On a more upbeat note, and against all the odds, I took the day off from invalidism. I drove to Brighton with my son and met up with my London-based daughter to buy clothes for them both in the lovely second-hand shops that can still be found in the Lanes. How much longer those places will be there before being taken over by expensive chiquerie remains to be seen. But Brighton is still good. My kids would like me and their Dad to move there, and as I stood under a canopy watching the sun and rain fight it out next to the knitted thigh-length socks of many-coloured stripes (two pairs for a fiver), smelling the coffee, seeing the trendy long-haired geezers with sleek grey hair tied back into long pony tails (only in Brighton, these) and feeling the beat of the place, I thought – why not? Why not just up sticks and move back to the centre of things, it might not make me better but then again it might not make me worse. That thought lasted only a couple of seconds, all said and done we have not sold our old house yet and, fed up thinking about it, have taken her off the market. But if the thought comes back, I’ll have a look at it.
The whole world and my daughter have given up smoking. I rejoice, even as I surreptitiously light up the last of my stash before I too rejoin the right-thinking universe and do cold turkey again. My daughter is very cool about the whole thing. Yes, it feels a bit as though your best friend has just died, but on the other hand it’s quite easy – the times you want to have one, you just don’t, and obviously it’s a drag thinking about it all the time and wanting it, but so it goes. We went to have char-grilled burgers in a tiny place hidden away up an alley you would be certain to miss if you didn’t stumble into it by accident or know it was there. We could smell the smoke that, even five days ago, came from the lit cigarettes. I remembered the sign that used to be up saying that they served Absinthe (only two shots per person). My daughter said that everywhere was becoming really controlled and “anal.” My son said that it was a good thing, the new smoking ban, and they bickered mildly about this for a while. I fell, as usual, somewhere between the two.
Also against the odds, I have thrown myself into, or possibly at, the resurrection of my novel idea. I have one first person narrator and plan to alternate between this and third person. I have re-written a whole chunk, well fifteen hundred words of first person narrative, converting it into third person. It’s rubbish as it stands of course, too subjective, but really – a woman in my condition can’t afford to look too closely: never mind the quality, count the words is the thing at this point.
I’m a bit manic from having got away with my day off. I’ll pay, of course. Or not.
Showing posts with label smoking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label smoking. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Monday, April 2, 2007
on the rocks
I have been to the Smoke again. To London, I mean, but I have also been at the cigarettes. I have a love/hate relationship with both, although the real grande affaire is with cigarettes. It’s just a blip, I’m not taking it up again, by order of the doctor who has convinced me of the real risk of dropping down dead of a stroke or heart attack if I do. I did think for a while, and decided to choose life. It’s just that once in a while I have the urge to dance with death. I have talked about this before.
I stayed with my daughter. On the plus side it was good to spend time with her alone and experience afresh the revelation of her unfolding character and unique loveliness. I also had the new experience of sleeping on an airbed, and surprisingly comfortable it was too. I recommend it as a cheap and storable alternative to the futon. My daughter's life has been rocky just recently. Sometimes things are like this. Amongst other things, she was assaulted as she walked home one night in one of the supposedly “nicer” areas of London, a stone’s throw from the underground station. She was wrestled to the ground by a man who wanted, presumably, (it wasn’t clear) her mobile phone, and she fought for several minutes until someone else appeared and her attacker ran off. Apart from a graze she is unhurt, but these things leave their mark, need processing and leave a shadow on the landscape and in the body.
It is not just my thin skin, nostalgia for 1970s and the fact of living in the country that makes London feel so alien to me. There is an edginess everywhere, more people are on drugs and not in a fun way. The rich/poor divide feels more dangerous. The bijoux little whitewashed houses with flowers blooming on the trellises are bang next to council estates where there is gun-crime and drug trafficking and we all cross our fingers and hope it will go away or at least not touch on our lives.
Back in the sticks, of course, it’s spring and everything is fine in the garden. Isn’t it?
