Slings and Arrows

 

 

Good news.  My doctor has given the thumbs up to coffee, chocolate and smoking.  Ok she is not a GP, she is the alternative kind who dispenses small sugar pills with exotic-sounding names and occasionally some lines of verse by Rudolf Steiner – but she is also a proper, medically-trained doctor.  Just in case you want to argue.  But why would you?  Here is the low-down: if you have low blood pressure, coffee first thing is brilliant and much healthier than any medicine that might be prescribed; stress is much worse for you than cigarettes and if the latter helps with the former then smoking can be seen as a health measure; chocolate, and sweet things in general, can help to bring “organisation” into the body.  Obviously one does not want to bring any of this under the harsh light of sensible scrutiny.  She would probably throw wine into the mix but the sad fact is that I can’t tolerate more than a little of this.  If it were otherwise I might, like the mater’s husband, begin drinking before breakfast and carry on till bedtime.  He is nearly ninety, so clearly it hasn’t done him any harm, unless one factors in what feels suspiciously like paranoid personality disorder, but that may have nothing to do with wine.  At time of writing he is not allowing the mater (who has Alzheimers) to have contact with me – hence my smoking as health measure.  It has been a time of stress and upset.  One has weathered this before, but this time it feels more entrenched and there is no telling how the situation will resolve.

 

Last night I felt too sad to eat.  This morning I breakfasted on kiwi fruit, fried fish and latte, made with my lovely Bialetti espresso-maker.  I breathed in the scent of mint and roses, given from my friend’s garden, now in a jug on the kitchen table. I am thinking about how the exhortation (in school hymns, in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio) to Be Joyful sometimes struck me as peremptory but actually makes a lot of sense.  Joy may sometimes come as a kind of grace, but mostly we have to do it for ourselves.  For some this is an extraordinary achievement in the face of overwhelming dreadfulness.  For me there is enough else to be joyful about to make it a properly sustainable activity.  I spent a couple of nights with daughter in Hackney last week and met with son for lunch.  My children are loving and beautiful = Joy.  I left my phone charger at daughter’s flat but neighbour had a spare one so she didn’t have to send it in the post.  The washing machine broke down and we thought we would have to replace it but then Mr. Signs (though he didn’t know how) fixed it.  While these might not come under the heading of Joy, it is still worth celebrating small wins of the more mundane kind.  As Tesco so eloquently puts it: every little helps. 

 

I got drunk in the middle of the day on Saturday.  I can’t remember when that last happened, and when it did it was probably for a more cheerful reason than wanting an anaesthetic for the emotions.  The after-effects (discounting the physical) were such that on Sunday I felt moved to attempt a visit to the mater’s house, making myself believe that the substance of good will and sanity would triumph over the forces of darkness, and that all manner of things would be well.  It was not a success.  Perhaps insanity is contagious, or the after-effects of drunkenness more interesting than we know, but I climbed out of the car outside Signs Cottage and announced that I was Jesus Christ.  My neighbour (the one with the roses) exploded with laughter = Joy.  The next day we went for a walk and I found a piece of twig with a catapult-like fork at the end of it.  It either represents a sling of the kind that David used against Goliath or a two-fingered salute. Whichever, it seemed to be an auspicious Sign.  Back outside my neighbour’s house, a young sparrow in mid-flight hurled itself against her kitchen window and fell dead at our feet.  The milky-white film was over its eye and there was no reviving it. 

 

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?  And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will (Matthew 10.29)

 

We wrapped the lovely creature in kitchen roll and binned it. 

