Nostalgia: fond memories

Playing in the woods, or just being in the woods on my own. Children can't do this anymore, it would seem (dodgy men lurking behind every other tree paranoia), but in the 70s we were allowed to go off on our own as long as we were back in time for tea/dinner. They were steep woods, and a favourite thing was hurtingly down on my bicycle, especially down one path which had a hollow in it so one effectively flew over it. There was a clearing with a weeping willow in it, whose branches were so low that one could creep under them and hide there, sitting on the horizontal tree trunk that was near the ground. Climbing trees and watching people going by, knowing that they didn't know you were there, watching them, was also a favourite.
The wood is still there, but it seems like it's been thinned out. A game of hide and seek wouldn't work now. There's liitle undergrowth and the trees have no foliage low down. Ironically the adjoining piece of land which was once home to just brambles and gorse bushes, which would burn down most summers (probably arson) now seems to have grown into a wood. A good thing, but it's not my wood.

Cats killing stuff

Lily caught a bird this morning - a starling I think, half alive, its beak pathetically - bathetically? - soundlessly opening and shutting.

I screamed (definitely pathetically) for, I think, the first time in my life (I used to have nightmares about not being able to scream, so I suppose this was progress) which at least made Lily run away with it. Although not in the right direction. She trotted upstairs, Basil close behind, and I sat holed up in the sitting room not knowing what to do. Or rather knowing what to do, but being too afraid to do it.

Anyway, in the end, I summoned up the nerve to open the sitting room door. Basil had stolen it off her (a pattern developing here – that’s what happened with the last mouse that he found the morning after Lily caught it – he ate it and promptly regurgitated it – obviously not fresh enough - leaving a stain on the otherwise rather nice wooden kitchen floor.) When I finally summoned up the courage to open the sitting room door in order to go upstairs, he was in the kitchen and Lily was sprawled on the floor in the hall. Basil was growling over the plunder he had stolen from his sister. She didn’t seem to care. In fact she looked extremely pleased with herself, stretched out, blood on her chin and neck. The smugness didn’t entirely go after I shouted at her and plonked her in the kitchen with Basil. He was still there – just tinged with a hint of resentfulness.
I didn’t know what to do then. The bird was dead at least, but I really didn’t feel like scooping it up, even though not doing so would potentially mean another stain on the floorboards. So I just shut them in there and tried to calm down.
I know. Cats. Dead things. It comes with the territory, but usually if the things are alive we can save them and this was their first bird (that I know of.) It's their nature, I realize, but I'd rather they didn't bring it (their nature and the bird) into the house.
I did feel somewhat proud bizarrely though, and utterly wrongly for a vegetarian, but mainly shaken.

My first (proper) kiss

My first (proper) kiss
My first kiss
Not the best. Not the worst. Is anyone’s? A bit like the first time one has sex, but I am definitely not going down that road on the narrative side of things.
So the first kiss I ever had. I was 15 and he was 22. Now even at the time, or at least shortly after, I did pause to wonder what kind of sicko would want to have some sort of relationship (? Ok I think he really did) with someone who was a mid-teenager. I don’t think he was a pervert though. Just a bit… well thick. Ok this is cruel, but it’s true. He was much less bright, much less knowledgeable than I was. I don’t say this because he was a train driver (you have to have your wits about you for that job) or because he lived at home (economical) or because of his penchant for nylon-heavy v-necked school uniform-like pullovers (which smelt nicely of fresh washing.) And the Bette Davies film thing might have given him brownie points had I been older.
No it was none of these things. He was evidently, lamentably just not that bright.
And I wasn’t remotely attracted to him, although I did quite fancy his
much, much younger brother who ogled me through the tea that his mum served up the one time I went over. My initial snogging session was the result of a kind of setting up by my sister, who, incidentally, later agreed with me that he was a sloppy kisser. And the whole incident only happened, on my part, as an act of revenge/self proving after a couple of friends buggered off to and allegedly did get off with guys, leaving me in the lurch, in a restaurant on my own for over an hour.
On my birthday. (All is forgiven by the way. It was a long time ago, but relevant to the narrative.)
As a consequence, I was fed up, self-esteem bereft (not that I had any self-esteem anyway) and my sister thought that she would cheer me up by taking me to the number one heavy metal nightclub that mid-1980s Sheffield had to offer - Rebels.
Or was it Revels? Always easy to confuse nightclub name with a chocolate one.
It was a classy place. Pictures of naked page three style bimbos on the walls, broken glass on the floor (not a style statement, just a consequence of drunken clientele, and presumably complacent staff) and lots of girls and guys (sorry lads and lasses) in pre-lycra days skin tight white jeans giving their brains a bashing as they banged their heads up and down to the likes of Meatloaf. It was sad, I knew then, but I suppose I was quite excited, doubtless cigarette in hand and Sally’s borrowed clothes on. I really don’t remember. Anyway ‘it’ (the ‘relationship’) lasted a week. There was only so much Bette Davies… or was it Joan Crawford? and fragrant navy nylon jumper that I could stand. (Actually one afternoon’s worth.) So I got my mother to break us up. She rang him and told him that I was too young for him, only being 15 etc. The next year he sent me a huge ludicrously tacky birthday card and rang me to see if I would go out with him now that I was 16.
I suppose it was sort of sweet, but I am not sure how innocent. I always thought it was the latter as well as the former, because I thought he was a bit dim, especially as I got a card the next year not to mention the big valentine cards with bears and hearts on them in the intermediate time, but perhaps given the turning-16 watershed and the ramifications of that in the eyes of the law, maybe not. I’ll never know.
I suppose that while I am on this train of thought, I might as well mention my best worst, chat up line. Not my chat up line, exactly, I hasten to add – I don’t chat people up - but the best bad one anyone ever tried on me…
I’d gone to a night club on a trip up north to visit my parents. Sunny Sheffield. I don’t do night clubs, and never really have (apart from erm Revels, I mean Rebels.) I mean what’s the point. Unless you really like dancing, there’s only one thing they are for, and that’s not having a nice chat and getting to know people. It’s getting off with people. Which I never did, not that I am sure that I wanted to really, but either way, standing with your arms folded tightly and watching your friends (were they really friends?) doing exactly that was the emotional equivalent of a stiletto heal grinding out the cigarette butt of the last bit of your soul or self-esteem. Wrong metaphor, perhaps. There was no way that guys would be wearing stilletos in Sheffield and I wasn’t into girls.
Anyway this time I was 25, so old enough to get into ‘Grab a Grannie night.” Yep. Passed the 20 mark, so a grannie. There was actually a couple on the dance floor that looked really old. Must have been in their 40s, and god so sad, strutting their stuff (how cruel we are when young), but apart from that no one over 28.
It was a strange evening. I had been dragged there by a friend, who’s friend we met up with promptly offered me poppers. Now I never get offered drugs, apart from pot – and who doesn’t get offered that – and I wasn’t sure what poppers did, so there was no way that I was going to accept any without doing research, and in the virtually pre-internet days that wasn’t going to happen even after the event. So for me, a bizarre start to the evening.
And then this guy came and sat down next to me, sidling up against me, and uttered the immortal words “You smell nice. What shampoo do you use?”
I was literally speechless for a moment.
I don’t remember what shampoo I was using. Why would I, and the inanity of the chat-up line would doubtless have obliterated any memory of my usual morning hair product anyway. But it was probably whatever Mr Sainsbury’s had on special offer at the time, being an impoverished post-grad student.
I think I danced with him, although I can’t be sure. It’s a long time ago.
Needless to say no snogging.

Cant meets Kant

It was a bleak night. Cold, really cold and wet. Not a good night to be out and about in Berlin. But that’s where he was, and to avoid being out and about he went into a bar. He was feeling uncharacteristically morose. Sometimes being a children’s presenter/narrator just sucked all the joy of life out of you. Having to be jolly all the time could be a strain, so he ordered a small glass of beer, slumped on a stool at the bar and sighed.
“You look troubled young man,” he heard a voice say. Brian reeled round. The man who was addressing him was in his 50s but his hair style looked like something from the 18th century.
“No, I’m fine,” Brian said.
“I see we have something in common.”
“Sorry? What?” The other man was looking at the credit card that Brian was fiddling with. “Our names. Cant. Kant. Although my grandfather was Scottish and used the same spelling as your name. Cant. I use the K spelling. Immanuel Kant.” The man held out his hand, and Brian took it.
“I’m er Brian Cant, but you already know that,” he said looking self-consciously at his credit card.
“Glad to meet you Mr Cant. What brings you to Berlin on such a harsh night?”
“Oh I don’t know really. I’ve just always wanted to visit here, although obviously picked the wrong time of year.” Brian smiled ruefully. “I suppose I just wanted to get away from my job for a while, and I had annual leave.”
Immanuel frowned slightly, but didn’t say anything, at first, then
“And what is your job Mr Cant?”
“I work in television.”
“Television? What is that?”
It was Brian’s turn to frown in confusion. “You don’t know what television is?” he asked incredulously.
“No. I have… been away for a long time. Modern technology is a mystery to me, but I would be interested to hear about this television.”
Brian wasn’t really sure what to say. This man must be a nutter, but…
“Well it’s a device that allows you to broadcast moving pictures on a screen to anyone who has a receiving device. And it’s categorically one of the most life changing inventions of the last century. Apart from dishwashers.”
“Is that so? Interesting. I would like to see one of these devices. Does everyone have one?”
“More or less. People find it imperative. The government in England even give out grants for old people to have them. Do as you would be done by and all that I suppose.”
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law,” Kant mused.
“Sorry,” Brian said “You’ve lost me there.”
“Do as you would be done by,” Kant elaborated.
“Sorry, I”
“Never mind, liebchen.”
And so began a new friendship. Immanuel would come round to visit Brian in his rented apartment, and they would spend many an evening watching and discussing the philosophical profundities of Trumpton and Camberwick Green, and very occasionally Chigley, although Brian never let his new friend see Playaway. It was just too embarrassing.