I stayed with my daughter. On the plus side it was good to spend time with her alone and experience afresh the revelation of her unfolding character and unique loveliness. I also had the new experience of sleeping on an airbed, and surprisingly comfortable it was too. I recommend it as a cheap and storable alternative to the futon. My daughter's life has been rocky just recently. Sometimes things are like this. Amongst other things, she was assaulted as she walked home one night in one of the supposedly “nicer” areas of London, a stone’s throw from the underground station. She was wrestled to the ground by a man who wanted, presumably, (it wasn’t clear) her mobile phone, and she fought for several minutes until someone else appeared and her attacker ran off. Apart from a graze she is unhurt, but these things leave their mark, need processing and leave a shadow on the landscape and in the body.
It is not just my thin skin, nostalgia for 1970s and the fact of living in the country that makes London feel so alien to me. There is an edginess everywhere, more people are on drugs and not in a fun way. The rich/poor divide feels more dangerous. The bijoux little whitewashed houses with flowers blooming on the trellises are bang next to council estates where there is gun-crime and drug trafficking and we all cross our fingers and hope it will go away or at least not touch on our lives.
Back in the sticks, of course, it’s spring and everything is fine in the garden. Isn’t it?
Monday, February 5, 2007
A Hint of Purple
I am preparing my house to be “viewed”. Having previously imagined it as a faithful wife long past her prime, I now feel she is a girl I am trying to prepare for the marriage market. People will soon be coming to assess her suitability as future wife. That she is too thin they will already understand from the measurements provided by the “go-between.” But they, being of modest means, will be realistic. They will look for her good qualities. What can I say? She is disobedient, untidy, unpredictable and hums to herself in unseemly fashion. But she makes people smile and how airily she looks over the tops of trees and houses. In her garden there are apples, cherries and cobnuts and the fine limb of a studio that is without spot or blemish. Two friends came today in order to help prepare for her coming out. The clutter is stashed in boxes. She holds her breath. I have not yet found a house to replace her.
I already feel houseless, or only half here. But perhaps that is also the excarnating after-effect of trying to show willing and be sociable at a Sunday lunch party of more than 40 loud people at the top of a restaurant where we were all instructed to “circulate.” No sooner had one established the ground for some form of tolerable mutual exchange than it was time to move on and begin again with someone else. I wonder how I would manage with speed dating. At one point I interrupted someone in full flow to say that I had to go outside. I told her I had M.E. and could no longer understand what was being said to me. This is unlike me. She is not someone I know or am likely to meet again so there was no need to volunteer this information. I could have professed an urgent need to go to the loo or done something or other - what anyone else does at parties when they want to extricate themselves. Perhaps this is the M.E. equivalent of becoming old and wearing purple. Or it is the beginning of the kind of incontinence manifested by the Ancient Mariner who felt compelled to tell his tale.
Oh dear, said the woman, I didn’t know, have you tried cutting out yeast, I once knew someone who –
Certainly it is easier to hold someone with a glittering eye and tell one’s tale than to listen. I went outside. I saw my daughter smoking a Marlborough. I asked her for a drag. It was good. I went back inside. I drank an Americano in one and had cake. I got second wind. I looked at the faces of my two children, my son up for the day from university. All manner of things will be well. If only one were still smoking cigarettes.
My kingdom for a Camel.
I already feel houseless, or only half here. But perhaps that is also the excarnating after-effect of trying to show willing and be sociable at a Sunday lunch party of more than 40 loud people at the top of a restaurant where we were all instructed to “circulate.” No sooner had one established the ground for some form of tolerable mutual exchange than it was time to move on and begin again with someone else. I wonder how I would manage with speed dating. At one point I interrupted someone in full flow to say that I had to go outside. I told her I had M.E. and could no longer understand what was being said to me. This is unlike me. She is not someone I know or am likely to meet again so there was no need to volunteer this information. I could have professed an urgent need to go to the loo or done something or other - what anyone else does at parties when they want to extricate themselves. Perhaps this is the M.E. equivalent of becoming old and wearing purple. Or it is the beginning of the kind of incontinence manifested by the Ancient Mariner who felt compelled to tell his tale.
Oh dear, said the woman, I didn’t know, have you tried cutting out yeast, I once knew someone who –
Certainly it is easier to hold someone with a glittering eye and tell one’s tale than to listen. I went outside. I saw my daughter smoking a Marlborough. I asked her for a drag. It was good. I went back inside. I drank an Americano in one and had cake. I got second wind. I looked at the faces of my two children, my son up for the day from university. All manner of things will be well. If only one were still smoking cigarettes.
My kingdom for a Camel.
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