The sparrow was not sent as an omen to forewarn me.  And I am not Jesus Christ. 

set down this

I am speaking to you from the flip side of the Apocalypse.  You may think that it is all over bar the shouting and the fat lady singing on top of Mount Bugarach, but I have it on good authority that this is just the beginning of the end.  You may say that whatever point we are at, from there one can always say that it is the beginning of the end.  It may also, however, be the beginning of something completely different from the thing that the end was attached to.  What I can say with absolute certainty is that here on the edge there is much activity around celebrating the birth of a new era.  People are joining hands and celebrating the birth of a new consciousness which will, if I read my group emails aright (I am on a list that keeps me informed of such things) bring extraordinary transformation.  I am talking a new heaven and a new earth.  I have nothing to say to this or to those who hold fast to the idea that the Mayans simply ran out of calendar space or thought this would be a perfect way to wind us all up.  Meanwhile there is another Apocalypse date set approximately four years hence and I want to enjoy Christmas with my children, one of whom will be landing at Heathrow tomorrow just in time for the festivities.

Well I didn't keep to my plan of putting up a post a day between 24th September and Christmas Eve.  It was a bit of a long shot and I have been no'well.  Today I went to a friend's pre-Christmas party and had to leave the merry throng downstairs and sit quietly on a chair on the landing upstairs where the truth came and announced itself to me without fanfare - quietly.  Parties and attempting to make conversation in a room with many people talking are inflammatory to the neurologically compromised brain.  It is no longer possible to be involved in activities that include such things and might mean ruling out weddings, special birthday parties, book launches and eating in busy restaurants.  It is the beginning of the end, and a long journey it has been to get to this beginning.  There was a time when I would not have been able to contemplate it without tears.  But I can now.  I am grateful for what I still have.  It is, you may say, satisfactory.

horsepiddle

I have been spending the day recovering from activity the day before.  This is one of the boring facts about life with moderate M.E.  If you do something one day then you have to leave a space the day before and after or risk relapse.  I occupied myself with fretting about Mater-related issues and trying to get hold of someone at the hospital who could give me an idea of when she might be expected to go leave.  This, after Mater telling me on the phone that things were awful and she was desperate to to home.  No-one was answering the phone on her ward though I tried at intervals throughout the day.  Eventually the hospital receptionist, fed up of hearing my voice, put me through to another department "so you can make a complaint."  A diplomat to the core, I always make myself sound as grateful and stupid as possible so as not to be though a trouble-maker.  The complaints department arranged for someone on the ward to call me back - she was super-friendly, didn't have a clue what was going on and then neglected to press the 'end call' button so my phone was out of use for a good hour while I used my mobile to try and find the person who made the call so I could at least go back to square one.  Plan for tomorrow: go to hospital, get low-down on the situation and connect with hospital social worker.  Also, get organic vegetables and take vegetable soup in a thermos to Mater, who is not eating the hospital food.

I feel as though I am going down with flu.  This would be worrying in the circumstances, were it not for the fact that this does not necessarily mean it will manifest as such.  It's an M.E. thing.  But on the other hand, flu has been known to happen and the last thing needed is for Mater to be infected with a virus.

Mr. Signs came back from London feeling low and things were a bit bleak at Signs Cottage, so we ate the best part of half a barm brack, toasted, with butter  And then my friend Cake Lady came round with a tub containing a huge quantity orange and walnut crumb cake.  I've just had a piece, with a glass of milk.  I know it's generally thought that love is all you need.  But sometimes you just need cake as well.

Prepare to (possibly) Meet Thy Doom

I am thinking, not for the first time, that the End may well be nigh.  It has rained and drizzled for more weeks than I can count and the builder who was scheduled to do some work to the outside of Signs Cottage has given up sending funny texts about Noah's Ark and probably decided that as we are living in the last days fixing the peeling paint situation on our well-rotted window frames should not be high on his list of priorities.  The cat has arthritis and the fur on her back is in a shocking state because she is unable to wash herself there.  We give her medicine but the vet says she also needs to have her fur clipped.  The late roses that appeared so exuberantly have wilted and hung their heads before their prime.  I bought a pair of Emu boots 'gainst the spectre of another snowed-up winter and had to take them back because they were too small, but the next size up was too big.  It all begins to add up, doesn't it?  And further, there is nothing at time of posting - apart from the cat's fur, but this will be remedied - that I need to be properly anxious about.  My children are both well and prospering, as much as anyone in rented accommodation in the Smoke in this god-forsaken recession (which Cameron now says isn't a recession any more but we know better) can prosper.  The almost-ninety-year-old mater carries on with her twice weekly pilates classes and is going with her spouse on a late autumn cruise.  Our boiler, despite its great age, shows no sign of packing up.  And yet, and yet - "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved" (Jeremiah 8:20).  You get my drift. 

