fun and laughter

I read some of Carol Ann Duffy's work recently. I am so glad she is Poet Laureate. I loved Andrew Motion, but its so good to see a woman in the post, but most of all to read something so full of humour. I read 'The World's Wife', and it made me smile. Why shouldn't it? why am I so surprised? I think it is a relief to think that a writer doesn't have to be serious all of the time. Thanks to Howard Jacobsen's winning the Booker Prize perhaps those times are over and we can return to a more balanced literary world, where laughter features more prominently.

joy

Christmas is coming and I have amazed myself by feeling a rekindled child-like excitement.
I can't wait to decorate the new flat and soak up all the new-found contentment. All fairy-lights and sentiment.
The most interesting things about people's response to 'Still Waters' have been surprising. The poem about alcoholism, which very nearly didn't make the cut, has been very popular, with people buying it particularly because of that poem for people they love.
and what surprised me more is that people are 'really more excited about the next one'.
I have such good friends

at peace

I am at peace
am happy
am unfashionable
and alive
enjoying life
finding it inspiring
wondering why the reward for this should be guilt and envy
afer all
it has been a hard won gift

greenbelt

I went to Greenbelt on Saturday. I didn't enjoy it at all. I felt terrible because I went with some friends who I love dearly and who all love Greenbelt with a passion. It would be the equivalent of taking them to Venice and them saying 'I'm sorry, but I just need to go home'.

But I did. I needed to go home. I went home. I spent a long time trying to decide why I had so needed to go home. It was lots of things. I didn't want to spend Bank Holiday without Graham. I didn't want to spend it there, without him. I also didn't want to be there full stop.

It interests me that we think we know ourselves, we think we know our friends. But sometimes I think we don't know ourselves or each other that well. My friends thought they knew me and Graham well enough to suggest that we came along to Greenbelt. Graham realised that he knew better sooner than I did. Graham pulled out and explained that he had changed his mind and wouldn't be going after all. I challenged myself to try, to challenge my own assumptions, to test out my instincts, to give it a chance.

What I value, and to some extent envy, about Graham and many other friends and family is that they don't try so hard to 'give things a chance'. They know themselves well, they know themselves so well in fact that they can tell in advance how they will feel about any particular experience. I always like to find out for real. For many years I had assumed that I would not enjoy Greenbelt. I was apprehensive about trying it. But felt I had no evidence to prove that I would not like it. Now I do.

Why do some things appeal and others do not? Why can we be so close to people that we know and yet be so wrong about what they will need? On paper Greenbelt offers everything I have claimed to need with regards to Church and Christianity. I think perhaps I did need these things once, but that I have changed, that I am a different person now with different needs.

What I couldn't work out when I came home was why I had even gone there in the first place. Neither could anyone else. Some people said I had given in to Peer Pressure, others said I was trying to please my friends, which amount to the same thing. I don't think that it the whole story. I think differently. I thought I needed and wanted something and somehow thought that Greenbelt with friends might address it.

But I have never forgotten my friend Anna saying that 'God only gives us what he knows we need and not what we think we want'. Greenbelt wasn't what I needed it was what I thought I wanted. We went the next day from home to a very ordinary service, with a small handful of very ordinary and yet at the same time extraordinary people. We sat for an ordinary hour taking an ordinary communion and then having ordinary coffee and ordinary cake in an ordinary church hall. The ambitious and visionary concept of the Greenbelt festival, with its creative energy and programme brimming to overflowing with ideas and speakers and events seemed worlds away. The 'extraordinary festival' was what I thought I wanted. The 'ordinary hour' is what I actually needed.

When did this change take place in me? Is it temporary or is it permanent? Did my friends know the old me, indeed did I know the old me? Have I changed only so recently that I hadn't even realised myself? Or have I become more truly myself, with less to prove, more comfortable in my own skin, realising more quickly than I used to what is right for me and what is not. I suspect the latter.

I wonder how we manage in life to make our way through it with all the changes that take place around us and within us. I wonder how any relationships last at all. There were friends, and certainly Graham was of this opinion, who knew that I would not feel at home at Greenbelt. They were mostly saying that they would have hated it, which is the same process of thinking someone will love something just because you do. I decided to find out for myself. I won't be going back.

There were a number of different aspects of the experience which I found difficult. It wasn't until I left that I realised which of these were the most affecting. Sometimes that distance is helpful. It helped me work out what was simply my own issues and what was problematic about the place itself. If I did have to go again, for whatever reason, I would work out first of all why I was going. Then I would work out what I wanted to get from it. Then I would make sure that I was there for the entire weekend. Then I would ask Graham to come with me. Then I would buy the programme brochure during the first few minutes and spend a few hours properly researching those things which were suited to my objectives. I think this is the only way to fully appreciate Greenbelt.

