Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: family, life, love, mental-health, writing
I can’t believe it’s still January – feels like it has been forever. And I’m still moping around at home, trying to rest, not doing it very well. I’m still in my pyjamas now at gone midnight so that’s something, but I get twitchetty, can’t relax and end up fannying about online doing fuck all, or watching too much TV. I finished that Heated Rivalry as Daughter just loved it and wanted me to watch so we could discuss and I did and I do think it’s good – really too much fucking for my delicate sensibilities (not really, but yawn, I’m def post-sexual and I don’t care, just get on with it) especially in the first two eps, but it was a pleasure to see a gay story with no homophobia, no tragic ending, just a lot of very scared love and some very moving scenes. So yeah, it’s a yes from me.
One of those shows you’d have to be careful who you recommend it to. I remember when I was teaching, a very bright top set Y10 so 14-15 year olds. The film Being John Malkovich came out and there was one kid, proper smart arse, I knew he’d love it, but he came in the next day, “MISS!!!! You could have said there was lesbian sex in it – I watched it with my mum! So embarrassing!” Luckily his mum was cool and knew where I was coming from, but it could have been tricky. I did manage not to recommend the first season of Shameless, the original UK version, which was so new and fresh and unlike anything that had been on TV before – definitely had a core truth that I recognized from some of my own experience and knew for sure some of the kids I taught would – many of them lived those kinds of lives, but no, do not recommend that to children. I hope they all found it later. I watched a bit of the US version and quite liked it but it’s not the same where space isn’t at a premium – they were all spread out in a big house – our lot were crammed in on top of each other, really adding an extra level of stress and tension. Also Macy wasn’t as prepared to be as unlikeable as Threlfall was as Frank Gallagher. He was just a cunt.
I meant to write about my unsuccessful attempt to make sourdough again – it wasn’t a total disaster as I realized that batch of dough was never going to hold itself together enough to make a loaf so I spread it out flat and made focaccia. I was too tired. I am too tired and by late afternoon which is the recommended time to start, I haven’t got a scrap of concentration, let alone ability to be precise. I get all ‘ah, that’ll do’ and sometimes it just won’t. I’m going to try again tomorrow.
Today started badly with one of those phone calls which when you’re thinking clearly you know is dodgy, but when it wakes you from a deep sleep and a lovely dream where you’re in the (real) bookshop bought by the (real) co-worker of many years ago, being so happy to see her again after all this time, some fucker saying they want to give you a 40% discount on your sky tv deal almost gets away with it. But not quite as all that shit is in Bloke’s name – he does IT and we have a loft full of servers attached to different charities which have headquarters nearby, so he needs blah blah blah – I don’t listen as I don’t care, but the TV comes with the internet so I say it sounds good and to contact him, not naming him, and then the woman on the phone gets all weaselly, trying to not say that she doesn’t have his details so I cut her off, forgetting to add my usual comment about hoping she gets a better job soon, and the fucker calls me back. Meh.
But later is acupuncture, always fab, lying on the couch in the room with only roof windows, watching the seagulls flying overhead, squawking and yelling, very soothing. Then a pause before a sauna with the mental health swimmers in a different sauna, made me feel I was cheating on my regular place, madness. In between I went to a café with a comfy sofa and made notes on new characters I’m bringing into the bit of fiction I’ve been writing for a very long time. It started as a modern Brit version of Of Mice and Men, then got muddled up with something I wrote years ago, but now is drifting towards a crime novel. Grace is storming off to ask the others when they last saw Lexie but I don’t have any others. Didn’t, cos I do now. I like making characters, I love how if you stick with them they start to have their own minds and make their own decisions. I’d thought Grace would go to Ida for help but she won’t, not yet. Whether I like it or not. And it’s no good telling her there aren’t any other characters as she’s on her way to see them so I’d better get on with conjuring them up. I’ve started with names as they help fix the ages. One’s about my age, too old to be working as a cleaner day after day, so what were girls I was at school with called? Janice. I’m starting with her.
Then to the sauna, by the lagoon, needing a long walk round the lagoon in the dark – not enough street lights. It’s not a real lagoon, just a big shallow pool where they teach water sports and it was quite creepy, but all good.
More resting tomorrow and another sauna – I inadvertently booked three for this week.
