Claire with an 'i'

Claire with an 'i' has itchy feet again, I don't think she's that keen on England either, generally speaking she is somewhere else. Either way, she has randomly booked herself in for a trek up a Ugandan mountain in January. She may have done it on a whim I think because now she's panicking. She "...can't even get up the stairs without having a heart attack", obviously a lie because her bedroom is upstairs. But, she has convinced herself that she'll never make it if the Gorrillas are at the top (of the mountain, not the stairs)she is praying they will be 'going local' and hanging out near the bottom so the trek isn't life-threatening. Claire with an 'i' is as over dramatic when she puts on a few pounds as I am. I must remember ask her if she has the same relationship with Muesli and Porridge oats as I do. She swears she has put on so much weight that she can hardly walk, which is another blantant lie. I, on the other hand really am such a lard-arse that getting out of the front door is significant challenge. Especially since the onset of the crescent-shaped fetish.
So we thought we might get fit together. She is going to join a gym, she says. No, I scream, don't do it. You are right she says instantly. She'll hate it she says, its a waste of money I say, its boring she says. The ladies waiting to book a wedding join in, those treadmills they say, try walking they say. Silence. Walking? Thats a good idea we say.
Where shall we walk, we say, when will we have time, we say. Try walking to work they say. Tricky for me, that one. Tricky for Claire with an 'i' too, unless she had those weird leg extensions and she's taller than she'd choose already. Where shall we walk then? Up Parson's Hill they say. I don't know if you've ever walked up Parson's Hill but I'd rather be on a tread mill with a blindfold personally. Its not the French Riviera or a Ugandan mountain put it that way.
Sensing a dead end, the bride to be intervenes, perhaps out of a sense of public duty. Try a class she says with a classic, unpretensious, smile from her smooth, young, cheek-boned face. She didn't judge us, you could see that, but she reallly wanted to help. Yes, says her Mum, in an encouraging tone, Salsa, Becky does Salsa. I know for a fact that Salsa is dull. I try being willing and have harboured a secret desire to return to Ballet but the floor to ceiling wall to wall mirrors make me look like Dawn French in the Darcy Bussell sketch and if you haven't seen it lets keep it that way. Ballet? I say tentatively. Claire with an 'i' almost ruptures her unwanted stomach laughing and I realise that my ballet days really are over. Jogging and cycling are out for me because my gargantuan arse makes me unstable. We have a good canal network locally, most jogging and cycling takes place around those because they are our most attractive landscape feature round here. You get the picture.
I am unashamed to be an avid Woman's Hour fan. There was a horrifying account this morning which made me want to eat crescent shaped indulgences without shame and turn down all offers of humiliating exercise regimes. Research now shows that women now face increasing pressure to have attractive bumps during pregnancy. The despicable magazine people air-brush them into an acceptable shape. Furthermore women are expected to be thin all over, gain no weight but still have an perfect shaped baby bump. The radio piece was about the horrifying fact that an estimated 1 in 20 pregnant women are currently suffering from an eating disorder. It is worse than this of course because eating disorders demand secrecy. Women, whatever their cravings are denying them so that they can be thin all over but still have perfect bumps. Is their no end to this nonsense? It is all blamed on Demi Moore and an extraordinary photographer. Because Annie Leibovitz took a photo of Demi nude complete with bump. At the time of its release the magazine had to sell copies covered with paper because it was so controversial. These powerful women made it acceptable to show our womanhood in all its glory. What I do know of these women is fabulously feminist. They are doubtless mortified to be associated with a change in culture which forces us into an unatural shape literally and metaphorically.
I'm off to buy something life-affirming to eat

