Consider the Lilies

 

I have been following someone on Twitter who is living, with his partner, a shoe-string existence, house and pet-sitting, couchsurfing or camping out in a tent.  By hook or by crook they earn a bit of money here and there, but mostly they live (quite cheerfully, it seems) well below the poverty line.  It’s partly choice – they don’t want to make the compromises necessary to secure a regular income, and partly necessity – they weren’t earning enough to pay the rent on their flat.  I keep following because I want to see how long they can keep this up and whether they end up making their fortunes, as I think they hope to do, from various projects they have on the go.  It seems to me that they are exercising a kind of biblical faith in the idea that their needs will somehow be met.  My interest isn’t just the vicarious thrill of living through other people's adventures: I feel a parallel situation in my own life. 

 

If money is a form of energy then perhaps one can look at physical energy/vitality as a kind of money.  If so, then I am also living on a shoe-string.  Sometimes there are long stretches of almost nothing – a few pennies here and there; or there is money in the pot but I spend it all on one activity.  I had a week or so recently when I thought I was flush, but I misjudged.  I went for dips in the sea, did some workshopping, saw people, took walks.  It can be like going into a restaurant thinking that £20 will cover everything and being landed with a bill for three times the amount.  And emotional stress is like the leak in the roof that might cost hundreds of pounds and puts you into debt.  Actually, I am nearly always in debt.  I don’t put hours of rest into the black hole of the energy deficit, I spend what I have when I have it - blow the lot.  I am deep in the red and ignoring it.  Well, not quite.

 

Last night Mr. Signs and I went to a friend’s book launch in London.  What is it about coming back from the Smoke that always makes the journey feel twice as long?  At Victoria station I bought a special offer large packet of Revels and another of Minstrels, knowing I would need the sugar surge to keep me upright.  We ate the Revels last night and I am making my way though the Minstrels today.  Sugar, chocolate etc. is like borrowing from a loan shark to deal with a pressing debt or to buy drugs (coffee is also a loan shark, but more of a gentleman – there is room for negotiation).  On the train I sat opposite a woman who had a stonking great hardback of scientology guru L. Ron Hubbard’s ‘Dianetics’.  I flashed my slightly smaller hardback of my friend’s new book and saw her look wistfully at it before falling into an open-mouthed sleep.  I noticed that her carefully belipsticked mouth was neat and pretty, and why this should have struck me as poignant in the circumstances I am not sure, but sugar probably had something to do with it.  I was alive to nuance.  A very drunk woman staggered along the aisle wanting to know if the train was going to Balham, which it wasn’t (opposite direction) then pointed ferociously and with intent at the alarm button, but because she was so drunk she kept missing it.  This kind of thing is no more or less than one expects on the late train home. 

 

Why am I here when I might be working at the novel (it is growing at roughly 1000 words or so a week), washing the pile of dirty dishes (also growing) or lying in bed paying into the deficit?  In part because I recently contributed to Scintilla Poets in Conversation, which put a link to this blog, so it seemed fitting to put up a post.  But also, dear Reader, it’s good to talk.  Why else would I have carried on doing this for six and a half years?  Hang the expense.

 

On we go – me and the two hippies who are slow-travelling on a journey to god knows where, as we consider the lilies of the field.  I will be doing a reading with the Green Room Poets at the Poetry Café in London on Friday – admission is free, and there will be a ragtime pianist, plus the Daughter who will be singing the jazz and the blues.  So be there – in spirit, if not in body.  And wish me luck and potent chocolate for the journey home. 


(Photograph courtesy of the Daughter, taken at the Petrie Museum where the book launch was held).

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. 

The Spin And The Shine

Well I thought I had moved into what is euphemistically called a Better Patch, but I might have slithered back a bit.  Not actually into the Pit itself, but none of us (I am talking M.E. obviously) wants to be headed in that direction.  Still - it helps to put a spin on things.  That is probably true for most of us and has the virtue of being good for everyone else as well as oneself.  Some might say it is almost a duty.  In my church-going days (as a practising-because-I'm-crap-at-it-Christian) I liked the part where the priest said, Lift up your hearts!  The congregational response to that is, We lift them to the Lord, but I think just the lifting up in itself is probably good enough, and I bet my best china cake plate that the Lord concurs.  I would say that putting a spin is just doing that, really, and very much hope that it doesn't amount to the same thing as Positive Affirmations, which don't engage the heart and are therefore just lies.  There is no need to positively affirm anything.  Even if you are of the 'Life Is Shit And Then You Die' school,  heart-lift is achievable even if it is in spite of rather than because of.  Nothing wrong with that. 

