a special bond between us. Neither of us was ever very happy in Dallas, and she and Peter returned to the UK late in 1987. When we came home, in spring 1989, she was around to help me adjust to another big change in my life.
I have been trying to work out how much of our 20+ years of friendship was spent in the same country – I think it was about 3 years altogether – first in the States and then here before they were on the move again to Geneva. If it hadn’t been for cyberspace, I don’t suppose our friendship would have lasted the way it did. Chris was a great letter writer, but during those first few years my contributions were largely confined to birthdays and Christmas. However, once we started swapping emails, we stayed in regular contact, even daily at times. We saw each other through some rocky times, always emotionally close though physically distant.
The last time I saw her was on Baltimore railway station in the summer of 2004, when she saw me off to Boston for a conference. I have a photo over my desk taken of the two of us in Anapolis during that trip. We were expecting to meet again in a few days, when I would fly back to Baltimore to catch my flight home. However, in the meantime her Mum passed away in England, and a few hours before I landed she had caught a plane to Manchester for the funeral. She was planning to come over two years ago, and we would have met up then, but the cancer took a turn for the worse and the trip was cancelled. My daughter thinks I should go for the funeral, but when I think about what Chris would have wanted, I can hear her saying: ‘Why the bloody hell didn’t you come and see me while I was still alive?’
Chris didn’t quite make it to the half-century – she would have been 50 on 12th March next year.
Please pass this news on to anybody you think would want to know.

Bad night, I woke up at 1:30 when Hubby came to bed, got up about 2:30 and went downstairs to read, the cat brought a mouse in and was chasing it round the sitting room, I couldn’t be bothered to try and do anything with them so left her to it. Went back to bed and fell back asleep, probably around 3:30, woke at 5:30 and looked at the clock, then dozed off until the alarm went off at 6:30, switched it off but stayed in bed till 7:45. So, altogether, I probably didn’t have much less sleep than a normal night when I wake about 4:30-5, but it felt more disturbed.
Out in the village putting stuff on the parish noticeboards yesterday I bumped into one of the councillors, who kept me nattering, then told me to go home and ‘put my feet’ up. However, after getting home and having lunch, I knew that if I ‘put my feet up’ I would just end up getting cross with myself for not getting anything done, so I decided to tackle the redecorating in the downstairs loo, which has needed doing for months. I did it a couple of years ago (white top half, ‘amethyst’ bottom half with a border in between) and didn’t want to change it, but the damp has been coming through the walls, so it needed patching up. Only, I couldn’t get bog standard ‘white’ paint, all I could get in the damp resistant line was ‘soothing white’, which looks to me like a pale blue grey. So, did the ceiling and most of the top half of the walls in that. Then I had to tackle the damp areas, Hubby said, ‘It all has to come out and I will fill it’, but when I started poking it was so crumbly I didn’t know where to stop, there are a couple of huge areas where it is right back to the bricks, I think if I had kept going I could have pulled down the wall with my bare hands. Of course, most people would get a builder in to sort it out, but that would cost money, so is a no-no.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article2080207.ece

At 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon, the phone rings.
‘It’s the hospital here. You’re booked in for surgery at 8 o’clock on Monday. Has anyone called you?’
Er, no.
‘Oh. Well, can you make it?’
Er, yes.
‘Right, so that’s 8:00AM on Monday 16th July, nothing to eat or drink after midnight. I won’t send you a letter now, with the postal strike you probably wouldn’t get it.’
As I’m hanging up, I’m thinking – Monday 16th, that rings a bell. A school governors’ sub-committee meeting and a strawberry tea. But they’re not till the afternoon, how long is this going to take? Hmm, be sensible about this, I’ll be in no fit state, I’ll have to send my apologies. Which means really giving some indication of why I’m doing it, at this short notice.
The other thing I think about is that last time I was there, they said I would have to go in for a preparatory session, prior to the actual surgery. But if it’s that, why no food and drink after midnight? No, this must be it.
I put ‘minor surgery’ in the email that sends my apologies. Up to now, I’ve not really told people outside the immediate family, certainly not people in the village. I hadn’t really planned for circumstances in which I might have to tell people, though I had half an idea of making jokes about having a ‘boob job’.
I have been torn during the last few weeks between wanting to tell people and getting their sympathy, and not wanting to tell them because I don’t want to worry them or put them in an awkward situation of not knowing what to say and making them think that maybe I’m trying to get their sympathy. Part of me wants to be fussed over, part of me doesn’t want to ask to be fussed over. So, on balance I haven’t told people. Except in Oxford last week after a couple of beers. And on Melinda_blog, but no one reads that so that’s OK, no one noticed.
Since I came back from Oxford, I’d wondered once or twice what was happening. Maybe they tried ringing up when there was no one here, and somehow the fact that the message hadn’t been left wasn’t registered. Or maybe it is a cancellation, or some kind of ‘just-in-time’ system that they’re operating now (like Toyota), or some cunning method of massaging the waiting lists.
I didn’t have the happiest evening I’ve ever spent. Then I had a bizarre and horrible dream, in which my car scared the horse which the Chair of the Parish council was riding and she was thrown into the river, from which I pulled her out and tried to give her the kiss of life, but she turned very nasty and accused me of doing it deliberately. This from a woman that I really like and respect. So I was glad to wake up, even though it was only 1:30, and realise it was a dream.
And Hubby has been giving me the silent treatment again, though he hasn’t retreated to the attic yet. But that’s part of another story.

