Christmas 7 Being between the generations

This morning Finn got immensely upset when M took a photo of us removing the extra table from the dining room... a bit later I tackled him about it, and it's about not having a girlfriend.  I pointed out that getting worried about how one looked wasn't the answer.  That I was totally gorgeous at his age but still hadn't had a boyfriend (well - I was roughly the age he is now when the great thing happened!)  I told him that girls were terribly lacking in confidence about their appearance and hung around in gangs to reassure each other about their hair and make-up and so on, and that fact that I wasn't like that when I was 15 was because I was too beautiful to care (no!) and a feminist who didn't believe in that stuff - I had nice long curly hair and didn't wear make up.    I told him research had discovered that kind children were more popular than unkind children and he said one of his NY Resolutions was to be "less hateful".  I told him the answer with girls was to take notice of them - admire their new hairstyle or something they are wearing and say nice, kind supportive things to them.  This will give him a positive reputation amongst the girls, and eventually one of them will want to go out with him - if they don't already.

He's going to spend the evening on the beach... but I hope he isn't expecting New Year's magic.  It's nice to think he's a little romantic at heart, but I hopeo he doesn't get too heartbroken.

Shortly after this, the focus of discussion shifted to Edward - a nice note from Stella revealed he was coughing up bloody phlegm... doesn't sound good.  She praised M for sensibly suggesting he did not start further hospital treatment.  But is he dying?  He's not eating again - when this happens (it has happened once or twice before) I always think of the Jews going "Musselmann" in the camps - starving themselves to death deliberately.  The only thing he ate over Christmas was a piece of my Christmas cake - a mild pride for me...  So we tip between the ageing and the burgeoining life of the children - it gives one such a sense of life and its continuity, and thinking about these things seems appropriate for a religious festival.

Today is New Year's Eve - which we will be celebrating at Adrian St Clare-B's... someone we know slightly, but are hoping to get to know better.  Cannot believe this is the first NYE party we have ever been invited to in Ramsgate - we had one a couple of years ago - but it didn't catch on!  I wish I felt a bit better - head cold, spot of neuralgia.  Seeing Clive & Naomi tomorrow for tea too - which will be nice.  Get him on board about 1 Chatham Place too. 

Christmas Day 6 - caring about the sick

Yesterday was Family Feast No 3 - we ate another fairly magnificent meal - drank a lot of fizzy, cremant d'Alsace and Cava... lots of red, didn't get around to the port - the walnuts, although we had some of the fab cheese Pollz brought.

The house looked very nice and it was a great day all round - people even noticed that I'd lost weight... success!  My father is currently staying with us - which is nice, it gives him a chance for a bit of a rest - and we spent a lot of the day in the sitting room reading.  The boys were barely evident - I think he's disappointed not to have them around - but I hope Finn will come and be sociable tomorrow.

I started the day with a bout of gardening - as the sun was shining and I have a small box of bulbs to plant.  I didn't get very far, had to deal with the fig tree, weeds and the saponaria in the front garden which is taking over.  I managed to plant 5 allium and an erythronium before I became overwhelmed by light-headedness and trembling (my new symptoms - of what? - !).  I then returned to my natural habitat: the sofa.

I am itching because I can't really write at the moment - I told myself I would be "on holiday" and available to my beloved family and friends - Mark has been very kind and helpful, Finn and Ned mostly absent - well, 1 out of 3 isn't too bad - and I talked to Pa a lot today.

I was thinking about S - I am quite shocked at how upset I feel about it, I had thought when I heard that he was having more radiotherapy in Jan/Feb that would have some sort of therapeutic effect, but it is actually done to reduce bone pain - it can't reverse the cancer.  Although a couple of his tumors had stopped growing - but presumably not shrinking.  I had hoped the treatment offered somehow but it's about prolonging life and making it more comfortable - not actually sort it out.  Apparently once the cancer has gone beyond the prostate it is incurable - so that's it - just a matter of time really.  Yes, death's just a matter of time for all of us, but rather less time probably in S's case.  I would like to do something for him, who knows what.   Am going to read one of Pa's books to see if I can think what to say to him.  But perhaps I am simply suffering from grandiosity - to think that I might be the one to push him in the right direction.  He is the cousin that I've been closest to - I always felt he was an ally in some way - especially since the "unpleasantness" a couple of years ago.  I don't think he ought to die yet - not for my sake - but for the people who are going to really lose him.  After all, I wasn't in touch with him for some years - and it was great to renew our friendship, now that we have done so, I will miss him more than I would have otherwise.   But this is in great part about the sorrow one feels as one's contemporaries begin to get scythed down.  For various reasons I have always believed that I will get to about 90 - preferably in good mental nick - if not, am happy to die sooner and not be a pain to my family.

I was talking to Angela Flowers the other day about the reptile brain - our cruel hunger for individual survival which makes us happy to see other members of the tribe drop by the wayside - she was very shocked by this idea.  I explained that we weren't really like this - we had been socialised and nurtured into being much more caring (some of us - although I can think of some exceptions).  I suspect a bit of a lack of nurture in my case makes me a bit less caring than perhaps Angela or even my father.  But time may (or may not) tell.  I don't think the instinct I had to "discard" in my mother's case was pure selfishness, but a genuine feeling that she had gone beyond the boundaries of an agreeable life, she was always telling one she wanted to die, one couldn't feel sorry when she did, because so much of her had already gone.  When I first heard that Edward was going to die, I was upset, I cried even - to M's surprise - but now I would be delighted if he died, for much the same reasons, seeing a good mind going dim is a sorry business.  Another factor about caring is clearly quite simply how much one loves someone.  That doesn't mean everyone who puts their spouse in a home is unloving - but every spouse who does this and doesn't go and see them every day... or as often as the circumstances allow might be less than 100% loving.

When my mother was ill I never felt very easy about performing les petits soins for her - such as massaging her, doing her hair, wiping her chops or whatever.  I think that was definitely uncaring of me, and perhaps a result of not having been cared for (this was the mother who had my hair cut because she was fed up with brushing it for me).  Or perhaps I really am rather harder and more selfish than I'd like to think. 

On the Third Day of Christmas...

I finally braced myself to look at our bank statement - and found we had gone over drawn... I had to rush off and put some cash in the bank account from Ned's savings.  Sigh.  That says it all really.  We have had a very modest Christmas in comparison with some people - no travel, no luxury foods (OK - a couple of packets of smoked salmon and a £6 tin of salmon caviar...

Today I finally iced our cake - and then dealt with the turkey carcass (turkey schmaltz, curry and stock).  We had a visitor - M's friend Chris from Norwich - Alex threatened a visit, so did Vanessa - but neither materialised.  I tried to prepare a bit towards the visit of my family on Saturday.  I had angst about their presents... but the financial situation curbed any impetuous thoughts  all my nephs and neices have way more disposable income than I do.

 I refreshed a few decorations, and got Mark to clean up the sitting room and urged the boys to expect to do housework tomorrow.

Overall, I thought about money - not much fun, I think I preferred the 2nd Day of Christmas (a nice walk to Pegwell Bay, a discussion of geology, some curlews and oyster catchers, a pair of ravens, then a friendly, warm party with Angela Flowers to talk to and so on..)

Jolly and hollow

Can one feel both at once?  I have been feeling terribly cheerful and bonhomous in the last few days - have really enjoyed the parties I've been to - and the beach assembly... lovely party tonight - Angela Flowers was there and we had a very good chat about stuff.  Mark has been behaving beautifully - and sociably.  And yet... I am feeling decidedly empty - there is anxiety, there is a "oh why bother?" feeling about my writing, about everything.  I can't face the thought of spending another year trying to get an agent, trying to struggle through treacle - trying to write the next Conscience book with no very encouraging outcomes.  I just wish that I could pick a nice agent who would like to hear from an author with a solid ability to write and a commmitment to doing it, and who can write a decent, readable, interesting book.  But how do I find this agent?  I thought I had her, then I discovered that her head had been turned by thrillers...

Of course it's too soon to think about giving up - but I have rather lost my bounce - which is a pity because for years I haven't risked having bounce (sure to be disappointed) but since last January I allowed myself to have a dose of it.  Now my fears have been vindicated and I am bloody disappointed.  I suppose I just have to write twice as hard and fast - maybe Naomi's hint that she would publish should be taken up as the best I can get in the short term.  I wish I knew what the best thing to do would be - I know overall the answer is "keep on" but it would be great to have a better direction to go in.  But perhaps I still have to be patient - another year?  Another two years? Before the kairos arrives. Oh damn, it's crazy.  The fact that a serious agent has taken it seriously still means something even if she didn't like the final result.  Shall I permit myself another re-write - at the risk of my sanity? - in January?  I hate the emotional impact of the re-writes, they make me think unwanted thoughts and make it hard for me to inter them as thoroughly as they ought to be. I am currently in happy/contented mode, I do not wish to make myself miserable again.  Perhaps I need to grit my teeth and pretend this is all happening somewhere else - nothing to do with me.  It worked as a technique for dealing with root canal treatment - why can't it work for emotional situations?

Christmas Day

Remarkably - it all went more smoothly than I had imagined.  I got up about 9.00 and did some fiddling with food - Mark came down - then we all opened our stockings and enjoyed some breakfast in bed.  We didn't have the cold ham and tongue - we are delaying them until Boxing Day and the 29th when my family come.
I prepared the veggies, put the turkey in the oven, gave the ham a brief baking to get the crust right - then we went down to the beach.