I recently became Facebook friends with a certain well-known journalist (erstwhile 'hip, young gunslinger' at the NME, to give you a clue).  We don't know each other in RL but have a couple of FB friends in common so I took my chances and she is of a generous disposition.  There are many things to enjoy about her various writings and pronouncements and, speaking for myself, one can use a bit of vicarious cheer now and then, or even on a daily basis.  For a start, she begins each day with Boker TOV, Motekim! which is Hebrew for Good Morning, Darlings!  It somehow works particularly well in the Hebrew and gives a small shine to the moment, even when it is followed by a youtube link to a band singing a song one doesn't share an enthusiasm for.  As she lives in Brighton and loves eating, drinking and good cheer, I had a fleeting fantasy of meeting up with her at English's Oyster Bar, chewing the gossip plus several courses of delicious things and drinking Black Velvet, which is a champagne and Guiness combo the mater introduced me to at Sheekey's (another fish place) in London. You can't let too much reality bleed into a good fantasy so let us assume that I can still drink tankards full of Black Velvet, that I would not be fazed when we were joined by a group of her sparkly-witty friends, and that when I spoke about how I mostly write about sex and death (with the definite emphasis, these days, on death) I would make it sound like the fun kind.  I might also lob in that I was recently long-listed for the National Poetry prize (poem all about someone choosing his coffin), though I suspect that doing this would neither impress nor endear me.  In the end, my inner introvert would fuck things up. I would ask the wrong kind of questions - the kind that lead to dark places, as you'd expect of a sex-and-death merchant - and I would wince if the jokes became too cruel.  Or it would be nine o'clock and I would suddenly turn into a slipperless M.E. pumpkin.  Ah well - fun while it lasted.

But what am I going on about?  For this very evening Mr. Signs and I will be going out to a new gastropub eatery recommended by my friend the Cake Lady, in honour of his successfully reaching another milestone in Shrink-training.  And also, tomorrow being Mothering Sunday, today is Mother's Eve and a fine and proper time to celebrate.  I have already cheated and opened the beautiful card from my daughter, with words that bring a shine to the heart.  Sometimes you don't need the spin.  It's just all there, and manifest. 

Laila tov, motekim.

***

#AmWriting

In my first week as an Eng Lit student at university one of the lecturers eyed us balefully and said, you're here to read and if you don't want to read, fuck off.  Another one told us that most literature was really very boring - just in case we were expecting to enjoy ourselves.  So that was us put straight.  A bit rough, but it was the early eighties, we were mainly women, used to being told like it is by men of a certain age.  As time went on, I could to some extent see where they were coming from.  I had worked for a number of years and was there on a mature student's grant.  This and the fact of no fees to be paid seems almost unthinkable now.  With a little paid work in the summer, I was well able to live on the grant.  And I loved everything about being a student.  The younger ones would often arrive at tutorials smudge-eyed, smelling of last night's party, not having read the text of whatever it was.  I was much sought-after in the ten minutes or so before a class for the quick summary that would allow them to bluff their way through the session.  I was not bored by much, except for The Faerie Queene which sits on my bookshelves unread, the portrait of Gloriana on the front still measuring and finding me wanting.  I thought Tristram Shandy boring too but persevered as everyone (even the hardened party people) seemed to think it was cool.  Later, it would allow me to bluff my way through conversations about post-modernism.

Cut to when I began teaching creative writing classes.  I suppose I could have echoed what my erstwhile tutor said but my preferred way was to give a short reading list, the first item being Dorothea Brande's 'Becoming A Writer'.  I was pleased to see that it was placed at number two of Hilary Mantel's ten rules for writers (the first being to get an accountant).  Brande had the belief that although there were varying degrees of talent, everyone could write.  I believed this too and simply assumed that everyone who came to class - even the man who said he was there because his wife insisted he get himself an interest and the art class was full - was there because they wanted to write.  And everyone did.  We began almost immediately, writing in class and reading it back.  People found that if there was no space to worry or censor, they were more brilliant than they imagined they could be.  I would set a writing task for students to do at home, which they brought back to class the following week.  Mostly they always did.