In the meantime I have no particular need or desire to go there again and I have no obligations either.

Tears of joy

I don't yet understand fully why it is that when we write for ourselves that those writings can reach other people. Neither do I understand why writings written through need for our own healing are so often given away to others. What I mean is, why do we need to release those writings and to have them read? I have begun to realise that I write for liberation. Although from what I seek release I am not yet sure. I think I feel 'heard' and understood in ways that I don't feel without writing. It is hard to find opportunities in life in which to express ourselves accurately with our own music. When I first allowed people to read my work I felt terror, but also a resignation, I had been fully seen, properly understood and I had not been interrupted or denied. With the printing of this little book this feeling has intensified, the readership is much wider. I am telling more people about it. I want them to read it and I also don't want them to read it. It is as though a real freedom is found in expressing myself fully and without restraint, inviting people to reject or accept me as I really am on the inside. The freedom for me was realising that I was, in fact, still loved, in spite of what I hold inside myself. I was not prepared for any of these thoughts or feelings that I am discussing here to surface after the publishing of our little book. I only knew that I very much wanted and at the same time very much did not want to do it. Some part of me certainly anticipated feeling difficult emotions, but what they would be was an unknown thing. But the time had come to no longer flee from these unkown feelings. It should come as no surprise that I feel very emotionally raw and slightly bemused by them, but our emotions and thoughts are our most constant human companions. I would be bereft and hollow without them, changeable as they are. Mostly I feel a depth of gratitude equivalent only to other times of key significance accompanied by that strange welling of tears. It is true that we cry tears of joy, and I am about to shed some.

Free

The first of our books has been put together and self-published. It feels good, a real thrill, a buzz. I have let loads of people read my poems and meditations gathered over the course of six very painful and also very rewarding years. I had made so many assumptions about how people would react. I tried to predict their reactions so that I can keep myself safe and protected. None of my reactions were right. Mostly they were so moved that they cried.
Today while I was doing some mundane task, so mundane that I cannot recollect it, I realised with alarming clarity that I was 'free',

Observations of Botanical Gardens

Large terracotta pots stand to attention. Topiary tree soldiers. An army of taller conifers stand tall behind at a distance. Veteran soldiers of a higher rank. The wide, deep terrace is crazed. Paved in random 'crazy' patterns. Solid teak chairs and tables sit empty, puddles of recent rain collected on arms and slatted table tops. The slope of the seats are strangely dry, stained russet and promising autumn.
A man's voice, the approach of flip flops. Idle comments, where to sit, what's good for his back, where's best to shelter in case of rain. The teapot has leaked
"take it back"
"it's alright"
"take it back, its not alright"
"no, no, it's fine"
The flip flop sound, he takes it back, she doesn't protest. Echoes of apology in the kitchens.
"Oh, sorry"
"no problem"
"These pots..."
"Oh, don't worry, its fine!"
The English way.
The flip flop noise gets louder with his return.

Loud clanking sounds of whirring demolition engines. A yellow arm of a digger lifting pieces of roof away from a nearby school. A bucket-shaped claw, swinging and returning, repeating the motion. Engines strain with relentless progress.

We all sit in our private worlds at separate tables, clinking cups, tapping forks, discussing cake under an Arts and Crafts veranda in a restored turn-of-the-century Edwardian villa. Wisteria is still in leaf, purple raemes long gone, it is tickling the sky with its tendrils. The celebrated family who built this place, they would have chatted about cake too. Would have bemoaned and celebrated progress in turns, just as we do.
Two women's voices.
"Shall we sit here?"
"Its up to you"
"Shall we? inside? outside?"
"I'm not sure"
"Inside, you decide, I really don't mind"
"Yes, inside, thats fine"
The English way.

The man in flip flops makes a call.
"Could you please ask Martin to call me please? Yes, well, if you wouldn't mind, its just that we are thinking of making a cash offer on the property. Would you mind at all if we had a look at it? Its just that it might be good to find out a little more, get a feel for the property. Yes, well, ok then, if you wouldn't mind, yeah, ok"

They would have sat here too, making polite offers, working out their sums, stretching their budgets, investing their cash, apologising for nothing at all, trying not to offend. A huge black bird with wings extended into witches fingers flies overhead. A tiny spider crawls across the dappled grey and sand paving. The contours like mountains. A wayward ant searches for direction and it seems that nothing really changes in moments like these. There are crumbs on the table from a previous feast. A lurid rippled green glass jar, an extinguished tea-light reaching the end of its useful life.