It was an unpromising day - a bit windy - light drizzle, with a touch of hail in the wind... so we wickedly drove.down to the beach - we rounded the corner of the former casino - aka the Royal Victoria Pavillion - and there were the usual suspects - perhaps fewer than in previous years, not everyone we expected to see - but it was great fun - and we spoke to a few people we didn't normally see - including a nice couple who are about to move to Wingham... also met two parents of friends of Finn's.  I realise that as we are the parents of the "bad kids" we need to hang out together.  Adam's mother was very pleased to meet me - and I saw a man I thought looked interesting and asked Jacqui who he was, she introduced me and he turned out to be Lily's father!  They are currently renting a flat in the Regency while waiting to buy a house - I told him to look out for the brothel there!

Strange really for a woman who spends much of her time crouched over her laptop, I still know quite a lot about what's going on.

Mark and I have been to two parties - and are going to another today.  I am beginning to feel "family" about some of my friends here - which is great - it's only taken about 3 years (most of them have only been here that long) - it is a weird and wonderful selection of people - although sometimes it's difficult to get a coherent/consistent conversation on any topic (perhaps that's because we're all drunk).  I felt the most extraordinary feeling of happiness at Sue & Kit's party on Sunday - something I haven't felt for ages... and that was after only two glasses of wine and a great deal of water.  We have been invited to a further two parties, a couple of "drinks" and are - unfortunately - hosting something ourselves.   I am determined to treat this period as a holiday though.

Christmas Day continued perfectly.  We came home, I put the spuds in the oven, the boys set the table and we all had drinks and opened our pressies.  M and I were drinking the Cremant d'Alsace we'd bought in France and Finn had advocaat (he took a gin and tonic to the beach) and Ned had "ale"... we all had lovely presents - really, not a duff one at all I think.  I was really pleased with my CDs from the boys - a Smiths compilation and a Rolling Stones Album... from 1975, so not the golden age, but enjoyable enough...
Just as I was entering the final stage of lunch Julian arrived and so we sat down and had a chat and another drink (some really nice Crianza I got from Sainsbury's).  He gave us a couple of bottles of wine, I gave him and Michelle a sun-catcher in the shape of a yacht... a number of sun-catchers have been given this year!

We then had lunch.  It was delicious, I think because we hadn't had a proper hot meal for some days (on Christas Eve we had blinis and smoked salmon and red caviar (yummmm).  We did not have Christmas pudding - instead we had the bakewell cheesecake that the boys adore - I was only going to have a tiny bit, but it was so delicious I had more (however, I didn't eat anything for the rest of the day except a couple of Belgian chocolates and two clementines, and I stopped drinking too).

After lunch some washing up was performed and M and I settled down to watch telly - the programme about Sister Wendy - during which I dozed off - we then watched a chunk of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Incredibles.  This prompted me to read some of the Silmarillion, which I have never read - I ploughed through it, but was rather underwhelmed - I have come across a lot of these creation ideas before, and adding a few "ere"s and "unto"s into the mix just add to the unreadability.  I may read a bit more, but it seemed so uninteresting:  God creates a lot of sub-deities to help him create the world, through singing it into being - one of them turns bad and puts a spanner in the good works of the others.... now read on.  I'm sure it becomes more complex and subtle later - but I am also discovering the truth about made up languages, that it is harder to engage with them than with real languages. Of course there are lots of echoes of Scandiwegian eeriness, Middle earth = Midgard etc. but some of the names are just unattrattive.

But enough of that.  Sometimes I think just 4 of us doing Christmas together isn't enough - but going out and seeing people adds to it.  I am very sorry we didn't get to church.  I was planning to go to Midnight Mass at St. Pugin's (sung latin!) but was too knackered - so went to bed, then couldn't sleep - so saw a tv Mass instead - but it's not the same.  However, as I am not living under the lash of the Magisterium, whether I go to church or not is my choice - and although I enjoy it for lots of reasons - mostly tradition and sentiment - it isn't absolutely essential.   However, that said, I feel a bit closer to God than usual at this time - so perhaps I don't need a church service to prompt it.  

Going out now to enjoy a bit of God's good creation with a walk to the Pegwell Beach.

Christmas 2

Christmastime is here by Golly!
Disapproval would be folly,
Deck the halls with hunks of holly,
Fill the cups and don't say "when".
Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens,
----------- drag out the Dickens!
Even though the prospect sickens,
Brother here we go again!

I wouldn't say Tom Lehrer's sentiments echoed mine exactly - actually I would like to drag out the Dickens and the Dylan Thomas - what Christmas is complete without a rendition of A Child's Christmas in Wales.  Perhaps I will read some when Alexander comes over...  But there's never enough leisure time to do that sort of thing.

All cheery thoughts are exiled by the latest news of cousin S - things clearly looking bad.  He's in the miracle zone now I suppose - only a miracle can save him.  So come on God!  How about it? It would be a stunning Christmas present for them all! Please don't just say "The answer to your prayer is No".  You may well have a higher purpose, but it's getting hard to see it.  Now that they've stopped radiotherapy because it isn't helping - what more can medicine offer?  Bone cancer is widespread... it's a miracle or nothing now.  Look, this is a public(ish) space and I'm going to say a prayer here, even if the readership laugh at me, and think me a credulous fool - because wherever 2 or 3 of us are gathered together... you'll listen, even if some of the readers are devout atheists.  If you read this, and can bring yourself to, please pray this prayer - or at least the Amen!

Heavenly Father, I just ask you, in the name of your son Jesus who came and joined us in the flesh, to heal Strat's bone cancer, and heal his body completely of all cancer and to let him live a natural span of healthy life. Amen  (everybody say "Amen"!)

First feast, a row, a broken grate, police intervention etc.

The first Christmas feast is over - M's mother, brother Tom, sister in law Anne and niece Alice came to lunch - with Gina there were 9 of us...it was fun, but utterly exhausting.  The children and Mark did the tree and a certain amount of housework - I concentrated on the cooking - the meal was pretty good, but I did something rather extraordinary - I forgot to add the cream to the Gratin Dauphinoise - was I unconsciously trying to make a less fattening version?  Clearly I was not really concentrating enough.

I got very angry at about 12.50 - when Ned broke part of the cast iron grate and started howling - just as M was dressing painfully slowly and about to go and get everyone from the station.  I shouted "I am never going to do this again, this is the last TIME!"
Then I bellowed "For God's sake - it's a disaster Ned, but there's no point shouting about it - get the dining room grate and see if it fits..."   We then resumed normal service - I came down dressed (I had been up since 6.30 cooking in my dressing gown) Ned made a sensible grate substitute and Mark went to get them while I checked out the table settting (Finn and Gina did it)...

It was really nice having Gina here - she was helpful because she could do lots of little sensible things so I didn't have to.

The meal was great - croquettas de jamon were very popular - as was the dreaded garlic foccacia... the ham was OK, veg ok - the Christmas pudding recipe was fabulous - I am going to do it every year, really nice.  I am a bit dubious about the brandy butter ice cream - kids happy with brownies...

Once we had exchanged tokens of whatever it is we feel for each other (I got a carving knife and a nightdress... no doubt there's a message there) they went rapidly.  I then found myself assailed with thoughts of the LO, which was disturbing and annoying.  Perhaps it was just a case that the need to play Fantasy Husbands was particularly strong at Christmas...

I was awakend from my reverie by a call from the police who had come across Finn and his chums huddled in the multi-storey car park smoking (in Finn's case) and drinking (the others).  I find it slightly difficult to approve of the police devoting so much time to harassing teenagers - but perhaps they think they are "nipping  it in the bud" - whatever "it" is.  Anyway Finn and Oscar returned, very chastened in Finn's case - coolly pragmatic in Oscar's.  Finn said he was glad he'd lost his smoking stuff - since he would now give up smoking sooner... so there's the silver lining I suppose.

Very tired, hope to rest before going to Sue & Kit's party tommorrow... have agreed to have Alexander around for drinks on Christmas Eve - which should be pleasant - perhaps I should ask some other people - but then I'd have to cook.  I am really off cooking at the moment - and even drinking.  Wonderful!  But I am not going to even think about tracking my eating habits over the period...

I feel as if I am off duty - but in fact, there is still a hell of a lot to do.  Ice the other cake, make the pudding for Christmas day, get the turkey, ham and tongue sorted, stuffings etc.

Dream - with added "Jungian" interpretation

I dreamed about the LO last night - I haven't dreamed about him for a while.  There were many people at an outside event - we had struggled to get to it.  We were staying near the LO's old home in London - he was living there with his father, but we had been unable to see him.  Eventually we met his father who gave us permission to go to their house but when we (my animus and me?) got into the house and found it empty.   The LO was in a sort of military group - who were guarding the event.   I was having dinner with some older women but feeling restless - I got up in the middle of the meal and went out.  I went and sat on the grass - LO's sister was there - she was lamenting the fact that he had broken up with his wife - I asked her why - it was over his refusal to listen to a new CD she had bought which he hadn't had time to listen to.  His sister was sure they'd get back together.  LO's band of people went to sit on a roof to watch the event, I couldn't see him.  He had made no attempt to see or make contact with me.  His son told me he was very depressed and barely spoke to anyone.  He added a few choice things about the LO's wife - but both he and his aunt thought they would get back together.  

I heard that the military duties would end soon and that he would come and speak to me - so I went back to my old ladies who were just finishing dessert.  I chose a place to sit where I would either be next to him or opposite him, depending on where he chose to sit.

I am taking the view that the LO in the dream isn't him, but an Animus figure - I wanted to see him (get in touch with that side of myself) his father - who is actually dead - is some sort of psychopomp figure... leading me to getting in touch with him.  The house is their house, not my house - and it's empty - it has been modernised since I knew it, but we only really see the kitchen... which is much improved.  The great grassy expanses of back gardens around the nearby houses are odd... not sure what they are.  My animus is in a military group  - under orders, or military discipline - he can't or won't communicate with me.  He is broken hearted and depressed over a matter of taste (the CD) - LO's sister is an enthusiastic nice warm woman - so she would obviously say he and his wife would get back together - his son is more intelligent and critical - so his view point is more nuanced...  I go back to the dinner table (my Christmas duties) and await his appearance, knowing that when he comes he will be near me, although I am still unsure that we will be "fully integrated".