Being a writer is perhaps subtly different from Becoming - though I think we are always doing that, wherever we are on the writing road.  Being a writer means you have reached that point where you know that this is what you are for, whatever else you have to do to earn money or to meet other commitments; this is what you have to come back to.  It may be that you stop doing it for long periods because of health, lack of time or writers' block (yes, even experienced and famous writers sometimes get it and some have recovered with Dorothea Brande), but the soul is uneasy until you get back to doing it.  And then the time comes when you might have to say to yourself: you're here to write and if you don't want to write, fuck off. 

Dorothea Brande puts it more delicately.  But she does say that if after a period of time you find that the resistance to writing is stronger than the impulse to do it - then it is better, dear reader, to find something else to do. 

One of my favourite Twitter hashtags:  #AmWriting. 

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.

Cafe Culture

I am aware that it begins to seem as though I spend my life swanning from one cafe to another.  Good, because what I am actually doing most of the time is negotiating paralysingly difficult circumstances surrounding the mater's recent operation and the aftermath thereof.  I would rather live in what seems, and this out-to-lunch moment with the daughter in a local cafe so cool it would not be out of place in trendy Broadway Market fits the bill nicely.  Yes, life is a bowl of perfectly-sizzled hand-cut chips, and a bacon burger with "onion marmalade" on a wooden block.  If burger-on-the-block conjures up unsavoury resonances let us push them aside.

Well, that was yesterday.  And today I went to another place - the community centre cafe which operates three days a week from the old village school.  The people that go there are mainly old, infirm or with small child, the cooks and waiters are volunteers and the food is best of 1950s and cheap.  The cafe is held in what used to be the school assembly hall - all they have done is put a kitchen at one end and get tables and chairs.  On the wall facing the large windows there is a mural, a collective effort by many children, called Our Village.  There are bookcases full of paperbacks to buy for 10p and small glass vases with little fresh flowers on each table. It is one of my favourite places and if I get to heaven any time soon I will organise a welcome party for the volunteers, when their time comes.

Harbour

So there we were, it being Friday, eating our fish and chips. From the photo, it looks as though there are not many people about, but the tiny place was packed, not just with people sitting but queues of folk waiting for their takeaways and I would lay a bet that not many of those were practising Roman Catholics.  But fish on Fridays is somewhere to go, isn't it - somewhere to locate ourselves in these Godless and, some might say, God-forsaken times.  Like pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, chocolate eggs at Easter, Turkey at Christmas, it gives a kind of rhythm to the weeks and months and the ancient hearth is, if not exactly renewed, then at least not entirely lost.  We feel it somewhere in the body of us.  The fish bar is not anywhere near a harbour, but that doesn't matter.  There is a drawing of fishing boats on the menu, we know that fish come from the sea and we can imagine ourselves near it, salt spray in the air and the mew of a seagull.

The mater and her new half-hip are back at home with zimmer frame, walking sticks and codeine for pain relief.  Old age, rather like M.E., isn't for wimps, and until now the mater has been sprightly with weekly Pilates, acqua aerobics and constantly moving about.  Unsurprisingly, she doesn't like this state of affairs.  In the fish bar Mr. Signs and I got to talking about how it would be when we are nearly ninety.  He reckoned that by then he would be long dead as his parents didn't make it beyond eighty.  I reckoned that I ought to be dead before him because M.E. does do that to a life - shorten it, I mean.  But because it has taken so much of the living I would like to have done, I feel I am owed something in the way of payback time so don't accept that I won't make ninety and beyond, whatever the statistics.  When the great big ship with the black sails comes in, will we be standing at the harbour meekly waiting to be taken?  I suppose that is the best way to go - gently into that good night.  But right now I can't see it.

There happens to be a Sandy Denny retrospective on the box as I speak, so it seems right and fitting to echo the lady:

And I know you won't believe me though it is the truth to tell

that the living it is hard, oh but it suits me well.

Though truth to tell (mine) I want for the living to be easy sometimes, the years to keep on turning, with pancakes in their season, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, a bit of singing and dancing - fish and chips on a Friday.