Well, as usual, it took only a couple of days hanging out with intelligent, interestng people who respect what I say and know how to party to make me feel good and positive about myself and life.
And an equally few days back in the real world to put me back in my place and remind me how completely I am marginalised and ignored, and how crap that makes me feel.
I'm too good for them. But that's not much consolation.

Last night, all the old feelings came back, as bad as ever. So they haven’t gone away, not really, not that I ever thought they would, they’re all still churning around in there. They might be less frequent, and they might not last as long when they’re here, but they’re never going to go away for good, are they? So is that as good as it gets, the best I can hope for? That the bad times might not last so long as they have in the past? Though that has always been variable anyway, there is no ‘typical’ pattern, so how can I know if things are getting better or just a temporary blip?
The fact is, I’m never going to be able to put them behind me for good, that’s just naïve, they are not something I’m ever going to be able to ‘get over’, just something I have to live with.
The only kind of happiness which lasts is the dull, count-your-blessings, mustn’t-grumble acceptance. Flashes of euphoria are fleeting, unpredictable and always come with a price tag.

When I was in my first job - over thirty years ago – I was chastised for being ‘too emotional’ about my work and taking criticism too personally. Maybe this has contributed to a certain reticence towards defending my ideas and my work. So, when a certain person asks someone else to do something I thought I was doing, I get angry, but I have to try very hard not to show it, because that would be ‘getting emotional’ and being a prima donna. Would I prefer it if he came straight out and said that my contribution wasn’t good enough? Does he do it this way because he’s too much of a coward to tell me to my face, or is he totally insensitive to my feelings? And isn’t that right anyway, wouldn’t it be better if I didn’t have feelings, or at least kept them under wraps?

And our wedding anniversary, too, as it happens. Not that we will be going anywhere or doing anything, just as we didn’t for my birthday, because we can’t afford it.
Looks a bit wet to do any gardening – I’m getting a bit ‘gardened out’ anyway. So what are my options? Housework, council work, research, writing or… decorating, I guess. None of which seems very appealing at the moment.
That is one of the drawbacks of my weird work pattern (apart from lack of money). All of the wage slaves I know seem to enjoy just being at home, even if they still have the same sort of crap (housework, decorating etc) to do as I do, being at home is at least some kind of break from routine. For me, it IS the routine.

Ed and Fallon, well well well, didn't see that one coming, (rolls eyes, raises eyebrows, ironic tone).
I was wondering how long it would take her to dump Kev.

Last week, I found the card the Crazy Frog sent me last year, when he said: ‘the world was quiet until [Melinda] decided to ... change everything’. I mean, what does that mean? Surely it means what it sounds like it means. Or maybe I can just accept that, at least, and be happy for it, and not keep wondering and worrying about it.
Of course, I've never seen or heard from him since (apart from 'public' type emails), and I don't suppose I'll ever see him again. But it still gives me a nice warm glow just thinking about it.
Like somebody else holding up the traffic to give me his twinkly grin. It is nice to feel desired, and desirable. That’s what I want, really. I don’t want to have sex with him, I just want to know that he wants me.
Or do I????

Sap, that is.
Went to Cambridge yesterday with a friend (61 year old divorcee) whose recent holiday must have done her a lot of good, because she suddenly announced, 'Let's go and find some men!'
Later we met up with another friend (69 year old divorcee)who, when discussing the 30-something Greek boyfriend of another (much younger!) acquaintance) suddenly said 'Isn't he GORGEOUS!' at which she and I discovered that we both have a penchant for Greek men, but have both noticed that the gorgeous young ones seem to suddenly morph into paunchy baldness (except my Greek-Amercian friend Demetri, who is holding up pretty well, it has to be said).
I don't recall ever having conversations on these lines with either of these ladies before!
After returning home, had a rather disturbing conversation with Hubby. I mentioned that my older friend had invited me to her 70th birthday bash, and said that he was invited too, if he is into socialising, which he isn't.
Hubby: 'I don't mind socialising'
Me: 'Just not with my friends'
H: 'Not with some of your friends. I wouldn't minds socialising with...' (HeWhoClearlyNeedsAPseudonym)
Me: 'Not sure I count him as one of my friends'.. but by this time Hubby had left the room, so not sure whether he heard it.
This is worrying. Could he have picked up on the vibes? He hasn't seen us together, so must be from something I've said. I will have to be careful.
After all that, last night I dreamt about the Crazy Frog (remember him?)