Muesli

I've started eating Muesli again. Vile stuff. I had started buying the most expensively packaged box. It seems that I believed it would somehow make Muesli alright. It was the most beautiful packaging I've ever seen. It came in a lovely duck egg blue matt cardboard with a stylised leaf motif pattern entwining it. It is recyclable, organic, dust-free (whatever that means), toasted leaves of corn, whole hazelnuts as opposed to unfulfilled ones presumably, slivered almonds blah, blah, blah. It has an essay on the back in a trendy silver embossed typeface singing its own praises. In the end though, I am a mug, and its just Muesli. Could have made it myself of course, but, oh that box! All the boxes are exquisitely designed, I even bought the cranberry one because I liked the colourway but the contents were still vile. Between you and me I've tried all the different colours. The Chocolate and orange box, with the inevitable juicy raisins and succulent dates smattered with golden sultanas. There is a whole array of Farrow and Ball paint pallette colours and absurdly sensual adjectives for what is basically and heap of shrivelled fruit, shiny bald nuts and chaffinch food. I got through most of them to spite Mr B who ridicules me everytime I try Muesli again. He sees me approaching the cereals because I've "...given up bread" (again) and groans. It is on an equal footing with my porridge fantasy. In the wake of my intended porridge regime (my Mum swore by it) I always have so many different types of oat left that I have to make massive batches of flapjacks to use it up. Before we left for France I had almost eaten my way through all the different colours, and had decanted them into some beautiful glass preserving jars. The same jars beloved of designer Terence Conran in the Essential House Book, but as you will quickly have realised I have unconventional ideas about what is Essential, and what isn't. Anyway the Muesli family looked pretty lined up together on my Habitat shelves. I was pleased with its 'rustic' appearance. With one jar left, the decanted hazelnut one from the duck-egg blue box I was feeling pleased with myself. I had started gloating at Mr B. He hadn't believed I could do it, I had passed the Muesli barrier, hadn't he seen that all the colours had been eaten, etc etc until his ears bled. But there has been a set-back.
The set-back is crescent shaped and made almost entirely of butter the scent of which would reach us in our Burgundian apartment before we had even opened the wooden shutters. For all its romance, living above a French Patisserie, even for one week had its disadvantages. It makes even expensive designer Muesli for middle-class toffs look like horse food all over again. When you've languished in your husband's elegant pyjama top on the balcony tearing the gentle downy dough of a fresh -from -the -oven croissant. When you've slathered hand-made confiture into its folds and then torn into an artisan loaf of bread, lyrically called a 'flute'. When you've discovered Creme de Marron, which predictably sounds dreadful translated as Chestnut Jam (Mr B viewed it with suspicion, but then he is from Norfolk)...Muesli no longer seems like an option. Its like dreaming that you are stroking the pectorals of one of the delectable Olympian swimmers and biting his biceps and then waking up drooling on a greasy pillow wearing the pyjama top of your bed-mate for fourteen years. The fourteen years referring to the sharing of the bed with this particular mate and not the wearing of the infamous pyjama top or even drooling on a greasy pillow for well over a decade.

On a lighter note

Reverend Rebecca, aka Jackie O, but that is another story, has a dog called Father Ted who can open the fridge and help himself to chocolate mousse or an assortment of savoury pickings and has taken to picnicking on her bedspread, gorging himself.
Never a dull moment

