Knackered

What a day - out last night - a few glasses of wine, then reading, bed, sleeping badly - awake for an hour or so in the middle of the night.  Woke late, dealt with some Ramsgate Arts issues, emails etc. then rushed over to Weight Watchers, then to the garden centre to buy some thornproof gloves and tools and bramble killer (yes, a non organic solution has to be faced).  Then quick supermarket - back home, made museli, fruit salad, bread, we had lunch, dashed over to Anna's - 2 hours pretty solid gardening - interspersed with tea and chat, back home - cook supper (turkey breasts stuffed with pancetta, mozarella and salvia in a marsala and cream sauce... sorting out Jaime (his parents wish to remove him from our house because he spends all his time on his ipad... so we have to police that - and watch tv with him.).  Just knackered now... and tomorrow Ned and I have more gardening to do at Jane's.  Hope we can hack it.  We all need the money. 

Meat eating and capitalism...Green/socialist views

For a long time I've wondered about green politics - whether the view that socialism is a luxury, the real priority is to sort out the environment - is correct.  I tend as I get older towards a dystopian view of the future - so I lean towards the view that environmental politics are the most important issue.

Of course there shouldn't really be a conflict between them - environmentalism ought to be socialist, about sharing resources.

Having "the rich boys" staying has had an impact on my thinking - together with a post I saw the other day on  Facebook.   What one sees with the boys in microcosm is the fact that if you give people the opportunity to take more than their fair share - they will.  So, for years the West has been helping itself from the communal plate, and leaving less behind for the rest of the family.  This is a result of a capitalist system that has enabled people to take more - and offers no protection to others (I mean people who live outside the wealthy nations).   Now, the cleverer outsiders have taken us on, and will beat us at our own game - we will be left with the scraps - fair enough, it's our turn I suppose.   But the real problem for the environment is capitalism - a system that does not believe in sharing resources - so perhaps capitalism needs to be re-shaped, re-constructed (I cannot believe it can be destroyed, although that might be desirable) and put under democratic control so that the environment can be protected.  

This only leaves the problem of trying to get the genie back into the bottle.  "I can't believe a great huge powerful capitalist system like you once lived under restraint and regulation. How on earth could you do that?"

"Ha!" laughs capitalism, scornfully - "watch and learn miserable mortal!"
And capitalism goes back under regulation and as soon as it gets there we stick down ever more legislation to stop it menacing people and behaving unjustly...   dream on!

Fussy eaters and rich boys

This is a general Arrrrrgh moment - I am a good cook, occasionally I make something less than gorgeous, but not often.  Rafa, our Colombian student, like most Latin American males was rather obsessed with meat - but really appreciated eating with us.  He had almost a week once when he ate out every night - takeaways and fast food with friends.  When he next ate with us he said "I missed Kate's food".

Artem, the Russian student, was very appreciative of food in his first week, but when Johnny arrived and started messing about, eating nothing, dashing off without pudding - Artem followed suit - despite having promisingly told us he liked "all vegetables".  Uzgur really liked the food and ate steadily - including veg. Johnny was apalling... he has, I think, some kind of eating disorder - he could not/did not eat vegetables except potatoes, and never ate puddings.  However, he stole crisps and took the Cheerios up to his room to consume.  I tried to explain about sharing... not a word he had learned.

Jaime, our Spanish student, is not shaping up to be one of the best - he's pleasant, but anxious - didn't eat the rice last night, or the carrots, or the green beans, but had two helpings of the carrot cake... When we have put food out on the table to share - e.g. the chicken for fajitas - he and Johnny snatched disproportionate amounts of the chicken, ignoring the peppers and onions - again, a problem with sharing...

I don't know what it is, when Ned is irritated with them he says "what are the rich boys doing?"  I think a lot of their attitudes are because they are rich - they haven't been brought up to share resources because they are limited, but instead are used to great amounts of meat etc. and no concept that it should be extended with veggies and so on.  The fussiness, the preferences for fast foods over the real thing are just normal teenage fussiness...I suppose they aren't so bad, it's just that because I cook nice, balanced meals with plenty of fresh fruit and veg I am rather disgusted when they don't eat it, and fill themselves up on crap.

Olympics - Spanish perspective?

In a desperate attempt to engage our rather dour Spanish 17-year old student in dinner time conversation, we asked him about the Olympics opening ceremony - we asked him what he thought about the opening ceremony - he commended Mr Bean - the only truly international element?! - but then gave us quite a long description of what was wrong with the Spanish team's uniform, which did not meet with his approval.