After a pretty miserable week, I have crawled back to the horizon (or x-axis – see below) and gained enough perspective to see that what I’ve been experiencing lately is just what I was talking about earlier, only in microcosm. Within the space of a couple of weeks I have gone from elation to despair and back to ‘normal’ again, and the high, which was great, was doomed to crash and burn. And I can also see that most of what happened at last week’s meeting wasn’t about my ideas being ‘side-lined’ but about my own sense of awkwardness at having got caught up in the flirtatious silliness, which made me feel defensive and a bit too confrontational – in fact, I could barely manage to be civil to the guy, despite (or because of) the mournful little voice inside telling me that I liked him as much as ever, and my behaviour was the best way of antagonising him and wrecking our friendship.
So, the good feelings never last, and the only thing that carries me over the bad times is just thinking: ‘Well, the bad times don’t last either’, and they don’t, but it still never feels like that when you’re going through them. And the choice, as I was saying to Suzee a couple of weeks ago, seems to be between staying on an even keel and not getting to the highs, or experiencing the highs and accepting the lows that follow them. I don’t want to reduce the fluctuations if that means I have to miss out on the good times. But wouldn’t it be good if there were some way to raise the whole curve, make it Sin(x)+c, where c>0?

I do envy Suzee. I know her circumstances aren’t perfect, but to be able to achieve the sort of integrated long term happiness she talks about seems to me to be wonderfully fortunate. My options seem to be either a dull, mustn’t-grumble resignation or fluctuation between mildly manic highs and mildly depressive lows, occasionally subsiding into seriously depressive lows. I say ‘options’, but that implies that I have some choice in the matter, which, if that is the case, I have no idea how to exercise it.
When I was bubbling over about being flirtatious last week, I guess I knew at the back of my mind that it was all too good to last. When we had a meeting on Tuesday, I felt awkward to start with, and things just went from bad to worse. Probably I had just built something up in my head that didn’t really exist outside of my imagination, I don’t know. But I got more and more despondent as the evening wore on. I could feel myself sliding into a fit of sullenness (is there such a word? I can’t think of a more appropriate one). The other people around me must have wondered what the hell was going on – or probably they didn’t, because why would they take any notice of my feelings?
I felt my ideas were being sidelined, which I find very frustrating when I’m talking about something I actually know a lot about – does that sound arrogant? I suppose it does, but it’s the Cassandra syndrome. I really hate confrontation, and most of the time I will keep quiet, unless there is something where I am absolutely sure of my ground, and then when I can’t convince people I get so frustrated because I think, well, should I just give up and let them have it their own way, knowing that it’s wrong and will probably cause problems down the line? Or do I try to think of other ways to convince them and probably end up becoming incoherent and getting angry with myself and convincing nobody? Then, when I’m proved right further down the line, I worry that I should have said something more forceful to have convinced them at the time and stop them making the wrong decision in the first place.
Anyway, that’s all by the by, really. What happened was that I continued to get more frustrated and feel more pissed off, and I couldn’t think how to make things better. And afterwards I reflected over other situations and wondered, how can it be that sometimes I can find the way to be so charming and even sexy, and have people around me (men and women) loving me and hanging on my every word, and how wonderful and powerful that feels, and then at other times I can completely lose touch with that and feel isolated and lost and frustrated (sorry, I’ve got to use that word again because I can’t think of a substitute) and like a sulky child? Which becomes self-reinforcing because I know I’m doing it and get angry with myself, but don’t know how to stop.
That has just reminded me of something – and probably it is just me going all pop-psychology again – but I thought about when I was a child, and how whenever I was upset about something and tearful, my father’s reaction was to get angry and tell me off, which of course upset me even more, and made him even more angry. His attitude was that crying was a deliberate act, something I had control over and, I suppose, that I was doing to defy him, when to me it was an uncontrollable expression of sadness and shame. I remember even as a child thinking how bizarre it was that he should think the way to stop me doing it was to make me feel even sadder and more ashamed.