indian call centres have gone impolite

Is that Mr Firth.
No it's Ms Firth.
Mrs Firth?
No Ms Firth.
Ok I am married but I kept my name, but I certainly not going to go into that with Indian Call Center Person.
Erm it wasn't obvious when I said hello that I am not a 'Mr', I think? Do I need to worry?
"Ok Mr Firth, I am calling about an offer from BT."
"I am sorry but I have a really bad migraine at the moment, so I can't really talk."
Dialing tone.
Here's another.
"Hello is that Mrs Weston?"
"No there is no Mrs Weston here."
"Ohhh ok I will give her a call later."
"No there is no Mrs Weston here. No one of that name lives here. So there's no point."
"Oh, ok"
Dialing tone.
I am not 'Mrs Weston' - hence the title of this blog, although I have just had 3 birthday cards from friends/relatives addressed to Mrs Weston. Jokingly I hope.
For the record Mrs Weston is my mother in law.

animeaux en france

I am having a very Normandy morning. It started with a bird in the poele (wood burning stove, scarily our only source of heat here in the winter. We are talking visible exhaled breath in deepest darkest December). That’s about five we’ve had in a week. Or maybe it’s the same one. The Special Ed of local birds that keeps falling down the chimney. Needless to say that poor Tom had to be dragged out of bed to sort it. Sorting it involves Tom’s not patented but-should-be method of opening the door to the outside, then the doors to the poele. If it is the same bird, it can’t be so stupid, as it always flies out.
Next on the animal agenda, 5 very fat/big sheep wandering into the front bit outside our house. At first I feared it was another bird. The sound of their hooves on the gravel, that’s fast becoming ‘lawn’ sounds not dissimilar to the sound of bird fluttering in the stove. But no.
Sheep.
I am not sure what gender they were. I am not familiar with sheep parts. I can tell the gender of a cat at a glance, but sheep, no. However one of them had dangly bits which, if he was male, and had been human, he would have needed the bollocks equivalent of a sports bra. I moved from kitchen to dining room to sejour, watching them, and suddenly they started staring at me, or so I thought, tipping their heads to one side and doing bull impressions with their forelegs. Then I realized that it wasn’t me that they were looking at. One of the tiny feral cats was slinking by. A little black and white one, but they all look pretty much the same. A bit of inbreeding there, I suspect. I rather doubt that Raymond, our farmer neighbour is experimenting with cloning though. But you never know...
They chased it off, and then continued to scoff the stale bread I had chucked out, assuming that it was the birds that were eating it. Maybe that’s why the sheep looked so fat. They were bloated on refined flour glutinous baguette (or ‘French stick, as they insist on calling it in my local bakery in Sydenham. There, a baguette is, apparently, a large round brown affair. I must experiment sometime and ask for a ciabatta… If I am lucky I might get a cottage loaf. But probably not in south east London. More likely a crusty roll)
Anyway.
We had chickens round the back the other day, attended by large chicks. One had somehow got through the chicken wire and was stuck. Tom, now also known as the bird man (and at home, with cat-presents, the mouse man and the frog man as well) heroically saved it, only to be almost savaged by a hen. The very French looking cockerel, white with a scarlet coxcomb and a gitaine hanging out of the corner of his beak, looked on aloof. Certainly, that was his progeny, he being the only cock on the loose, in more than one sense, his chick now being man handled by a well, man, but one of his harem could sort it. Boffe (as they say in France – a bit untranslatable, but mildly negative.) Not that he really cared.
Going back to the sheep with their unexpected food preferences, this could explain why all the herbs we planted 2 months ago have completely disappeared. Although that could have been the chickens.
Three small kittens out the front now. More results of Raymond’s cloning experiments, looking exactly like all the other semi-ferals. They are cute, moving as if wearing nappies, and very very nervous. Tom, of course, wants to feed them. It seems, though, that one of them must have been a cloning experiment gone awry. A mainly black tiny one, that Tom described as a tadpole. I suspect that the cloning machine might have been cuckolded.
Ah now the chickens are back. Well just the cockerel and one of the hens. ‘Sacre bleu’ the cockerel is thinking, his gitaime dropping out of his beak. ‘The bloody sheep have eaten all of the fucking bread. There were about three loaves, albeit unpalatably dry - je suis desole: unpalatblee dry baguettes out there these mourneeing. But now they ‘ave gone. Wee will joost ‘ave to eat ze vegetable slop that they left under ze tree, or ze vegetable peelings…”
We ave, er, have tried in vain to acquire a compost bin, but neither Point Vert (garden centre, sorry if that’s obvious) or Monsieur Le Clerc (hypermarche) have been helpful, so being in the habit of recycling at home, and not having a rubbish collection here (we have to take it to the decheterie/dump/recycling place several kilometres away) left over food and peelings get ‘put under the tree’. I assumed that the slugs ate it, but maybe not…
The other animal that makes a frequent non-appearance, but a lot of noise is the fouine. Stone Martins in English, apparently as big as a cat with a big bushy tail. I hear them at night moving around in the attic. It sounds like they are moving furniture around up there. Perhaps they are. “Ah ma cherie, le canapé (in French = settee not small pre-dinner snacklet) ce n’est pas dans le lieu corrige. Ici est meilleur…!” you get the drift. They make a lot of noise, and when you put the shower on in the main bedroom, it brings out the eau de fouine pee very nicely, thank you.
Ah and flies.
Les mouches.
All over the place.
It’s a fly summer, it would seem, which means that it’s a good one. My uncle-in-law has apparently commented on how they are having sex early this year. Early or not, they certainly are.
Having sex.
On the bread I’ve left out, on the dining table, and a few abortive attempts on me. Oh and swimming in any drink that’s left uncovered for more than a moment, the little hedonists, (then dying) and landing on my head, my legs, my arms, and very likely other places, trying to do bad fly sex things, and biting, and pooing (I assume that’s what it is) all over the place, and generally being very, very, very annoying.
I used to worry a lot about the flies when we first bought this place. The first summer was a fly summer too, but now I am a little less uptight about them. Just annoyed. And I don’t even object to Tom swatting them, I have to say, very successfully. I am actually impressed by his skills in this respect. I could do with ten Toms, Matrix style, killing the damned things off. Or maybe I just need to get a lizard as a pet.
The latest ‘animal’ episode (apart from the feral cats again which Tom is now feeding squirty cream to. Ok I’m doing it too. I know it’s wrong, but we are both in cat withdrawal states. And the squirty cream will have gone off by the time we are next here… Yeah. Whatever.) are the wasps/bees/big waspy things that stung Tom while he was doing his macho thing with the petrol-fuelled hedge trimmer. He thinks that he may have disturbed a nest. I was busy reading while he was trimming, so only vaguely aware that that was what he was doing when I heard the screaming.
I feared the worst. A dangling, bloody hand, a gash in the head, some other severed bit.
Fortunately, it was just stripy insect things whose identity is still not known, but came with stings. He said that one got stuck in him, pathetically trying to extract itself from Tom’s flesh, while Tom tried to keep control of his macho-machine. I am rather imagining all of this, of course, as I was busy on-line at the time, but my one time wasp stinging episode involved just that. I think he was a young one, and wasn’t terribly experienced. At any rate he didn’t seem to be able to extract himself from my leg. Ironically, I had acquired an irrational fear of wasps long before I was stung, and this one got me very shortly after moving into the shared house where I met Tom. I had to pull the thing out of me. I have been far less fearful of them since.
I am rapidly running out of animals here. There are moles of course, but not surprisingly one doesn’t see them. The owls, like the fouines, heard but not seen, our neighbour’s geese that make a racket at dawn that sounds like a machine. (Or maybe it is a machine.)
Baaah is all I can say.
Actually ‘bear’ is a more appropriate sound if not word. For a while I thought that my neighbours were impersonating sheep, but of course being sensible pragmatic farmer types they probably weren’t The sheep were impersonating people impersonating sheep. Obvious explanation.
Back to the flies.
Mission impossible.
Duh duh duh duh duh duh duh…
“Will you stop buzzing that fucking annoying tune, Lieutenant.”
“Sorry sir. But it seems appropriate. I know there are 50 of us but there’s no way we are going to get into the fridge.”
“We are on the ledge, handle thing, whatever you call it. We will get in there and eat the food, poo all over it and lay eggs.”