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These are scary times. Can that orange idiot really not be stopped? He breaks every law, lies brazenly, repeatedly, has set masked thugs to run rampage killing at will and yet still he stands? I long since stopped watching TV news in an attempt to maintain my mental health, but now I keep checking the headlines to be sure some new outrage hasn’t been committed. I mean, we’re all relying on the other political leaders to play along for long enough to keep the peace, but this is not how the world is meant to operate, FFS. I fear for my friends in the US.
Enough. Son came to stay overnight which was fucking ace. We talk and talk about our various projects – he has exciting things occurring, though in the arts there’s a long and possibly fruitless gap between possible and actual. He asked if I had a title for my memoir. I do: To the Sea, Again, which made his eyes fill with tears, so I reckon that’s a keeper.
Day 2 of resting, though as ever, I’m up past midnight so day 3 really. I’ve been mainly bed-based with plenty of TV. Yesterday I kept ending up with gay men. I started with Heated Rivalry which someone recommended – Canadian and Russian hockey players fucking each other senseless in secret – nothing in the way of plot development after two eps so on I went to Good Grief, which I’d misread the synopsis, more gay men, but lovely Himesh Patel so I stuck with that, lots of snogging not so much fucking, good. Not the best film I’ve ever watched but OK.
Then one of my writing pals recommended Banjo and Ro’s Grand Island Hotel which is just perfect. Yes, they’re a gay couple but that’s by the by, they’ve got involved with a beautiful derelict building on the virtually uninhabited island of Ulva, just off Mull (Scotland), and they do it up in satisfyingly edited sections, with help from everyone around. They haven’t bought it, the community bought it years ago, but they’re living there rent free in exchange for rehabilitating it – so peaceful, such a strong community, sharing, non-profit vibe, everyone doing what they can. I love Banjo. He collects more old rubbish even than me and my daughter put together and knows exactly what will look perfect where. My favourite line of his so far is, “When I was a little boy all I wanted to be was an old man.” On BBC iplayer, recommended.
And I’m reading ‘The Life Inside’ by Andy West, which is the memoir Waiting for the Out, currently on BBC, also all on iplayer, is based on. West says in the introduction that he amalgamated characters and changed locations to protect people’s privacy, and it was then reimagined for the telly which makes me wonder how much of anything other than several different people’s imaginations is left. Still interesting, teaching philosophy to prisoners who are glad to engage with the ideas and concepts which often have direct application to their own lives.
Today I contacted the GP as this fatigue is getting worse and I have an appointment in two weeks, with the option to get back to them if it gets too much worse. I took the dog out as I had to get in the air and among a bit of nature, down to the lake as the sun went down but I only managed about half an hour with several rests.
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Well I finished the memoir manuscript, got it as good as I could, let R put my submission letter through some AI thing I couldn’t understand which did make it tighter but possibly blander, then sent them off to seven different agents. And promptly keeled over.
Tomorrow I’m going to try proper resting. I’ve cancelled the proposed meeting at one of the local places where I could do the art foundation – with a friend who’s currently doing an art degree there so I can go there any time – why did I think I could plunge straight into it the minute I’ve finished? I was going to follow that with a walk and lunch with my pal MH, both cancelled. Not even going to yin yoga – yes I love it but I have to drive there during rush hour in the dark and park in tight places and climb loads of stairs then drive back in the dark. No.
I don’t know how to rest though – my mind is racing already, thinking of things I could be doing. I’ll give it a go
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: birds, books, nature, wildlife, writing
Not a great day though I did get some shit done, like art group which I’ll soon be able to miss as I’m starting a charcoal course – I don’t really want to do charcoal but it’s quite cheap, six weeks, Tuesday mornings and on a houseboat near where we used to live. And you never know – I might fall in love with charcoal and that might be me sorted. Never mind mixing colours, grey will do for me.