License to Jump Queues

Oh for goodness sake, where have I been! Drawing out Lent, I should think not, as though privation were good for the soul, for this soul I mean (because no it isn't) or as though I am Greta Garbo, gawdssake, with a big loud megaphone blaring that I Vant To Be Alooooone! When actually, I don't, not really. I like the community of disparate souls that gather around the flames of blogfire and it wasn't my intention to banish myself forever to wander in the dark forest toute seule. At least not yet. At least I don't think so. And I say this with whatever shreds of strength are left to me by this wretched chronic Condition of mine, which I will neither go on about at great length nor seek in any way to deny, and this is quite a trick to pull off, so give me a few gold stars for this. I am not sure that I have been earning gold stars for much else. I have written some poems and taken them to workshops, I have given attention to workshopping other people's poems also and this continues to feel meaningful to me - in other words, like real work. And I am honing a skill that I have yet to find a title for, but let us call it Giving Myself License - GML for short. As things stand, this basically means that I park in places that strictly speaking I shouldn't, but I hope to find creative ways of extending this and will welcome all suggestions.

Went to see my GP the other day. Come back - what do expect me to blog about on my first post, post-Lent, and I can file it quite reasonably under the label Life and Stuff. Ahem. GP has been away from the practice for a while as he became the father of twins. A photograph showed from behind a box of index cards and I saw the crowns of two smooth baby heads. He looked tired but did not mind that I had come with a list of ten or so things. He is by no means the brightest button in the box but he is unfailingly courteous and does what he can with the limited resources allowed by the NHS. There needs to be dialogue between him and the specialist I see from time to time, and in order for this to happen I have to be on the case or things get stuck. So yes, much time is given over to health matters. I don't mind. I am still hopeful that if some of the issues underlying my symptoms can be addressed then a measure of wellness may be given back to me and will never believe that it was part of Anyone's masterplan that I should come into the world and be so ill for so long. When things go wrong, when something vital is lacking or malfunctioning you try and put it right and you go on trying while there is hope and while you can. That is all.

Meanwhile, you carry on and develop strategies. One of mine is to give myself license to break minor rules. Call it covert bad behaviour of the mostly uncriminal kind. If there is a queue anywhere I will, if possible, try to jump it. I park my car beside petrol pumps at Tesco Express when I just need some shopping but no petrol. I park in the bays at the back of the doctor's surgery, which are only supposed to be used by staff, when there are no spaces at the front. I do these things to save my strength and because there are times when walking up an incline can make me much worse, and standing in queues will always do that (if interested, see Orthostatic Intolerance). So yes, the other day I parked at the back of the surgery. Plenty of space there, no-one spotted me, no harm done. And you see that photograph at the top? That was taken by Mr. Signs on a lovely day in Brighton when we were having a walk and fancied a cone of Mr. Marrocco's ice cream (length of queue is testimony to how good it is). We went to the back of the queue, as one does. Then I asked Mr. S to wait while I went to investigate. Are you going to try and jump the queue? he asked. He knows me, doesn't really approve but is also realistic. Make mine a raspberry sorbet, he said. I hovered around the glass counter looking as though I was studying the various different flavours on offer. There was a kerfuffle of people choosing things and a bevy of scoop-wielding shop assistants. One of them spotted me and asked what I wanted. I walked out with two cones - simples. On our walk back we spotted the same person that had stood in front, still waiting and reckoned I must have saved us about half an hour.

Am I a bad person? This is rhetorical and not really up for discussion, at least not in my hearing. And, like I said, suggestions welcome.

***

breathing the spring

Not meaning to be a wilting tulip here but blogger is still in anti-poetry mode, and the Moment has now passed. I discovered that the squashed version of the poem thing I meant to put up and then deleted is still on Googlereader. Wha'evah!

So where was I? I am on the edge of this amazing, ancient forest that becomes intense at this time of year, breathing the spring at you like some fine and fragrant lover so you could almost lose yourself in it and if you didn't have M.E. then you really might just do that. Even with M.E., even from the window or walking a short distance - it's good. The postvirals keep piling up in one though, and Mr. Signs has been under the weather. So it still feels as though one is waiting for the winter to go, for the year to begin. But I have, so to speak, been preparing the ground and adding to my new opus, bit by bit, keeping it alive-alive-oh - much easier this time, as the roots are autobiographical. I have ordered a long out-of-print German children's story from Abebooks (Deutschland) and am excited about this for the substance of it is in what I am writing and I haven't seen it since I was about seven years old. The book must have got lost in one of our many moves but I carried it in my consciousness along with the other important stories, the fairy tales.