If you analyse it this way it makes a lot of sense,.  I (the Animus - the male side of myself) am under military discipline - getting Christmas ready, so I cannot be in touch with the other side of myself because that would result in a more authentic response to life - i.e. doing what I want, which is to get on with the novels.  The old ladies are like my book group having their Christmas feast... which is where my Christmas labours started - although in the dream it's summertime - suggesting that is the season I want to be in - one of growth, fruition, harvest (the grass needs to be cut for hay), rather than living through the restrictions of winter.

I am rather glad of Jungian analysis here  - if I did not know of it, I would have assumed that it was just an anxiety dream about the LO not being interested in me, even if he'd split with his wife.

As for the general marriage situation, I had a good chat with A about it - her insights are often very useful - and now that her marriage is crumbling, she sees the attractions of one's nice home and family very strongly.  I admit, I do not really wish to go and live in a bed-sit on income support... I shall continue to live in Samuelgard, attending the warriors like a good little Valkyrie, until the warriors depart for adult life and I can re-assess the situation.
, 

Andrew Mitchell again!

Now it's called Plebgate - I liked it better when it was called Gategate...

Nearly Christmas...

Today is Mark's birthday - we have still not been able to shift it to a more relaxing time of year - July maybe, or August.  So we are having the usual celebrations - this year instead of celebrating with his family on the day we are celebrating it twice... first today - then again on Saturday when four of them will be here.  He was in adn exceptionally grumpy mood this morning...this didn't help.

I am doing that "woman at Christmas" thing that they have begun to talk about in the meejah.  In my case this consists of being as patient as I can be - and just getting on with stuff.

Today's achievements:

Took delivery of Christmas tree (Nordmann this year - he offered us one at the same price), cooked scones, birthday cake, soaking a ham, starting to deal with spiced beef, making steak and kidney pudding, went to 2 supermarkets, tidied up the booze cupboard and decided we actually could get by on what we had between now and Boxing Day (when Sainsbury's is open - if there's an emergency).  Tidied up sitting room, dealt with card s, wrapped some more presents - realised we were nearly out of wrapping paper - tried to tidy up kitchen, tried to make more fudge (assembled ingredients, but got no futher).  Organised small but perfectly formed birthday tea for M, N, F and Gina - it is not surprising that the cake went wonky - shoved it in the oven without  due care and attention... Also needed to spend time persuading Mark to cheer up - it isn't the end of the world (that's tomorrow) that he's now as old as me.  He did cheer up and enjoyed opening his vast selection of pressies - and eating the coconut cake (only I seemed to notice it wasn't as good as usual - don't think the organic coconut I bought in error tastes as good as the usual own brand stuff!).

We have a hell of a lot to do tomorrow - and I have to go and mind Suzy's shop - which is fine, it will give me a chance to sit quietly and read, or perhaps it will be busy?  She is having late opening - followed by a party at hers... but we also have to:

get everything out of the dining room and clean it,
clean and tidy sitting room, rearrange furniture to accommodate tree
Clean the hall, stairs, etc.
Stuff ivy in all unattractive bits of the house
Erect and decorate the Christmas tree
Get boys to make biscuits and more fudge for presents.
Wrap more presents,
Cook brownies, red cabbage and prepare croquetas...
Ice two Christmas cakes (have to do that tommorrow because one is for Tom & Anne)

Everything seems to take so long.  Clare noticed how much walking I had to do in the kitchen - I suppose dashing the 22 ft between the washing machine and the drying rack and the sink and the recyling bins is keeping me from utter slothfulness.   This is the first time I've relaxed for a while - and I go back to my laptop and discover another agent has rejected my novel - it only took her 3 days.  Good, she urged me to continue looking for an agent.  I don't really think I'll have much time until January. Tomorrow Mark is going to Canterbury to get some stones - he has another job, which is great, and he can do it at once - so we'll only have to make the next payment stretch until mid-Feb, and I can explain this to the Nationwide.  Arrrrggggh.

Nostalgia - 21st December?

I feel nostalgic - don't know why - but the last few days I have felt endless mild yearnings - I want the Moon! What is the nature of these things?  Nothing has changed objectively - I still want to change my life - I feel it is slowly changing, creaking open... but maybe that's an illusion.  I thought everything changed at the beginning of this year, but now it seems to have gone retrograde - perhaps that's why I'm aching for the dear dead days beyond recall - or maybe it's my sedately raging hormones... Or maybe it's because the world is going to end on Friday.  

Just heard a programme about the Mayan prophecy - I know rationally it's a pile of pooh - but there was one person who was speaking so earnestly and apparently sincerely about it, that I almost began to believe in it.  I suppose I am guilty of over-empathising sometimes.  I think that's why I often close myself off from things, seal myself away from the seething emotional lives around me.  I was struck by the astronomer who pointed out that there were no significant planetary conjunctions... I had also been wondering what the doomsters had meant by that - there's a difficult Pluto-Uranus angle - but that's been going on for months - no doubt blighting my 5th house (true love and creativity!) and quite a few others beside no doubt.  Actually, there's nothing blighted about my creativity.  I'm exploding with ideas at the moment, for new stuff, and for improvements to old stuff - which is great, what I need is someone to pay me for it.  True love?  Nah, not allowed to have that when you're married - oh, hang on, I thought that was the point of getting married.  I suppose one can't get everything right in one's life, but right now it seems I have got quite a few things wrong - this is something which has only just occurred to me.  Seen objectively my life could appear fairly disastrous - but I don't feel it is for some reason.  Probably because I don't judge myself by material standards.  I'm happyish I suppose because of the levels of creativity - because I have very nice friends, a husband who means well, decent kids (on the whole!) and we can still just about afford central heating.  Yet it seems that beneath the surface complacency there is still this emotional itch...sometimes I think "perhaps, when we're 64" but really I feel it is safest to expect nothing, and then one can't possibly be disappointed.

He who wishes to save his life, will lose it...

I've always found this Biblical verse, Luke 9.24, puzzling, or rather, a slightly extreme one.  I understood it to mean that only by giving up things for God would you get a really good life - but it always sounded as if it was at the heroic end of the Christian spectrum.   However, over the years I've realised that like a great deal in Christianity it's close to other teachings such as Buddhism - about abnegation or self-denial or something like that.  It isn't necessarily heroic, there have been times when I abandoned certain hopes or objectives to concentrate on something else and have been given the things I gave up.  In particular there have been 2 occasions when I've felt able to give up things - once when Ned got a head injury and was bleeding from his ears, which I took to be a sign that he was close to death - he was very cold and pale, seemed to be losing consciousness and I really thought he was dying, and I was able to thank God for the 8 years of his life and say what a blessing they had been and to give him up if that was God's will.. Ned always knew as a child something was seriously wrong with him then - he said later he could see I was frightened and it was the only time he'd seen me frightened.

The other time I gave up something was when I thought I was dying - I was drifting into unconsciousness through blood loss and I accepted the possibility of death, but while praying I said "I don't mind dying for myself, but I don't think it's very fair on Mark and the boys."

As you can see, neither Ned nor I is dead, but both these rather extreme occasions reaffirmed my belief that it is only when you abandon a cause, or a hope, that it has any chance of being fulfilled.  Not abandon it exactly, but cease to believe its fulfilment is the only really important thing. I wish I could abandon my anxiety that money was a really important thing - perhaps it would then flow freely into my life - but I feel that adopting this do ut des policy may be a bit cynical, and would not be honoured if done for the wrong reasons.  It is of course, at the basis of the idea of sacrifice - "I give you this lamb and you give me innumerable benefits" - but the Luke verse is more subtle because Jesus is not saying "give up stuff so you'll get back" he's saying if you focus on yourself, you will get lost in yourself - if you are willing to lose your life for others you will save yourself.  Losing your life for others sounds a bit drastic - but that probably isn't quite what is meant - just that one has to be able to accept the vicissitudes of life without getting hung up on "what will this do to ME?"

And the next verse, Luke 9.25 is the famous one "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world but lose his soul?" - which suggests not that you would lose your actual soul - but the spiritual part of yourself that connects you to God would be blighted, hidden, no longer useful to you - you would lose your connection with God - and this is the outcome of an obsession with anything really - one's health, one's children, one's life, money, one's worldly success... But it doesn't say that inevitably if you gain the whole world you will lose your soul - it is possible to have a great deal and still be part of the Kingdom of God.   This no doubt connects with the idea of "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and the rest will be added unto you..." although this seems to refer to basics such as food and drink and clothes - rather than luxuries.

My problem at present is how to lose my obsession with getting my first novel published, and my anxiety about money - I feel they are getting in the way of other things.  I feel sure my life would be better in every way if those two issues could be resolved.  But perhaps it wouldn't.  Perhaps I need to lose these things somehow first.   

Still Standing...

Just about, I haven't written for a week or so, because I've had set-backs and busy-ness and now I'm feeling rather low.    There could be an objective reason - but I suspect it's because I've just done another re-write of TRF and after the engagement with the story and the characters, I feel a bit flat.  Also,. the cat's disappeared, we haven't seen him for 3 days and I'm feeling rather sad about that.   This is not up there in the ranks of blogs about famous people, and strident opinions on political matters, but it's where I am now.  I feel like crying, but - apart from the loss of the cat, and nostalgia, can't really see any good reason for it.

A real opera

I went to the opera on Tuesday - a Glyndeborne touring production in Canterbury with singers I'd heard of, and some of whom were so old that I'd actually heard them before  It was Nozze di Figaro - which is the first opera I ever saw at Covent Garden - in their da Ponte season in 1980? 81?  I used to listen to it all the time, but it's such a long time since I saw it.   The first half was a bit irritating as we had been bought the last two tickets by dear Anna T. and these were in a box above the stage from which one couldn't see more than one-third of the stage, or the surtitles.  In the second half we slid over to a couple of spare seats I'd noticed in the slips... which were marvellous in comparison.