Mark asked him what other people in Spain thought about the ceremony - he said on Twitter there had been some remarks - but and generally they seemed underwhelmed - "not good, not bad - just Normal".

Oh dear - well, I think a lot of the jokes were in-jokes for the British - but I think there were some spectacular moments - the forging of the Olympic ring and the way they rose into the sky and so on, the winged cyclists going around the outside of the stadium and the torch lighting were all incredibly beautiful and extraordinary moments - better than "normal" - or maybe there are dim Spanish memories of Barcelona - competitive feelings that won't allow them to admit that ours was spectacular - I've never heard people talk about the opening ceremony at Barcelona...

I Ching

The latest suggestion - Abundance


In a time of Abundance you find that, despite what you have lost, there is a new charge given to you that leaves no place for sorrow or anxiety. It is not the time to hide yourself away and grieve the past. Decide what you will do, take it on, make the practical preparations and march out.

Hmm, it's half appropriate, defining what exactly I have lost is tricky... but I do feel I need to just get on with writing - and everything else will fall into place... I wrote a little more of 17Y today.  I never feel what I write at the weekend is proper... that may just be another feature of the neurotic weekend.  I also seem to spend more time with M - which makes me irritable.

We went for a longish walk today - down through the Harbour along to the end of the Great Wall - to see Emily's Crow picture - which I may insert at a later date... I suppose it will get washed away, that's the idea of these pieces...saw an egret in the shallows at the harbour, haven't seen one there before - it was solitary, with a few dunlin or something small and brown.  Am feeling knackered and stiff... more exploration tomorrow - M has decided we will go to Hastings - perhaps we can go to the Jerwood - or perhaps not.

The other factor at the weekend is that when I want to write in here (our bedroom) I can't because M is always here - chuntering about and interrupting.  Clarity of thought severely undermined.

Olympics - the opening ceremony

It has to be said, that I'm really not very interested in the Olympics - I don't care how many medals we win, I think that a country that gets so over-invested in its sporting prowess and achievements, is heading for a fall.

I watched last night's opening ceremony with great pleasure - at least the first hour - I thought the historical conversion of the UK from agrarian to industrial nation was a bit simplistic (no children, Isambard Kingdom Brunel did not create the industrial revolution) - but spectacular in staging terms... I loved the fact that the top-hatted men looked like the traditional left-wing portrayal of bloated capitalists (and some of the participants were on the stout side).  I loved the fact that the NHS was celebrated - as well as inevitable "groovy" things like British pop music and film - over all, I got the impression we were famous for the Health Service, pop music, the Industrial Revolution, films, music, nannies (a mass flight of Mary Poppinses) and the internet and Mr Bean.  I wished they'd made British literature more explicit - but there were references to Shakespeare, Wind in the Willows, Milton's Pandaemonium, Blake, Ian Fleming, J M Barry, Harry Potter, reading to children, and probably lots of others - after all did I expect that they would parachute Mart, Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan down into the stadium...? Or some better writers like Hilary Mantel even

I noticed a slightly subversive, anti-Tory tinge to the spectacle - when the NHS/Great Ormonde Street Hosp. sector lit up I was hoping it would read "Fuck off Lansley" - the fact that it celebrated popular experiences/culture rather than the Great and the Good (apart from Brunel of course) - the First World War seemed to be the culmination of the Industrial Revolution (Discuss, giving examples from the industries which profited from it).  It did to some extent celebrate British Comedy - I suppose the things we like about ourselves, without being too triumphalist.  No displays of mass lip-curling cynicism...

All this jolly stuff was followed by a 2 hour geography lesson during which the 1 billion viewers probably reached for Google earth several times (where the hell is Palau?).  Finally the magnificent 204-petalled torch was lit - by 7 people simultaneously... it was so beautiful - the flaming flowers than lifted up into the air to create a huge brazier.  The symbolism and the aesthetics were perfectly matched.    After which, the inevitable Paul McCartney - I made my excuses and left.

What was interesting was that there was so much happening during the ceremony there was no time for audience reaction shots - once or twice we got Michelle Obama when the (very multi-racial) US team came on, and assorted ambassadors embracing and so on.  We got a shot of the Queen looking bored and putting her knitting back in her handbag and Prince Phillip dozing over his Sudoku book... Huw Evans the commentator glossed this as "The Queen looking very impressed...." hmm. she's clearly one of our great unsung British acting talents then.