De-cluttering is still on the agenda, and probably should be hereafter, as a matter of routine, because I feel the difference. Objects have a forcefield of energy around them and take up psychic space. Plans are in place for the (modest, perforce) re-organisation of Signs Cottage. For the time being I am perching myself with notebooks (no computer) in Son's room, he only using it occasionally as he lives in London now. I am near to the sky and look over treetops. It is not only outer space that must be organised and claimed - inner space too needs this attention.

I saw the liver specialist this morning, following the most auspicious of blood test results - the meds are working, PBC under control, no liver transplant on the horizon. But we can't, he shrugs, do anything about the fatigue. Some people have transplants for that reason alone, but of course in your case - . Need we say more? Not that he knows much about M.E., looks baffled at the idea that autoimmune disease may be connected and, really, I cannot be arsed to enlighten him, nor would he be interested. There is a coffee machine in the waiting area, I press the button that says Mocha, help myself to a biscuit, make an appointment at the desk to come back next year. Done and dusted, like one's shelves.

how to win

House of Signs is having a winning streak. Fifteen minutes before the start of the race, Mr. Signs decided to have a flutter on the Grand National. We chose two horses, put a fiver on each and one came second so basically we have got back what we spent, plus £1.25. Not a lot one can get for that, and Mr. S treated himself to a Feast ice lolly which cost £1.20, so we are richer now by 5p, and I don't think you can even get a box of matches for that. But never mind, for the Signs are Auspicious - as this undoubtedly proves. If the horse had come first they would have been even more Auspicious and the winnings might have paid for a meal out, but I'm not complaining - a win is a win. I didn't follow the race very well, caught by the sight of the riderless horses, beautiful creatures, as they carried on galloping around the track, no-one to tell them that there was any reason for them to stop.

This king and queen of all colds is having a party in me but just now I don't care. It will pass and I have decided to apply my parking spaces capability to the rest of life. Have I told you about this? I began to develop it after someone told me that whenever she said, "hail Mary full of grace, please give me a parking space" one always manifested for her, and this even though she was by no means a Believer. Of course I had to try this out for myself - and it worked, even when I didn't bother about saying the hail Mary, just kind of expected a parking place to manifest. Ah well, perhaps there are times when it doesn't, but the significant times (ones I choose to remember) are when it does, and expecting a good outcome is better all round than fearing a bad one. Either way can make one bonkers, but who in their right mind would want to choose the path that leads to anxiety disorder? And the Signs, as has been demonstrated (and I have the 5p to prove it) are auspicious. It's good to win.

red carpet

I watched most of the very ghastly BAFTA awards thing, mainly because I wasn't properly up to doing anything else. I should have just gone back to bed and read the papers but I knew if I did that I might fall asleep early - and then I would risk waking in the small hours and doing the night watch . Now I should go to bed but feel wired and restless. I blame BAFTA and the state of heightened boredom it induces so that one feels obliged to chew through the best part of a box of wine gums. Paul McCartney looked in a shocking state, I thought, as though innerly propped up by something or other (drugs?) but not really in himself. In a thin voice, he promised us a "rockin' evening." The closest we got to that was Helena Bonham Carter hogging the space to receive best something-or-other (King's Speech etc). Bad behaviour does, after all, promise a measure of intrinsic interest. But she also looked in a bad way, as though on some kind of disorientating medication, not in herself but still up herself. Am I being a grumpy old blogger? Good.

The truth is that as far as I am concerned, nothing could be right after the glitz parade of designer frockage at the beginning when they all arrived and spilled themselves onto the red carpet. I know it is part of what happens, what one expects and what, presumably, every single person in the whole world apart from me really wants to see. But every time I allow myself to watch something like this I wish that just one of the actors would decide to turn up in the equivalent of my purple shell-suit trousers. It is very unlikely that I will ever be spilled out onto the red BAFTA carpet but if, for some unfathomable reason that none of us can forsee, this does ever happen I promise to you, my brothers and sisters who carry the torch for true artistic (not to mention aesthetic) integrity that I will not under any circumstances be dressed in designer clothes or any other glitz-schmatter that leaves my shoulders and most of my boobs bare. It is February, forsooth! I will be dressed in my Purples with matching cashmere jumper, string of pearls and grey hoodie if it is raining, fake Uggs on my feet or possibly Crocs with striped purple socks showing through the holes. So no-one will be able to accuse me of not having Style. But there will be none of the dreary glitz we were subjected to this evening.

