Resistant But Persistent

Five minutes, more than twenty years

2012-03-11T23:54:00.000Z

Saturday - Petts Wood

We lived there once.

We moved in just a week before Megan was due, I brought her home from the hospital to the first house she ever knew. As she grew up, we walked through the town almost every day, crossing and re-crossing the foot-bridge over the railway, from east to west, past the library and the church, between school, shops and home. We picked blackberries in Jubilee Park when the weather was good, pick-and-mix in Woolworths when it was bad.

We learned about the Pett family as we played in their woods. I read the faded information boards, green with the moss and damp of the surrounding trees and told my children how the Pett dynasty had built ships for the royal navy. I was busy building my own dynasty then.

In Station Square, there used to be a gentlemen's outfitters. I remember peering into the carefully dressed window as I passed on my way to the bank or the chemist, it was full of tweed jackets, cashmere scarves, woollen socks. I never bought anything then, and I'm sorry about that now. Today it's a coffee shop.

Sitting in the window where the clothes once were, I stir my coffee and look out across the square. There's a huge pub called the Daylight Inn. It was named for William Willett, a campaigner for daylight saving. I know there's a memorial for him in the woods; a huge sundial. Just behind the Daylight there used to be a kitchen shop, with a small office above it, where I worked for twelve hours a week while Megan was at nursery. Cornwall Lord Chartered Accountants moved away long ago; but I still remember how I used to dash out of there at lunchtime to pick Megan up, I remember how she loved to cross the road to the bakers on the corner for a hot sausage roll.

Sunday - Sidcup

We lived there once.

I was nineteen when we moved in a month after getting married, and it was the first house I ever owned. In the nine years we lived there, I learnt to cook and clean, knit and sew; I worked out what it meant to be a wife and a mother.

Today, Megan is sitting in the car beside me as we drive into Sidcup. As we go past Queen Mary's hospital, where all my children were born, she chatters on incessantly; but I'm tense and tetchy with her, not really listening to anything she says. As we pass the roundabout, where I once thought she might arrive too soon, she reaches forward and turns up the volume on the CD player and just as we've done so many times before, we both start to sing.

A few minutes later, she points to a house up ahead "there it is - the one with the white fence." I turn into the driveway carefully, trying hard not to hit the gateposts, trying hard to sneak a look at the house.

Megan's friend Lara opens the door. She's smiling as she tells us to mind the wet floor "I've been cleaning for hours" she says proudly. We follow her into the kitchen, and admire the purple accessories - the toaster that matches the washing-up bowl and the cutlery, the purple leather bar-stools and the empty glass fruit bowl. Then she takes us on a tour of the rest of the house; the other rooms are big and bare. Upstairs we look at the bedrooms; I ask questions about where the furniture will go, I smile as she describes a small bedroom as a walk-in wardrobe.

We come to a third room "And this will be my room" says Megan. I picture the room she's left behind this morning, the bed piled high with black plastic sacks full of clothes and rubbish. I try to imagine what this room will look like in a month or two, when she's settled in here and forgotten to be tidy.

I don't stay long. They both come to the door to say goodbye. "come and see us as often as you want" says Lara generously. "Not too often" adds Megan.

I drive away slowly, not really thinking about where I'm going, along streets that were once familiar. It's only five minutes from the street we once lived in. Five minutes, more than twenty years.

I remember the excitement of moving into our first house in Sidcup, the pride of bringing Megan home to her first house in Petts Wood. I know today's a good day.

I just wish it hadn't come so soon.

Casting on

2012-03-04T14:29:00.000Z

I was sixteen, tall, skinny and awkward; still trying to work out what clothes suited my gangliness, still wanting a style of my own. I wanted originality, but nothing too scary, something that would make people look, but not comment and never laugh; I wanted something more than Topshop but not quite punk.

Of course, I knew how to knit, I’d made squares for charity blankets at school, ungainly mis-shapen objects that really gave new meaning to the idea of casting off. But I’d never attempted something that was actually meant to be worn, not until I saw a pattern for a sloppy joe jumper in a magazine.

So I took the bus to Brixton, to the old Littlewoods store, where I'd seen shelves of wool stacked up high. The pattern told me how many balls I needed, but I hadn't yet learnt about yarn weights, or plys, needle sizes or tensions, so I simply picked the colour I liked best, a soft flecked grey, and some thick metal needles that felt smooth and cool in my hands.

I started knitting as soon as I got home, no messing about with tension squares, I just launched straight in. The two T-shaped pieces of knitting were thrown together with much more enthusiasm than expertise and, of course, the yarn was too thin for the needles. My joe was very definitely on the sloppy side, but that didn't matter; I’d experienced the irresistible alchemy of taking a long straight piece of yarn and turning into something else. And since then, there’s never been a time when somewhere in the house I haven’t had a bag of wool, a stack of needles, a pile of patterns and a half finished piece of magic.

I've often wondered what it is about knitting that captured me all those years ago, and has held me ever since. No doubt there's an element of pride in making something myself, a genuine pleasure in taking months to make a gift for someone else. There's the way the continuous action relaxes and soothes, even the knowledge that I'm continuing a craft that's been around for hundreds of years.

Recently though, I've realised there's something else. When I knit, I watch something take shape and grow. I have a picture in my mind of how it will turn out, though I'm never quite sure till it's finished. There are a limited number of stitches, but I can use them in a thousand different ways, and it's up to me which ones I choose and how I put them together. I can work on it a little at a time, make it shorter or longer, bring together different threads, or try a different style. And if I'm not happy with how it's turning out, I can unpick it all and start again.

It's really just like writing a story.

Jejune - a poem

2012-02-27T22:37:00.000Z

In rising arcs of naïve aspiration,
in glowing pride and unbound admiration,
I saw great depths, a new sophistication,
a worldliness beyond imagination.

I framed a peerless man in my mind’s eye;
I gave you wit, decreed your dullness wry.
I sketched the cynic’s smile you’d never own,
described the haughty brow, you’d never shown.

But then. I came to know a different you,
the hidden artificial, far from true;
the depth of intellect I thought I’d found,
a shallow pool of superficial sound.

Your metaphors came clichéd, too simplistic,
a jaded language so far from realistic;
the symphony, a halting, jarring tune
of disillusion found, too soon. Jejune.

Kiku - a story

2012-02-20T23:32:00.001Z

So here they were, three sisters, in a strange room without any sofas, looking out from their separate armchairs. They’d never been here before without their parents; they hadn’t even been here very often with them.

Nobody spoke.

Rachel played with her socks, rolling them down round her ankles, like fat white sausages, then pulling them back up again. Mum would tell her off if she was here, tell her she’d ruin the elastic. But Mum wasn’t here, and Susan didn’t feel like it, so Rachel carried on; rolling and stretching, rolling and stretching.

Carol was chewing on one of her plaits. She’d screamed the house down earlier that day, when Mum had brushed her hair; she always did, no matter what day it was. Now she sat, curled up in an armchair, staring out of the window. Auntie Joan and Uncle George were the only people they knew who lived in a flat. It was on the top floor of a big old house, so the windows were level with the tops of the trees outside. Today, with the branches all bare, you could see through them to the streets and tall houses that stretched away down the hill, past the park and across the outside edges of Crystal Palace.

It was bad enough that their Nanna had died, worse that they weren’t allowed to go to the funeral. Susan knew that some people hadn’t wanted them going to the big church on the hill, and she could understand that for Carol and Rachel. Neither of them was even ten yet; but she was nearly thirteen, so she couldn't see why they’d all had to be dumped together on Auntie Joan and Uncle George.

Susan looked around her. Even though it was still light outside, the room was dark. The flat was part of a tall old building, one of the scary looking witch-houses they always ran past on their way to the swings. There were three lamps on small round tables, each with a tasselled green shade, but they weren’t doing much to brighten the room. Their weird glowing light reminded Susan of that time they’d gone swimming in the lake; when she’d ducked her head under and squinted up, she’d seen the same sort of dull green brightness.

It felt like they were waiting, but she wasn’t sure what for. She wondered if she ought to cry. Other people had cried when they’d heard that Nanna was dead. She’d tried, really she had; screwing her eyes up tight and thinking bad thoughts. But even though she’d remembered the worst thing, she couldn’t squeeze out a tear.

The last time they’d seen Uncle George had been at their own house. He’d done that trick where he’d put a tuppenny coin on the base of his thumb, then closed his fingers over the end in a fist and somehow clicked the joint, so the coin disappeared. They’d all checked his sleeves to see where it had gone, they’d looked under the cushions and down the sides of the settee, but none of them could spot it, until he’d jumped up suddenly and pulled it out from behind Rachel’s ear.

Susan wished he’d do a trick now, but maybe you couldn’t do magic when someone had just died.

Auntie Joan came in with a tray. It wasn’t like the painted metal one they had at home with the scratched old roses on it; this was a long wooden tray, with high raised sides, and holes cut in each end for handles. On it were three tall glasses of milk. Carol didn’t like milk, she’d never drink it, not even when Mum heated it up in the milk pan and put sugar in it. Susan wondered if she should say something, explain how Mum had written a letter to school, excusing Carol from the morning milk. She watched Carol wriggling in her seat, she noticed how even Rachel had stopped rolling her socks, waiting to see what would happen.

She saw how Auntie Joan placed the tray very carefully on the sideboard, then picked up the first glass and handed it to Rachel, who took it and said a quiet thank you. Susan knew she’d be last because she was the oldest; she knew Carol would be next. So she watched as her aunt picked up the second glass, and with it, a small plate of those biscuits with the nobbly edges, she waited for Carol to shout, or cry, or run out of the room. She could hardly believe it when her sister reached out to take the glass, copied Rachel’s quiet thank you and started to sip.

As she gulped down her own glass of milk, Susan wondered what time it was. There was a big wooden clock on the mantelpiece, she liked its loud ticking, but the numbers were written in Roman, and even though she knew she should still be able to tell the time, just from the position of them, the harder she stared, the more complicated it seemed.

Though she’d never actually been to one, and didn’t have any idea how long it might take, she thought the funeral was probably over by now. But she’d watched Mum earlier on, packing three pairs of pyjamas into the big blue holdall, wrapping their toothbrushes in one of the spare plastic bags from under the sink, so Susan knew their parents wouldn’t be coming back that day; she knew they’d be staying with Auntie Joan and Uncle George for the night.

None of them had ever stayed away before, well, not unless you counted being on holiday; and she couldn’t figure out where they were all going to sleep. If you’d asked her, she'd have said that she didn’t want to share a bed with her sisters, but she did want to go to bed soon; she thought it might be just like at Christmas, the sooner they all went to sleep, the sooner the next day would come. And then they could all go home again.

She heard a door bang shut. It was so loud; it must have been someone in the flat, though she couldn’t imagine Auntie Joan or Uncle George ever actually slamming a door. Then suddenly, there was cousin Vivienne, laughing and saying hello. All in one movement, she seemed to drop the embroidered strap of her bag from one shoulder, unwrap the long striped scarf from round her neck, shake her long hair loose, and scoop up Carol for an eskimo kiss.

Susan watched as they rubbed noses, she saw how Carol giggled and squirmed, how she begged for more as Viv put her back onto the armchair and turned her attention to Rachel, who was sitting across the room, watching silently, chewing on the skin at the side of her thumb.

“Hey Rach, have you ever seen a necklace like this before? It’s made of apple pips. All of it. Would you like to borrow it for a bit?”

Only after Viv had carefully placed the necklace over Rachel’s head and twisted it twice did she turn her attention to Susan. The eldest, always the last, and no lifting up for eskimo noses, just a tight, two-arms hug.

As she buried her face in her cousin’s shoulder, Susan could smell the strange, almost rotten, scent of Vivienne’s coat, with its leathery skin and furry edges. Then coming through over the top of that was another smell, it seemed to be oranges and lemons, sweetness and sunshine.

And then there was no need to screw up her eyes, or think of bad things. Susan breathed in the smell of being grown up, of being away from home; the scents and sense of things she knew and didn’t yet know. And, in the hug of her cousin, she cried for her Nanna.

Valentine

2012-02-11T10:40:00.000Z

I get the call from Philip just as I leave the office.

“Say if it’s too much hassle, but is there anywhere you could stop on the way home and get an onion?”

“An onion? Just an onion?”

“Yep, I’ve got everything else, but I need an onion.”.

Ten minutes later I'm in the huge supermarket on the outskirts of town, on a fleeting shopping stop between the town where I work and the village where I live, between the day at work and the evening at home. An in-between visit to what feels like an in-between world.

People walk slowly, silently, sullenly; leaning heavily on their shopping trollies. It’s mostly single adults. Maybe like me, they're popping in for a forgotten item on the way home, or perhaps they're just putting off returning to an empty home, reluctant to re-heat the meal-for-one they’ve thrown in the trolley, that nobody sees, and nobody will share.

It’s a bit of a pied-piper world, no brightly clothed children careering around, no shrieking or crying. No laughing. There aren't any old people either; I guess they’re indoors keeping warm, away from the lightly falling snow. I remember how my Dad, when he got older, used to have a four o’clock curfew. It drove us mad that wherever we went with him, he always wanted to be back indoors by 4 o'clock. I couldn't understand the urgency then, his need to get back and sort out his dinner before the early evening news.

You’d never have found him amongst the after-work Tesco shoppers. Not then. But I know there was an earlier time when he was one of the people stopping on the way home to make sure there was food for his daughters' dinner. Picking up a pack of Findus Crispy pancakes, or a Fray Bentos tinned pie – quick to prepare fuel, for someone who’s found themselves suddenly having to take on the cooking, but who never really learned how. I wish I'd got to cook more meals for him myself.

I've only gone in for an onion, but the shop’s too big and I don’t know where anything is. I find myself wandering aimlessly, gazing up at the signs above the aisles, falling into the trap of wondering if maybe I should get some tea and bread while I’m there.

I turn a corner and suddenly there’s a whole aisle of Valentine gifts. Chocolate hearts, fake red roses, balloon-bearing teddies. Between the purple cellophane wrapping and the scarlet red tinfoil, I see LOVE written in gaudy shades of pink, in a dozen different fonts. Row upon row; I can’t imagine how they'd ever clear these shelves, not even if every single shopper for the next five days bought a Valentine’s present. Not even if they gave them away free at the checkout.

I've never quite bought into Valentine’s day – the idea that someone might tell us how and when to love. And when I see the startling rows of coral, fuchsia and rose, I’m more glad than usual that it’s not something we do. I know I never want to be the sort of person who thinks they must buy a love token, and then throw it into their trolley with the cat food and the washing powder.

I walk on until I reach the vegetables. The green and brown hues are a welcome sight, even under the fluorescent lighting they remind me of the real world outside, and there at the end of the aisle are the onions. I take my time choosing; it seems only fair, if he's doing the cooking, that I pick the best I can.

In the end I buy three.

In February - a story

2012-02-05T08:06:00.001Z

His disappointment was palpable; she could see the expectation dripping from him, as his shoulders sagged, and his earlier brightness faded away. Perhaps it was the wind, but she thought she heard a long slow sigh. And suddenly she smiled at the thought of him being caught up and thrown squealing around the garden; blown up into the tall trees like a deflating balloon.

No words were spoken, there was nothing to be said. His head slumped forward, but not quite enough to hide the bead of water that traced a line down his face. She watched it trickle over his rounded cheek and down into the scarlet scarf tied so tightly round his neck. There would be others who’d pity him, but she knew that what caused his weakness made her stronger. And she knew that soon there’d be no need to seek shelter from his brittle coldness.

So she stood and watched the snowman in the slowly warming sun.

--------

We had our first snow last night. First snow of 2012 and the first time it's snowed since we've lived in Otford. Philip will be up soon, and urging me to go out and play. I'll wrap up warm and join him, but I'll be thinking of the sun.

Construction - a poem

2012-01-28T08:31:00.000Z

Starting out was simple,

a joyous thing to do,

you built without concern or care;

the palace of the new.

You laid each brick so carefully,

cementing it in line,

so focused on the task ahead.

Believing it was fine.

The walls grew high around you,

you laboured on within,

each interlocking fragment

an ever thickening skin.

Oblivious to the weather,

to rain or storm-swept sky,

you carried on constructing.

You never wondered why.

You built high, never pausing

on the task that you’d begun,

until the day you realised that

you’d never reach the sun.

Beginning it was easy,

but knowing now is tough;

however high you built those walls

would never be enough

------

One of the comments on my last blog post was from Joe Pereira, who, amongst other things asked me if I could "write something about "building walls" ?" this poem is my response to that.

Thank you Joe - I'm not sure how well I've risen to the challenge, but I hope you like it

Broken sunglasses and an old potato

2012-01-24T20:44:00.000Z

It's not a good start to the day as I realise, yet again, that it's bins day and neither of us remembered last night to put the rubbish bags out for collection. As I stumble around the house in the half light of early morning, muttering and grumbling about being late for work, I wonder how other people organise themselves for the day-to-day activities of living together. With the small part of my brain that's awake at 6am, I trawl through faint memories of our early conversations, but I can't remember us ever having a conversation where we allocated out the chores; I don't recall any lists of tasks carefully shared and balanced.

There wasn't any negotiation process all those years ago, and I'm sure there would be no point in opening talks right now. It's too early, I'm sleepy, he's asleep. So I gather up the newspapers for the recycling bag and move from room to room emptying bins into a black sack. I line up the bags at the kerbside, then go back indoors to wash my hands before leaving for work. When I go upstairs to say goodbye, I realise there's one bin I've missed, so I dash back down for another bag, my irritation increasing with each of the thirteen stairs down and every one of the thirteen stairs back up again.

In our bedroom there's a small white basket, it's usually got a few tissues, perhaps the label cut from a new t-shirt or the polythene wrapper from the weekend's newspapers. Today, just because I'm in a hurry, it's full. And when I tip it up, the contents don't empty quickly or cleanly into the bin-bag. I reach down gingerly through the tissues, hoping for nothing damp, then extract a pair of broken sunglasses, one lens missing, one arm sticking out at a strange angle. I tug to release it from the wicker weave of the basket, and as I do so, the rest of the litter falls to the floor. As the tissues float down like over-sized snowflakes, there's an unexpected thud, and I see a wrinkled old potato rolling across the floor and under the bed.

A little later, I'm driving to work, along with the often-slow lanes of traffic on the M25. This is usually my time for the mental shift from home to work, an hour of thinking about the day ahead, preparing the virtual list of things I'm probably not going to achieve in the next eight hours. But today, my mind keeps returning to home; the images in my head are a pair of broken sunglasses and an old potato.

I can't help but think how well those two objects sum him up. If I was taking part in a tv game show, I'd have guessed the identity of the bin-owner before the compère had even finished describing the wrinkled gnarliness of the potato.

I'd have known why sunglasses are a year-round accessory for him; that it's not a vain affectation, just a need to stave off the unsettling effects of over-bright lights. I'd know that he loses or breaks them time and again, that one day he'd like to own another pair of real Ray-bans, but that in the meantime he settles for something close.

I'd have been able to describe to the watching millions exactly where that potato came from, how it's ancestor sat in an egg-box on the window sill in Crown Road, before being planted in the middle of our allotment. I could talk about the enormous pride we felt the first year we harvested our own crop, how every year since then he's dug up the potatoes with the glee of a boy searching for buried treasure. I could go on to explain how he's the cook in our family, how he turns those potatoes into the crunchiest roasties, even though he insists on leaving the skins on.

Today, the traffic flows as smoothly as my imagination and soon enough I'm pulling into the car park. As I stand in the lift on my way up to the seventh floor my last thought of home is the realisation that, without any negotiations about the sharing out of chores, I seem to have done ok. A frantic early morning emptying of the rubbish bins is a very fair price for the dinner I know I'll be going home to later.

Dinner for two

2012-01-15T19:50:00.001Z

We talk almost constantly, as we struggle out of coats and scarves and take our seats either side of the wooden table. It's a couple of months since we last met up so there's plenty to catch up on, but as we each pick up one of the oversized menus to choose our food, I'm momentarily side-tracked by thoughts of childhood friends. I don't ever remember going out for a meal as a child, not even with family; the very idea that anyone back then would have suggested an outing involving dinner makes me smile.

I think of a time when friends were just there, wherever you happened to be; sitting next to you at school, running alongside you round the field by the bin-sheds down the flats, standing beside you peering into the muddy ripples of the river in Belair Park. In the days before mobile phones, in a world where ballet lessons and after-school activities were something other people did, there wasn't any planning or scheduling involved; it just happened.

Conversations were about the people and the situations you all knew; your teacher, the girl in class whose Dad hit her with his belt, whether or not you were really going to kiss Terry Jackson. Friends changed quickly, you fell out and fell back in again and a 'best friend' was more a state of mind than a matter of fact, but friendship itself was a constant.

I don't know when it started to change, perhaps it was when we all left school to go off in different directions. After that, families and relationships, new jobs and places to live, there were so many reasons why keeping friends suddenly became 'keeping in touch'; why constant became intermittent.

Yet the first half of our evening follows a defined pattern, as we each share news of our other halves and homes, of ex-colleagues in common, of current work burdens and future holiday plans. Conversation flows, it's collaborative and comforting, but then as the plates are being cleared, I realise there's been something in the tenor of our talk that's changed. When I've spoken about holidays, it's been less about future adventures and more about the places I might never get to see. We've made reference to failing eyesight and aching limbs, I've even mentioned retirement.

Then comes the moment when I lean forward to make a confession. But it's no tale of infidelity or misbehaviour, no shocking scandalous gossip,

"I've bought a new pillow."

Almost as soon as the words leave my mouth, I realise the mistake, I'm already cataloguing myself as an old woman.

But then she smiles and offers up her own secret.

"I've got an electric blanket."

And then I remember that thing about friendship; about finding things in common, having a partner in crime, and I realise that maybe times haven't changed that much at all.

Maybe it's because

2012-01-08T16:05:00.000Z

It's the city of my birth, and even though I live in the countryside now, I've never lived more than thirty miles from its centre. Whenever I stand on Waterloo bridge and see the sun glinting on the river, I get a rush of pride that this is my town; that I can call myself a Londoner.

Yet there will always be times when I feel like a tourist. Afternoons where I wander around bewildered; craning up at tall buildings, rushing past my reflection in shop-front windows. I still traipse down crowd-filled streets because I've never learned the quiet short-cuts, still shop in over-priced chain stores because I've never found the secret alternatives.

Philip has often teased me for my inability to find my way around. When he first arrived here, he took the time and trouble to learn the streets, to look for the places he wanted to eat or shop or simply spend time. He walked and walked, until the roads had formed their own pattern in his brain, until he'd formed an affinity with his adopted city. Growing up in London, I just took it all for granted. Or hopped on the tube.

Nowadays, part of the challenge in finding my way around is that my understanding of the geography is totally based on London Underground maps. My only way of working out the route between two locations is by interpreting the coloured spaghetti of the tube.

But at the same time, I have my own, ever-so-slightly bonkers, theory of tube travel in London. It's based on the miles I've walked, swapping between one line and another, along corridors, through tunnels, up and down escalators, threading my way between rushed commuters, striding past unappreciated and unappreciative buskers. I sometimes believe that it's all a big conspiracy.

Just imagine that, by the time you reach your train, you've actually already walked the distance to your destination. Could it be, that the trains shake and move in the dark, but don't actually go anywhere? That the tube companies entice you in, with their promise of speedy travel, only to use you as a captive audience for the adverts pasted just above eye-level. Have you ever wondered why those adverts are so carefully positioned exactly where you end up looking, as you try desperately to avoid eye contact with the people sitting opposite. As you sit there, in over-crowded, over-hot, carriages, desperately waiting to be set free at your destination, have you ever questioned why it takes so long to travel just a mile?

Or could it just be, that my antipathy to tube travel has more to do with the fact that most of the subterranean railways criss-cross their way beneath north London, leaving those of us who hail from the south-east, forever grateful to red buses and black taxis, fundamentally mistrusting the notion of underground travel in any form at all?

Shortfall - a poem

2012-01-03T19:48:00.000Z

If I could close my eyes and turn away

Pretend I haven’t seen or caused the fault

Not know I was the one who disappointed

Nor face the truth, that I have fallen short

It seems so hard to take the errors’ credit

Or make myself accept my personal blame

Gather in the harsh accusing finger

Not whisper out some other culprit’s name

Oh. I wish I could return to childhood

Let someone else protect and make it right

Shrug away the weight of resolution

Sleep undisturbed throughout the longest night

Packing up

2011-12-30T21:48:00.001Z

And then, almost before we knew it, there was nothing left but a half-full tub of pistachio nuts and the unclaimed contents of a Christmas cracker.

The empty bottles had been rinsed and put out for recycling, the left-over cheeses packed into a cool-bag for the journey home, the still gift-wrapped panettone was stowed in a box alongside a half-full pack of lentils, and an unused Christmas pudding generously offered up to the ones most likely to eat it.

The dishwasher was emptied for the very last time, and the neat white crockery lined up once again on the kitchen shelves. One of us unplugged the twinkling white lights, while someone else crammed the carefully ironed tablecloth and napkins back into a bag, making a safe nest for the still-new candlesticks and their half-burnt candles.

As I gave the lounge one last tidy-round, plumped up the cushions on the striped grey and white armchairs, straightened the back of the cosy sofa, I realised just how quickly we'd each claimed our own seat, and stuck to it for the whole week. I thought about how many times we'd sat there and chinked together our glasses of sherry, how we'd sipped at gaudy yellow snowballs, and relished our fruit-filled gin and tonics. I remembered how we'd tried to find new words to describe the deep red wines and smooth dark chocolates, and how we'd sat there watching our favourite Christmas films; sobbing for tiny Tim Cratchit in the Muppets' Christmas Carol, smiling at the recovery of Zuzu's petals in It's a Wonderful Life.

Upstairs, the wardrobes and chests were clear, and the clean white bed-linen looked as good as new. Our individual shampoos and gels were removed from their corners of the shower, our toothbrushes and wash-bags packed away for another trip. The huge white bath remained unused, but the enormous towel rail and industrial strength radiator continued to pump out enough heat to warm a castle.

Back in the kitchen, the dining table was wiped clean, and the chairs arranged neatly around it. There was no sign now of the shared meals, or the cups of tea we'd learned to make, just how we each liked it - sweet and milky for some, strong and dark for others. Who would have known that we'd sit here for hours, playing at being despotic dictators in a board game, or scrabbling for letter tiles to form interlocking words? Who could have foreseen the unexpected pleasure, or predicted the level of ferocious competitiveness, that came with learning to play Canasta?

The last of the boxes and bags was carried out to the car, thenwe pulled the door closed tight behind us and stowed the key away in its wall-safe. We tried to leave it just as we'd found it, and on the surface, you'd never know we'd been there. But, as I started the car, then turned to take one last look, I felt pretty sure that when the next guests arrived, they might still catch the faint echo of an often-told joke and a fading ripple of laughter.

Cutting it close

2011-12-11T20:14:00.001Z

If I'd walked through a different door that day, we might never have met. If we hadn't hit it off straight away, I might never have seen him again. It was 1996 and he arrived just a few months before I left. He's one of the few people I still know from those days, the only one I still know from the town I lived in then, the only reason I go back there now.

A lot has happened in the intervening years, but as I sit in the black leather chair, sipping on a mug of too hot, too strong coffee, it's as though no time at all has passed, though everything and nothing has changed.

He still remembers the day I dropped by on my way to a night out, wearing a sixties-style black and white dress. Every now and then he reminds me of how I looked and just for a moment we both stop and remember; and I feel as good as I ever did.

My hair was long in those days, and I could have played for Britain in the hair-flicking world championships. I'd got it down to a fine art, but that never impressed him - he never liked my hair long, never missed a chance to suggest it would look better short. And strangely, after a while I began to realise that he was right.