The production was interesting, the singing was good and the fact that I knew it so well meant I really, really appreciated it and engaged with it.  When the Count finally sings "Contessa, perdona" I had tears in my eyes.   What seems to have happened in the twenty years or so since I last went to proper opera on a regular basis (i.e since I met Mark and so on...) is that acting has become extremely important - and there is no question of someone walking on, singing their aria and then standing about like a lemon.  It does make a tremendous difference to one's engagement with it.  Obviously there was operatic acting 20 years ago - but it wasn't so ubiquitous.  Or perhaps it is just David Grandage's productions?  The style was clever - 70's costumes in crumbling Moorish palaces.  The Count's costumes were especially louche and fab - the Contessa wore floating kaftans.

I should have  made M listen to it a bit before we went - I don't think he really got into it.  But then again, neither would the LO probably...perhaps one just has to accept that one can't turn "to share the rapture" with people as much as one would like...there will always be spaces in between in any sort of intimacy, and that too is desirable, although occasionally it can feel a bit lonely. 

What's God like?

This is a question that everyone who believes in God has to ask themselves.  I answered it to my satisfaction years ago - an answer that was based on the fact that I had experienced something - an enveloping, awesome, powerful darkness.  I experienced it more than once - I think it's some sort of ultra-conscious state when one ceases to be conscious of the material world and is - very briefly - with God - in eternity.  It was an unfrightening darkness, it had no negative element - when I became materially conscious again I was filled with a sense of love and thankfulness - but I didn't feel that during the brief experience.  On the occasions I've had it, I've longed to experience it again.

On the more superficial level - when it comes to day to day trying to do what you think God prefers, one takes the Gospels as a guide, tries to turn the other cheek (abysmal failure usually!), to be kind to widows and orphans (mercifully few around) and so on.  I tend to believe in a God-form that I've created from my own nature - a forgiving, liberal God, who would read the Guardian if He/She ever got around to it.  This is a God whose ultimate judgement of me will, I hope, be kindly and understanding, will recognise the struggles I've had to be a better person, and will admit me to some positive new state of ultra-consciousness when I die.

This morning I woke at 5.00 am - and found myself worrying: suppose I'm wrong? - suppose all the fundamentalists who believe in an angry, vengeful God, who sends people to Hell, are right?  If this was the real God - and not just their personal projection of God - what hope would there be for me? In terms of the Old Testament I can't find much comfort, I have either broken or derided a great many of the Biblical laws - I haven't killed anyone, and never really stolen more than stationery...but apart from those saving graces, I'm pretty much destined for Hell.  If it exists and is occupied.  That gave me a terrible feeling of despair - that nothing I could do would make it right.  Of course this isn't true: there is repentance and forgiveness - and above all redemption through Jesus.  In theological terms these are the remedy for Hell!  

But what about those people - those fundamentalists who really believe in Hell, in punishment, in their own deep-rooted sinfulness?  They are surely already in a Hell of their own making - they are imprisoned in an anxiety that any mild lust or covetous or malicious thought, will not go unpunished.  I suddenly felt something I had never felt before - a great compassion for those people - who are not living a full and abundant life because they are terrified of what might happen in the afterlife if they do. What an absolute misery this must be for them.  No wonder they have to have a go at the rest of us as we go about, blithely enjoying the God given pleasures of the world and human society - they must resent our casual attitude very much.

Tories & rent boys - child abuse & "paedophilia"

All those beautiful Greek words for it - pederasty - from pais erastos - desired (lusted after) boy,  paedophilia - love of boys (or children - same word in Greek - girls didn't count). I have decided not to use these words - child abuse is the appropriate one.

The revelations that come from the N. Wales abuse victims don't speak of love or tenderness - or even the kind of desire that one would associate with that.  There is no sense of relationship - just use... no tenderness, but rape.

I cannot even begin to speculate on the history of rent boys - but no doubt where there's a demand there's usually a supply.  Someone will have contributed a book of "queer history" which will focus on their history - it may be spoken of with pride, but the "suck your cock for sixpence, guv'nor" idea of a chirpy, free-spirited rent boy may be a tad on the idealistic side. Perhaps there are 14 year old boys who are making a bit of a career of it.  We used to live next door to a retired rent boy in London (he didn't know we knew) - I over heard a very loud telephone conversation which boomed through our bedroom wall one morning - and he said (inter alia) "When I was a rent boy, we wanted to make something of ourselves - now it's just all about money."

One has to pause to wonder what depths someone could come from if becoming a rent-boy was a step up on the ladder...

So, if we accept that, for whatever reasons, there is a steady supply of willingish rent boys in large cities (I can only speak for London) - why would anyone want to trek out to North Wales to find unwilling sex with amateurs?   Well, maybe the majority of the users were locals - say the Chester MP Peter Morrison - so they weren't going far.  Were they inviting chums from London to join them?  Was the unwillingness part of the attraction?  It was fresh meat rather than the jaded, over accomplished services of a "professional"?

Then we return to the vague idea that somehow London rentboys are free-booting independent contractors -  clearly they were mostly not, clearly there were rings, men who supplied.  The magnificent case of the Committal proceedings where a man who was part of a paedophile ring supplying boys to various people, claimed "you can't touch me, I supply the ______  ______ " and further reporting on the matter was suppressed by a D Notice (this was from a comment on one of the posts I've removed).

The fact is that there was some very nasty stuff going on - people like Edwina Currie knew about Peter Morrison - but no one said anything even though it was illegal.   What did they think?  That those boys had chosen that path - that it was a "lifestyle choice"?   That it might be better than some of the alternatives?  They they were doing them a favour in employing them for a tenner?  Perhaps some of these things may even be true in some of the cases.  But the fact that something so thoroughly illegal and immoral was going on alongside the business of government does not seem to have bothered people enough to do something about it.  Evil flourishes when good (men) do nothing - arguably many of the people who knew about it weren't good.

Tory child abuse cover up "like the Nazis"

This is the rather dramatic opinion of my friend A - who is famed, as a former BBC journalist, for having such opinions and stories to back them up.  Of course it is an hysterical viewpoint in some ways.   The Nazis had widespread control of large swathes of Europe - child abusers in the Tory party do not.  Speaking out against the Nazis was a suicidal policy - speaking out about Tory child abuse probably isn't... but it is nevertheless being suppressed.

A cited the case of the government scientist, David Kelly, who died in mysterious circumstances shortly after having displeased the government (a Labour government incidentally).  His somewhat outrageous view is that  similar things may happen now to people who upset the apple cart over this affair.  He believes Steve Messhums was paid a handsome sum to re-cant; he thinks it inconceivable that no one ever showed him a picture of his abuser in the last 20 years... and that he misidentified him... He also speculates that SM will meet a sticky end.

So far, so repressive.  But the difference from the Nazis is instructive - and almost more shocking.   Firstly - for most of the last 20 years the Tories have not been the ruling party - so why wasn't this dug up before?   Secondly, it is only a tiny handful of leading Tories who have been allegedly involved in child abuse - and some of them, such as Ted Heath are dead.  Surely the rest of the party - which I assume is not involved in child abuse? would naturally be revolted by this and want to bring the guilty to justice?  Perhaps they really think it is a matter for the police - but the police were most helpful in assisting the cover up last time - so when David Cameron suggests that if anyone knows anything they take it to the police, he's potentially setting  the same old carousel in motion.  But what else can he say?  That he's going to hold a public enquiry?

I would love to see a Leveson type enquiry that would bring the suspects to Westminster for questioning... then we could see who all the suspects were - and get them to reply to the evidence.  However, that isn't going to happen.   There has been so much covering up and muddying the waters that it would be very difficult to ascertain anything.

At the base of this is the fact that certain rich, powerful people have no respect or care for the weak and vulnerable - and see them as objects for use, rather than humans of equal value to themselves.  In this they are exactly like the Nazis, the fact that this view is not widespread throughout society makes it even more damning that they have been allowed to carry on like this in secret and been covered up by official bodies.  Why did Waterhouse refuse to reveal the names?  Did he think everyone would stop, having been sufficiently frightened - or was he leaned on?  Or did he have some sympathy for the perpetrators?  Or did he think society would be undermined, that the Tories might lose popularity?... And why do I have to wait until they are all dead before I can write freely about them?   People are sickened that Savile got away with it for so long - they won't be happy to see the revelations about this lot after they're all dead.

In a very bizzarre way this cover-up is worse than the Nazis - because there's really no excuse for it - except that it would embarrass people. A small handful being protected by a larger handful - doing something that there is no political justification for.  There is no over-arching ideology that the people of Britain have been swayed by, child abuse is not happening to give us a greater sway in the world - yet we seem almost as powerless as Germans in the 1930's to combat it.

Tory Child abuse rumours

There were 3 posts about this which were surprisingly popular - until I took them down.  

I took them down because I heard Lord McAlpine (who I hadn't mentioned in them)'s solicitor talking about the law of defamation on the PM programme last night. The thing that upset me is that he said repeating rumours could result in legal action.  Now, I didn't write about Lord M, and the man I wrote about hasn't been mentioned much - although there has been a prodigious bit of rumour swirling around him.   Perhaps he is lying doggo - hoping it will all blow over and there will be another D-notice or injunction supported cover-up like last time.

I spent yesterday evening in a gloom (there was another factor) and woke up this morning feeling very angry.  How dare I be told what I could and couldn't write?  This has never happened to me before.  I wasn't writing  anything salacious, or giving any details - because I didn't know any.  I did want to discuss more widely why these rumours arise and why we are so interested in them and what we want out of them.  It is also true that I deeply dislike, distrust and despise the Tory party (pace individual "good Tories").  I would be delighted to discover that the abuse and the cover-ups were enough to bring them down.  But, solipsistically, what really upset me was being told that there were limits to what I could write publicly - and that I certainly could not write my inner thoughts in public if they concerned a public person.

