The Brocante Home Chronicles.

The Glorious Destination

"Can you think of a single other person you'd rather be? There. Doesn't that tell you something? Your own situation may not be ideal, but at least you know your way around it. You are travelling a road that simply has to lead to a glorious destination. There's a point to what you are doing and there's something positively poetic about the way things are changing. Be glad that you are who you are- and allow a positive cosmic climate to fill you with the enthusiasm you deserve to feel..."

My horoscope.

I rather like life in a positive cosmic climate. While I consider most astrology to be a lot of mumbo jumbo there is nothing quite like a scrumptiously happy little horoscope to throw a little rose coloured light into our day...

It is Spring. Glorious, gorgeous, lime green Spring. The bin men are outside again whistling a happy tune and I am here, wiggling my bare toes and waiting for the pain d'epice to finish baking in the oven. The weekend passed in a flurry of chichi bars, a lovely birthday party and a Spanish omelette to sell your granny for. Though I do say so myself. Today I have been down on my hands and knees pulling up weeds in the front garden and tomorrow Finn will attend a starter session at the primary school he will eventually attend. All of a sudden there is clarity. Mud splattered clarity but clarity all the same. Mud splattered my darlings, because as I kneeled in the soil this morning gossiping with my neighbour John, Finley saw fit to pull back the elastic of my trousers and tip a spade full of dirt down my knickers. Whoever said children are a blessing obviously didn't have any.

It is said that cosmic shifts happen in seven year cycles. When I was twenty two I finished university, bought a titchy green car, and started my decorating career. When I was twenty nine, I grew so tired of the horror that is working in other peoples living rooms, I took a no-stress job as a hairdressers receptionist, bought a house and got engaged. I danced a little polka with normality, two up two down and one day, two and half kids. And now seven years later, now I'm thirty six, now when the world is upside down, I can feel it happening again... all change please. Time to get off the bus and board the train to a whole new kind of bliss m'lady.

Of course things happened in-between each seven year period. First time round I lost a business, put on three hundred stone, and taught colour scheming to women with little else to do. Then second time round, I lost three hundred stone, had a baby, started Brocante and lost a relationship. (I'm downright bloody careless aren't I??) All these things happened but they weren't planned with any real sense of shaping my destiny. They were getting through, the time is right, oops how did that happen, must be done things. The universe didn't line itself up and say the time is now Alison. Not like it is now.  Whether you want it or you don't, your life is taking on a new shape and you've got no choice but to re-invent yourself and shake off yesterday. Including for heavens sake, mindless meandering towards goodness knows what, spending entire weekends feeling all shook up by a voice from the past, chasing tired out dreams and waiting for miracles to happen. Time for a plan Missus. Time to recognise that change has come knocking.

Ooooh noooooo: change is terrifying, so lets talk about gardening instead.

So there we were, Finley and I, all decked out for a bit of green fingery. Me in a pink pinny, hair piled up in a spiky, scary pineapple, lavender gloves and the quintessential blue gardening clogs, and Finley dressed as Doctor Who, complete with mini sports jacket and a stripy tie. I of course had mud in my knickers but let's put that aside and concentrate on the matter in hand. Namely that he who I adored as a teenager works in a garden centre and the fact that my postage stamp is a mass of weeds is a cause of great embarrassment that had to be addressed before his next visit. And so there we were, me on my hands and knees, dragging out a complicated tangle of weeds and Finley running in and out of the house, bringing out a concoction he reliably informed me would kill the weeds: something I clearly wasn't paying the required attention to as I tinkled along to Carla Bruni piped from inside the house, dwelled on the forbidden bowl of pesto pasta I was planning for tea, and sniffed in wonder as it struck me that the tiny little hydrangea bush hiding under the bay laurel smelled almost exactly like Obsession, my favourite perfume in the world.

I sniffed again. Bizarrely the camellia bush smelled like Obsession too.  And the over-sized unidentified bush by the door. Curiouser and curiouser. In fact the whole of our lane stank of me.

I ran into the house, resolutely ignored the trail of diddy muddy footprints up the stairs and down the landing to the bathroom and caught my very own little mad scientist in the act. The act, my friends, involving tipping the last of my Obsession body lotion into a can full of Aveda shampoo and cold water and stirring it with a Spiderman toothbrush.

Clearly the child needs to be in school.

And there's the rub, because he will be won't he? In just a few month's time I will be shoving my child into a blue uniform and handing him over to a lovely woman called Mrs Carr, while I hopefully attend the Masters Course I have applied for, run the 5k for breast cancer (stop laughing Dad), write with reason and walk determinedly towards the glorious destination I've been casually meandering towards for the past two years.

It's a plan. Of sorts.

You see Jonathan Cainer was right: there isn't anyone else I'd rather be. Now is not the time to wander off my chosen path.

So bring on the next seven years. I'm poetry in the making Baby.