I have said as much before and it bears repeating: I have long suspected that it is only my anxiety that prevents the world from falling into imminent destruction; in which case, dear reader, you should be worried, or at least doing everything possible to be saved a.s.a.p.  I have spoken.

How Things Are in January

I have decided to be kinder to myself. If a family member, friend or (come to think of it) anyone were to commit to doing something and then couldn't, I would not berate them. I would not treat them as I have treated myself, pushing them to keep going as though kicking a poor, worn-out donkey. Shame on me for having done that. I am as deserving of consideration as the donkey. A digression: in our family the donkey has a special place. My daughter and I both had donkeys as our special stuffed animal transitional comfort creature. More than transitional, they accompanied us through childhood. We love the donkey and support the Donkey Sanctuary. Son used to send them his pocket money. End of digression.

I have not been strong or well enough to consider working on my novel project right now. It will have to wait until things change for the better. I am carrying on with poetry work though this too is circumscribed, for at the moment my bed and dear little Macbook Air is the centre of operations. I do get up from time to time - for essentials plus writerly engagements - but the earth's rotation and gravity have to be negotiated.

Signs Cottage is not necessarily the best place for me, it has stairs and other inconvenient things. But Mr. Signs works from home several days a week, and cat is here. Life, still. Sweet.

Tomorrow is the mater's 89th birthday bash (meal in a local posh hotel). She does Pilates and aqua aerobics and is in rude health and sprightly as a pixie.

Back soon with posts from the front. They will be short, pithy - and unspeakably heroic.

(The title of this post refers, quite shamelessly, to the title of Ros Barber's poetry collection: How Things Are on Thursday)

(un)ravelling

Back on the front line again - fearless on the battlefield. Meaning that I have been laid up and mostly in bed. This is when we (pwme) have to be brave and free ourselves from fear, become incredibly zen and dispassionate about the hours and days that slip into a continuum and there is no telling how long this will last - it might be a week or several months. I walked a short distance along the path by the golf course that leads into the forest. A small moment of overreaching craziness when I was tempted to keep walking, it would have been downhill for a stretch before the uphill climb into forest proper, and then on and on with the possibility of getting lost. Everyone here seems to have a story about getting lost in the forest. But I walked back the way I came, before the rain came down, before I landed myself in a spot where coming back would be an endless uphill slog, before a pointless unravelling.

I feel an analogy coming on - don't you?

I have wandered too far from my story again - the one I should have been working on had I not gone down with this. Story never cares about reasons and excuses for not writing, however justified they might be. Story fleshes out and becomes real when you give it energy and attention and becomes pale and ghostly when you leave it alone for too long. The plot unravels. Getting back is an uphill climb that requires real, physical effort. And today was just weird, hard to pin down: all day waiting for the vet to call back because Cat of Signs was hyperventilating last night; then today she wandered out for an unusually long time and I had thoughts of her perhaps losing her breath again, breathing her last, without the strength to get back. I wandered around and into the neighbour's garden bleating her name. She was fine, scratching her claws on a wooden post. A man came to look at a couple of things that need doing, one of them being to properly lag the loft so the bedrooms are warmer when the cold comes. But he gave me the strangest look as he came in, as though he knew me from some previous and deeply troubling incarnation. Mr. Signs ushered him upstairs and they spoke of this and that. On the way out he gave me the same look, though I smiled nicely and did a faultless hello/goodbye. Trying to think where on earth I might have met him. Perhaps he was once a student of mine and I said something about his work that he didn't like? No, I would remember. Then laptop began to malfunction and made everything look like hieroglyphics, and it was as though I stared at a wall and could not read the Signs. It went on like that for an hour or so, and then righted itself. Sometimes things just do, and leaving things alone to sort themselves out is the best way.