I can see that were I a well-known writer I would not want rumours of my sexual pecadilloes (historic) to be revealed in the press - even though I've done nothing that any sexually adventurous woman of my generation probably hasn't done or tried. But would I take out an injunction (if I were wealthy enough)? I don't think so.  I'd do a frank public interview and discuss the rumours and what I thought about them and hope to be convincing enough to change people's minds about me, and if that didn't work, I'd have to live with it.

Lord M has finally given the interview (I had forgotten the rumour about him, because he doesn't register on my radar much).  He has been distressed and disgusted, and on the whole, I think if he'd come out and said this twenty years ago it might have had more effect, or indeed if someone had tried to get Messhams to identify his abuser earlier this might have helped too...it should have quashed the rumours at the time.   So why don't public people adopt this tactic?   Why do they think lying doggo is a better one?  Perhaps it does work most of the time - it seems to work for the man I wrote about, but arguably it may work well for him because he may be completely innocent.

I do know one thing about Lord M though - during the 80's when I worked at Lazards, his family firm were clients.  One of our directors was quite chummy with him.  Lord M used to invite said director to (charity?) boxing matches at the Cafe Royal I think.  Well, to be accurate I know he did this on at least one occasion.   This is all legal and above board, but perhaps I won't be the only person who thinks the glorious tradition (dating to Byron and beyond) of upper class men watching young fit working class men beating 7 bells out of each other, is not entirely attractive or without an element of the homoerotic/paederastic.  The Ancient Greeks would have understood this very well, English people are shy of admitting it.

Gloom returns

So after a week of not worrying about it, the putative agent did not get back to me.  I sort of knew that.  But I told myself I would call her at 4.00pm this afternoon, and then I just couldn't face it.  So now I feel miserable, tearful and generally awful.

God, I haven't felt this miserable for ages... I could have put myself out of the misery by calling her (probably), but it was fear of her not saying anything positive, of saying "no" - of rushing her into a negative response.... so where am I?

I feel desperate - need comfort, M offered to take me out to supper - but we can't afford it as usual...And anyway, all I can think about is how wretched I feel.

And yet, as I often point out to myself, nothing has changed objectively...I have still got two well-written novels, I have not actually been turned down by the agent (yet) and in fact she probably won't - I think if she were going to she could have emailed me this week and said so.

M is being gloomy and has also convinced me that high powered lawyers will be tracking me down to sue me for defamation, since apparently repeating rumours is a form of defamation.  Oh God.  I have taken down the blogs.

Defamation - famous Tories and sex

OK - I've been scared into it.  I have taken down the 3 blogs that referred to rumours about a former Tory cabinet minister... I don't suppose we need D notices any more - the libel laws, the super injunctions etc. have taken over.  Although arguably, if a cabinet minister is using underage boys, that would not really be a matter of national security - would it?

Interestingly, the rumours I was writing about focused around someone whose name has not been mentioned in the mainstream media.  Perhaps lying low is the smart thing to do.  It will probably all blow over... although not until the enquiries are over.

Meanwhile, Cameron pulled off some fancy footwork with Philip Schofield didn't he?  By suggesting that the paedophilia cases could set in motion a wave of homophobia, he carefully suggested that gay men were the chief perps. of paedophilia... was that deliberate?  Or just a heat of the moment distraction technique?  We will never know.

It all stinks - and the fact that I have been scared into removing my blogs is not the least stinking thing.  I was not generating rumours, but discussing existing rumours - and apparently that too has legal implications.

Well, I shall retreat from the wider world and instead focus on personal  minutiae and wondering if my putative agent will ever ring.  

Alex Katz and the American Dream

Last night I went to the Turner Contempt to hear a talk or rather a "conversation" about Alex Katz's work... as it was the day after the successful re-election of Barak Obama one was anticipating something rather zingy - but as two of the main participants Bonnie Greer and Sarah Churchwell had been up all night reporting on it for ITN, their contributions seemed a bit lacking in "joined up thinking" (Churchwell delivered her notes at a breakneck speed, Greer was too tired to contribute much beyond her notes she'd written on the train).  However, there were some interesting points made, especially by the artist Merlyn James - who discussed Katz's work.

The points that struck me were that (a) Katz's work is about relationships, he shows people's relationships, and some of the hollowness there - his pictures look incredibly glamorous, a great deal about style and surface - but the underlying relationships don't seem close.  He particularly looked at one painting of a man and a woman, he's looking at her, she's looking down and away - behind them is the sea with a little jagged reef of black rocks - the couple divorced shortly afterwards; he mentioned other examples of Katz's uncanny ability to suggest things that had not yet happened.

The idea of the "American Dream" did not come into use until 1930's - i.e. the Depression - it encompassed the idea of a "good education" which came as something of a surprise to me.  Churchwell insisted it was possible to get an excellent education (I asked a question about how Americans might be taught better history) in the US if you lived in the right area and paid high property taxes - which is great for someone like her,  Bonnie Greer was apparently bussed to the same school... she seems to have unconsciously proved my point - that American education is very good for the elite... She gave a snub about the products of English education...heigh-ho!  I guess some people like to "win" rather than discuss.  She certainly didn't answer my question about how to get more historical understanding into Americans.

I liked what she said about Gilead - rapidly becoming one of my favourite books... how it traced the history of American radicalism from 1851 when Iowa was the heart of American radicalism, participating in the underground railway which hid runaway slaves etc.  to 1956 when it had lost that sense of its past - and how when Eames was gone they would re-build the old church that had seen all this.

Merlyn James made the point that McCarthyism had made it impossible for artists to depict work in any way - that sort of thing stank of "socialist realism" and nobody would sell it.   It made me realise that there could be a simple narrative of that time... the Depression may have heightened awareness of a "better world" - expressed cosily in the "American Dream" or in the aspirations of Socialism - McCarthy comes along and squashes all the socialist stuff - and people get left with the hollow, and economically naive idea of the "American Dream".  It may have been realistic in the 40's-70's, but once they started exporting the jobs abroad, it has become incredibly naive to think the American Dream will ever be possible again...

There was a comment from Churchwell about the "British Dream" - but we didn't get to develop that one: I was thinking that this is not a feature of European culture - the Germans have been known to have dreams, which got them into a lot of trouble.  Henri IV wanted every peasant to be able to afford a poule au pot once a week - and in Britain we had "homes fit for heroes" and "Now build the Peace" - I think in Britain we are too individualistic to have a collective dream - although we came close to it with the NHS - we do have a sense of the common good though which is still hanging on in some places, although we don't really believe it when the Tories try to appeal to it...

I would have liked to hear more from Bonnie Greer - but I was glad of Merlyn James.  There was a good deal about The Great Gatsby - which I clearly ought to re-read.  I will have to excuse Greer and Churchwell since I don't think either of them were thinking straight.  I felt so much more could have been said - but there wasn't time, and it wasn't really a conversation either..

Not Leon Brittan at all?

[Originally written in 2012 - now relevant again.  There is a very interesting anonymous comment that should be read too]

Why do rumours congregate around certain people?  You might say there's no smoke without fire, but why Leon Brittan?   Why not instead, Peter Morrison - the former MP for Chester and Deputy Leader of the Conservative party - who has already been named as involved in the Bryn Estyn business and is dead, and therefore unable to put out an injunction...  Is it because we want action, we want movement, and we want things to happen.  "Dead Tory MP was paedophile" isn't quite as exciting a headline as we would get if a living politician was implicated.

Also, there is the fact that the former victim has not quietened the speculation by saying "but anyway, he's dead now."   And of course, the BBC has reported that the "senior figure" is vehemently denying the rumours/allegations etc and Rod Richards - another Welsh Tory has said in today's Daily Mail  "Peter Morrison and another..."

It's commonly said that Labour Politicians get involved in financial scandals, while Tories get involved in sex scandals.  Leon Brittan resigned from the European commission after a fraud case - in which he does not seem to have been implicated, and was subsequently ennobled: nevertheless, he seems to have had the bad luck to be implicated in both types of scandal.  It is at times like this that one wishes Private Eye had an archive on the web.  It is at times like these that one is irritated by the rumours, and vaguely aware of having read something, somewhere, but can't quite remember what, that left one with a bad feeling about a person.

Peter Morrison died aged 51 after a fairly active life as a user of rent boys - who would then have been underage - and probably of younger boys too.  He wasn't the most prominent of Tories - apart from being Thatcher's PPS.  He doesn't look particularly sinister - just a stoutish, ruddy man who obviously has sensual appetites, could be gay, but one wouldn't be surprised to find him pinching bottoms and winking roguishly at a Constituency Cheese & Wine Party either.  The revelation in the Daily Mail of his involvement doesn't get Leon B off the hook yet.  Although I have a soft spot for William Hague (due to his ability to rile Tony Blair at PM's Questions) the fact that he seems to have been in charge as Welsh Secretary during the Bryn Estyn investigation (and cover up) adds another element - there have been questions over Hague's sexuality too.  If he is implicated in a cover up over this matter, these questions will no doubt be revisted.

There is nothing wrong with being gay, but unfortunately, because of the way attitudes have changed in the last 40 years, some people are still living in the age of discretion/secrecy that used to surround homosexuality.  When people talk about a "Gay Mafia" they are reflecting the fact that when it was not permitted to be gay, loyalties and affinities were discovered, - which resulted in people protecting each other - regardless of the crime.  This "huddling together for warmth" can be seen in any minority group - it doesn't necessarily lead to the covering up of crimes, and the protection of the guilty, but can certainly create a sense in those outside the group that they are sticking together and plotting and caballing.  Might a gay man who was only interested in reputable equal relationships with other men nevertheless cover up something more dodgy, like paedophilia, because the perpetrator was a friend, a member of his protective group?