(P.S: I'm an Aries in case anyone else feels like boogieing in a positive cosmic light with me. Heck come if you are a Sagittarius. A Gemini or even a naughty Scorpion. Let's face it, it's all in our pretty little heads anyway!)

The Only 127 Things I Need

So the house is on fire and you've got ermmm, twenty minutes (it's a slow burning affair) to drag everything you really need in this life on to the front lawn. Or keeping your home depends on raising a silly amount of money so you've got to sell everything but the things your world rely's on. Or heck, maybe you've just come over all minimalist and decided its all just gravy...

You've got to choose 127 things to keep. 127 things because this is the number Donna Wilkinson has declared constitutes life's essentials, but not having yet read the book yet I'm not entirely certain that those things I consider essential would really keep anyone else's boat afloat but here it is regardless: the 127 things I couldn't live without...

Do feel free to come up with something slightly more worthy than big earrings...

1. Washing Up Liquid. Give me a bottle of it and I can clean the house from top to bottom.

2. A packet of the cheapest bourbon biscuits you can find in the supermarket. Posh ones just won't do. They need to cost about 22p to really thrill me.

3. The hospital bracelet they attached to Finn's wrist when they told me he was suffering from either cancer or cystic fibrosis. Always look on the bright side Dear Doctor...

4. The twinkly denim jacket perpetually tied around my waist. Big bum disguise with added sequins. Actually make that "everybody stare at my big bum please...". But never mind, it makes me feel better...

5. An old pottery figurine of an old man who looks like my Grandad. It broke in half and I glued it back together in a gruesome fashion, but oh how I love it. So much so that it is hidden under my bed because it doesn't quite fit my shabby chic aesthetic. Sorry Grandad.

6. An ancient copy of The Hobbit I read when I was seven. The day I fell in love with reading.

7. A cheese grater. For cheddar and marmite granary toasties.

8. A flannel because I've got a grubby son. I'm one of those Mothers who grabs her child in a head lock and scrubs. Could be worse Son, some mummies lick a tissue and wipe it all over your cherubic little face...

9. My ribbon tied bundle of 130 Gulf War love letters from a soldier called Dale. Bless our teenage hearts. We were so young. And they'd given him a gun. Terrible, terrible, terrible...

10. A gold paperweight engraved with Ali May, (thats me!!) from my sister Helen. 

11. Snuggles. I mean I know I can't pack them in a suitcase but I wanna take them with me regardless. Only the other day I squashed up to my poor Mum and forced her to hug me properly on pain of depriving me of essential human contact and thus causing me to shrivel up and die...

12. My trademark bangle sized gold hoop earrings. Because I'm a gypsy at heart.

13. My mobile phone. I kiss it sometimes because I'm thirty six going on eighteen and some conversations make me smile in a silly fashion. And it's got an MP3 player. Though what that's for I'll probably never know...

14. Jellybeans from a jar. A whole new culinary obsession.

15. Ruby by The Kaiser Chiefs on cd. Because hearing Finley scream Ruby Ruby RUuuuuuuuuuuBY! on the way to nursery every morning makes me giggle. I love my son to bits.

16. Smudgy kohl eyeliner. I look a bugger without it. And some days I look a bugger with it too.

17. My Dad's Wednesday night sweet delivery. A bag of Tangtastics and a quick chat. Lovely. (And yes Mum, I do know how very, very spoilt I am!)

18.  Emmerdale Farm. It's a long term love affair. Not sure how I'm gonna get it in a trunk though.

19. The Victorian gold locket that was my eighteenth birthday present from my Mum and Dad.

20. My pink washing up bowl. People who wash the dishes in the sink make me wanna bash them up. Lordy, who made me Goddess of the pots and pans?

21. A George Forman grill. Because I'm lazy. And I like stripy food.

22. Finley. Because he is my bestest dream ever.

23. The slightly bashed up bust of a young girl that was the first thing I bought for the interiors shop I owned when I was twenty three. And then stole from myself.

24. Padded coat hangers. They strike me as gloriously luxurious.

25. A crumpled up newspaper cutting of a man I don't know wearing a t-shirt that says "Living so large it hurts". I've had it since I was fifteen and still to this day cannot understand it's appeal. But I smile at him like he's an old friend.

26. My yellow journal. From the days before the damned Internet got a stranglehold on my creativity.

27. My Ormskirk Shop Window Display of The Year Certificate circa 1995. Yey me! Awarded by the local Town Crier. Probably my finest, silliest hour. Complete with twig reindeer.

28. The Coeliac Society Food Directory. Our bible.

29. A long black halter neck dress that doesn't particularly fit me but makes me feel so beautiful I occasionally wear it while I'm hoovering. With a dirty face and bed hair.

