Husband or cat?

http://husbandorcat.blog.co.uk/2007/12/

It’s exactly a year today since I logged on here, and – in characteristically gloomy mood – whinged about my boring New Year’s Eve. And set myself a challenge. To blog every day for a year. Well, I didn’t make it EVERY day. Just every day I was here, home, in my study, in front of this battered old PC. And it wasn’t always 500 words, not in the early days. I’m not sure when the ‘write 500 words every day’ merged into the ‘blog every day’. Some of the earlier posts were fairly cursory, although the rest of the 500 were lurking somewhere in the background, on my hard drive or in a notebook. I didn’t always feel able to share them. But I got tired of editing. So, now, everything comes in here, often in a big splurge. And a lot of the time I genuinely don’t know what I’m going to say until I say it, though there are other occasions too, when the words are just hammering to be let out.
Needless to say, it’s been one hell of a year. I’ve fallen into and out of love twice – actually, make that into twice and out of three times, given that I started the year still nursing that stupid infatuation that had been rolling its way around my heart since the first faltering steps of this blog, over three years ago now. But I let him go, replaced him; let him go, replaced him; let Himself go - the only one who was consummated out of the three - but he’s gone now too. So be it. I have sealed up the box marked ‘love’ and deposited it in a left luggage office, ‘Not wanted on voyage’.
At the start of the year, I thought I might be going to Vienna and/or Sydney. Well, that didn’t happen, but I did go to Hungary and Berlin, unexpectedly, and also to Brussels, Oxford, London and Paris, all stations along the way. And metaphorically, to other places I never expected to see. I have spent good times with old friends, happy memories to lay down and treasure for the hard times, and made quite a few new ones, both on and off line. As for other plans, I still haven’t made any progress on that bloody novel. Or on my research. No high grade journal papers this year, I’m afraid. No poetry published. Just blogs and notebooks.
Marian suggested the other day that I should close this book and start a new one, something which had already occurred to me. But I still have another step to take, one which will be the culmination of the last three years, in fact, of a much longer journey than that. A culmination AND a springboard, as I said in the presentation for my doomed interview. The first of many down a new path. And part of me is excited and part of me is terrified.
I always strive to be honest, here as in real life. Oh god, how disingenuous does that sound??? ‘Trust me, I’m a used car salesman/doctor/politician’??? Well, I AM a doctor, of sorts, if not of medicine. I can’t swear that I’m always consistent, but I always sincerely believe in whatever it is I’m writing as I’m writing it. I hope those who have known me for some time know that is true and appreciate my sincerity. I never set out to create any special persona for myself, just to draw out what was there, the things I didn’t understand or recognise about myself.
And in the process I have discovered/created this unique and – if you don’t mind me saying so – rather wonderful woman. She was always there, but she never believed she could emerge into the light of day, always doomed to be the ‘might have been’, the ‘should have been’, the lost twin. It has taken a crisis to pull her out at her full stature, to stand blinking in the daylight. I have no idea where her next step will take her, but it has to be done. Because the one thing that makes her really uncomfortable is deceit. And she has been living a lie for so very long, by default if not by action.
And HusbandorCat is the appropriate place for the chronicling of that step. So, I’ll be around for a little longer. And then, my friends, expect news about a different blog. I hope you’ll choose to join me there, but the choice is up to you, of course.
In the mean time, celebrate today in the way that suits you best, and let us all welcome 2009 with hope.
Linda
xxx

My family meets today at my house. Three generations – and I am one of the elders – OK, the youngest of the oldest, but even so... How did that happen? When the generations before us fall away, and suddenly we find ourselves on that pinnacle, or outcrop at least, looking back at the ones toiling up behind us. Nurturing the children, watching the ones who are no longer children making their way through the thickets of adulthood.
We cannot live other people’s lives for them, but we can reach out a hand sometimes, when we have come so far, but still have so much further to go on our own journeys.
I meditated on love again this morning, as I do every day. Learning to feel that generalised love: for myself (hardest of all, of course), for my friends, for people who are difficult to like, for all living beings. To even it out and be able to say: ‘I accept you all. We are all in this life together. I will see you for who and what you are, and I will wish you well.’
I see the destructive power of both hate and love around me. I see friends who are suffering in love and I try to offer what comfort I can. We love the person who is in our heads, but sometimes we have to face up to the fact that that person does not exist, we have to let them go, and it’s hard, believe me, I know just how hard. ‘If I’d never loved, I never would have cried’. Who said that? Oh yes, Paul Simon, ‘I am a Rock’. But that is too bitter, that song, it’s a young man’s song. I hope I’m not bitter. I’ve moved beyond that, I like to believe so, anyway.

‘Love’ and ‘hate’ trip off the tongue, but is it really ‘hate’ which is the opposite of ‘love’? I think of someone else I tried to reach out to. I won’t try it again, that is too dangerous, and I have to protect myself, I’m not a saint. But I wonder, what is it that drives that person? Not love, whatever they may think, or if it is, a particularly dark and distorted form of love. Hate, then? No, I don’t believe it’s hate either, because if so, I’m not sure who the hate object is, unless either the self (and I don’t think this is true, the person in question is cunning and has very strong instincts of self preservation, I’d say), or the rest of the world in general. But I’d say that this person doesn’t hate other people so much as see them as objects, tools, to be used and manipulated at will and then discarded when they no longer fulfil the purpose intended. No, I suspect that what drives this person is neither love nor hate but fear. Fear of being alone and powerless, perhaps, of being found out, of being rejected, of seeing themselves as they are.
I don’t feel anger towards this person, but I do feel sorrow for those who have been hurt. And gratitude that I am not one of them.

Another morning, and today I actually don’t know what I’m going to say. I have had a lot of private thoughts that I don’t feel able to share – yes, even I have them.. But nothing so far has formed in my head to write to you. And so I will sit in front of the keyboard and see what stream of consciousness emerges today.
I have managed to avoid thinking about work for a few days, but it can’t be put off indefinitely. I spent some time yesterday looking at my college work, I have an assignment to complete by the end of January, and I need to go back over what we did, the things that we rushed through, that I didn’t have time to practise between sessions. I enjoy it, it means a lot to me, and several people have said that the qualification might help my employability. Well, it can’t hurt. So there is an incentive there.
I’ve also got some follow up work from the Berlin meeting to do for the 15th, but the email asking for it, with very non-specific and confusing requirements, only arrived last week. So, that will be a challenge And the paper I presented in Oxford has to be rewritten and expanded by the end of the month for inclusion as a chapter in a book, which will also be a challenge. As well as my usual clerking work. But I will get my head down and it will all get done.
My siblings are coming tomorrow – I think. We’ve never been close, but since our parents died, ten years ago, we have tried to make the effort to meet up at Christmas, rotating the location between the three of us. Last year it was due to be at my sister’s, but there was some bad feeling between my brother and brother in law, and I had a phone call the day before from my brother in law to say that my brother would not be going, but that we were welcome to if we wanted. This year, I have had confirmation from my brother to say that they will come, but although I’m expecting my sister, she hasn’t called to say whether my niece and family are coming too, and she’s been staying with them over Christmas, so I haven’t been able to call her. So I don’t know how many to cater for. Given what happened last year, the fact that she hasn’t called is making me uneasy.
Why do people do these things? I don’t like my brother in law and I never have, though I’ve tried to tolerate him for my sister’s sake. But I don’t understand why people get into petty feuds with one another and hold grudges like this. They hurt themselves as much as they hurt each other. I try to be tolerant, and to keep away as far as possible from those I find intolerable. I try at least to respect everyone’s point of view, even if I don’t agree with it, to acknowledge that they have their reasons for their feelings and behaviour. I have spent a lot of anger over the years to no good purpose, and made myself miserable in the process. I have realised that I don’t have to like everybody, and I don’t have to spend emotional energy on people from whom I get only grief. I can accept that they are who they are and how they are, and I try to do so without judgement, of them or of myself. And so I step a little further along the path.

Every day is a new day. Wake up and start again. Whatever has gone before is in the past. Remember the good things, but don’t try to hold on to them, be glad for them and let them go.
I’m drifting through these limbo days with no real plan of what is going to happen, what I’m going to say, what I’m going to do. This situation is so bizarre. Just a few more days. Not before Tuesday, because my sister, brother in law, brother, sister in law and possibly niece, husband and children will be here, we talked yesterday about the cooking arrangements. Not before Tuesday. And Wednesday? New Year’s Eve? Bring the curtain down? Tell him and then go out, leave him here alone? What about Thursday, New Year’s Day? I am holding on to it all, but what am I holding? Am I procrastinating still? Sometimes I think I’ve been procrastinating for three years, longer, even.
I pull off my rings. They are irritating me, there’s an itch just below the knuckle.
How will he react? Will he understand, acknowledge, give me his blessing? Will he retreat, hide himself away again? Or will he explode? That seems unlikely, it has never happened before. But if he does, I have nowhere to escape to, so I will have to stay and face the consequences.
Yesterday I was thinking of Paris, of how good that felt, good and real and strong. Life cannot always be about sitting on the Left Bank sipping coffee and listening to the bells. I’m not so naïve. I know there will be hard times, black times. I need to keep a point of light burning.
We cannot always be ruled by circumstances. We cannot always wait for them to fall into place. Sometimes the universe is telling us what to do but without showing us how. We have to make the decision before we have the means to implement it.
Take it gently, was Mary’s advice. Start by making a room for yourself. I have my own rooms, my study, my sitting room, he has his. The spaces we share are the kitchen and bedroom. It is the bedroom which is crucial, symbolic. Last time, I sent him elsewhere. Perhaps he will offer to go this time, but I must be firm, I have to be the one to go. What will I say to make him realise, understand, that this is not a test, a trial, a game, a bluff, I am serious this time? Or should I not even try, just let it happen gradually?
I must stop speculating like this. The only thing to do is to do it. Let it happen, whatever might happen. Whatever happens, I will still get up every day and find the world there, in its usual place, waiting for me, the cats waiting to be fed, work waiting to be done, correspondence waiting to be dealt with, dust sneaking in and settling while I’m not looking, waiting for me to come and chase it out again. Day after day.