“Yeah right and how are we going to get the door open, exactly sir?”
As you said there are 50 of us and…
“With all due respect sir,” (said sarcastically of course) “ we are flies.”
“Ok. Maybe a rethink.”
Short silence.
“We could draft in the ants. Those big m-f red ones.”
“Sir, they are not exactly reknowned for being altruistic. They may be big, but they kill the little black ones. The male human tried to save a black one, but the red bastard came right back to get it and dragged it to his queen in the ant hill. And I thought the red shirts were phaser fodder.
“What?”
“Star Trek reference, sir. Sorry for the geeky allusion. But anyway, I doubt they’d help.”
Another pensive pause.
“Ok… What about the chickens?”
“What are you going to ask them to peck the fridge open, assuming they can be bothered to spit out their cigarettes?”
“The sheep? They like human food.”
“Given that about a hundred of us have been swarming on their backs for the last few days, I rather doubt that they’d be helpful, even if we offered them bread.”
“Ok.” Last resort. “The feral cats.”
If the fly could have rolled his eyes or indeed was capable of any facial expression it would have happened.
“Alright, mister smarty-pants-lieutenant, how about this. We swarm on the humans and bite them until they give us what we want. They open the fridge and we no longer have to survive and procreate on their puny left over crumbs.”
“Brilliant, sir. Now that’s what I call a plan.”
At that point the napalm aka fly killer spray filled the room, and they all died horribly, apart from the lieutenant who was swatted by Tom.
Ok I was going to stop there, but I realized that I haven’t mentioned the cows.
Ok the cows are not that interesting. They tend to just stare at you slightly aggressively, and if you stare back they do the thing that bulls are supposed to do, the thing that the sheep seem to do – stroke a forehoof back and forwards on the ground (like they are actually going to be able to hurt you, although having said that, they are pretty hefty, baguette scoffing and all that. But the cows definitely have greater kudos... cowdoss?)
They also moo, which sheep don’t do. And bellow.
They have permission to be in our field when they are in calf, which terrifies me, but so far we have been mercifully cow free in that area. On a camping holiday in Dorset, years ago, Tom derided me for being afraid to traverse a field of cows with calves. With several deaths reported in the news lately I feel vindicated for my temerity and my reluctance at the agreement that was made with our neighbour, but neighbourly things were going down the pan so it seemed worth doing.
Alright I am done for now…
Or maybe not.
There was one survivor. He knew he wasn’t going to last long, but that didn’t matter. Before the flyocide incident he’d managed to couple with his wife. Well, not wife really. Female fly. It could have been male. He didn’t really care – flies aren’t that choosy - but he was pretty sure it had been female, so that meant eggs, and another generation, and let’s face it those slobbish humans weren’t going to clean up anytime soon. Why else would they have had such a fine population of flies in their house?
Plus he and the other fly had ‘done it’ under the bookshelves, so the progeny might just survive, unlike the offspring, or not offspring, of the other stupid twats who had left their eggs in an abandoned glass of wine.
Duh.
His lungs were giving out. Ok he probably didn’t have lungs, but what the hell. Dramatic license and all that. He was dying. He was allowed his OTT moment, even if he didn’t have anyone to share it with.
So did the last fly die, slightly comforted that there might be another generation that would succeed him.

“Ok we are going to get our revenge. Those humans are really going to suffer. Are you with me.” Not really a question.
“Yeah, said the other ten flies. They were a bit confused having only just metamorphosed from maggots into winged things.
We’re not trying to storm the fridge are we?” one newby asked, some race memory kicking in.
“Hell no. We are going for the big time here. The humans. Pain. Revenge for the evil they inflicted on our forefathers.”
“Forefathers?” one slightly more intelligent fly dared to say.
“Yeah fuck we are going to bite them and sting them, and...,”
“We can’t sting... sir” the slightly more intelligent fly said. It resisted the temptation to ask what the ‘and’ was.
“Er... no. But we could draft in the wasps, er stripy stingy things in. They’d be on for it. The male human disturbed their nest.”
The slightly more intelligent one hunched up a little.
“Are you sure about this... sir. I mean we are kind of on the humans’ territory after all. We don’t really have a right to be here at all.”
“They killed our fucking predecessors boy. Revenge is our right.”
The other fly would have shrugged if it could have. But the commander had a point.
“How do you know I’m a boy?” it suddenly blurted out.
“Because you are young and, oh god you’re not female are you? That would explain a lot.”
“No, definitely a boy,” the female fly lied.
“Right, so action time. Next time the human idiots open the door we are out there and liaising with the stripy fellow insects.”
The not-a-girl fly sighed. Life was so shit and it had only being going on for a couple of days. Magotthood had been tough. All those hormones and the whole eekiness of being a white wriggly wormy thing. She had hoped for better when she grew up and transformed, but had instead ended up in captain sheep-shit-is-my-food-of-choice once I get outside of the door and the war’s over.
And pretending to be male.
She actually kind of liked the humans, in spite of what they had done to her parents. At least the wasp plan was crap. They would never help. She hoped.
“Sir, perhaps I could volunteer to do a reckie to see what the humans are up to?” she offered as boldly as she dared, given that she had an alternative agenda and that she was a not-girl.
“God thinking Lieutenant. Buzz around, get as much info as possible and annoy them as much as you can.”
“Right –o… er sir.”
“And try not to get swatted.”
“Yes sir.”
She did actually fly upstairs to see what was going on. All the doors were shut. They had gone, it was clear. So back down to the sejour, where she found a gap under the door big enough to crawl under and escape to freedom. There was a slight pang of guilt that she hadn’t let her fellow flies know about this, but only a slight one.

Sleep

Sleep (or to not).

We’ve not really got on with each other for years. Our relationship all started to go wrong in my early teens. I was pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to take an hour or two to get there, but I rolled with it.

University.

Not much better, although we got on quite well in the afternoons. He would enfold me in his arms for an hour or two when I was revising. But perhaps that was just perversity. After that, our relationship got worse. Often I would be tossing and turning until 3 or 4 in the morning. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough, but trying doesn’t work with sleep. In fact, it makes things much worse if you try. He wants you to succumb (or in my case doesn’t) not to try. I have tried all sorts of techniques – herbal sleeping tablets, various mental exercises, but none work really other than prescription tablets, and I can’t go down that route.

But now the game plan has shifted. Possibly for the better. I can get to sleep, but I wake up early.

Really early.

I am not sure when it shifted. In the spring, I suppose. Last winter, sleep was actually dominating me. Not a kind embrace, but a suffocating, stupefying stranglehold. I was waking at 11am, having a nap in the afternoon, then going back to sleep at 8 or 9pm. The pernicious beast was making me sleep for England. But, as I said, something changed. Maybe it was the lighter mornings and the lack of curtains. Maybe crawling out of the bereavement induced depression a little, but anyway I started to wake earlier.

And earlier.

Waking at 7 am became the norm, then 6am, then 5 am, and now an all time – what low or high? - 4am. It can’t be blamed on the dawn anymore. I have a curtain now I have moved into the back bedroom, and the birds aren’t so noisy out the back. Clearly, I have just developed a bad habit. Developing bad habits is something I am good at. Far too good at.

I have never been able to just sleep when I am tired. I sleep to patterns. (I am rather the same with food.) A rigidity that I hate. I also can’t stand being woken up by alarms. For years, before the 6am habit/addiction developed, I didn’t need an alarm clock. I would set it for 8am, but always woke ten minutes before it went off. I stopped bothering to set it after a while, but there was always Tom’s alarm. His literal alarm clock going off horribly early, but also his natural alarm-for-me system, his coughing, stomping around, talking to himself more than an hour before I actually need to get up was enough. I woke up 10-20 minutes before he did, lying there, tense, knowing that more sleep was an impossibility. Now, of course, the tables are turned. I get up at indecently early times, and probably disturb him. This is not a good thing at all, and I do try to be quiet, but there is some karma about it.

I think my father had a similar problem. He was ill from his early 40s – Crohn’s disease that had him up in the night, and he got into a pattern of getting up at 5am, washing up and feeding the cats. I am not sure when he started doing this – he didn’t retire until his mid 50s, so how he could survive doing this without his post-retirement mid-afternoon nap I don’t know. He didn’t get up like I do, but just laid in bed reading theology, or possibly thrillers, or listening to Radio 3.