We hear a shocking crack as the demolition vehicle bites chunks of timber from an attic space. Through to a walled garden. Gravel crunches underfoot. An overwhelming floral scent, drying lavender, blooming stocks, catnip and the promising smell of rain-soaked earth, birds chatter. The demolition continues, but within these walls there are only gentle sounds. Wheelbarrows on pathways, nip, nip, nip of borders being snipped, neatening the edges of the flower beds. Low male voices discussing practical matters. A distant drone of a motorbike. So late in August and the bees and flowers persist. Indigo blue sweetpea flowers creep up a wigwam made from sticks and twine. Plush, purple daisies needlessly smooth and luxurious like velvet. Discs of pink punctured with purple and a button of yellow nod slowly and sagely, heads the size of petite hands. Glossy red chard, beetroot, and curly lettuces their colour a mix of balsamic vinegar and hops, sit in queues waiting for recipes. They are promising us late Summer salad for the last days of August and Italian casseroles for warming the first chill of Autumn. The towering wall of beech trees at he far side of the garden shimmers with laquered sheen the colour of morello cherries. The trees quiver in the breeze.
Some lazy red and apricot roses and some tardy thistles puncture the soft feathered greens. A lone surviving tower of runner beans is still dotted with scarlet orange flowers. A Christmas tree for Summer. The clover in the lawn is a cushion underfoot. Artichokes shoot boldly from the borders of the grass pathway. A sharp contrast to the quilt underneath. The sky is inky and bubbling and I am ready for my lunch. Time to go home.

Observations of Tea-time

A squirrel, a grey one, obviously, is seated like a monarch on the end of a branch. He is moving with the stance of a surf boarder on the feathery waves of the Yew Tree. He conducts a perpetual search for red berries, risking life and limb for each and every one. Sometimes I feel depressed for him that this is what he is reduced to. In another life he could have been The World's Only Circus-performing Squirrel. But all ambition has been lost so that he can focus on his berry picking for the moment. The cat, on the other hand, harbours no apparent thwarted ambition whatsoever. She is content in her dotage to watch birds from inside through the glass door. She is happy to chase spiders, to defend her patch from marauding blue tits by hissing at them. Mostly she sunbathes in those rare moments. At the moment she is being hypnotised by a wasp, who appears to be controlling her mind.
Car doors are clunking. People are returning for their 'tea', their 'supper', or their 'evening' meal'. Microwaves will soon be pinging. The smells of frying onions and spices will soon be singing in the corridors.

Observations in a Park

Observations in a Park
The flower beds are vivid cartoon colours. Orange and fuschia, purple with red. Colours only nature has the courage to combine. When a stranger smiles, sometimes it is touched with joy in repsonse to your own, sometimes it makes you question. A strange barking sound is coming from the next bench along like a distress signal. Someone in a wheelchair with a need to make noises, communicating something without words. A man walks past with the words 'I usually start Sunday morning on the bench' printed on his red T-shirt. There are knocking, hollow sounds from a construction site, where they are re-building the cricket ground. There is the distant strumming of the City roads. The shrieks of children, high-pitched on the wind, swirling with the prematurely falling leaves. The geese honk and chat and squawk. Birds shift in the bushes. The pedals on the orange plastic pedal boats squeak. A leaf skitters across the tarmac grey in front of a spinning bike wheel. My hair shifts in the breeze, tickles my ears, gets in my eyes.
Platform heels clip clop past, bleached, blonde hair, a tatooed upper arm, one child on a hip, another in the other hand, another trailing at her heels. The child's teeth are protruding, eyebrows high in surprise. A sapling tree, newly planted in remembrance of a dead girl is opposite me. She was a daughter and a sister and she was 14. She had a Sikh name, and it would seem that everybody called her 'Bubbles'. There is a poem and a drawing of a harp etched into the metal plaque. The poem simply thanks her for being who she was.
Most of the black iron and wooden slatted benches are empty and so they sit strategically placed around the War Memorial enjoying the view all by themselves. It is still early in the Summer holidays. It is the first week. Clouds are threatening British Summertime rain. The litter bins in all their black enammelled gold-plated glory are not yet crammed with Cornetto wrappers, wet wipes and nappies. They sit expectantly, waiting for it all to start. Some more pedal boats, these ones pale blue, float pointlessly, young couples in overambitious life jackets pushing them around in circles in a few inches of stagnant water. The Midlands is so far from the sea.