I changed my picture again. I changed it on MSN first, and someone said he liked it, so I thought I would change it here too. I only found it quite recently, in Facebook. It was taken in Paris in May by a Czech friend who put it on her Facebook page but somehow I missed it at the time – there were so many people posting so many photos from that trip. It was outside Sacre Coeur on Saturday evening, I was with Petra (Czech), Eduardo (Spain) and Arto (Finland), and we had just walked up through Montmartre. In the full picture, my elbow is resting on Edu’s back, and Arto is standing behind me – Petra, of course, took the picture. Later we walked back down and found a restaurant, the others came to meet us from the other parts of the city where they were scattered, and we had a final dinner together before flying off (or training, in my case at least) in our different directions the following day.
Actually, that’s not strictly true, because at least some of us had lunch the next day as well, a picnic on the Pont des Arts. I’d spent the morning on my own in the Latin Quarter, listening to the bells of Notre Dame and exploring Shakespeare & Company. Falling in love – in love with being myself, with Melinda, with detaching myself from the limitations which hold me back and stop me from finding my own way. I was still a little in love with someone else at that time – or not such a little (not anyone connected with Paris, BTW) – I didn’t realise then that it had just reached the point which was as good as it was ever going to get, but soon the process of detaching myself from him would begin, too.
And so I sat in a café with my notebook and listened to the bells and drank Sunday morning coffee and sunshine and people and magic. Bought a poster from the stalls on the Left Bank. And when I was ready, I met my friends outside the Louvre.
I guess I’ll always have Paris.
I went back to the start of this blog again last night. A sense of time folding and doubling back on itself, taking me back, and yet, I am so different now, I am not that woman any more, I have reinvented, recreated myself, I have seen myself at last through others’ eyes, others’ lenses, and I can let her go, that lonely, fearful woman, and stand alone. I have resolved the contradictions of Belinda and Melinda by truly becoming Melinda and acknowledging her strength and power. For now, at least.
‘It was late in December/The sky turned to snow/All around the day/Was going down slow./Night like a river,/Beginning to flow./I felt the beat of my mind go drifting into/Time Passages./Years go falling in the fading light./Time Passages/Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight.’
The last train home? But where is home? Where will the train take me?

A bizarre Christmas, but then, how could it have been anything else? And, honestly, not so different from many others. Our presents to each other were just about right – not so trivial as to seem mean, but nothing so extravagant and personal as to cause awkwardness in the weeks to come. His card to me – and he has a history of giving me ‘for my wonderful wife’ type cards with long mawkish verses about how I’m the centre of his universe and dee dah dee dah – was a simple picture of a cat (what else?) on the front, and inside, ‘Merry Christmas’ and his name with three kisses. Mine to him was a humorous cartoon, with just my name inside – no kisses, no customary ‘All my love’. The morning passed without incident, everyone was relatively relaxed, except that Laura and her boyfriend had to leave early to see his parents before her shift at the pub started. We had dinner when they got back at 5, which was rather a strange time to eat, but it passed OK. In between, hubby took control of the cooking, as he usually does, I helped out as needed, mostly we went our separate ways.
Laura and her boyfriend were planning to stay here again last night, but at 9 his mum rang to say that the dog, who has a tumour, couldn’t stand up, and they were trying to decide whether to call the vet out then or leave it till this morning. Laura took the call, then told me in a whisper. ‘I don’t want to go, but I’ll have to for him’. I hugged her. The death of a dog doesn’t mean much on the scale of things, but when you’re 19, it is another part of childhood to let go of. Like the flawed fantasy of Christmas.
The other fracas I’ve been involved in still rumbles on. My attempt at reconciliation was accepted briefly then rejected again. So be it. I tried reviewing, honestly my part in the whole thing, and though I don’t claim to be perfect, I can’t really see what I did to invoke such venom.
Over the years, I have occasionally attracted the attention of strong personalities who offered friendship but then attempted to control me – the result, I guess, of the ‘little me’-dom to which I can be prone. Such people have given me a lot of grief in the past, but I’m tougher than I look. I remember a toy from my childhood, inflatable child size plastic figures which were weighted in the bottom with sand, so that they could be used as punch bags. Push me too hard and I’ll bounce back and put your eye out. Well, no, I wouldn’t do that, I try not to. But I won’t roll over for you to walk on me either.
I know that people who try to use others in those ways are also victims, and in the end they hurt only themselves because the rest of us can shrug them off and move on. A friendship which can be so easily broken has only shallow roots.
I reached out in a small way to another friend, a genuine friend, last night. I know the dark places, I’ve been there enough times, sometimes they can be very dark, at others just a little gloomy, but they pass. Everything passes.
And I got through the whole of Christmas Day without a single tear. Now, that’s an achievement.

I was angry yesterday. Very angry. I felt I had been misinterpreted, misjudged, mistreated, manipulated, by someone I have tried very hard, against my deepest instincts, to like and feel loving towards. My compassion, trust and tolerance were stretched so thinly that one more word could have snapped them completely.
We cannot control others, and we cannot prevent others from trying to control us. Often we cannot even control our own reactions. But at least the potential is there. To look at how we react in certain circumstances, and try to find the ‘best’ way of responding, the way which will lead to greater peace for ourselves and others, rather than perpetuating the old cycles and playing out the old stories.
For me, there are two old stories in cases like that. One, the oldest, the most primeval, is to lash out, to try and inflict as much hurt and damage as possible, to tell that person over and over exactly what I think of them, force them to face up to the truth about themselves (as I see it, but then, what else is truth other than that which we can see?), to make them understand. I abandoned that approach decades ago. It never works, how can it? We cannot control other people’s minds. We cannot control their way of seeing the world. We cannot make them see what we see.
It is always, always destructive, and what it destroys is the person who is trying to use it.
So, if I cannot change others by my anger, what else do I do with it? Turn it on myself, of course. Always. This has been the pattern throughout my life. In so many ways. The world is against me, everybody is against me, nobody wants me, I’m going down the garden to eat worms. This was my instinct yesterday, to run away, even though I knew it would be no more helpful, positive and constructive than unleashing my anger. The lure of the old patterns of behaviour was almost overwhelming.
So, how to find a third way? How to step back from the fire and the flood and stay on the firm ground?
Distraction, first. Do something, anything, get on with it. Lose myself in practical action. Fortunately, there were plenty of practical actions to get on with. And look for guidance.
I read about forgiveness, that forgiveness is not something to be handed down, but an openness towards the other person, a willingness to stand here in this moment, to let go of the past, not to assume that the future will always replay what has gone before. We can’t force change, but we don’t have to assume that it is impossible.
I won’t hide any more. I will show my face. It is a lovely face, a pretty face, a sexy face, I know it is, I have been told so. No more false modesty, no hiding away, no ‘oh, I’m only little me, nobody wants ME’. That’s not true. It’s a beautiful face, and in real life, it can be even better, more captivating, more seductive, more loving. It can be all those things. And it can be strong, too. It can face a new day, a new year, a new life. It can let go of the past.
Happy Christmas, my friends.

Maybe it’s time for Linda to beat a retreat from blogland. She has been used, battered and bruised, cast aside like an old sock, apparently. So be it. Leave the place to the beautiful, glamorous, passionate people who are here as of right. She doesn’t expect to be wanted, loved, desired, admired, cared for, appreciated. Why should she? She belongs in the ranks of the eternally ordinary and everyday.
There are some friendships, some people, which are just too difficult to handle, too hard to please, no matter what you try to do. And she tries, she always tries, to please people. The awkward kid on the fringes of the group, who doesn’t know what she’s expected to do, how she’s supposed to make friends. She doesn’t push herself forward, she always waits for them to come to her, not out of arrogance or stand-offishness, but because why would they want her, why should she try to impose herself on them, what a joke that would be, imagine, her of all people, trying to find a friend. She doesn’t mean to upset or antagonise or disappoint anyone, but somehow she always does, and she ends up back here, alone and despised.
In here, it is just too easy to say things, anything, and assume that your words are just marks on a screen, just electrical impulses, nothing more nor less. What happens in blogland doesn’t count in the Real World. Why should anyone care, take anything seriously? It’s all a game, after all, just let it all go.
So, she will go back into the real world and deal with the real world people, and try to get through the next few days of enforced jollity, while the world around her celebrates. How will she hide the tears? How can it be that anyone will fail to notice that she has been crying? Blame the exhaustion. That’s it, that good old stand by, that universal excuse, and it’s not far from the truth either, as she drags through another day on three hours’ sleep.
And she’ll find herself reflecting on that eternal truth, that none of this really matters, that we are all imaginary people, playing at being alive, then putting ourselves back into the box, disconnecting our batteries, returning to the manufacturer, unserviceable goods. Otherwise, why would we be here? Why wouldn’t we be out there, living real lives?
She is rambling again, as she always does when she is tired. And full of self pity. And being unfair on the people who do care, the people who are there, because there are some, some kind souls who don’t want her to go. Perhaps. But maybe they are busy, and it’s not fair to expect them to shoulder her feelings at times like this. Her feelings are her own burden, she must carry them alone, no one else can do it for her. Even though the tiredness is almost overwhelming. She has to keep going, because there is only one alternative, and she has made promises that she will never go down that road. And if nothing else, she keeps her promises.

I have a friend who’s always very quick to warn me off any men of our mutual acquaintance who might show an interest in me, or in whom I might be interested. This one is very charming but cold and unfeeling, he flirts with everybody but doesn’t really care for anyone, except, possibly, his wife. That one is fragile and deeply damaged himself, to be handled with great care. This one is amusing but shallow, I would get bored very quickly. That one is fascinating but too intense and dangerous.
If I were a different sort of woman, I might resent her interference. But I respect her judgement. I will always listen to her opinions because I know she’s right. Always, infallibly, straight down the line, bang on the money, right on the nose.
But do her individual judgements, I wonder, give her the insight to understand the fundamental problem? Which is, that they’re all flawed, every single one of them, there is no one out there who could tick all the boxes, meet all the requirements. There can never be a man to match my complexity, he hasn’t been born, not in this age, at any rate, and if he has, what are the chances of me finding him, or him finding me?
Love is always a compromise, but I have compromised for long enough. I will cultivate friendships, and maybe find sex along the way. That shouldn’t be so hard, should it? Once I used to think it was, but perhaps I was looking in the wrong places.
In the end, perhaps, I will come to the realisation that the one who suited me best was dear old Hubby. He will never feed my passion, answer my questions or fill my empty, gaping holes. But he is there. He tolerates, ignores, never criticises, never complains. Never engages, never listens, never responds. He will never leave. So I have to be the one who will. Or accept that I will never be my own woman. And does that matter? Yes, I think it does.
When I think about Himself, I know it wasn’t him, that he could never be the one to tick all the boxes. And yet, he ticked so many, that I was blind to the ones that still stood empty, I dismissed them hurriedly, as though they didn’t really matter. Oh, they did, they did, and they still do. But now, each time I think about a man, I find myself mentally checking against those same boxes, the ones he ticked... Sense of humour? Dark eyes? Intelligence? Smile?
No, that way madness lies. Get a grip, woman. Think about something sensible and ordinary, take your mind away from those murky tracks.
Holiday starts today. I’ve decided. I didn’t get all the work done yesterday. My brain was still fuddled from exhaustion. I will let it all go, for a few days, at least. No one cares about deadlines at this time of year, do they?
I wrote and sent off all my cards for Europe yesterday. I know, I know, far too late. But they will be there for the New Year. It wasn’t till last week that I got round to sending the annual circular email asking if addresses had changed from last year, if people still wanted to be on the list. I felt embarrassed in the post office, till I realised that the man in front of me had cards for Canada, the States and Australia. Maybe they were Easter cards.