It was a huge leap of faith to trust him enough to go from long and girly, to short and sleek; but that's the thing about friends, you trust them. And so I did. I might have felt like crying as I watched my hair falling to the floor, but his confident assurance kept me from running out the door.

Last year, I tried growing it again; it got long enough to tie back and put up, but I knew he wouldn't approve, so I avoided him for months, until I'd got tired of it and knew it needed some drastic action. And like any proper friend, he didn't tell me I was stupid, moan about my neglect, or try to persuade me to do something I didn't want to. He just took control, as he always has and always will, and turned me back into the person I'd rather be.

I may only see him every six weeks or so, but I always feel better when I do, and that's not just because he tells the worst jokes in the world. He'll talk to me about my family, ask if Philip is still playing the banjo, tell me how my daughter has turned out a fine young lady and a credit to her mother; he'll let me know how protective he felt when one of his colleagues showed too keen an interest in her.

He'll untangle the knots in my neck and the tension in my brain with the most skilful of head massages, then he'll switch his attention to considering how my hair should be cut. It doesn't matter what I think, or want, he'll simply decide what I should look like next - and whatever he decides, I know I'll feel more able to face the world, more confident in who I am. And who could ask for more - from a hairdresser or a friend?

Hedera Helix - a story

2011-12-04T18:43:00.001Z

It was a beautiful garden.

The deep borders were filled with scented bushes and tall arching roses, each carefully placed by the old couple who’d lived there before; people who knew about soil types and seasonal planting.

When Jack and Pamela had first moved in, they’d been happy to leave the garden alone, waiting to see the succession of flowers bringing new shades and shapes to the borders as the seasons passed. They’d welcomed the dark green foliage of the ivy snaking its way up the fence panels, pleased that it softened the long straight lines, noting how its dark leaves made a fine contrast to the emerald-green brightness of the curving lawn.

But it had grown so quickly. And now it covered the fences, its pointed leaves intermingling to block out any colour, any sign of what was beneath; the stems stretching and snaking up the wood, with their tiny, hairy shoots clinging and grasping onto anything and everything.

Last night Pam had dreamt of it, pictured the ivy spreading and creeping towards the house, reaching out for the kitchen wall. She’d seen herself standing at the kitchen sink, watching the tendrils snake in under the window sill, pulling the window open, crawling towards her. The images had frightened her and disturbed her sleep, perhaps that’s why Jack had left her dozing in bed this morning, why he’d gone off to visit his brother without saying goodbye.

And now she stood on the back door step, wishing there was a little more warmth in the wintery sun. As her fingers curled tightly round a mug of tea, she shuddered at the memory of her dream, the thought of those dark green leaves sliding over the bright red and orange tiles that gave such brightness to the kitchen.

Jack had promised to make a start on trimming the ivy before he went out, but she could see no sign of his efforts. True, the wheelbarrow was parked halfway up the garden, where the ivy grew thickest, but the fence post was still leaning precariously, covered by leaves. She wasn’t sure whether the ivy’s tendrils were pulling it down, or holding it back from falling; she’d warned Jack to be careful when he cleared it, sure that the wood underneath would be splintered and cracked.

Pam looked up at the tall elm trees. At this time of year they should be bare skeletal structures, clear against the pale grey sky. But the ivy had taken them over too, so their trunks were now a dark bushy mass. Their branches had been wrapped round and round, until only a few twigs remained uncovered at the ends, reaching out like beseeching fingers from a swamp, begging to be freed from the enveloping greenness.

She knew Jack wouldn’t be back for hours, perhaps she could surprise him; let him see how much she could get done without him. He’d been moaning about the ivy for weeks now, railing against its gradual encroachment. He’d seemed almost threatened by it, offended by this greenery that had arrived unwelcome and uninvited into the garden, his garden.

Decision made, Pam started to look for the garden tools. She found the thick gloves quickly, knew she’d be glad of their protection from the damp glossiness of the leaves. Then she searched for the shears and secateurs, but there was no sign of them anywhere. She couldn’t find them in the garden shed, they weren’t in the cupboard under the stairs either, nor hastily thrown in with all the bags and rubbish under the kitchen sink.

She’d really need something sharp to cut through the snaking tendrils, to ease them away from their anchor points, but perhaps she could just begin by clearing a way through the outermost leaves, pulling away the looser sections of growth. She wasn’t sure how hard to tug, worried that the fence would sway and topple, but gradually she made progress. She tried to ignore the rustling and creaking sounds that seemed to increase as she worked, focusing on the other sounds of the garden, the hum of motorway traffic a couple of miles away, the cawing of a crow from the top of the elms.

She could hear none of the usual Sunday garden sounds, no shrieking children, no droning lawnmowers, but it was late in the year; perhaps her neighbours were all inside their warm houses, preparing a weekly roast lunch while she worked out here alone.

Pam wished she’d found the shears; their long sharp blades would have given her a much longer reach through the tangled growth. The secateurs would have been great for those thick trunk-like stems at the bottom; cutting through them would ensure the ivy didn’t grow back. Instead, she pulled and pulled, grabbing at handfuls of leaves, throwing them over her shoulder towards the wheelbarrow. As the light slowly began to penetrate through the green gloom, she saw something glinting on the ground just ahead, something long and metallic.

“Oh for goodness sake Jack” she muttered “you always make such a fuss when I leave the tools outside. All that moaning about bluntness and rust, and you go and leave our new shears here in the bushes; just wait ‘til you get home, I’m gonna love teasing you about this one.”

She reached forward for the shears. At first she thought they’d just fallen into the ivy, but then she saw how the leaves seemed to have twisted and entwined round the handles, just like the tree branches, curling and wrapping. She moved closer, treading carelessly on the ivy tendrils that reached out towards the lawn, brushing away the pointed leaves that grazed her face.

As she tugged at the shears they seemed to move slightly, but when she pulled again, she realised there was something else holding them back. It was funny how it almost looked like an ivy-covered hand, with an ivy-covered, arm-shaped branch behind it. It was strange how, in the gloomy depths of the bushes, the ivy-arm looked like it was wearing a checked shirt, one of those brushed-cotton ones Jack was so fond of. Just like the one she’d washed and dried yesterday for him to wear to his brother’s today.

As she crept closer, Pam realised that the shears were indeed being held by an ivy-covered hand, on the end of a checked-shirted, ivy-twisted arm. As she turned to run, the tendrils from the grass crept over her shoes and curled around her ankles. Slowly, slowly, as she tried to scream, the leaves that had brushed her face and hair slithered into her mouth and silenced her.

It was a beautiful garden.

A Tale of Two Villages

2011-11-27T20:14:00.001Z

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light..."

So wrote Charles Dickens more than a hundred and fifty years ago in A Tale of Two Cities. His words have been echoing in my mind this weekend.

This time last year, as long-time readers of this blog will know, we lived in the best street in the best village in the world. And as the last Saturday in November dawned, we were up early, donning our warmest clothing for the best weekend of the year, the weekend when the residents of Crown Road put up the Christmas lights.

But six months ago, knowing that we couldn't go on renting for ever, and having given up hope of ever being able to afford to buy a house in Shoreham, we moved along the valley to Otford. This year, there was no slip of paper through the letter box confirming the date or time to assemble, there was no bustle and noise outside as the boxes of light-bulbs and wheels of cable were placed at strategic points along the street.

Instead, a few days ago, Philip received a text from Keith, our old landlord and ex-next door neighbour, inviting us to go along and join the annual ritual. Philip knew straight away that he wanted to go, I took a little longer to set aside my grudging sense of disappointment that our new village has not yet entwined itself into our hearts, and finally agree that it would be a good thing to go back and join in.

So yesterday, instead of just opening the front door and stepping outside, we jumped in the car and drove along the valley. And when we arrived, all was just as it should be. We slotted straight back into the roles we'd been assigned last year. Philip in charge of the Christmas tree at the end of the road, me the queen of the WD40, making sure all the bulb sockets were liberally squirted.

Nobody was surprised that we were there, though many asserted their pleasure that we were. Some things had changed - different window frames on one house, a new car outside another, but so many things were still the same. We chatted and worked, exclaimed with gratitude at the coffee and flapjacks as they appeared and praised the choc-chip biscuits made by Imogen, who wasn't even born the first year we were there to put up the lights.

There were some new neighbours, joining in for the very first time, and about to find out the wonder of those bright lights in the darkest month of the year. There were others who, like us, have moved away and were spoken of and remembered fondly.

At the end of the morning, as always, we made our way to The Crown, the pub at the top of the road, the pub that had been our very first visiting place in the village and the venue for our wedding reception. There we all squashed into the small front bar, recently decorated by the new landlords who are slowly and quietly working their way into the affections of the village.

And it was only then, as we all raised a cheer to Crown Road and its lights, that it really hit me. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. We've moved along the valley, but my heart is still living at no 13.

Soundtrack stories - Trouble

2011-11-24T20:00:00.000Z

I've never owned a song by Coldplay and until recently I didn't even know what this one was called, but if I hear the first three notes, wherever I am and whatever I'm doing, I'll stop for just a moment and think "Oh, it's Ged."

And suddenly I'm back in the house in Bickley.

It was always a strange house; an old lodge that had once marked the entrance to a much grander building. A bungalow, built in the shape of a cross; it had a series of rooms leading off each other, each of them tiny, and each of them impossible to keep warm.

In my memory, I'm always sitting at the table in the dining room, looking out on the ivy-covered wall that separates the house from a busy road. The table is covered in a red and white checked cloth that doesn't quite match the raspberry-painted walls. The ironing board stands in one corner because there's nowhere else to keep it, and just behind where I sit is the bookcase with its shelves of books arranged by the colour of their spines.

And all the children still live with me.

Claire and Megan are in their bedroom, tucked behind one of the doors leading from the lounge. The eight year gap in their ages brings a strange mix of cuddly toys and sparkly make-up to the mess that surrounds them. Charlie is sprawled on the sofa watching tv. In one corner of the lounge there's a huge open fireplace, piled up with the pine cones we've collected from the garden. In the opposite corner there's a small wooden staircase that leads to the boys' attic bedroom, and up there sits Ged playing on his Yamaha keyboard.

As I sit at the table, gazing out of the window, I don't notice the sound of the traffic outside, or the shouts from the tv in the next room, because all I can hear, flowing down that small wooden staircase, are those three notes.

Back then, I didn't know what the song was called, but I looked it up on Google recently and read the lyrics. And now, as I sit at the dining table in another house and time, I'd really love for the girls to be here squabbling over make-up, for Charlie to be glued to Match of the Day, and for Ged to be somewhere upstairs playing those first three notes, so that I could sing back to him, in the words of the song.

Oh I never meant to cause you trouble; Oh I never meant to do you wrong.

Irrational numbers - a story

2011-11-13T21:55:00.001Z

Some people have voices in their head, Sophia had numbers.

At school, she’d always been the best at arithmetic, at work she was the first to turn a string of digits into a solution. There was something that compelled her to play with figures, to build meaning from those markers of time and scale. She’d always known that numbers were more than just unrelated symbols; they were parts of patterns and shapes, and if she played with them for long enough, she’d always find an answer.

Each morning at her desk when she logged into e-mail, the numbers glared out at her; the total in her in-box, the boldness of the messages still unread. At the end of each day, she stared at the figures and compared the results; the achievements of her working life measured, not in terms of matters dealt with, but by the balances remaining. She notched up the completion of hours passed, counted the days to the weekend, the weeks until payday, the months and years to retirement.

When the money hit her bank account each month, there was no room in her thoughts for the anticipated pleasures of purchase; the new numbers in her online account trapped her, caught her imagination, kept her looking, counting and calculating. A mortgage payment meant the outstanding total was lower; if she paid a little extra there’d be less interest due. Pounds and percentages, totals and timescales, whirled through her brain.

Driving home, she looked at her milometer, at the gauge that told her how much petrol she had left. In her mind, she turned the fuel in the tank to a number of miles, the miles into minutes, the distance from home into a time of arrival. When she got home she turned the evening into the seconds before sleep, the hours before waking again.

When her 51st birthday arrived, she felt the stabbing pain of the single digit sticking out on its own from her strong half-century. “Only half-way to a hundred and two” Sophia consoled herself “only three times seventeen.” But it still felt wrong. Its unevenness unsettled her; it wasn’t a prime number and she felt beyond her own prime. She added and subtracted, multiplied and divided, but the numbers kept jumping; they wouldn’t settle, her life wouldn’t balance.

She started doing puzzles, writing numbers in squares, trying to bring order to the increasing chaos, if she could find the right home for the 1s to 9s, then surely the rest would find its place? But then she found she couldn’t bear to form the lines of a numeral. It felt as though each digit she wrote was a subtraction from the total.

She switched off the glowing red lights around the house, the timer on the cooker panel and the flashing digits of the bed-side alarm. She stopped winding the old wooden clock on the sideboard. She searched for ways to add back the numbers. She favoured clothes with no buttons or fasteners, elasticated waists, slip on shoes. She gave up going to the hairdressers, grabbed back the minutes spent on plucking her eyebrows, painting her nails. She began to eat meals that needed no cooking, then food that needed no chewing. Her sentences got shorter, her words monosyllabic. She forced herself to stay up all night, snatching at the moments that had previously passed unnoticed in sleep, counting and reckoning all that had been, totting up all that might be left.

As her weight dropped and her energy dissipated, her friends began to slip away. She couldn’t understand how the subtractions were adding up. She tried to crack the code and decipher the equations, but the patterns felt disrupted; she couldn’t solve the multiplying divisions in her life.

Then she began to wish for zero; the only figure that could add nothing and take nothing away. She lay on her bed, curled up in a tight round ball and dreamed of the glorious round nought without a beginning or end.
Finally, as she longed for and dreamed of her solution, Sophia slipped into oblivion.

Soundtrack stories - Finlandia

2011-11-09T23:57:00.000Z

I wonder how many of you listen to, or have at least heard of, Desert Island Discs? For anyone who hasn't, it's a radio show where famous guests are invited to imagine themselves cast away on a desert island, and they choose the eight pieces of music they'd like to take with them.

I'm glad to say I wasn't around when it first aired in 1942, but I've listened to it hundreds of times and played the game in my head almost as often. My choice of favourite tracks changes almost as often as the seasons and slightly less often than my moods, but there's one piece of music that has been in my top eight for at least the last ten years.

On the radio, people almost always choose, or perhaps feel obliged to select, at least one piece of classical music; apparently, the most popular is Beethoven's ninth symphony. I'm no different, except for me, there's not the tiniest sense of obligation, and it's not Beethoven I'd pick; the track I'd go for is Sibelius' Finlandia. I'd choose it because every time I listened to it I know I'd be taken away from the isolation and desperation of my desert island, and back to the astonishment and wonder of the first time I heard it performed.

Many years ago, I had a pretty dull job in a pretty fine organisation. There was nothing glamorous about my daily tasks - I filed, I typed, I managed databases and dealt with insurance claims, but my employers had a strong sense of history and a long presence in London. They owned a box at the Royal Albert Hall and for every single concert, any tickets that weren't wanted by the Governors, were made available to staff in a raffle. Once a month it was my job to organise that raffle and distribute the tickets amongst my colleagues. It was by far and away the most enjoyable task I've ever been employed to do. I loved the sense of anticipation as staff waited to see the list of winners posted up, and I loved the look of delight as I handed over the tickets to the lucky winners.

Some concerts were very popular and completely oversubscribed, but there were others, usually during the Proms season, when there was not enough interest to fill the box. One night there were several spare seats for a Proms programme that included Finlandia; I'd heard my Mum say it was one of her favourites so I decided to go along, but if I'm honest I wasn't expecting much. The last time I'd been to a classical concert had been with the school, when I'd yawned and fidgeted my way through the orchestra's best efforts in typical teenage boredom.

I don't remember now what else was on the programme that night, but I do remember looking down from my gilt-framed seat in the box, and wondering at the scale of it all - the number of musicians, the range of instruments, the row upon row of people listening intently as the music played and erupting into loud and enthusiastic applause when it ended. I couldn't pick out each of the instruments that leant its individual voice to the marvellous whole, but I remember sitting there as the music built and built, moving from bold, through calm, to triumphant. And I can picture, even now, the huge kettle drums that pounded out the rhythm and emotion, that matched and lifted the beating of my heart.

Diversion

2011-11-06T20:18:00.000Z

As I emerge blinking from the tunnel under the Thames, I realise I've allowed too much time for my journey. I've over-compensated for the usual slow crawl, that sees hundreds of cars filter through the toll booths into the tunnel like grains of sand through an egg-timer, and now I know I'll get there much too early.

Just as I'm thinking that I really don't want to hang around on my own at the training venue waiting for my colleagues to turn up, I see the sign for a service station just ahead. With a quick flick of the indicator and a twist of the wheel, I pull off the motorway and follow the road as it winds round and under the fast-flowing traffic.

It's further away than I'd expected, past the signs for the shopping centre, beyond a billboard boldly announcing the'ultimate karting experience'. As I turn in, the slip-road winds on and on until I'm almost convinced I've missed the car-park and I'll be spat back out onto the motorway, but then I see it, looming up out of the last remaining wisps of the early-morning mist.

The huge, white concrete slabs are incongruous against the wasteland and scrub. It's almost as though I'm reliving my childhood games in the garden and I've shrunk down to the size of my lego set. And, as I struggle to find the entrance, I wonder if, just like some of my lego creations, they've forgotten to put in a door.

Inside, it's almost empty, the only other customers are men. So many of them seem to be wearing the unofficial working-man's uniform of an over-sized navy sweatshirt and loose-bottomed jeans. I wonder how many of them actually have any connection with the logos emblazoned on their chests.

The high-pitched welcome of the girl behind the coffee counter is a strange sing-song contrast to the hum of deep male voices all around me. She works slowly and methodically, completing each order with care before starting the next. Even at this time, with so few people about, a queue starts to form. I take my coffee over to a table by the window. Everyone else is dotted around the edges of the room, as though in some sort of hidden code, they've all agreed they won't take the tables in the middle.

I look up across the room at the harsh flashing lights of the 'Lucky Coin' concession, where an array of slot machines and computer games shout silently across the space. I'm always surprised to see these machines, I can't quite fathom the mindset that makes people simply give away their money to a shiny metal monster; even now there's a navy-sweat-shirted man there, pressing the buttons, in desperation or unbridled optimism; either strikes me as sad.

In one corner is an old man, well past the age for the working-men's clothing, he's wearing a cord jacket and a tweed cap. 'A proper old man' I think, as I look across. At first I think he's asleep, then I see him turn the page of the huge large-print book propped up on the table in front of him. I quickly dismiss the unbidden thought and sense of relief that he's neither asleep nor dead. At this time of the day it's hard to think of a worse fate than dying alone and unnoticed in a motorway service station.

To my right is floor to ceiling glass. The clear panes are dotted with transfer images of coffee beans and costa cups; they look like a skein of geese flying across the sky. Outside the mist has cleared, and I realise that time is passing and I need to get on my way. As I pick up my coat and bag I glance out of the window, and I'm surprised to see a huge lake spread out behind the Lego, surrounded by trees and shrubs, with real birds flying across it. I'd had no idea it was there.

As I head back to my car and continue my journey, I'm glad to be reminded that there's so often another view, another world, just waiting to be seen.

Settle

2011-11-02T21:15:00.000Z

To reconcile, resolve or mend

To calm down, slow down, face the end

To straighten out, to come to rest

To aim for only second best

To sink, or drop, descend or fall

To find the bottom of it all

To never float, or rise again

To dumb the hope and numb the pain

To pay what’s due and clear the debt

To spread the price of terms not set

To clear what’s owed, discharge the cost

And settle for a lifetime lost.

Irene - a story

2011-10-30T08:45:00.000Z

She’d seen the others watching her in meetings, noticed them looking up mid-sentence to gauge her expression. A firm rebuff would bring the most confident proposal to a stuttering halt. Sometimes just a look was enough; a disdainfully raised eyebrow, a contemptuous frown. They all knew she could control the silence, that she could impose it on others, force a meek, wordless, acceptance. They’d felt the force of nature that swept away the opposition and moved relentlessly on.

As evening fell, Irene sped home; taking the route through the park only because it was quicker, more direct. The relentless drumroll of her heels kept time with the pounding in her head, only faltering when she kicked at stones, swiped at debris on the path. She didn’t hear the shouts of children in the playground, didn’t see the boy pedalling towards her, or the McDonald’s takeaway bag swinging from his handlebar. She barely registered his anguished cry, or the sound of metal scraping on tarmac, didn’t connect it at all with the small pebble she’d viciously struck out of the way.

Irene didn’t turn to see the boy on his knees, desperately trying to reassemble pieces of burger and place them back in their polystyrene trays. It was another person’s kindness that brought the hot embarrassed tears to his eyes as he finally sat back, acknowledging that he’d never be able to brush the dirt and grit from the fries lying scattered across the path.

At the other side of the park, there were crowds of people leaving the cricket ground. Old men shuffled past, trying to bring life and movement back to arthritic legs that had sat still for too long. Irene increased her pace; she didn’t want to get caught up amongst them. As she whirled past she didn’t see the couple trying to move out of her way; the grey-haired lady juggling a picnic blanket and a cushion, the elderly man leaning heavily on a walking-stick. Irene didn’t hear the woman’s sharp intake of breath as her husband’s stick caught in a small pot-hole, didn’t see the panic cross that frail lady’s face at the thought of another fractured hip, more weeks in hospital, slow, painful healing and the struggle to walk again.

It wasn’t Irene who rushed to check if the old man was alright. She didn’t hear his faltering insistence that he was still in one piece, that he should have looked where he was going. She didn’t see the gentle care with which two equally aged men helped him back to his feet, nor the kind arm of reassurance one of them offered to the trembling wife.

As Irene headed away from the centre of town, it became quieter. She came to a place where there were no people, no birds in the trees, only dead leaves and litter blowing along the street. As she neared the house her pace slowed; ahead of her was the one silence she couldn’t control. In the now-empty rooms, only the walls would echo her strident views, and only the mirrors would see her frown.

The key in her hand felt cold and heavy, the door resisted her tired push. Irene sank down on the step. Her storm was spent.

Soundtrack stories - Fast Love

2011-10-23T09:32:00.000+01:00

October 1996, Gran Canaria.

There are many reasons for me to remember 1996; not many of them are good. It was the year my dad died, a year after my marriage had ended. I was at University as a mature student, halfway through training to be a primary school teacher,and slowly realising that my childish aspirations were indeed just that. Most of me spent most of that year questioning the actions and decisions that preceded and accompanied it. Most of me spent most of that year not knowing that there'd be a week in October, which would begin to change everything.

One of the outcomes of marrying too young, and then making being married all that matters, is that you miss a lot of other things; I had a whole long list of them. When I met Fran in an English class halfway through our first term at university, when we both pulled a grimacing face at something particularly pointless offered up by one of our fellow students, I realised I'd stumbled across the biggest missing-out of all.

It seems crazy now, to think that I'd so willingly dropped all my school friends, that I'd given up on going anywhere with anyone who wasn't family, that I'd so easily become a caricature of who I'd thought I should be; but that's what I'd done. And then suddenly, there was Fran. Intelligent, funny, cynical, beautiful, with her dark Italian eyes that always had a glint of wry amusement and a hint of something more. Francesca Ferrari, my new best friend.

I don't know now which of us suggested the holiday - neither of us had any money and it was just another one of those things I should really have known better than to do. But when you've taken so much time and trouble to mess up almost everything, the idea of running away is very beguiling, so we looked on the Teletext listings anyway. And as we scrolled through screen after screen of bargain-priced offers for a week in the sun, the idea took hold. I'd never been on a holiday with a girl friend before, and we didn't even know each other very well, but a quick phone call to a bored-sounding holiday operator, a reckless charge to my credit card, and without even knowing where we'd be staying, we were booked for a week in the Canary Islands.

There are so many things I could write about that week. I could try to describe the way we spent day after day, lying by the pool, talking almost non-stop, the words and the laughter tripping over themselves to be heard. I could conjure up the people we met; the funny Essex boys who tried so hard to impress, the two quiet Austrians who we'd come to know much better.

But this is a soundtrack story, so let me take you instead to a dark nightclub, hidden underground beneath the gaudy shopping centres of Playa del Ingles. The music is loud, its beat echoing around the huge room, pulsating through the dancing crowd. Leaning against the bar at one side, are two dark-haired women. You can tell by their sun-tanned faces and relaxed smiles that they're having a great holiday. They've been dancing for hours, and now they're sipping on vodka and lemon, watching the others, chatting away, though it's too loud to hear. When the music stops they'll pause and listen for what comes next, hoping it will be the song they've danced to all week. And when it is, they'll both leave their drinks and stand up, a quick glance from one to the other, a wide, shared smile, as they make their way through the crowd to the very middle of the dance floor.

George Michael will start to sing "Looking for some education, made my way into the night"

They will dance.

And nothing else matters.

------------

This week, it will be exactly fifteen years since that trip to Gran Canaria. My life has changed so much since then, that I'd barely recognise the woman I once was. Throughout that time, Francesca Ferrari has been my friend and for every one of those years, Fast Love has been the soundtrack to the continuing wonder of her friendship.

The hour before

2011-10-20T22:05:00.002+01:00

I don't need to get up so early. I could stay in bed for another hour, rush into the shower, pull on the clothes I laid out the night before and be out the door in thirty minutes.

But I don't.

Instead, I slip out of the dark bedroom and head downstairs, groping for the light-switch on the landing as I pass. I tread carefully, trying to avoid knocking down the wall of books we've been building there, volume by volume until the day we get round to fitting bookshelves.

When I get downstairs, I realise it's cold. For the first time since we've lived here, the lounge has a distinct chill, and in the darkness of the early morning, the rawness of the air emphasises the emptiness of the room.

I sit for a while in the chair by the window, and watch the sky lighten. Every now and then a car purrs quietly past. The only other sound is the repetitive call of the wood pigeons, I see them balancing on the telephone wires that string across the street; dark black cables marking out their territory in the brightening sky.

When I look over at the sofa, I see where Philip sat last night. His shoes lie slightly askew, just where he slipped them from his feet. The cushions are just as he left them - stacked up in the corner, the imprint of his body clearly there. For a moment I wonder if that will be how it is when he's gone, a memory, an impression of him being here; his possessions left behind, but no more him.

It might be that, or the chill in the room that makes me shiver. Either way, it's enough to make me realise it's time to move, to get ready for the day ahead. I make two cups of tea and take them back upstairs to the warmth of the bedroom; where the impression on the pillows is caused by him still being there; where he's waiting to say good morning.

Soundtrack stories - pressing play

2011-10-16T19:17:00.000+01:00

As I drove to work a few days ago, a song came on the radio. Unbidden and unexpected, it caught me, whirled me up in its notes, and threw me back down in 1994.

It doesn't have any association with a remarkable incident; it doesn't remind me of a long-lost love, or life-changing moment. It's not in my top ten favourite songs and it wouldn't even feature in my Desert Island Discs, but when it came on the radio, it had the power to take me back in an instant, to a particular time and place.

The song was Deacon Blue's 'A Ship called Dignity', it was the opening track on their greatest hits album 'Our Town' and I played it on a plastic radio-cassette player, while I decorated our sons' bedroom. As I slapped on blue paint - dark blue at the bottom, light blue at the top, with the colours separated by a brightly patterned sea-side border, I sang my heart out to the opening song and the following 18 tracks. I played it again and again, moving the player around the room with me as I worked. I listened to one side then downed the paint-brushes to swap the cassette over and play the other. Before long, I knew the order of the songs so well I was singing the next one before the opening bars had even sounded.