A metal walking stick of the variety issued from the NHS stumbles rythmically past the conifers and the one remaining empty circular flower bed. The leaves rustle and some pretty curvaceous birds fly off on some unknown business. Crisp packets scrunch and the park cleaning vehicle chugs around it's circuit. The strange barking sound begins again, more and more frenetic, it seeems to mirror the honking of the geese. In the distance a lazy game of football is in progress and the smell of over-sweet adolescent deodorant mixes with the soft greenness like another colour on a pallette. A small boy of about three or four imagines himself a football hero. He scurries enthusiastically with the ball. Little blue and white striped tee-shirt a nice foil to his father's immaculate blue and white attire. This father is a man of quiet pride and obvious dignity. He is ironed out to perfection. Little yellow pointed flowers waggle their heads in smiling approval. They are like waving flags at a parade. They cheer him on as he charges on with inexhaustible energy. He calls 'Dada, Dada, Dada!' rolling his eyes in exasperation and disgust at his father's inability to score. A hornet lands on my electric blue pen and dances with it as I write. A young woman ambles along with her thoughts wrapped carefully beneath a black scarf. She wears an incongruous turquoise sweatshirt with the number 55 on the back. She looks like a basketball player wearing Hijab.
The air is cooling and the light is changing. Toddlers in helmets and elbow protectors are learning to ride three-wheeled bikes coloured lilac and yellow cheerleaders tassels hanging from the handlebars.
A Sikh family are devouring ice lollies. The children have their hair neatly coiled, or un-cut and plaited. Their father is neatly turbanned and charged with carrying the bread for the geese. We live in peace in this place at this moment and I am glad of it. This is England. It is 2010 and we are right here in the very middle of the country, in Birmingham. One of our beating hearts, almost the furthest distance from the sea that you can find on such a small island. A place where, even so, the sea gulls still sing hopefully for a fish supper. I can't explain my love for this place. But it is my home now. This is a place for exiles in search of homecomings. I delight in its complexity. But I am tired now of the over use of the word 'Diversity'. We've moved beyond that here. It is more like tapestry. It is very beautiful at its best. I percieve it as a 21st century version of those ancient tapestries. The Medieval murals which told stories without words about how things were. The parks of England tell stories, some sordid, some promising. Cannon Hill Park tells a very particular story. It is a magnificent tapestry. It is coloured and textured. It is multi-dimensional. It is a window for the imagination. This is a park whose boundaries seem to largely suspend prejudice. Whatever prejudices we hold, they are rarely, in my experience expressed here. Instead of voicing our thoughts and opinions, we allow ourselves the luxury of hoping that just for the length of a cup of tea, we can accept our differences. It would be easy to slip into cliche. Describing this park lends itself to the trap of listing nationalities and describing different skin colours, hair styles, types of dress, indicators of belonging and believing. It begs for descriptions of the Polish waitress, the French speaking family in African dress, the Japanese man with the Jack Russell terrier. He has a broad Brummie accent. Is he Japanese at all? I have to fight a descent into a description of the wide range of age groups. The sheer scale of difference embraced and held here. But this is a fruitless task. It would be easier to describe what isn't here. The nationalities, religions and various elusive categories of people. But even this would be guesswork. The French-speaking family in African dress were, in fact, Canadian. What really matters here is that we are 'at play'.
I have met people recently who are either moving to Australia or New Zealand, or who knew someone who has, or is.
"what is lovely about it" they say, without exception "is that it is just like England used to be, say 40 or 50 years ago"
'How awful', I think.
"I see" I say instead.
"Before...you know...er...before..."
I look confused. They can't usually bear to say the word 'immigration'.
"Before, crime rates, violence, that sort of thing".
Was there ever such a time?
A flock of grey pigeons are swooping sleekly overhead, synchronised. They are all the same. Grey native birds. They are swimming in the sky in circles like a warning of the impending rain and the thickening clouds of the English Summer.
There are plenty of 'Dads' in operation today. I think perhaps the 'Mums' are at work. Its good to see.
"It didn't happen in my day", Mum used to say."Your Father never once pushed any of your prams. It was simply unthinkable, I envy your generation" she said "Dads who push prams..." she used to shake her head with delight that such an unforseen development could take place in the human race.
When I hear about how wonderful Australia and New Zealand are because they are 'unspoilt, just as Britain was 40 or 50 years ago', I wonder about the selective memory that nostalgia comprises. What purpose does it serve? it unravels the latest tapestries which we have woven with such intricate care. People pine for the simplicity of 'wooden tops' and other home-made Victorian toys, like those we had in the 'olden days'. But our nation's children love the colourful new ones. Fabulous trikes and scooters and tasselled bicycles in every colour under our bleak grey skies. It didn't happen in my day!