I was interested to see that the GB team was much less multi-racial than it should have been.  I think this is because the sports we excel at are the expensive, public school sort of sports: rowing, horse-related sports, yachting - and more democratic sports like cycling which are expensive to participate in.  Clearly we are not getting improved participation from urban youth.

I got into terrible trouble with Ned for making a racist comment - when Botswana came on, the sole woman in the team was carrying their flag while the men sauntered after her.  I commented that this was fairly tradition in Africa, the women carried the stuff while the men relaxed - actually, they should have been walking ahead of her with sticks to scare off snakes.  Anyway - this was racist apparently.  I thought it was feminist?  I thought it was a sociological/anthropological comment about cultural norms.  I am fascinated that "racism" now covers every single observation about cultural differences in the popular thinking.  Bad luck for university anthropology departments!

So despite much cynicism - and sneering at Seb Coe's speech - I rather enjoyed it all. I may even watch the women's wrestling! (a number of the women flag bearers were wrestlers - it's all research for my talk at the Summer Squall).

Pegwell Bay, Dyce - evolution, humanity etc.

At my suggestion, we went for a walk along the bottom of the cliffs at Pegwell  Bay this evening around 8.00pm - it was an hour or so before low tide, and we walked along the chalk platform, spotting birds, and the large number of shellfish there.  I have never established whether we can eat the mussels there or not, so I haven't.   There were quite a few open empty oystershells here and there, and a number of oystercatchers (who presumably enjoy whelks, mussels, winkles and limpets too, as there weren't many oysters).  I started reciting The Walrus and the Carpenter one of the few poems I know by heart (one of the others is Jabberwocky which tells you all you need to know about my childhood reading) M joined in - his memory of it is less perfect, and we did lose a couple of lines.

After a while, scrunching across the rocks and feeling guilty that I was walking on a mussel nursery, we began to discuss human development.  I was thinking how running with a javelin was (I think) one of the original Olympic games - obviously a very necessary hunter-gatherer skill.  M pointed out that running on 2 legs was one of humanity's major achievements, but that for the first 40,000 years of homo sapiens existence there were very few innovations - why everything hotted up suddenly is one of the great mysteries. I am going to argue in my talk about the Olympics that some of the games probably go back to exercising the necessary skills of hunter gathering, as well as things like wrestling - which were clearly mainly for fun?

As usual we discussed the rock, the layers of flints, the frost cracks, the loess etc.  There is something about Pegwell Bay - the geology is so "in your face" that you can't help consider issues such as evolution, biology, how people have lived.  No wonder Dyce chose it for his picture reflecting on Darwin...  Strange how I've loved that picture all my life, ever since I first saw it in the Tate Gallery, and now I can re-create it, minus crinoline and stout boots (summer trousers and trainers).  If you turn your back to Ramsgate and look out across the landscape at dusk before the lights come on, you can imagine people living there, coming down to take mussels from the rocks, perhaps to climb down the cliffs for the fulmars' eggs...perhaps because the geology isn't that ancient relatively (the loess is really only a few thousand years old - well more, but post glaciation) one does tend to imagine relatively early humans whether hunter-gatherers or agriculturalists, hanging around there - of course the coast would have looked different then.

It was a lovely sunset - with a broad band of filthy smog over the Channel glowing purple, strange greens and turquoise in the sky.  Fabulous.   It was strange, we haven't done anything like that for ages.  Perhaps we'll do Botany Bay tomorrow... I was reflecting on the way home that it had been rather like taking an outing with an old friend, intermittent talk, not much laughter though - and plenty of time for silent contemplation.  Perhaps this is it - the companionate marriage.  The best a man can get?  He always tells me what a great companion I am for him (not in those exact words, but that's what he means).  But is it the best thing for me? There was a certain happiness from being out under the sky, and looking at things, but it wasn't really a shared happiness somehow.  Perhaps it's my fault, I've forgotten to share stuff with him, or given up bothering.  Oh bugger.

Where am I now?

