Still Water

Note to self:

You know how you meet someone on the bus that you haven’t seen in aeons? There are awkward smiles, hugish movements, and then the inevitable question: “So, what’s new?”

To which acceptable answers are:

“It’s great, I just finished my novel”
“It’s great, I got married and populated the earth”
“It’s great, I got a promotion and now have people at my beck and call”

Or possibly:

“Can’t you see it’s great? I lost 20 pounds”

However. If your sexiest possible answer is:

“It’s great. My boss decided this winter we’re to have insulation in the office roof. We’re all really excited”

Then maybe you should reconsider going out in public at all.

On this note: yay, I’m back.

Jingle Hell

Well, it is upon us, no use hiding. Buffet ads obscuring all news in papers, giant trees of no forest grown littering the cityscape, financial strain, guilt and gilt abundant: the obstacle course that is the run up to hex-mash is here.

 

Actually, I do not much mind the celebrations themselves. Last year, I spent on a mountaintop in Provence, listening to the howling winds and keeping an oyster’s only diet. A few years before that, we went to India and swam in the turquoise surf on Christmas morning and had garlicky buttery salty deep sea fish for supper. And throwing memory back, way back – there is an endless line of divine smells, crackling fires and snowy walks to wax nostalgic on.

 

Unfortunately though, before we can reach that Shangri-la of Hollywood Ju-bi-la-te, my family is in grave danger of having drowned my will to live in vats of folly. If Christmas is a time for peace and joy – the planning of it takes aeons of grief, guts, and disinheritance.

 

Every year brings a fresh tug-o-war between siblings, mothers, mother’s siblings, mother’s sibling’s mothers, fathers, fathers in laws, and the cat. I suppose it is only natural that a celebration involving most of the civilized world will be a bit of a hassle to party plan. But I also figure that much of the trauma of planning that half-week of brotherly loving is caused by the simultaneousness of it all.

 

When you are supposed to down mince and nog, fit into sequin number, find book for granny, mend heirloom decorations uncleverly stored since last year AND clean-deck-and-dance-through the halls all in the same month; of course your stress levels will be dangerous. Adding the “who’ll brown the cabbage and who’ll bring the eel and who’ll host twenty people full of stout” discourse is just taking it one bridge too far.

 

So I thought, that if you could just get the general outlines of the thing settled well beforehand, you’d be in the clear. If you could have an agreement on some basics, such as locations, and dates, a lot of unnecessary slaying of baby infants could be avoided. Or I mean, a lot of endless discussions over who-spent-what-time-with-whom-last-time-and-where-and-for-what-reason-and-also-the-doll-you-got-when-I-was-five-was-much-nicer-than-the-one-I-got-at-three could be avoided.

 

Alas, over gin and tonics (plural) in the deepening soft warmth of a late summer night, I brought up the subject of where to spend Christmas. In the balmy calm, settling dates and places went smooth as hell. Everyone was brought to agreement with a minimum of fuss. Listening to the merry clinking of ice, and looking up at the Rudolphesque red moon, I felt smug. Look what a bit of planning will do for family fun. I mean, if someone just takes an exec-decs well before Dec, no one has to fight, sulk, or scream about Christmas. On my recliner, in my cotton print dress, I poured myself another finger and figured myself for quite the modern day Ghandi. (Or did he not do family vacations?)

 

Well, like Ghandi, I was soon to learn that pride goes before fall. My easy street was really a slippery slope.  And now I am in a bit of a muddy heap at the bottom.

 

Over the weekend, the effects of that stiff August drink finally wore off. Due to some minor tiff (I suppose someone had suddenly remembered some x-mas card long left unanswered, or some herring wrongly salted) all arrangements were rudely uprooted. Instead of a calm Sunday brunch, followed by a slow walk and nap and possibly some snogging with the Better Man, I was faced with a family in free-fall as aunts and sisters and mothers galore took up arms and sides and generally wreaked havoc on the calm instilled by that good Chief of Peace-Keeping Ops, Mr Beefeater.

 

Come late Sunday night, all bets were off, and only one thing certain: that the whole planning process had to commence all over again, and preferably with lots of shouting and cancelling of tickets, too.

 

At which point I realised that some things are not worth fighting for. Such as peace and harmony in November, along with snow in Africa this Christmas time.

The Slipper of Truth

It was weird looking in the mirror this morning, darkening lashes and plugging pearls in. I spent last night at my Fathers flat, with my brother and mum, watching old videos from -87. And the face that flicked in and out of frame then, mine, looked just so like the one I carry now, bar a few lines round the eyes. Gestures and expressions, and stray tendrils, seem eternal and unchanging.