sunny day

Lent continues apace. The fasting is boring and trying and hard. The house sale is still not secure, the agent is on holiday. But, though it is still freezing cold, we have SUNSHINE. What a shock. Maybe Spring is starting at long last. The light is longer. Praying for a breakthrough with the house. I bought the packing boxes 'in faith' and the next day it all nearly fell through. I feel so right about it though, that I am sure it will come right in God's time, with patience. But it doesn't stop the yearning. I'm going to leave off and go and meet my friend Halaas. She is at a difficult time in her life.
But I am feeling positive and hopeful, even though I hate waiting. Perhaps it is the sun . I'm going to write more this week.

The Social Worker's Scarf

I thought I'd had the unexpected pleasure of being chatted up today. Before I stank to high heaven of dry-fried herring. On reflection, he could just have been genuinely impressed by my scarf. He was very attractive, with a cool hat and a cool baby and a soft American accent. This is what made me mistake his interest in my non-descript, hand-woven scarf for flirtation, he couldn't actually love my scarf could he? I mean, its a nice scarf. I bought it in an emergency when we had 2 cm of snow this year and I wasn't equipped for it. It does the job. Its just a bit 'Social Worker'. A bit 'Sensible Shoes'. A bit 'Earnest and Worthy'. I was a bit taken aback that someone so hip would be so impressed with it. Perhaps he thought I was Miss Marple, or thinks that this is how we are in England, always commenting on one another's scarves. "My, what a nice scarf Ms Jones!", "Why thank you Mr Smith". But it wasn't the Home Counties circa 1930, nobody was wearing carnations in their lapels. So, I assumed I was being chatted up, by a sexy bloke with a cute baby. So I can't really account for what happened next.

"Oh, thanks" I said, "I call it my Social Worker Scarf". I think I said it wittily. Its not that I have anything against Social workers. He clearly didn't get the humour and laughed a bit unconvincingly and asked "why?", I thought this gave him away. "Well, you'd have to see it with the beads". He started on about "what does a Social Worker's scarf look like?", and the whole joke began to fall apart. I was blinking anyway because I have been persevering with Dostoevsky's The Idiot at night under an eco-bulb. I had wanted to mention the baby, which seemed only polite. I had intended to tell him "what a beautiful baby Mr American!" but it would have been a lie, because I couldn't actually see it. I had thought I was going blind, but Graham says it's because the print is so small. It is too, I had wondered why it had taken me so long to read it. Apart from the fact that I loathe it. The only thing I do enjoy is the humour, and I can admit the genius of his characterisation. I think, for all my misgivings about Dostoevsky, he would have understood about my Social Worker Scarf. He might also have understood about the awkward exchange at the coffee counter with the softly spoken American.

I've not heard that Dostoevsky was much of a looker. Its hard to tell with all that facial hair. The man who pretended to love my Social Worker Scarf had a bit of that too, but he didn't get the joke, even when I described the beads. This is why a good-looking man, with or without facial hair, however good-looking and however cool his hat, and however cool his baby isn't always enough. Its the humour that matters. My husband gets it.

Oily fish

It has been several months since my last, and final, unfortunate encounter with a mackrel. I felt it was time to give the humble Herring a chance. All the whole food experts and nutritionists and all the good people out there eager for healthy brains, guts, hearts and so on recommend the very thing that strikes fear into my heart and a projectile vomit message to my stomach.

Oily fish.

Those of you who have read my previous post will be familiar with the wildly enthusiastic Patrick Holford. He is the big time believer in the power of food to transform our lives. He is the man who swears that an oily fish several times a week keeps the Doctor at bay. Knowing Patrick he would eat it with it's head still on, eyes blinking, such is his passion for fresh produce. I chickened out and almost cried with relief when the fishmonger offered to take off it's head and insides. The Mackrel had come complete with it's innards and I had forgotten to take them out during the last fateful liaison with an oily fish. I was embarrassingly grateful to see The Herring headless and gutless.