Living with a sense of expectation that something is about to happen is inevitably a bit disappointing.  I think the last few weeks have - or ought to have - indicated how very unreliable astrology is.  Usually when a particular date is highlighted, something, inevitably something very small, that could link with the themes suggested happens.  But I can't see that anything significant has happened to me throughout May and June, eclipses, etc. etc.  Perhaps an astrologer would say "well, they were all blighted by Saturn" so nothing happened.  But I say, why should Saturn be a blighter - maybe just a delayer - maybe all these fab things will happen in September.... or maybe I should, like those mad pre-War German astrologers invent my own astrology - based on contacts to the Ascendant and midheaven, and significant Uranus transits (except that wouldn't really work - I've got a Uranus-Venus transit at present which ought to be doing something).  So, perhaps it's time I stopped looked at astrology.

Basically, I am keeping on keeping on, writing, doing stuff, living my domestic life, with bursts of unpaid writing for the Arts Festival,.carrying a torch for someone, a torch which is unlikely ever to be lit I suspect, dieting, reading, writing, seeing friends, enjoying the garden.   This is what I've been doing - the last significant new moon for me was in January - when I heard about TRF - since then nada!  I have a "feeling" about September as a time when things may shift - but that's only a "feeling".

I am going to a vast Jay family party in September - but I think even if I lived off celery and swum 50 lengths every day between now and then, I still wouldn't be able to wear my beloved silk dress, so I will have to think of a more creative outfit - still, I have plenty of clothes... that's not a problem - yesterday I wore A-M's swimming cossie to the beach (I first wore it there in May) and found there was something wrong with it.  Yes, readers, it was too big for me!  Hurray - it has now gone in the clothes recycling bin, I can wear my other cossie.   Anyway, a Jay family party isn't really going to do much for me - last time I met Kevin Maxwell and Henry Porter (which was interesting for me) - but sod's law I will just be stuck in the midst of a great Helpsian love-fest... how sad.  Oh well, Minna and Garry will be there so that'll be nice.


So - WHERE am I now?   Just in media res I guess.  Happy in a funny way, as long as my expectation don't get out of control, and not expecting much to happen in August, just best to go into holiday mode and not worry about work etc.

Bad dream

I dreamed last night a dream that is a variant on the Jungian house dream.   In this dream I was visiting a family where the father has cancer and is just about to embark on a new course of treatment.  They were running a conference in their home - which I have never visited.  It was a Georgian/Recency house in the country - but very tumbledown - everywhere the walls had been distempered and there was dust of plaster lying about.  It was in need of a lot of work, but they were all fairly cheerful - although preoccupied with the conference.  There was a family who lived nearby, red-faced squire types with dogs - they were talking to me about everything.  I went back to the house, and they told me how they had bought part of the house next door and were delighted with it.  They opened a door in the kitchen, and showed me a huge room in even worse condition - gaping holes in the wall without window frames, stubs of rubble where walls/partitions had been.  It was dreadful, but full of potential... .

On the matter of interpretation - perhaps this is about my feelings for them, that things are getting worse, even though they are keeping faith and seeing things positively.  It definitely isn't my house in the dream - so this isn't about me.  I suppose it is about my belief that things will get worse for them - and perhaps I feel/"know" that their positive attitude is masking a very terrible situation.

Good weekend

Yes, really.  Went to traditional village show and carnival on Saturday in Minster.  There is something about the smell of the show tents - grass, flower scent, damp, vegetables and piles of cake.  It's so evocative - of every flower show or country fair I've ever been to.

There was fancy dress, "olympic games", punch and judy and impossible, disgusting food... if you don't eat sausages, you're stuffed.  I got extremely hungry and by the time we had left the pub was closed.... then we went to see if the Quex restaurant was open - it said it was open until 4 but they only offered the grim cafe menu.  A crumpled laminated thing, which contained the usual dullish selection of potatoes and sandwiches.  So we left, I had got to the hungry state where I only wanted to eat something REALLY NICE!

We drifted down to Westgate, found a nice, stylish cafe - had some overcooked calamari and sweet potato chips with sour cream.  These were delicious, if I'd known I would have forgotten about the calmari - we left, intending to go to the deli, only to find it was closed.  Ah the joys of Middle England - late night opening (i.e. after 4.00pm...) meh!

Sunday we were planning to have our usual solitary trip to the beach, but delightfully Ned and Finn came too.  We swum - it wasn't too cold,  but the band of flints just where the water deepened was a deterrent.  I only swum once, the breeze got up in the afternoon, although it was beautifully sunny and my face got tanned.

The boys were good and jolly - Finn left early of course, Ned went to meet Gina as the Carnival was coming.  They had money for ice creams and went to Pelosi's.  M and I left the beach in time to see the extensive Carnival procession...