Meet a stranger in a bar.
Wear a short skirt, stockings and high heeled boots.
Drink champagne.
Sit on a high stool.
Let him slide his hand between my thighs.
Is that the answer?
Another broken night.
I have to finish off my work today. If not, I will still be doing it tomorrow. Possibly Wednesday… And by next week, I’ll have to start thinking about all the things that need to be done in January…
What about the sort of job where you get paid just for turning up? Do those exist any more? Where it doesn’t matter how much you achieve or don’t achieve, you just have to be there, and a nice comfortable sum is deposited into your account at regular intervals. And in between, there are times when you don't have to be there, and your time's your own.
‘No one knows where the night is going,/And no one knows why the wine is flowing,/And oh, love, I need you, I need you, I need you…’
Leonard Cohen. Bad sign.
Actually this has been the year, among other things, when I’ve rediscovered Leonard Cohen. After years – decades even – of not even thinking about him or playing any of his songs. Rosemary lent me the double CD – but something must have happened before that, to trigger it, we must have been talking about him for some reason, she wouldn’t have just said out of the blue: ‘Oh, would you like to borrow my Leonard Cohen album?’
Perhaps it was something she saw in my face.
The year keeps stumbling remorselessly towards its bitter end – only to start another round, in the cold ashes of January. Round and round we go.
I’m sorry, I’m not very festive this morning. I’m so tired, there’s this great heavy block in my head, the dam that holds back sleep, that pushes me through the days, one after another. Decorating a tree. Writing cards. Making mince pies. All the forced enthusiasm for something which means less than nothing at the moment.
To have both the children here. That’s something to be happy about. Laura has to work on Christmas day, but she’ll come for dinner afterwards, and be here Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. Happy families. Well, not exactly. But it will be good to have her around. At least she knows, but I try not to rely on her for comfort, she has her own worries to preoccupy her. Simon doesn’t know, of course. Not yet.
Hubby seems relaxed, happier than he has been for a while. And I have to change that. Because it’s not enough, it’s not good enough, I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to say.
But I will keep saying something, and nothing, because this is the task I set myself, this challenge to write and keep writing, where is it all going, what is it all for? The novel is so far out of my mind, it seems like a poor joke, more implausible than Father Christmas or three wise men following a star. How will I ever again find a place where it could seem like a reality? All my words are here, they spew out onto this virtual… what? Virtual what? I can’t even think how to end that sentence. So even the words aren’t there any more, after all.

Another broken night, another lie in. This could be becoming a habit, though I mustn’t let it. At 5 I disabled the alarm, settled myself back down into bed, and told myself, if I was still awake at half past, I would get up. And woke up at quarter to eight. Despite lying in so late yesterday, I was still exhausted in the evening, and almost fell asleep on the sofa. This bug must be sapping my energy.
We bought the tree yesterday – perhaps the last thing we will buy together. At present it is standing, lop sided and rather forlorn, in the utility room. Hubby said it was a bit difficult to get it straight on his own. We’ll have to readjust it in situ. He got the decorations out of the loft, strung up the outside lights, had to remind me that we were going to buy it. He must be wondering why I’m showing so little enthusiasm. Or maybe not. Maybe he just isn’t thinking at all.
Unlike Lu, I will have to decorate it myself, alone, but I’ve done that for the last nine years. Since we’ve lived in this house, we’ve always had two trees, one in the sitting room which I decorate, and one in the living room for the children. But this year, Laura doesn’t have time to come round and decorate a tree, so we will just have the one.
I know when it’s done I won’t be happy with it, I never am. I just don’t have that sort of knack. I’m not great at practical aesthetics, though I can draw passably as long as I have something to copy from, and don’t have to create something from my imagination. My talent is verbal, not visual, I tell myself, words are my medium, though even that sounds a bit pretentious.
Simon came home yesterday. He rang about 4, just as he was leaving, to ask for directions. I passed him to his father, who proceeded to tell him the wrong junction number from the M25 to the A1 (he mentally counted the number of junctions from the M1, but forgot which direction the numbers go in and counted down, not up). Another phone call, a little later, which I didn’t answer this time, being in the throes of cooking dinner. He’d got off at junction 19 and was seeing signs for Aylesbury and Hemel Hempstead, and that’s not right, is it? ‘So you told him just to turn round at the next opportunity and go back to the M25?’ ‘Yes, but now he can’t start the car’. Great. He’d had to get a jump start from his housemates to get started in the first place, obviously the battery wasn’t just flat but knackered, as the drive from Guildford to Hemel hadn’t recharged it. ‘…so he’s waiting for the RAC. And he hasn’t got much charge left on his phone either’.
A third call, when we were a Scotch and two glasses of wine into dinner – he was sitting in slow moving traffic just past the tunnel under the Hatfield Galeria, hoping that it wasn’t going to stall. ‘I told him to just stick on the A1 and hope the traffic picks up, rather than trying to head across country. At least he knows his way from there’.
Don’t fuss. He’s an adult. Even though sometimes, for such an intelligent young man, he can be frustratingly clueless about practical things. Where does he get that from, I wonder?
It was good to have him back safely, around 8 ish. He hugged me spontaneously, I held him tightly, forgot to warn him about my germs. I reheated his dinner and sat with him in the kitchen while he ate it, talking about next year and what he’s going to do, he’s still thinking about a PhD, they don’t seem to have been given much career guidance, he needs to make an appointment with the careers office. He’s decided that he really prefers programming to building circuits, he’s better at that, but it’s mainly an electronics degree. I told him about my evening class, and how much I’m enjoying programming again after all these years. While his father sat in the living room in front of the telly.

Late today – very late. Terrible night. So I went back to bed with no alarm and woke at 8:15.
Sometimes it’s our bodies that do it to us, sometimes it’s our heads. And I could say ‘sometimes it’s our hearts’, figuratively speaking, because of course the heart isn’t the seat of the emotions, it’s just a pump that drives the blood around the body. Though lots of cultures seem to make that connection, I wonder why? Perhaps because we can feel it beating, and we notice how the speed of the beats changes when we respond emotionally to something. I never thought of that before, and I don’t think I’ve read it anywhere, but possibly I have. Makes sense, anyway, at least, it does to me.
So when I got up this morning, at 8:30, I went and got straight into the shower, rather than my usual routine of feed cats, meditation, blogging. I let the hot water pour over my befuddled, congested head. Sometimes it’s our bodies. I thought about this, about the body, mind and heart. And while I dried myself I remembered something else, I think it comes from Beowulf, about the soul’s journey being like a bird passing through the warmth and brightness of a chieftain’s hall, darkness before, darkness after, just this one brief passage in the light and colour of life, the moment of Camelot.
I got on the scales, checked my weight, might as well know where I stand before the Christmas splurge. Not too bad, half a stone lighter than the start of the year, anyway.
Used to check it every week, we would read the scales carefully for each other, in the days when we used to make love in the mornings at the weekend, when we would be naked in front of each other, and look, and touch, and speak, not like now, when we carefully pass each other by, and speak through the cats, or discus catering arrangements. But when I’ve finished this, we will go and buy a Christmas tree together. Our last, though he doesn’t know that. Or does he?
I sat in front of the dressing table drying my hair. I only wash it every two or three days, so I didn’t do it yesterday. It was so good to let the water run over my head this morning. I looked in the mirror, and despite the red I didn’t feel strong. Bodies let us down, heads let us down, hearts let us down. But we keep going.
Almost time for the solstice. I don’t know what date it will be exactly this year, of course, this was a leap year, so does that mean it would potentially be earlier or later? I should be able to work it out, if I think it through, but my head is full of mucous.
The dark of the year. But soon we will be moving back out into the light again. Just as long as this dark can be kept at bay for a little longer, the sun will return.

I went to the hairdresser’s yesterday, and to college, and to meditation. I warned everybody about my cold, but I went anyway.
‘I never catch colds, I’m too unhealthy’ said my hairdresser. ‘They don’t like the cigarettes and whisky !’
‘Is that the answer?’ I asked, ‘I must remember that one!’
My hair is red now, and I feel alive – or, I did, for a little while. I only do this once a year, usually just before Christmas, though three years ago it was a little earlier because I was going to Brussels. Not all over red, just a hint of fire, to wake me up and give an edge of Melinda to the dull Belinda days. In the summer, the sun seems to bring that warmth out naturally, but at this time of year, it needs a little chemical assistance.
I tried blonde highlights once, twice, about 12-15 years ago. And it was disastrous, like my experiments with perming ten years earlier. It looked as though I’d gone suddenly grey. It made me feel: ‘you’re getting old, don’t even think about it, no one wants you any more, and why should they?’
Yet now, I feel younger than I did then. Sometimes. And although the grey is creeping in, it hasn’t taken a hold yet.
I was so pleased with it when I got back yesterday, that I wanted to post a photo. But as usual with taking photos of myself, the results were awful. I’m just too self conscious, as I said last week. The one where I was wearing the least stupid expression was the one where the colour didn’t really show. So you’ll have to take my word for it.
I posted the last of my UK cards yesterday. It’s all been a bit perfunctory this year, get them written and out of the way, no time for letters or even a few words about: ‘How have you been, how’s things?’ Partly because I can’t actually tell anybody how I’ve been, or how I am. Most people with whom I’m on Christmas-card-terms, anyway. People I spend real time with, or complete strangers on the far side of the broadband, are a different matter.
So what will I do, with my new red glow? Will it make me smile more? Maybe that should be: ‘help me to smile more.’ I’m trying. I’ve learnt how transforming a smile can be. I’ve seen the evidence, in pictures that friends have taken when I was happy to be with them. After years of staring at mirrors, searching for what they saw, now I have seen it with my own eyes, I understand a little better than I did. But I need a reason to find it.
‘Looking for happiness isn’t selfish’ Mary said to me, ‘because when you’re happy you make other people happy. Remember what Chris said: “don’t be happy for yourself, be happy for us.” It hurts us too to see you suffering. Probably it hurts your husband, although he might not admit it, even to himself. You’re not doing him any favours any more than yourself’.
Once those words would have driven me deeper into guilt and self loathing. Now, they feel hopeful.
I warned everyone last night about my germs. I told them I wouldn’t hug them, but I wished them all a happy Christmas.
I can’t believe how lucky I am to have such good friends.