We did writing group as well, although I really didn’t want to, but it turned out OK. I’ve had this writer’s toolkit – a box of cards and sticks with different starters on which was OK but we’d exhausted it a while ago. Last week one of my regulars at the other group brought me a Christmas present – a whole load of lolly sticks with different starters she’d written on them. We used one today, D picked it out without looking, “I hadn’t seen her since Tuesday…” which sent us all off in different directions and I was really pleased with mine. I’ve been adding random bits about my characters for ages but no real plot has yet emerged. Son said “Have a murder – you love crime fiction,” obviously true and pertinent and today with that prompt I was away. Lexie has vanished – she’s the female version of Lenny from Of Mice and Men. She doesn’t dream of rabbits [ha – proof-reading I spotted I’d written ‘she doesn’t dream of rabbis’ – that would be a whole different book], just a nice home like the pictures in the Ikea catalogue. Sometimes sucks her thumb and flicks through the pictures, showing them to whoever’s around. But she hasn’t taken her catalogue with her – where has she gone? Grace (the George one) is scared and anxious.
And I had a sauna in the dark though by then I could hardly drag myself up the beach. The temperature has suddenly shot up to 10C which is almost warm after sub zero all this time.
And just after I’d spotted a blue tit on the feeders for the first time – we usually only get little brown birds like sparrows and wrens, the odd robin – suddenly there was a sparrow hawk sitting on the fence giving all the little birds a Hard Stare. It fucked off when I moved quickly up to the window. Good.
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It’s hard, isn’t it, living a good life with all this shite of the worst kind all around us. What are we meant to do – keep up with current events or look after our mental health? Can’t do both. Not these days, Jesus. I’m trying to keep my head above water but constantly feel I’m sinking. I was meant to go to a grief singing thing on Wednesday – I can’t remember the details but it did sound good but now I’m not going – it’s all bubbled up close to the surface again, all the losses, all the sorrow.
Kate’s sister, who was with her when she died, wrote a long post on FB, describing how it has been since, that all the local people who knew Kate – she’s been spending winters there for donkey’s years – have gathered around her, the sister, supporting her in this dreadful loss so far from home, which is something, a silver lining, a giant hug from the community. There will be a ceremony on Wednesday on her favourite beach in Goa at sunset and I’ve calculated the time difference and cancelled the rest of my day so I can sit with her. I might paint it
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I was waiting at the traffic lights – roadworks, yawn – on my way to the first choir practice of the year. I knew the wait would be three minutes – four way lights – so I opened my phone and looked at my Facebook page. Where I learned that a dear friend died yesterday, in Goa. Oh man. So this is about Kate.
She’s a friend of R, one of the stoner-grannies from the kids’ field at Glastonbury. I first met her at Shambala festival, in 2013 where she was running soap-making workshops with R. It turned out that both Kate and I were in search of decent care homes, Kate for her mother, me for my daughter. We connected, shared our struggles. She lived in Glastonbury so apart from at festivals we didn’t meet often, but she came this way to do advanced yoga courses and we’d hang out, finding it was easy to fall into chatting shit together on a bench in the sunshine, for hours. She’d had an autism diagnosis long ago, which was helpful to know as she wasn’t quite like others in her responses but I still liked her a lot, valued her friendship.
When I had plantar fasciitis (which I called fascist foot – we don’t need no fascist foot thing) and had tried everything, she sent me a lotion or a potion in a beautiful glass bottle, which healed me at once, though I never did complete the Couch to 5k plan. Kate got into crypto and made a fortune – she kept wanting the rest of us to invest but I couldn’t understand how it worked – I could see she was making money but where was it from? She made so much that she bought her rented house from the landlady and still it accrued so she bunged quite a few of us a thousand pounds each, a gift, no returns, no obligations.
We both found good care homes in the end and we shared stories of loving and caring for someone we loved who used to be a force in the world but was now fading away. We were both glad to be able to do this, painful but beautiful.
At Glasto, 2019 I think, on the Sunday night a bunch of us headed off to see The Cure and realized we were all mothers and daughters, me and mine, R and hers, Kate and hers. We grabbed a passing person to take our photo and it’s one of my all-time favourites.
Kate’s mum died on Sept 1st 2018 and my Sam died on Sept 1st 2018. They both had their funerals on the same date as well which felt like a strong bond had been forged. This last year we met up at Glastonbury Abbey to see the Alabama 3, and spent a lot of the time sitting in camping chairs, chatting shit, comfortable, easy. Then as usual, she and R went off separately to spend the winter in Goa, not together but near each other, in places they’d been going to forever, where they both had friends. Kate caught Covid on the flight out there and was very poorly for quite a few weeks, not saying much online but posting lots of political links, things that needed to be said about human rights, the climate – things I can’t manage to explore in detail. On 17th Dec she had a meal with R, they spent the day together and she posted that she was feeling much much better and she looked it. We exchanged love and hugs and I thought she was on the mend.