A propos this issue, one thing I have noticed, about virtually all the Tory politicians who are, or have been reputed to be, gay, is that those who are married never have children of their own, or usually, any children.  Curiously there used to be rumours that Gordon Brown was a paedophile.  For some reason, I never entertained these rumours as anything more than malicious - God knows who started them, he had enough enemies it seems.  The fact that he married and had children whom he clearly loves, seemed a very final nail in the coffin of that particular rumour.

Leon Brittan - what do you want?

[Second in the original series of 3 posts about LB from November 2012]

It is clear from what happened on this blog yesterday that there are a large number of people idly trawling the net, seeking evidence to prove rumours.   The net contains no answers - only fuel for speculation.   My husband asked me crossly "Did you look at his Wikipaedia entry?" - "Yes - and curiously it doesn't mention that he is a practising paedophile."  Although he (my husband) has a PhD and doesn't really believe in the net as the best source of facts - he has touching faith in Wikipaedia.  But, to quote Auden, just as "a penny life will tell you all the facts", Wikipaedia will give you plenty of facts, but nothing of the essence, the emotional/spiritual side of a person.

When you, the readers, put Leon Brittan's name into Google and reach this place, what are you hoping for?  Confirmation?  Details of the abuse? A denunciation? A middle-aged man's tear stained memories of childhood misery and degradation? Or do you hope this blog can deny it - say it was rubbish, that during that period he was on a  3 year trade mission to Tierra del Fuego and nowhere near the Bryn Estyn (sic?) Home?  [Sorry - the Elm Guest House!]  Or are you simply looking for something new to say about it all?

Why am I writing about it?  Nothing we do to the culprits can restore the childhood innocence of the men they damaged.  Even if we name the guilty men and strip them of their public honours, how can we help their victims?  Yes, there's a certain pleasure in revenge - it is good to see your enemy's body floating past you down the river - but when it's gone past, you are still left with your unhappiness and trauma.  Even if we were to "string 'em up" "hanging's too good for them"... what then for the victims?

The real problem of paedophilia is that it's about power, like rape - and the urge amongst humans to gain power over each other is something so innate, that to eradicate paedophilia we will have to re-program the human race. Yes, you or I have never done this... but we probably have had an urge to power in other situations, to humiliate or best someone, to take revenge.  These desires might make us behave badly in other ways.  How do we stop it?  How do we stop it?  The remedy for change is within us individually, to become aware of our urges to dominate others and eradicate these urges or channel them into more constructive ends.  The good will try to do this, the not so good will say it's rubbish, can't be done, it's human nature etc. etc. I'm not defending paedophilia - just saying, it's one extreme of poor human behaviour.  This returns us to the idea that human nature is essentially bad (sinful?)... and what can we do about that?   Interesting where these arguments lead you.

Child abuse rumours - Leon Brittan? - censorship

[Published in November 2012 - withdrawn when people began to mutter about defamation]

Well, the Savile business seems to have flushed a few other issues out.  The North Wales children's home business was investigated a decade or so ago - in secret.  "lessons were learned" etc. etc. but no action was taken.  It is now being widely bruited about that a "senior conservative politician" has been named in connection with this scandal - hence the censorship of the outcome of the investigation?

I am now wondering whether the politican involved was Leon Brittan - there were rumours that he was a paedophile during the 80's - like all these rumours, one is too far from the source to know whether it has any veracity. I am now guilty of the usual internet crime of sticking an unsubstantiated opinion up.  Since I posted this this morning, this post has had the most hits in one day, and is approaching most hits ever.  I don't think this is a good thing, because it isn't about something that's true - only a rumour.    It hasn't been said that the politician was a Cabinet Minister - it may turn out to be someone who was "senior" in a less obvious way - a treasurer or chairman of the region - part of the party structure rather than someone so public.  A little light research reveals that all the other sources of this story are blogs of varying degrees of credibility.  It is hard to separate what people strongly believe from what is factually accurate sometimes, the levels of outrage and conviction are high - even if the evidence is ?  What?  Rumour and hearsay - but they turned out to be true about JS.

Looking the Tory Cabinet of the 1980s there were any number of people who might have been creepy enough to be molesting children as well as buggering the UK economy.  Candidate for most creepy?  Well, Keith Joseph obviously, and Norman Tebbit; LB might have to be up there though.   If it were him, would that harm the career of his protegee Nick Clegg?  Can his career be any further harmed?

It will be interesting to see who this politician is, since I am sure the name will come out sooner or later.

I have been reading Nick Cohen's excellent book on censorship, You can't read this book - and while I don't suppose my blog is widely read in government circles, I have carefully edited this post since this morning.

Fanfare

In the spirit of blowing one's own trumpet, I posted again about Conscience on Facebook - and this time received all necessary plaudits from most of the nice friends - and even a youtube trumpet link!  "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqmKfT8yIJ4&feature=related" which is the fabulous Purcell Sound the Trumpet which I can thoroughly recommend as early morning music.

And now, I am going back to bed.

Prostate cancer & assertive atheism

This is a topic intermittently on my mind, because of my dear cousin S.  Because he has adopted a calm, faithful approach to the disease, and because I am a less intrusive interlocutor than I might appear to be from this blog, I do not know what his official prognosis is.  He is hoping to do a retreat at Minster next year - I am hoping to see them there. Since we are all praying for him, we just have to have faith and hope, but it is difficult to maintain these in the face of increasing development of bone cancer.   I believe people have come back from the brink from worse states, so I hope he will too.   However, the faith can be shaken.

There is a local couple I feel ambiguous about - I feel I have quite a lot in common with her, but I'm sure she doesn't feel the same. Her manner is abrasive, "direct" is how she puts it, but there are other less complimentary descriptions.  He has recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer - it was caught early, he responded well to treatment and now everything seems hunky-dory - so he can continue his career of being mildly patronising to me and others (he assumes because he is in a small way of being a property developer that he will inevitably know more about any local issues than me or Mark).  This cheery pair are really very nice in many ways (I tell myself) but we just don't "click" - the fact that they are very assertive atheists of course may be a factor (although it doesn't usually bother me).  Anyway, because of my reticence in questioning Strat I took the advantage of distance and questioned her about his symptoms, since like a good partner she is now very knowledgeable about prostate cancer.  "Oh, well, basically he's fucked!" she said.  No beating about the bush of course.

If this was (Catholic) fiction, the "fucked" character would go on to miraculously recover thanks to the use of prayer, novenas, relics and the intercession of St. Vincent de Paul - or someone... while the secular character - well, it would be too melodramatic to have him die of secondaries - perhaps he would simply go his merry way, unaware of God's grace and mercy.   Unfortunately, this will not be resolved like fiction, and we have a longer, slower wait for an outcome.

Assertive atheism is interesting.  If every time some one said to me "I don't believe in God, it's all bollocks, Darwinian evolution- cosmology blah, blah. It's a trap to fool us" I replied simply "I believe in a God who is outside time and space and created the laws of physics and evolution, which I also uphold, and I also believe that Jesus was God in a human form and that he rose from the dead - probably in accordance with quantum theory..." I would of course be regarded as a nutter and a religious maniac, yet I would simply be stating my beliefs without proselytizing.  I might even be shunned - when all I am saying is: God and the laws of physics are not incompatible - a scientific attitude towards the development of the universe does not preclude belief in God...unless you want it to, but please don't bully those of us who can't share your atheism.

Irony - in buckets

Perhaps it is too late, and my apparent boasting about my life has turned away 1,000s of blog readers - but for some reason I awoke this morning, anxious that my last few posts had seemed a bit "full of myself".  I grew up in a traditional British household (in some ways) where "showing off" was severely discouraged.  Arguably this may have led to a slightly depressive underestimation of my own abilities and talents during a large part of my adult life.   Now, eventually, I have just about come to admit that much of what I know and think and can do is actually quite interesting (even if occasionally veering to the nutty or solipsistic), however, whenever I allow this confidence to appear on the page after a day or so I feel retrospectively embarrassed that I might be accused of "showing off".

So, whenever I write about what a raging success I am, this is done with irony.  However, as the emoticon has yet to become a convention of English punctuation, I am not inclined to spell this out to the intelligent reader, who I hope is drawing their own conclusions.  

Ghosts

An appropriate Hallowe'en subject - interesting discussion on the radio about it, and how the perception of it has altered through the ages.  In the Catholic Middle Ages, people thought of ghosts as helpful, often religious characters, who came to advise or warn quite often.  After the Reformation in the early 17thC people began to think they were actively demonic - this view is still largely held in the US - presumably it was taken there by the Pilgrim Fathers and the other English free-thinkers who went over there in the C17th... and now this idea has returned from the US to haunt evangelical and charismatic Christians.

The author being interviewed said that a popular idea now was that buildings, especially those made of organic materials, held impressions of strong emotions, so deaths and births were often a factor in hauntings... this made a lot of sense to me.  After all, many churches have a fantastically good atmosphere because of all the positive prayer going on there for centuries.  The two best attested hauntings at my parents' house were connected with a birth and a death.  What of the other ones?  The moving wardrobe may have some other origin... and those bursts of laughter and noise I used to hear occasionally - who knows?   I feel the atmosphere in Cippenham Place is very bad again, which is one of the reasons why I don't like going there.  It's ennervating - I have to fight it.  It makes me feel defensive and hostile - or is that just my family?   No, I do think that there's something there now, maybe connected with my mother, or negative emotions concerning her last years there.  I don't know whether this can be exorcised, since it is not exactly demonic.