While tapping out this post, a whole chunk of it began to unravel and delete itself. I feel another analogy coming on.

Riots in Hackney

Just a few of the photos that Son took last night. Both my kids live in Hackney.

doth make my soul to thrive

Came back from Brighton yesterday evening to find that our apple tree had fallen down. It was a good friend. The children used to climb it, fruit made lovely jelly. With us for nearly twenty years, it was always precariously connected to the earth as its other half had fallen, years back, in a storm. Something had been eating away at it - the honey fungus, perhaps, that has been stalking our garden for a few years.

There are riots in London, and lootings and burnings, everyone talking about it on Facebook. I am uneasy. Daughter says there is a siren a minute. Another shop burned down. Someone said that the youth of the Middle East riot for freedom, the youth of the UK riot for 42 inch HD TV. But the sickness goes deeper than that, I think. Certainly it is opportunistic. What is it saying to us, though - that they are disconnected, alienated and don't care? It goes further back than the Cuts. Kids on barren housing estates with what kind of culture?

Mercury is in retrograde, someone said. This means little to me, but apparently it is significant. In the words of the I Ching, it does not further one to cross the great water. Stay at home and put the kettle on, keep an eye on the news.

I lay on the trunk of my apple tree, palms against its skin. My first tree hug - my last, perhaps.

all you need is .....

(The Holstee Manifesto - go Google)

1. Thanks for the advice, I bet you love giving it and go around dishing it out often.

2. I don't like simplistic pronouncements that pretend to tell the truth about life. Good enough?

3. How do you even know how much TV I watch?

4. All emotions are not beautiful. Some are very ugly, get over it.

5. I have a ghastly premonition about your inspiring dream, but fire away.

6. I don't want to travel often, I have M.E. and Brighton is close.

7. Share my passion? You'll be lucky if I even share a packet of Monster Munch. Pickled onion flavour, if you want to know, very nice - for those that like that sort of thing, which I do. There, I've shared something.

Ah, cobblers.

Narnia again

I seem to have walked through the wardrobe and found myself here again. The trees are becoming heavy with snow which is predicted to continue. The BBC weather forecast says the temperature here in deepest east sussex will plummet to minus ten by Friday, which is when we are due to go to London to see son play the romantic lead in West Side Story. The launch of a poetry anthology I was to have attended today has been cancelled because of weather. Leaving aside other considerations I would not, in any case, have been able to get my car out of the road.

I am uneasy in my soul - for other reasons than those listed above, and also for no clear reason, but the wintry landscape does serve as metaphor. It is Narnia in the grip of the White Witch, and Aslan is not in evidence. Of course, this is the real advent experience, everything getting darker and more difficult. It is just at this time (at these times) that you have to light the candle, that substance inside you, the wax and wick of it. I have lost my box of household matches, and here - conveniently - is another metaphor. I do not have the werewithal to light the candle. Well, ok, I lit it from the gas stove, but you get my drift.

There is food in the house, enough for today at any rate, and it is warm here. If I could just get myself out of the cold forest. But on the other hand, I have been there before and know the terrain.

Go deep and you are on hard ground.
You know the way the air grows cold,
it’s always winter and the light burns low
in a single lantern on a post, and you are
lost again. Flame won’t flicker, heart won’t beat.