I had thought that with the head and eyes missing and the fish offal scraped out I was on to a better start. No. Not so. Patrick didn't help me, because he forbids sea salt and additional oil. The only mention of the word 'butter' is somewhere on the graph of 'foods that KILL' under 'dairy fats'. Perhaps he is concerned that if he types the word 'butter', even under the chapter on Heart Disease, he might remember that comforting smell of sizzling golden butter warming on the stove. God alone knows what would become of him if he remembered the taste of a hot, salted chip or the texture of a newly baked loaf of white bread. Yes...you guessed it...white bread is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! Even on its own, its wrong. You can forget all about the fresh zing of home-made marmalade....because of the sugar...WRONG!

I love to get sanctimonious about what I percieve as my Puritan eathing habits to my heathen husband. A man so addicted to freshly ground coffee, Yorkie Bars and sausage rolls that I often remind him of his mortality and threaten to avoid his funeral when (not 'if') he dies before he reaches 45. The man is moderate really, but I do enjoy whining about his buttered crumpets, sighing about his occasional bowls of vanilla ice cream, tutting about the emptied biscuit tin, and we all know why, don't we? Yes, its because I'm jealous. I'm jealous of every single mouthful, and I'm jealous that he doesn't care a stuff, and I would love to be so unconcerned with my health, my body, my spare tyre.

I tried today, I'm sorry Patrick but I really tried. I managed the tasteless splodge of saltless, sugarless oats this morning by going wild and adding some walnuts. They didn't help much, and by 11 am I was reaching for the pumpkin seeds all over again.

health food phase

It would be hard to describe Patrick Holford's NEW Optimum Nutrition Bible to anyone unfamiliar with a pumpkin seed. It is even harder to imagine of what Patrick Holford's OLD Optimum Nutrition Bible might have consisted. I suspect the NEW one is even less 'fun with Patrick' than the OLD one and this is a reliable assumption because it would be hard to imagine anything less enticing than this NEW ecyclopaedia of joyless eating. The fact is that Patrick's presence in our home marks a return to the 'Health Food Phase' I went through in my teenage, vegetarian years. This was a phase much embraced and ecouraged by our mother who was ahead of her time in her eco-friendly, recycling egg-shells, organic home grown honey ways. We were raised by a woman so devoted to the medicinal benefits of honey that she even proposed it to my sister as a cure for breast cancer. It didn't go down well.

I am not sure how long my relationship with Patrick is going to last. I have developed an alarming passion for pumpkin seeds, so it looks promising. I am a woman who likes to plan ahead. I have started worrying about my bowels and osteoporosis, and so I now force a bowl of my least favourite food down my neck every morning. Until I met Patrick I was starting to come to terms with my unwelcome companion over the breakfast news, oiling the waters my bowl of oats with double cream, maple syrup and almonds. My mother, of course had her porridge made with water and salt. She probably had honey as well. But Patrick says, no honey, no maple syrup and no double cream. I'm allowed almonds, but only twelve of them in the afternoon with a piece of fruit. So my explorations of the possiblities of porridge have been reduced to a mean teaspoon of flaked almonds. Perhaps this is why pumpkin seeds have become so alluring.

Patrick Holford's NEW Optimum Nutrition Bible found it's way into our home shortly after a chance encounter with a licqorice and peppermint teabag and a bout of Swine Flu. Not the most orthodox of romantic encounters, certainly not 'dinner a deux' over a bottle of Bordeaux. Luckily for you as a lifelong amnesiac I have forgotten the details but suffice to say that the teabag and the bout of Swine Flu between them somehow weaned me off caffeine and I never looked back. I developed an insatiable appetite for liqcorice tea, though I never have worked out how to spell it, as you can see. As a consequence I had to trawl Health Food Shops to fuel my craving. As a further consequence I suddenly had to beg the unhealthy looking owner if I could use her toilet. She looked alarmed, I suppose she may have been concerned that I was too toxic, but she was, of course, ethical and allowed me to use it, eco-friendly recycled loo roll and all.

All this was a recipe for an slightly unexpected conversation about this bizarre craving for this tea which I had discovered by mistake. "Oh" says the unhealthy-looking Health Food Shop owner, "that is because it is particularly good for chest infections". I obviously looked dumbfounded. She went on "If you have been suffering with Swine Flu and chest problems then your body is telling you what you need". I was polite, but I knew the packet said something like 'aids digestion'. Either way, she didn't have any for sale. Which you or I, whether familiar with the pumpkin seed community or not, would have thought unremarkable in itself. "Well", says I, "who would? its a bit odd after all!". "No, no, if you had come in yesterday I could have sold you loads, but we had a lady who came and bought our entire stock of Licqorice tea, so we've run out, if I'd known...". Well, how could she have 'known' she would have a sudden rush on Licorice tea?