I was happy. I was decorating the house we'd worked and saved for. It was the house that the children were meant to grow up in, go off to the rest of their lives from, bring back our grandchildren to. I didn't know then that we'd leave that house the following year, that the room I was decorating would all too soon end up being slept in by someone else's children. I certainly didn't know then how guilty I'd feel in all the years in-between; for not trying hard enough to keep us all together in the house that we all loved.

For that week, while I painted and sang, I was happy. It was a time when I didn't know just how miserable I'd feel for a long time afterwards. When the song came on the radio, it took me straight back to that happiness and I'm so glad it had the power to do that.

--------

All of which has left me thinking. I've never tried giving this blog a 'theme' before, and I'm not about to turn it into a music blog now. You would see only too soon, just how mundane and unambitious my musical tastes can be. But I know there are dozens of other songs that have a similar effect on me - bringing me instantly to a moment in my life, pricking at my memories, prompting my reflections. I think I'd like to try and capture some of those memories here, maybe once a week, under the heading Soundtrack Stories.

I've been so delighted by all the new (and continuing) readers who've visited this blog since the Blog-of-Note excitement last week, and it occurred to me that this might also be a way of getting to know you all a bit better. So I'd also love to hear if any of you have your own striking memories associated with songs. If you've written about them, feel free to e-mail me, or please put a link in the Comments box and I'll come and take a look. I may even share the very best of them here if people are ok with that.

Let me know what you think.

Sharon

Well Dippers

2011-10-13T22:35:00.002+01:00

If you squint at the map, so you can still read the place names, but can't quite make out the distances between them, then Tunbridge Wells is our nearest town. At least that's what we tell ourselves. But whenever we visit, it feels more like slipping into someone else's world.

At one time it was a fashionable spa, a place to see and be seen. As we stroll through the Pantiles, I become a Jane Austen heroine, lifting the hem of my ribbon-trimmed dress to step out daintily over the muddy pavement. As I twirl my parasol, I peek out from under my bonnet,and smile innocently at the dashing, handsome, soldiers passing by.

We dip in and out of shops - boutiques and emporiums for people who live a different life. We covet furniture made for high-ceilinged living rooms in three-storey houses, and sneer at clothes for slim blonde ladies who work in publishing and have more than one winter coat.

When Philip suggests a visit to the second-hand bookshop, I encourage him to go on ahead; I know he'll be gone a while. Last time I trailed silently after him as he tiptoed round books stacked in piles on the floor and browsed through worn-looking volumes on faded wooden shelves. When we finally emerged, I had the taste of books and dust, of other people's lives in my mouth. This time I opt for coffee instead.

The unexpectedly warm weather has sent people scurrying for their summer clothes again. As I sit outside the coffee shop I see a stream of bare legs pass by. Pale-skinned, fake-tanned, bulging calf muscles, thick ankles, all accompanied by the slap-slap of flip-flops on the brick-laid path. There are no cars in this pedestrianised end of town, so people meander by, crossing from one side to the other to peer at the window displays that capture their attention.

A woman sits at the table next to me; she's probably in her early seventies, immaculately made up. She sips at her coffee without leaving the slightest trace of lipstick on her cup - I envy her that skill. She draws deeply on a cigarette, relishing every inch of its journey into her lungs. When I ask her to pass me the sugar bowl, she does so willingly, but seems compelled to apologise. I don't mind other people smoking, I never have, but she hurriedly finishes the cigarette and stubs it out. She leaves almost straight away and I'm left feeling bad for her ruined pleasure.

A man pauses to rest, taking a chair just in front of me. His brightly checked shorts and blue baseball cap are a striking contrast to his middle-aged belly and stubbly chin. I listen to him as he keeps up a constant flow of chatter - with himself and to himself. He recites all the train stations between here and the sea, the route clearly etched into his memory, but several times I see him shake his head and say "I don't know" in answer to a question only he can hear.

Like me he watches the passers-by, commenting on everything he sees. For me, it's written down in my notebook, for him it's spoken aloud. In many ways we're just the same - remarking on what we see, to audiences real or imagined. We speak to everyone and no-one; each of us dipping into the Wells, sharing what we find.

Holding on - a story

2011-10-09T18:28:00.001+01:00

Halfway up the high street, Dominic decided to let go of his Dad’s hand. Usually he liked walking here, where the pavement and the street were at the same level. There weren’t any cars, but there were so many people, you had to duck in and out of them. He liked that, even when it meant you had to watch out for shopping bags bumping.

But Dad seemed to want to go faster than everyone else today. Dom heard him tutting when the old people stopped just in front of them, he knew that Mum would have slowed down, given them a chance to get going again, but Dad mumbled something cross and just kept going, pushing his way past. Dominic saw the old lady shake her head; he wanted to stop and smile, make it alright, but Dad just kept marching on. It wasn’t easy to keep up, even when he half-and-half walked and ran.

Sometimes when he was out with Mum, they did the matching footsteps thing, but not today; every time he’d hopped to the other foot to try and keep step, Dad had changed his stride. Maybe Mum just hadn’t told him how it was supposed to go. Dom tried getting him to slow down instead, tugging at his sleeve. He scuffed his shoes on the brick path, but Dad didn’t notice that either. Halfway up the high street, just by the big shop with the window full of fishing rods and lanterns and wellington boots, Dom slipped his fingers from the big curled up fist and let go.

It wasn’t far to the bridge from here. When he was out with Mum, they’d usually stop for a bit when they got there, and he’d stand on tiptoe with her arms tight round him to look down the river. There were tall, tall buildings along the edge of the water. Some of them looked like giant garden sheds, made from planks of dark brown wood. He knew there were people who lived in them, but he couldn’t imagine the insides, he couldn’t think what it would be like to have stairs in a garden shed. There might be cobwebs and spiders too.

Mum had painted the shed in their garden, bright stripes of green and yellow. “Like daffodils” she’d said, laughing at Daddy when he’d pulled a face and screwed up his eyes. Dom had worried then, he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to like it or not; but he could still remember his mum standing in front of it with spots of yellow paint in her hair and on her hands.

He got to the bridge and leaned against the big grey bricks. The one in the middle had writing on, sometimes when he stood there he’d trace round the letters with his finger, but not today. He peered over, into the water, to watch it passing underneath. There weren’t many boats; just a small blue one with a pointed white sail, and a long black and red barge. Mum had told him about barges, he knew that some people went for their holidays in them, travelling around, up and down canals. She’d told him some people even lived in them, people who went to bed every night with the water rocking them gently to sleep. This one had boxes of flowers on the top, she’d like that.

He wanted her to come back and tell him other things.

The barge moved slowly up the river, away from the bridge. There was a man standing at the back, holding onto a long stick, making sure the boat stayed in the middle and didn’t hit the sides. Just in front of him were two small wooden doors. As Dom watched, one of the doors opened and a lady came out. She looked at the man and smiled as she handed him a big mug of tea. Then she looked up at the bridge, saw Dom and waved. It was a big wave, not just her hand, like the Queen, but her whole arm.

The lady was wearing a big red jumper; she matched the paint on the boat. He thought she looked a bit like his mum, her hair was the same colour, but his mum didn’t have a red jumper. Dom waved back. A small wave at first and then just like her, a big whole-arm stretching wave.

As the boat moved away, the man leaned towards her and said something, maybe he was telling her to go back inside, but she didn’t. She stayed there, looking at Dominic, smiling and waving. Dom’s arm was starting to ache a bit, but he couldn’t stop yet. With the hand that wasn’t waving, he pushed himself up as high as he could, he stretched and leaned forward a bit more against the side of the bridge, he watched, as she got further and further away.

He didn’t know what was happening at first, as the big arms grabbed and held him, and he felt the sharp sting of his knee scraping against the bricks. He couldn’t see much, with his face pushed into the rough front of a jacket, but then he thought that the jacket felt a bit like the sleeve he’d tugged earlier. And after a while, he knew the voice that whispered in his ear.

“Not you. Not you too.”

A new perspective

2011-10-05T22:14:00.000+01:00

There's a point, halfway across the bridge, where I leave one county and move into another, where I cross from the world of work into the land of living.

The traffic is almost always heavy at this point, so we crawl across, nose to tail; a long line of blinking brake lights, like a Christmas garland draped across a mantelpiece. Below me, instead of a fire place, is the river. On my right it stretches into the magical distance of London town; where the tall towers of Canary Wharf compete with the bullet shaped Gherkin to grab the skyline and my attention. I can't see Millbank Tower but I know it's there, just a bit further along; reminding me of the days when I worked on the 17th floor and looked out every day on this same river.

This is the last bridge before the sea; below me, the slow muddy water makes its way to the ocean. It meanders on past Tilbury docks; where passengers wait patiently for the cruise ships to pick them up and transport them to other ports of call in settings more sublime.

As I creep into Kent. I peer at the warehouses and factories laid out on the riverside. I see a line of lorries, decorated in their bright corporate orange-ness, waiting to be filled from the depths of a distribution depot, and I realise I've never actually seen anyone entering or leaving the vast shed. I look at the grey factories and smoking chimneys, wondering what goes on behind the brickwork. Are there people in there working the evening shift, looking up at all those cars on the bridge above, envious that for some of us, the day's work is already over?

Usually, this is the point where I leave the worries and frustrations of my working day behind. I start to relax as the car crawls slowly towards the toll booths that mark my return to the south of England, the place I know best.

Today though, I barely notice the bridge or my journey over it. Today, just as I reach the halfway point, my phone rings, and the voice in my headset tells me excitedly that Blogger has made me today's Blog of Note.

And now, there are no thoughts of work to exorcise from my brain, no weary anticipation of dinner and sleep. My mind is whirling, I'm thrilled to bits by the thought that people might come to read my blog for the very first time, that some of them will come back again. I know already that I'll get to read some great new writers that I just haven't known about before. I can't wait to see who they are.

Today, halfway across the bridge doesn't seem like the escape point from where I'd rather not be; it feels like an entry to a whole new world.

Turquoise

2011-09-29T21:25:00.000+01:00

I saw him again today; the man with the turquoise tie.

There's always a bit of a bottleneck outside the station; the school coach waits to mop up its quota of reluctant scholars and simpletons; the "I'm late for the train" last-minute drivers tut and fume, trying to push their way through to the car park; the stay-at-home wives manoeuvre round the narrow entrance lane in their four-by-fours, dropping off their breadwinners before heading off for a day of all the things I say I'd like to do, but probably wouldn't really.

He stands patiently at the side of the road, waiting for a break in the traffic, unwilling to step out into the unpredictable stop-start line of vehicles. The gently swaying briefcase in his hand is the only sign of movement as I drive past.

Without his tie he'd be Mr Monochrome, dressed in a pale grey suit and white shirt, with an ashen face and silver white hair; without his neck-wear, I know I wouldn't notice him. But today, as I continue my journey to work, I find myself thinking and wondering about the man with the turquoise tie.

I picture him arriving at his office. Taking his sandwich bag and papers from the briefcase, tucking his lunch in a drawer and neatly lining up the pile of reports on his desktop. He doesn't invite conversation with the others; he still hasn't quite got used to the open-plan arrangements they introduced last year. His desk is in the corner, but he preferred it when there was a small room, with a door to shut, a door to be politely knocked on before entering. Some of his colleagues throw out a loud good morning as they pass his desk, but they don't stop to talk and they've already gone past before his mumbled response is half out.

He switches on the computer, wondering what instant responses his inbox will demand today. While he waits for the cursor to point its accusing finger, he reflects on the days when memos and internal mail envelopes gave at least two days grace, the days when a thoughtful measured approach, steeped in experience and expertise were things to be admired, not impatiently tolerated or worse, derided.

Then he shifts in his chair, pulls himself upright. Today will be alright, because today he is wearing his turquoise tie. The one Christine gave him for his birthday three years ago; the one she suggested he put on this morning. He is already smiling when he thinks of the way she came up and draped it over his shoulder as he stood indecisively in front of the wardrobe mirror. She didn't need to say anything, just a nod and a smile, and he knew that she was right. Today will be fine because in just twelve hours there will be another nod and a smile as she slowly and carefully unties the knot and slips the tie from round his neck.

And today will be good, because without even knowing it, the man with the turquoise tie has reminded me that there are kind quiet people, who live and love, and make the world a better place simply by being.

Falling leaves

2011-09-25T18:13:00.000+01:00

Since we came to this house, the first thing I've done each day is look out of the bedroom window. From where I sit in bed, I can't see down into the garden, and there are no houses looking back at me; all I can see through the square window, is a patch of sky, framed by tall sycamore and elm trees. Whenever I've woken on a sunny morning, I've watched the branches waving and the leaves dancing in the sunlight like a happy, hippy crowd at a music festival.

It's getting darker in the mornings now, but the early gloom is brightened by pale yellow leaves that have started floating down past the window. The path is strewn with them; it's as though the party is ending and the crowds are leaving the festival to make their way home, dropping their litter as they go.

It's been four months since we moved in; we arrived in time for summer, and now we're welcoming autumn for the first time. As the weeks have passed I've seen the colours come and go - from the flowers and shrubs that were here before us and the new ones we've planted since. I've cut the grass and trimmed the hedges and watched them grow again. We've eaten lunches and dinners at at the picnic bench that came with us from Shoreham, and we've sat chatting over breakfast at the new table and chairs we bought in an end of season sale, just a couple of weeks ago.

Already there are dry leaves caught in the stems of the lavender bushes and floating across the surface of the pond; soon the grass will be covered in a russet and golden coat that I'll delight in crunching through as I walk down the garden.

Time is passing, but it doesn't feel as though the days are slipping away, more that we're building new traditions, taking old memories out of the box and examining them in a new light.

Watching - a story

2011-09-19T18:38:00.000+01:00

Some people wouldn’t see any point in standing here under the trees, in hanging around this quiet street, watching and waiting. But Tom knew you could learn a lot by just keeping still; and you never knew when that might prove useful.

He’d realised a long time ago that people like their routines. “Creature of habit” he muttered as he watched the man from no. 26 shambling along the road to fetch his paper. Tom knew that the old guy left his house at five to seven every day, to reach the newsagents just as it opened. The shuffling walk was accompanied by the tap of a walking-stick, click-scuff-scuff, click-scuff-scuff; the sounds beat a rhythm as regular as the old man’s routine, he’d know it with his eyes shut.

Of course, it took a while to pick up the patterns, to be really sure. It was easier to spot the regular routines of the older ones, they had less to disrupt the order of their days; but they were all pretty much the same really, sticking to their customs and schedules. Take that couple who’d moved into no. 32; they’d been there just over three months now, 115 days to be precise. Tom liked to be precise; that way you made fewer mistakes.

He knew now that they both went out to work; she was always first, always in a hurry, zooming off with the windscreen only half de-misted. Her husband emerged about an hour later, setting off on foot towards the station, strolling along, looking around, taking notice of the sky, the weather, the geese flying over. Tom thought that, in another place and time, they might have got on quite well. He reckoned they both had that inclination to stand and watch; natural observers. But you had to keep work and pleasure separate, Tom knew that; there couldn’t be any friendly chat with the man from no.32.

He reckoned they were his best option in this street. The old folks might be regular in their habits, but they were also much more restricted; he’d spotted the four o’clock curfew that always had them home in time for tea, he knew there was far less chance of them being out all day. Truth be told, there was probably far less of interest left inside their houses too.

Tom had been in his usual spot the day they’d moved in to no.32. The smart navy blue removal van had perked him up no end, gold lettering and all. None of your cheap man-with-a-van here; they must have stuff worth taking care of. There’d been an awful lot of boxes and some of them had looked right heavy. He’d been there when they’d pulled up in the car and gone into the house for the first time; her carrying two laptop bags, him carefully holding a cat basket. No dog though, that was good.

He’d hung around a bit more over the last couple of weeks, getting to know when they were indoors, working out when his best chance might be. He’d realised she was usually home on a Friday, staying inside where he couldn’t see her until around tea time, then she’d come out and cut the front grass. Must be her way of marking the beginning of the weekend, he’d thought, and if she’s doing the front grass, the chances are she’ll do the back as well. That turned out to be just what she did, the front, then the back, every Friday afternoon.

Tom knew the gardens in this street; they were long and narrow, leading down to an access road. He’d walked round there once, just to check things out, but there was too much open space, too many windows looking out over the gardens, so he hadn’t been back. He knew though, that it took a good while to cut all that grass, she’d be out there for at least an hour. One other thing he’d noticed, after the first couple of times; when she carried the lawn mower through to the back, she sometimes forgot to lock the front door behind her. He stood as near to the gate as he dared and listened very carefully for the metallic clack. Today his luck was in; there was no sound of a turning key.

He walked up and down the road a few times. It was very quiet, no cars, no people, nobody to notice if he just slipped quickly up the path. As he got nearer to the door he heard the gentle hum of the lawn mower round the back. This was his chance; he wasn’t likely to get a better one. Very gently he pressed down on the handle and pushed, and slowly the door opened inwards. Ahead of him, a carpeted flight of stairs, to his left a white painted door.

He pushed the white door open a few inches, poked his head round the gap. The buzz of the mower still droned from the garden. There was a huge furry black cat curled up in an armchair, but it appeared to be fast asleep, didn’t even raise an ear, let alone move, or question his arrival. He glanced around the room, assessing the possibilities; there was a flat-screen TV in the corner, but little else that could be grabbed and carried.

Ahead of him was another white painted door. He guessed there was one more room between where he stood and the garden, but he didn’t know if she could see him from out there. If there were patio doors he’d be sunk, well and truly framed. Perhaps he should turn back, or maybe try upstairs. But once he was up there, it would be really tricky if she came back in, no quick unnoticed escape possible then. He trod softly across the laminate floor, pushed tentatively at the door. It swung back to reveal a big kitchen, a tall fridge-freezer right in front of him, two square windows in the wall to one side, a bog-standard back door to the right. There was no way she’d see him here, not unless she came back indoors.

The mower whirred on.

He stepped into the room, it was sunny and bright, the sort of place he wouldn’t mind living in himself. Wooden chairs placed around a square table, as though waiting for the family to come home and eat dinner together. And right there, in the middle of the table, was an open laptop. Now he knew it wouldn’t be a wasted risk; he could take that and be gone.

As he leant across the table to unplug it, the screen lit up, and he realised it had been sleeping rather than switched off. There was a document still open on the screen; she must have been working on that before she went out to cut the grass. It didn’t look like work though, maybe a story, or a diary entry. Tom started to read.

He stands out there a lot. I’ve seen him, rolling a cigarette, pretending that’s why he’s stopped. But he’s there all the time; I wish I was brave enough to ask him why. He almost seems to melt into the trees, like part of the scenery, but he’s always on his own, just standing and watching, he must get cold. And lonely. I hope he’s ok…

Tom turned away. With four strides he was back at the front door, then outside, pulling it quietly closed behind him. He’d thought they were an unmatched couple, he hadn’t felt any affinity with her, always busy, always rushing around. But, this time, it seemed he had failed to properly see.

He walked down the street, turning up the collars of his coat against a sudden cold chill. You could take from the well-off and the arrogant, it was ok to relieve the smug of their reasons to be haughty; but the natural observers? Well, you just had to let them be.

Out of kilter

2011-09-11T18:28:00.000+01:00

The world continues to turn, day becomes night, summer slips inexorably into autumn; all is as it should be. Except it's not, quite. I still recognise the world around me, but it's as though everything has shifted,the world has tilted, my perspective has slipped.

It started in the taxi. I'm used to driving myself everywhere, deciding when to leave, how fast to go; but this time, instead of steering my own course, I sat in the back of the car, watching the scenery pass and the minutes tick by, worrying I'd be late as we tiptoed slowly down quiet country lanes.

Eventually the car turned through a set of gates and drove serenely along a tree-lined drive, finally pulling up outside what looked like a grand country house. As I waited for the driver to retrieve my suitcase from the boot, I felt like I'd stepped onto the set of a Sunday evening period drama; I half expected to see a stiffly-starched nurse pass by, wheeling a wounded soldier across the manicured lawns of a war-time convalescent home

I knew they were expecting me, but I was still surprised by the smiles of welcome when I gave my name at the reception desk, and I was somewhat taken aback when the clerk proffered a hand in greeting before showing me to my room.

I hadn't eaten all day and I was feeling a little light-headed, so I unpacked quickly. I was only staying for one night and it didn't take long to hang my clothes in the wardrobe and put my wash-things in the en-suite bathroom, then I sat in the high-backed chair by the window to wait.

The branches of an elderberry tree grew across the window, behind them I could see an old stable-yard set out in a square behind a high brick wall. As I sat watching the berries sway in the breeze, I wondered when there had last been horses in the stables, I pictured coaches coming and going, proud grooms in immaculate livery, horse-brasses glinting in the sun. I began to think about the others who'd sat in this chair, watching and waiting.

It wasn't long before there was a knock on the door, and, as if stepping straight from my earlier daydream, a neatly uniformed nurse came in. After that, there was a procession of visitors, the consultant, an anaesthetist, a catering officer, another nurse. I got undressed, removed my contact lenses and jewellery, and struggled into the open-backed gown they'd left on the bed. An hour or two slipped away with knocks at the door, polite questions, stilted answers; each of them explained carefully why they were there, what would happen next. I tried to concentrate on what they said, but it was almost as though, without my lenses, my thoughts were as unfocussed as my eyesight.

Then it was time to walk along the corridor, with its pale blue carpet, and take the lift down to the theatre. I know that the anaesthetist told me my birthday was the same day as his daughter's and I remember him telling me to think of sunshine and blue skies, of pine trees fringing a warm Greek beach, as he pushed the needle into the back of my hand. I think I remember him telling me, just before the world tipped away, that the next thing I'd hear would be someone saying

"Leave your nose alone"

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My nose. My much-wiped, much-abused, senseless nose. When I wrote about it here many months ago, a number of people suggested that perhaps my long-lost sense of smell wasn't gone forever, simply missing in action. After much reflection and persuasion, I decided to make use of the health insurance provided by my employers and see if there was a medical solution. Last week for the first time ever, I checked into a private hospital and had an operation to clear my nasal passages.

I've always been strongly in favour of our national health service, staunchly against the very idea of anyone getting a better, faster service just because they can afford to pay for it. I want to know that anyone, whoever they are, can access medical support at the right time to keep them safe and well. But I swallowed the line that my employers funded this because it meant I would be back at work and productive again much sooner, that there was a rational argument for jumping the queue, seeking a better service.

I hadn't realised how easily I would be seduced by the feeling of being taken care of, how much I would appreciate the gentle paid-for solicitousness of the nursing staff, the regularity with which they came to check on my well-being and stayed to make sure I was comfortable. This was a world I partly recognised and wholly liked, one I could get used to, but one that felt, and continues to feel, inherently wrong.

I'm home again now, and trying to make sense of the last few days. The painkillers have left me a little other-worldly, I've got a glorious black eye and a bloody nose. Though I can't yet breath any more easily, and my nostrils haven't yet been tantalized by the aroma of bacon frying or the scent of flowers in bloom, I remain optimistic that things will get better soon.

In the meantime, I'm not allowed out for a while in case I inhale an infection, so I'm sitting here surrounded by tissues and tea-cups. I'm not used to enforced stillness, it leaves too much time for reflection, it leads far too easily to the world feeling distinctly out of kilter.

Whores and heroin

2011-09-05T23:26:00.000+01:00

You spend your life accumulating acquaintances, finding friends, building a circle of people to spend your time with. Somewhere along the way, you work out what it is you like about others, what they might find to like about you. You begin to understand and comply with the compromises that friendship requires, you relish the opportunities to try new experiences, build shared histories.

Once in a while, if you're lucky, you get to meet someone outside of your normal social sphere; someone who carelessly crushes all the criteria you've formulated for friendship.

"You'll like him - he's got great hair."

"He doesn't wash much, but he never smells."

"His boots have got more holes than leather and he's got really skinny legs."

"He's very, very talented."

"He talks about whores and heroin. And sex. A lot."

"He's become my sort-of adopted son"

You're not sure how to react to that sort of introduction, but you're each choosing guests for your wedding party and you want to be fair, so you go along with the suggested invitation for someone you've never met.

You barely talk that first time, though you quickly acknowledge he does indeed have great hair. A few months later, you go to see him play and you're bowled over by the power of his voice, the strength of his lyrics. You wake up the next morning singing a song you've only heard a couple of times that already seems implanted in your brain.

Then you begin to see the impact he has on the people you love; they way your husband speaks of him with smiling enthusiasm; the times your daughter is suddenly eager to spend an evening in your company when he's around. You start to like him a little bit more just because of that.

Conversation doesn't come easily or instinctively at first; you notice how polite he is with you and you feel a bit like a venerated grandmother. But then there comes a time when the three of you get gloriously drunk on peach cider and you spend an evening swapping fish-based puns, juggling Maltesers and falling from bar stools. One day he sends you a message saying he's come up with a great new idea, suggesting you write a space-based musical together. Gradually, you forget to feel old and out of touch when he talks to you.

After a while you realise that he's no longer just your husband's adopted son. The pleasure you get that night in Clapham, when the whole bar is clapping and singing along to Happy Song is something akin to loving pride.

Whenever you meet his girlfriend you're really pleased that she seems so right for him, you're delighted that she takes such an interest in his adopted family, that she's happy to spend time in the village, decorating plastic ducks for the duck race, talking about knitting and sewing, visiting the allotment. You know though, that she's only here on a visa and sooner or later she'll have to leave. That day comes round much too quickly and without understanding how the time has sped so fast, you find yourself saying a hurried goodbye of hugs and tears at a railway station, wishing her good luck as she sets off for another continent.

You worry about him when she's gone, not sure if he's eating or sleeping properly, you're concerned he'll descend into a cycle of drink and despondency. You know they've planned to meet up in Canada in a month or two and you hope he'll stick to the plan, that they'll be back together soon. But you also know there's a downside to that.

Tomorrow you'll make your way to the Windmill bar in Brixton, where he'll be playing his last London gig for a long, long time. It'll be a great night, a proper send-off in a crowded bar; the sort of occasion you'd have tried to avoid before you knew him. In a few days he'll be getting on a plane to Canada. You want him to go, you want them to be together, but you also know how much he'll be missed. You sense it will be a while til anyone in your household wakes up singing their own version of Happy Song with anything like conviction.

The Gate

2011-09-03T09:57:00.004+01:00

Timber slatted,

flaking paintwork,

round-arched frame in high brick wall.

Clicking latch-key,

creaking hinges,

rusting bolt that slowly draws.

Secret door to unknown garden,

opening to another world,

entrance to a different lifetime,

exit gate from yours.

After I'd written this, Pat posted a wonderful picture of a gate on her blog - you can see it, along with a whole range of other lovely pictures and writing at Past Imperfect

Life lines

2011-08-23T21:16:00.001+01:00

I'd sit there for hours at the dining room table, the Spirograph set in front of me with everything in its rightful place; the cogs and wheels laid out in their plastic packaging, four pens with different coloured inks, a corrugated card backing-sheet and the small pins with round yellow tops that would hold the wheels in place. The instruction leaflet showed me the countless ways I could produce intricate patterns, just by chasing a cog around a wheel; and I believed it. I was captured by the promise of the swirling patterns, by the idea that I could recreate those pictures from lines.

And sometimes I did. But more often than not, my hand would slip as I changed direction, or the paper would move where I hadn't pinned it down tightly, and my intricate pattern would be scarred by a jagged line of ink cutting through. I'd always been proud of my colouring-in, my skill at keeping the bright pencil shades inside the bold black lines, but this was different. In the Spirograph patterns, the lines haunted and taunted me, marking out my successes and failures for everyone to see.