But soft ye now, for we are almost in Valentine's day, and today being Valentine's Eve (it's almost another Christmas as far as hotels are concerned, so why not?) Mr. Signs and I went out to stuff our faces with sunday lunch at the local posh hotel. The pianist played right through the Sound of Music and followed up with the Godfather and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Mr. S ate rare roast beef and I my fillets of plaice on a bed of crushed new potatoes followed by poached pears and chocolate sauce. The French waiters (yes, all French) hovered and spun around us while outside the wind and rain lashed at the high bay windows and for one brief moment it might almost have been possible to imagine that we were in some well-rehearsed play in which we played our parts beautifully. We laughed and we love each other. Bring out the red carpets.

wedded

I miss the swimming. This is a good sign because it means that I must have short periods (moments) of feeling up for doing it. But if I actually did I would be back in the crawling pits again. It wasn't only the warm chlorine - regular, sustained exercise is not something that PWME can do. I already knew this but made myself believe I could find a way. Does anybody, in any case, get it all right? Life, I mean, and how to live it. My aunt, nearing her death and not yet particularly old, confessed that she had never been particularly "wedded to life", and I felt surprised by this, and to some degree shocked, as thought it were a disavowal of something that we all come with, this bond that weds us unbreakably to life, until life itself is gone from us. But my aunt was, I only realised this later, probably depressed for much of her life - the signs were there but not obvious to anyone who didn't know her intimately. She was passionate about the arts and particularly about getting to know people who were something or other, who had made a name for themselves. She was a fine cook and courted them with boef a la ficelle and Grand Marnier souffle. She collected famous names and even had affairs with some of them. This, and Fortnum and Masons, made her feel much better about life. We all need things that are better-making.

I'm sure this post was going somewhere, but a couple of phone calls, my neighbour's knock on the door with coffee and walnut cake and a pressing need to have something to eat (boiled eggs and soldiers) interrupted the flow. Never mind, because what I was going to talk about was the particulars, and how they above all can wed one to life, particularly when life is constrained by chronic illness or any ongoing situation that is difficult to bear or robs one of life-force. But then, I am not depressed. I am many things that one might (and please don't!) give a clinical name to - but not that. And I know this, because there were two short periods when I almost certainly was, and anyone who has been there knows about the difference between that dark beast and all the other mind-creatures one has to battle or negotiate with. I am wedded to life, the better and the worse of it, in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, especially to the particulars of coffee and walnut cake, pleasant interruptions, the magpie who has found temporary lodging on our apple tree, and even, or perhaps particularly, an almost redundant yellow HB pencil, its india rubber worn to the metal rung that holds it, the lead almost blunt - I must remember to sharpen it later, restore it to some kind of usefulness. And an old leather cricket ball that has sat on the desk this many a year, the tough stitching around its red middle still good. No use for it at all in our lives, but there it sits, placing itself in the list of particulars that we may or may not find in heaven but can only properly relish here on earth, to which I am wedded.

This being so, why am I smoking again? Must stop before it takes hold. There is always that.

I blew a thousand pounds in just over half an hour yesterday. Eight hundred went on blood tests and the rest on consultation with specialist. Thank you BUPA health insurance, but there wasn't enough over for ultrasound so thanking you in anticipation, National Health Service . Even though I haven't got the results of anything yet, I am feeling cheerful about it all. The PBC wants attention - ursodeoxycholic acid - and specialist wants me to have a liver biopsy. We'll see about that. I'm going to Berlin next month to the wedding of an ex-stepbrother (it's complicated) and will take the opportunity to see a specialist with an alternative approach. As everybody knows, Germany is the place for all things Liver, and I look forward to going back to my old stomping ground and getting the low down. I have a sense that all manner of things will be well, manageable and to some extent treatable.

And also, it's nearly autumn - my time, my season, I can feel its breath in the air though we are still in summer.

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.

Noele sing we clear

I seem to have hit a patch of blog fatigue. Not sure why this is, but normal service will resume - because why not? It is a way of thinking aloud (the blogging) that suits me, sitting happily on the cusp of extra/introversion.