One week to Christmas. I got most of my remaining cards written and in the post yesterday lunchtime. I could feel myself getting croaky throughout the day, and now I’ve lost my voice, got a sore throat, usual crap.
I’ve got a hairdresser’s appointment this morning, my annual red highlights, then a catch-up session at college at 6 and mediation at 7:30. Should I cancel them all, or any of them? I don’t want to, for myself, but I wonder about passing my germs on to other people, is that fair? Perhaps the public spirited thing to do would be to shut myself away, keep out of everyone’s way.
I have one more phone interview to do, with a woman in Baton Rouge. I keep calling and getting her secretary, nice woman. But how can I talk to her when I've got no voice? I finally managed to get hold of the one in Ottawa yesterday. There are two others outstanding, one in Winnipeg who wouldn’t talk to me and just said I could get the stuff from their website (which I actually haven’t done yet), and one, ironically, in Tower Hamlets, whose contact details I just can’t track down because there always seems to be a problem on the website. It would be good to get it all finished off before Christmas, so if I can’t get it done today and tomorrow I will have to work next week too. But I probably will anyway because I’ve got, at last count, two and a half sets of minutes to do, letters to write, and various other stuff to sort out. Then there’s loads of stuff that needs to be done in January that I should really crack on with.
Well, that’s life.
Life is still happening to me, laughing at my attempts to make any kind of plans, so why bother? It grabs you and drags you along, whether you want to go or not. Or it throws you into the mud and you feel yourself being sucked down and have to struggle your way out again. It goes on and on, as somebody said about history, one damn thing after another. Who has time to stop and look at the patterns?
Patterns are what I like, patterns and connections, order and symmetry, though you’d never think that if you saw the state of my study. Oh yes, filing, I should get that done before the end of the year as well, sort everything out.
And what if I do move in the new year? Christ, just the thought of having to sort out all my stuff, having to pack it up... I can’t bear to think about it. It’s all too messy, too complicated. And I don’t feel well.
If I stopped, how would that be? Just stopped, let everything slide. Then it would just get worse and worse. It happens sometimes, I find that time passes and I get nothing done, and it all piles up accusingly and stares at me, waggling its finger, like the mess in the study, or the rest of the house come to that. It won’t leave me alone. There is no escape.

I was sitting in front of my computer yesterday when I heard a strange noise. Musical – or at least Muzakal – and vaguely familiar, it grew increasingly insistent, but where the hell was it coming from? It took a while for me to realise that it was being made by my portable alarm clock/bedtime reminder/falling-asleep-on-the-sofa-in-the-evening-preventer/text messaging device. So seldom does anyone ever call me on it, that I forget that it can also be used as a telephone, and if it ever does go off, it always induces a sense of panic.
‘Hello???’ very cautiously. I’m never too sure which button I’m supposed to press.
‘Is that Linda?’
Not a number it recognises, a young male voice
‘Speaking…????’
‘This is … from … recruitment. Just checking in to see how you are and introduce myself’.
Recruitment? It’s the agency I had an interview with about a month ago. Maybe they’ve found me something!
‘Oh, hello!’ why the hell did he call my mobile? Lucky it was switched on and in the same room.
‘I know you met Melanie when you came in, but I’m having a look at your details now to see what we can do to help you’.
I spent ages going through it all with Melanie, In the end, I thought she had a good grasp of what my situation is, what I’m capable of and interested in, what’s going in, even to the extent of knowing that I’m looking for something more regular and permanent because I want to leave my husband. And she helped me sort out my CV to make it clearer and more convincing about what I’ve got to offer – or so I thought.
‘Have you had any interviews since you saw us?’
‘Yes, one’.
‘What was that about then?
‘Research Fellowship’. How to explain that? Didn’t sound as though he would have much of a clue. ‘It was a bit specialised, a bit of a one off’. Fortunately he didn’t seem too interested.
‘So you’re doing this City and Guilds website design. Is that what you want to do then?’
‘Well, I’m interested in that, yes, but anything really, anything to do with using computers. Desk top publishing, websites, data analysis, admin, book keeping, database management… I can pick up most kinds of software’. I went through this with Melanie, and she made it sound quite good.
‘So, will that give you a qualification? Will it help you get a job as a website designer?’
‘Yes, a City and Guilds’. You’re the recruitment agent mate, you tell me.
‘So, what were you doing for the …?’
‘It’s a quarterly magazine – well, more of a newsletter really, just 12 pages, but laid out like a magazine. I do the desk top publishing.’
‘It says designer and publisher’.
‘Yes,’ he’s obviously expecting a bit more detail. ‘They send me the copy and I do the page layouts, a bit of editing, putting the thing together, designing it, liasing with the printers…’ what else is there to say?
‘Sounds like that was right up your street. So why did you leave it then?’
‘I didn’t, it’s only four times a year, it’s quarterly. It’s not a full time job’.
‘Oh. And what about the Parish Clerk?’ He prounced it ‘Clurk’, like someone from an old American film.
‘That’s part time too. I do two of those, two different villages’.
‘And the school governors’ clurk?’
‘Same thing. I do two of those too. But it’s all part time’. My heart is somewhere in my son’s bedroom, on the floor below. He hasn’t got a clue, has he?
‘So what are you after then?’
‘Something a bit more reliable’. That pays enough to live on..
‘Full time?’
‘Not necessarily, maybe three days a week. Anything really. Anything that would be a bit more regular than what I’m doing now’.
Oh Jesus, I spent hours on that bloody CV, hours explaining it to Melanie, and she made me feel quite hopeful. But this…
‘Well, we’ll see what we can do, it’s a bit slow at this time of year though. I’m just looking at your geocities website.
‘Oh, right! I need to update that a bit!’
‘I didn’t even know you could get a profile like this!’
It’s not a ‘profile’, it’s a website. I created the bloody thing from scratch.
‘What’s a “haykoo” then?’
‘It’s a haiku. A sort of poem.’
‘Oh, right, well, all the best then, have a good Christmas, and I’ll be back in touch in January’.
‘Thanks’.
I switch off the phone.
God help me.

Looked at the clock – 3:50.
There’s a cat sitting on top of me, and I can hear Hubby snoring, coughing in his sleep.
I shake off the cat, try and settle myself down.
I’ll get up soon, go and sit downstairs, read. Soon. Lying here is no good, I know that. It doesn’t help anything. I’ll go soon.
What do I think about? So many things, I can’t even begin to tell you. Or the same things, over and over. Things I read yesterday, fellow bloggers, different perspectives. Hubby lying beside me. He never tries to close the gulf, why should I? Why should I keep trying when I know it’s not what I want any more? I tried it for so many years, tried telling myself that that was the way it was supposed to be and that if I only kept on trying, made that bit more effort, I could make myself happy with him. How long can you keep lying to yourself? It’s as though I stepped back and thought, right, what happens if I don’t make the effort? Let him come to me for a change. And I’m still waiting. And I don’t even want him to any more. Why should I? Did I ever even want him to in the first place, did it ever make me happy, or was it just what I had to do because that’s the way it’s supposed to be, and anyway, what options were there, nobody else wanted me, and how could I be on my own? And it must have been all my fault. So, stick with what you’ve got, look for little things to make you happy. Except, of course, that they don’t, not really, not for long, you always end up here in the middle of the night listening to him snoring and staring at that bloody clock.
4:40.
OK, I should get up now. I can read for twenty minutes, then come back at 5 and play my mp3 and that way I might get another half an hour or so’s sleep before the alarm goes off.
Yes, I’ll do that. Soon.
Stop thinking. Focus on the here and now, you’re warm, you’re safe. I think about the past, the future, what might be, what might not be, I wonder, I worry, I fantasise, I masturbate. Well, not last night, not that last one. Sometimes I do, lying there in the dark, wondering if he knows what I’m doing, but then, I’ve done it for years and he’s never shown any indication that he did. It doesn’t help me sleep, it doesn’t make me feel any better, but at least it passes the time. And sometimes it takes a long, long time to reach a half way satisfactory conclusion, rubbing and rubbing in the dark, my eyes filling with tears.
It must be getting late now. Probably gone 5. Not worth getting up. I’ll just go to the loo, come back and play the mp3. And maybe I’ll be able to drop off for a little more sleep.
Sometimes the thought of sex takes me over, dominates my thoughts. Is that really all I need? Someone to give me a shag? I expect I could find it if I really went looking for it. Would that help? Well, I wonder, I think, ‘It couldn’t hurt’.
Look at the clock again. 5:33. Shit, well, there’s no point in even trying to go to sleep now. Might as well get up.

I haven’t had a mince pie yet. I think that’s probably a record, for me. I made some yesterday – well, made as in made the pastry and filled them but didn’t bake them, put them in the freezer until they’re needed. I haven’t really done anything Chrstmassy at all. Well, I started writing cards yesterday afternoon and then I went carol singing, but that’s it. I only made it to one bell ringing practice, and now it looks as though they/we won’t be going round the village after all because there aren’t enough people available on any evening.
I actually wasn’t planning on making any mince pies at all, but I decided to make them to take to the meditation group do on Thursday. It’s just that on the last one before Christmas, we all take something to share. The recipe is from the M&S freezer Cookbook, from the 70s, it’s really the only recipe I still use from that book, but they are nice and it’s convenient because you just keep them in the freezer and cook as many as you want when you want them.
I put ‘vegetarian mincemeat’ on the shopping list, and Hubby came back with a large jar. ‘Didn’t they have any small jars?’ ‘I didn’t know how much you wanted.’ ‘I’m only going to make a dozen.’ ‘Oh well, it keeps’.
Yes, it keeps – but I’m the only one who eats them – and next year...?
I usually make gingerbread for the meditation group, but this year I thought I’d do mince pies and chewy butterscotch apple brownies. I made the pastry, put it in the fridge to chill, made the apple cake, put it in the oven, got the pastry out and started to roll it. But it stuck to the board, I guess I hadn’t put enough flour on it. I could feel the stress building up as I scraped up the dough, mashed it back into a ball, started again. Why the hell am I doing this?
‘Something will turn up, something will happen, it will all be fine, it will work out’.
Will it? Won’t it? Nobody knows.
Do I believe that? Don’t I? There is a visceral belief in us all, I guess, that there is some meaning to life, a wish to see the patterns make sense. But logically, rationally... things happen. Shit happens. Cause and effect, yes that makes sense. Events have consequences, they lead on to other events, the strands twirl and twist around each other after their own pattern. But... 'something will turn up, something will happen, all will be well?’ Those are the patterns we impose ourselves, there’s nothing intrinsic about them. Maybe we cause them, maybe they happen in spite of us, maybe we are able to exploit them to our own benefit, maybe they pass us by. Then we can look back and say, ‘Oh yes, it came out of the blue, but it all worked out in the end, it must have been fate!’
But when we’re standing here, at this place, and looking forward, it’s impossible to see how this situation is ever going to be resolved, what the options and opportunities might be or might not be, or if life is just going to keep on stumbling through as it always has, while we keep ‘waiting for the miracle… for the miracle to come’.
And making mince pies.