But all of this aside, I like watching the dawn happen, like listening to the dawn chorus, but it’s a guilty pleasure, and one I pay for mid-afternoon.

This getting up early business is having a knock on effect on the cats. They now expect to be fed at 5am or whatever. They don’t wake me like they used to do when they were younger, but there’s no peace once I go downstairs if I don’t feed them… well Basil (the male cat), in particular who mews like the eunuch that he is until I rip open a couple of sachets. It’s not what I want to be doing, but mithering is involved if I leave it so it’s not worth waiting. Unfortunately, 5am is the hour of the dead bird (why can’t they eat that instead of pestering me?) which doesn’t add to the whole trying to relax-at-least- as- I’ve-not-had-enough-sleep thing. They will be three years old soon and have only just discovered the art of birding. Personally I definitely prefer the frogs. You can save frogs (although they squeal which is not pleasant) … and mice (and worms) but birds are a different kettle of fish, so to speak. Sharp beaks, the whole fluttering flying and pooing everywhere aspect. Anyway, I have digressed.

Back to alarm clocks. I think the 4am awakening is the ‘nature’ equivalent of waking up before an alarm goes off. The new descent into insomnia hell involves me waking up 10 minutes before dawn, regardless of the fact that I can’t actually see the dawn. Although I suppose I can hear it.

Perhaps I need one of those total immersion tanks, but then I would just wake up panicking about what time it was and not get back to sleep, plus it would be wet. And claustrophobic. And the cats wouldn't like it. Although then at least they probably wouldn’t pester me for food, and Lily-cat wouldn’t jump on my chest with her ‘make herself heavy’ thump.

The best insomniac times have been abroad when I can pretend that the time zone change is to blame. The excuse sort of washed in New York and Tokyo, but Paris… who am I kidding? Anyway all of these involved my being up at in appropriate times, sitting cross legged on the floor of more or less large rooms. (Japan large, New York small, and needless to say, Paris very small.) I was seriously, and as I said unjustifiably out of synch in Paris. I woke up in the early hours. It was hard to know what time it was. The street lights deprived the night of its darkness; a dirty brown twilight ever pervading, confusing birds that sang all night. The windows obscured by ‘black out blinds’ - blinds that are designed now to keep the light out rather than to stop it escaping, but they couldn’t altogether stop the light getting in, their perimeters outlined by a halo of fluorescent glow. I lay there, then moved to the floor waiting for a dawn that it seemed would never come, longing to go out, but afraid to do so in the dark, on my own. I wasn’t sure what I was afraid of. And eventually I convinced myself that I should go, escape the claustrophobia of the tiny Parisien hotel room.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to be invisible, or, at least, to have some power, some immunity, that meant that one did not need to fear others. What it would be like to walk out into night, at any time, anywhere, knowing that, at worst, one could be hurt, that one could not be mortally wounded or killed. Would that work? Would knowing that death was impossible be enough to make one fearless? Would it make life better or worse? Would one seek new ‘edges’ to make life worth while?

Interesting, but not really an option.

I hadn’t eaten for days. I knew it as stupid, but every time I tried, I just found that I couldn’t, and now, at last, I craved food, I craved a buttery croissant, but, ironically, although it was 7am ( I checked the clock in the hotel lobby), nowhere seemed to be open. Typical. So instead, I just wandered around and around, and, eventually, found myself at the gates of the Jardin de Luxembourg. It was still dark.

It would seem that I can never get used to how late it gets light in France in the morning in the winter. This sentiment is one I more assocciate with driving through Normandy at 8am, in winter, amazed that almost everyone must have to go to work in the dark. Although being brought up in the north, setting off for school in the dark in the winter was the norm, so maybe it shouldn't feel strange, but that was (quite) a while back.
But in this instance in Paris... strange white statues, menacing marble women loomed out of the half-light in the Jardin. It always surprises me how pompous Paris can be. Not as bad as Berlin, it seems, maybe not as bad as London, but I am never up in my home town, place of residence at any rate, at this time in the morning, in this state of mind.

I sat down on a metal chair next to a large pond. Dawn was on the cusp of finally happening now, and the seagulls were hopping along the ground comically. I knew that if Tom woke and found me not there he would be angry – angry, not worried – and I also knew that he wouldn’t wake before I got back. I could take coffee in Les Deux Magots, linger over patisserie, and he still wouldn’t be awake when I got back. It was tempting, but I didn’t like to look so far forward. I had got used to these unwarranted, unelicited, jet-lag hours that I had taken to keeping of late. I wanted to savour this.

There were a surprising number of joggers in the park, I noted. I hadn’t thought of the French as a nation particularly partial to participating in this pastime. Although I suppose there must be some way that the women stay so thin and manage to eat so much. Had to be that or the fags. Or maybe a one meal a day regime.

I resented their arrival, having been the first person there, the only person there for some time, apart from the gendarme who had told me off for moving my metal chair from its allotted location to one nearer the pond sothat I could observe the ducks better.

Anyway, that’s the Parisian insomnia escapade.

Tokyo.
Sitting huddled by the window of our 13th floor room. Tom had sensibly gone to bed early, while I sat watching the city fall asleep surprisingly early, ironically regaining my desire to write after a 15 year lull. Ironically, because there wasn’t enough light to see by to do so.

New York, listening to music and again trying to write in a lighting-challenged environment.

These really should be bad memories, but they aren’t.

Perhaps that is part of the problem. I actually rather like being up when I shouldn’t be. I like the solitude, the privacy, even if there is a snoring soundtrack going on in the background.

So possibly no cure for insomnia.

My first (proper) kiss

My first (proper) kiss
My first kiss
Not the best. Not the worst. Is anyone’s? A bit like the first time one has sex, but I am definitely not going down that road on the narrative side of things.
So the first kiss I ever had. I was 15 and he was 22. Now even at the time, or at least shortly after, I did pause to wonder what kind of sicko would want to have some sort of relationship (? Ok I think he really did) with someone who was a mid-teenager. I don’t think he was a pervert though. Just a bit… well thick. Ok this is cruel, but it’s true. He was much less bright, much less knowledgeable than I was. I don’t say this because he was a train driver (you have to have your wits about you for that job) or because he lived at home (economical) or because of his penchant for nylon-heavy v-necked school uniform-like pullovers (which smelt nicely of fresh washing.) And the Bette Davies film thing might have given him brownie points had I been older.
No it was none of these things. He was evidently, lamentably just not that bright.
And I wasn’t remotely attracted to him, although I did quite fancy his
much, much younger brother who ogled me through the tea that his mum served up the one time I went over. My initial snogging session was the result of a kind of setting up by my sister, who, incidentally, later agreed with me that he was a sloppy kisser. And the whole incident only happened, on my part, as an act of revenge/self proving after a couple of friends buggered off to and allegedly did get off with guys, leaving me in the lurch, in a restaurant on my own for over an hour.
On my birthday. (All is forgiven by the way. It was a long time ago, but relevant to the narrative.)
As a consequence, I was fed up, self-esteem bereft (not that I had any self-esteem anyway) and my sister thought that she would cheer me up by taking me to the number one heavy metal nightclub that mid-1980s Sheffield had to offer - Rebels.
Or was it Revels? Always easy to confuse nightclub name with a chocolate one.
It was a classy place. Pictures of naked page three style bimbos on the walls, broken glass on the floor (not a style statement, just a consequence of drunken clientele, and presumably complacent staff) and lots of girls and guys (sorry lads and lasses) in pre-lycra days skin tight white jeans giving their brains a bashing as they banged their heads up and down to the likes of Meatloaf. It was sad, I knew then, but I suppose I was quite excited, doubtless cigarette in hand and Sally’s borrowed clothes on. I really don’t remember. Anyway ‘it’ (the ‘relationship’) lasted a week. There was only so much Bette Davies… or was it Joan Crawford? and fragrant navy nylon jumper that I could stand. (Actually one afternoon’s worth.) So I got my mother to break us up. She rang him and told him that I was too young for him, only being 15 etc. The next year he sent me a huge ludicrously tacky birthday card and rang me to see if I would go out with him now that I was 16.
I suppose it was sort of sweet, but I am not sure how innocent. I always thought it was the latter as well as the former, because I thought he was a bit dim, especially as I got a card the next year not to mention the big valentine cards with bears and hearts on them in the intermediate time, but perhaps given the turning-16 watershed and the ramifications of that in the eyes of the law, maybe not. I’ll never know.
I suppose that while I am on this train of thought, I might as well mention my best worst, chat up line. Not my chat up line, exactly, I hasten to add – I don’t chat people up - but the best bad one anyone ever tried on me…
I’d gone to a night club on a trip up north to visit my parents. Sunny Sheffield. I don’t do night clubs, and never really have (apart from erm Revels, I mean Rebels.) I mean what’s the point. Unless you really like dancing, there’s only one thing they are for, and that’s not having a nice chat and getting to know people. It’s getting off with people. Which I never did, not that I am sure that I wanted to really, but either way, standing with your arms folded tightly and watching your friends (were they really friends?) doing exactly that was the emotional equivalent of a stiletto heal grinding out the cigarette butt of the last bit of your soul or self-esteem. Wrong metaphor, perhaps. There was no way that guys would be wearing stilletos in Sheffield and I wasn’t into girls.
Anyway this time I was 25, so old enough to get into ‘Grab a Grannie night.” Yep. Passed the 20 mark, so a grannie. There were actually a couple on the dance floor that looked really old. Must have been in their 40s, and god so sad, strutting their stuff (how cruel we are when young), but apart from that no one over 28.
It was a strange evening. I had been dragged there by a friend, who’s friend we met up with promptly offered me poppers. Now I never get offered drugs, apart from pot – and who doesn’t get offered that – and I wasn’t sure what poppers did, so there was no way that I was going to accept any without doing research, and in the virtually pre-internet days that wasn’t going to happen even after the event. So for me, a bizarre start to the evening.
And then this guy came and sat down next to me, sidling up against me, and uttered the immortal words “You smell nice. What shampoo do you use?”
I was literally speechless for a moment.
I don’t remember what shampoo I was using. Why would I, and the inanity of the chat-up line would doubtless have obliterated any memory of my usual morning hair product anyway. But it was probably whatever Mr Sainsbury’s had on special offer at the time, being an impoverished post-grad student.
I think I danced with him, although I can’t be sure. It’s a long time ago.
Needless to say no snogging.