As I sit here tonight I think of all the other lines. The thickening waistlines and thinning hairlines; the multiplying creases round our eyes, the pillow line that carves my face like a ventriloquist's dummy. I reflect on the times at work when I've tried to cross the line, or encouraged others to toe the line. I smile at the warm feeling of success and relief that comes on opening night, when after months of rehearsals, all the lines come out with the right words in the right order. I remember old relationships where I failed to draw the line or was too stupid to read between the lines. I recognise the thin line between right and wrong, between love and hate.

Then I look outside and see your vests flapping against my t-shirts on the washing line, and I remember the lines I wrote you in that e-mail, back before our beginning. I would never have guessed then of the marriage lines we'd share so many years later.

I think of the lines that mark the beginning and end of life, the umbilical cord, the blinking line on a heart monitor. I'm glad you are my life line.

Running out of role models

2011-08-18T21:34:00.000+01:00

It was easy when I was young; I didn't need to work out who to be or how to behave, I just had to read a book.

It started with Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren's fiercely independent nine year old who lived in Villa Villekulla with a horse, a monkey and a suitcase full of gold coins. Who wouldn't want to be the girl with the strength to lift a horse, the imagination and determination to spend her days arranging adventures and telling outrageous stories? Pippi wasn't worried by her long thin legs, she wasn't in the least bothered that her nose was covered in freckles and she was positively proud of her hair in its two tight plaits that stuck straight out; so what could it possibly matter if someone called me skinny dripping, teased me for my freckles, or laughed at the way my carefully braided hair was looped across my head?

In time Pippi was followed by a succession of girls I might have been or could have been; the resourceful and rebellious Arrietty from The Borrowers, the graceful and talented Posy from Ballet Shoes. As I grew, I found new characters to emulate, I built them into so much more than the typed letters on a page.

And then I found Elizabeth Bennett. My middle name is Elizabeth, I'm a second daughter; that was enough to grab my attention. When I found out she was intelligent, opinionated and favourite of her father's children, that was enough to keep me caught. Through her I defined my role as the sensible one in the family. I recognised my inclination to form an opinion too quickly, saw the implications of a judgement based on first impressions, learned the dangers of pride and prejudice. I still mostly didn't get it right, but she helped me believe that mistakes could be overcome, that there were always second chances. And that kept me going for a long, long time.

But the trouble with Elizabeth Bennett is that she ceased growing up nearly two hundred years ago. She never got to be middle-aged; she didn't have to worry about what to do with greying hair and increasing girth. She married into a stately home, so what would she know about paying a mortgage into pension age, she never became a working mother or grandmother. I can't turn to her for advice on how to handle a re-structure at work; she can't tell me how to muddle through a long day in the office and still be half-awake and slightly interesting when I get home.

So I need a new role model; someone for this century and today's world; I just don't know where to find her. And for the first time in my life, books have let me down. I don't see any authors creating a positive pitch for the past-her-prime lady. I can't find the novel where it all turns out well for the woman who ought to know better by now; I've yet to read the story of the almost-invisible someone starting their second half-hundred; or the fable of the grown-up girl who is still trying to find out what to think and how to be.

I hope she's out there somewhere. Maybe she's just starting to come together, letter by letter, page by page. I'd love to think that one day I'll pop into a bookshop, pick up something that catches my eye, turn to the first page, and suddenly learn that there's another truth that's universally acknowledged.

No lighthouse

2011-08-12T18:06:00.000+01:00

It's been a long day, a long week, and I'm bone-tired as I get into the car to drive home. A small voice tells me it wasn't the best idea to go out tonight, to drive 60 miles for dinner after 12 hours in the office. But the small voice's invincible sidekick tells me a night out was just what I needed. And it has been lovely; relaxed friendly chat, catching up on news of friends, swapping stories of visiting guests, telling tales of office colleagues.

The road is dark and I'm the only one on it. No street-lights out here in the country, no headlights from passing cars.

I feel the waves of sleepiness rise up, feel the heaviness at the back of my eyes, I try to swallow down the weight and the lethargy. I know how quickly I fall asleep at home, how hard I fight to stay awake in front of the tv and how soon I lose consciousness the minute my head hits the pillow. I know how easily I could drop off now.

Bright cats-eyes dance on the road in front of me, then suddenly I feel them under the tyres and realise I've swerved, I pull back sharply to where I ought to be, to my side of the road. For a moment I'm wide-awake, blinking in panicked shock, but then the sense of slipping comes again.

Twenty miles to go, half an hour to home.

I turn up the radio, blast out the air-conditioning, gulp down great mouthfuls of cold air. I'm not really listening to the radio, the voices merge with the thoughts in my head; the conversations of tonight, the confrontations of the day, all mixed together in no clear stream, with no clear sense. I move my head from side to side, feel the muscles in my shoulders stretching, my spine clicks. I imagine someone pulling a string tied to the top of my head, lifting me up tall and straight.

As I pass a lay-by I think of pulling over, but I'm too stubborn to stop, too scared to sit at the side of the road by myself, so I drive on. I think of speeding up, perhaps if I get there quicker, I'll beat the almost irresistible weariness.

A huge lorry looms up out of the darkness, seemingly out of nowhere. The row of lights across the top of the cab dazzle me, shining out like stage lights on opening night. I blink awake and shrink back like a hidden creature retreating when a stone is overturned.

When I finally get home, the street is dark, our house is asleep; no lights at the windows, no lamp above the door. I'm strangely angry that there's no brightness to greet me; I want a lighthouse beam to recognise how close to the rocks I've been, to guide me safely the last few yards.

I fumble for the key, feel for the lock and guide it in. I feel clumsy and stupid; I know I'm not angry with the dark house but with myself; I know just how easily I might have been slipping, not into the dark comfort of home, but into another kind of darkness altogether.

The orchid

2011-08-04T22:42:00.001+01:00

It's not flowering at the moment, but that doesn't matter. I know, like all the best things, it will be worth the wait. I know that when the white buds return they will surprise and please me again, taking me back to the day I first saw it.
------
The first time we met was the day I took the photo for his ID card. Like all new members of staff, his introduction to the organisation included the humiliating ritual of stepping into my small office and facing the camera. Like the others, he stood patiently while I struggled to assemble the tripod, while I waited for the laminator to heat up. We made small talk while we waited. At least I did - I think he probably watched in stoic northern bemusement while I went through my standard "oh you'll like it here, everyone's very friendly" routine.

It was probably a year later that I got a promotion and we ended up working in the same office. I finally felt I was moving on - making some progress, from the failed marriage, the unfinished teaching degree, the never-quite-good-enough job as mother and the gratefully accepted but never-quite-aspired-for role in admin. He treated me like a grown up and a proper colleague, listened to what I had to say, argued strongly when he thought I was wrong, but never once patronised me or treated me like an idiot.

He sat at the other end of the office. I couldn't see him from my desk, but I could hear him. Some days he drove me mad, coughing and clearing his throat, until I ended up choking in strange sympathy. Other days he circulated Tommy Cooper jokes that caused a ripple of laughter to circulate round the office, so you'd know each time someone else opened the e-mail.

I remember the summer day when he spilt sugar all over his bare sandalled feet and spent the day with sparkling grains between his toes, I remember how pleased he seemed when I finally managed to make a cup of tea strong enough, how I never told him that I'd cheated and used two teabags. I remember how I felt when he said he liked my new haircut.

Sometimes we'd sit together in the canteen at lunch-time, he the committed vegetarian, moaning about the quality of the fish; me the total carnivore marvelling in the roast pork and crackling. We never really knew much about each other, but he'd stop and talk sometimes when he passed my desk, and I guess that's why he was the first to know that I'd managed to climb another rung on the slippery ladder, that I'd be leaving in a month to work across the river in a bigger taller building.

I hadn't expected him to come to my leaving drinks, I'd never seen him out with the Friday night crowd, I don't think I'd ever seen him outside of work. I was pleased that he joined us as we walked up towards the Windmill pub in The Cut, it felt right when he fell in beside me as we passed the Old Vic. I'd already had my leaving presentation in the office and I'm ashamed to say now that I can't remember what they'd all clubbed together to buy me. But I'll never forget the present he shyly handed to me as we walked up the road.

----------

We bought a new pot for it when we moved into this house, it sits on the windowsill above the sink and it's there every morning when I look out at the garden. It's more than ten years old now, and like him it's become part of my life. It might not be flowering just now, but I know it will be just beautiful for a long time to come.

On the side

2011-07-29T20:05:00.001+01:00

I'm not sure exactly when they arrived. One day the sides of the motorway were just plain banks of grass, the next, there was a swathe cut through and a tarmac path running parallel to the road. Suddenly there were three caravans, parked nose to tail on the concrete, traffic cones marking their space like a red and white picket fence.

There are net curtains at the windows; a strange suggestion of homeliness, and once or twice I've seen a man emerge blinking into the early morning sunshine as I pass by on my way to work. He wears the violent lime-green overalls of a construction worker and I wonder if he is actually living at the side of the road. The transition from my quiet home to the hectic madness of the motorway is always a shock to me; I can't imagine what it must be like to have no transition at all, to spend your working days and sleeping nights on the side of the road. This is one of the busiest motorways in the country, there is no end to the roaring traffic, and as the lorries thunder past rocking the fragile trailers, I think it must be like living in a constantly churning tumble dryer.

I wonder what the workers do once they've finished for the day. I picture a thick-set man in his late forties, ducking his head to step through the small doorway. He takes off the hard-hat he's been wearing all day and tries to rub away the lines it has left on his forehead. Then he eases off the heavy boots and places them together just inside the door. I see him trying to wash the grime of the road off his hands at a small stainless steel sink, before heating a tin of beans on a tiny two-ring stove. What does he do for the rest of the evening? Perhaps he's slumped back against the geometric-patterned fabric of a thin bench, peering at a portable TV; he must be frustrated at the quality of the picture, the poor reception caused by the constant traffic. Does he sit at the small table playing game after game of solitaire,or quietly reading until his eyes get heavy and he realises he's almost asleep and missing half the words? I smile at the thought that one night he might order himself a take-away; at the image of the bewildered pizza-boy, trying to find the right lay-by.

The roadworks are scheduled to last until the summer of 2012; twelve months of contra-flow systems and traffic cones; a whole year of speed limits that the crawling traffic has no chance of breaking, and speed cameras that threaten us should we dare. As summer turns to autumn, winter, then spring, I'll pass through this way on my journey to work each day and back again in the evening. I've no doubt I'll complain when the traffic is bad, swear when I get held up. I won't enjoy the journey, but I will be grateful that, unlike the imagined residents of the roadside caravans, I am just passing through.

Staying over

2011-07-26T00:14:00.001+01:00

It's sometimes blindingly obvious - that link between childhood fascinations and grown-up obsessions. It takes no effort at all for me to trace the journey from standing with my Dad, on the terraces at Crystal Palace football club, to standing with Philip behind the goal at Bromley FC. It's almost as easy to see how my my love for Formula 1 racing started when we walked beside the wide tracks of the one-time racing circuit in Crystal Palace Park, or listened to the roar of the engines from the back door step at home.

It isn't always quite as simple to understand the impact of the things we never did, those things that went unnoticed and unremarked at the time.

Looking back I think we must have been fairly self-contained as a family; the characters in my memory bank are always my parents, grandparents and sisters. Apart from an occasional aunt and uncle, I don't remember any other visitors. Perhaps there were friends of my parents who made quiet calls after I'd gone to bed, but if they did, there were never any traces of their presence the next day. And, apart from the time when my Nan was really sick, I never, ever, remember anyone coming to stay.

No childish sleepover ending in a top-to-toe bed-share; no late night dinner party leading to a blanket- draped figure on the sofa. No strange coats thrown over the banisters at the bottom of the stairs, no odd toothbrushes in the bathroom, no politely embarrassed conversations over breakfast.

Our house wasn't big; five of us and only three bedrooms, but it never felt too small to me, certainly not like Maria from school, who lived with her six brothers and sisters in one of those tiny houses overlooking the cemetery. We didn’t have central heating, but hardly anyone I knew did then –we were used to the winter frost on the inside of the bedroom windows, to cowering under the wall heater in the bathroom, to sitting in the kitchen with all the gas rings blazing to keep us warm while we ate. But the house was always clean; properly clean. not just a tidy-away-the-newspapers-and flick-the-hoover-round clean.

I never asked then, and I wouldn’t dream of asking now, so I'll never really know why nobody came to stay. But in the midst of all that didn't happen, I somehow missed out on a whole heap of life lessons, on the etiquette of staying over.

I never quite grasped how much cleaning in advance is a good thing or when to stop; I could never see the boundaries between thoughtful hospitality and force-feeding. I never learnt when it was ok to admit to tiredness, to suggest it was time for bed; and I never understood the proper arrangements for getting up in the morning or agreeing the order for the bathroom. I couldn't work out if it was better to take in a cup of tea and risk waking people too early, or to wait until they decided to surface and risk leaving them feeling ignored. I never reached that state of relaxed happiness where you know your guests are having a grand time and you can stop trying to fend off their boredom and disappointment.

For years I shied away from inviting people to stay; in my head I invented all sorts of reasons why it was a bad idea or simply inconvenient.

This weekend I learned something I never found out as a child; if you invite good people because you enjoy their company, you end up enjoying their company. Your new house begins to feel a bit more like home and you start to see the place where you live with different eyes. You might even begin to feel a strange sense of pride that your village has the only listed duck pond in the country and the largest scale model of the solar system in the world. It might not even matter if you don’t quite get the etiquette right, you could still have a simply lovely time.

And this weekend we did.

Lazy Sunday afternoon

2011-07-11T23:10:00.002+01:00

Leicester Square on a Sunday afternoon is all the very worst of London.

Crowds of people mill around, with no obvious sense of purpose or direction; tourists spill noisily from over-priced chain restaurants; the scents of sweat and grease mingle as their bodies and burgers are warmed in the sunshine.

Dark blue hoardings section off half the square, proudly proclaiming "we're getting ready for 2012". Here in 2011, people negotiate their own version of an Olympic steeplechase round the half-completed road works. As you pause outside the Odeon, imagining a red carpet rolled out across the upended paving slabs, you wonder what the Hollywood stars would make of this shabby London première; ball-gowns and high-heels mixed with JCBs and potholes.

Tucked between the restaurants and bars are the small shops, stacked high with souvenirs; in one, there are enough t-shirts to bestow an artless slogan on everyone in the square; in another a sea of red plastic - miniature London buses, telephone boxes, Royal Mail post-boxes. Do people ever really buy these as gifts for their loved ones, or is the whole world caught up in a game of "bring me back the worst thing…"?

In one corner of the square there’s a side street where tall buildings block out the sunshine; their shade acts as a deterrent to the crowds and it's suddenly quiet. At the far end there's an old-fashioned pub; the unwelcoming threat of its dark black exterior is mellowed by the gold lettering of the name picked out above the windows and a long cold drink is suddenly the thing you need most.

Stopping just inside the door, you take a moment to adjust to the gloom. There's a long bar on the left, and you're surprised to see how many people are standing against it; a part of you still thinks that Sunday afternoons are for sleeping off a roast dinner in front of the TV. At the far end there’s a seating area where padded leather benches line the oak-panelled walls. Red-shaded wall-lights are reflected in the wood, their glow a testament to centuries of polishing. Hanging between them, the glaring faces of lords and politicians send out their own gilt-framed messages of history and you begin to understand why this place is called The Imperial.

The leather benches are the colour of dried blood, and just for a moment, when you see the jumble of music cables spilling out over them, you think of entrails, but then you notice the guitar case that sits bolt upright and alone, quietly claiming the space, politely waiting its turn. You know that it's waiting for the singer to give it a voice, to introduce it to the crowd. So you find a wooden chair and wait.

The afternoon wears on and an ever-changing stream of tourists, Londoners, drinkers, singers and listeners passes through the bar. You watch them come and go, see them stop for a drink and stay a while for the music. You notice how tense they seem when they come through the doors and how quickly they relax. You begin to realise the value of this place, so steeped in history but welcoming the new; happy to accept both young and old, strange and known.

And then you know, that this small place just yards from Leicester Square, is all the very best of London.

After five o'clock

2011-06-30T22:56:00.000+01:00

They arrive in a group just after five o’clock. If I walk through the lift lobby around that time, I see them gathered together, chatting away in a language I don’t recognise, though I guess it’s from somewhere towards the east of Europe.

They’re a mixed bunch; men and women, a range of ages, but they look pleased to see each other as they come together. It’s the end of my day, the start of theirs and I wonder what they’ve been doing since they went their separate ways last night. Maybe it's just having the same job and a shared language that brings them together, or perhaps there's something more; remembered histories, whispered secrets, common experiences or family ties.

I’m not very good at leaving work; there’s always just one more e-mail I could deal with, a paper to read for a meeting the next day, a new policy document I really ought to get my head round. So I’m still at my desk when there’s a quiet knock and he pops his head round the door.

“ahh sorry” he says with a heavy accent, backing away quickly but grinning widely.

“Oh, I’m still working” I respond. Never quite sure how strong his English is, I gesticulate clumsily, waving an arm vaguely in the direction of the papers piled up on my desk, the bright computer screen blinking in the corner.

“I’m really sorry” I add, “I’ll be done soon”.

But he’s gone: off to hoover the corridor outside. I hear him whistling over the hum of the vacuum.

I don’t know how to explain that I really am sorry. I know he’s got a job to do, that I’m getting in the way of him doing it, delaying the time when he can finish and go home. I don’t know where he lives, I’ve never asked him, but I imagine a small flat at the top of a converted Victorian house that’s seen better days. I picture him walking slowly up the steps to the front door, trying to open it quietly so he doesn’t wake the children. I wonder if he complains to his wife about the stupid English lady who makes his work take longer. Or perhaps he shakes his head pityingly as he tells a tale of the sad woman who sits at her desk long after the others have gone home.

I carry on for a bit, trying to make some sense of my inbox in the vain hope that it will give me a better start the next day, but I’m tired, so it’s not long till I start to pack up. As I leave the office I look around for him, hoping to catch him and tell him the office is clear, I don’t want to leave him hanging around any longer than he has to or guessing when it’s safe to knock on the door again.

As I get to the stairs, he walks out of the kitchen.

“Good night” I call out, falsely cheerful, knowing I’ve still got a long drive ahead.

“Gooood night”. He says in return. And then, slowly, articulating each word with the utmost care, he adds

“I hope you have a nice evening”

And I go down the stairs smiling.

Like Robin Hood and Maid Marian

2011-06-26T23:29:00.000+01:00

There's a sunken pathway. Without any paving stones the ground has compacted over the years, trodden down by the footsteps of all the others who've followed the same route to the end of the garden. I stop to admire the pale pink roses, wondering if I should collect the secateurs from the shed to cut some flowers for the house on the way back; already half-knowing I'll forget. I bury my nose in the soft petals, hoping just once to inhale their scent. My sense of smell faded long ago, but the fragrance of childhood rises in my memory at the thought of the crushed rose petals in a jam-jar of water that was my first perfume.

I go past the gooseberry bush, where only a few undersized fruits remain; most of them have been taken by the birds, or fallen unnoticed to the ground. There were always gooseberries when we were young, down at the end of the garden, next to the rhubarb plants, just past the metal pole at the end of the washing line. The pole was always slightly loose in its fittings, and on a windy day, you'd hear it clang as it moved backwards and forwards, swung around by the movement of the heavy wet washing. A few steps further there was an old green swing, with a deep channel under the wooden seat, where years and years of scuffing shoes had worn away the grass then the dirt. I remember how we used to dare each other to see if we could make the swing go so high it would spin right over the top. We never managed that, but we all learnt to leap from the seat at its highest point, stretching out to touch the top of the washing pole as we tried to fly. I remember the time my sister tore her red tartan dress when it caught on the swing as she leapt, I think I remember my mum's exasperated despair that she hadn't known better.

Perhaps we should get a swing for this garden, I like the idea of a future generation shouting at me to push 'higher, higher'. More than that though, I like the idea of sitting on it, gently moving backwards and forwards as the sun goes down, taking the time to reflect quietly on my day. I like to think that's what my Dad used to do as he sat on the old swing slowly inhaling one of the long Senior Service cigarettes he was discouraged from smoking indoors.

As I pass by the pond I try not to be distracted by the dusty windows of the shed, try not to notice the varnish that's cracked and peeling and the wooden slats that are drying out and warping in the sun. I don't even notice the empty raised beds; one day they'll be stocked with vegetables, just waiting for us to pick and eat, but not just yet.

When I reach the end, I go through the wooden gate. It hangs slightly askew and I need to lift it a bit to help the bolt slide out, but it's not too stiff or rusty and I remember to shut it behind me, in case the cat is following. I cross the access road; we're right at the end and there's no through route, so the cars don't come down this far. I like that it's there though, I like the way it marks the space between our proper garden and the secret garden that sits there in front of me.

At first glance all I can see are nettles and brambles, a mass of small flowers promising me an autumn blackberry harvest, but I know there's more to be found, that the thorns and stings are really there just to keep me out, like the forest that grew up around the sleeping beauty. There's a thin path along the side, where the grass has been cut, so I walk on, past the pile of grass trimmings and hedge cuttings, to the tangled branches of two old apple trees. One has small green apples, the clear sharp green of cooking apples; the colour of Robin Hood. The other tree has fruit of a softer green, with a pale red blush, a bit like Maid Marian.

Pushing through the apple trees are the new branches of an elder tree. I'm not sure if there's only one, the undergrowth is too tangled to see. I stand for a while, wishing I was a child again, imagining the fun I could have clearing a space and building my own secret den here, somewhere I could stay for hours with just a book and a glass of lemon barley water. I'd cut the thin branches and weave them into a shelter, peer through, without being seen. I could sit hidden from parents and sisters, staying safe from the evil Sheriff of Nottingham until my Robin cantered home.

Between the leaves I catch a glimpse of something red lying on its side, with brambles weaving up and through it. It's an old climbing frame. I recognise it immediately as the same one I bought for my sons many years ago. In an instant I'm taken back to the garden of the house we lived in when they were young. The house I thought would be ours for ever; the place they'd grow up in, leave and come back to with children of their own. I swallow hard, wondering where the years have gone, pushing back the voice that tauntingly reminds me how things didn't turn out quite the way I'd planned.

But then, just as the secret garden starts to fade away, turning back into just an overgrown wasteland, I hear another voice. It's Philip telling me about his plans for our orchard; the peaches, almonds, apricots, and greengages we'll grow, the walnut tree he's already ordered. Then I know, even if this doesn't turn out to be the place we live forever, we can still be like Robin Hood and Maid Marian.

Step by step

2011-06-19T21:14:00.000+01:00

He walks...

seeking out new footpaths, different routes, unknown views; making a landmark of a tree silhouetted against the wide clear sky; seeing patterns in the clouds gathering along the valley.

He takes pleasure in a mock orange hanging over a tributary of the river; stopping to inhale the perfume, burying his face in the blossom;

He visits local pubs, greeting landlords with cheery enthusiasm, trying out the local beers.

He stands silently at the gates of Broughton Manor; where Offa of Mercia battled with the King of Kent, and Edmund Ironside defeated the Danish invaders.

I can't sit still...

picking odd things up, trying them in a new position; opening the last of the boxes;

cleaning surfaces, wiping and dusting like the good housewife I've never been and will never be for long.

I re-order books; taking one at a time from the bookcase, trying it next to a new neighbour on a different shelf.

I stand at the kitchen sink; gazing into the long garden, watching the light at different times of day, listening to the birds in the tall trees next door.

I cut the grass, walking slowly up and down, my feet marking out our new territory, my footprints on our ground.

I plant a rose; figuratively and literally putting down roots.

We're slowly settling in.

A sense of place

2011-06-14T00:19:00.000+01:00

It's been a long time since I put finger to keyboard. There's been a lot going on; a new house, a holiday; a whole series of new experiences, sights and impressions.
It still feels too early to write about the house. We're settling in, and getting to know it. It's lovely, but I haven't yet got past the sense that we're playing at living here; Otford still feels more like somewhere we're visiting than the place where we live.
So while I can't yet write about the place I've come to, I'll try to share a few impressions of where I've just been - from my recent holiday to the beautiful Ionian island of Kefalonia.

------------

Gradakia beach

The sea, just about warm enough to swim in, brings shrieks and squeals of shock from timid bathers. We start the week like the others, inching in slowly, feeling the chill creep up our legs and higher, until we are almost breathless with the cold, gasping and swearing quietly. After a day or two we decide it's better to immerse ourselves quickly, get the shock over, move around frantically until we acclimatize. We like to describe it as 'marching in bravely.'

-------------

Two women stand in the shallows, playing bat and ball. They take turns to start, but each fails dismally to return the ball; they never quite manage to create the rhythmical pit-pat of a rally. One suddenly rushes for the shore "I forgot I'd gone in with me watch on!" she cries, holding the offending time-piece between finger and thumb. It dangles and drips uselessly.

Their husbands have opted to try snorkelling. They sport matching blue face-masks with bright orange breathing tubes; the garish colours a testament to the newness of the equipment so recently purchased from the Dolphin supermarket in Lassi. Heads down, they kick towards the rocks at the edge of the bay, in search of strange creatures.

Above them a bare-footed, brown-skinned, boy looks down. The men have no idea they have interrupted his solitary game of dare-and-dive, the game for which he scrambles on sun-hardened feet over jagged rocks. They'll never know how hard he has to fight to overcome the fear of jumping, the terror of scraping skin on sharp edges, of landing in too-shallow water to gashed hands or feet, of the bite of a strange bright-coloured creature.

---------------

A sun-bed by the water's edge. Waking from sleep, disorientated, a line of dribble at the side of her mouth confirms her slip from consciousness. She sits up too quickly, not knowing how long she's lain there in the sun, already feeling the skin on her back beginning to tighten. A single hair, caught in the hinge of her sunglasses, tickles and irritates. She looks at others sitting around her, catches the smirking glances of one or two before they turn away.

In the row behind her a family sit together; father, mother and frowning teenage boy, two sun loungers beneath an umbrella, one beach mat on the sand beside. She wonders what bargain has been struck for the father and son to secure the beds, what compromise or promise has been extracted to relegate the mother to the floor.

----------------

A father and daughter come to the beach. He is laden down with toys to keep her amused, beach ball, bucket and spade, a range of small plastic figures.

There is no mistaking their relationship, each has a shock of curly black hair and dark eyes, both have large front teeth sticking out over their lower lips as though constantly in thought. Each is very overweight, with rounded belly, thick legs, pudgy arms.

The girl decides to apply her own suncream, while her father stands at the water's edge, looking on. The factor is high, the lotion the thick consistency of tile-grout; she smears it in streaks on arms and legs, missing the parts she cannot reach. Her father continues to watch her efforts, his expression a mix of indulgence and despair. I wonder if he is encouraging her self-sufficiency or simply avoiding having to help her. Others watch silently; though nothing is said, I think we are all struck with the urge to help. But friends who've spent a week rubbing lotion into each other's backs unquestioningly, know they cannot do the same for her.

Our shared exasperation is expressed by one on-looker, once father and daughter have finally made their way into the sea. "I really hate it when people let their children get fat." Until then, I don't think I'd realised quite how snugly indulgence sits, between caring too much and too little.

The Pygmy Giant

2011-05-27T10:06:00.001+01:00

I'm thrilled to bits that The Pygmy Giant has published one of my stories today.

The Pygmy Giant is an on-line home for a great range of British writing and I feel very proud to be included. It would be rather lovely if you go there and read my story and maybe even leave a comment, but while you're there, I'd really recommend you to read some of the other great pieces too.

Winging it

2011-05-24T22:43:00.000+01:00

It's just one of those days. A diary full of back-to-back meetings, that I haven't found time to read the papers or prepare for; a seat-of-the-pants day, when I'll try to sound like I know what I'm talking about, when I'll try to add value to the discussion, or at least get away without announcing my complete idiocy to a room full of people.