This refers to the Sunday Times article I linked to below, here’s the link again:
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/ariel_leve/article1622259.ece
(note: I haven’t actually read the book – just this article – so I’m not presuming to criticise it specifically, just my experience of that genre of self-help).
I was struck by the line: ‘If it’s something that makes her feel better, why did I need her to see the downside?’
So, why DO I need to be so cynical about these positive-thinking … things? (sorry for that lame word ‘things’, but the only word I could think of was ‘scams’, and I thought I’d better not put that ).
I guess if other people want to believe in it, I shouldn’t be so scathing, I should let them get on with it, and hey, maybe it will work for them, and that’s great. Perhaps my antagonism is mainly sour grapes because it doesn’t work for me.
I think there are three main problems from my point of view. One is that I’m too rational and can’t see how it would work. Well, I can see how it affects people in face to face situations, so that if you act confidently, they will respond differently to you. But as far as affecting causality at a distance is concerned, forget it, that is just mumbo-jumbo
Second thing, I have tested it empirically, I have tried it and it has let me down.
Third – how DO you actually control your emotions? That is the toughest one, I think. I am far too governed by my emotions, and I really struggle to see how to control them. So, forcing myself to think positively is a real struggle and always feels inauthentic and fraudulent. Which is not to say I’m incapable of feeling that way spontaneously, of course, it’s just the whole business of MAKING yourself act/think/feel a certain way that I rebel against. But I am working on it.
There’s a fourth – which I’ve just thought of – and this is probably the reason why I react so strongly – it’s that some people are so damned evangelical about the whole thing that it gets right up my nose!

Watched ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ last night. I hadn’t seen it before and didn’t know what to expect (except that the Oneword film programme guys are always raving over it). I’m not sure what I thought about it as a film, and I won’t go into any details about it, except to pose the question: if you could erase memories, which ones would you go for, the bad ones or the happy ones which remind you that life is not like that now?
Coincidentally, when it was on I got a text from my Greek friend (wishing me a belated happy birthday). We haven’t been together since December 2005. Will we all meet up again? Will it be this year? (There are plans for meetings in Cyprus in September and Brussels in October, but they depend on funding being available). If not this year, then, I suspect, probably never. Will I ever go to the States again, and see the friends I have over there? I really don’t know, but again, it definitely won’t be this year.
So, is it better to blot out the memories of the good times, do they make things worse in the here-and-now, the humdrum? Maybe it’s better not to erase any memories, even the bad ones, because they are part of what you are, and messing with the mind is tricky. Anyway, at my age, my memories have a disturbing way of eliminating themselves when I can least afford to lose them!

Could this be the moment the worm turns???
Are Lizzie and Nigel going to adopt Ruairi? (Myself, I think Ian and Adam should have him).
And can I persuade you-know-who that being a town crier is vital to his ambitions of becoming a parish councillor??? (can't stop thinking about those breeches - and the tricorn hat, of course).

But I wish I could have said it so well!!!
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/ariel_leve/article1622259.ece

Almost a year ago, Goingsomewhere 'tagged' me to produce a list of ten fantasy shags. I only got as far as 8, then gave up and never posted it.
I was reminded of it tonight when watching Dr Who (the connection is in number 2 - which has now been amended - see below - and David Tennant doesn't come into it). So I had to find the list, and I think it's a great testament to my filing system (or packrat syndrome) that I managed to do so - voila!

Fantasy shags
1 No contest; Michael Wood, the telly historian. Looks, brains, and a man of my own age who still has his hair. What more could a girl ask? And it would probably take place half way up either the Himalayas or the Andes – Shangri-La, here I come! (in a manner of speaking…).
2 The young Will Shakespeare… as long as he looks like Joseph Fiennes (yet another reason to hate G Paltrow…).
NB this should now be replaced by the guy who was on Dr Who tonight
3 Jim Morrison… obviously. Had to be. Just hope he wouldn’t be too stoned to perform (or I would be too stoned to care)
4 Casanova – just, for once in my life, to know what it’s supposed to feel like.
5 Han Solo – in a galaxy far, far away.
6 Malcolm McDowell, circa 1972 (a fantasy from my girlhood).
7 Antonio Corelli – I guess. A tricky one, this, but I thought I had to include him though it would be the lifelong romantic devotion I’d go for, more than the shag. BTW, did I mention he has acquired a voice as well as a body –singing Portuguese rather than Italian, and playing acoustic guitar rather than mandolin, but hey, this is MY fantasy!
8 Tommy Lee Jones, circa 1980 something. A fantasy from my twenty/thirties. Mmmm….