When the Better Man heard of last nights plan, he tried to get out of it. Surprised, I looked at him, and tried to keep the scorn out of my voice: of course, he wasn’t invited. A few measly months do not grant access to the inner circle. For another thing I would formerly have jotted down on my list on the indestructible is family dynamics. Bringing outsiders into it is a slow and careful process, and even then, there are some doors that will always remain closed.

Or that are opened slapstick abruptly and to ridiculous effect – as you will see.

I am a child of divorced divorcees. Between them, my mum and dad have children enough to give heft and weight to that old adage of going forth and populating. There are sisters and brothers scattered about with impunity, and I am certain, when one day I stand sad-eyed at a coffin, it will be carried by more than enough previously unknown wild oats.

The effect on me, is that while the concept of “relations” has lost much of its importance by dilution, the need for an inner circle, ritualistic, has grown strong. I can’t be bothered to bat an eye at simple shared DNA, but am fiercely protectionist those who share the memories that count: an older sis and a younger brother that I grew up with, that are on those old videos. Oh, and yeah, the parents.

On the surface, though we rant and rave at each other, this core troop is a strong one. When we meet up like last night, for a meal, we still keep the same seating at table: the same seating that can be traced back trough a long line of scarred tabletops and hot-pot-on-wood-markings.

Relationships seem to have been preserved, the quiet but constant communication between my brother and I – natural in those shared baths sequences – is still in place, we still flick our eyes and each other and move about each other and wrinkle our foreheads in unison: my sister still the pack leader, using teeth if necessary to keep us in line. 

And the parents? Divorced, sure, but far from separated in any true sense of the word. Theirs is an affair with an unhealthy degree of durability, standing against reason, against even inclination, I believe. They seem bound together in a fashion, and though they are now both in new relationships, when we meet up like that, it seems easy to slip back, to gloss over the possible cracks, to go on as if though nothing happened.

However: last night a foreign element introduced itself into the circle and made obvious to everyone, in varying degrees, how much of a shimmering (if angst inducing) mirage that continuum really is. A small yappy dog.

My brother lives with the best girl in the world. A few weeks ago, the best girl in the world decided to get a dog. Once procured, she buggered of to the states for a month or so, studying the architecture of Las Vegas, leaving a small and non-house-broken pup to the tender mercies of my brother. Who has never owned, nor yet liked, or associated closely, with an animal.

Alas, last night, the dog was with us. And though it did manage not to relieve itself indoors, it did also manage to dig up some uncomfortable truths. Namely, the slippers of my Fathers new lady-friend.

It was funny, really, almost Greek in its dramatic timing, holding up an increasingly torn dilapidated slipper at the most inopportune moments. It bit at it, it worried at it and tore the stuffing out of its sole. It growled at it and spit the remains of its embroidery out on the carpet.

Mysteriously, every time someone had managed to wrestle the slipper from the pup and put it somewhere safe, it was found, minutes later, back in the jaws of the tiny adorable beast. But whoever it was that thought to get its revenge of the New Woman by feeding her belongings to the dog, had made an awful strategic mistake. For on top of each slipper was a tiny pair of tiny bells. And the bells chimed and made clinking noises in time with the frantic chewing of the mutt. And the bells, they did toll, for the illusion of unbroken unity

For really, pretending that no water has passed under the bridge in ten years and lots of acrimonious dealing with lawyers is fine. But doing it to the jangling tunes of the footwear of the present being shredded is quite another.

Without bothering with any likenesses to cocks crowing thrice, or any more animal life, I shrugged my coat on and got on the bus. Going home, breaking the spell, looking for new bonds.

Pent Up

I am going through a bit of an ordeal at the moment. For I have been faced, once again, with the unpleasant, indisputable fact of my approaching old age.

It all started when my ex-landlord came back to town and threw me out of my tiny but hardwood-floored nest, facing nothing but blue sky and a bit of sea. Like some biblical figure thrown from grace, I have fallen and fallen and landed, at the beginning of the week, in a bit of a low-ceilinged, dank and dark, cluttered, dusty, wrought iron, possibly hazardous, nursing-home smelling mess. While I won’t go so far as to call it actual hell, I will claim that the Devil himself could pick up some spicy new tips from whoever built and furnished this place. It is ugly.