Humble pie

First night back at Candlelit Church. I was strangely hermit-like until tonight, lying low and pretending I wasn't really home. For all my griping about England, my wondering at how I ended up in Brum, the people never fail to delight me and humble me. That is why we stay. The people I know from my work at Church have genuinely changed me. When Iam working at Church doing what I do and being who I am I always think that 'working' is an inadequate and innappropriate word. This is because it is pure joy. I love it so much that it transforms me. Being with these delightful people and hearing their stories, being changed by them, shaken up by them, challenged and touched by them. I can never understand how they wake me up and keep me where God has told me to be. If only they knew that I would not be there if it weren't for the knowledge of God's call to me in that place at this time doing what he gives me to do with the gifts he gives me to do it with. I do it for love, yes, but really I do it because he told me to. It seems so much less noble when you see it for what it really is, a reluctant obedience. I have enjoyed having time away from our Church, although I couldn't keep away from Church while 'on the Mainland'. Nipping in and out of 'Mass' and the Feast of the Assumption like a fraudulent Catholic. I tried to convince myself I'd got it wrong. That we should be travelling the world, doing thrilling things, we didn't need to stay here. The world, forgive the use of the word, is our oyster.
But it is always like this with me and God, I try to talk myself out of it and then an extraordinary person will floor me with their certainty about the Church's need of me. On this occasion, knowing nothing of my yearnings to be free of this vocation, a simply remarkable young woman of 17 picked a perfect time to remind me of why I must be where God has placed me. She looked me in the eye and said 'you and this Church, you saved my life, thank you'. She wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me with undeserved gratitude. If you knew her story as I do you would find it impossible to understand her survival. Only a miracle would have kept her alive. I feel so small and inadequate in the light of her gratitude because all I did was say a squeaked and angry 'yes' in a frankly very bolshy and petulant manner to what I thought was God's most unreasonable request. I always thought that if I had only known the joy of it, the warmth and the love, peace and bliss that would come from that one absurd decision not to walk away it should have been easy. But the wrestling and sulking didn't stop there at all, I still resist, I still sometimes fantasize about fleeing. Even with the countless and priceless gifts I am given by these people, I still think my work here is dispensable. I wish for a simple, standard, more predictable, less unusual job, somewhere more exotic than the industrial Midlands. Couldn't God have made me a different character, a more tickbox human being in a more interesting landscape? But there she was, genuinely convinced that the Church has saved her life. If I am a part of this Church then it is true that my being here has helped God to save her life.
What was I thinking? How do I live with myself? I don't really, I just about tolerate myself and even that isn't easy.

cat-scratching

One of the cats, real name Rosie, affectionate name Minnie, is incensed. She is unable to make the connection between the arrival of new sofa covers and the sudden disappearance of the sofa into a cat-proof room with a shuttable door. It is her sofa and she tried sending me to Coventry for a considerable time, not realising that living around here most of us have survived that once if we're lucky, several times if we're not, already. She has given up with the cold shoulder treatment and is now whittering at me, nagging, following me around the house using an irritating tone. The other cat, real name Tabitha, affectionate name Mimi, is unconcerned. As long as she has opportunity to put her bum in our faces twice daily and bat our faces like ping pong balls...in a loving way, she isn't that bothered. She is more pragmatic. As she sees it life is life and there is always the fur rug on the bed. There is also the cat bed in the spare room, donated by another feline who was above these things. It is supposed to reside on the radiator but she insists that she prefers it on the bedstead. Mimi/Tabitha is quite content with her lot, she didn't even bother ignoring us when the sofa disappeared.
As a consolation prize in the absence of the sofa I bought them another one of these cat-scratching posts. I don't know why because we've been down this route before and it is always treated with disdain. This one is a weird contraption that spins in the middle. We doused it in catnip and they were grateful at least for that but have refused to use it because it fails to be a sofa.
I think Rosie is over-reacting, which she generally does, she is after all allowed supervised times on the sofa. She never takes advantage of this, she demands to be drooling all over my lap and picking my linen trousers to bits. I idenitify with Rosie.