The wardrobe is dreaming you out, pushing you
from the nest of your familiars to wander in the
dark wood. You have no compass. It is good.
Your breath is white, the ghost of owl calls
from the forest. Who walks in the night?

back story

I swear by the hairs on the chinny chin chin of the howling wolf that prowls on Edge, the gods have got it in for me again. There is a literary fest hereabouts on the weekend, and I'm involved, and guess what? I've done, I mean really done, my back in. This has never happened to me before. I have had verucas, ingrowing toenail, toothache, conjunctivitis, measles, mumps, chicken pox, allergies, not to mention an impressive little collection of autoimmune diseases - but never a bad back! So not having much experience of it, when something goes ping slightly to the left of the base of my spine as I bend down to pick something up I think ouch, that feels weird, and when it carries on feeling weird and hurting a bit I think, oh what a nuisance, and carry on sweeping the kitchen floor. Spine grumbles and moans at me over the weekend and I notice I'm holding myself strangely because it's hard to bend and by Monday night (my birthday, dammit) there is no ignoring it.

Back I go to ice packs, aspirin, codeine, lying flat, fretting about whether I'll be sufficiently upright by the weekend. Or I don't know what.

Fuck-a-doodle-doo.

Comments (and possible end of world as we know it)

Something is malfunctioning, and for once I'm not talking about myself - all Blogger's fault.

Some people's comments (mine included so I can't reply) are not appearing. I've tried several times to put a comment under my last post but it gets disappeared. All a bit Nineteen Eighty Four, if you ask me, and reading the signs, as I cannot help but do, it probably means the end of the world as we know it is nigh. You can argue with me on this if you like, but odds are nothing will appear in the comment box (though it may in my inbox).

First the business with the aerial, then the dentist muttering darkly to me about "a very difficult situation" and hinting at worse to come but he couldn't say for sure until we see What Lies Beneath - and now this.

Pass the tranquillisers, someone.

Interiors

I have been incredibly busy recently. Rearranging the spice and herb jars, if you want to know. What do you mean, is that all? Listen, Signs Cottage is a seriously makeshift establishment. The walls etc. are solid enough, give or take disintegrating window frames, faulty guttering and places where the corner between ceiling and wall begins to weep for no reason that anyone can ascertain. But I am speaking about interiors. We have managed to get along for nearly twenty years by, basically, leaving everything alone. If it doesn't make serious attempts to get our attention it stays as it is, and this includes big things like the energy-inefficient boiler, which we are annually told should be replaced, and the ancient wiring that is bosom friend to a poltergeist, as well as the shelf that holds the spices. It is not strictly speaking a shelf. It is a bit of wood that sits on top of two twenty-year-old cans of Whole Earth organic spaghetti. It works as long as you don't move the cans, so usually I don't. The problem with serious cleaning/rearranging is that once you begin to go in there with any kind of serious intent everything begins to clamour for attention. I have thrown out packets and jars that are at least five years past their use-by date, and some so old that they didn't even have a date. It was our wedding anniversary yesterday and Mr. Signs was at shrink school so I wanted to make the gesture. No need to feel sorry for me, I was given beautiful roses and dined on exquisite dover sole (before the football recommenced in earnest).
Something has changed in here, said Mr. Signs, but I don't know what it is.

I have noticed that kind of thing. I am missing the lovely person who used to come and vacuum the house, clean the floors and dust. Whenever she had been I sensed a change in the house, as though it could breathe more freely. I am quite certain that this is not just my imagination. So many subtle things come into play inside a house or flat - inside anywhere that calls itself home to anyone. An ancient friend who originally met the mater in internment camp during the war, once said to me: it doesn't matter about what you have or haven't got in your home, it only matters about the life that you live there (imagine this with a thick German accent). This means all kinds of things, including the attention one gives to cleaning and rearranging a spice shelf.

The Brighton flat is a place of beauty because of the shape of the rooms and the light. But it also has something else, given by the previous occupants, a family with two young children. I don't know how they managed to squeeze themselves in there, but they loved the place. They said so, and you could feel it breathing out of the walls. I think the youngest child was probably born in the bedroom.