Inappropriate behaviour

Inappropriate behaviour
OK I am not exactly innocent when it comes to inappropriate behaviour. Far from it, although I am not prepared to go into details. Well maybe I could admit to licking a plate to relish the last morsels of a truffle cream sauce… swigging juice from its carton (but everyone does that… don’t they?) and there was that time I fell asleep at my own party. I was just going to have a nap, but didn't wake up until the next morning. Good thing I had a flat mate (mostly her friends at the party anyway) to hold the fort. And it ended ok. A 7am walk in Port Meadow, working off the embarrassment, and some arty photos taken of dew-filled spider webs and the like. (Although I am still slightly disturbed and curious about the identity of the person who was caught stroking the ceramic sheep on the outside of my bedroom door whilst I was sleeping.) But anyway. All of this has been in the privacy (well sort of) of my own home.
Not in public.
But some people seem to have no sense of what is appropriate. To some extent my reactions reflect on my own upbringing/obsessions/phobias. I mean hey, what’s intrinsically inappropriate about cutting your nails on the tube. (God, the sound of the clippers still haunts me.) And there’s certainly nothing wrong with putting your make-up on on the train. In fact, these women should be given a medal for having the tenacity to apply eyeliner while the train speeds from Loughborough Junction to Elephant and Castle. (We are talking serious swerving here. I am told that it’s to do with crossing points on the line.)
And the woman on the train who licks her fingers every time she turns a page of her free gutter press newspaper. Nothing wrong with that. (I wonder if you can get ink poisoning. I rather hope so. Then I might not have to witness it again. Very Name of the Rose.)
But as I said this is all small fry.
Compared to the guy I was sitting opposite on the train the other day. He was sipping from a large carton of double Elmlea ‘cream’, cradling it like it was some elicit after-work can of beer- on-public-transport kind of thing. And I thought I was weird.
Someone I mentioned this to suggested that perhaps the carton actually did contain beer. If so, I hope he washed the carton out thoroughly. Cream/beer mix. It doesn’t bear thinking about. But then there are people out there who like Baileys. (Erm I have been known to drink it – but only in private. And that’s not official.)
There’s perhaps a slight blurring on the border between inappropriateness and the slightly strange. Or, as I like to think of it, the surreal. Generally one can only keep a grip on the surreality of things if one refuses to look for an explanation. This is something I have always thought of as appropriate. Ignorance may not be bliss, but it can be amusing. Breast pumps, for example. As soon as my ignorance was relieved, so to speak, an amusing aspect of life was also removed. But there are things in my life which will never be explained, thank goodness. The time, for example, I was in a phone box (poor student, no phone) when the booth was suddenly surrounded by 5 burly firemen, shouting ‘it’s in here.” I assume they weren’t referring to me, but who knows. I didn’t, and don’t want to.
The guy who used to walk down the main drag in Shepherd’s bush wearing black plastic sacks wrapped around his legs, who inexplicably turned up in Oxford several years later. (Maybe it wasn’t the same guy. Just a plastic bag man ‘meme’ sort of thing.) Finding a big big beetle on my curtain after watching a TV production of Metamorphosis.
Ok I am straying into the realms of my list of bizarre experiences now. But only bizarre if you don’t try to understand them or half think that there is a meaning that goes beyond the obvious.

something different - a dream

It was dusk, and the pale sun was sinking below the tree-ragged horizon. But somehow I knew that in the valley ahead, there was another sunset. A fantastic blaze of fiery light which, if only I could run fast enough, I might just see before darkness extinguished everything. And so I ran. I ran across the brown landscape, through the scrub and the leafless silhouetted trees, until I reached the brink of the hill – the lip of the valley. And there it was. As if somehow the sun had been captured here – as if some ancient myth were true, and daylight was held ransom whilst moonlight ruled the world. But this was no ordinary daylight. For as I said, it was fiery – a deep and dangerous orange. But then it changed, and in front of me was an abyss of intense blue, with wisps of white. And without warning – surprising even myself – I stepped off the edge.
I fell gently and I realised that I was not alone. Many others were falling too.

Rent to the ideal/Polish interlude

There was something familiar about the man, but I couldn’t quite work out what it was. It was about ten past six, and I was on my way home from the station after another excruciatingly boring day at work. The man was standing at the junction of York Hill and Knolley’s Road, looking lost, slightly agitated. I knew I shouldn’t have let us make eye contact, but I couldn’t help it, couldn’t ignore him.
“Polskie?” he asked hopefully. He seemed almost tearful.
“No, I’m English, I replied.”
“English. I try to get to friend.” He held out an Oyster card. “Sutton, but no…”
Ok, he wanted money, Fine. I wasn’t going to brush him off, but I wanted this to be over as quickly as possible. I had already begun to dig into my pockets as he tried to explain further in one word sentences.
“I don’t have much money on me,” I said. I couldn’t actually see exactly what I had extracted from my pocket. A couple of quid I imagined. I put it in his outstretched hand. Suddenly, he grasped me pulling me into a firm embrace, weeping onto my shoulder. I tried to pull away, but his grip was strong.
“Er, I think I ought to go now, I said.” I could see people on the street staring, looking concerned, I liked to think. “I need to go. Good luck.” Eventually, he let me go, and I hurried up the rest of the hill smiling, feeling embarrassed. Telling myself that if I had been fooled, then fair enough. Rent to the ideal, as E.M. Forster put it in Howard’s End.

Muscle man

A lean young man, nicely, not overly, tanned, with well developed chest, abdominal and arm muscles – I didn’t know the technical names for them – smiled brightly out of the poster. His expression bordered on manic, a touch over the brink of enthusiastic and happy, but just about clinging onto something that could pass for normal. Apart from his muscle-induced triangular torso, he would have been attractive. But as it was, he’d have to be wearing more than a pair of white boxer shorts to appeal. Which was ironic, as it would seem that it was his body (apparently just the upper half) that was the cause of his almost-crazed expression of sheer joy. Its appearance and the new-found energy that he had, so he claimed, gained in the process of attaining it.
To the left of him, on the poster, was a – his, allegedly – testimony about how some personal training, consumption of protein drinks, and presumably, although put in an understated manner, taking of a ‘food supplement’ – the one he was endorsing in the advert – had changed his life. He’d lost two and a half stone, become fitter and even given up his boring job and started his own business because of the amazing results that this ‘no gimmick, completely healthy’ product had had in so short a time. It didn’t say what this new business was, but he had been an engineer. Wow! Brains as well as beauty. One suspected that he might have gained a new partner out of this too, but none was mentioned. It seemed like an oversight. Surely part of the point of getting a body like this was the thought that one might attract others, potential partners. But I imagined that they were trying to avoid alienating gay men, by giving him a girlfriend, and straight men by giving him boyfriend. The advert was, of course, aimed at men.
He was clutching a large framed photograph of his former sorry self. In the photo, he looked sallow, bordering on grey. He was slightly slouched in posture emanating dissatisfaction if not misery. His hair was non-descript - none of the gel-teased spikes that his new perky self had. He wasn’t thin, but he was by no means fat either. His stomach perhaps a touch puffy, a little too much flesh on the ‘love handle’ area, but really not that bad at all. At worst, he was the man on the verge of becoming a little too fat, and he looked dejected. But thanks to a certain product, he had brought himself back from the brink. I found it bizarre that he had ‘always dreamed of having a six pack’ – but then I am not a man… And almost more so that he owned a large, framed photograph of himself wearing nothing but (presumably) blue boxer shorts.