I get up early, deciding I can get to the office and speed-read through the agendas and reports, scribble a pertinent comment or two in the margins. In a cavalier moment of over-optimism, I throw my gym bag into the car, thinking I might even go for a quick swim on the way in.

90 minutes later, I'm tapping my nails impatiently on the steering wheel, inching the car forward a few yards at a time, cursing the lorries that have blocked the slip road and brought the roundabout ahead to a standstill.

There's an etiquette between the drivers as we each push our way onward, nobody must look at anyone else; if you make eye contact you're doomed to a catalogue of exasperated head-shaking, unnecessary hand gestures and mouthed obscenities. So I feign nonchalance and gaze out of the side window at the banks that line the motorway, the un-cut grass intermingled with dandelions. Weeds grow strong and green, but there are other plants, stunted and black, that have proved less adaptable to the exhaust fumes and incessant vibrations of passing traffic. Dented cones lie on their sides, abandoned from some long-ago traffic scheme; nobody likely to come back for them now. Rubbish has piled in drifts, thrown from car windows by thoughtless drivers, but looking almost as though it's grown up through the ground, meant to be there.

I try not to think about being late, no point in getting stressed about what might happen, even less point in berating myself now for not preparing for my meetings in advance. Instead, I do mental calculations; 22 miles down, 18 miles to go; if we start moving now, I'll be there in 30 minutes. I watch the minutes click round on the dashboard clock, count the street-lamps as I pass them; 4 lamps to every tenth of a mile. It's a slow-shoe-shuffle I'm unhappily familiar with, the price I pay for swapping cold platforms and delayed trains for the warmth and solitude of an 80 mile round trip to work each day. I wonder about the drivers around me, where they're going, what the day might hold. I'm stupidly pleased by a van just ahead, with "Lynn Shellfish - our quality is catching" emblazoned on its side.

Then suddenly we're moving again and I'm passing freely around the roundabout like a ball thrown into a roulette wheel. I've been lucky, I'll make it in time for my first meeting. And yet I know the danger of winning once, that it might just encourage me to try my luck and leave everything too late again. As I speed along the motorway for the final stretch of my journey, I hear Kenny Rogers in my head, singing the Gambler's song out loud:

And the night got deathly quiet
And his faced lost all expression
He said, "If you're gonna play the game, boy
You gotta learn to play it right"

Memories and mementoes

2011-05-22T22:12:00.002+01:00

I unlock the small square door and reach up to pull down the aluminium ladder. Above me, in the dark, dusty, cob-webbed space is the task I've been dreading most since we started packing up the house to move.

I'm not scared of spiders and I don't mind a bit of dirt, but nevertheless, the task of clearing the loft fills me with trepidation. Though there's no picture of Dorian Gray hiding up there, I know that, stacked up in a corner and hidden behind the suitcases and bags of old clothes, are the boxes that represent another life. They've sat there unopened since we moved to this house. Treasured keepsakes, each with a meaning of its own, each telling a story about a different me, as daughter, wife or mother; these are the possessions that sum up my life before Philip; the stories of my family.

It should be a simple task to lift these boxes down and pile them up with all the other boxes for the removal men to transfer to our new house in just over a week's time. And it would be, if I could resist the temptation to open them and sift through the contents.

The first box holds medals and trophies from when the boys played football for the cub-scouts and school teams. The trophies are wrapped snuggly in the shiny fabrics of a dozen replica football shirts. I remember the freezing hours I spent, standing on the touchline, shouting and willing my lads to run and score and win, until they were too old and too embarrassed to want me watching them any more.

Next is a container of all the kitchen things I bought for Megan when she first went away to university. The saucepans and colander for all the beans and pasta I thought she'd be eating; the tea caddy for her unquenchable thirst for a nice cup of tea. She only stayed in Leeds for one term, hating every minute of her time there. I remember driving up to collect her and bringing her home; the box has been in the loft ever since.

There's another one from Charlie's slightly longer, but no more successful, time at Manchester University. It holds his study materials; a collection of pens and papers, a calculator and his student ID card; all evidence of the good intent to study that he took with him, but which evaporated as quickly as his student loan. I'm suddenly hit by the recognition of how lost he must have felt, away from home for the first time, his money all gone and a slowly growing panic as he fell behind in his studies. At the bottom of the box I'm surprised to find a fountain pen. It's mine, and I'd assumed it was long-since lost. I've no idea how it came to be in the box; I'd like to think he chose to take it up to Manchester with him.

Next comes the photo box. I lost hundreds of pictures after a move 4 houses ago when I stupidly left the albums to go mouldy in an outside shed. The pictures in this box are the only ones I managed to save. Rare and precious representations of my children as babies and toddlers, birthdays, weddings and school photos. I'm surprised to see a younger, slimmer me, secretly pleased at how I used to look.

There's a huge box of paper souvenirs; school report letters; theatre programmes and tickets; newspaper cuttings; handmade birthday cards. Among them a letter from Charlie, telling me he's sorry for fighting with his brother, that he didn't mean to upset me, that he loves me lots. Beside that, a small envelope holding 4 notes from Claire, written to Charlie and me just after he was born.

The last box I look through is the one I know will make me cry. It holds everything I still have of my Dad, bank statements and insurance papers; his final will and testament; details of the arrangements I made for his funeral and the condolence cards we received. I know what's in this box, but I haven't looked through it for four years, so the contents come back to me with a shock. I smile when I find the tickets issued over fifty years ago for a trip to Spain for him and my Mum; I swallow hard when I find the picture of him as a young man in the army, confident and smiling, knowing there is still a whole lifetime ahead. I'm struck by the resemblance between him and Charlie.

And then I find the small envelope. Inside it is a typewritten sheet, a story written many years ago by my Dad, for Charlie on his birthday. As I read the story I begin to hear his voice. And then I realise that even though I'll be moving to a new house soon; a house he'll never visit or know; my Dad will be coming along on the journey anyway.

----------------

The Day We Won the Cup - written for 'His Majesty Emperor King Charlie':

Once upon a time, on a sunny summer aftermorning, all the people on earth were very happy. They were dressed in their best clothes, with pink ribbons hanging from their toenails and green ice-cream cornets dropping from their noses. They started the day with a special breakfast, starting with scrambled crocodile's eggs,which were followed by Marmitemud on toast.

The reason for all this happiness was that this was the day of the long-awaited final of the Inter-World Cup between the men from the planet Klobbadog and a special team from the planet Earth. The men from Klobbadog were known as excellent footballers, who had won every game that they had played. This may, of course, have been because they each had three legs worked by batteries, and large square heads mounted on rubber stalks, which made it easy to head lots of goals.

The team from Earth that had been chosen to play against Klobbadog were known as the Longshortworth Rovers who, although consisting on only six players, were famous for the special skills each of them possessed, Up front was the Daddyman, whose special skill was running down the pitch tripping everybody up with a golf-club. Joining him up front was the Mummywoman, whose special skill lay in feeding players on the other side with homemade cakes which poisoned them within minutes. In midfield were the Clairegirl, who wasn't really very good at football, but used to wave her feet at anybody that came near her so that they collapsed on the spot. Alongside her was the Gerardboy, who had a special ability to turn himself into a bear-cub, and at the back was the cuddly Meggygirl who used to talk and talk and talk until she sent everybody to sleep.

But the star player of the Earth team was the goalkeeper, Charlieboy Longworth, who had never given away a single goal, because of his ability to make his arms and legs stretch to ginormous lengths by saying the magic words:

"Abracadabra Hazel and Mush, my teacher looks like a scrubbing brush."

The Earth team were soon two goals ahead, First the Mummy girl ran up the pitch, turning sideways so that she was so thin nobody saw her. Then the Gerardboy ran forward giving a loud bear-cub growl and frightening all the Klobbadog players and banging the ball in the net.

The game was nearly over when disaster struck! One of the Klobbadog players tripped over the Daddyman's golf clubs and was awarded a penalty. He shot the ball hard with two legs, straight at the goal, but the Charlieboy caught the ball with one of his magical long arms, ran straight up the pitch and scored another goal. The Earth people had won! Charlieboy was the hero of the hour! He was given special toys made of ice-cream and toffee that he could eat when he was fed up of playing with them, and they all lived happily ever after!!!!!

Just along the valley

2011-05-14T12:47:00.000+01:00

We hadn’t been together all that long when Philip first introduced me to the small green guide book; 28 circular walks in the Kent countryside, ranging from a gentle stroll round a field to a sharp breath-stealing march up a hill. With his usual boundless enthusiasm he overcame my reluctance to accept walking boots as a fashion item, and over the next few years we tested them out - the boots and the walks - working our way across fields and footpaths, stomping through villages and valleys. As we walked, or stopped to admire the view, we scribbled comments in the book's margins; 'bluebells in April,' 'a cheese sandwich under the trees,' 'Badger!' After a while the book became shabby and dog-eared; a cracked spine and turned-down corners the battle scars of our favourite walks.

There was one page in the book that became more worn and tattered than the rest, one walk we returned to again and again, until we really didn't need the book any more. The footpath started out in a small quiet village, then wound its way up and through a wood, across a valley and a hill, past farms and a golf course; before winding back down again, past a viaduct, along a river and back.

Before long I was calling the village 'the nice place' and weekend walks were supplemented by visits on a Friday evening. We found a small pub, where the barman always greeted us with a smile, addressing Philip as 'young man'. It was no time at all until he knew our names and started pouring out our drinks before we'd even finished asking for them. Occasional drinks turned to dinner every Friday; the perfect way to mark the beginning of the weekend. We gradually felt more and more at home sitting at 'our' table in the bar, chatting to the other regulars, marvelling at how lucky they were to live in such a lovely place. Our conversation became peppered with phrases like "wouldn't it be nice if..." and "maybe one day..."

So, when one Friday evening we pulled into the pub car park and spotted a 'To Let' board outside a house a few doors down, we knew it was meant to be. Dinner waited while we walked up and down the road, peering through the front windows as we passed, trying to make it look like we weren't being nosy, hoping there wasn't anyone inside looking out. When we finally sat down in the pub to eat, there was no other conversation possible. The very next morning we contacted the letting agent and a few days later everything was in place for us to move.

We both knew it would be temporary; long-term renting really wasn't the wisest move, but we hoped that before long we'd be able to buy a house - if not in the same street, then at least in the same village. In the meantime we just settled in and enjoyed every minute spent living in a street with the friendliest, most community spirited neighbours I've ever known; and next door to the best landlords anyone could hope for.

For months, Philip went round with a big smile on his face, telling anyone who'd listen that it was just like being on a permanent holiday. We started to put down roots - in the street, at the allotment. We helped to put up the christmas lights, took part in the duck race, manned a stall at the village fete. Philip chopped wood for our open fires, I trod the boards for our local productions. The village opened its arms and welcomed us, it was only natural that we loved it in return.

After a while, we began to realise our aspirations to buy had been too optimistic. We watched as the For Sale signs came and went; we waited while prices got higher and higher. However hard we saved, even the tiniest most run-down cottage in the village was beyond our purse strings. We talked about it long and hard; renting was fine for now, but we both knew that if we left it too much longer we'd never be able to own our own home.

It's been four years since we moved to the nicest street in the nicest place in the world. This week, we exchanged contracts on a house in another village.

Our new house is small, but lovely, with a warm friendly feel about it and a wonderfully long garden. It’s only a couple of miles along the valley, so we’ll still be able to carry on doing all the things we've grown to love; and seeing the people we've come to know and admire. I know we are very lucky to have found a place we can afford to buy; I know that it will suit us just fine.

We’re moving in two weeks’ time, so the next few days will fly past in a blur of sorting, packing and cleaning. Before we leave, I will take one last slow walk around the house, smiling to myself as I remember the day when we sat together in the bedroom and Philip asked me to marry him. I’ll think of our wedding day and the wonderful party we had in the Crown pub at the top of the road, made perfect through the hard work and good will of Phil the barman. I’ll stand in the kitchen and think of all the vegetables we’ve proudly carried home from the allotment, the fabulous dinners Philip has cooked here, the gorgeous cakes that Megan has baked. I’ll look at the room, still pictured at the top of my blog, and re-live how I felt when I sat down to write my first ever blog post, marvelling at all the words I’ve written and read at that table ever since.

And then before I know it, and certainly before I’m ready for it, we’ll be closing the door for the last time and handing back the key. The move is, without doubt, a good thing. The tears I know we shouldn’t cry are just a confirmation of the wonderful time we’ve had and the happy memories we’ll be taking with us.

Thank you Shoreham.

Having words

2011-05-05T22:39:00.000+01:00

She hated it when they shouted at each other. Cruel sharp words, arrows dripping in saliva and bile. How could they even look at each other the next day. How could either of them accept the other's 'I didn't mean it'.

In her head she joined in the screaming, silently begging them 'Don't say it. Please don't say it. You can't say something like that and not mean it' Once those words were out, they were out - there in the air between them. No matter how hard they'd tried to pretend it didn't matter, it did. She couldn't see how they could act as though things hadn't been said.

She'd dreaded the times at school when the teacher walked around the class as they wrote. Automatically her arm would go up around her work, shielding it from the teacher's eyes. Pencil in one hand, eraser in the other, she'd write and rub out, again and again. The paper turned thin and grey, but she didn't want anyone to read it until she was sure of every word.

At work she agonised in meetings. Confident of her point, but never quite sure when to make it, she dreaded the moment when they'd all turn to look; a raised eyebrow, a barely concealed smirk; her confidence sent plummeting. She lingered over e-mails, knowing how they could be misinterpreted, how jovial could be read as flippant, succinct as terse. On the way home in the car, she'd replay the day's conversations in her head; the things she could have phrased differently, the times she should have kept mum.

At home in the evenings, in front of the laptop, she tapped the keys, watching the thin black lines appear on the screen. Just lines and shapes, meaning so little, revealing too much, concealing more. Type and delete, type and delete. Again and again.

She hit the 'publish' button, sensed the black lines peeling away from her, lifting up from the screen and flying away. She didn't know where they'd land, if they'd be greeted with a friendly welcome or a forbidding stare. Once they were out, they were out. She couldn't pretend they hadn't been said.

Parallel lives

2011-04-28T21:48:00.000+01:00

21st June 1982, London, England.

Two maternity wards, two young women; each of them putting aside the pain and exhaustion of the preceding hours as they reach out to hold a new-born child.

Two boys.

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Families and friends, school and work-mates, loosely connected by-standers, all influenced them as they grew, shaping their actions and recording their histories in photographs and memory.

Each boy was a first born son, growing up with the hope and expectation that brings, knowing that one day, in a different century, they would be expected to learn the family trade, take it on, build and nurture it to support another family.

Each of them thrived in the early years, spontaneously talkative and affectionate, confident in their parents' love.

Each struggled to make sense of the bitterness and struggle of the separation and divorce that came later.

Somewhere along the way, each defined a role for himself as guardian and protector, the man of the family; taking care of his mother whatever his disappointment in her; accepting the role of elder sibling, whatever the annoyances and embarrassments of a younger brother who was more than reasonably prone to seeking out trouble.

Both grew up tall and handsome.

--------------

Tomorrow, one will stand in Westminster Abbey, with the eyes of the world on him, as he pledges his love to the future queen of England.

I will be among the millions watching that boy on TV, but my hopes and my love will be with the other one. The boy relaxing with his friends over a pint or several, somewhere in south London. The one that the world will never know, but the one who makes me as proud as any mother of a king.

My son Gerard.

Egg count

2011-04-23T23:13:00.000+01:00

So many ways to mark the passage of time; the years slip by in a cycle of celebrations and anniversaries. The old shoe-boxes under the bed fill up with hoarded birthday cards and folded wallets of photos; you build a treasure trove of loving wishes and embarrassing haircuts.

And there, tucked into a corner next to the boxes, still in its supermarket carrier bag, is the Easter egg you bought a couple of days ago. You’d been queuing up to buy your lunch when you’d seen the coloured boxes stacked high at the checkouts, when you realised how the passing decades have also been marked by the rise and fall of the Easter egg count.

When you were young there’d been an Easter egg every year. Three identical eggs lined up on the sideboard, one for each of you and your sisters. On Easter Sunday morning you’d take yours from its box and run your finger over the shiny purple foil, smoothing it out until the cracked pattern of the chocolate showed through from underneath. Then you’d unwrap and gently prise it apart, trying to keep the halves intact while you sought out the chocolates hidden inside. You could make it last for three days; eating the chocolates first, then one egg-half at a time, breaking off small pieces along the pattern lines.

There might have been two eggs each in the years after your parents split, but you don’t really remember, already by then your head was full of ideas for building another home and a new family. The first years of married life brought extravagant Easter gifts wrapped in crisp cellophane, tied with satin ribbons. Thrilled by the romantic gestures you saw no forbidding portents in the over-sized packaging and disappointing content.

Then came the years when the children were small. For weeks before Easter you’d push the buggy around Woolworths, walking slowly past the floor to ceiling displays, while they pointed out the ones they liked the look of, the eggs they hoped they’d get. And you chose with such care, each had to be just right for its recipient. A grown-up egg with proper chocolates for a girl so nearly a young lady; a Yorkie bar for a strong quiet lad; a black-and-white covered round ball of chocolate, for your football-loving boy; and a small pink-wrapped oval nestling in a ballerina-decorated cup for your singing, dancing baby girl. You’d keep them all under the bed, hidden away from sticky fingers until Easter morning.

In those days there were so many eggs; gifts from parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, everyone wanting to mark the occasion, shower attention with a sweet treat, mindless of harm to teeth and tummies. It would be days before the boys’ appetites weren’t ruined by eating chocolate between every meal; weeks and months before the girls would get through the eggs that, just like you, they insisted on saving for eating slowly, bit by bit.

After a few years the number of eggs began to dwindle. Your father died, aunts and uncles had children of their own to buy for, money was tight. There was still an egg for each of them, every year, but none for you and not quite as much excitement.

Then before you knew it they were grown and you were all living in different houses. The eggs you bought, and kept in the cupboard just in case, went unclaimed when they were too busy to visit. You found them some time later, the boxes covered in a thin layer of dust, the chocolate inside mottled white. You'd ended up just throwing them away. Last year you decided not to bother at all.

But a few days ago, as you stood in the queue to pay, you’d looked over at the shiny boxes. Something about the sickly looking white chocolate egg with its gaudy pink icing had made you smile, and now it’s sitting under the bed waiting to be handed over with a kiss and a hug.

Just one egg this year, but maybe it’s marking a change. Perhaps, before you know it, there’ll be dozens again.

Garden-keeping

2011-04-17T15:44:00.000+01:00

It will come as no surprise to those who know me, if I write that housekeeping is not my forte. It's not that I can't do it; I know all that could possibly ever need to be known about cleaning fluids and polish, dusters and mops. I have rubbed and scrubbed, vacuumed and swept with the best of them. I've experienced the self-righteous glow of turning a pigsty into a palace, but frankly it just doesn't interest me. I resent the time spent washing things down and tidying stuff up; I'd rather be doing almost anything else.

But while I can merrily ignore dust until I trip over it, and live with accumulated papers til they cut me, I simply cannot leave grass that has grown too long, or weeds that need pulling. All week long I've been getting itchier and twitchier as I've practically heard them growing in the garden, calling to me as they stretch their green arms out to the sun. This morning I responded to the call and spent a few lovely hours trimming and digging, and now, with achy fingers and dusty knees I can sit here with a genuine sense of satisfaction from a job done well, that was well worth the doing.

What is it about being outside that makes work feel like play?

When we were kids we spent a lot of time outside, while mum was indoors trying to make our house spotless. I sometimes joke that we were locked out in the garden so we couldn't come in and make a mess, but I'm not entirely sure that isn't true. When I think of my mother back then, she's almost always either cleaning or ironing. I'm probably the only person on the planet for whom the Beatles' album Rubber Soul is inextricably mixed with the sounds of my mum singing along to the backing track of a hissing steam iron.

In my mum's head, anything, and I do mean anything, that required washing, must also demand ironing - socks, pants, towels; nothing was already sufficiently flat that she wouldn't feel the need to bludgeon it into further submission. And given that there were five of us, that always meant a pretty huge ironing pile waiting to be tackled.

It seemed to have a hold on her, as though she couldn't relax until it was conquered for the day. Even on the most glorious sunny days, when you might have thought the heat of an iron was too much to bear, she'd still set up the ironing board. Her only concession would be to open the french windows, and set the board just outside, stretching the iron's lead as far into the garden as she could.

For two weeks of every year though, it was different. Each afternoon of the last week in June, and the first week in July, the housework would be abandoned, as mum sat down to watch Wimbledon. Glued to the TV she'd live through every moment of Roger Taylor's unsuccessful efforts to be the next Fred Perry. And those are my favourite memories of her. In my mind, a whole summer was mixed up in just those two weeks.

I'm sure that was when she'd let us make our own ice-lollies, pouring orange juice into special plastic holders; or when she'd give us a bowl of peas to pod, sitting on the back door-step in the sun. It might have been when we helped her pick gooseberries from the bottom of the garden, or loganberries from the bush behind the shed. I know it was then that she tried to teach us the rules of tennis, when I learnt that a tie at 40 points was called deuce and not juice.

Every now and then, if it really was a perfect summer's day, then mum would abandon the inside of the house and come to sit on a deck chair in the garden, to watch us play our own version of Wimbledon on the lumpy, but regularly-cut back lawn in Croxted Road. I'm sure that was the reason I ached so much to have my own tennis racket, and why I was oh so chuffed to get a perfect white Slazenger. I still have it; although nowadays it's warped beyond playable and the shiny white paint has almost all chipped off.

You can't see any more where I carefully scratched my name into the handle, claiming ownership, exhibiting such pride, but I think it's the only possession that has stayed with me since childhood. Maybe that, and the memories it brings with it is why, even now, at the slightest hint of warmth and sunshine, I feel the need to get out there to cut the grass.

Cherish is the word I use to describe

2011-04-11T21:52:00.000+01:00

It's not often that I spend an evening by myself. It's such a rarity that, when I imagine it, I build the idea up as a special treat, a chance to do what I like, an opportunity to pretend that I'm a grown-up independent woman, in charge of my own destiny and decisions.

I hadn't expected to be on my own tonight. It wasn't until Megan called, just as I was leaving work, that I knew both she and Philip had alternative plans. My day at work had been stupidly busy, so the previously unforeseen promise of a peaceful, solitary evening dangled alluringly in front of me all the way home. A bit like an air freshener on a rear view mirror.

The trouble with car deodorisers though is that the fresh new atmosphere they promise usually turns out to be a false unnatural scent, masking the reality. Even with my appalling sense of smell, I know that's not the right ambience for me.

It's a rare occasion that I come home to a dark and silent house. I'm usually the last one back, the one coming in to shoes parked by the front door, bags dropped somewhere between there and the kitchen, opened mail scattered across the dining table and the radio playing loudly in the background. Minor annoyances, that are easily cancelled out by a cheerful welcome, the offer of a nice cup of tea, and the sight of debris in the kitchen, promising me a lovely dinner already half cooked.

Tonight the only greeting was an insistent one from the cat, wondering why he'd had to wait so long to be fed. After I'd answered his demands and made myself a cuppa, I mooched around the kitchen, hoping for some inspiration on the food front. I've never seen the point of cooking just for me. I'd hoped to finish off last night's rhubarb crumble, but it seems someone had that for breakfast. Luckily there was some cold meat in the fridge, so a lamb sandwich dinner it was.

Half an hour home and I was already feeling a bit sorry for myself. I turned on the TV - not just for the sound of the voices; this was my night in charge, I could watch what I liked. Well, I could within reason. A quick flick through the channels showed me that the value of controlling the remote is in direct proportion to the quality of the programmes on offer.

I was just about to turn off in contempt, when a news-clip from years ago caught my attention. The footage panned across a scene at Heathrow airport where hundreds, perhaps thousands of screaming teenage girls waited to welcome the arrival from the United States of their heart throb David Cassidy. In an instant I was transported back to the early 1970s, to the first time I ever went to a concert, the first time I ever felt completely part of a whole experience, watching, listening, feeling, the beat of the music coming up through the floor, my screams joining the others echoing around Wembley Stadium.

Sitting here tonight, in our house in Shoreham, I could see myself back in my bedroom in Croxted Road; playing the Cherish album again and again; singing along to every word and holding onto the album cover as tightly as if it had been him. I loved David Cassidy then, really loved him, and like so many millions of girls the world over, I convinced myself that I only had to meet him to persuade him that he'd love me too. I started saving up. I wasn't yet old enough for a Saturday job, but my pocket money pennies and birthday gifts that year all went into a special box; it had a slit in the top and a label on the front - my 'going to America to marry David Cassidy' fund.

I can remember all that so well, but strangely I can't remember when I stopped poring over the pictures in Jackie magazine, when I discovered other albums to listen to, found another use for my pennies. I don't even know what happened to the going-to-America box. I suspect it happened gradually, as I slowly understood it wasn't a reality and there were other, better, things to spend my time thinking about, wishing and wanting.

Then it came to me, forty years later, sitting here in our house in Shoreham, that's exactly what will happen to my dreams of spending time alone - one day I'll just know that there are other, better, things to spend my time thinking about, wishing and wanting.

A walk in the park

2011-04-07T21:19:00.000+01:00

As I walk along the path by the river I hear footsteps; a heavy pounding beat on the tarmac behind me, quickly coming closer and closer. I don't know if I should be afraid. I'm not usually here at this hour, I don't yet have an understanding of the patterns and habits of this part of town.

As he passes me, I can't help but smile. From the shins up he's just a boy, a skinny lad who got tall too quickly. In his grey tracksuit trousers, sweatshirt and baseball cap, with a sportsbag slung over one shoulder, he could be on his way to school. It's only the boots that suggest something different, their heavy reinforced toe-caps, beating out the rhythm of a working man.

Most days, I travel to work by car, from the lovely street where we live, to the multi-storey car park next to my office. When I was young I was intrigued by the idea of a transporter - the sort you'd see on Star Trek, where you'd step into a capsule and almost instantly end up in a different place on another planet. Now I'm all grown-up, I realise that my journey to work has become a bit like that, although admittedly not as instant.Once I enter the car, it's like I'm in my own bubble. My only interaction with anyone else is vicariously through the airwaves of the radio, or in mimed action through the exchanges with other drivers who surprise, irritate or enrage me. The only engagement with my surroundings is when I wipe a finger across the dusty dashboard, or scrabble about in the detritus I keep in the door-pocket, for a tissue, a tube of hand cream or the one CD I want to listen to most, though I can't remember where I put it.

A week or so ago, crumbling concrete brought a change to my routine, as the multi-storey was declared unsafe for use and we were all forced to make alternative arrangements. For the last week my journey has included a ten-minute walk to the office. The route takes me along a footpath, past the back of the cricket ground into the park, then along by the river, until I emerge from the underpass, just a few yards from my building.

I'm surprised how many people are around; dark-suited office workers march determinedly onwards, heads down as though they daren't risk the slightest distraction. Kids race past on scooters; while their mums try to keep up, propelling baby-buggies forward like miniature chariots. I feel sorry for the babies, pulled from the cosy comfort of their beds, breakfast hurriedly spooned into their still-yawning mouths, arms thrust into the un-cooperative sleeves of tiny coats, in a daily rush to the child-minder.

I pass the children's playground. There's a new climbing frame, resplendent in shades of purple, jade and yellow. Its colours make the old, faded-blue swings look shabby and unloved. I slow down for a while, imagining how my sons would have loved the frame; the chance to hurtle up ladders, fly across bridges and fling themselves down the slides and poles. I think of the times I stood by the side, pleased by their fearless adventures, terrified of impending injury.