I have recently become more aware, because of someone I have met, of problems experienced by people with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. Most PWME share some of the same issues, to a greater or lesser extent and we are probably far more affected by toxic substances than we know. I was mindful of this when choosing what to paint the walls with (Farrow and Ball) but didn't think about the new bedroom carpet or the sofa. Both are emitting something, especially the carpet, and the emissions are not good. I hope that in time they will evaporate - that it will not become too much of a problem. Our homes should be places where we feel safe and free from fear.

in the swim (2)

So I have been doing the swimming for the best part of a month and need to decide whether to sign on the dotted line and become a Member of the exclusive little place. The swimming, while I'm actually doing it, is bliss and I am getting better at it, stronger, feel as though I am flying, in slow motion, bird on the wing of blue water. Chlorinated blue water, but still, it is the element and I am in it.

M.E. god is displeased. I hear him rumble and growl, a great wailing and gnashing of teeth, like Grendel and his mother both, howling for blood. That word again. But it is as though something is moving in the blood and a battle is being played out, David and Goliath, Daniel and the Lion. David and Daniel had the Lord on their side and won. The question is, will the Lord be on my side in the Battle of the Swimming Pool or will I be left gasping and bed-ridden with everything worse and the blinds all pointing south. Bravery in the face of M.E. god is never rewarded, we all know everything there is to know about this.

But the inner prompting is firm and insistent and says, do this; or, as my old grandma used to say: "Be heppy! Things can only get vorse!" Meaning that whatever you do things are going to go pear-shaped, so do the thing (that makes you happy) anyway. Well, she didn't mean exactly that, she meant shut up and be grateful for small mercies, especially the bean and potato soup I just made. But a little poetic license is appropriate, I feel, in the translation.

The thing is, I feel ill, my muscles flare and hurt, and some days I think oh gawd (sorry Lord), this is the beginning of something dreadful, back to how it was at the beginning. But muscle pain and feeling ill, c'est normale, and a couple of days and a few drugs later inner prompting says, get out and do it again while the coast is clear, be quick about it, make yourself stronger while no-one's looking. So I do. And it is all I can do. The writing is fast and furious, squeezed into tiny pockets. And inner prompting says, sometimes there is a door, and sometimes you can choose to go through it. Do not be afraid.
Why not? I ask.
Because fear is the devil.
Will I survive?
I don't know.
Why now?
Because now.

Blast

Swam again yesterday. Stronger this time, and had coffee after rather than before. The aqua aerobic peeps had been in the pool before me "building up a burn" (as I overheard someone in the changing rooms say to her friend: "can you believe you'd be sweating in the water?") And I fancied that all the cavortings would have left some substance in the pool that might be helpful to me. I didn't even bother to be sensible this time, I pushed out length after length - a ten minute stretch followed by a couple of minutes in the jacuzzi heating up the muscles, then another few lengths. Blast and damn, if I'm going to go down I'll do it this way. In the afternoon I went walking on the forest, took in a couple of steep slopes - this would fix me for sure. It didn't. Stayed up to watch A Serious Man, the last of the four dvds we rented (special deal from Blockbusters) and was blown away by Jefferson Airplane's Somebody to Love first heard at The Roundhouse, which I had all but forgotten about, the quality of Grace Slick's voice exactly capturing the mood, the vein I am in at the moment.

No perceivable ill effects today other than a blinding headache, which I can cope with and for which I have pills, both pink and white, damn and blast. And intend to go to choir practice. If that doesn't kill me then I'll be back to tell the tale (I know, I know, I'm so rockanroll I blow myself away sometimes).

It goes against everything one knows with respect to the Condition, but I have this impulse to keep moving at all costs, and this notion that a moving target is harder to shoot down.