weak

I’m not very good at asking for things, asserting myself. For example, this morning I bought a cappuccino, just so that I could have the chocolate powder on the top. I don’t really like cappuccinos. I find them too strong, and they make me feel edgy, but it just doesn’t seem to be done to have a latte with chocolate on it. The complete antithesis of a friend of mine, whom I recently took to a trendy bar/restaurant near my work. Before I proceed, I have to say that I admire her for having the guts that I clearly lack. And there is a bit (a lot) of embrodiering here.
But... she must have tasted half the white wine menu before settling on the first one she tried, only to drink it by the glass. Later, she proceeded to order five small dishes, interrogating the impressively patient waitress (especially given that this was London) about the ingredients of each dish, asking for variations – could she have the skate without the cream sauce, and no dressing on the salad that accompanied it, the mozzarella and parma ham salad without the parma ham, the brandy snap basket of ice cream without the brandy snap biscuit. Oh, she really wasn’t holding back. It might have been the copious quantities of wine we had drunk by this point that made her so brazen, but, somehow, I think not. I’d have been sinking through the floor into the toilets below, if I hadn’t had the booze to muffle my embarrassment.
No real rason to be embarrassed.
I am just
weak.
Of course, one does not need to take it to such extremes. There’s a difference between being demanding and asking for what one wants. Something I really ought to learn, given my problem with eating out in France, and indeed elsewhere. I think I’ve only twice ever asked for a dish minus a piece of meat in France, and, on both occasions, the request was met without a hint of reluctance, incredulity, or even surprise. Something that rarely seems to happen to us in the UK. All too often, asking for something that’s not exactly as it is on the menu is met with a ‘we can’t do that’ or simply a blank ‘does not compute’ expression.

Perhaps we need to eat out in more upmarket establishments.

Anyway, in spite of my two positive experiences in France, I am still reluctant to ask for something ‘sans lardons’ (as everything invariably is ‘avec’ in Normandy.) It’s enough effort to get some French out, without asking for something different. Without seeming to be an awkward person.

My being reluctant to asking for changes to an item on a menu also extends to trying to find out if I can eat a particular thing unaltered, when I am in a non-English speaking country. This is more often than not true, even when I have sufficient language skills. My temerity, on occasions, has become too much for Tom, and, he has taken the matter into his own hands and said ‘my wife is a vegetarian. Is there anything she can eat?’ Although this really pisses me off, I can’t blame him. Many’s the time we have wasted an hour or so, trying to find a restaurant where we can eat, my blood sugar levels getting ever lower, my mood ever more foul. In a café Paris, Tom’s question was met with a disdainful snort, and a vague hand gesture towards a green salad on the menu. (If it had been Normandy, it would have had lardons in it, and maybe some andouille too.) On this particular occasion, I was especially angry with him for doing this. Partly, because I felt humiliated by the waiter’s rude, dismissive response, but also because I had really wanted to try the soupe à l’oignon gratinée, or ‘French onion soup’, as the English speaking world calls it. I knew that it wouldn’t be strictly vegetarian, and now that my vegetarianism had been brought to the fore, how could I possibly order it without looking like a hypocrite? Not that the waiter would care. But that wasn’t the point. And I suppose that, if I am truthful, that wasn’t really why I was angry. It was more that I had now had to admit to my hypocrisy to myself. I couldn’t adopt the ‘what I don’t know about doesn’t really matter’ stance.
I ordered the soup in the end anyway. It was dreadful. Greasy broth with a slice of overly toasted bread and a bit of cheese. Had much better in England.
In Tokyo, the outcome of Tom’s statement was equally embarrassing and, in the end, extremely uncomfortable, for very different reasons. Although it did make for an unforgettable meal.
The Tofu Meal.
We’d been finding it difficult to eat Japanese food in Tokyo, partly because it didn’t seem to exist in a vegetarian guise, and partly because I was loath to walk into a restaurant that had no English menu and ask if they had anything vegetarian. This was not entirely because I am a wimp about asking, in these circumstances. I just didn’t relish the thought of maybe having to walk straight out again, having been told that they didn’t have anything. This would feel rude in England, and I was very much aware of how much easier it could be to offend in Japan.
So I told myself.
So, one night, having hovered outside a tofu restaurant near Tokyo station for a while, speculating on whether it would be ok for me, Tom, once again, took the situation into his own hands, doubtless fed up with Japanese pizza and pasta dishes. “My wife is a vegetarian, do you have anything she can eat?” Or words to that effect. Tom’s request certainly seemed to send the entire staff into a fluster, as a waitress rushed off to the kitchen to consult in hurried Japanese with the chef. She soon came back nodding and beckoning us to a table. The meal that followed was to be punctuated by such overheard discussions, as they worried about each course of the meal, clearly taking my food requirements very seriously indeed. In fact, their concern to get it just right was embarrassing. They were clearly going to so much trouble. The antithesis of our Parisien waiter. There was going to be no fish or meat stock in this meal. No clam lurking at the bottom of my bowl of miso soup. The result was a meal that consisted of tofu, salad, vegetables, and broth, in various disguises, none of them too difficult to see through.
To start with, a big tofu salad, accompanied a platter of tofu, of three different textures, with a small side salad, with pretty much the same constituent ingredients as the big one. We were rather full by the time we had got through this, and not at all sure that we even really liked tofu.
Next, cubes of tofu (some of it was blue) cooked in three different ways on skewers, presented in a little 3-tiered wooden crate. By the time we had got through this, it would have been true to say that we were totally tofued out, and feeling relieved to think that that was it. We could just get our bill and get out of there. And not think about tofu again for some time to come.
But, oh, how wrong we were.
The pièce de résistance was yet to come.
Our waitress brought out a clam shell-shaped brass cauldron, with it’s own gas cooker, and placed it in the middle of our table. First, using chopsticks, she delicately placed some vegetables into the boiling stock – Japanese mushrooms, and a few others - I can’t remember what. Then came the tofu. Great big wobbling, flabby slabs of it. I really don’t know how the Japanese can eat so much in one meal full stop, let alone this much tofu. We were almost gagging on the stuff by now. The blobby blue stuff was particularly difficult, and we were running out of condiments to dip it into to make it edible. We were afraid it might be rude not to eat all of it, but in the end had to admit defeat. There came a point where even one tiny mouthful more would have been close to impossible.
Tofu desserts were on offer, but Tom settled for soya bean coffee. I swear the ‘wine’ was made of soya too.
We knew we wouldn’t be eating tofu again for some time to come. Which was a shame, as we knew that tofu was a Buddhist delicacy in Kyoto, where we were heading later in the week
Ok, well maybe this meal wouldn’t have gone any better if Tom hadn’t mentioned my vegetarianism, but at least he might not have had to suffer so much too. And I could have just not eaten the fishy bits.
He did it to me again in Kyoto, but this time the only suffering involved was me being hungry all afternoon, as I was presented with 5 small pieces of vegetable tempura, whilst he feasted on huge quantities of fish.
Perhaps the thing I really hate about Tom asking for vegetarian food for me, is that it takes away my ability to compromise a little.

wartime meanness

I bet they told them that these were just as nice as lollies. The boy isn't buying it.
Nor would I. Raw carrot. The one uncooked vegetable I still can't stand, apart from obvious ones such as aubergine. Although clearly some of the cooks in places I have eaten in in London wouldn't agree with that.

I was walking down the street on my lunch break, walking at my usual unfeasibly fast pace, when I tripped and landed on my knees.
My first thought was, ‘Oh no, not again’. A bowl of petunias moment if ever there was one, for those familiar with the works of Douglas Adams.
I have done this so many times over the last ten years, I am beginning to lose count.
I just lay there for a while, stunned, annoyed. A man hurried over asking if I was alright. I didn’t answer - too shocked. He was joined by a construction worker from the site on the other side of the road, who asked if I had fainted. (I suppose that’s what women do.) Looking concerned, the first man repeatedly asked if I was alright, and after a while it eventually occurred to me that perhaps I ought to answer him.
Yes, I was fine. But how the hell was I going to get up? They offered to help me, the construction worker, surprisingly gallantly, taking off his glove before he held out his hand. It took them a little effort to pull me to my feet, effort, which I couldn’t help thinking, reflected badly on my weight, rather than on their lack of strength.
I hope I thanked them.
I hobbled back to the office humiliated and angry with myself, and, moreover, lunchless. I limped up to the first floor – kind of hard to do when both legs wanted to limp - and announced that I couldn’t believe it, I’d just fallen over on my knees again. I sat down on my chair and began to tremble, and when someone asked if I was alright, I found myself bursting into tears.
More self-humiliation.
Everyone gathered round, and inspected the two large angry red marks on my knees where blood was beginning to seep out. At least nothing seemed to be swelling up too much this time.