A piece of grit

Some British people never, ever go 'abroad' to Europe. Or as my half-Belgian'/half-American/British citizen friend with a wife from Hull would say: "some British people never visit The Mainland". I wouldn't put it past him to say 'visiting The Mainland' just to be contentious. But then that is what I like about him. The funniest thing is the way no one says anything in response, mostly we nod politely. When you grow up on an island called Great Britain it doesn't immediately occur to you that he is visiting somewhere else. It takes a while to process it. Saying I'm "visiting The Mainland" really does put us into perspective though. When I 'visit The Mainland' the first thing I notice is that the weirdest thing about living in my homeland, on this tiny island is that it is so bloody small. The ostentatiously named 'Great' Britain is a tiny piece of grit. I don't understand how we all fit onto our little piece of grit, or even why we love it so much with its diabolical sandwich shops and hairdressers that impair our vision. Most people who don't go into mainland Europe probably don't go because they can't afford it. Perhaps other people never visit The Mainland because they know they won't want to come back. I don't blame them really. It is easier not to have seen it than to know what you are missing.
I have lived on this piece of grit for 36 years now. Well, how have I done that? The most overused sentence in my head since my return from The Mainland is 'you should be grateful for what you've got, you are a spoiled brat, if you didn't have Democracy and Healthcare and clean water and sanitation then you'd have something to moan about'. Unfortunately for all the truth of this I am still sulking like a child denied a new toy. On the Italian Border it seemed so idyllic that I found myself saying "they must have their problems'. I mean, it can't all be Focaccia baked in a wood oven with sea salt and rosemary can it darling? (I can't tell you how good that was)
When I got back The Guardian had a piece in it about some Roma Gypsy girls who had drowned on the Italian Amalfi Coast. Their bodies had been washed up, corpses covered in towels and then abandoned while a couple observed them curiously and continued to put on suncream and eat their picnic. A couple of weeks on The Amalfi Coast has been on my wish-list for years, but I feel a bit uneasy about it now. In France they have terrible problems with Racism apparently, you name it, anywhere in the world there is something. When we finally got home on that dreadful snail of a train from The Old Smoke there were reports about Russia invading Georgia, President Mugabe being President Mugabe and endless other horrors. For two weeks we had only occasionally caught sight of a headline or two on a newspaper or on TV and we discovered that we'd won the Olympic cycling while drinking peppermint cordial and eating sorbet by the sea. Unfortunately because we were busy pretending not to be British we failed to celebrate wildly. Subsequently this has really hurt because we had pipped the French to the post when the medal was meant to be theirs.
It is moments like this when we are on The Mainland and we suddenly feel patriotic and terribly, terribly English or suddenly get a glimpse of the world's ugliness even in places of exquisite beauty that I try to remember when it takes me four days to dry my washing because of the endless rain.

and another thing

Why must my hairdresser ignore my pleas for a hair cut where I can see out of both eyes? He calms me down with false promises and then sends me out blind in one eye staggering like a pirate,walking into doors. Today he even admitted that he didn't care. Cheeky bastard. "Fabulous" I heard myself say as he held up the mirror, and then wondered if this was because I could only see half of my face and I was looking at the back of my head anyway. He only did it at 12.30 and I already have a hair grip in at 4pm.
But then...I do look fabulous, half of me