I don’t know why she died, just that she seemed to be getting better then had a relapse. Her sister was with her and I think R, who said that it was peaceful. I don’t know what happens now. She was lovely – kind and funny and deeply committed to working towards a better world where she could. I’m really sad that she’s gone.
Friday night, feel like I’ve done a week’s work rather than mooch about mostly. Salty Grief Warriors today, a sauna, after a long interlude. Only six of us, but that’s enough. No one wants to organise meetings as we’re all flaky as fuck. In case you’re new here, SGW is a group pf bereaved parents who started meeting up to swim in the cold sea and share the kind of talk you can’t share with most people. We can’t do it regularly but we need to do it every now and then. So today we had a sauna with the usual intermittent dipping in and out of the sea – considering most of the UK is in the grip of a storm it wasn’t too bad – the harbour was calm though the water and the wind were both icy, but that’s OK when you get back up the beach and into the sauna where it soon becomes too fucking hot.
Meeting in the sauna is not as satisfying as when we used to meet on the beach and all did everything together – we’d sit in a circle and share thoughts and feelings, passing a stone round and talking for up to five minutes each, with no interruptions, no suggestions, no comfort, then all get in the sea together. With a sauna we all have different tolerances for how much heat we can take so it gets unfocused and well, different and not as good, frankly. Though I was one of the first to drift away from the regular meetings as I couldn’t listen to the ones whose children had taken their own lives – today that was half of us, plus one teenage child who vanished without trace six years ago. I’d be even more mental if that was me.
Only ten minutes tonight because I’m really tired and should just go the fuck to bed, but here I am, so bollocks. Me and R the writing mentor declared the manuscript and the submission letter done today so now my task is to find ten literary agents to submit it to. Instead of cracking on with that I made a pot of leek and potato soup for later then went out to lunch with my beloved grandson, took the dog for a walk on the prom then came home and keeled right over. I was meant to do one last read through, a close proof read of the first 25 pages, just to be sure but instead I kept fucking about, tweaking it here there and everywhere, but I just realized I can save that under another file name and go back to the one R sent me this morning.
The only real change I need to make is to add into the submission letter that I have a first draft of a female version of Of Mice and Men, set in modern Britain. R reckons that’s worth saying and I trust her so in it will go. This whole being at the end makes me feel very jittery, but it’s big, isn’t it? I mean it’s all exposing all my worst bits – I kind of assume no one will read it, or just a few poor souls who’re in the shit like I was /am, but who knows? That’s it. Time’s up. This is the prologue:
It was cold and wet and windy – it was always fucking cold and wet and windy, but the air in the care home was warm and thick and could not be borne another minute so we were going out. I’d bought a wheelchair poncho for Sammie, a big blue waterproof jobbie that went right over everything with a hood and her little face peeping out. Off we went, down the lane, past the rehab centre, the guys sitting on the steps trying to light fags in the wind, all right gal? Round the corner onto the prom into the feral wind.
We were the wrong side of the pier – the west wind blew us there in five minutes – was the tide out far enough for the pier to be open? Yes, hoorah, sometimes on a high tide big crashing rollers would break high enough to knock you off your feet as you fought your way to the end, but today ok, past the antique lamp posts, past the no fishing signs, past the fishermen, their buckets of bait filled with water to keep them still and safe, their catch laid out on slimy newspapers. You Ok Sam? I’d lean forward and look round to check her expression, was she enjoying this or did she want to go home? But she always lit up at the sight of my face so we’d grin and push on, the weight of the wheelchair hard against my legs, but on, head down, back bent, into the wind and the sea and seagulls swooping down, to the end of the pier, past the run down cafe, closed all bloody winter – we’d have liked a hot drink now, but no, just a last hard push and round to the eastern side, out of the wind, facing Brighton in the distance, the lights, the city, the life, all the way over there.
It always made me think of Sea Fever by John Masefield ‘I must go down to the sea again/to the lonely sea and the sky/ where the gulls… can’t remember the rest, but I had it on my phone, so I’d find it and squat down beside her and read it, the words caught in the wind, drifting away.
annanotbob4 