And this is when being aesthetically minded turns into a bit of a handicap. For unlike some people I know, who will happily spend ten years in an interim housing, once I am unhappy bout the colour of the walls I can think of little else. It is as though the unappealing surroundings spill onto the very fibres of my soul, leaving big coffee-coloured stains, as though the lack of wood and the surplus laminate KILL MY VERY SOUL!

At first though, I refused to despair. The solution was evident and time-tested:

If the unloveliness of your abode is killing your spirit, you go out and throw back a hell of a lot of spirits. There is nothing like a hefty drink to cure your eyes from sight. Darken the door only when very much over the limit, and you won’t be able to tell if your nausea is induced by an extra few mouth-fulls of red or by the swilling swaying pattern of the rug.

Oh, and if this doesn’t work: give the homestead a complete miss and find a man who will let you crash at will, choosing his peculiar brand of clutter over the current curse of the ugly flowerpot…

And for a week or so, I have been sticking to both these plans simultaneously. That is until this morning, when I realised a few slight drawbacks. Like the way I cannot possibly pretend that my suit is clean anymore, or my skin clear, and the way, frankly, I guess I am no longer the kind of girl who will find a home at any hat. The time when chug-it-back-and-kiss-me-quick was the end-all solution is no longer. I need more in life than a corkscrew and a good screw. Like a hairbrush.

It may be a sign of aging, but spending limitless nights boozed up and making out is beyond me. I long for a couch and some soup. I long for pyjamas and baking bread. I long for slow reading of the papers and long showers. I long for white clean linen and watering my plants. I long for the backs of my books and the kicking off of shoes and the soft glow of my orange lamp and I need my blue bowl and I need my pink cup and I need to simmer some garlic, pronto, or I’ll bust from pent up nesting. Once again I am forced to admit it: I am too old for this shit.

So tonight, I am going “home”, to throw a blanket over that damn couch, embrace my age, and to put on the kettle. For I guess that fucking horror of a bedroom lamp is better, in its way, than eternal streetlights.

I am hoping though, that lust will blind the man to the horrendous drapes long enough for him to visit.

Angel of the Morning

The sun, a novel invention, is being picturesque over the water and the green. There is not a boat on the bay, nor a foot on the field, and the small forrested island in the midi-distance is wrapped up in the morning mist.

I have been watching the dawn from where I lie, propped up against pillows, I have been watching it like I have been watching the passing of the night: both, in their ways, intensly beautiful – both at the same time deeply insulting to a tormented insomniac. Let me explain:

Being periodically unable to sleep is a drag. For one thing, it affects my liberty – forcing me to some slightly ritualistic and heavily regulated behaviour; like for example, I have strict bedtimes, strict times for rising, strict rules for how full/hungry to be before bed, strict rules about the amount of reading am allowed, strict rules about coffee. If I mind these and get some fresh air and physical fatigue, I am pretty much fine.

But every now and then, there are periods in which all of my normal talismans seem to loose their potency and I am left rolling, reeling, clipping my eyes, dry, hot, bothered, with fevered fits of dreams, mind pacing, heart racing – holding lenghty midnight discussions with an empty room. These periods usually last from a couple of night to about a week. 

And here is why you find me cursing at the scenery: the main drawback of sleep disturbance (save from being a liability in traffic and slightly stupider than normal) is that it is so intensely boring and monotone. Once you’ve seen one rolling night, you’ve pretty much seen them all. And though the sun rises in glory, it is a quite predictable feat, unable, after plentiful sightings, to capture all of your interest: despite all the show and celestial cymbals. No amount of frothy pink cloud, haunted Ursua Minor, or splendidly trembling nighttime breeze can make up for the fact that the hours are long, and most of all, lonely.

Though I try not to allow myself any distractions (if I do something to amuse myself, my body will likely not get the message and shut off) it is hard, once awake, to stay away from books, or getting up and doing some work, or writing. And ironically, this is how I discovered the cure for my ills.

Roll round four thirty, I turned on my laptop to do a post (on a completely different topic), and, through the slightly clumsy fingering of the keyboard, was transported into a veritable smorgasboard of virtual sleeping-pills!

Out there is a world of complete nullity, absolute pointlessness. There is site after site of tedious, introverted, badly spelled and thought through “information”. There is all the drivel and dravel and stupidity a girl who’s trying to knock herself out could wish for: an onslaught, if you open the floodgates, of the mindnumbing and the trite.