It is extraordinary how being on the beach makes one feel so happy.  We lay on the ridge of sand just above the high tide mark - lying down one stares out across a short distance of sand and then the sea - nice little waves, wish we'd taken the body boards.  There were a few tall ships out - the ferry leaving, a dredging clearing the harbour and presumably just dumping the sand, and yachts hurrying to get into the harbour before the lock closes.  And of course, loads of seagulls. And people, but plenty of space between us and them.  Large numbers of foreign students, kids playing football, and people sitting behind windbreaks in rows of low-slung chairs.  But it is just the being close to nature (although there's rather less "nature" around at this time of year, Mark said that he felt the sight of the sky reflected in the sea was a consoling sight because you knew it would go on for ever and be seen by people in the future.  I have found this thought encouraging in the past, but confess that now feel a bit gloomy - they sky and sea contain hidden poisons, and the sea is not too well.


 Reading was a bit sporadic, since there were endless interruptions.  We took foccacia and white wine and olives - the boys ate foccacia too - and shared the packed lunch Jaime had left behind this morning.  It was all deeply satisfying.  This weekend has been one of those weekends when everything falls into place (well, parking spaces, etc.  So much for retrograde Mercury!).


Later we tried to talk to Ned and Finn about the planetary future - none of my "your planet needs you!" talk will deter Ned from believing he is going to be a writer/artist/musician...  I don't really want it to, but I wish they were both intensely committed to environmental engineering.  But what can I expect - their parents are effectively drones - archaeology and writing are hardly essential tasks in today's society.   But no worse than, er, banking? Marketing? really, I shouldn't fret.  Ned said that the future isn't going to be grim as I was painting it - and that I was beginning to think my dystopia was real.   Interesting, I suppose Islanders is now beginning to absorb me as much as The Romantic Feminist - but in different ways. 

Book of the Month

 I am reading Lisa Appignanesi's All About Love - a book I should have read a long time ago.  It talks about the imprinting of early relationships on one's life (so it's not just me then...!) but it also assumes that early relationships are a product of rebellion, carried on in the face of parental prohibition - well hardly!  Parental indifference more likely.  My mother barely seemed aware of my teenage relationship when I asked her what she thought about it years later.

The Appignanesi book is good - although perhaps not quite as enlightening as I might have expected.  It's an odd mix of historical survey of attitudes coupled with psychoanalytic views,  this therefore contains a lot of material I have thought about, or was aware of, combined with some new stuff that I wasn't aware of, so in that sense it isn't blowing my mind intellectually and changing my whole outlook, rather complementing and perhaps occasionally correcting some of my knowledge and opinions on the matter.  Nevertheless it's a pleasure to see this material gathered together.

I notice she dismisses evolutionary biology quite early on - so we are getting a cultural history of love, rather than All About Love.  Much as I loathe the conclusions of ev. biol, I don't think they can be entirely dismissed, although I do believe that the requirements of complex human societies enable vast numbers of us to transcend the simplistic level of relationship that evolutionary biology sometimes seems to propose.  We are not hunter-gatherers any more!

I think there is a scientific element to love - or at least sexual attraction, which isn't dealt with.  So it doesn't carry quite as much new interesting info. as say, Jared Diamond's books.  

I just don't know what to do with myself....

One of my favourite Dusty Springfield songs, which seems totally appropriate for today.  I emailed the "final" pdf. to the Agent this morning (and then amused myself by putting some extracts from it up on the Only Writing blog) and fiddled about a bit, and thought I should go shopping, but it rained.  So I'm loitering without intent and feeling a tiny bit melancholy and aimless.  This too will pass.

Sometimes one person, sometimes another

I spent the evening with chums from RA - I had a really good time, lots of laughing, flow of reason and so  on... big jabs at the Catholic church from Col - only 4 lapsed Catholics there, including him - discussion of Tour de France, Tracey Emin - again! 50 Shades of Grey - again!  The festival, being 30, 30th birthdays, youthful experiences, Kent Miners, working in schools, production of The Tuggses of Ramsgate (briefly), how to get volunteers, "Who is that man?" (nobody knew his name - but Des knew something about him) Whether between us "we" know "everybody" in Ramsgate yet?  (I think we're still on 6 Degrees of Separation for some of them), how difficult it was to write sex in novels and get it right (no one else ran with this one - I was trying to make a case for writing about sex, without writing a wank book), Shelley's car crash into Anette's front wall, hot flushes..And lots of conversations I didn't hear - 8 of us made enough noise... the failure of marketing on the Boat project,

Then I lost the horrible, harassed person I am at home for a while - a holiday from the quotidian - such bliss! Really, I must get out more.  Although I often find myself preferring one to one chats being in a big group was fun - more frivolous, less intense...  It was a contrast to say, equally enjoyable Saturday night - a 2-couple dinner party - fun, more intimate in lots of ways.  Less gossipy, more sustained topics, more depth perhaps.