Apparently ghosts seem to proliferate in England due to the anxiety about them after the Reformation - people were forbidden to pray for the dead, the doctrine of Purgatory was dropped, and people felt unhappy about the lot of those who had died recently, this anxiety seems to have proliferate belief in ghosts.

I think I've seen ghosts, Finn has seen one in this house, and I have certainly suffered from "atmospheres". I have always thought the story of the ghost on Salisbury Plain who "warned" my friend's son Mark was a very interesting and credible story, much more proactive than merely seeing a woman simply drifting through one's room.  It is odd about my parents' house: I liked it when it was properly haunted - although it could be frightening.  I didn't like the fact that they had a perfectly nice house exorcised, although it did get rid of the jumping wardrobe and the haunted cupboard.  (And nearly did for the drinks cupboard - that's what happens when you get a charismatic evangelical to exorcise for you).  Maybe what I experience there is a sense of closing in - the idea of fewer years ahead, the necessity to make peace with one's mortality (I think I have) and perhaps the restless unwillingness of my father to do this.  Oh dear.  

Fanfare for me!

Yes, you do have to blow your own trumpet - nobody does it for you.  I announced to the awaiting world the completion of Conscience vol 1 on Facebook this afternoon, and got a "like" from Finn - and the rest of my eager chums? nada, zilch, niente...  I expect they were all busy, it is Hallowe'en after all, and I seem to be the only person who doesn't treat it as a lesser Christmas.  I hope that's why no one noticed, or did they notice and think I was showing off... or are they all assuming I am about to fail.   Perhaps I am.

Anyway, I finished Conscience today.  This was an idea I have had for a while - and, sometime in 2003 I went up to London on a train with a small notebook and came back with the whole plot.  I've never looked at that notebook since, it is probably full of gorgeous ideas which I would be kicking myself not to have used.  I can't actually remember when I began to write it - when I started The Romantic Feminist I had already written about 20,00 words of it, and I wrote a little more on it after I'd completed the first few drafts of the RF.  I wrote it so slowly and infrequently, it had taken me at least a year to write those first 20,000 words, perhaps two years.  This afternoon I finished it.  I decided this morning that Thursday and Friday were going to be busy days, so I should just go for it.  The last chapter is just under 5,000 words, all written today.  It will need considerable polishing, but I wanted to get some momentum back - the previous chapters had covered about 4 weeks in about 15,000 words.  I didn't think my readers would want it to drag out, every painful conversation, every initiative.  M of course wanted me to include a scene with a recruiting sergeant - I felt that had been "done" - I left it out, there is some anxiety about how the wife character changes - is it a but unrealistic, has she been subsumed to the plot in some way...

Some weeks ago it became apparent to me that the story, which I originally imagined as one big fat book, and then realised would make more money as two, might actually become three books.  Currently this version is about 87,000 words - slimmer than TRF, but still a respectable size - about 220 pages... it may need some padding out - but there were a few ideas I had as I went along that perhaps need to be expanded a little - and maybe the last chapter would benefit from another couple of thousand words.  I am desperately excited, and thrilled, and also a little deflated - what on earth will I do next?  Some housework perhaps?

Maggie O'Farrell

It is always a great joy to read a good new writer.  I have been aware of MO'F for a while - she used to write for the Guardian - and so I tended to treat rave reviews of her books as a bit of hype for an ex-colleague.  However, this month's Book Group book was The Disappearance of Esme Lennox, which I thought was a really interesting, competent book - very well written, well constructed, interesting characters, interesting inter-relationships.  I enjoyed it, admired it - these things are not always synonymous.

Social whirl...

Well, not exactly, but just at the moment, if I wanted to I could more or less go out all the time, and when I am at home dear friends are ringing for lovely chats, which is lovely - but 3 today is going it a bit, what with the weekly weightwatchers meeting and shopping it is surprising that I get any work done, but I did 2,600 words of frustrated sex scenes - God I'm getting so good at this!  I keep saying I'm nearly finished - but another 1,000 words slip in.  I may finish it by the end of the week, but if I don't, I don't.  Tomorrow I should have a good run at it.

Anyway, things are moving along - and every time I see a friend they suggest something else we could do or go to or see... do I want to go and see an am-dram production of Mapp & Lucia?  Do I want to see an interesting poetic-play by Nancy Charley - or hear Jamie Moores play?   This weekend is mapped out - Marine Studios 3rd birthday party - then a concert on Saturday afternoon - then supper with our paying guests... then?  Sunday a walk if it's fine - maybe to collect wood - or we could have the first fire of the season.  And the other thing - unknown people wanting to be friends, sending me messages.  Perhaps all the astrological stuff about getting a high profile is true.  Oh yes, a high profile in Thanet!

A Party for a Peter Blake exhibition

The other day when I was minding the shop I was also eavesdropping at what was happening on the tourist info. desk.  I heard the chief volunteer phoning around - to invite "influential people" to a re-launch of a pub.  Actually, the pub's been going strong, but its former manager has returned... so they're having a re-opening party. I wondered who the "influential people" were who were being invited, fairly safe in the knowledge that I wouldn't be one of them.  I'm not sure what it takes to be "influential" in Ramsgate - and who you'd be influencing - if it's Thanet District Council, any one with a brown envelope would be in this category, or the membership of a Masonic Lodge.

Anyway, one of the invitees I did hear the name of, has invited me (in her PR capacity) to something rather more interesting: the opening of a new proper art gallery a two minute walk from the house.  It's an interesting thing - a commercial art gallery - but a proper gallery - which is going to be holding commercial shows of really good known artists.  It is being located in an odd place, but the owner is already an established galleriste and has a strong list of clients - who will pursue her even to the wilds of Ramsgate... so should we expect parking problems? Or will they all come by train?

I am not quite sure why I've been invited: is it because I've written reviews of exhibitions for Thanet Watch (which probably makes me Thanet's leading art critic - pas grand chose, alors!) or because I am middle class and local.  It is certainly not because I am an art buyer likely to pick up the odd Peter Blake drawing, or even to influence my avid readership to do this. Maybe I have become "influential"? without realising it.  Now I am going to be fascinated about two things, firstly whether they do what Turner Contemptible did - have a couple of preview parties for locals and then have a really important party on the last night, or will it just be the one party - and we hoi polloi from Ramsgate will be rubbing shoulders with international art glitterati and buyers.  Will Peter Blake lui-meme be there?  There will be champagne - although I think putting that in the email title was a little de trop, no doubt it was to indicate that this would be no ordinary, prosecco reception.  The other fascination is - who will be there?  The 250 most "influential" people in Thanet?  Or just a few vaguely groovy people? Will it be commercial and sensible or just vaguely arty?  Will the elusive Ramsgate Millionaires be there?  Peter Blake is a very sensible choice for a first exhibition - figurative art always goes down a storm here...

So why me? What list do I appear on?  Who mentioned my name? Or is it just a mistake - like those weird people who follow one on Twitter?

Staying up late

I don't really want to stay up late - but when Mark's away I can without anyone grumbling at me, so I do.  He has gone to the Society of Antiquaries to a lecture on Selborne Abbey - for which he is providing the pictures.  Tomorrow he is going to see his father, then go and see mine - we'll all have supper there on Friday night.   But first Friday has to be navigated.  The last 3 Fridays have all been hellish for some reason - due largely to my having had too much to do in the time available.  I daresay this Friday will be the same.  Rush, rush, rush - so why am I not in bed, sleeping the sleep of the just?  

If I'd really wanted to make a night of it I could have invited the whole Festival Club back to mine - but what would have been the point?  I would just have drunk a ludicrous amount and made Friday impossible to navigate.  I am going to sit in Suzy's shop again and read and think - it is usually quiet on Friday mornings, and I can read a serious book.  At the moment the book is Nick Cohen's You can't read this book - which is interesting.  My brain is really dying... I just have lost concentration - I think it's because I live so much of my time on the unconscious level - the writing etc.  And the super-charged daydreaming...

I had some very welcome feedback on TRF from Kirstie - not depressing enough - Denise thought bits of it too depressing - K would have preferred that Lucy jumped off the viaduct.  She loved the Benjie character - and the end, thought it was only slightly improbable.

Some songwriter was talking about Bob Dylan today and how they "borrowed" from him all the time in their songs.  I was thinking that I don't consciously borrow from literature - or rather I do do conscious intertextuality - deliberately, but I don't "borrow" plots and situations from literature - rather from life, so I've borrowed  bit of Bella, a bit of Michelle, some actual circumstances from the LO's life - and Kirstie said that Melissa was a classic gorgeous American ballbreaker... perhaps I should have made her Australian? which means that I haven't borrowed her from anywhere, she's just an archetype I picked off the shelf...so perhaps she was "borrowed" from literature.

Happy!

Even though I only wrote 300 words today I made progress in all sorts of other ways.  I re-wrote the synopsis of Conscience1 and edited the first 3 chapters again - they are in pretty good shape, but there was some stuff about the conchies I needed to correct.  When I re-wrote the synopsis I had to go to the end, and although I knew roughly what was going to happen, it was good to clarify the story.  There is just one thing I haven't done... an idea I have had, but am not sure about.  So that can be my new thing to worry about for the next few days.  I don't want him to do a Soames Forsyth on her, but I can imagine it.  I think it would upset family members a lot.  I need to make the distinction between plot - which the history of my grandfather's life provides, and story - which is the bit I've made up.  Yes, I've made up a story to fit the facts.  There will have to be an afterword...