The nut addiction followed shortly after this strange development in my personal habits. I went back to my thin pale friend in her wrapped up in scarf, hat and gloves in her lightless, ethically heated and therefore freezing cold shop. I asked her about our bodies and why they suddenly start asking for things. She started to look alarmed again, like the last time when I demanded to use her low-level flush wc with its water-saving device. I wanted to explain that I meant nutritionally speaking, not the satisfaction of carnal instincts. She fully understood this because I came out carrying a copy of Patrick Holford's overambitious claims. Patrick displays absolutely no signs of carnal instincts. Even his sex life is rationed according to how much it depletes his levels of zinc.

A lady came in for a couple of crates of cider vinegar, another of our Mother's eccentric tastes. A friend had read somewhere that drinking cider vinegar helped to curb our appetites. A friend had, she said, lost a stone just by drinking cider vinegar. Patrick would have been appalled because our kindly earnest Health Food seller advised her to swill it down with a couple of spoonfuls of honey. To my horror I joined in the conversation. "My mother swore by it and she lived to be 79 and she wasn't fat" I said, which was disingenuous because she did also die of a hideous cancer, which even honey couldn't cure and she kept her weight off by scuttling around after my father.

I can't deny feeling a bit cynical. In the section about living a long life, he advises 'avoiding heavy traffic' and I can't help feeling I'd rather die young than count out my almonds in an Old People's home. We shall persevere, perhaps me and Patrick can work out a compromise, where I don't die of boredom and lose all my friends to an over-zealous nutritionist.

a word of advice

My advice for the New Year would be: don't do a New Year post entitled A Poem for my Funeral,
it makes people feel a bit nervous.
Anyway, enough of that, on to matters in this life.

We recieved an offer on our house, which was from the first people to view it. They came for a viewing in the morning. Then, overwhelmed no doubt by my neat cushions and carefully placed magazines designed to offer auto-suggestions a la Derren Brown, that master of psychological manipulation, they rushed back for a second viewing in the afternoon. This prompted more fire-lighting, candle-lighting, dimmed lights for mood, and various other tricks for atmosphere which, being intelligent adults they doubtless saw through in the blink of an eye. They then made an offer on the first working day after that. So, they are either keen, or they thought we looked a bit stupid because the offer was a lousy 30 grand under the asking price. For reasons no one can explain to me we have had to play this absurd game of cat and mouse. It is all very strange. No one expects to get the asking price for a house and no one expects to pay it either and so we all put our houses on the market at a price we know no one will pay and do our sums according to an offer below the price we are asking or being asked to pay. If you pay the asking price for a house everyone thinks you are a mug, so no one ever likes to lose face and no one ever offers the asking price, unless they are a mug of course. It seems to me that it would be a great deal less hassle if we all asked for a price we expected to sell at. We're not Turkish, we're English, we don't haggle. The only way we can justify such a lack of manners is to make up spurious nonsense about inadequately supported chimney breasts, damp cellars and unkempt hedges, which makes our mean offer seem 'fair'. As it is everyone spends many confused hours by their phones waiting to hear that the offer they offered below the asking price won't be accepted and the price they asked for won't be offered, etcetera, etcetera. It is all very distressing and boring and predictable. The game is that everybody tries to fleece everybody else and nobody wins. I'm writing this waiting for the phone to ring to say that the buyers can't offer what we are asking, in which case, I would like to ask 'why did they come and visit the house in the first place?'. If they had thought to themselves 'we are first time buyers and we can't afford this house', they wouldn't have visited in the first place and I would not have had to make a point of lighting every scented candle I have in the house. I would have been spared spending an entire week hiding all signs of life, placing unused bars of soap where usually there would be a worn out lump with unsightly hairs all over it. Placing perfectly folded clean towels on the towel rail. Two decisions which may have cost me dear because in the event they turned out to be post-graduates from Durham and Birmingham and will have possessed acute powers of deduction. Who knows, they may have deduced, if their imaginations are as over-active as mine, that we never washed. Either way, had they decided that we had a little self-respect and were not going to give our property away in exchange for an M & S gift voucher I would have been spared hours of polishing the taps, taking down all photographs of us (the occupiers!), hiding assorted underwear, light bulbs and tile adhesive under the bed in the spare room. Graham would have been allowed to use the loo and wouldn't have been coerced into hiding his bed-side table coin stash. In short, my week's work would not have consisted of making the enitre house look uninhabited and scented like the first floor of a department store. Even that backfired when they all started sneezing simultaneously in the bathroom with its 'tea time in Marrakesh' candle.