It acutally only took about thirty minutes on some (undisclosed) sites, and then I could feel my eyes getting heavier, my thoughts slowing. Had I stayed on any longer, I probably would have gone too far and felt my very will to live flagging, but instead, I turned off the machine, lay on my back, and drifted into sweet, dreamless sleep.

(only to be woken an hour later by some damn bird, but that is a separate story).

Let Me Count the Ways

Lately, I have found myself in a novel situation. Usually a benign, kindly person with a simple mind and simpler worldview, placid, pacific, mild and meek, I tend to like people and rarely find fault with them (their faults being well beyond my limited span of comprehension).

Or at least, this is how I like to shroud the fact of my deeply cynical and terrible judgemental little heart. But lately, I have been violently in hate. A hate that could not be disguised. 

Where normally I like to smile pleasantly while muttering snidely between my teeth, this powerful loathing made me throw daggerlike glances, wring my hands, whisper in corners, and damn with faint praise. I have schemed and plotted and stabbed in the back (and would have gone frontside too, given half a chance). I have ridiculed, belittled and snorted.

In short, I have been terribly disagreeable, unable to stop myself from exposing my blackened soul. The snideness out in plain view, I have stood naked in all my petty, malcontented gorey/glory.  

Of course, feeling like Glenn Close sans make at the the opera only added self-loathing to external loathing, the blame of which I placed on the despised object, compounding my dislike, and so, stuck in an evil downward spiral, I gritted my teeth, tore at my hair, and generally behaved like the brutish count or cloak-and-dagger villain of some daytime soap.

The reason for all this anger is of course, that she is competition. I mean, serious competetion, of a kind I have never encountered before. (And also, she’s been incredibly nasty to me since day one, but I guess that’s just her way of being queen bee). And with our competitive streaks out in full flash, things could very possibly have gone on like this, escalating to the point of no return and fistfights. 

But luckily, I was struck with an ingenious idea: If it is a competition, I can very easily end it, just by taking myself out of the running.

So I have decided on remi, walkover in the contest for spotlight and right of way. I will step back, hands down, smiling. I will go back to being benign, kindly, and simple of mind – simpler of worldview, placid, pacific, mild and meek. I will like her and I won’t find fault with her, because she is well beyond my limited span of comprehension. 

I will be kind, and she will be the greater woman. Which will make me, by default, the bigger man.

Trashy

There is no aspect of life where the swings and roundabouts, the cosmic wins and losses and the practical application of kharma become more evident than in matters of moving house. Help received is help that must be given, and stored for later, and then used again. The friendly ties that bind one carrier of armloads of books and crockery with the next is a great example of solidarity, accountability and sustainable division of labour. It is also very sweaty. 

Last night, I was forced, by the memories of boxes lugged by D in ancient times, to help him and his wife lug in the present. And this is when I realized that moving says quite a lot about people. And that what it says about me is that I am an utter loss, a total liablity, in any carrying chain.

For example; each of their boxes was labelled with the room into which it should go. I usually mix it up to utter confusion. They had different size boxes, so that none were to heavily packed. I usually fill big ones to the brim and call for daddy. They had visible signs saying “fragile” – I tend to stuff wineglasses into socks…

All of which, together, made their move a seamless, dust-free, breezy venture: and my participation did in no way repay for the times I have made D carry a library worth of paperbacks in flimsy plastic bags up three flight of stairs, plus an early 1900th century cabinet and a butchers-block table, and ride in the movingvan with a big plant wrapped in a pillowcase on his knees.

Well, I decided, given this eyeopener, that I too can become efficient, organized and well planned. Starting as of right now I will no longer be the weakest link. And since I will be moving in a few weeks, Right Now is a god-given opportunity to mend my messy ways. 

When I got back from their place, I surveyed mine. It was stuffed to the brink with bits and bobs. It was pell-mell with dusty artifacts, old badges, rusty nails, binders, hairclips, animal skins, sneakers and half burned candles. There was nothing for it: I rolled up my sleeves and started cleaning.

At first, I though I would only pack everything neatly into boxes. But then, in the middle of excavating my closet, holding up a grey and yellow swirly number to the light, my arm, suddenly and of its own volition, threw the thing on the floor, instead of folding it into a box. This was the start of something that I will always remeber as the Great Purging.

Suddenly free, I went through the flat like a raving madwoman, chucking the best part of 27 years away together with the yellow swirls and a past-its-due carton of eggs. I worked on the principle that if I haven’t worn it, eaten it or searched for it in the past two months, then it might as well go – and as for books, if I couldn’t see myself reading them again or lending them to a friend, we were over.