Hope is usually regarded as a Good Thing. But what about the kind of hope that keeps us stuck in a situation which is never going to be satisfactory, never going to give us what we need? We can all recognise it in our friends, that yearning after something or somebody who has hurt them or let them down in the past, but about whom we/they think, well, maybe this time it will be different, and he/she will realise what was staring them in the face all along, that the times we had together were so great, of course they must want it to happen again. And, after all, maybe they WILL change, or you have to pretend to yourself that they might, and that it can be different this time, because if you don’t, if you turn your back on them, maybe this will be the time when it would have worked out after all, but you’ll never know it because you pushed them away…
Take it from the voice of experience, that sort of hope is just self-delusion, or, as Springsteen says in The River: ‘Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true,/Or is it something worse?’
After blogging all that stuff yesterday, I guess it was inevitable that I would suffer a backlash. Yesterday evening was hard and lonely. You can tell yourself that you’re moving on, but feelings have a sneaky habit of creeping up behind you again when you least expect them to.
Of course, it can work the other way too. When someone wants you to be a certain way, the person they have in their head, it can be hard to get them to see that actually, you’re not that person, and you never were, that person didn’t exist, it was just a picture in their mind, and you don’t want to conform to that picture any more, you want to be yourself, whoever that might be.
‘I’ve started out for god knows where,/But I guess I’ll know when I get there’ (Tom Petty, Learning to fly).
Cold today. I woke up at 5, but it’s so hard to get out of a warm bed into a cold room, and it’s surprising how quickly an hour can pass just lying there not doing anything, just thinking…
Well, after a quiet day yesterday, I’m going to be quite busy today. Apart from the usual Sunday housework, I’ll be making mince pies and apple cake this morning, for the meditation group Christmas do on Thursday. Then this afternoon I’m going carol singing at a pub in town, to raise money for our up-coming production of ‘Carousel’. Should be fun.
I’ve decided to sign up for the Flash evening class when my web design course finishes, at the end of January. It will be on Mondays, instead of Tuesdays, just for 8 weeks. But it should be fun, and at least it will keep me going a little longer.

Start with the first thing, get it out of the way.
Yesterday the letter came, telling me that I hadn’t got the job.
Then the second thing. I texted Himself – Simon. His name is Simon. Now that I have accepted that it’s over, I will open a little, very gently and carefully, and let you see some more of me. His name is Simon, the same as my son.
I texted Simon, I texted and emailed a few, very few, friends who matter to me. And told them. They all responded, with kindness, with sympathy. Except for Simon. And that was when I knew, that I had pinned too many hopes to him, that I had let myself care too much. And for the rest of the day I kept thinking about him, his sense of humour, how easy we were together, his kisses. But what is that worth if he doesn’t answer my texts?
I got a text a couple of weeks ago: ‘Mary and pals invite you to join them for a pre-Christmas drink in the Gordon Arms on Friday 12th Decmeber, 8:00 onwards. Just turn up’.
I saw her on Thursday, and she said: ‘Stay over afterwards at mine’ and I thought, why not?
But yesterday evening, it was the last thing I felt like doing, as my eyes kept filling with tears. They are now, as I type, just from remembering. As I tried to put my makeup on, looking in the mirror I could see them coming again, why bother to put eye shadow on, when it’s going to be washed away any moment?
But, I persevere. Perfume, the one I bought at the airport, ‘Envy Me’, just a squirt. What else? Boots, scarf, where’s my jacket? Where’s my gloves? Must be in the car. Get the car out. No, they’re not in the car, must be in the house. In the tea box, brought home from meditation.
Right, off we go, an evening with a bunch of people I don’t really know. How fun will that be? Come on, it’ll be OK.
The pub is crowded, but we’re a very small group. I perch on a stool at the edge of the table, people standing at the bar behind me. ‘What would you like?’ ‘Red wine please’ ‘What sort? Large or small – Merlot, or?’ ‘Merlot’s fine, please. And large’ I would have liked mulled wine, but it’s not on offer.
I feel in the way, constantly trying not to block the way past the sitters at the bar. ‘Scuse me! Sorry!’ I try to pull myself in to the table, move my bag out of the way. I feel someone’s hands on my shoulders. I turn and look, watch him as he moves off into the other side of the pub. Young, way, way too young, but… oh my god… I turn and catch Mary’s eye, see her smiling at me, smile back. Honestly, what am I like???
The group in the comfy chairs by the window leave eventually, we move in and I can relax back in comfort. Now it’s Mary, me, Mary’s brother Paul and Thea (pronounced ‘tie’), his Nigerian wife, Dawn, Kevin, back to me again.
Paul is drinking the Merlot too.
‘What we need with this’ he says ‘is some crackers and brie!’
‘Now you’re talking!’ I agree.
‘I haven’t got any brie, but I’ve got some edam’ says Mary, ‘not really the same, is it?’
‘Hardly!’ I laugh.
‘I could try the One-stop, across the road, they’re still open’.
‘I don’t think they’ll have brie! And the Cheese Kitchen wil be shut. I don’t believe it, you live round the corner from the best cheese shop in town, and all you’ve got is edam!’
Why did we start talking about freedom?
‘Freedom’s just some people talking’ says Paul.
I stare at him.
‘It’s an Eagles song’.
‘Yes, I know, I’m just trying to remember which one – is it Desperado?’
Of course it is.
‘Your prison is walking through this world all alone.’
‘Now look what you’ve done, you’ve set her off!’
Mary says:
‘I’m going over to the One-Stop’.
‘You don’t need to, sit down, it’s OK’.
‘No, I’m going’.
Paul gets out his baccy tin and makes a roll up, two.
‘I’m off out for a smoke.
He’s wearing a tee shirt. Thea hands him his coat.
‘I’ll be OK!’
‘No you won’t, you’ll freeze!’
Thea is quiet, young, lovely and delicate. She looks exhausted. She’s drinking Appletize. She has to drive back to Cambridge tonight.
‘How are you?’ I ask. ‘Are you OK?’
She smiles.
‘I’m OK. I never drink anyway. I don’t mind. But I have to go to work tomorrow.’
Dawn gets up. ‘I’m off. Nice to see you. Have a good Christmas all, if I don’t see you before. Take care.’
Her glass of chardonnay is almost full, but she won’t stay.
Mary and Paul return.
‘I’ve got bacon and eggs!’ she announces. ‘And cheddar. But no brie’.
Why do we get on to talking about good ways to go? That was Kevin, but why? I don’t remember.
‘That reminds me of another song’ I say, ‘the way I’d like to go…’ despite the Merlot, I’m a little self-conscious.
‘Life in the Fast Lane?’ asks Paul.
‘No, not the Eagles…’
‘This is another Eagles song’ he points to his tee shirt: ‘Tequila Sunrise’ it says.
‘No, no, it’s… ‘they’re all waiting for me…
‘”I wanna die with you baby on the streets tonight, in an ever-lasting kiss.” An everlasting kiss. That’s how I’d like to go’.
‘Ohhhh, Springsteen, NOW you’re talking, the Boss!’
‘Dawn left her chardonnay. Who’s going to finish it off?’
‘Well… I’ll share it with you. Can’t let it go to waste. Even if it IS chardonnay!’
Paul pours half of it into his glass. I drink the rest.
‘Right, bacon and eggs!’
‘I’m for home’ says Kevin. I have to go back to the car for my bag. Mary gives Paul the key, and walks with me. When we get to the house, Thea lets us in. The kettle’s on. Mary goes into the kitchen.
Paul is eating chocolate, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. He offers it round.
Not if I’m having bacon and eggs, I think.
Cups of tea, crackers, butter cheddar.
‘I’m not cooking bacon and eggs now’
Fair enough.
We sit, and talk, and eat cheese, and drink tea.
‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose’. I say.
Paul screws up his face, closes his eyes.
‘Errrr…. Kriss Kristoffersen!’
‘That’s right! I thought you were going to say Janis Joplin!’
‘Why, did she write it?’ asks Mary.
‘No, Kristoffersen wrote it, but she sang it’ I say.
‘We should go’ says Thea. ‘I have to work…’
‘Take care’.
We make more tea.
‘I’ve got Green & Black’s organic cocoa. Would you like some of that?’
‘No thanks, tea’s fine.’ When I’ve had enough of the cheese and crackers, I’m planning to start on that chocolate.
We talk, we talk about my life, her life, other people’s lives. About meditation, and Buddhism, and the journey, and people’s expectations, and the pursuit of happiness, or the lack of it. About change. I tell her about Simon, about the baby, about my childhood. How I try to remember a time when I felt loved and wanted, and how I mostly give up the struggle.
‘You need to seek out those little bits of happiness, they must be in there somewhere. To make yourself a treasure box in your head to put them in. Then that’s what you can go back to when you need to. Like, when you finally got your PhD, or when your son got into university…’
‘Or when he was born?’
‘Yes, as long as you don’t then start saying: “oh, but after that, it all went horrible…”’.
‘No, I know. And can I put the other Simon in there?’
‘If you want to, it’s up to you what you put in there, just as long as…’.
No, I know, I know.
At some point, after 2 o’clock, we make cocoa, we take it upstairs. The room is warm, the bed is warm. I drink my cocoa, play a little of my sleep track on the mp3, fall asleep, wake briefly, fall back into it. When I wake properly, I can see it’s light, I can hear Mary moving around. I find my watch, glasses, switch on the light. It’s 10 past 8.
She’s in the kitchen.
‘Cup of tea?’
‘Coffee please’.
‘I’ve got porridge and toast, but I’m not cooking bacon and eggs!’
‘Can I cook it? Can I have scrambled eggs and bacon?’
‘Yes, of course. That sounds good. Can I have some too?’
She shows me where everything is, and I cook while she’s in the shower. I won’t ask permission, or apologise, or worry about whether this is the ‘right’ way or the ‘wrong’ way, I just get on and do it. I find the cafetiere and the ground coffee, I make more tea for Mary.
‘Dawn will be round here at half past nine. I promised to help her with this Christmas fair. She’s very precise, it’s like a form of Asperger’s’. This is a statement, not a joke. ‘If she says she’ll be there at 6, she’ll be there at 6, not 5 to or 5 past.’
This morning’s conversation blends into last night’s. I tell her about my spa fantasy.
‘Well why don’t you do it?’
‘Can’t afford it’. I say.
‘Well, can you think of how you could do some of it? You could come here. The place on the corner, they do massages. And you could come back here, stay here. Why don’t you do that? I’m going to be away for 10 days over Christmas. I’ll give you a key, and you can come any time you like’.
‘When are you going to France?’ She has a flat somewhere in the Pyrenees. I asked her once if she wanted a caretaker, and she said, ‘Come as a guest, next time I go, in the new year’.
‘I don’t know, some time in January. Do you want to come? How long can you come for? After Christmas, we’ll check out the flights, on line. I can’t promise it’ll be warm, but you can get a massage there, if you like! It’ll be cheaper than Champney’s!’
‘Even with the flight’ I agree.
The door bell rings. Its 9:30.
‘We’re just finishing off breakfast. I’ll see you down there.’ Dawn goes away.
‘I’d better go, I’m getting the train down to the south coast to see my son later today, but I’ll be back for Thursday. Look, have the spare key, all I ask is that you get another one cut so I can have it back again. Any time you need a place, just come round.’
She goes. I wash up the pans, empty the dishwasher, put away what I can and leave the rest on the counter. Stack it again with the breakfast things.
I think about what she said.
‘Don’t expect to find it in a man. I think that’s still what’s at the back of your mind’.
‘No, I know. Just sometimes I think... but I know it’s not the answer'.
And:
‘Start gently. Just tell him you don’t want to sleep with him any more. Make yourself a room, a space. It doesn’t have to be any more drastic than that, to start with. See how it goes.’
When I leave, closing the front door, checking that it’s locked. I remember how close it is to the park, the river, the town, the shops.
A bolt hole. A space.