Now I wait to hear the bad, but ultimately inevitable news that they can't afford our house which I used every psychological trick in the 'how to manipulate potential buyers' manual to try and sell to them. I can't leave the landline phone because my poor mobile has been boiled in a cup of tea for reasons I can't be bothered to explain.

It is all a bit frustrating, but don't worry, you won't be needing that funeral poem just yet.

A poem for my funeral

When I die I don't want to be remembered for the things I didn't do
I won't be spoken of as the person who never did and never was
I refuse to be the woman who wasn't this and wasn't that
Don't speak of the 'couldn't have' and the 'wasn't able'
At my funeral do not define me by who I did not become but celebrate who I was
Don't mourn what I couldn't be, cheer because I could only be this
The tragedies and the losses of my life will never define me and I have not worn them as a badge
When you bury my bones talk about that
Sing about the gifts I had and the things I did
Be grateful for the laughter, but also for the healing tears
Cry over the empty space I filled
But don't cry because it is now empty
Cry because you will miss the way I filled it
Talk about the colours I wore and the songs I sang, chat about the way I moved through this life
Remember that this was the life I was given and this was the life that I lived and the landscape I lived in
Remember too that I loved and lived because I was loved until I learned how to live
Give thanks that you loved me back to life.

The feasts we prepared
The food that we shared
The words that we used
The laughter that moved us

The aching inside
and
The sheer gigglitus
The tears that we shed
and
The wordless emotion

The views that we saw
The countries visited
The songs we have sung
and the languages spoken

The dances danced
pictures painted
poetry cited
These were Love requited

The man in the seat in front.

"Are you, er, feeling a bit, well, are you, er in a better place, a bit, further on, a bit more, well, are you a bit more relaxed after your break?" said the man in the seat in front. Mo thought 'that's English code for 'I heard through the grapevine that you had a nervous breakdown before the Christmas break and wondered whether you were out of hospital yet and whether the medication was working.' Sometimes she loved the English, because sometimes creeping stealthily around a 'difficult' topic with euphemisms and diffident stuttering was a kinder way. The deep voice continued to resound around the railway carriage as the train moved predictably through its frozen landscape to Birmingham City Centre. It was refreshing to hear a rich toned cosmopolitan voice. "Er, yeah, um, I think we need to get all our ducks lined up in a row" he said, and Mo imagined six little plastic yellow ducks sitting on the edge of a misplaced and rusty enamel bath nestled in a snowy wasteland in Siberia being blown to pieces with a rifle. Not for the first time she wished that she could control her thoughts sometimes. "Er, yeah, sure, well, we'll ease in gently and have a conference call on Thursday" he said smoothly, and, Mo thought, kindly. It was the first working day after the New Year. That first Monday back, when the photocopier refuses to work and the heating breaks down and the trains protest about the weather and everyone goes down with colds and the Christmas decorations suddenly look tired and ridiculous. The man in the seat in front had sorted out his business meeting with his depressed friend. The train was pulling in to the hideous concrete station, with its strange textured grey block walls, the snow skipping on the wind. On the platform there were a handful of huddled shapeless black coats hanging from a small batch of people who hadn't dressed for the cold, waiting to catch the train. Everyone was wearing black, it was as though the entire country were in mourning. She followed the Man From The Seat In Front off the train, wondering how she could have imagined his face, his shape, his outline and hair so wrongly. He wasn't suave or well-dressed or even handsome. It was very disappointing. He wasn't ugly or badly dressed either. He was a bit mediocre, he didn't deserve this rich, self-confident baritone voice for a ring tone. He should have sounded dull. He should have had a flat, dimensionless voice. Why did such anomolies occur in life? It made no sense at all for God to give this unpreposessing man such a sublime sound. Mo was the kind of woman who often bemoaned the lack of sense in the world. She wasn't a grumling sort. She was just bemused by the odd things, like this bland man with his delicious tones. It was just another example of nothing making any kind of sense.

to be continued...

2010

First day of a new year
I love new year
it is a starting again time
A new decade is even more exciting.
This is my prayer for the New Year and the New Decade

Flame-dancing Spirit, come,
Sweep us off our feet and
Dance us through our days.
Surprise us with your rythms,
Dare us to try new steps, explore
New patterns and new partnerships.
Release us from old routines,
To swing in abandoned joy
And fearful adventure.
And in the intervals,
Rest us
In your still centre."

Ann Lewin