Actually I am going out tomorrow to meet some of the same people - the Pugin play sharing session - I expect there'll be other people too. Then I'm going to have a drink (or two) with Anna.  And on Wednesday I believe we're seeing Alexander.... M is going to London on Tuesday to a much more hi-falutin thing - the preview of the Shakespeare exhibition at the British Museum - he thinks it might be good networking - but as he will be accompanied by his mother, who will want to meet all the most "glamorous" people in the room, he may not have a chance to do this freely.  I will be interested to hear how the dynamics work.

That's what it's all about really - the dynamics of different groups... how we fit together, what we can say to one person or group that we can't say to another.  I suppose we belong to such different groups that sometimes I do feel like a slightly different person.   I would occasionally like to discuss politics and the economy - and this seldom happens... one can feel out of the loop... But the Kate out - the "party mode" Kate is a very different animal from the domestic version.   I am not really a "party animal" I can get very tired of socialising - but at the moment I seem to be well balanced - plenty of my own company/writing etc. during the day - a bit of socialising at night.    I also wonder whether the fact I did not write today made me a more cheerful companion this evening?

To be discussed later...

Is it true?
Can you absolutely know it’s true?
How do you react when you think that thought?
Who would you be without that thought?

And if you do this sort of self questioning - Does it work?

Father Ted's theology

"That's the thing about Catholicism - it's so vague and and nobody really knows what it's really about"
is such a funny phrase, the complete antithesis of the church...

"You know - the difference between Right and Wrong - Page 1 of How to be a Catholic".

Everything and nothing

A lot happens, but nothing really interesting.  There has been fun, and exhaustion, and drinking... and eating forbiddenish foods.  But a bit dead around the edges.  I have been consciously choosing to live in a fantasy world for a few days and to indulge myself mentally if not in other ways... as a result the quotidian seems a little dull, empty, underpopulated.  And I find myself thinking "Now what:?" - However, a curious upside of this is that it is making me more aware of the affection potential in my husband... we even had what he jokingly calls "an affection episode" - only slightly marred by the fact that he hit his head on the peg bucket while attempting to kiss me - still, it made a change.

Sometimes I just write for the sake of doing it, and I apologise for the poor, uninteresting quality of this stuff.

Foreign students...

Funny that the person I think of as a whinging whiney boy, is seen as a sort of cool, sex god by some teenage girls.  I realised the other night that this language school is the great dating agency for them all.  I suppose going on the Cheltenham Green course when I was 17 allowed similar light and enhancement to my emotional pool - meet new people, sleep with them!  (I got 2 boy friends (with a year's gap) out of the experience, it probably could have been more if I'd - oh, never mind).

Some teenager are frankly gorgeous - some are just not.

Annie Hall

Mark, Ned and I just watched Annie Hall - it is years since I saw it - who did I see it with?  Tim perhaps - probably.  It is stuffed with good lines, some of the old favourites - like Shakespeare you didn't realise Woody Allen was the progenitor (or populariser) of certain jokes, lines, quasi-proverbial sayings.

The one at the end that got us was when he says "You know - sharks have to keep moving forward or else they die - and it's the same with relationships, if you don't move forward you end up with a dead shark!" [I paraphrase] - Mark and I immediately recognised that we had a bit of a dead shark and laughed about it.  Good that we can laugh about it I suppose, maybe it's not dead yet.  

Equilibrium restored

Nothing like a day of writing to improve one's mood.  I continued to "update" my text - added quite a lot, improved scenes.   I feel that now I've lost interest in the LO (fingers crossed), I can go to things I didn't want to 3 or 4 months ago.   You know, I haven't really lost interest in the LO.  I've just somehow succeeded in putting him back in his mental box, so he's not bothering me most of the time.  Seeing him in the flesh would be the test, and I don't think I'd pass it somehow.   Convincing myself he is not/was not interested is another matter, but trying to fight those thoughts has proved impossible - giving up the fight is the only way to deal with them.