I remember the holiday in Devon, when Gerard decided to climb the cliff. One minute he'd been sat by my side, playing in the sand; the next he was halfway up a precipice. The lure of reaching the top had obliterated any consideration of how he'd get down again. I shudder, even now, at the memory of the blind panic that gripped me as I imagined him plunging down into the sea. I know I stood there paralysed with fear, unable to think or move, while he loved every moment of the scramble up and relished every minute of the attention he got from the group of men who so generously climbed up to escort him back down.

But the playground is deserted; everyone is too busy heading somewhere else. There's no time to stop and play, no chance of screaming falls; or even grazed knees and bumped heads at this hour.

I carry on along the path. The walk is still a novelty, so I look around, noticing the clumps of sunny daffodils and the emerald green nettles building their traps by the side of the river. I hear the birds singing from their vantage points high above me. I look up.

The trees are in full blossom. Their flowers seem bolder and whiter than they ought to be, somehow they remind me of the winter snow that's not long gone. I'm glad that the fall of their flake-like petals will bring warmth and sunshine rather than shivery cold. And it's the thoughts of warmth and sunshine, the promise of future holidays that stays with me as I walk through the graffiti-ed underpass, past the locked empty car park and into my office.

The power of a long thin envelope

2011-03-31T22:20:00.000+01:00

I'm not sure exactly when it was, but I must have been about ten years old when I first discovered the power of a long thin envelope. Up until then, the only mail I'd been remotely interested in was the stiff square variety that turned up at Christmas and birthdays; cards containing at worst a gaudily coloured wish and at best a folded five pound note.

This envelope was different. It was cream and important looking, with a typed label on the front. Though I knew it was about me, it wasn't addressed to me, so all I could do was wait for my Dad to open it, wait for him to read it, then watch him pass it to my Mum to do the same. All I could do was watch while they looked at each other and wait until they finally looked at me.

----------------

Some months earlier there'd been discussions about secondary school. This was in the days when the Eleven Plus was still widespread, when children were categorised, classified and labelled on the basis of a three-part test. My big sister had already passed hers and was attending the local grammar school, but I wasn't daunted. I'd spent most of my life playing word games and doing puzzles; I knew the smug satisfaction of getting a sum right, demonstrating my comprehension skills, predicting the next shape or number in a series.I was one of those sickening kids who actually liked tests; I positively looked forward to it.

So that was when my parents upped the ante. I've no idea who first suggested I might sit for a scholarship to James Allen's Girls' School, a local independent fee-paying establishment. I don't remember if they asked me what I thought, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway, I couldn't have expressed a view; nobody I knew had ever gone there, or was ever likely to do so.

The scholarship exam was in three parts, two rounds of tests, and for those who did well enough, a final interview. My memory of the tests is hazy and mixed up with later experiences of exams, but I'm pretty sure we had to sit in a huge hall with tall windows. The first challenge was probably finding my seat - walking down the long rows to find an empty chair at one of the wooden fold-up tables, taking my seat while looking around at the other girls, watching them place their pencils neatly on the table-tops.

I must have done ok. I got through the first round of tests and then the second one. A few weeks later, before I'd even really thought about it, I was on my way to an interview.

Nowadays, if someone I knew was going to an interview I'd tell them to prepare, to think about the questions they might be asked, to imagine themselves in the role. Back then, the whole thing still bore no relation to reality. I don't think it even occurred to my parents, with their misplaced trust in my innate ability, that I might need some guidance or practice. It wasn't until the imposing lady with the stuck-up voice enquired haughtily of my entirely healthy, but distinctly adenoidal south London accent, "do you have a cold?" that I started to realise I might be out of my depth.

My nasally-toned answers to her questions became monosyllabic. After a while she waved a hand grandly towards a large gilt-framed picture propped up on a chair -"'talk to me about this painting Sharon. Describe to me what you see. Tell me what it makes you think of". At that point I think we both knew we were wasting our time.

--------------

I'd worked out that a letter of acceptance would come with lots of information about uniform and books, about kit-bags and fountain pens. And that would mean a thick, padded envelope.

So when the long thin envelope arrived, I already knew what it contained. In the time it took for my Dad to open it, read it, then pass it to my Mum to do the same; before they'd looked at each other and then at me; before I'd even started to feel guilty for disappointing their hopes, I'd already learned that the power of a long thin envelope is the power to dash down dreams you didn't even know you had.

Gone shopping - a story

2011-03-25T17:36:00.000Z

The restaurant was on the top floor and the windows took up the whole of one wall; their double height panes of glass letting in the spring sunshine. From the top of each frame hung an oversized light-bulb inside a clear globe; all of them were switched on, despite the brightness of the day.

George headed for a table, hoping he'd get there before anyone else grabbed the last empty seat by the window. He held his tray carefully, trying to balance it; hoping the cup of milky coffee wouldn't slide into the plate, make a soggy mess of his jam doughnut.

The shopping centre had been built into a disused chalk quarry. Its glass domes and pointed steel towers filled the crater like a crashed alien space-ship. Far below he could see people arriving, entering the store. Already, on this first warm day of the year, they'd come out without their coats, relishing the feel of sunshine on necks and wrists, knowing it wouldn't be long before they could bare arms and legs. He thought of Lily, "cast ne'er a clout til May is out.” It bothered him that he could barely picture her face, even after such a short time; but her sayings were still there, just under the surface of his consciousness, her voice ready to whisper in his ear at the slightest prompt.

So many people outside. Young couples, new families with babies in pushchairs, mothers and daughters with matching haircuts, similar walks. He watched a man taking a long deep drag on a cigarette before dropping it to the floor and slowly stubbing it out. His wife waiting impatiently for him to take his last gasp, before entering the smoke-free halls of the shopping centre. Some couples were already returning to their cars, laden down with bags; he guessed they were the serious shoppers who knew exactly what they'd come for, bought it, then left. Funny, though, how many of them did the same 'pocket-patting-checking' action as they walked towards their car, trying to remember where they'd put the keys.

Sunlight caught on the wing-mirrors and glossy paintwork of a long line of cars, winding round and down the sides of the quarry, ready to fill each car space as it became empty. Everywhere he looked there were cars and people, constantly moving. They looked small from this height, reminding George of the way insects scurry around when their homes are disturbed, the cars like beetles, the people like ants. He imagined Lily ticking him off for being over fanciful, shook his head to dismiss the thought.

On the glass just in front of him were a set of child-size fingerprints. He could picture a little lad on tip-toe, nose against the window, gazing out at the scene below. At the next table a young girl sat watching. When she saw him looking, she offered a small conspiratorial smile, then hid her face behind both hands, offering up a game of peepo. She was brightly dressed in a pink corduroy pinafore over a striped t-shirt that matched her tights, peach and lemon, mint-green and lilac, a palette of pastel rainbow-colours, optimistic, happy, young. George smiled back, then raised his own hand to cover his face.

Slowly he opened his fingers, peered through the bent, swollen joints, but the girl had turned away, her attention distracted by the balloon tied to a nearby pushchair. He felt foolish, dropped his hand quickly. Too quickly. Before he knew it the coffee cup was on its side, pale brown liquid seeping across the tray. Lily would never have left the cup and plate on the tray, she liked to do things properly, eat nicely wherever they were. He’d forgotten to get napkins too, so he groped in his pockets for a handkerchief, but there was only a screwed up piece of tissue. There'd been no more neatly ironed, monogrammed, hankies in his sock-drawer. He hadn’t bothered washing any.

Small stupid acts of rebellion; not just the tea-tray and the handkerchiefs, what on earth had he been thinking, coming here today? She’d have hated it; the bright lights, the maze of shops, the hoards of people buying things they didn’t really need. Who was he kidding, this was no place for a silly daft old man, he should just go for the bus, get himself back home.

Slowly he started to get to his feet, looking across the restaurant for someone he could tell about the spillage, someone he could apologise to for the mess. At first he barely noticed the gentle tug on the hem of his jacket, but then it became more insistent. He looked down, saw the bright colours of her t-shirt, even through the blur of unwanted tears.

She held out a pile of napkins. “Mummy said you might need these”.

As he reached for them it seemed her smile shone brighter than all the lights in the windows, warmer than the sun outside.

Call, screening

2011-03-17T22:49:00.000Z

I arrive far too early. Even though I've been driving all my adult life, I still worry when I'm going somewhere I've never been before. It seems that the more reluctant I am to actually get somewhere, the more I fret about getting lost, about not being able to find a parking space when I arrive.

But of course the journey turns out to be straightforward and there is a huge parking area with plenty of room, so I find myself sitting in the car with time to kill. I've brought a book with me, but I can't concentrate on it, so I pick up my phone, check for e-mails from work. I see a message reminding me of the phone call I should have made before I left home. I know it won't be a pleasant call, but sitting there in the car park, biding time until my appointment, it suddenly seems really important to do this first.

She answers at almost the first ring, sounding nervous and hesitant, as though she's been waiting by the phone for my call. I hate myself for leaving it longer than I'd needed to.

"I'm sorry, this is probably not the news you were hoping for, so I won't beat about the bush. We've decided to offer the position to another candidate".

There is a silence at the other end, which I rush to fill with platitudes about the strength of her interview and my confidence that she will find a suitable role soon. As soon as possible I hang up, cursing myself for sounding glib and patronising.

I leave the car and make my way to the mobile screening unit. It's hidden behind the main hospital, in an overflow car-park. Tucked away from the real illness and suffering, it seems almost as though it's ashamed of taking up even that space. I climb the shaky metal drop-down steps, thinking how strange it is to be having an appointment in an articulated lorry.

Stepping inside I'm greeted warmly by a kindly looking lady with a soft Scottish accent. I wonder if they employed her just for that accent and its ability to put people at their ease. Or perhaps it's the huge glasses, that take up half her face and make her eyes seem wide and innocent.

I take a seat on the lilac upholstered bench and watch the women come and go; it's quite a production line they've got going here. Every few minutes a lady emerges from the room at the end and goes into one of the small curtained cubicles to get dressed; rearrange herself. Almost immediately a hesitant looking woman emerges from a different cubicle, and heads to the end room, clutching a small pile of clothes to her chest, for protection. We're all women here, and we've each come on our own, but there's no eye contact between us and very little conversation. It's as though we've left our personalities out in the car park, where they can't be found by the screening equipment.

Soon enough it's my turn. I don't know what to expect, but there's another kind lady, I think maybe Malaysian this time. She introduces me to the space age machine and explains what will happen. It's hard to take in what she's saying when I'm standing there half-naked and feeling foolish, my arms wrapped across my chest in a childish attempt to maintain some modesty or dignity. When it's all done, I laugh and make a flippant comment, and she's strangely pleased that I'm smiling at her. "Too many women get cross with me" she explains before telling me that the results will be sent through in four weeks. It's a routine check-up so there's no need for concern, but if there's any problem they'll call me.

Then, after no more than half an hour, I'm back in my car. As I take my phone from my bag to turn it back on and check for messages, my mind goes back to that earlier call. Even though I know we made the right decision, I still feel bad about it. I wonder if the gods of retribution will seek to pay me back some way. I can't help but hope that it won't be me, in four weeks time who stands there nervous and hesitant, as some kindly person says "I'm sorry, this is probably not the news you were hoping for..."

A way with words

2011-03-14T20:48:00.000Z

I tried to make a path from stones and pebbles,

collected from the beach and carried home.

I chose them one by one from park and garden,

brushed off the soil, then placed them in a row

I piled them up, one rock upon another,

stood back and contemplated the effect;

the look and feel, the shifting shingle grouping,

a sometimes jagged sharpness that it left.

At first I hadn’t known they’d need containing;

their shapes and textures pleasing, smooth and round,

but then I sensed them knock against each other,

collide in changing contexts, shifting ground.

I saw them, trodden down and disappearing,

sink back into the earth from which they’d come.

I’d thought them mine; the world sought to reclaim them;

chiselling new meaning from the stone.

I tried again, I laid a holding membrane,

visited new sites, collected more.

Reordered, piled, and polished from my journey,

the treasures from each trip enriched my store

Until at last I’d made myself a pathway.

The pebbles came together underfoot.

Tho’ every now and then it shifted slightly

I’d found a road through words towards a truth.

Friday on my mind

2011-03-11T21:06:00.000Z

It's Friday morning, eight o'clock and I'm still in bed, propped up by a pile of plumped up pillows. Most mornings I'm up and out before Philip's even conscious, but on a Friday I work from home, so I'm the one who gets to stay tucked up in the duvet, with the cup of tea he made before he left.

I don't always live easily in the present. My mind's default setting is to think about the future, to mull over things, worry about and plan for what will, or might, or ought, to happen. Today though, there's something about the light outside that leads me to just sit.

The sky's a pale blue, cut in quarters by the white trailing clouds from two passing planes, like a washed out Scottish flag. From where I sit I can see the tops of the trees; they're still skeletal at this time of year. Though I know their leaf buds are forming, I can't see them from here. One old tree must have been there for hundreds of years. It stands in the back garden of a small cottage along the valley and it's been pruned a number of times to stop it blocking the light from the buckled leaded windows. It seems to have been hacked at without much thought for its shape so it now has a permanent one-sided lean, as though it's straining to get away from the cottage. For the last couple of years it's been the last tree to get leaves, like a recalcitrant old man who finds fewer reasons to get up and dressed every morning.

Where the tree's been cut back, I can see the upstairs of the house. The windows peep out from an old, uneven red-tiled roof, blinking in the light like eyes from under a fringe. I wonder if there's someone sitting in their bed thinking about the trees and the sky, looking out at me.

It's very quiet now that Philip's left for work. It's not just that he likes to leave the radio on in every room, more that there's a sound to his presence. When he's here, I sense his breathing. I can tell by the pace and depth of it, what mood he's in, how hard he's concentrating, whether he's tense or relaxed. When I first knew him, we worked in an office together. One day he spent a whole day coughing, trying to clear his chest. By the end of the day I felt the need to clear my own throat in sympathy every time he gasped for breath. Sometimes now, without even realising it, I find my breath slowing down or speeding up to keep pace with his.

Before he left, I listened to him moving around, heard him downstairs talking to the cat; waited for his step on the stairs, on the creaking floor-board in the bedroom. I noticed the click that his tin of hair-pomade made when he set it down on the wooden box by the bed, I heard his keys jangle as he picked them up and dropped them into his trouser pocket.

I sit for a while, but thoughts of the work I need to do today start pushing into the empty quietness. I know it's time to get up. When I do, the news is all of a terrible earthquake and tsunami in Japan. I switch on the TV and see film after film of buildings shaking, people screaming, rolling tidal waves of water washing over fields and through car parks.

It doesn't seem possible, that while I sat looking out at the peace of the valley, halfway across the world, people's lives were literally being turned upside down. I know there is no rhyme or reason. It simply isn't fair that some people will never again hear the turn of the key in the lock as their loved ones return at the end of the day. I am enormously grateful that I will.

Tailoring

2011-03-07T21:38:00.002Z

Helen unbuttoned the white coat as they entered the restaurant. She shrugged it off as she walked, held it out for the waiter to catch as she passed, heading straight for the table in the corner. Mark knew she’d want to sit against the wall, her back upright against the sludge-green wooden paneling. From there she could see across the restaurant; see and be seen.

He’d always been happy with it that way, watching her watching; satisfied enough by her decision to sit with him. He didn’t need to see the rest of the room; the looks of surprise exchanged between the other diners, their heads bending close as they whispered comments about beauty and the beast.

The waiter came to take their order; she always ordered for them both. At one time she’d have chosen different dishes, mouthfuls to be swapped, tastes shared.

“We’ll both have the beetroot salad. No starter.”

He looked at her while they waited for the food, while she studied the décor, the costumes of their follow diners. They didn’t speak, but he could almost hear her completing the judgmental checklist. He watched her run her fingers through her hair. To anyone else this might have looked like a distracted, thoughtless gesture. He knew better, understood her desire to demonstrate that, even at her age, she could still carry long hair. He knew that the blond colouring was carefully re-established every few weeks. He also knew how painstakingly the hairdresser recreated the dark roots growing through, doggedly covering any hint of grey.

The arrival of their meals stopped the silence from stretching. He watched as she sliced carefully through a piece of beetroot, noticed the purple juice seeping out like spilt wine, saw how it stained the white cubes of feta cheese. Her thin lips clamped down on the fork, enclosing the small mouthful of food. For a moment he imagined her with beetroot juice running down her chin, tried to picture her laughing and wiping it away on the back of her hand.

When had everything become so constrained? It was almost as though each stitch through her skin had sewn up a reaction, closed in an emotion.

There was a sudden shriek from the next table. Mark turned just in time to see a man drop a smoking napkin to the floor; it must have caught on the candle. His companion was smothering a giggle, hand clamped over her mouth to stop the laughter escaping, her shoulders shaking with the effort of keeping it in. He felt a sudden enormous urge to put his arm around those shoulders, to feel something other than taut skin, sharply defined bones. How he longed for looseness. Loose-limbed, lascivious, luscious, loveliness.He bit into a piece of beetroot, savoured the taste of sweet earthiness.

“Excuse me, I think I need the bathroom.” So polite, even after all this time. He placed his knife and fork neatly by the side of the plate, knowing anything else would irritate.

Crossing the room, he came to a short corridor running across the back of the restaurant. To his right the toilets, to his left the exit to the car park. He saw the white coat hanging on a coat rack by the door. He knew what it symbolized; an owner who had no need to use public transport, who had no fear of getting it soiled; a short-term seasonal whim, no need to make it last. God, how he hated the smug arrogance of that coat.

Mark paused, but only for the briefest moment, then without a backwards glance he turned left. As he unlocked the car he smiled ruefully, wondering how long it would be before she realised he wasn’t coming back. He pictured her calling for her coat, looking on in horror as the waiter handed it to her, seeing the rapidly spreading stain as the dark red juice seeped from the pocket where he’d oh so carefully placed the slice of beetroot.

Gut Girls - last night and the last night

2011-03-05T18:11:00.001Z

Tonight will be our final performance. Tomorrow, whatever the state of our hangovers from the last night party, the cast and crew will all get up early to clear and clean the village hall; returning it to its normal state of readiness for the youth club, the women's institute and the horticultural society spring show. I think I might want (need) to have a little rest after that, so this will be my last theatrical post for a while.

For those of you who've stuck with my daily posts - thank you for reading and thank you for the very kind and supportive messages you've left. I've appreciated your good wishes very much.

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Last night was performance number three. We were determined to raise the energy levels, put on a good show and get the reaction from the audience that had been missing the previous evening. Five minutes in, it was beginning to work. One by one, the other cast members came back stage grinning widely,

"have you heard that man with the really loud laugh?"
"who's that bloke two rows back - he seems to be really enjoying it"
"have you noticed the guy with the hat, he's having a great time".

Of course, I didn't need to ask the question, I knew exactly who it was. I live with him.

And it was just what we needed. His enthusiasm may have been ever so slightly biased, but it was infectious, the audience relaxed and so did we. It was our best show yet.

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I realise that I've said little about my fellow cast members to date. Before I end this series of posts I'd like to set that right and introduce you properly to the cast and crew; in order of appearance:

Harry (Derek Parker-Richardson)

Derek gets very nervous before every performance and quite often needs to nip out for a calming cigarette part-way through, but you'd never notice it when he's on-stage. He brings a lovely blend of professionalism, humility and supportiveness to the cast and his portrayal of Harry has just the right blend of pomposity, vanity and vulnerability.

Maggie (Sharon Longworth)

That's me. In the words of our director I'm "A wonderfully coarse Maggie!"

Ellen (Patsy Groom)

Patsy and I have been in a few plays together now, but I've got to know her much better this time round. Her character Ellen is trying against all odds to establish a trade union for the workers and achieve better working conditions for the girls. Patsy brings her to life with a convincing mix of hard-nosed pragmatism and caring consideration for others. She has a much naughtier sense of humour than I'd realised, and I think she's relished having a role she can really make her own.

Polly (Megan Longworth)

I've always known Megan can act - I've watched her performing her whole life - so I knew she would be absolutely marvellous in Gut Girls. And she is. I am, of course, enormously pleased and very proud that everyone else now knows she's a star.

Kate (Matilda Lloyd)

It can't have been easy for Matilda to come along and join a cast of complete strangers, many of whom have been around for quite some time, but she's thrown herself into it wonderfully. She's one of those great people who you know you can completely rely on to get it right time after time, but she's done much more than that; developing the character and bringing more to it each night.

Annie (Ann Jones)

The power of Ann's performance has, I think, surprised us all. Over the last few months she's changed from the girl who kept being asked to speak louder at rehearsals to an actor who has the ability to make the audience laugh one minute, then move them to tears the next.

Jim (Jacob Hart)

Jim is also new to the Shoreham Village Players. It's been great to have him around and I hope one day he'll be able to talk about sausages without wincing uncomfortably!

Lady Helena (Sue Rivett)

Sue is an absolute star - she has been a model of professionalism and patience throughout our rehearsals and performances and she has made a fantastic Lady Helena - portraying her naivety and well-intentioned interference with complete credibility.

Edwin (Dave Jones)

I'm in awe of Dave's talent, and have really enjoyed acting alongside him - especially when I get to threaten him with a knife every night. But he's also the absolute opposite to the evil character he portrays in the play. I've loved watching him when his wife is on stage. He stands in the wings, mouthing every word of her lines, willing her to get it right and pleased as punch when she does.

Edna / Emily (Jill Webster)

Jill just gets it right every time. She picked up an additional character when one of the cast fell ill, and has played both so well. As Eady she plays the mother to Megan's character and they've built up such a great relationship on stage that I'm seriously thinking Megan might want to trade me in for the nicer version.

Arthur (Neville Fourie)

Arthur is a villain in the play. Neville couldn't be less of a villain in real life, but he's risen to the challenge brilliantly well and has now got us all convinced that maybe somewhere deep down there is a nastier side to his character.

Len (Peter Triggs)

Len usually works back-stage, turning his hand to all sorts of practical tasks and I think this is the first time he has taken part as one of the cast. It's been a lovely surprise to see how well he can act. He has the dubious delight of playing the character that I eventually end up marrying in the play - for that he gets my sympathy, but I couldn't ask for a nicer pretend hubby.

Eady (Liz Nash)

Liz has performed in many Shoreham productions and deservedly brings her own village fan club with her. Eady is my mother in the play and it's been great fun to share scenes with her - and not just because she always reminds me when we're supposed to be going on and what I'm supposed to be doing. She brings to the role a great combination of humour, scorn and despair.

Priscilla (Sarah Dickins)

Sarah is not only beautiful, but patient and supportive to all the rest of the cast. For an Australian, she does a fantastic posh English woman and her portrayal of the frightened, bullied Priscilla has been genuinely moving. On top of that she's even found time to make us all the most delicious cup-cakes!

Mad Jacko (Jamie Lyons)

Jamie has one long scene in the play during which he is heckled by all the Gut Girls. It has sometimes felt a bit seat-of-the-pants as he's struggled to get the lines he knows perfectly well at home out in the right order when he's on stage. But it's been great to see him overcome all that and he brings a huge amount of exuberant life and humour to his character.

Nora (Sheila Webb)

If anyone can ever be relied on to have a smallish cameo role yet steal the scene it's Sheila. She brings so much to her role with just a haughty expression and the raising of an eyebrow. Wonderful to watch.

----------

There have been so many other people involved - all of whom have done a fantastic job behind the scenes - the wise and experienced Kate Britten as stage manager; Vivien Booth who designed the set; Mark Hodges who designed the lighting and Henry Desmond who did so much more than flicking the switches: Chris Euman, who as first time costume manager did us all proud; Jamie Lyons who made the most gruesome fake meat and Joan Cornwell who sourced our props; and so many others who won't be known to the people who read this blog, but who are known and appreciated by everyone involved in the play.

A special mention for Sheila Wilson who gave so much of her time to prompt us during rehearsals, and who, despite whatever pain she must still be in, got up from her hospital bed to attend one of our performances.

And lastly, our brilliant director Lonnie. I've hugely appreciated her support and advice. She has had such a clear and strong vision of what she hoped we'd achieve, and has, I think got more out of many of us than we knew we could do. I hope we've at least partially lived up to her expectations.

As for me, well I couldn't be more pleased with how it's all been.

Gut Girls - second night lows

2011-03-04T17:38:00.000Z

Some things you learn early in life. I think I've always known the danger of getting 'too big for my boots' the impending disaster of pride before a fall. I know I quickly mastered the basic techniques of avoiding disappointment 'Don't Look Forward to Anything Too Much', 'Always Expect the Worst', and 'Pretend it Doesn't Matter';

So, I really should have known that after a great opening night, our second performance was likely to feel flat. The energy and excitement that had got us through the previous evening had somehow disappeared and for the first half an hour it felt like we were going through the scenes in slow motion. We found ourselves moving awkwardly around each other on the stage, stumbling over our words, leaving just too much of a gap between each other's lines. Halfway through our opening scene someone accidentally knocked against the table that wasn't meant to fall apart until later in the play. We'd only just managed to stifle the embarrassed giggles when one of the back-stage speakers fell down from the wall with a thunderous crash.

Worse, our missing exuberance seemed to be having an effect on the audience. At our first show, every time the lights went down, the audience had applauded. Last night it was as though everyone there was waiting for someone else to react first. Scene after scene passed by in deathly silence, the longer it went on, the worse it seemed to be, as the lines that we'd thought were sure-fire winners began to sink without trace.

Backstage we were starting to despair, each of us individually blaming ourselves for not quite getting it right. But then I think someone finally remembered that we were supposed to be having fun, so we started plotting ways to wake the audience up, to shock them from their slumbers, shake them from their timidity. And strangely enough, as we sat there thinking of ways to bring the audience to life we started to recapture some of our own confidence and enthusiasm. By the end of the night it felt like we were all back on track. There wasn't one of us who could have done it on our own, but somehow, between us we'd managed to turn it round.

In a short while we'll be trying to do it all again. And I'll be struggling with the added nervousness brought on by knowing that tonight Philip will be sitting out front. I know, once again, I'll be relying on my fellow cast and crew members to get me through, so I don't think there's any better way to end this post than by introducing you to some of my partners in crime, the splendid cast of the Gut Girls.

Gut Girls - Opening night

2011-03-03T15:18:00.000Z

As I walk through the door it immediately feels different. Row upon row of chairs fill the hall's empty floor space, facing expectantly towards the stage. People are moving around, checking the lights, placing the props, setting up the bar; each of them quiet but purposeful.

It's different backstage as well; costumes hang neatly on a rail, grouped together for each character; hats are piled up on a table and a huge box of gaudy jewellery is tucked away just beneath it. Next to the hats, individually addressed envelopes are laid out, each with a rose carefully placed across it; cards and good luck messages, one for each member of the cast from our director Lonnie. She's back with us tonight. Each arm in plaster and a sling - not one, but two broken wrists from the previous night's fall. Ignoring any pain or discomfort, she carefully steps around us, quietly reassuring, giving out a few reminders.

The space behind the stage doubles up as the storage room for the village playgroup, so there's not much room for manoeuvre, but the same sense of quiet purpose pervades. Each of us slowly adjusting to the mood of our colleagues, offering to tie an apron ribbon, do up a hard-to-reach dress hook, or help locate a mis-placed boot. Others sit quietly, feeling the need to silently mouth their lines just one more time.

All too soon it's time for us to take our places on stage. We're moving around the gutting sheds, in character, as the audience take their seats, but I'm too nervous to look out, see how many of the rows are filled. Once they're all sitting the lights go down. When they come back up we begin.

"Stand yerself up girl, and whatever you do, don't take no deep breaths, that won't do yer no good in here"

My first line in the play is spoken to a timid new member of the gut girls on her first day in the sheds; but I almost feel as if I'm saying it to myself, willing my nerves back under control, telling myself I'll be ok. And it works; suddenly I've switched into character, the lines are coming at the right times, I've remembered what I'm supposed to do.