Sensible post to follow shortly. Probably.

be done by as you did

I have done it again: overdone it; and now have to undo the doings that I did, and also but not only dismantle the commitments and say goodbye to Shrink, which in psychoanalytic is usually a long, drawn-out goodbye but will have to be a little less so. It’s a pain in every sense. I now know without a shadow of a doubt that I cannot do regular driving trips of any distance, it’s madness, I should know better, I do know better. My bones and muscles are not happy, actually they are furious about something or other (the driving seat, the desk chair?) and I should have seen an osteopath this morning but cancelled. Too much. Brain hurts, I am dizzy, an unhinged marionette, excuse me rabbitting and do feel free to wander off while I talk to myself, but if you are still here and interested:

Today: there is poetry workshopping, it’s a once monthly group and I’ve let go of so much else I want to hang on to this one.
Tomorrow: nothing in the day but people coming for dinner, this has been planned and re-planned for months. Chicken tagine and fruit fool, can prepare in advance, but.
Monday: niece is coming for the day (also planned and re-planned), needs to be collected, picnicked, taken to a local May fair – nothing loud and brash, more of a garden party plus with people dancing around a maypole, tea and cake, arts and crafts.
Tuesday: shrinky (see above), and later a dear and much-travelled friend coming to stay for a couple of nights, can’t re-plan this as she has work to do in the area and anyway. I’ll have to say that I won’t be up to any conversation until
Wednesday: nothing planned, but.

Yesterday I wrote 1,000 words and it felt good. But afterwards it felt like I was doing the browbeating, heavy, leather, resurrection shuffle. But without actions and music.
I am somewhat unravelled, reader, the yarn is everywhere

- "and the living is easy"

My neighbour is a bit fed up because the raspberry bushes on our side of the fence stop her vegetables getting enough light. As we are friendly, this isn’t much of an issue. Her problem is really on the other side where the simply enormous ash tree is threatening to take over the universe, like something out of Doctor Who (and who but Signs to pick up on its occult intentions). Things very easily just grow apace here and everything wants to become forest. Drop a conker on the ground and next morning you’ll find a cluster of chestnut trees invading your little bit of garden, not exaggerating. Life, eh? Gets out of control very quickly.

One of my kids has got through to the finals of a reality TV talent contest thingy and – er – this is going to be on the telly soon and could all get quite big, and I’ll just shut up about that for now. Another one has got a new Amour and is preparing to put on a great big thing of a show at the Edinburgh Fringe in August. Mr. Signs has decided to have a party for his birthday this month. He is undertaking a part-time training to become a shrink and seems to have got in touch with his inner party animal. I must have said this before, but a good image is worth re-using: I feel a bit like Mickey Mouse walking off the edge of a cliff – everything is ok so long as you don’t look down. And Mr. Signs, being a Gemini as my father was, has this unshakeable belief that the sun always shines on his birthday. Which it had better do in the light of the number of people invited, or how they will all fit into Signs cottage doesn’t bear thinking about. In fact, thinking in too much detail about stuff at the moment is something I am not doing, sometimes it just works best that way.

My throat still aches and the glands around my neck feel swollen. It is June, dammit – what gives? Not going to think about that either.

The Rhythm of Signs

Well it isn’t Lent any more and I can report that poetry boot camp was a partial success in that I did what I said out to do for some of the time. Not enough, obviously, but better than nothing. Next task is to polish up some of the stuff I’ve got and send the poems off, which I find myself strangely reluctant to do. I don’t know if this is fear of rejection or some deep condition of laziness or a combination of both. Have decided not to analyse too much, or at all, actually. I have poems, I have envelopes, I have stamps. No, I don’t have stamps, I will need to get some from the post office. You see? Already a hitch. And I am post-Easter discombobulated from disturbed sleep and a creeping undercurrent of general anxiety disorder of the sort which makes small run-of-the-mill tasks into conundrums which quite unravel and obscure the Signs.