Apparently there’s a challenge to put a picture of yourself wearing a hat on your profile. So, I have. That’s me under that hat. I presume you didn’t want to see my face as well. Trust me, you really, really don’t want to. And I don’t want you to. I hate having my photo taken, just as I hate looking in the mirror. I just do not want to see my face, to be reminded how I really look. The pictures I post on here have been taken by friends when I’ve been relaxed and enjoying myself, often without even knowing I was being photographed at all. In fact, I look like a totally different woman from the one I see in the mirror, under normal circumstances. That’s why I avoid mirrors. And having my photo taken, other than exceptional circumstances, when I’m with people I want to be with.
My friend Mary has invited me to a booze up at her local in Bedford tonight. I said I probably wouldn’t stay long because I’ll have to drive home, and she said, ‘stay over at mine’, so I might do that. At least take my night things with me and see how it goes. If I do, I won’t blog tomorrow morning, or if I do, it will be late.
I still haven’t heard about the job. Friends were asking me at meditation last night, and I had to say I didn’t know. ‘When will you know?’ they asked. I don’t really know. They said they would be making a decision quickly, so I presume by the end of this week, ie today. We’ll see.
It was funny because Trish and John were there and I haven’t seen them for about a month, and when they said ‘What job is it?’ I had to say, it was the one I was moaning to them about the last time I saw them, because I hadn’t been offered an interview. And the email about the interview came the next day.
Trish finished her PhD earlier this year and has had a lecturing job in London since the start of term. She doesn’t get to meditation much these days because she’s so exhausted. She’s working seven days a week at the moment, she says sometimes she hates it, but she just hopes it will get easier as she settles in more. Clare asked: ‘What about work-life balance?’ but her answer was: ‘Well, there isn’t any’.
I got there late (as always) and they were already into a 5 minute meditation, the way the session normally starts. So I sat on a chair outside the room, and just being there I immediately felt more relaxed and able to meditate than I do at home. Probably at least partly because it was warm.
I had a brief word with Ruchiravajara, the leader, as I was leaving, about how I don’t know which way this job will go, but whichever, I will accept it, and life is changing and change is never easy. Sometimes I think I just have to let go, give myself up to fate or whatever, stop clinging on to the edge of my old life. If you’ve ever read ‘The Alchemist’ by Paul Coelho, that’s the idea, to lose everything, let go of everything before you can start again.
And driving home, I was thinking about how I should let go of Himself. When does reliving a wonderful memory become obsessively torturing yourself by reminding yourself that it’s past and it’s over, not here and now? It turned out to be another of those yearning relationships after all.
Let go, start again, find a better way.

Hubby got up and went to the loo. It must be that time. Then he got back into bed. So it’s not that time. I glanced at the clock. Just before 4. Shit. Of course, I didn’t get back to sleep till about 5:30. The alarm on my phone went off in my dressing gown pocket, hanging from the mantelpiece. I stumbled across the room to get it. No lying in bed for ages.
On the nights before he has to go to Nottingham, Hubby has taken to going to bed before me but sitting up and reading till I come up. Then he switches off the light and rolls over. Usually he falls asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow, but lately once or twice (like last night), I’ve thought that his breathing sounded as though he was lying awake.
I wonder if he’s waiting for me to reach out for a cuddle. If he reached out to me, I’m not sure how I’d react. I’m desperate for contact, would I take it from him? When I hug Laura, or Mary, or any of my friends, I hold on so tightly I think I’m going to crush her. I want to be held, but... by him? It wouldn’t be right, it wouldn’t be good. I’m not going to fall back into his arms and say, ‘OK, everything’s OK, I’m better now’ because it’s got too far for that. I’m not going to give him an ultimatum: ‘Change, or else!’ because it’s too late for that. I don’t know which is the right thing or which is the wrong thing, but it’s too late to convince myself that, actually, I can just get through this and we’ll go back to normal, and that will be fine.
I set myself two conditions for making the break: that I should do it when he is being OK and we are being civil and amicable with one another, when it’s as good as it ever gets, so I can look at it and say: ‘Actually, it’s still not good enough’. And when I don’t have anyone to run to, when there’s no one else on the horizon, so that the options are to stay with him or face being on my own, and yet I still know that that has to be better, or has the potential to be better, and so I have to give it a try.
Two weeks today till Christmas. It struck me yesterday. I was thinking about something or other, and I was imagining it ‘only’ being three weeks away, until I realised – no, it’s only three weeks till the end of the year, never mind Christmas. Time in December moves at a different rate from the rest of the year.
I’ve got that ache across my shoulders again. I need a massage, to pay someone to caress me, to feel the stiffness and tension melting away. A day at a spa, swimming, reading, yoga, sipping champagne, meditating in the sauna, and sleeping afterwards, alone, in a warm bed. What bliss that would be.

Early this morning, I slept through till 5 and got up at half past, so I finished my meditation by the time the alarm went off at 6. Still tired, but I feel on more of an even keel.
Late for college last night, I left at the same time as usual, but when I reached the first set of lights into town there was a long line of cars snaking back, they were only letting 3 cars at a time through, it happens sometimes, I don’t know why last night happened to be one of those times. So, I wasn’t horribly late, but I missed out on my snickers and moccacino, and on seeing young Mr Meldrew.
There is one more week before Christmas, and then 4 afterwards, and that’s it. Somehow I had it in my mind that there would be another course starting in February, but I realise that that’s because I originally signed up to do the level 2 course this term and moved up to the level 3 when I started. So, life will be changing again, this little piece of routine that I’ve settled into will be over. The tutor mentioned the Flash course, which is 8 weeks on Mondays. They are affected by the same changes in funding subsidies as the writing courses, and the tutor was saying last night that these courses probably won’t run next year. Which is an awful shame.
I’ve really enjoyed it, going back to my roots in programming, I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed it. I realise that it’s not exaggerating to say it’s been the high spot of my week these last few months, something to look forward to in all the mess. I wish I’d been able to spend more time on it in between, that would have made it easier to progress. But I’ve got all the notes, I can go back and work through some of the exercises that I didn’t manage to complete. I am still plodding my way through this mountain of work, but at least I feel I’m making some progress.

I blogged a little while back about my friend Kate in Australia, who has/had breast cancer. I haven’t heard anything from her in months, though that is not unusual. I had a couple of little presents I’d picked up for her on my travels, and I was thinking about posting dates, but as I hadn’t heard anything I was wary about sending them. I knew I had to go to the post office with some other things yesterday, so it would be the ideal time to take them, but I didn’t want to send something when I had no idea of the situation at the other end.
But yesterday morning, out of the blue, I got a circular email from her with some silly bit of Christmas nonsense attached. So I know she’s still alive. I bundled everything up, put it in an envelope with a card, took it to the post office. And replied to her email. Then got an out of office reply saying: ‘I will out of the office until 28th February’.
Oh well.

First, the interview – thanks for all the kind wishes, BTW! But I can’t tell you how it went, though I suspect not well. I was prepared to dazzle them with my intellect, but they asked questions about project management, and I didn’t know how to answer, I mean, I just get on and do it. Irony of ironies, they asked how I’d cope with juggling several projects at once! Part of me says, if it’s that sort of job, I’m not sure I want it. But if they offer it to me, I won’t feel able to turn it down. Anyway, the interview per se is over now, it’s out of the way, I don’t have to worry about that any more.
Second was shopping in town with L. That was truly nightmarish – especially as we were trying to find things for Hubby. Well, he’s got beer and chocolates and I’ll order all the books on his Amazon wish list and that will be it. He hasn’t asked for anything specific, and I can’t cope with getting him anything more personal.
When I got home, I spent an hour replying to/sorting out some emails and phone calls on Parish Council business, before a 50 minute Skype call to a woman in Vancouver. Pilates was cancelled because they were having something done to the hall, and bell ringing was cancelled because there weren’t enough people to make up a team, so I thought I’d put my feet up, but I ended up sorting out the last couple of insert sheets to go out with the magazine next week – well, that was quite fun and at least it’s another thing to tick off the list. And I listened to an interesting programme on Radio 4 about the way the scientific understanding of climate change has developed over the last 50 years.
Over a bacon buttie and a latte in BB’s, I had that conversation again with L, about how I can’t back down and she won’t let me. But sometimes I get so scared. I look to the future and I see this great black void and I don’t know what will happen. On Sunday I was looking at the local paper, first the job ads (nothing), then the places for rent, and all I can see that is feasibly affordable looks dire.
So here I am again, I’m cold and there’s a tension in my shoulders that won’t go away. I even noticed it in bed last night, I think it might be because I spend so much time hunched up against the cold, I’ve even taken to wearing a shawl round my shoulders when I’m at the computer, like an old granny.
I was awake earlier last night, around 2. I did the usual thing of keep thinking ‘I’m on the brink of falling asleep, I’ll stay here a bit longer’ but of course it didn’t work, and after about an hour I finally got up and went downstairs and read.
When I got back to sleep, of course I dreamt again. I was on a barge (‘Picture yourself in a boat on a river…’) and there was a wedding party going on, and a Society of Local Council Clerks meeting, and some other gathering, and there were people there who I knew from lots of different contexts. And there was a Little Richard impersonator – or possibly the man himself, but as he was when young – and he was trying to get me to dance (I can’t dance), and I was dancing with him, but then he wanted to flip me up and over his back to land with my feet on the floor, and I wouldn’t even try, I told him I just couldn’t do it.
I’ve started leaving my phone in my dressing gown pocket hanging from the mantelpiece across the other side of the room, so when the alarm goes off I have to get up straight away to switch it off, but Hubby got up a few minutes before 6 anyway so I was already awake.
Maybe today will be better, all I have to do is just get on with some work. And I’ve got college to look forward to this evening. High spot of the week.