So, I never got as far as 9 or 10, though I did toy with the idea of 'the one who got away' from my student days for number 9 (his name was Jonathan, and I wonder what he's doing now?)

As for 10??? I guess I'm still waiting for him to come along...

Went to see the counsellor again yesterday. I was talking about how I had settled into that ‘contented’ plateau, but now I feel I want to move out of it and get back to the dizzy heights, but I’m afraid that it won’t be sustained and I will descend back down into the depths. But maybe that is just the pattern of my life, which I have to accept.
And maybe (it occurred to me) this is the point of acceptance. There is this tension between acceptance and – well, striving, but I’m sure I thought of a really good alliterative word in the night (Achievement? Aspiration?). In trying to achieve ‘acceptance’, I thought it was about accepting things as they are and life as it is and making the most of it – the word the counsellor came up with was ‘resignation’ – making the most of things, counting your blessings, looking on the bright side, in that Pollyanna-ish way which pisses me off so much. So I thought I had to stay on that ‘contented’ plateau because I knew that if I tried to move off it I would start to want more, to be in the dizzy heights all the time, and to crash when I had to go back to ‘normality’, and then struggle to get back to ‘contentment’ again.
But maybe what I have to accept is that that is the pattern of my life, the way it works, and that anticipating the negatives is part of it, as long as I just acknowledge that they will come and not use them as a reason not to try for the positives. And she pointed out that the ‘contented’ plateau won’t stay a plateau forever, but will start to decline eventually anyway, and slide me back into the depths. So trying to cut off that side of me that wants to get to the heights won’t really help anyway in the long run. And although at times the heights seem unattainable, life has a habit of throwing up opportunities when you least expect them, I just have to be alert to that and take advantage of them.

I have roused myself from my hibernal somnolence into developing friendship with a guy (not gay – I assume not, anyway) in the village. Here is the sordid story so far:
· When I only knew him by sight, I thought he had a lovely smile.
· When we landed up on a committee together, I thought he had a lovely voice.
· When he offered to buy me a drink after a meeting to make up for pissing me off (he hadn’t, but I wasn’t going to protest), I found out what we have in common, viz, that he is over-educated, frustrated, and struggling to find gainful employment.
· When (precedent having been set), we ended up chatting over a beer in the snug after another meeting, I persuaded/cajoled/bullied him into standing for the Parish Council.
· When I sent him a jokey email, he responded in kind, and a dialogue has been set up.
· When I was walking up the High Street and he was driving the other way, he stopped his car, wound the window down and grinned at me inanely until I pointed out that he was obstructing the traffic.
Okay, so ‘Sienna’s Lovers’ it ain’t, but I feel I could be drifting into Joanna Trollope (or Midsomer Murders) territory.

I went to see my counsellor last week, for the first time in about 6 weeks. I no longer feel I need to see her every week, but I’m reluctant to cut the cord, so I had arranged to go back again.
I said at one point that I had found a kind of contentment, and she said ‘Contentment, that’s a new word for you’. And I thought, well, no, it’s not, not really. It’s only new in the context of the time she’s known me. I have had periods of ‘contentment’ in my life before, and I started to think what characterises them, and what it is that brings them to an end. And I decided that cross stitch is a good indicator, if I have a cross stitch project on the go, and an evening spent cross-stitching feels like a good evening and makes me feel happy, that is a sign of contentment.
But what are the things which disturb this? Thinking that things could be different, that life could be different, that I COULD have been a writer, or an academic, that I COULD be out there knocking them dead. And the thought of having contact with people who make me feel that I’m wonderful and special is scary because I might slip back out of this ‘contented’ phase and back to the place I was in this time last year, when nothing could make me feel happy. Far easier to think ‘No, no, this is me, this is who I am, this is what I’m good at and what I’m fit for’. And when I spoke to her about this (though not in such a coherent way, because I’ve now had a week to think about it), she used the words ‘tragic, in a way’, and I thought, what does she mean by that? Because if I start thinking of my life being ‘tragic’ that is what will drag me back down again, far better not to even think about it.
There is this tension between accepting myself as I am and the world as it is and striving to be something more and to make the world different. And how do you balance that, how do you find some kind of equilibrium, if you always have the feeling that you are capable of being someone else but you just can’t do it? Isn’t it better to be ‘a happy idiot’ (Jackson Brown, ‘The Pretender’)? I started to think that there is this box, or cupboard, that as long as I keep the lid on and the door shut I can keep going and be ‘content’, but if I start to open it and look inside then all kinds of things might come out. And so I thought about Pandora’s box, and I remembered that the last thing to come out of Pandora’s box was hope, and maybe it’s worth all the shit just to hang on to that hope.