oysters

I've not met many Brummies who are passionate enough about oysters to have told me about it. Nor have a met many Midlanders with a particular taste for them. I think we might have one oyster bar for the few incomers who visit the 'posh' bits of the Second City, and many of us living in Brum are people who have claimed it as our home rather than 'Brummies born and bred. I am unsure about the point at which a newcomer becomes a Brummie, but I'm not aware that we ever do. So, I can't generalise about Brummies and oysters but in my experience a Brummie, 'born and bred' or newcomer, won't talk to you about oysters, tabasco, lemon, darling...it just won't happen. An Oyster to a Brummie is first thought of as a thick slab of potato, dipped in fish batter and deep fried to a crisp, probably smothered in curry sauce. If this proves not to be the case then they will think of it as a strange type of indulgence which will cost you a packet and not fill you up. They won't judge you over it, but they won't get it either.I have heard plenty about oysters. I think I tried one once, because you have to if you grow up in the Surrey hills, you tend to bump into someone rich enough who hauled some in on their yacht. I must have loathed it because I never tried it again.
I am in a minority group of my own. A Southener from the Home Counties I rarely, thankfully, meet my own kind, although there are a couple of real Brummies who are as foodie as the best Surreyite. I turn to them for moral support at times like the one I'm about to describe.
This isn't about oysters. It is about the point at which a culture decides what is reasonable, extravagant, pointless. How do we decide to put value on something? Something like service or quality?
I realise that I have reached the grumpy old woman stage because I really am cross about this incident in the inappropriately named sandwich shop Upper Crust. By all appearances this is a simple and unremarkable incident, be warned it is doubtless that my Surrey-girl core has been re-activated by two weeks in Foodie France, where everything is 'simply divine'. You might think it ridiculous to be so upset about it.
It went like this: girl buys large slab of 'pizza slice', which isn't pizza or slice it is slab of cheap bread mix with tomato concentrate topped with soap. Girl is slight and looks like she has a small appetite. Seems reasonable when she asks 'can you please cut it in half'? So far, so ordinary. Person 'serving' agrees sullenly before being randomly summoned by her supervisor to go on a break. Person 'serving' simply mentions that she will when she has cut the so-called 'pizza slice' in half. Supervisor bites off head of person 'serving', shrieking at her that she must take a break immediately and screeching hysterically that 'we don't cut pizza slices in half' over and over again. I'd been looking for an excuse to bite someone's head off myself to be honest and maybe I was jealous. However, instead, skinny woman and me catch each others eyes (in my case she only caught one of mine thanks to hairdresser Anthony's most recent experiment with my fringe but don't get me started). I roll my one eye, she rolls both. I drop it into conversation that 'I've just been to France and there they have service' like the Surrey girl I can't help being. I get asked whether I want a drink with my 325 calorie brown bread with plastic re-hydrated ham, cheap margarine, over-ripe tomato and wilted cucumber sandwich. I want to scream 'if I wanted a drink don't you think I might have thought of that on my own', and say 'no thank you' through pursed lips instead. I wish her luck and totter off with some Hagrid sized bamboo twigs from TK Maxx and a new water jug because from now on I'm going to do it the French way and drink water with my sit-down lunch. Today of course I swallowed a sandwich on the run in one gulp, without a drink because I was too proud to admit that I wanted some water but was too mean to pay £1.75 when I could 'make it at home for nothing'.
This place, it gets under your skin.

Post-Holiday Blues

We had such a great time. So completely wonderful. The right balance of everything. We came home on Saturday evening and on Sunday I was inconsolable. Today I was on top form getting back into my life and the future. Tonight I woke up with a horrible sadness. There are so many things to say.
On the answerphone on our return there were twelve messages, ten from the fish man saying that I forgot to pay him, one enquiry about an RSVP I hadn't sent, and one from my sister Jan. I realised tonight that the absence of a message from my Mum should have been the thing I noticed. As it happened the first conversation I had on my return was with my sister and concerned the hard fact of her cancer refusing to bugger off and of her chemo, in her surgeon's words, 'killing her' and therefore being stopped. She had a brave and positive outlook on how she wants to spend the rest of her life 'however long I've got'. She has been told unequivocally that it will definitely come back even though it is currently in remission. We don't know when or where but the facts remain. Grappling with the solid truth of these words only re-enforced an inner knowledge and a widely acknowledged one. My sister has terminal cancer, there are no magic answers and we must all face our loss and hope that it takes a long time before it hurts her further and kills her. So listening to her speak blinded me to my Mum's absence on the answerphone, her passionate interest in everything we did. I hate telephones, as anyone will tell you, but I missed her voice.
On holiday me and my sister were in text contact about her scan and so I knew even on holiday for certain that the cancer hadn't gone, I knew anyway, you just do somehow. She let me know the scan results while we were away, I couldn't settle and asked her to tell me. The night that I found out I woke up after a really happy day screaming 'no, no, no!'. In my dream someone was stealing something of such importance away from me and I was desperate that they wouldn't take it, there was a figure in the doorway and I was begging for mercy. The screaming was so loud that it even woke up Graham (bear in mind that earthquakes and tornadoes have failed). The next day I carried on as normal.
Our minds must store these things away. After a constructive and positive peaceful day today tonight I find that suddenly I can't sleep and I can hardly be surprised. On holiday I let it all fall away as much as I could in my conscious moments. The landscape seemed to absorb it better than this one. Without the sea and the sky and the trees it crushes my breath which is simply breathing 'please, not again, not yet'.