It makes such a difference to have an audience out there, reacting to what we're saying and doing. It's not always the reaction we'd expected and certainly not always at the right time, but nonetheless it makes it all seem more alive. Backstage there are speakers, so we can hear what's being said out front. By now we all know the sections where we've struggled to get it right, we stand there listening, holding our breaths, willing the characters to get the words out; we breathe a collective sigh of relief when they do and the audience responds.

As scene after scene passes without mishap and we near the end of the first half we start to relax, we begin to exchange smiles, someone's even brave enough to whisper what we've all started to think.

"It's going alright, isn't it?"

And then, almost before I know it, we've said our last words and we're lining up for our curtain call. Our first performance is over, the audience is clapping loudly, and their applause continues as we make our way off stage.

Of course Lonnie still has notes for us; things she's already asked us to do dozens of times that we keep on forgetting, things that we promise we'll remember for tomorrow. She points out the odd late entrance, the occasions when we weren't quite standing in the right place for the lights. We know ourselves where we mixed up our words, stumbled into the end of someone else's speech. All of this will keep us on edge, make sure we try just as hard again tomorrow. Nevertheless, tonight we leave with smiles on our faces, we did ok.

Gut Girls - show week part 3

2011-03-02T18:11:00.000Z

Dress Rehearsal

Perhaps I shouldn't have written about the broken leg. Maybe that's another theatre superstition - don't mention the mishaps...

I went for lunch with a good friend yesterday; so much better to be eating, drinking and chatting than sitting indoors worrying about the dress rehearsal. Even when she rang early in the day to say she'd been sick in the night, I wasn't worried. Yesterday was all about staying calm, taking time to enjoy myself, then getting ready slowly and carefully for our final rehearsal.

I probably shouldn't have gone for the afternoon nap, not after an enormous plate of fish and chips. Maybe I should have packed my bag before I went to sleep, practised my make-up as I'd promised myself I would, set some time aside to re-read the script one last time. I most definitely should have set my alarm to go off a little earlier.

Yesterday was all about staying calm, taking time to enjoy myself, getting ready slowly and carefully for our final rehearsal. And all of that should have been possible. Instead, I slept in too long and when I woke I felt sick. The griping pains in my stomach gnawed away at my good mood, my sense of calm evaporated. I was caught with a wave of nausea each time I bent down to put something in my bag. Ill-will towards my erstwhile good friend emanated from every pore as I diagnosed myself with food poisoning at best, Norovirus at worst. 'Indigestion' sighed the supportive other half. 'You're probably just nervous' snapped the sympathetic daughter. 'Shut up or I'll throw up on you' replied the wannabe actress.

So I arrived for the rehearsal late, flustered, grumpy and not quite on the planet. I thought I had it bad. As I walked into the hall and towards the stage I noticed Lonnie doing something with the curtains. I was so obsessed with annoyance at myself that I barely noticed she was standing on a chair. I certainly didn't even register that the chair was neither robust nor safely positioned on the stage. It was only when I heard the bang that I finally came to. And that's when I saw our director, sitting down, shaking her head and quietly moaning 'I've broken my wrist'. And indeed she had.

I've found out over the last few weeks that the Shoreham Players are nothing if not versatile. They really do step up to a crisis and live out the old adage that 'the show must go on'. Chris, our costume lady, became the ambulance driver for the night and whipped Lonnie off to the hospital; Kate our stage manager stepped in as director. The rest of us promised to tread very carefully and on we went.

The lighting wasn't always quite there, some of the costumes were missing and several of the lines went astray, but we got through it. Gradually I saw the tension back-stage dissipate as scene by scene we began to realise that it was starting to come together.

Of course there is still room for improvement in the pace of some scenes, our positioning and movement, the interaction between characters. Of course I know now that my skirt is see-through and needs a petticoat, that we've got a really quick costume change between two scenes and that my style of wrist-watch definitely wasn't worn in Victorian England. But as I listened to the director's notes at the end of the evening, I realised that my nausea had disappeared, that we'd made it through without any more casualties, and that there's nothing we still can't get right.

So with just half an hour to go until I set off for our first night, I'm feeling ok. We've got a great cast, a fabulous crew and a cracking play, and I hope everyone who comes along tonight has a thoroughly splendid time.

Gut Girls - show week part 2

2011-03-01T11:02:00.000Z

Yesterday was, at least theoretically a 'rest day', the only day this week when I won't be treading the boards. Tonight is dress rehearsal and then we have four performances, from Wednesday through to Saturday.

I like the last minute preparations for a show, pottering around checking that I've got everything I need, making final adjustments to my costumes. I've sewn the missing button onto my gruesomely blood-stained apron and removed the pocket from a blazer to make it look slightly less grammar school, slightly more gutting shed. I've even tried softening the sleeve protectors we have to wear while hacking the meat, but they're made of harsh rough sack straight from a local farm and they remain far tougher than me. Although it might be in character, I won't be wiping my nose on my sleeve tonight.

We'll be doing our own make-up for the show. I don't usually wear much more than a lick of eyeliner and a brush or two of mascara, so assembling the jars, pots, tubes and brushes I'll need for tonight really feels like getting ready to play dressing-up. I'll probably need to practice a few times before I get it right and it's easier to do that here than in the confined space back-stage, so I'll do my make-up at home before I go down to the hall. Surely strolling through the village as a painted lady will only enhance my reputation with the locals?

I'm starting to feel just a touch nervous; not that gut-wrenching panic when your mind goes blank and you can't remember what scene you're in, let alone what you're supposed to say, but a tingle of anticipation; that sense you get when you've spent ages looking forward to a day out and you're half-excited, half-worried it will disappoint. Half of me thinks we're hideously under-rehearsed, the other half thinks that's ok as it means we'll be on our toes, still trying hard and keen to get it right - it's a difficult balance.

I think I might walk down to the village shop in a while. The shop doubles up as our box-office, tickets for each night stored in plastic boxes under the counter. A separate seating plan for each show is stuck onto a large piece of cardboard and each time a seat is sold, the corresponding box on the seating plan gets a large cross through it, so it's easy to see how well sales are going. Saturday night is likely to be a sell-out and, last time I checked opening night was going well too. The only downside to that is that the cheaper seat prices for our first performance usually attract the slightly more mature members of village society. I'm not entirely convinced they're yet quite ready for the coarse reality of a Deptford gutting shed at the end of the nineteenth century, but hopefully some of them might forget to turn on their hearing aids.

Gut Girls - show week part 1

2011-02-28T18:27:00.000Z

Sunday 27 Feb - Technical rehearsal

We've been building up to this for months. Gradually absorbing and repeating the lines, carefully planning and practising the movements, slowly getting to know the other members of the cast as well as the characters we'll play.

The 'technical' is our penultimate rehearsal before opening night, the final check on lighting, props, staging and costumes; it has always had the potential to be both scary and demanding. Despite all the careful planning and the very best intentions of cast and crew, the last few weeks have been challenging for Lonnie our director and the four hours set aside in our rehearsal schedule, which had seemed so ludicrously generous all those months ago, suddenly appear to be nowhere near enough.

It's one thing to walk through the scenes when all you need to do is imagine the props, another one entirely to manoeuvre around the small space of the village hall's stage without totally blocking the audience's view, as a fellow cast member delivers their most poignant line. It should be easy to wield a meat cleaver with conviction, but the more you do it the less natural it feels. The Gut Girls are supposed to be coarse and common, but we're still being urged to be louder and more raucous; and you may think that it would present no challenge, but I haven't yet entirely got to grips with the art of swigging convincingly from an empty beer bottle.

Theatre is full of superstition. Many believe that mere mention of the name of 'The Scottish Play' is enough to bring on a plague of bad luck. Others attempt to evade calamity by banning whistling anywhere in the theatre, avoiding the use of mirrors on stage and insisting that the colour blue can only be worn when offset by silver. But probably the best known of all theatrical superstitions is the phrase that's meant to replace any ill-advised good luck wishes. This week Sheila, our prompt, took that a little too literally. Having spent weeks patiently and successfully overcoming the challenges of a cast who change their lines at every rehearsal, her downfall was the curled up edge of carpet in the doorway of the hall, which resulted in nasty tumble and a fractured femur.

It's strange how you think you know people just because you pass them in the street and say hello. I saw a different side to my fellow Shoreham Players that night. Sheila was very brave, despite her obvious fear and pain, but she was matched in stoic fortitude by Jill who crouched down motionless for a limb-numbing age to hold the injured leg still. Derek's kind, calming, softly spoken words are just what I'd want to hear if ever I was in trouble and even Megan, who in my heart will always be my little girl, showed me she's far from that in the confident clear way she called and spoke to the ambulance service.

Sheila has now had an operation and is recovering in hospital, but even so, I don't think anyone will be telling us to 'break a leg' on opening night.

Gut Girls - show week

2011-02-27T21:02:00.000Z

Like the witches in Macbeth, the legs of a tripod, the sides of a triangle, or even just luck, things often arrive in threes. The fortuitous convergence of three events this week has given me an excuse to try something a little different on my blog for the next seven days.

Gut Girls, the show we've been rehearsing since November last year is finally coming to the stage of Shoreham Village Hall this week, with performances from Wednesday to Saturday.
Because there is no way that I could be on stage every evening and up for work at 6.00am the next day, I have taken the whole week off. This also means I have more time for writing.
Next Saturday, 5th March, is not only the final performance of Gut Girls, it is also my very first Bloggiversary; one year to the day since I started this whole blog-writing malarkey.

For these three reasons, and not just because I am a self-obsessed luvvy, I have decided that for the next seven days I will write a blog update every day - focusing on the happenings at the village hall, our final preparations and the performances.

A daily blog is not something I've attempted before, but I really like the idea of keeping an almost-live record of the week. I know that this is completely self-indulgent, and I've no idea how it will turn out, so I can only beg your forbearance. If the whole idea seems just too hideous, then all I can suggest is that you stay away from the blog for the next week or so, after which normal service will be resumed.

If, on the other hand, you fancy taking a journey through the stage-fright, the highs and lows, the glamour and greasepaint of a theatrical production in a small village in Kent, then please switch off your mobile phones and take your seats; the curtain is about to rise...

A cottage in the woods

2011-02-26T17:39:00.000Z

In fifty years, I've never lived on my own, never even been on holiday by myself. Half a century of sharing and adjusting, carefully negotiating space and sound, decor and temperature.

At nineteen I moved straight from the shared bedroom of childhood to the double bed of marriage. I'd quickly closed down any conversations about going away to university; that had seemed no more real than the notion of finding a room in a shared house, renting a bedsit in the city, travelling around the world. Other people did those things, people I read about, not people I knew.

It might have been that I was rushing into being with someone, trying to get back to the family life that I'd known before my parents' divorce. Or it might have been that young love had convinced me that being half of something was better than being less than someone. Either way, for a long while it was a good place to be, especially while there were children arriving and growing, when sharing space meant snuggling up on the sofa to read a book, budging up in bed to make room for a sleepy kid in the early morning. When eventually, perhaps inevitably, we realised that there wasn't enough space in being married, the children and I moved to another house. Though I'd never been more lonely, I still wasn't alone.

But every now and then I'd think about a cottage in the woods. In my head it was a place where I'd live all by myself. I'd sit and read, with only the creaking sounds of the trees to keep me company. Life was simple in my house made of logs. No electricity, no machinery, no conversations or relationships; nothing to break. I pictured myself revelling in my solitude, writing the book I'd never found time for, being at one with nature and myself. I sometimes wondered though, how long I'd last, how long it would be before I rushed to the nearest town, started a conversation with anyone who'd listen.

My children are all grown up now, but I'm still not on my own. With Philip I've learned a whole new set of adjustments. We live in a tiny house, so whatever one of us does, it's bound to have an impact on the other. I realise that I'll sometimes have to tolerate the freezing gales that blow through the open kitchen window because he gets too hot when he's cooking. I understand that I'll need to grin and bear the northern cadences of Radcliffe and Maconie, because he likes to listen to the radio while he does so. But that's ok, because I also know that I'll get to sit down with him and eat the meals he's so carefully made while he's been sweltering and I've been shivering.

In return, he's got quite adept at avoiding the shoes and bags I place around the house like booby traps, the laptop leads that I trail across the floor like poachers' wires; he knows I'll get around to moving them eventually, because I'm the one who hoovers. We've both learned that, even when we silently blame each other for leaving clothes around, for piling up books and papers, for failing to change the bed, replace a light-bulb, put the rubbish out, it doesn't really matter. We're both quite comfortable in our clutter and our shared space.

Even so, I still sometimes imagine going on holiday alone. I picture myself lying by the pool with a book, while the other holiday-makers whisper between themselves, wondering in hushed tones about the enigmatic lone-lady. And every now and then, when I've had a dreadful week at work, when I feel like the years are slipping away, when the things I ought to do are eating into the time for the things I want to do, then I still think about that cottage in the woods.

Except this time, there's a bearded, check-shirted lumberjack called Philip living there with me.

Senseless

2011-02-19T22:20:00.000Z

I have almost no sense of smell. It's a bit like that very old, and not very funny joke:

'My dog has no nose'
'How does he smell?'
'Awful'

It hasn't always been that way; I have some really powerful scent memories. Ambre Solaire in the heat of a Majorcan sun on my first teenage holiday, fresh-cut-grass in Dulwich park on a Sunday morning, burnt-out fireworks in November, the bury-your-face-in-it scent of a just shaved boyfriend. But it's been a long time since I walked past a lilac tree and was knocked out by its fragrance, even longer since I came home to the heart-lifting aroma of a roast dinner.

One of the real down-sides is the impact on my ability to taste. I easily get those flavours that rely only on the tongue - put either sugar or salt in my tea and I will kill you while spitting it out in your face; but ask me to describe the nuances of a fine glass of wine and I'm lost. I live in awe of tea-tasters and all those who earn their living by their taste-buds. I am nonplussed by those who can define the impact of a herb - imagine being able to say you don't like coriander.

I know it's frustrating for my beloved. He's a very fine cook and will happily spend hours blending flavours to create a perfect dish. I know that my "very nice" doesn't do it credit, but I just don't have the vocabulary to describe what isn't there. In compensation for my lack of palate I have however developed a supreme appreciation of texture. Take the well-crafted combination of textures in crispy duck and pancakes, the soft giving-ness of the pancake, the cool crunch of the cucumber and spring onion, the springy bite of the duck, all enfolded in sticky plum sauce. Unbeatable.

There are other advantages; I never suffer from the odour of sweaty shoes left lying around the house, I'm never compelled to move away from a smelly fellow passenger on a train, I can be relied on to put the rubbish out without making a fuss. At times though, it borders on dangerous. I can sit in a room with burning bacon under the grill and notice nothing until the acrid smoke brings tears to my eyes, I can happily pour gone-off milk into my tea and only notice when it rises to the surface in lumps.

I always wear perfume, but never choose my own - I have to rely on the good taste of others to tell me if it suits me. And because I cannot rely on my sense of smell, I live in constant fear of offending the olfactory organs of those around me.

A few years ago, while sitting in bed with my beloved, he started talking in his softest, kindest voice,
"you know that I really love you...."
Well that immediately set alarm bells ringing. Why was he being so nice, what was he building up to?
He must have been about to tell me that I smelled.
"...I want you to know that you can rely on me..."
Now I don't mind making a deliberate fool of myself, but I couldn't bear to think that he was feeling sorry for me or disdainful.
"...and because I really love you, I think..."
This was too much. I was ready to leap out of bed and rush to the shower.
Then he took my hand.
I knew it must be really bad.
"...I'd like you to marry me..."

Well I certainly never sensed that coming.

Setting out

2011-02-16T23:13:00.000Z

Each morning I follow the same routine; as I leave the house, I pull the front door shut behind me, turn left and look down the street. The terraced cottages form a guard of honour as the road makes its way slightly downhill towards the river. Beyond that, the view opens up across the fields to the other side of the valley. From this distance I can't see the llamas grazing, but as I look up I can see the lights glowing from the solitary house on the hill. I'm intrigued by the round turret like wing at one end and always think it could be the setting for an Agatha Christie murder mystery, a deadly dinner party with Hercule Poirot as guest of honour; 'Villainy at the Vineyard' perhaps, or 'The Shocking Shoreham Shooting'?

I have a long commute to work, so it's still dark when I leave. There's no-one else around at this time, but as I look along the road I can picture the other Crown Road residents waking up and preparing for the day ahead. I know the house where the toddler will already be awake, chattering away to her Dad before he sets off for work in Tunbridge Wells. I can imagine the scene where our champion of the allotments will be slowly stretching, bringing the life back into his aching shoulders. I can almost see each of the dogs and cats bending down to their individual breakfast bowls.

Then I turn to walk up the road towards the car. Parking is never easy in this small narrow street, so it's usually a bit of a way from the house. I never mind that though; this is sometimes my only chance of the day to feel like I'm really part of the village. At the top of the street is the hill leading up to the woods on our side of the valley. This is the slope where so many people rushed to test out their tobogganing skills when the snow fell heavily in December, I can still almost hear the excited shrieks of delight and fear. Sometimes the field is empty, at other times there are sheep or cows grazing there. I remember the reaction of my son when he first saw them clinging to the steep incline "why don't they roll down?"

As I walk up the road I continue to imagine the scenes behind each front door. The young couple a few doors up are expecting their first baby. It was due earlier this week and I wonder if anything happened in the night. But there's no way of knowing; everything looks peaceful and it's far too early to knock and find out. As I reach the top of the road, the first car reverses past me on its way to the station. The driver smiles and waves through his rapidly de-misting windscreen.

Just a few minutes later I reach my car, but in that short time the darkness has lifted a little and the sky is a lighter grey. I know that each morning for the next few weeks this will happen slightly earlier until the day when I walk out for the first time this year to the bright morning light of Shoreham. On that day I'll walk even more slowly to my car.

One fair lady - a story

2011-02-13T22:49:00.000Z

She was a sucker for a musical. Write a play, put songs in it, and she'd be there. It didn't matter if it was trite and predictable, she didn't care if it was contrived and cheesy; with the first note of the overture she would instantly suspend all disbelief and be entranced. There'd been few defining moments in her life that wouldn't have been improved by the people all around her turning as one to an imaginary audience and, with shining teeth and sparkling eyes, bursting into song.

Her teenage role models had been the irresistible Maria from West Side Story, the irrepressible Maria from The Sound of Music. She'd modelled her approach to parenting on a combination of the chaotic care of Caractacus Potts and the matronly magic of Mary Poppins. But it was the character of Eliza Doolittle that had captured and held her. Perhaps it was the name, so close to her own Lizzie; perhaps it was the London setting. She'd certainly known people who would judge her on account of her accent.

She'd sometimes felt uncomfortable with the notion of a girl needing or wanting to change so drastically to fit another's definition of proper, but there was something so very enticing about that dramatic transformation. The very idea that, if you only tried hard enough, you could become beautiful and accepted. She'd pictured herself playing the part on the West End stage. Manipulating her vowel sounds, overcoming her gracelessness and winning the heart of the curmudgeonly but oh-so-clever Professor Higgins.

So why, when he played the soundtrack tonight, as they sat and ate together, did she have to blink away the tears? Why did she feel the need to straighten her shoulders, hold her head high and pretend all the optimism and joy he expected? She could still remember the time when she'd offered to give her heart to anyone who'd stand outside her door and sing 'On the street where you live'. So when exactly had the transformation from cockney girl to stunning socialite become such a parody of misguided hope and untaken chances?

She looked across the table at her own intellectual. She pictured him singing 'I've grown accustomed to her face' and wondered when that had become a reflection of reality rather than a love song. Was it inevitable for everyone to eventually reach a stage when they have to accept who they are? When do people realise that the best they'll ever be has already been?

Sighing, she got up to clear the table. Slim chance that she'd ever again want to dance all night. He stood up as she passed his chair, reaching out to catch her hand. She knew he'd meant well and that she'd disappointed him with her silence, she just didn't know how to explain. But as Lizzie looked at him he grinned and then, still holding her hand, he very softly started to sing,

'All at once am I, several stories high, knowing I'm on the street where you live.'

The shed

2011-02-10T00:21:00.001Z

A few nights ago I dreamed of our garden shed. It wasn't the timber-slatted, flower-pot-and-cobweb filled refuge of an aged pipe-smoker. Neither was it an eau-de-nil painted summerhouse, with gingham curtains and a wide verandah. This shed was brick-built and square with a flat roof; a utilitarian council-house issue of the early 1960s. It stood in the garden of our house in Croxted Road, just a few yards away from the kitchen, and for nearly twenty years it was the first thing I saw whenever I opened the back door.

For hour after hour when I was a girl, I'd play two-balls against the closed shed door, the pounding of the tennis balls on the wood, marking out time to one of the rhythmic songs I'd learned at school; each line accompanied by the appropriate actions as I practised throwing and catching, throwing and catching.

"PK penny a packet,
first you lick it, then you smack it,
then you stick it to your jacket
PK, penny a packet"

In my dream the door was open and I was peering into the gloom of the shed's interior. It was a bit like looking at any memory, clear at the centre, but dark and fuzzy the further you go into it.

In my mind, there was a coal bunker just inside. Though the house was newly built when we moved in and I don't remember there ever being a coal fire, I could swear there were a few shiny black nuggets in its corners. Did I imagine the square of old faded carpet laid out on the hard concrete floor under our feet, where we played 'shop' on rainy days when it was too wet to stay in the garden; where we'd pile up toys for sale and take it in turns to press down the keys of the brown and cream plastic till to ring up the prices.

I pictured a folded up wigwam leaning against the wall and the old Silver Cross pram, which we used mostly for pushing our dolls, but sometimes for carrying the docile ginger cat from two doors down, who didn't mind being dressed up. Behind it was a heavy black tricycle and somewhere in a corner there must have been the abandoned pogo stick that I tried so hard to master yet never managed to cling on to for more than two springs.

In the shed of my dream there was no sign of my sister's chopper bike and no images of us huddled on the doorstep each night after school, polishing our shoes before we could go indoors. Nothing had yet been cleared to make way for the stacked cages of the guinea pig stud farm, those small substitutes for the ponies my sister really wanted. And my selective memory edits out the times I took friends home to ridicule her as she spent hour after hour training guinea pigs to jump over tiny makeshift fences in her garden gymkhanas. My older sister tells me she locked me in the shed once until I wet my knickers, but that event is firmly erased from my consciousness.

Memory is a tricky thing; even more so when it's shaped by a dream, so it's hard to be sure how much of what I recalled is true. The shed always seemed dark, I don't think there was a light or any electricity and there was only one small window high up, but in my mind's eye hanging on the far wall, was a framed print of Van Gogh's Sunflowers, shining out like a gold tooth in a gaping mouth.

A photo of you

2011-02-04T18:16:00.000Z

For a long time there weren't any photographs of the two of us together. I found pictures of you from before and put them on my mantelpiece, almost as if I was trying to claim another part of your life

In one of them you're a skinny teenager, wearing an over-large grey jumper, sitting in front of a bed of municipal daffodils. Behind you the traffic passes in a blur, a transit van in one direction, a blue Ford Capri in the other. It's a bright looking day with patches of clear blue sky between the high white clouds, but the daffodils give away the season and the jumper suggests that it's not yet warm. You grew up by the seaside and I like to think you're looking out to sea in this photo. I like to imagine that you're gazing away from the terraced houses of the town, towards the open grey expanse of water beyond the harbour. The sound of the waves, crashing on the pebbled shore is enough to drown out the noise of the traffic behind you. There are no other people around on this sunny spring day, just you and the girl with the camera. Perhaps you've snuck off from school to hang around together. Maybe later, when the cold sea air creeps in through your jumper, you'll grab her hand and run laughing to a nearby cafe where you'll warm up with steaming mugs of strong sweet tea.

You're older in the other photo, but I love the carefree look on your face, the relaxed way you lean back in the chair and the broad smile that brings creases to your eyes. Your smile was for another woman then. I think you were on holiday together, sitting at a pavement cafe, parasols in lines behind you. Your sunglasses are hanging round your neck from one of those string things - are they called lanyards? I can't imagine you wearing them that way now, not the you I know. You're looking straight into the camera, as though you're happy to have your picture taken, happy to be sitting there. I wonder what you said to her just after she'd clicked the shutter.

In the early days, when I hadn't known you long, I sometimes wondered what would happen if the worst thing occurred. I was no next-of-kin, no name stored in your wallet, nor the front page of your diary. Your sister, in a far-off northern town, had only knowledge of your last long love, no note of me. If something happened to you, how would I find out? Who would think to tell me? In those early days, when I placed your smiling pictures on the mantel, it was almost as if I was trying to claim another part of your life. I longed to place beside them a framed photo of the two of us together, believing that would somehow make us real; prove that we had a shared history, a promised future.

There are lots more photos now; other pictures of bright spring days and warm summer evenings and in some of them we're together. You still have a smile that creases your eyes and a way of gazing out, asking the world to tell you its story. But I've stopped putting photos on the mantelpiece. Nowadays that's full of other clutter; your recent birthday cards, red candles on china saucers, the antique clock we bought together. It seems that somehow, almost without noticing and without the need for photos, I have claimed part of your life.

Coming together

2011-01-31T23:17:00.000Z

It was the fire that we noticed first; brightly blazing logs inside a hearth that looked like the drum of a washing machine. At that point we were shivering outside peering in through the window, the warmth visible but not reachable. We'd arrived far too early; eagerness and mistrust in rail services conspiring to make us arrive thirty minutes before the pub was due to open.

Too cold to stand for long, we walked around the neighbourhood that neither of us knew. We stared up at the glass and chrome fronted apartments, imagining the lives of those who lived within, enviously admiring the wide balconies facing out to the river, picturing champagne and canapes on a warm summer's evening. We sympathised with the residents of the less showy flats round the side, that looked out on the waste recycling centre, where the smaller glass-fronted balconies were lined with rush screens, as though their owners were too ashamed to be seen. We passed an oversized Chinese restaurant where the white-clothed tables were each surrounded by pale yellow satin-draped chairs - like frozen bridesmaids round a petrified bride.

On our way back to the pub we paused to gawp at the contents of the over-priced furniture store with its acres of white leather, and smoked glass. We laughed like country bumpkins at the strange ornaments, the dining chairs that looked more like upturned laundry baskets, the hideously clashing, but oh-so-carefully arranged cushions. And finally, when we'd wiled away enough time we made our way back to the pub.

It was still early, and we were the first to arrive, but gradually the place started to fill. We smiled indulgently at the two men who seemed so pleased to be meeting, their smiles as wide as the arms they threw around each other in their unembarrassed embrace. We invented stories about the tired-looking man, about the argument he'd had with his wife for staying out too late the night before and the revenge she was now exacting in making him overcome his hangover by taking his children out to lunch. We watched the old man with his white hair stained yellow by nicotine, as he wove backwards and forwards between the bar and the door, each pint followed by a cigarette. We winced with sympathy as the desperate-to-please young man opened the door for the girlfriend who responded with a look as cold as the air that accompanied her; and we were intrigued by the huge family who turned up trailing enormous suitcases behind them, who took ages finding the right place to sit and enough chairs for them all, then only stayed for one quick drink before trailing off again with their luggage.

All around us, people were coming together. I wondered if they'd noticed us, I hoped they weren't concerned when we looked up with anticipation each time the door swung open, or disappointed when we looked away again as another stranger walked in. I'd like to think they saw the moment when our friends arrived, when our faces lit with unabashed delight. I'd like to imagine that the stories they invented for us were of an afternoon spent eating and drinking, our words and laughter bubbling and tumbling over each other; I hope they saw the evening we'd spend, plotting and planning for new challenges and excitements, setting out on a new venture towards the happy ending I know we'll have.