Loads and loads of old scribbled papers, exams, half finnished scarfs, bijoux, scraps and bits of memorabilia, countless items of clothing, books, cd’s, make-up products, greeting cards, the odd painting, a rug, two lamps, and at least five handbags went into the trash. It was liberating, it was exhilarating, and feeling only slightly guilty, I topped the pile with a chrystal owl given to me for graduation by a blind aunt.

The rest, collected plates and dried fish and petit point pillows, War and Peace and a ruby lipstick and a really great hairproduct called high hair went neatly into boxes. After which, come two in the morning, I sat down on the one chair not folded up, and surveyed my deed. Only to find that frenzied inspiration has its drawbacks. Namely, that every utensil, every scrap of clothing, every bit of reading that I own is now individually wrapped in tissue and stowed in a box. Exept for a tweed jacket.

Which shows that organizing, like most other foibles, is something to be taken in measured doses, and not mixed with late night lattes.

Magic Pants

Last night, the friend I was supposed to meet came down with some rare and exotic exploding head disease, completely incapacitated from the thrumming and strumming behind his temples, leaving me with a clear schedule. Naturally, my first instinct was to go shopping. 

Winding my way through town I ran my usual course of food, reading, and clothing. First, stopping to pick up some venison thyme sausages and ripe tomatoes, then a slim volume called The Uncommon Reader, and finally, trying on some very sleek purple suede heels, discarding them as wrong height. Then, just as I was about to turn my nose homeward, I came upon a store I would normally never have entered: sportswear.

I may have taken to sports lately, but that doesn’t mean I have taken to wearing those tight lycra things and hooded tops that all the girls wear at the sportsclub. I haven’t even got a pair of proper, to the purpose, trainers: instead I do my daily repentance wearing some old street sneakers, a pair of ratty depressed looking sweatpants and whatever moderately stretchy top is currently washed.

Because lets face it: until you are one of them people in a tight fit and a band round your hair, you aren’t really a part of the whole health culture. I mean, it is sort of like showing up at masons without your…whatever it is they wear, at regiment in slacks and deck-shoes; or, for that matter, at a comp.litt. class in a pink Minne Mouse jacket (have done, almost failed entire semester). And I guess up until now, I haven’t really been willing to embrace this whole new spandex aspect of my personality: though I wear much black, it is rather of a polo- or scoop-neck variety than the cling-film variety used by the fit.  

But as I gazed up at the illuminated shop window, the mannequins all clad in efficient, steamlining material, chunky comfortable shoes on feet and a determined glint in their vacant eyes, I felt a pull. Unable to resist the combined influences of shapely legs and the SALE sign, I went in. In a way, it was very much like I image a real brain-wash would be: a swirl of pumping music, hot red walls, and gladiator style attendants. When I found myself on the street again, I was considerably poorer and carrying some suspiciously large looking bags.

At home, I ate the sausage and the tomatoes and read the book - a glimmering little bit of fancy, perfectly balanced. And then, with a feeling almost of dread, I opened the sportsbag and looked at what I had gotten away with: some proper pants, a pair of running shoes, a vest: all deliciously soft, flattering, and demanding. Because with purchases like that, I had burned the last bridges to my old life of nothing-much-doing. Trying them on I felt uplifted, but also taken over, in uniform, almost: the clothes stated certain things about me, that I had now better fulfill.

And what better way than by starting the morning at the gym? Yes, you heard me right, at 8 this morning I was there, changed inwards and outwards and ready for the treadmill. I did a twenty minute run, and then the weightlifting machines; all of it passing quickly, almost effortlessly: watching myself in the mirror and seeing someone who belonged on those contraptions, at home in all the dank air and tinny music.

The feeling grew even stronger, later, in the changing rooms, as I stood as one in the military line before the mirrors, applying mascara at the exact same pace as the ten other women in there. We brushed our hair, we perfumed our necks, we picked some lint from our blazers, we pushed the pearls through our lobes, we smacked our lips at ourselves, glossy, all as one, supremely synchronized swim team. We were all filled with the same glorious feeling of being slightly better than all them people outside the doors to the gym, all those people who eat their bagels without doing their run, all those people who take time to read the paper and have an extra cup of tea instead of stretching…all those people, quite frankly, who used to be me.

But then I noticed something: when we were all patched up and ready to go, we didn’t look the same anymore. There was a banker type and a student type, a mother type and a lady who’s next serious appointment must have been lunch: there were the tan skinnies with super tight jeans and the coiffed and suited, there was an outdoorsy type with a scrubbed face and a back-pack and then there was me: back in black and with Aspects of the Novel safely tucked in my bag, between the water-bottle and my new trainers.