Son of Signs is back from India and looks - how can I put it? - so much like himself and yet so changed. He has long rockanroll hair and is taller, leaner, his eyes darker, I swear they are, and I should know the colour of my boy's eyes. He has brought mangoes, incense, tobacco toothpaste (yes), saris, a statue of Ganesh. He came on Sunday, went for an interview at the Barbican on Monday (a three-month internship), got the job, is sorting out where and how to live in London, considering internship is unpaid. My head is a whirl.

Daughter of Signs has written a play and is busy with this and the musical she wrote last year, refining the one and promoting the other. It is early days, but things are looking and feeling auspicious.


Brighton flat is up and running (give or take a faulty shower) - and beautiful. If I can get myself camera-focussed I will put up some photographs, see if I can capture the windows - the light.

You see my predicament: I mean, who needs a blog post that reads like one of those tooth-grinding round-robin letters that list the year's triumphs and achievements? Because, peeps, it's all coming up roses on the Edge, and I mean this most literally, or almost, for actually we are still in blossom time - but the begonias are getting ready to burst their green corsage.

And here's another thing: I have been given an award by Noele Gordon her very self, and please don't ask me who she is. She was the Grande Dame of Crossroads Motel and is active in the hereafter as a kind of spirit guide - not to me, I hasten (very quickly) to add, but to another bloggiste (clearly what one might call a "sensitive") - through whom she has bestowed this honour.




Fabulous, and so much more substantial than the Noele I dimly remember from real life. Probably because we only had black and white TV (and I hardly ever watched Crossroads). As this comes bespoke and personalised I should really find a way of putting her on the sidebar.

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.

Snow on the Edge

Inspired by Cuspie, some photos of where I be, in deepest Sussex. Cheating, because they are taken by my neighbour-over-the-road who has a talent for this sort of thing.

The last photo is of Signs Cottage, the lit up window our living room.

Festival Again

Off to Edinburgh again tomorrow, looking forward to all of it. Daughter is staying in London this year, bashing on with her nearly-finished musical and working. A fun shopping trip with her today (me, who usually detests shopping for clothes!) - both of us bought lots of lovely things in the high street of my nearest little town, quickly, painlessly, and cheaply. High spirits.

Son will be playing geetar in a show called Miles Ahead with other jazz musicians - at C Venue, if you happen to be there and into Miles Davis.

Ms North has been shortlisted for the Kelpies Prize with her story, Magnus Finn and the Ocean Quest and the Signses will be there at the award ceremony on Wednesday when the winner will be announced.

I will be taking the notebook along, probably not writing much in it until my return but one must always show willing, even on holiday.

There is so much auspiciousness in the air, I can taste it.

Far North

Here is the lovely house where we stayed. Like mine, it is on the edge - but in this case it is hard by the sea rather than forest, these windows look right onto it. It is cloudy in the photo, but we sat underneath the umbrella in bright sunshine, to eat and to read and write.

This is my new best friend - a border collie called Flora who goes every day into the sea, either to swim or just stand and look out to sea, meditating on the horizon or watching trout leap from the water. She is both intelligent and hyper-active and, having no sheep to herd, needs four walks a day and is inclined to chase the chickens if she gets bored. Not the kind of dog that I would be able to keep, more is the pity, but it suits Ms North perfectly for when she is not writing and teaching she is walking with Flora and both are in their element.

Here is the beach that is right by the house. The photo was taken very late at night, it never really gets dark here in summer.

And just to prove that the skies really were (mostly) blue. A view from the side of the houses across the river. The place is a small hamlet, there are no shops to speak of, unless you count the hut that sells bedding plants and motor oil. We ate fresh mackerel caught by someone who goes out in his boat every night to fish.

While we were there, Ms North saw one of her poems published as one of the runners up in the Mslexia poetry competition - and the next day a letter came with the news that her children's story has been shortlisted for the Kelpies prize. She will be reading from it at the Edinburgh Festival, when the results will be announced - and perhaps (nudge, nudge) update her blog with all the news. Auspicious? I should coco.

So I am back to my own particular edge and rather missing the granite beneath my feet, but fired up for something or other, and thinking about new strategies for doing more of what I want to do - the usual damnable restrictions notwithstanding.

More on this anon.