The thing is that I can only really cope with the most plodding of everyday tasks in the great scheme of things. I was about to speak of the rhythm of life but of course, because I am (allow me to speak euphemistically) loosely put together, my life has no particular rhythm, even boot camp has to accede to this: sometimes I wake at six in the morning, sometimes nearer mid-day, and it may take a couple of hours before I properly incarnate into the luminous being that is the person of Signs. Hello world, I say at three in the afternoon, or nine in the morning – or even midnight. Signs, replies the world, the party is over but welcome anyway, there’s room for e’en such as you. We chunter along like that for quite a while, me and the world. Then blow me if it isn’t time to put a load of washing into the machine, get the supper cooked, and so to bed. You get the picture. In spite of which, I heroically manage to turn up for poetry workshops and meet with significant others, for the world would be poor without such things – she has told me this in confidence and I believe her.

I am going to London on Friday to visit good friends, watch Son of Signs in performance with his jazz a cappella group – and touch in with Daughter, who has been in Edinburgh a-fixing of a venue for her show (yess!), to be staged there at the fringe Festival in August. Mr. Signs will be away for the weekend a-conferencing with other psychotherapy shrinks-in-the-making. I feel increasingly unable to deal with travelling on the underground, particularly as my journey always seems to take in the rush hour. Also, if I am to be honest, I spend so much time in Signs Cottage that leaving it begins to feel as though one is a tortoise without its shell. This has to be challenged, obviously – and I do, I do. Plans are in place to fly to Scotland at the end of April and Berlin in May. I just carry on, pretending it’s ok. It isn’t but then, in a way, it also is, and has to be. Or I don’t know what.

Be Perfect

There is perhaps something to be said for the Be Perfect “driver” (see previous post), when one is on the receiving end. This was brought to my attention by Mr. Signs today when he showed me a letter from the manufacturers of his company car. It was a Manufacturer’s Recall Notice that said:

“As a result of our constant quality monitoring process we have found there is a possibility that due to insufficient fixation of the genuine Toyota accessory rubber floor mat on the driver’s side, it may slip forward under specific driving conditions and interfere with the accelerator pedal.”

I mean, blimey! If only my dentist took this attitude I wouldn’t be sitting on a bill for hundreds of pounds worth of work which only needed doing because of “insufficient fixation” in the original work.

I wouldn’t be nursing a shocking great bruise after a blood sample was taken and the nurse said, “no, that can’t possibly be hurting you, it’s just a pin prick.”

The bastard who went into my car and left my back lights smashed would have left a note saying sorry and here’s my contact number, insurance details etc.

Or am I confusing this with professionalism, decency and empathetic engagement?

And anyway, we all know that straight roads and trains running on time isn’t everything.

What If? (or how I might be saving the world and no-one even thanks me for it)

It often surprises me to hear what people think I’m like. Obviously they don’t tell me the uncomplimentary things, nor would I encourage this. The word “calm” is something I frequently hear, and “unflappable.” While these are pretty neutral in terms of how one assesses a person’s character, they seem to be qualities much coveted by people who lead lives that are increasingly rushed and stressful. I wish I possessed them too, to the degree that I appear to. In reality, I am a prey to every flying thought and a mere change in the wind’s direction is enough to increase the pulse rate. My daughter travelling across London during an underground strike is a minefield of what ifs, and don’t even begin to talk about night busses at three in the morning. I shut up about it most of the time or I would drive everyone and myself bonkers. There is no-one better in a crisis than me because I am always primed for it – I never need to read any of those Worst Case Scenario books, my undisciplined but vivid imagination has pictured it all. The single useful thing a cognitive behavioural therapist identified was that one of my Core Beliefs seemed to be that anxiety was in some way helpful: that by worrying one perhaps prevented the worst from happening. Obviously it isn’t helpful. “I” know that, even if my core believer doesn’t. It takes energy. It is not a good thing. On the other hand, but this will remain forever unverifiable, perhaps it is only my anxiety that is preventing the world from falling into imminent destruction – in which case, dear reader, you should really be thanking me. I’ve been doing it too long, though. Someone else want to take over?