Interview today, at 10 o’clock. As Hubby said, better then than in the afternoon and have all day to worry about it.
Awake in the night – of course. Lay in bed for an hour instead of getting up – of course. Well, the cat was lying on top of me and I couldn’t shift her. Got up and read through all the stuff they sent, in case I needed to change what I wanted to say or could think of anything else. It’s only a half hour drive, but I want to leave here in good time – preferably before 9 – to find a parking place and sort out the admin. I’m tired. Oh well, no surprise there. I’m used to it.
When I went back to bed, at 5, to try to catch a little more sleep, I played my ‘fall asleep’ tape for a while. I had this weird feeling – I guess it was a dream, though I was only just on the verge of falling asleep – that I was about to pass out, literally falling to the ground, I could feel it in slow motion, I thought I was in the kitchen then I woke and realised I was in bed, but of course I was awake then.
When I got back to sleep, I dreamt I was shopping with my daughter – we’re going this afternoon, after my interview. We went into a shop that had tables with little fragile, delicate things on them and not much space between, I was worried in case I knocked something off and broke it, I tried to go one way round the table, then the other, but there was a chair in the way, then back to the first.
By the time I got round this table, I’d lost her. There were stairs going up and going down, and I didn’t know which way she was. I went down, into the basement, it was quite dark, it reminded me of a tapestry shop in Brussels just round the corner from the hotel I stay at, on one of the streets off the Grande Place. I couldn’t see her.
Even though this was the basement, there were still flights of stairs going down, two more floors in fact. But I didn’t have time to explore, so I went back up.
Then I was in a meeting with one the councillors. I was about to start taking notes, he asked if he could borrow some paper, so did the guy in front. I reached into my bag for the notebook I thought I’d just bought in the shop, but when I looked in the paper bag I realised I must have picked up someone else’s shopping, because it was full of sewing threads and buttons and general haberdashery stuff, not a notebook.
There was more to the dream, but that’s all I can remember with any coherence.
I sent a text to Himself on Saturday telling him about my interview and saying ‘wish me luck!’ I told him about applying for the job over dinner when I last saw him, but at the time I didn’t have much hope. I texted him when I knew I’d got the interview, but he didn’t reply.
Yesterday evening I got one from him: ‘Good luck Dr Belinda xxx’.
Not much, but better than nothing.
I texted back:
‘Thanks! I’m sure that will make all the difference! xxx’

What do I want from life? What do I expect? Not necessarily the same thing – in fact, nothing like the same thing. Always tailor your wishes to your expectations. That way there’s less chance of being disappointed. That’s my philosophy of life.
I don’t know what I expect any more. Except that I expect loneliness, whatever I do. If I go, obviously, I will be lonely, because I have to face living alone, probably for the rest of my life. If I stay, I will carry on being lonely in a different way, the way I’m used to. Which is worse?
Personally, I think the staying and being lonely is worse, because with that there is no hope of change, of things getting any better. If I go, I suppose there’s the remote possibility that I might meet someone else. A theoretical possibility only, but one which has a greater probability, I would say, than if I stayed while hoping at the back of my mind that I might meet someone else. Which is how it has been for years.
If I go, I won’t expect to have men throwing themselves at my feet. That’s not the way it works. I’m not the sort of woman that men adore. I’ve always had to struggle for every little scrap of male attention I could get. I might say I want a 50-text-a-day et etc relationship, but I know I’ll never have it. I just don’t inspire that sort of worship. What I get is: ‘Well, yes, we had sex and it was amazing and I would like to see you again but I’m really busy and I’m afraid I can’t reorganise my work schedule – sorry!’ And that’s that.
So, be grateful for that. Be grateful grateful grateful for every little thing and never expect too much, never expect any more than that. Remember how lucky you are that anyone even noticed you at all, after all those years of being ignored and unwanted.
This started out to be a positive and strong post, but it’s starting to sound rather bitter. Never mind, I’m used to bitter (as I’m used to lonely), and no doubt anyone who bothers to read this blog is used to bitter too. That’s what they expect from me.
So, how do I start again? Without bitterness? I said yesterday to La Spice that I don’t do regrets, and I don’t. There’s nothing that was within my power to change that I wish I’d done differently. Well, nothing major, anyway. I’m sure if I thought about it, I could think of something, like not asking the Crazy Frog if he wanted to come back to my room that last night in Cyprus, but if I had and even if he’d said yes it would be ancient history by now, it wouldn’t really change anything. What matters is the future, and what happens now. But not as in a scenario of perfection.
It’s 10 to 7, and I’ve been awake for two hours. I feel I could go back to sleep now, I’m drifting that way. My eyes closed and I felt myself floating there for a while. Maybe I should go and get back into bed. I think I could go back to sleep. But I’d regret it. No, it wouldn’t be a good idea. Now I’m up, I should stay up.

Another Saturday, another week closer to Christmas, and the end of the year. And another day closer to my interview.
What about today? I’ll be cooking this afternoon. That’s OK, I enjoy cooking, as long as I don’t get too stressed over it. which, to be honest, I find quite difficult to avoid. I struggle to get everything ready for the right time, and I get angry with myself, because when hubby cooks, everything is ALWAYS ready at the right time. This is true in so many aspects of life, I struggle to get things done in the time allotted, I drift and wander down side streets, but even when I’m trying to be focussed, it never works out. Partly it’s because I’m untidy and can’t find things, or can’t remember where I put things. I trail chaos in my wake. I don’t think I was put on this planet to do practical things, just to think and write. But we all have to do practical things to get from one day to the next. This is why I like routines, so I know what to do and know that things will get done, because otherwise it’s more than likely that I will forget them and have to rush around in a daze from one thing to the next. It is very easy to lose the threads and find yourself without a clue what you should be doing and why you’re here. Well, it is for me, anyway.
I emailed Himself last Friday with a suggestion for when and where we could meet again. I waited for an answer. On Wednesday I texted him to say: ‘Did you see my email?’ and waited for an answer After several hours I got a reply: ‘Not recently… what did it say? x’. I repeated the details, sketchily, and waited for an answer. Yesterday evening I got another text to say he’d tried but couldn’t make it. So that’s that.
I want a 50-texts-a-day sort of relationship. I want a kiss-you-awake-and-make-love-before-breakfast sort of relationship. I want a lying-next-to-a warm-body listening-to-your-breathing-and-watching-the-light-through-the-window sort of relationship. Maybe I’ll find that again some day, maybe I won’t. I love his sense of humour, his company, his smile, his body, and the way he makes me feel when I’m with him. But this is never going to work the way I want it to. I hear myself making excuses for him, as I’ve done for every other man I’ve been involved with, trying to shape and mould what we have (do I call it a ‘relationship’? ‘affair’? ‘double one night stand’? or what?) in my head, into something that means something, that is recognisable as a phenomenon, satisfactory in some way. ‘Well, no one’s perfect’. But how far away from perfection do you settle for? When perfection isn’t even on the horizon?
I’ve been watching the moon this week, I meant to blog about it earlier, seeing it grow from a slim crescent on Monday night to a semi-circle now. By next week it will be full again. I found a poem yesterday that I started a couple of years ago, but never really finished, just half a poem, called ‘Half a moon’. It starts: ‘Half a moon/Is better than/No satellite…’

FINALLY REPLIED TO MY TEXT!!!!!!
OK. So what he said was:
'I'm sorry, I can't reorganise my work schedule that day! I did try xxx'
But at least I can still PRETEND that he cares and is interested
Can't I???

Yesterday I had to send in my presentation for the interview on Monday. I have been over and through and round and under that presentation so many times, it seems pointless and puerile. ‘Springboard to a future career…’ what am I supposed to say? ‘I’ve got ten years before I hit retirement age and I plan to spend them here???’ Should I be up front about my age? After all, I can’t hide it. But maybe that’s the worst thing I could do. I got back the feedback from the personality test I took last week as well, and that doesn’t look good. Shit. I tried to be honest. I mean, if I have to try to pretend to get the job, it’s not going to make me happy if I do get it, right??? But what happens if I don’t? what then? Maybe it would be a blessing in disguise. But should I even be thinking that way, is even allowing those kind of thoughts to creep in scuppering my chances from the word go?
I don’t know.
Last Parish Council meeting of the year last night. We started early so we could go to the pub afterwards. Not that I wanted to, not really. But I thought I’d better be sociable. The Chair said to me quietly: ‘I’m not staying for long’ so I thought, OK, I’ll just go and have a J2O, make my excuses and leave. It’s only a few minutes walk from the Village Hall to the pub, but I thought I’d take the car so I could drive straight home from there afterwards.
By the time I’d locked up the hall, got in the car, driven round the corner, parked the car again, and walked into the pub, I was the last one there. As I walked in I was greeted with: ‘Here she is! Would you like a glass of red wine?’ I said no, but then thought, oh, what the hell, just the one, I don’t have far to drive. ‘Great, we can have a bottle!’ I could see it standing on the bar. The men – four – were up at the bar. Of the women – four – one (the Chair) was standing at the bar chatting to one of the new councillors – the sexy one – while us other three clustered by a table, talking about Selfridges and geese and irritable bowel syndrome. Well, the other two did, I just sipped my wine and stole a few glances at Charlie and wondered how come Debbie was chatting to him and I wasn’t. I caught her eye once and she smiled at me. I wondered if she’d noticed the way I was looking at him. Oh god, how embarrassing.
‘How are your geese?’ Jane asked Rachel.
‘They’re fine thanks. Well actually’, and then she launched into a tale about how the old gander had died, and then afterwards one of the geese started attacking all the others because she wanted the young gander to herself and in the end she had to be put down. Rachel is a vegetarian but her husband isn’t, so she gave it to her mother in law to cook it, and they went round to dinner, and her husband ate it.
True to her word, Debbie left after the first glass, and so did Jane.
‘I must go too’ I said.
‘Don’t leave me here with all these men!’ said Rachel, joking, because I know she’s well able to handle them, and anyway they weren’t taking any notice of us.
So I sat down and we finished the bottle and she told me about how stressed she is and her life and her husband and I said ‘I can’t even begin to tell you about my life’, and we talked about how when someone says: ‘How are you?’ you always say, ‘Fine, thanks’, like with the geese, because no one really wants to know the details about how your idyllic life is full of shit, and the men stood at the bar and laughed and flirted with the landlady and once I glanced up and thought I caught, not Charlie, but Roger (who’s also very tasty, I spent the whole of one meeting thinking how much he looks like Himself) looking at me, and we talked about what we’d do if we won the lottery and she said ‘I love him to bits really’ and I thought, hmmm… and when it was throwing out time I hugged her and thought, well well well, you never know, do you?