And I suppose the finishing line should be something about books and their covers…

Judgement Day

There is something about the whiskey-fuelled wakeish-ness of the last hot month in a cold country that turns the city cauldron: bubbling, fizzing, stirred with a sturdy spoon: back alleys cobbled with slick glass, stone melting and letting out the stench of mouldy onions and the rats.

August is arrived, all death and moths and rotting fruit: bruised nectarines oozing their juice, watermelons split and the mint heavy-limbed and lilting. Gauzy pale blue northern nights have been replaced by a dark velvet sack, 14 drowned last week and sheets spattered with sweat shroud the sleepless.

Worse though: all this prickly heat, the cusp of the season, has my soul feeling wonky, ill at ease, waiting for the hammer to strike or some rabid animal to bite. When all the world seems ready to burst hell and damnation prey on you. I listen to Dig, Lazarus, Dig and take my time staring in the mirror: Dorian Grey in a sudden fit of contrition.  

The one thing for it was to get me and my slippery breastbone onto a bus and out of it: out of it and onto the patio of a suburban friend, where the french doors wait for thunder, the trees stand silent and deep and begging for water and the lawn is a yellow expanse, like the skin of some animal bloodlet, but at least you glimpse the oily sea and its small lashing waves and can imagine it to be cooling and sane.

And there, as we were fanning ourselfs and cursing at the flies and the mosquitos, the bees and the wasps, picking listlessly at a couple of fat shining black olives and drawing creased skirt up around thighs: the apocalyptic stifling skies created an intimacy, fleeting, where suddenly all can be told and herd, things that would, roll round the November rain, have been strictly taboo. Like on the deck of a sinking ship, or in a nasty fever dream, we spilled our secrets.

We started out with the easy, giggly ones, the ones where you can still scratch you knee, grin and be forgiven, but as the shadows grew longer we delved deeper, going for real gems of infidelity and cracked truths: another woman stolen from, a baby gone to dust, a mother unforgiven.

And though the skies did not change and the heat did not relent, though there wasn’t a single symbolic aknowledgement of the universe giving pardon, we did feel suddenly giddy and much paler, less sticky, slightly hungry, laughing out loud and waking the dog, who came lumbering up and licked our hands. For afterall, in the greater scheme of things, secrets when out in the open and compared were a lot less furious and vindictive than before.

Which proves, I guess, two things. One, that götterdämmerdung really is just a matter of proportions. And two, that a friend is someone who will always trump your moral decay by sharing her own.

Coming home late and joyous I threw open all windows and slept, on a cool pillow, well into to the morning. Today I feel collected and sane again, thanking my lucky stars that its not everyday the temperature rises or my soul would be very bare.

Message in a Bottle

Last night, after a beautiful Caesar in the shade, I traipsed over to my first ever lesbian party. It was on an old barge, strung with colorful lights and balloons, the champagne was 10 euro a bottle and the view was of the sun setting over the green copper roofs of City hall – with a bit of cream brush over the sky for effect.

The boat was heaving with base and young bodies, all tans, plimsolls and cutoffs (except me, straight from work in bankerpants) and a slow surf. Someone wore a sailors-cap at a jaunty angle, someones ears glinted drooping gold, and the girl at the entrance drew a sloppy heart on my hand… in other words, the stage was set, if ever, for falling head over heels.

And since I didn’t even stumble, but instead spent a few fun hours having a laugh with friends, utterly unstirred by all this beauty (except one girls fabulous nape, really remarkable jointwork) I must assume that I am back in the closet – leaving the door ajar for fear of stifling, but still, firmly, ensconced amongst the coats. Taking a cab home, I was back before midnight.

Now, you’d think that being a good Cinderella like that would have some apeacing effects on my poor battered liver. That I wouldn’t feel jarred and wrought today, that I would wake full of the springtime hopes of early morning. But no, apparently the accumulated effects of a good time and a lazy schedule have been one to many for my poor flesh. I can take no more. Not another drop. 

Giving the dark hours a bit of a rest will hopefully give me the time to pursue other interests: like balchony gardening, wardrobe maintainance (seeing as I will be spending the forseeable future in there), finishing the last chapter of the History of Norwegian Kings of the Dark Ages, getting back on the bike, feeding myself, mending brokeback fifthies paperbacks, carefully monitoring the office gossip. Oh, and turning 80.