Jimmy Savile - the latest

Perhaps I am over interested in this subject, I think I felt a vague connection with him as a result of seeing him liveon the Beatles Christmas Show: I hadn't seen many famous people in the flesh as a child.  Thank God I didn't get too close! (actually, I would have been too young then even for his depraved tastes),

So, the latest is last night's Panorama programme.  It gave an interesting picture of life at the BBC in the 70s.  JS was clearly incredibly cocky, often suggested to people that he was "having" various young girls - made jokes about young "birds" etc. and a number of people recognised that something was very wrong.  One DJ explained how he was certain that JS was up to all sorts of nefarious things, but as a very junior person, felt he couldn't make trouble for a "star".  This DJ is also gay, far less acceptable at that time - so perhaps kept quiet for fear of it all rebounding on him in some way.  I don't imagine JS was very forgiving - despite his much-vaunted devout Catholicism.   There was the usual list of damaged young people who were now upset middle-aged people and the sins he committed were all very predictable - ranging from mild sex pestering to a good deal of oral sex, and full intercourse.  There was the horrible story of the police asking him to help find a runaway teenager "but if I find her I get to keep her for the night as a reward" he said, and he did.  Most of the sexual stuff is banal, also the fact that he consorted with other paedophiles such as Gary Glitter.  What is so sickening is the number of incidents, the abuse of his celebrity and the way he actually boasted about what he was up to.  He winked, he hinted, he insinuated, he was pleased with himself - either he didn't think it was wrong, or he did but was exulting in his own power to do what he wanted.  Either of these suggests he might have been something of a psychopath. People around him felt he should be treated differently because he was "a star". Different standards applied to stars, especially those who devote their lives to "charidee".

It was in part his charity work that made him untouchable in his lifetime - now the damnatio memoriae is almost complete: a building named after him is changing its name, and both the charities bearing his name are winding themselves up.  They will presumably donate the funds to charities with similar objects.  He had sought to leave a legacy "more enduring than bronze" - but within a year it has been destroyed.  Maybe bringing him to trial would have obtained a public sympathy for a frail old git - and that would have been the lasting memory of him.  Instead, since he is dead, we can recall him at his cocky peak - and enjoy the poetic justice of his rapid fall.

A life of contrasts

So, on the one hand, I am on the verge of being offered a publishing deal, and getting an agent on the case, and on the other hand our card is being rejected at the supermarket because we have run out of money again.  Part of me is utterly convinced that I am on the verge of a breakthrough of some sort - and the other half of me is living in poverty and misery.  If we hadn't had paying guests this month I don't know how we would have managed.  Our client hasn't paid on time... and the building society has rung us to complain about lack of funds.  If we didn't have £100 in cash from the weekend, we would be really in the fecal matter.

It reminds me of when I was a freelance financial journalist: I would have lunch or maybe just drinks at the Savoy on some corporate jolly - and then home to scrambled eggs... all I could afford. Boy did I get sick of chicken in those days. Life is strange, I am still pushing quite hard at the square wheel - but am constantly being distracted - we need to finish Clive & Naomi's garden and get that money, and I need to do some more work for my father (and get some money from him, although I don't think he should pay me) but I am desperate to finish Conscience vol. 1.   I spent this morning doing 2,000 words in about 3 hours, but loads of that time was spent doing picture research on Google to find nude male statues they might have seen together. I knew the ending was going to be hard work.  And it is.  Not hard, but careful, concentrated work, that needs a lot of attention to get it right.  And all the time, my time for doing it is being eaten away.  I really want to finish before the end of November - because once Christmas gets near it all becomes impossible.

The good news is - two bits of new work have come in today!  Wonderful!  So money will flow eventually...

Old friends: Combining business with pleasure

Have had a really nice time in the last 18 hours or so.  Spent Saturday in the usual sweat over tidying, bedmaking etc. and cooking a bit.  Cheesecake disaster - put in double the biscuits in the base and forgot to include the sour cream in the topping.   That apart, no problems.

At 5.30ish my old university friend Al turned up for his "lads' weekend" with two fellow social workers, Steve and Stephen.  They have an annual weekend away - and this year he chose a trip to East Kent - and the BandB they stayed in was mine!  So we'd agreed a few weeks ago that they would pay me for B&B and I would give them dinner - and I invited Clare around too - so that I wouldn't be totally outnumbered.  It was great fun - Al and I managed to have some good talks on our own, as well as the general conversation and after midnight we just sat and talked and had the "what do you think of the show so far?" conversation about life - reflecting on relationships and how they had gone and what it felt to be getting older and so on.  It really was great, I had forgotten how close I always felt to him - I think we both have a capacity to feel deeply but appear on the surface rather analytical about relationships.  He talked about how difficult he found it to cope with rejection - and about not asserting himself enough in situations - and I certainly empathised with that - we also talked about children - their emotional meaning in relationships, rather than their specifics.  It was very good to have this conversation with him.  We did cover a fair bit of the ground that is covered in The Romantic Feminist but I realised how many more stories there are about our conflicts between our emotions and our ideologies - and in some ways how feminism can be an artificial construct that comes between people - preventing them acting the way they really feel.  Oh dear.  I can almost feel a re-write coming on... I also appreciated his emotional language - a subtly different way of talking about relationships.  I have become very aware since starting this blog how dependent I am on certain words - I need MORE words...

I think the other thing I became aware of was how few of my women friends have this sort of analysis of relationships... he is like me very fond of proper conversation - inquisitive, piecing things together, making conclusions,   I was very interested to hear his great sad love story... and his observation which I also make, about how one buries stuff and ignores it - and how some people have this ability to completely ignore past mistakes, and never admit regrets (I can think of an enormous number of people like that). We speculated on the possible areas of regret of some people we knew.

The other two S's were both very nice - one was extremely quiet - the other less so - and teased Al a lot.  It was nice to meet them and it was fun having a "dinner party" - we had the works: lots of snacky starters (multicultural tapas: mini salami, Polish brawn, Latvian smoked sprats, felafel, Spanish olives with manchego, beetroot salad, stuffed peppers), then bobotie, rice, salad and carrots, then the fated cheesecake, cheese, coffee, chocs etc.  The two S's went out before dinner to explore the Conqueror - apparently voted the best real ale pub in Kent last year.  Still haven't been there.

Personal crisis in retrospect - Mother stuff

Thinking the other day about how my sister C is still very emotional about the rejection she felt from our mutual mother, and how I seldom feel like that now, I wonder.  It is the kind of thing that used to make me very upset indeed, especially about this time three years ago - not long after she died.  Then I started taking Citalopram - in August 2010 - and so began a long period of relative emotional calm - almost as if I had achieved the ataraxia - the state of being unmoved that the Stoics recommended and aspired to.  During that time I frequently felt angry with my mother, and I occasionally felt that there was something inherently artificial and not altogether desirable about the drug.   It is now - what? 4 - 5 months since I stopped taking it, I don't think it's having a residual effect, but I feel the same.  I am probably a tad more irritable than when I was taking it, but I have stopped feeling those more introspective negative emotions, the sort of self-pity thing, don't feel pain at certain things - don't feel as rejected as I used to.  Does this mean I have "got over it"?  Whatever it was?

There were several different factors in the crisis of 2009 - there was my mother's death, the apparent imminence of my father-in-law's death (I was very fond of him), Mark's terrible illness and of course the mysterious reappearance of the LO, the sudden flare up of the writing and so on.  Quite a year really - and most of these things rolled over into 2010 - so by the summer of 2010 I was in a fair old two and eight.  So what happened?  When I went into therapy and did come out better and wiser with greater empathy and understanding - my mother said "I don't think it was the therapy - you just got older."  I thought that was just her general contempt for therapy and fear of what it would reveal.  So perhaps we could say that since then I have got 2-3 years older and have survived these things and life went on, and I have had to survive more horrors - like the fiscal meltdown of 2011 - and the weekly fights to stay afloat financially.  Maybe the distractions of that helped me to put the stuff that had/hadn't/could've happened in the 2009-10 crisis in perspective and in the past.  So it's not ostriching exactly - but it is not dwelling on it, not wallowing in it.  I could have gone into therapy - but I didn't.  The Citalopram worked on my brain a little bit the way an anti-inflammatory works on muscle pain.  The muscle tenses with the pain and that makes it worse, the drug relaxes the muscle, masks the pain and gives the muscle the opportunity to recover.  In the same way my emotions were relaxed, the pain masked and everything got a chance to recover.  That is how psychiatric drugs, well anti-depressants are supposed to work.  It was easy to come off it and give it up and now everything is fine. I mean, that while the objective conditions are not fine, I am not buckling under with misery about them.  In fact, I find it easier to get angry now - while my nearest and dearest may not think this is a great advance, it is meant to be more psychologically healthy than bottling it all up.

Actually, this is still not about my mother.  I find it hard to write about her while I am still feeling quite angry with her.  I wasn't allowed to be angry with her for 4 years because she was ill - and before that - well, it was different.  I wonder why I am so angry with her, and why exactly?  I think it's because she or rather her attitude to me, have given me all sorts of stresses and strains in my own persona, anxieties about so many things and a fundamental sense that people dislike me.  I know rationally that the reverse is true - that people rather like me, find me interesting, want to be friends etc.  But my mother's attitude to me since conception perhaps, has given me that feeling.  And it is tiresome at this advanced age to find oneself endlessly justifying and rationalising about people's feelings towards you - imagined feelings I should say.   I do not like being chippy/prickly - I would like to be a smoother person really. However, there is evidence I am recovering - the incident of discovering I had not been invited to a birthday party was a bit of a turning point.  Years ago I would have agonised, why didn't they?  I would have turned it over and moaned and groaned and worse still, seen it as further evidence that I was not really a nice person.  Now I just think "how rude of them!" to invite A but not us... but then again, they are free to invite who they want, and I am grateful for their behaviour has liberated me.

I am feeling a lot freer about many things now.  The other day I counted the number of women I could have coffee or a glass of wine with in Ramsgate, it was over 10.  Of course that is "too many" friends in one sense, because I haven't actually got time to see them regularly - but if I see one a week I get enough society and gossip and deep meaningful discussion...but when I think how incredibly lonely I sometimes was in London, I feel quite amazed. And I didn't count the men friends...