I shall write about the writing in the other blog.  

Gems from the playlist

This has been a bumper morning for the playlist.  I use it to facilitate writing, and this morning the phrases have been jumping out at me.

Setting the scene was the Johnny Cash song about divorce, "Going to Jackson" - then Tracks of my Tears - "although she may be cute, she's just a substitute"  - Cream's White Room "at the party, she was kindness in the hard crowd".  Bob Dylan's Tangled up in Blue "wondering if her hair was still red" "she said we meet again some day, in the avenue"... Pet Shop Boys Love Comes Quickly  
"Live your life learning
And working alone
Say this is all you want
But I don't believe that it's true
'Cause when you least expect it
Waiting round the corner for you,
Love comes quickly, whatever you do, you can't stop falling..."

And Brigitte Bardot's melancholy La Mandrague and now it's BD's Simple Twist of Fate.   

The unfortunate thing is, I need to update and re-write bits of TRF now - because they have added thoughts to my mind.

Postscript.  I cannot hear Jimmi Hendrix's The Wind Cries Mary without giggling a little now.

A Neurotic Weekend provokes Marital Reflections

Well, it was a doozy really [what is a doozy exactly? Perhaps it's the wrong word [no, it means unique/one-off - so it's fine]] - I couldn't write about it at the time, I felt in a daze, unconscious almost.   M went away to Belgium with the choir from Friday morning to Sunday night and I simply managed the household without him.   At the same time I read The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler.  I found this book incredibly painful - it seemed to horribly like my marriage with Mark.  Although neither of the characters was that like us - the wife was rather over-emotional and seemed to take too many things personally, and the husband was a bit unimaginative and didn't really know her... or at least that was how I took it.  Eventually they divorced, but at the end you realise that they did love each other - and that while the marriage in a sense was wrong because they had the wrong personalities for each other, still love was possible.

So, this combined with actually missing Mark - well missing his support to be honest, I felt rather depressed - even moved to tears occasionally (Citalopram withdrawal - I stopped taking it about 5 days ago).  It was a weird time, I had a lot to do - housework, cooking, washing - but I also felt weird - that I ought to have a chance to enjoy myself while M was away.  In the event Anna cancelled our evening together which was very annoying, and I couldn't really do anything else at that late time - because of the rottid students... I had to feed them and once we'd done that, it was too late to go over to Marine Studios - so I suggested to the boys that we went out for a drink together.  We went to the Bellvue and enjoyed the sea and the sky and the beginnings of the sunset on the terrace.  I gave Ned a tenner to buy the drinks which he can do now... and it was all fine.  Drinks (a large white wine, a pint of bitter and a large coke) came to £9.,95 - so good job no one wanted crisps.

On Saturday had a lie-in - read in bed - luxury!  Got up - Ned did some cleaning, I did cooking for Amnesty Garden Party... brownies, puff pastry slices with courgette and goat cheese, ham and cheese wheels, marmite wheels.   Went to Muriel's, chatted to some people, admired the garden, and bought some books then came home.  Enjoyed lying in the garden, late lunch with the cat (who wanted the chicken in my sandwich) and reading.  Then supper - Gina here, students "not hungry".  Johny, the whingey Slovakian seems to live off banana - anorexic? or something odd definitely...

Then had another literary crisis.   I bought an excellent book about sexual moraes and feminism in the period 1885-1914 - the era when David, the hero of Conscience was growing up. Just what I needed to understand the ethos/language of that time. I suddenly started to think "should I be concentrating on this now?"  I am in a quandry - wondering whether Islanders and  17 Years were just deviations.... arrrgh.

But the central issue of the weekend, was as ever, my marriage.  I wondered in M's absence whether I could live without him.   The answer is, not in this house.  I love it, but it is too large for me to cope with and even with the boys' help this weekend things were far from smooth.  I began to think more fondly of Mark and since he has recently made a comment suggesting his regret for the great "it's all your fault" issue 3+ years ago, however he then followed it up with a joke about salamis - and I felt despair again.  Why do men make adolescent jokes about sex - don't they realise that women don't find them endearing or particularly sexy... I might find it endearing it - if I was still in love with him, but I'm not.  I suppose he is puzzled and confused and I ought to talk to him more about it.   Why don't I?