Remembering Miss Wood

2011-01-27T00:14:00.001Z

My daughter Megan is training to be a teacher. She's recently started her final teaching practice, with a class of five and six-year-olds, and each night she comes home with a story of something that's happened or something the children have said. In just a few days she's gone from 'they're all too little and annoying' to 'I think I'm starting to like them'. I guess they might be starting to like her too.

It's funny how well I can remember my teachers from primary school. My favourite was Mr Griffiths. I know he was my favourite because I can still recall the sinking feeling when I lost my temper and shouted at him. Even then I knew he was disappointed with me. I don't know how it started, I vaguely remember it was something to do with a tennis ball, but I don't really know what turned me from my usual goody-two-shoes to a tempestuous ten-year old in a tantrum. Though all I hollered was 'It's not flippin' fair', word soon got round that I'd sworn at him. I realise now that I missed the opportunity to exaggerate my waywardness and so gain the credibility of my school friends, but I was too busy hoping to win back his approval. My rebellions have always been somewhat low-key.

Miss Da Gama came to us as a supply teacher, part way through the year. Perhaps that's why she always seemed a little odd. I don't think we were particularly kind or welcoming to her. We'd been taught about the famous Portuguese explorer, Vasco Da Gama, so we teased her about her name and her possible connections, but I don't think we were especially cruel. One day, when we tried to go back to the classroom after lunch we were ushered away downstairs to the hall. Later we found out that she'd had some sort of a break-down, smashing up the classroom and ripping down all the carefully mounted paintings and stories from the classroom walls. We didn't see her again.

After that we got Mr Campbell. Perhaps he'd been told to treat us kindly; perhaps he was just that sort of man, but for a whole year, all we seemed to do was art and drama. I spent hour after hour making 3-D structures out of paper drinking straws - tetrahedrons and dodecahedrons. Hour after hour sitting on cushions on the floor because he'd cut all the legs off the tables.

Of course it all changed when I got to secondary school. I had to smother my irritation with the maths teacher, whose name I refuse to remember, because she insisted on pronouncing mine 'Share-on'. But I loved that we had an art teacher called Miss Brushett and a physics teacher called Miss Newton. It was right that our religious knowledge teacher was called Miss Theophilus, and our skinny nervous history teacher was Miss Lean. Nowadays it's not the bizarre coincidences of their names that I think about, it's realising that I spent so many years being taught by single old women, in an all girls' school - small wonder I married too young.

It was at secondary school that I was taught by Miss Wood. She had short hair, like Ingrid Bergman in Joan of Arc, and she was the first person I'd ever met who wore contact lenses. I think maybe she was a little afraid of losing a lens in class and having to crawl around on the floor to find it, so she was always very careful. When she looked from side to side, she'd turn her whole head rather than just her eyes.

She was my form teacher in class 2D, the year I became a teenager, the first and only time I was voted form captain, but that isn't why I remember her. She taught us English and I began writing my first romantic novel while in her class. She made me read it out to the rest of the girls, chapter by chapter. While they yawned and giggled, and pointed out the glaring inconsistencies in my characters and actions, she sat on the edge of the desk listening and nodding approval. It didn't matter that it I never finished it. She introduced me to the thrill of putting words on a page for others to respond to, even though she was the only one who showed any sign of appreciation. She made me think I could write.

Sharing an office on the seventh floor

2011-01-23T15:30:00.000Z

For the last two years I've worked from a small office on the seventh floor of a municipal concrete block. Typical of 1960s office architecture, it's cold in the winter and too hot in summer. Each day the passing hours are marked by the raising and lowering of the plastic venetian blinds, as the sun crosses from east to west in front of my window.

From my desk I can watch the seagulls circling around then settling on the roof of the next block. Behind that, I can see the floodlights of the cricket ground; poking their heads up, like hyacinths in early spring. To the right is the now empty building plot, where the bulldozers, cranes and swinging steel demolition balls kept us mesmerised last summer, as they wrecked and flattened the old university buildings. In the distance span the graceful arches of the Victorian viaduct.

It's not a big space, only room for two desks and a small round meeting table. In one corner is the locked door to the cupboard where the IT servers live. At least once a day we're interrupted by a man from IT wanting to check something; the door is unlocked, and we're greeted by the cool blast and the whirring sounds from the air-conditioning installed in there to stop the servers over-heating. The irony of air-con for the computers, but not for the staff is, of course, not lost on us.

Throughout the two years I've shared this office with Chris. The air between us has often crackled with the sound of swearing and frustration from my side, patience and resignation from his. I've known for some time that he hasn't been happy in the job, but unlike so many of us, who whinge about it and keep turning up, Chris decided to find something else, and in a few days he will be starting a new job, something much closer to his heart and his ambitions.

On Thursday, I watched him clearing his desk, throwing paper after paper into a huge yellow plastic crate. As he flicked through the notes from meetings, the reports and strategies, I recognised the frown on his face as he recalled a particularly difficult transaction, saw the satisfied nod as he remembered the issues he'd resolved. I watched how carefully he peeled the blue-tack from the walls to take down the pictures and messages from his daughters, how he gently placed them in his bag, to be taken and re-hung on another wall in another office.

It's strange how you can spend so long sharing an office with someone, yet still feel you barely know them. I know the obvious stuff, like the names of his wife and children, the football team he supports. I know that he likes to dress well, a sharp suit and polished shoes. I've seen the limitations of his colour-blindness swept away by the bold, bright assertiveness of his shirt/tie combinations. Yet I've never seen him outside of the office environment; I have no idea what he looks like in jeans, or if he even wears them. We've never socialised, never got drunk together, both of us too keen to get back to our own worlds at the end of the day.

But I've seen the way his face softens when he talks about his girls, how it takes him a bit of time to adjust when he arrives in the morning, as he tries to switch his mind from home to work. I've noticed how his shoulders relax as he leaves at the end of the day and we walk together to the car park.

I work from home every Friday, so I wasn't there for his last day in the office. We said our goodbyes on Thursday, with a half-embarrassed hug and a kiss on the cheek - two years not quite long enough for us to know the etiquette of physical contact.

He's often looked at me with bemusement while I've banged on about the joys of Twitter, never quite understanding why I'd want to type something in 140 characters when I could just speak to someone's face, so I can't see us keeping in touch that way. He's said he'll come back for a drink in a couple of weeks once he's settled into his new role, but I'm not sure if he will. He knows I write a blog, and every now and then he reads it; but he's never left a comment and I don't know if he'll ever look at this. But I hope he knows anyway that the office will seem strangely empty on Monday.

January 2001, January 2011

2011-01-19T00:26:00.000Z

It was a cowardly way of doing it, sending you an e-mail, but I wasn't sure I could say it to your face. My finger hovered over the keyboard for a long time before I clicked on send. I knew it was only a couple of days before your birthday, so not much of a birthday greeting, but I felt sure it was the right thing to do.

I tried not to think about how you'd react, focused instead on reinforcing my sense of me, taking solace in the notion that there were no cracks in my defences, nothing to undermine my independence. I'd got a new job and was earning more money, I was inching my way back towards the sort of life I'd had before. I'd even found a new house that was closer to where I'd lived when I was married and the children were small.

It was a ridiculous house, an old gatekeeper's lodge, for a big house that no longer existed. It was built in the shape of a cross, each of the tiny rooms leading on to another one, and each of them with three outside walls, so it was always cold. When I'd gone to view it, I'd been intrigued by the odd little building tucked behind a high brick wall, swamped by its overgrown garden. I'd been bewitched by the big open fireplace in the lounge, the full height stained glass window in the kitchen, the long attic bedroom with its windows looking out over the garden, that made me think of Anne of Green Gables. It was totally impractical for a single mother with four teenage children, but I loved it none-the-less. Perhaps it was its smallness in a street full of expensive detached houses, maybe it was the defiant way it had remained standing long after the big house was demolished. Somehow it spoke to me, made me feel like this was the place where I'd start to rebuild, put down some roots, grasp some confidence in life.

Of course I only half knew you then, I hadn't yet learnt that you don't easily take no for an answer, I hadn't realised that the surest way to get you to act is to tell you to do the opposite thing. Nowadays I could predict how you'd respond to my e-mail, but ten years ago I hadn't expected that you'd still want to see me, to try and talk me round. When you arrived on my doorstep, you looked tired. You accepted my offer of a tuna sandwich as though it were the finest cuisine, as though I was offering you so much more than some tinned fish in a slice of bread. And I guess I was, even if I didn't yet know it.

We went for a walk, a long meandering stroll around the local streets and towards the park. I remember how you stopped me at one point, held my arm and turned me to face you. So intent on making me believe, making me trust you, you almost shouted at me "I'm putting my head on the block for you. I'm giving you the axe". It was, and still is, the most romantic thing anyone ever said to me.

Shortly after that, when we found ourselves sitting on a park bench, holding on to each other while snowflakes fell all around, I think you started to believe that it would all turn out ok.

Tonight you're sitting upstairs, waiting for me to stop tapping away at the laptop and come to bed. We don't live in the strange house any more but we've found ourselves a home in the best place in the world. When you wake up in the morning, it will be ten years to the day since you turned up at my door. I couldn't have asked or wished for a better decade. I hope there will be many more.

Gut Girls - in rehearsal

2011-01-16T21:32:00.000Z

I've noticed the seasons more since we moved to Shoreham; the way the colours and the light change with each passing month. Though I know it won't be long until the hedgerows take on a pinkish hue and the leafbuds swell, for now the landscape remains one of skeletal silhouettes and shadows, charcoal and ashen grey.

We don't have street lights here, so when it gets dark, it's properly dark; inky black and threatening. In January, once the christmas lights have come down it feels even gloomier. My natural reaction is to stay indoors, to turn into a solitary hermit until the promise of spring lures me blinking back into the light, like the Mole from Wind-in-the-Willows. If I lived anywhere else, that might be what happened, but not here, where there is a year-long schedule of events to force us to socialise. Just as I'm sliding into curmudegeonly confinement, the wise thespians of the Shoreham Village Players step up the rehearsals for their next production.

From 2 - 5 March this year, the village hall will become the blood-soaked sheds of a nineteenth century Deptford slaughterhouse, where The Gut Girls will ply their trade. They are a rowdy bunch, foul-mouthed and raucous, strong and independent. Though I'm firmly denying all suggestions of typecasting, I have been cast as one of them, a character called Maggie, and my Sunday afternoons and Thursday evenings are now spent wielding an invisible meat cleaver, knocking back imaginary bottles of beer (at least until the props arrive), and swearing like a trooper.

Our director is keen for us all to be as loud and common as possible - a requirement I seem strangely willing and able to fulfill, even though I know it will do nothing for my reputation in the finer drawing rooms of the village. But there's still a certain amount of bravado called for when the script requires you to tousle the hair of a man you barely know, even though you've said hello in the high street a hundred times.

With only the residents of the village and its near neighbours to draw on, there is a certain amount of poetic licence in the casting and some of the 'girls' are a little past the first flush of youth. Take it from me, it's not easy being a fallen woman when it takes so long to get back up from the floor. I'm hopeful that by opening night, one fellow cast-member might stop collapsing in hysterical laughter each time she addresses me with the line 'Are all the women working here as young as you?'

Today was 'books down'; the date underlined in our rehearsal schedules, the day we've all been dreading, when we're supposed to start acting from memory, rather than reading our lines from the scripts. I very quickly worked out which of the cast had done their homework. Suffice to say, I didn't quite rise to the challenge of recalling words and actions and delivering them both in a co-ordinated manner. I think our very patient prompt will sleep soundly in her bed tonight from all her efforts, while our director may well start having nightmares soon.

A north-south divide

2011-01-14T00:51:00.000Z

I'm a South London girl, through and through. Those of you reading this from other parts of the country, or indeed the world, might not realise the enormous difference between being just a Londoner and being a South Londoner. I know lots of countries have a north-south divide; with one half of a country deemed to be more prosperous, productive and progressive than the other. I know I've occasionally made an ever-so-slightly derogatory comment about my beloved's birthplace being in the north of England. But the truth is, in my heart, the north-south divide centers on the River Thames. All the good people live south of the river, the others, well they're just Londoners.

I'm fiercely proud of the few square miles where I grew up. Who needs London Zoo when you can feed the ducks in Dulwich Park? Who'd want a dip in the Serpentine when you might swim all day at Brockwell Park Lido. Why crane your neck to admire the Docklands skyscapers when you could gaze up at the Crystal Palace Tower and pretend you're in Paris?

None of my family still live in the area, so nowadays there's very little reason to go back. But once in a while, when I'm brave enough to take the car into London, I'll go slightly out of my way to follow the route of the no.3 bus, slowing down as I pass our old house in Croxted Road, and again when I hit the congestion of Brixton High Street. Then I'll remember the shopping trips to Brixton with my Mum, me traipsing around behind her while she did her shopping; bored, but comforted by the knowledge that we'd always end up going to Marks & Spencers for chicken-flavoured crisps and a packet of iced biscuits.

My first ever Saturday job was at Clark's the Bakers in Brixton's Electric Avenue. Wikipedia tells me now that the street gained its name from being the first in London to be lit by electricity. I didn't know that then, but I did know the different names for all the types of bread; from farmhouse to bloomer, split-tin to baguette. I remember the way our fingers got sticky from the cakes, then black-sticky from handling the money, and I know how horribly smug I was that I could add up the prices in my head while others needed to jot them down on the back of paper bags. I haven't thought about that job for years, but as I write this, I can still picture the brown and white checked overalls we had to wear; a bit like a doctor's housecoat, only nasty and nylon. I can still sense the feel of sticky fingers on synthetic fabric.

And when I think of working at Clark's I can't help but remember my first ever boyfriend. Eddie lived in Brixton, and on Saturdays he worked in Electric Avenue. I never minded tidying up the trays of belgian buns and doughnuts, when it meant I could look up to see the tall grinning Irish lad, selling yams and green bananas from the market stall outside. After work, it was so much nicer waiting outside Woolworths for the bus home, when you had someone warm to wait with.

Perhaps the relationship was doomed to last only as long as my job at the bakers, but it wasn't helped by events on the night my Mum threw a party, on a river-boat on the Thames. Copious amounts of free drink and the gentle rocking of the waves proved too much for Eddie and he ended up being sick over the side of the boat. It might perhaps have been ok, if I'd known before then about the false tooth he wore. The one right at the front. The one that flew out in a stream of vomit, into the river that night.

At the time I was mortified and even though the tooth was soon replaced, I could never look at him quite the same again. Many, many years later, with the benefit of hindsight and perhaps a slightly less shallow perspective, I can be much more forgiving. Who knows, maybe his nausea had nothing to do with the drink, perhaps it was the strange foreign air he was forced to breathe on leaving South London and entering that no-man's land of the Thames, the great north-south divide.

The Black Crow

2011-01-09T08:30:00.000Z

It was the rain that woke me up. The incessant drumbeat on the flat kitchen roof, the higher singing tone of water cascading over the blocked gutter. And now that I'm awake, it's the rain that keeps me up, watching its drops break against the window pane like a series of morse code dots and dashes.

There'll be sandbags across the doorways of the cottages by the river tonight. Bags to sop up the encroaching water, stop it coming across the doorstep; a lumpen wordless bodyguard for each house. I wonder how high the water is now. In the few years we've been here, I've seen it swell over into the fields across the river, reminding me of the Chinese rice fields we learnt about in school, but it's never been high enough to cross over to our side, or inch its way up our street. I imagine the water filling up all the cracks and holes left in the tarmac by the recent frosts and snow, forming puddles for wellie-clad children to jump in tomorrow.

We've been here long enough for me to know which of the roads gets tricky to pass after a heavy downpour, the big dip further along the valley, the road by the lake, where there's nowhere for the water to drain away. I'm never sure how to drive through standing water. I'm scared that if I drive slowly the water will seep into the engine, creep in around the door sills, suck me and the car into its clinging wetness. My urge is to accelerate, push through it as quickly as possible, no matter what great bow-wave I create. Then through the other side, where, if my car was a dog it would shake from side to side and nose to tail, creating a halo of raindrops. Instead I pull away fast, hoping the wheelspin will drive away the water.

When I was a child, my younger sister Caroline was scared of the rain, she always thought it would flood. And as kids so often do, we picked up on her terror. We could reduce her to tears, a flood of her own, by telling her that the house would float away each time it poured. I always liked the imagined idea of de-camping upstairs in a storm, piling up the furniture, eating picnics on our beds, but that probably didn't help for Caroline. Upstairs wasn't a place of refuge for her - not since the time our big sister Ros had so vividly imagined and described 'The Black Crow' that hovered at the top of the staircase waiting to pounce.

Perhaps it was just water that Caroline hated, you'd have certainly thought so if you ever heard her having her hair washed. When we were kids, there was no shower at home and it wasn't til I was a teenager that we got one of those rubber shower hoses that you can fit over the bath-taps. So for years, our mother washed our hair while we stood at the sink, using saucepans full of water. Pour, shampoo, rinse, then repeat. When it was Caroline's turn the sound of each saucepan-full was accompanied by the sound of screaming as she wriggled to escape, trying to duck the water, failing to keep the shampoo out of her eyes. Pour, scream, rinse, shriek, shampoo, sob, rinse, screech, then repeat... scream, scream, scream.

I can almost hear it now.

As I sit and listen in my head to those sounds from long ago, I realise that it's quieter here now. The deluge from the drain has stopped; the ticking of the mantelpiece clock has replaced the rain-beats on the roof. Time to go back up to bed.

I wonder where The Black Crow sleeps tonight.

Standing tall

2011-01-05T21:27:00.003Z

The fans had volunteered to clear the pitch so the game could go ahead. Now the snow was piled up all round the edges and if you squinted a bit, it looked like the pictures of mountains in his Dad's atlas. When one of the players came to the side to pick up the ball, Jamie saw him as a giant, taking huge steps across the snow-capped alps.

Bank Holiday Monday, the last day of the Christmas holidays, the last day before going back to school. It was a good crowd, considering. Men and boys everywhere, all in shades of black and blue, faded jeans and padded jackets, their shapes indistinguishable under the thick layers. They stood in groups, hands deep in pockets, stamping their feet against the cold.

Not many women here today, just the few who came every week. Jamie looked quickly across to the stand, where his Nan and Grandad sat. They'd been bringing him to football for years and years, ever since his little brother was born. He used to sit with them, waiting for Nan to share out the drinks and crisps she'd brought along. Nowadays he'd rather buy a coke from the burger stand. Nowadays his Nan took a cushion and a blanket with her to protect against the cold and the hard seats.

Maybe he should have gone back to sit with them at half time.

Here behind the goal there was a group of boys his own age - or at least he thought so. He was head and shoulders taller than most of them, but then he was taller than all the lads in his class as well; it was a long time since he'd stood up straight. It was easier to blend in here where nobody really stood up properly - some of the boys were bent over the advertising hoardings that surrounded the pitch, banging out a rhythm to accompany each goal kick; others stood hunched in groups, curling in on themselves to keep out the cold.

Jamie watched the game playing out in front of him, as the lead changed from one side to the other, as chances were missed then taken, as tackles became more desperate, and the referee's whistle grew more shrill. Behind him he could sense the tension mounting.

He looked over his shoulder, saw scowling faces, heads shaken from side to side. He'd already heard people swear at the linesman, call the referee all kinds of useless. The fans at the other end had started chanting and he knew it wouldn't be long before the men behind him responded. He didn't mind so much when they just shouted back at the fans, it wasn't directed at anyone in particular, but he hated it when they started on the opposition goalie in front of them. The poor man who had to stand there on his own throughout the game, the one who, if he did his job well would become the butt of everyone's anger, who if he did his job badly would be laughed at and ridiculed. Throughout the game, the goalie had to stand there, pretending not to hear, trying not to react to the shouts that would start off by doubting his ability to catch the ball, then quickly move on to him being too fat, too slow, or too stupid. Jamie knew what that felt like.

He waited. Like the game in front of him, the mood behind the goal could go either way. He waited and hoped for the one brave man who would risk pride and reputation by launching into the song they all knew. Could he dare to try it himself? Would he be left as a foolish lone voice, wishing the ground would swallow him up. Or might he be rewarded with that brilliant moment when one, then another, picked up the song as it rolled along the terrace in a wave of sound. Not a humble embarrassed muttering, but a fierce loud roar of a song. A song you'd be proud to join in with.

But he'd need to know when to stop as well, he'd hate to be the one who carried on singing once the others had finished, risking that confidence sapping chorus of 'On your own, on your own, on your own', and the smirking faces behind him.

The ball had gone out for a corner. Jamie looked at his watch, then glanced behind him again. All eyes were on the players filling the box, jostling for position, trying to make some space for a free header. Nobody was looking at him, if he began singing now, they probably wouldn't even know it was him who'd started it.

He looked at his watch again, only five minutes of normal time left, this was probably the last decent chance of the game. He could do it, he could do it now. He stood up, squared his shoulders and cleared his throat.

But then, as he opened his mouth, from somewhere just behind him came the loud, confident chant,

'Walking down the Mason's Hill, to see the Bromley Aces....'

It didn't matter. It really didn't matter.

He looked across to the stand. Perhaps he'd walk round to sit with Nan and Grandad, watch the end of the game with them.

Learning to know

2010-12-31T08:48:00.003Z

At sixteen there was so much you didn't yet know, so little you could face with confidence.

You were still learning how to watch the others, picking up the right words to say, the right things to talk about. You were beginning to understand their reactions, starting to see when it would be better to laugh off a clumsy comment as a failed joke. You almost knew when you shouldn't say what you really thought, or felt.

You already understood that it was better if you looked ok. So, as you got ready that New Year's Eve, you applied the lilac shimmer eyeshadow, oh so carefully. You stroked the black mascara over and over your lashes, eyes staring, mouth wide open, glancing every now and then at the dress hanging on the cupboard door. You still weren't quite sure about the dress, even though you'd saved for weeks, setting aside the money earned from your Saturday job in Woolworths; even though you'd taken the number 3 bus up to Oxford Circus and spent almost a whole day browsing through the racks downstairs at Top Shop. You'd practised how to use the hair tongs, how much hair to slip between the metal jaws, how long to hold it before your hair would singe.

You'd told your Dad you were going out, but not where you were going. He hadn't asked, hadn't really paid attention, seemed quite relieved. You were too wrapped up in your own plans to wonder what Mum was doing, who she'd be spending New Year's Eve with. You didn't even think about your sisters.

There was no need to hesitate at the door of the Railway Tavern, you knew the others would already be in there, that someone would offer you a gin and bitter lemon as soon as you arrived, so you didn't have to go to the bar yourself. You had no cause to worry about being under age, this was already your regular pub, where the landlord valued his 'young crowd' and didn't ask any questions.

Before long it would be time to leave the pub, pile into the orange Hillman Imp that waited outside and head off to Streatham. To the Cat's Whiskers, the one-time Locarno Ballroom, the only place in South London to spend New Year's Eve. You'd never met the boy squashed in next to you, though you'd heard his name at school. He didn't try to talk to you, but shared a friendly smile that reached his eyes, that made you feel ok.

You didn't know then that he'd stay by your side all evening, that he'd be the one who'd kiss you when the clock struck twelve, the one who'd ask for the last slow dance at the end of the night, the one who'd walk you three miles home and the one who'd take you to the pictures the following week.

And you didn't know then, that it wouldn't get any better than that. That for the next year you'd try so hard. That you'd turn up at the Railway Tavern every Friday and Saturday, knowing he would walk you home; even though he hadn't bothered to take you there himself, or call to see if you were coming. You'd be so ridiculously pleased, so grateful, on those Thursday afternoons when he'd telephone, just after you'd both finished watching Little House on the Prairie, when he knew you'd be at home, that you'd pick up the phone, that he wouldn't have to explain himself to your sister or your Dad.

You didn't know that you'd spend fifty-two weeks putting a circle round the days in your diary, the days when you saw him or spoke to him. Marking the days to show this was something, each circle a proof that he must really like you. Not wanting to ask any questions of him and not brave enough to talk to your friends. Telling yourself this was how things should be.

-----

At seventeen there are still so many things you don't understand, but you know a little more.

You know that there will be another New Year's Eve and another night at the Cat's Whiskers. You know that there will still be a quiet boy. By the time the clock strikes twelve, you will also know that however carefully you get ready, however hard you try, his friendly smile will be for another girl, not you.

The Bookcase

2010-12-24T07:28:00.001Z

In every book there are two stories waiting to be told; one emerges from the print on the pages, the other comes along with the perceptions and experiences of its reader. So it is then, that the shelves of a bookcase can hold a whole world of stories and a whole lifetime of meaning.

When I was a child we had only a couple of small bookcases - most of my books came from the library and had to go back, they didn't need their own home at ours. But before very long, I grew up and got married. I started to create our family home, to fill the second-hand teak units with an ever increasing collection of paperbacks supplemented by our favourite picture books for the children's bedtime stories.

In my mid-thirties, when I found myself starting all over, with a new life in a new home, I bought a bookcase. It was the first piece of furniture I'd ever bought with my own money, just for me.

I took my time filling its six shelves. The top shelf was for poetry books. Each one with corners turned down where I'd found a poem that expressed the anger and loneliness I felt. Below that, the penguin classics - a whole shelf of black spines with white lettering; nineteenth century novels, complete sets of George Eliot and Jane Austen, Tolstoy and Turgenev, cheek by jowl with Hardy and Dickens. Me trying to convince my few visitors I was well-read, intelligent.

Then came three shelves of the books I'd actually read, arranged not by author or genre, but by the colour of their spine. Annie Proulx's The Shipping News sat next to the faintly intellectual blue spine of Simone de Beauvoir; below that a group of old orange Penguin books including Thackeray's Vanity Fair that I'd won as a prize at school. At the bottom was the white shelf. It's surprising how many books have white spines, how few are yellow or purple. Of course not all the books were single-colour, and not all the same shade, but I spent hours arranging and rearranging the shades, finding the right tones that could sit together. When I was a kid I loved those wide flat tins of colouring pencils, 40 shades from white, through the rainbow, to the special gold and silver at the end. I'd spend nearly as much time sorting out their order in the tin as I did colouring, some days it was like that with the books.

If you picked up any of these books and turned the pages, the chances are a ticket would fall to the floor. A train pass or a boarding card, sometimes a theatre or concert ticket, each a symbol of things I'd been doing at the time I read the book, each a reminder of escape or perhaps truancy from expectation. If you looked to the back of Sebastian Faulk's Birdsong, you'd see the edges of a page roughly torn out, used to write a love letter on a beach.

When Philip and I first got together, I loved that he'd read more widely than me, that I could talk to him about poetry, that he'd be able not only to name a poem, but also to quote it and identify the author. I welcomed the books he brought with him, that I might get to read myself someday. At first I resisted their entry to my bookcase, but over time, things changed. Suddenly the top shelf contained travel guides as well as poetry, the third was filled with cookery books. Colour-arranging went out the window, I began to relax into myself, the odd Agatha Christie story snuck in next to an allotment guide, I added my collection of Rowan knitting patterns, the pile of programmes from Bromley football matches began to grow.

Ten years later, the bookcase continues to change. The edges of the shelves have filled with the relics of daily life. As I sit here now I can see the incense burner, an empty perfume bottle, a set of drill-bits and a knife sharpener, some mints, a pair of sunglasses and an empty camera film holder. We continue to accumulate books, read them, love them, then give them away when we run out of room. I was horrified when Philip first suggested a book-give-away - even if I was never going to read them again, it felt like my books were part of me, defined how I felt about myself. But once I'd tried it, seen the pleasure on people's faces as they browsed through the boxes we put outside on the bench, I began to see the appeal - and it's becoming a regular event.

The bookcase does still tell a story about my life, but it's become a story of change and possibility, of mixing and sharing.