One time, I was on my way home, rushing to catch my train, when I tripped over a metal stand outside the shoe mender’s. I went straight down onto the concrete floor of the threshold of the station, nothing to break the fall, and landed hard on both knees. I somehow managed to get to my feet, and slowly, agonizingly, hobbled down the steps to the platform, and got on my train. In the 20 minutes it took to get to my stop, I watched with horrid fascination, as the bump on my left knee grew into something the size of an apricot. My knees had pretty much given up doing what they were supposed to do by then, (bending, mainly) and I realized I was going to have to get a taxi if I was going to get home in the next few hours. When I displayed my injury to the taxi driver (I felt I rather needed to justify a ¼ mile taxi ride) he was gratifyingly horrified, and offered to take me to A&E. I smiled bravely and said I would be alright. I spent the evening wearing bags of frozen vegetables on my knees.

At least that time it wasn’t my fault. Although that’s a moot point. My mother always says it is my fault, because I walk too quickly.

The first time this sort of thing happened, I really had no right to any sympathy, even had it been offered. I was, I have to admit, a little bit the worse for wear. I’d been out helping someone celebrate their 30th birthday. Helping a bit over zealously, perhaps. On the way home, when the bus reached my stop, I’d stepped off it and fallen flat on my face, scraping my upper lip, bashing my nose, and, of course, my right knee cap. My hands had been in my coat pockets at the time, and my reflexes weren’t fast enough to remove them in time to break my fall. I lay on the pavement, motionless, for what seemed like a minutes, but were probably seconds, feeling blood trickling down my face, out of my nose. When I finally managed to get up, there were big spots of it all over the pavement, and all over my coat. In fact, I never got round to taking that coat to the dry cleaners. It was black, so the blood didn’t show up much. But I knew it was there, and it retained those stains, as an admonishing reminder of my foolishness until the day it was finally thrown out.
I couldn’t bear to go to work the next day. I was in some shock, but also excruciatingly embarrassed by the unsightly scab that was developing on my upper lip.
Not to mention the black eye.
This didn’t stop me from gingerly going out to see if the spots of blood were still there though, out in the public domain.
For the next few weeks, I had to live with the scab, as it cracked every time I smiled or opened my mouth too widely to yawn.
Sandwiches made with baguette were out of the question.
The odd thing about these falls is that other, seemingly unrelated, bits seem to get injured too. During the latest incident, I had fallen on both knees hadn’t I? There were the grazes and the small bump on my left knee to prove it. Then how come I had a big blue bruise the shape of Africa, and several scratches on my upper right arm? Even the time I tripped over an irregular paving stone in Tooting, when the few seconds it took to hit the floor (right knee took the brunt again this time) had seemed to stretch out, with horrid clarity, into minutes, - when I seemed to see the minutiae of what was happening as I tottered on the brink between up righting myself and falling flat on my face - even then, I sustained injuries that seemed to bear no relationship to how I landed.

I don’t think of myself as accident prone, but, then when I think about it, maybe I am. I’ve chopped the end of my finger off with secateurs, while pruning lavender. It grew back .The finger tip, I mean. In fact, it grew back big time. I ended up having to have some of this miraculous growth burnt off with silver nitrate sticks before it got out of hand (so to speak). Not something I would like to experience again. Although, God knows what would have happened if they hadn’t done it. Maybe I’d have a famous record-breaking 5ft long finger. I could have made a career appearing on chat shows, touring the country, a modern day freak show.
I also managed to slice through another finger (well, not right through) whilst cleaning a kitchen knife. I still have some loss of feeling from where I must have severed the nerves. Oh, and there was the time I walked into a lamppost and gave myself a black eye. I’d been pointing out some interesting architectural feature on the upper story of a building, and failed see the obvious coming.
Still, I’ve never had stitches… although perhaps I ought to have done.
Perhaps I should slow down a bit.

Still this time, it wasn’t so bad. The pain lessened in about an hour. My legs stopped battling it out for which one got to limp, my left leg winning on account of it having a bump and a graze on it’s knee as opposed to a mere graze.
But do you know what the worst of this latest incident was? Now everyone in my office knows that I sometimes wear pop socks.

Addendum
I just did it again….

iPoddity

Recently, I have become addicted to my iPod. Tom and I have had it for a couple of years – it used to be a ‘joint’ one. For ages, I’d only use it on long train journeys, if I was on my own, or on plane trips, which were long enough for me not to feel obliged to talk to Tom for the full duration. I liked the way it seemed to provide my journey with a soundtrack, as if I were in a film. I suspect that my giving Tom his own iPod for Christmas has been somewhat instrumental in my rapid descent into hardcore addiction. I no longer have all his crap on the – now my – iPod. (The feeling is mutual. The other night he accidentally put my iPod on, and immediately ripped the headphones off himself and dropped the thing on the settee, in much the way I might if I had accidentally – how else – picked up a slug.) But the odd thing is, that was only really an issue when I used what Tom regards as being the abominable, shuffle function. But, since I started to need, first a daily, and then twice, and now a thrice daily fix, I stopped using the shuffle. Instead, I began to fixate on one album, which I would play, over and over, to the exclusion of all else, until I tired of it and moved onto the next one.
I knew I had sunk really low, right down to the depths of iPod addiction hell, when I started playing it in the street. Ok I now realize that this is no big deal. Everyone does it, but at the time it felt weird. At first, I just kept it on after I got off the train on the way to work. Then, I progressed to wearing it on my way home from the station. It took a while for me to reach this particular level, mainly because I was slightly afraid that someone might steal it from me in the area where I lived. I mean, it’s not that bad an area, but there are some dodgy types around. Every now and again, there’s a police poster up asking for witnesses to some mugging, carjacking or assault, and there has been the occasional stabbing, so I was just being careful. It’s alright for Tom to do it, I told myself. He’s 6ft4 and somewhat on the chunky side. He’s not going to be the first target for an iPod-snatcher. I am. In fact, they’d take one look at him, then at me, and mark me out as their next target there and then. They’d watch my movements day after day, and then, one day, when I least expected it, they’d pounce. One minute I’d be blissfully listening to a very loud song from a Black Lab album, and the next, I’d be ripped out of my emotionally charged cocoon of noise, and they’d be making off down the street, triumphantly clutching my scruffy, scratched iPod, leaving the earphones dangling from my ears, the other end ripped out of my bag.
I think it was the poster with the mobile phone at the entrance to the station that made me think like this. The one warning you to be careful using your phone there. The one that suggested that the moment you took it out to ring and tell your loved one that you were at the station, and on your way home, it would be snatched from you hands and whisked away leaving the person you were talking to at best confused, at worst, insulted.
Anyway, in spite of these misgivings, I suddenly decided to take the plunge one day. When I got off the train, I turned my iPod off, and took the headphones out, keeping it hidden away, while in the vicinity of the station. I wasn’t going to throw caution to the wind altogether. But, once I’d walked down the alleyway that led down to the main road and passed under the railway bridge, with a sense of guilty pleasure, I put it back on.
I don’t know why I did this. Maybe it was a bit like my first cigarette.
I’d resisted smoking until I was 16, puritanically refusing all offers and opportunities whenever they arose, vowing that this was Something I Would Never Do. I had a list of 6 or so things That I Would Never Do when I was in my teens. It included Never Visiting A Zoo – did that at 15, although not voluntarily - Never Owning or Wearing a Pair of Trainers – I still don’t - and Not Wearing a Watch – I gave in to that one when I was working in a shop, around the age of 20, and needed to know what the time was, for taking breaks etc. But, since my last one ‘exploded’ under cabin pressure on the way back from a holiday, I’ve been clean for the last 8 years.
Anyway, smoking.
One day my sister, who had been smoking for years, offered me one, and I took it. Just like that. (It didn’t last long, as I accidentally broke it in half, while inexpertly trying to flick ash off the tip. No matter, my sister, ever the one to nourish a potential addiction, gave me another. I don’t smoke by the way.) So perhaps something similar had happened with my iPod. Some voice inside me said, ‘You know you want to, put your iPod on in the street, go on…’ So, I mentally shrugged and said ‘ok’.
This not only demonstrates how low I’ve sunk, but it’s also immensely hypocritical. Many’s the time I’ve had a silent, mental rant about people wearing iPods in the street – how it makes them less aware of their immediate surroundings and therefore more likely to walk into you, or makes them meander from side to side across the pavement, making it impossible to overtake them. Of course, I convinced myself, I wouldn’t be like that. The meandering bit wouldn’t be a problem anyway, because it was rare that anyone was fast enough to overtake me (although I had my suspicions that some music slowed me down a bit.) And I would be extra careful to be aware of what was going on around me.
I’m not sure why I feel so guilty about listening to my iPod. Why is it such a guilty pleasure? Maybe its because it’s such an immense pleasure, listening to music turned up loud, without having to worry about it bothering other people, it just doesn’t seem decent to do it in public. Such intense pleasure should only be enjoyed behind closed doors –a bedroom, or an hotel room, perhaps.
And that’s another thing. I don’t quite believe in earphones. That other people really can’t hear what I am hearing. Well, I know they can’t, but I still find the whole thing odd. I’m paranoid about having my music on so loud that other people will hear that annoying buzz or, worse still, actual tunes. So, at least once on each of the occasions I am listening to it, I have to take the earphones out and hold them a few inches away from my face to check that nothing’s audible. Sometimes, I do it twice. Some people might say that that’s obsessive behaviour, like flicking a light switch on and off, even though you can see whether the light’s on or not. But I just like to think I am being considerate to others. Or, more truthfully, avoiding embarrassing myself.