I think if I did things might get better between us - but there's a part of me that doesn't want it to.  That's really terrible, I want us - ultimately - to separate.  This weekend was a trial... and it didn't work, because I felt I wanted him back... and that I would have a go at talking to him, and seeing if we could restore some of the affection in our relationship.

So having felt I wanted to try and get the relationship back, I went to collect him on Sunday.  I watched the elderly husbands of the choir greet their wives with little kisses - and Mark waved enthusiastically at me... he then got into the car and launched into a discussion of the medieval architecture of Chimay church.   He discussed the trip enthusiastically for 20 minutes until we got home.  I didn't get a kiss, or a how are you?  How did the weekend go?   I was happy for him to have had a good time, and to feel stimulated etc. I didn't resent the feeling that I was a "prisoner of Thanet" at all...but an acknowledgement of me - my existence, presence, efforts, would have been nice.

Citalopram is the great drug for emotional ostriches - last week I could have written that sentence without welling up, this week, off the drug, I can't.

So what is the truth about our marriage?  It's a collegiate affair: we are engaged in upbringing and home maintenance.  Our house is our workplace, we continue to socialise after work - but we aren't having much fun.  Maybe I am too gloomy and saturnine sometimes, and I do like my own company - but this is exacerbated by M's own tendencies this way.  I need someone for the other side of me - the more jovial/mercurial bit... my humour tends to be sanguine rather than melancholic... I am resilient, this will continue for years.

It boils down, as usual, to this: would I rather be married to someone I feel so different from, just for the company?  Or would I rather strike out on my own into uncertainty, as I did when I was 31...?  But when I was 31 I had an inner belief that I would get married and have children.  I'm not sure I have any such inner belief now - I mean I don't have a sense of a better. more appropriate relationship.   I have a fantasy about it, but I wouldn't say I have any certainty about the LO seeing the error of his ways.  I have no inner sense that if M and I separated that things would improve for me.   I see us progressing into increasingly grumpy middle age and beyond...actually I don't.  What I see now is me going to parties, talking to interesting people, giving talks and readings and getting about.  So, there is an alternative - M not going, but fading - becoming less central perhaps. This is an image that sustains me, just as the getting married and having children, sustained me when I was younger.  It will be all right.  I think my underlying thought is that things will change, have to change, but that the kairos hasn't come yet.  There will be a moment though, when everything slips into place with a click... and then the new cycle will begin.  And what about M?  I think, somehow, he'll be all right too.

Meanwhile I know the Citalopram is fading - I'm listening to my laptop playlist and tears pricking my eyes, and realising that too many of these songs remind me of emotions I haven't allowed myself to have for a while.

Language students

We often host language students in the summer - when money is tight.  At present we have two, a Russian boy Artem - and a Slovakian boy, Johny (not his real name!).  Artem was here on his own for a week, and was very charming, but since Johny has come, he is ruder and less agreeable.  Johny is more ingratiating, but a whinger.  He had an appendectomy 3 weeks ago - and complains he cannot eat - I don't think this is true - I think he is fussy about food.  He can eat crisps etc. when he wants.  J and A have what N&F call a "bromance" I think Artem is behaving worse to impress J.  He has just left one of his friends out in the rain for 25 minutes.  I told him not to make his friends wait outside. I asked the boy if he would like to come in, but he said no.  A may be a popular character, but no excuse to treat friends badly... I went and told him to hurry up - that he shouldn't leave his friends outside in the rain.  Why would you do that?  It seemed like a sort of controlling/bullying thing to do.

I know appreciate what an exemplary student Rafa was - and yet he made so little impact on us - or perhaps that was why I found him exemplary.  

Another blog?

I've had a few busy days.   Several things have occurred, one, that I don't want to write about my diet here - so I may start another blog for that.  There are lots of things to be said, but I am not really in blogging mood, and today I haven't been writing either.  I have been tired and sleepy.    Another strange thing is that I haven't been thinking about the LO at all... has it finally gone?  If so, Hurray!  There is finally little pleasure in unrequited love - if it was requited it might be another issue...

It is a full moon today - in the true Jam Tomorrow spirit of Susan Miller's astrological predictions, this isn't the Full Moon for me - that will be next month apparently, so I can just keep on keeping on while awaiting for the burst of glory that will finally arise... as you can see, the Agent has still not got back to me.  But I barely think about that either - except when the phone rings.