In the cold, damp north, in the land where the north wind comes from, lives a race of wise, compassionate people called the Hyperboreans, skilled in the arts of music and story telling, and wise in the knowledge of the world and the ways of the beasts, the trees and the stars.
Why did that appear in my head this morning? It is so long since I’ve though of such things. My imagination and sense of wonder lie crushed and buried under the weight of the ‘have tos’ and the ‘what next?s’, not to mention: ‘Why doesn’t he answer my emails? Should I text him? Will I ever see him again? Does anyone care?’
It’s months since I read anything purely for pleasure. And yet, you know what I do? Obsessively, over breakfast, and in the evening when I’m relaxing before bed, whenever I have a moment? Kenken. Like su doku, but a bit more interesting. A lot more interesting. And Killer su doku, but only on Mondays and Tuesdays, because they get harder through the week, and I can’t cope with the Wednesday ones.
This is what my life has come to, numbers squeezed into black print squares in a newspaper. Or on Facebook, obsessively clicking on images of different coloured cars or planting and harvesting ‘tomatoes’, watching the numbers creeping up and wishing I had someone to talk to, touch and kiss.
I tell myself this is only a phase, a stage I’m going through. My life will resolve itself soon, shake up the kaleidoscope, find a different pattern, something with a bit more clarity and symmetry. Soon.
In the mean time, I hack away at this forest of work, chopping down one trunk at a time, even though out of the corner of my eye I can see others springing up behind it, occasionally flinging myself to the floor and just managing to roll under a deadline before it comes crashing down. Parish Council meeting tonight. School governors next Thursday. Need to send out the agendas for that one today, finished the finance report last night at about 9:30 and sent it off, at least they had it 24 hours in advance – almost. Sort out the correspondence file. Hope I haven’t missed anything. Talk to Vancouver tomorrow. Send off my interview presentation today. Interview. Christ, that bloody interview. Well, this time next week it will be over.
Yesterday evening I went to bell ringing practice. Every year a group of us go round the village with a set of hand bells, from door to door, playing carols. Freezing cold but fun. People who live within a few hundred metres of me, yet this is the only time we actually get together, ‘Is it that time already?’
And what about next Christmas? Where will I be then, what will I be doing? Still here? Maybe I’ll be back with them again, shaking my bells, glad I finally came to my senses. Or maybe I’ll spend next Christmas in a hotel somewhere being pampered or with friends who really want me there or on my own in a freezing hovel or on a Greek island or the top of a mountain.
Or in the land of the Hyperboreans.
Who knows?

Wednesday morning. No matter what happens, I get up every day and the world is still there. Nothing is resolved, nothing is settled, nothing is clear, but it’s still there. Today I sat in my meditation place and tried again to be calm and to focus on the here-and-now and to feel compassionate towards myself. My mind wandered down a million pathways (oh, all right, mostly the same ones I guess), even after I’d reached the point where I’d decided to stop and get on with other things, switched the mp3 player off, I was still sitting there, the thoughts no different, following them willy nilly, chasing round and round.
College last night. As I drove there, I was thinking: ‘Great, college, this is the high spot of my week!’ I love it, but I never do anything from one week to the next.
I’ve been meaning for the last few weeks to mention something about it. I try to get there early enough to grab a moccachino and a Snickers in the coffee bar on my way up. The traffic is always awful at that time of day (it starts at 6), and at first I always used to be late, but now I make a real effort to get there 5 or 10 minutes beforehand.
There’s a man I always see in the coffee shop having his dinner, I guess he’s a tutor, about my age, thick dark hair, dark eyes, craggy features, could be quite sexy in a geeky, FE-tutor kind of way except for one thing – he always looks so bloody miserable. I’ve thought about this before, I meant to blog about it a few weeks ago, but didn’t, I guess something else came up overnight. The first time I really noticed him, it made me smile because – hell, you have to smile, otherwise what happens to you? You end up like that??? Of course, I know nothing about his life, I only know about the pressure our tutor is under which is bloody awful. And if he eats his dinner in the refectory at college every week, looks like he doesn’t have anywhere to go to, or anyone to go back to,doesn’t it? But that’s just speculation. The point is that it looks as though this guy never smiles about ANYTHING. And so I got into the lift and smiled at myself in the mirror just because I could, and then I smiled some more.
Last night he wasn’t there, I thought I wasn’t going to see him, that it was just coincidence those other times, and I thought, ‘Damn, I was going to blog about him tomorrow and he’s not there’, but he turned up just as I was leaving.
So, evening class is the high spot of my week, except that last night I realised I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, I sat in front of the screen not knowing what I was doing and why what I was doing wasn’t working, and not knowing how to even tackle it because I was so completely lost, and the tutor was going round but I had to wait my turn, and she said:’It’s fun when things don’t work because then you have to find out why’ and I thought, 'I KNOW, I used to be a programmer, for god’s sake, but I just don’t understand what I’m doing here’ and I got more and more frustrated.
So at the end she was talking to me when the others had left and I told her the potted version of my life as it is at the moment, and in the lift between the 6th and 1st floors (where she got out) I told her the most dramatic bits (except for Himself) and I thought to myself: you couldn’t make this up, could you? Put like that, this is really bloody surreal.

I take the second pudding from the bottom oven of the Aga, where it has been steaming all night. Take off the lid of the steamer and carefully lift out the basin. Water splashes on my chin, lucky it isn’t actually boiling. There is a metal cross which supports the basin, there is a name but I can’t quite think of it – maybe it’s a trivet? That sounds about right. A handle of string to make it easier to lift, I’ve learnt from experience that the gap between the edge of the basin and the edge of the pan is too tight for fingers in oven gloves. I ease the basin out onto the tiled work surface.
With a fork, (because I have no fingernails to speak of, too weak and brittle) I unpick the knot of the string holding down the foil cover. Why do I do that, why not just cut the string and throw it away, get some more when it’s cool and dry and ready to be wrapped up with clean paper and foil and put into the cold dresser in the utility room. Why? Because string is string, and this is the way I’ve always done it.
I came into the kitchen looking for Hubby. I heard him through my meditation, getting his breakfast. Why do I want to see him? I don’t know. Maybe for him to notice my unhappiness, maybe because I feel we should be talking, we have something that needs to be talked about, and yet we won’t talk. Maybe because for those few seconds it seemed as though he was better than nobody.
He wasn’t there. I sorted out the pudding and went up to the attic, where I noticed the cold, and the cardi I usually put over my knees in the morning wasn’t there. It was in the bedroom, because I wore it yesterday. I went back down to the bedroom to get it. He was still there, in his suit, ready to go, in a haze of YSL pour homme. I noticed in the bathroom the bottle was almost empty. Should I buy him some more for Christmas? Why? It’s the fragrance I associate with him from 30 years ago. And he has plenty of other bottles of aftershave. He doesn’t need more, and he wouldn’t appreciate it, and what would it say if I bought it for him now?
‘Right, see you later tonight, bye’. Cursory, monotonous, a formula which has to be recited, got through
‘See you later’ I reply. But he is already gone.
L came round briefly yesterday. We sat in the kitchen.
‘I don’t want to be here any more’ I said.
And yet in some ways I still love it. I walked around the neglected garden at the weekend (well, my bits are neglected, not the vegetable garden, of course). The winter jasmine cuttings that I planted against the archway between the front and back gardens is flowering for the first time, two tiny yellow stars against the wall.
‘It’s not home any more, you’re not happy here’ she said.
‘But if this isn’t my home, where is? I don’t have a home.’ My eyes started to fill with tears.
‘Find somewhere and make yourself a home, just for you. That’s what you need’.
What does a nineteen year old know about life?

Well I’ve done two interviews already today, not bad considering it’s only 6 o’clock now, that is the last of the Australian ones done, and two of the three that I was asked urgently (on Thursday) to do for tomorrow. – I’d better get them typed up. The third one is in Halifax (Canada, not Yorks), at least that’s only a 4 hour time difference, I’ll try and do it about 2 o’clock today, a good time, I’ve got another one booked in Ottawa at 3. then if I can I’m hoping to round off the day by calling Vancouver at 6 this evening, the best day to do it as I just have pilates tonight and won’t go till gone 7, other days I need to go out earlier than that, I don’t like calling people earlier than 10 their time if I can avoid it.
Well, I’ve now done 9 out of 19 interviews, so I’m almost half way, though three of those are waiting to be typed up.
The magazine has to go to the printers tomorrow. I got an email yesterday from the president with a whole list of things she wants changing, then a phone call from the editor when I was trying to think about my presentation for my interview – it’s got to be sent to them by Thursday. At one point she was whingeing: ‘I can’t work under these conditions, I haven’t had a chance to write a single Christmas card today!’ at which point I shouted at her down the phone: ‘I haven’t BOUGHT a single Christmas card yet, nor a single present, as far as I’m concerned Christmas will have to be cancelled this year because I just don’t have time for it!’ and she laughed. I told hubby and he started to laugh and I said: ‘She laughed at me and I felt like saying: “You think I’m joking, but I’m deadly serious!”’ which I was and am.
I woke up at 2, I think he was kicking me, I don’t know why, maybe I was talking in my sleep, I don’t think I was over his side of the bed or anything. I’ll ask him this morning.
Well, I feel better for having got those calls out of the way, but I will get another call from the editor some time this morning, when she has had comments back from the other proof reader, she will expect me to have made the changes we discussed yesterday, but my priority has to be to get these interviews written up.
Another irritating thing she said was: ‘I try to get as much done in advance as possible, you should do that too’ well I try to too if there’s time, she just doesn’t have the first idea of what my life is like.
Sorry, there I go moaning again. But this is my moaning place, you know that by now.
Oh, and I made Christmas puddings yesterday, well, the mixture anyway, it has to be left overnight and then I will steam them today. It makes three but I make the full amount because they keep, even up to two years, if you put them in a cool place. It’s Delia Smith’s recipe from her original cookery course of the early 80s, when we were first together. I’ve lent the tatty old paperback version to my daughter, all my cookery books are falling to bits, the pages that get used are covered with spatters and stains, the edges of pages and covers are fraying and going fuzzy. We have on the dining room bookshelf the hardback omnibus edition, inherited from Hubby’s Mum, it is in perfect and pristine condition, I tried to keep it away from any actual food so as not to make it messy, but still managed to get a few splashes of water on it when I was washing up.
And why was I making Christmas puddings, of all things? God knows. Just saying life is normal, I guess, though clearly it isn’t. Why do we do anything?