Recently I’ve taken to trying my iPod out in different types of places. I know it probably looks rude to be walking through Ikea, Tom at my side, with it on. But it’s an experiment, I tell myself, so it’s ok. The experiment is to see if wearing an iPod in Ikea makes the experience any less hideous. At first, I realize, that it does to seem to be achieving this effect, to some extent. It almost drowns out the sound of screaming children, although it can’t stop them hurtling into you, and somehow the music seems, miraculously, to soften the glare of the harsh lighting. Even my obligatory for-an-Ikea-trip slight hangover doesn’t seem so bad.
So, for a while all is well in Ikea with an iPod, apart from the fact that it’s obviously pissing Tom off. But, hey, so what? He’s just jealous he didn’t think to do the same. (Although, how sad would that look? The two of us, side by side, too immersed in technology to interact with one another, to have a relationship, to all outward appearances.) Anyway, I’m all chilled out here. I can live with his irritation. But, as we get closer and closer to the check out, I feel my anxiety levels inexplicably rising slowly, but perceptibly. They have almost reached screaming level, by the time Tom staggers towards me under the weight of the bookshelves he is trying to lift onto a trolley. Ok. I give up. I turn it off and put it away in my bag. I don’t want to be cured of my addiction right now, and Ikea could well provide the sort of aversion therapy that might achieve this.

Actually, I do feel a slight need to curb my addiction when it comes to using my iPod on the train. I know I really ought to be reading. I enjoy reading, of course, if I can find something I like, but at the moment, it’s taken on a new role. I regard it as food for my own, so far, rather unsuccessful attempts at writing. I hope that if I feed them enough, one day they might grow into something beautiful, or at least serious. I try to ration myself. One journey reading, the other, iPod.
However, I’m not very good at this rationing thing. Take last night, for example. Lately, the writing thing has been getting a bit out of hand, as far as I am concerned. I haven’t been doing the other stuff, stuff I ought to be doing, like putting washing away, cooking and, sometimes, eating even. Or anything really. Even watching TV. Since getting back from France at Easter, I have gone from getting home and automatically turning on the TV, to watching nothing all night. Instead, I scuttle up to the attic to write and/or edit. But, last night, I had a simple plan to foil all this.
I would go home, spend 40 minutes making a chilli for dinner, 15 minutes feeding and watering the tomato plants, write until Tom got home, eat and sit with him for a bit. Then write for another hour. Then watch TV for an hour. Oh’ and I wasn’t going to have any wine that night either.
When I got home, I realized we’d run out of onions. I couldn’t be bothered to go down the hill to get any, or more to the point come back up afterwards, and I couldn’t make chilli without one, could I? There was a pizza in the freezer. That would do, wouldn’t it? And did the tomato plants really need watering? It had rained earlier in the day. They could wait another day for some food surely. So, I poured myself a glass of wine and went upstairs and wrote for the next three hours, neglecting to eat anything, and was not entirely sober when Tom finally got home. You’d think there might be flip side of this - that I could use reverse psychology to get me to do the things I know I ought to. But no. If I told myself I could just have baked beans for dinner, or nothing if that’s the way I felt so inclined, that I could write for as long as I wanted and drink a whole bottle of wine, that’s exactly what I’d do. Anyway, I have digressed.
I find the whole concept of personal music devices a very strange thing. The idea that there are hundreds of people all walking round in their own little worlds, each different. You’d think there might be some sort of solidarity between in-the-street mp3 player users. That they might have some secret sign or code that signifies their camaraderie, that they are in a sense all sharing a similar, singular experience. But no. Of course not. Part of the nature of them is that they isolate you. And then, I suppose, most people don’t think of using them as anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps I won’t, given time.
Tom was on the bus coming home from Balham the other week, listening to his swanky new, much better than mine, matt finish iPod, when the elderly man next to him tapped him on his shoulder. Tom politely slipped his earphones off.
“Can you hear anything when you’ve got that on?” he pointed at the iPod.
“Er, no, not really,” Tom replied.
“Well, that’s such a pity. We’re on such a nice bus, and everyone’s in such a good mood, and you can’t have a conversation?”
“Do you think they’re antisocial?” Tom asked politely. I imagine. The man thought for a moment.
“Stops you having conversations,” he answered. “So, yes, yes I do.”
Like Tom was in the habit of having conversations with strangers on buses anyway. It wasn’t his iPod that stopped him doing that.
“Now, here’s a conversation,” the man continued warming to his theme. “Cricket.” He looked at Tom defiantly as if he had thrown down the gauntlet. “What do you think to that?”
Now, Tom is quite a cricket fan, so he was quite capable of conducting a conversation about the ins and outs of it. Tom expressed his opinion on some technical point which means nothing to me. This seemed to take the man by surprise. Clearly he thought that wearing an iPod meant not just that one didn’t have the opportunity to converse, but that one had lost the ability. That it sucked all intelligence and knowledge out of its wearer like some strange alien device in a science fiction programme. Tom one. Stranger nil.
I am now trying to come up with new iPod experiments – new odd and inappropriate circumstances in which I might wear it. Find out whether being engulfed by own personal sound wall will enhance the experience or otherwise. I have contemplated wearing it in the bath. I assume it would be safe. But I’m not one for long baths. I get bored easily and I hate the way the hard London water makes one’s skin wrinkle up so quickly.
Although my addiction means that I am listening to music at every opportunity, you can still tell that I am not an experienced junkie. My earphones are constantly falling out, they seem to get tangled even though I wrap them round the body of the iPod when I’m not using it. I struggle with the controls. I try to wheel it round to the track I want, then when I remove my finger, it inevitably – perversely, in my opinion - continues onto the next one. I’m not quite sure whether to set the thing going, then put the headphones on, or the other way round. I forget to set the control freeze button to orange, and suddenly find myself deafened. (How come it never goes quiet? I bet there’s some abstruse theory about going clockwise being the natural state of things…)
And another thing, when you’re listening to it on the train, where are you supposed to look? I don’t like reading when I’m listening to music. I either like to really listen to it, or to let my thoughts wander. But, in the meantime, where to look? Looking at the headlines on people’s papers is tempting, as long as one doesn’t try to read more than that. Looking to see what books people are reading is another. Of course, my favourite thing is just to look at people, their faces, to note their expressions, watch their mannerisms. Some people might say I stare, but I say I’m just taking in detail, being observant. But there’s a problem with this activity. I don’t know if it’s just me – Tom says it is – but I can’t really seem to manage to keep this up for more than about 30 seconds before the said ‘victim’ looks up and catches my eye. I have to look away, of course, and then there’s a dilemma. Dare I look again and risk second eye-contact? I mean, one eye-contact incident could just be a coincidence. I just happened to glance their way when they looked up. But twice? They’re going to think I’m weird. And do I care about that? Well, yes, I rather do, actually. So, in between furtive glances, I stare at the door frame, the floor, the far end of the carriage, anything inanimate almost, although looking out the window makes my neck ache unless I’m sitting next to it, and, if I have the choice, I rarely am. Perhaps this is why some people have their eyes shut on the train. It’s not because they didn’t get enough sleep the night before, as I’d always assumed.

Talking about really listening to music, as opposed to drifting off into thoughts, I am frequently surprise how very, very wrong I have got some of the lyrics to even songs I think I know well. For example, I could have sworn that there’s a line in David Bowie’s Quicksand that goes “Knowledge comes with tax relief.” Ok a bit odd, but not totally implausible, I think, given them method of lyric writing Bowie used to claim he used – writing sentences on strips of paper then almost randomly putting them together. And then this evening I discover, after 25 years, that what he is actually singing is “Knowledge comes with death’s release.” (Um, I think.) I like to think that’s just the wonders of digitally remastering, but…

The one bad thing I have to say about my iPod is that I no longer have the right to feel smug. I am no longer safe in the knowledge that, whatever other health-threatening habits I have, at least I won’t go deaf from listening to music too loudly.
The one really good thing is that, wearing it in the street, those horribly overly-enthusiastic people with clip boards, who are trying to make you sign up to a direct debit to a charity, no longer attempt to stop me.