30.  My laptop. Obviously.

31. Johnson's Baby oil. For glossy skin and slippy, lovely baths. Please don't try this at home.

32. Balsamic Vinegar. For dousing pretty much everything. Even baked beans.

33.  My first business card. Proof that I was once a grown up. And have since regressed.

34. A photograph of Helen and I, sitting on the sofa giggling on my 21st Birthday.

35. Nurofen Max. Because I get headaches that come out of nowhere and fair old blind me occasionally. Once when I was driving. Almost into a wall.

36. My Noodle. A pink fuzzy duster I can strap to my hand. Goodness, that sounds a bit bonkers doesn't it??

37. Paper and a propelling pencil. I'm a passionate doodler of tulips, over-sized sunflowers and ladies with big lips.

38. Erotica by Madonna. My getting ready to go out music of the moment.

39.  An exquisitely worn Irish linen rose sprinkled tea-towel. Lovely because it works. And it's pretty. And it dries things! Wonders will never cease.

40.  A baby blue cotton romper suit my babba looked like an angel in when he was four months old.

41. Mother Pucker lip gloss. Because I'm addicted to the tingly chocolately loveliness of it.

42. Pineapple jelly in a rabbit shaped mould. With the trailer trash joy that is whipped cream sprayed from a tin. God I'm sooooo common.

43.  A little silver cheese knife I seem to spend my life hunting.

44. My red floral duvet. Womb-like, but with roses. Fairy scented bliss.

45. A huuuuuge tub of baking soda. Every home should have one.

46. Oil of Ulay/Olay. I never put it on my skin. But sometimes I sniff the pink plastic bottle because it reminds me of my Nana.

47. Finley's first ringlet. Was it mean to chop it off while he was a-dreaming? It smells of baby. I wanted to bottle it.

48. A green milk glass with a fat little border of hearts. The only one left of four identical siblings. I couldn't be more careless if I was doing it on purpose.

49. Soap and Glory Wrinkle Filler. Polyfilla for my face. Our little secret ok?

50. The biggest bottle of Tanqueray I can find. For emergencies of the heart. And the purse. And domestic disasters usually involving little rodents.

51. Rebecca. The novel and the film.

52. The man I adored as a teenager. Because he has insisted on being included in this list. (Cheeky) And because he brings me oodles of dark chocolate. Bless him.

53. The geranium on my kitchen window sill. Simply because I can't believe it's not dead yet. I'm irrationally proud.

54. My tumble drier. The day it dies is the day you will find me dangling off the satellite dish.

55. The framed sepia picture of two sisters in my laundry room.

56. The leather writing case my Nana bought me when I was twelve. Now stuffed with teenage ramblings and a postcard from George Michael aka my Auntie Barbie.

57. Finley's rather fabulous picture of a chest of drawers with elephant. An inspired composition methinks.

58. A scanner. I'm mad for scanning things I am.

59. My flower sprinkled, chocolate covered, pencil written, sellotaped together, cutting filled home made recipe book.

60. My precious library card.

61. A handwritten note from the Poet Laureate Andrew Motion explaining why my poem was the National Prize Winner. Proof I can write when I put my mind to it.

62. A picture of me in the local paper, wearing a pretentious row of pearls on the day I won said prize. Awful. But funny. Which just about sum's me up really... awful but funny.

63. The Steve McQueen postcard tucked into my Venetian glass mirror. When I want something I fight like hell for it. Because it's true. And sometimes I don't even know I'm fighting. No wonder I'm bloody exhausted.

64. Water. Out of the tap. Ice cold please. With a big chunk of lime.

65. A pretty plate and a spoon. A girl has got to eat.

66. A pink crocheted bib a BrocanteHome reader once sent me. For the little girl I'm going to have one day. Probably when medical science has invented geriatric maternity wards.

67. My grey blanket. For wrapping around my naked self after a cosy bath.

68. My great big Scouse pan. Stolen from my Mum.

69. Oh and a well seasoned wok. There you go: all cooking emergencies covered.

70. Foil. I do like a nice big roll of foil. 

71. A tiny little brass bell. Because I like helping angels get their wings.

72. Salty Normandy butter and smoky streaky bacon. Not necessarily together.

73.  Finn's Mummy Bears. Life would rapidly turn hellish without them.

74. My damask covered ribbon box. Rolls of ribbon secured with teeny pearly pins. Just for looking at. And licking occasionally.

75. My red heart shaped baking tin. For the best chocolate cake in the world.

76. The pile of yellow paper on which the first two chapters of my (rubbish) novel is scrawled in pen the colour of blood. Spill your guts Miss May. Spill your guts.

77. A letter from my friend Julie, starting with the immortal words, Dear JellyEgg...

78. The blue patchwork quilt under my bed, falling apart and smelling of  home and cuddles and our first flat.

79.  Tea. I'm pretty sure life wouldn't be worth living without a good cup of Tetley's tea. Made by my Dad please. With skimmed milk and one Canderel. Because I'm a heathen.

80. A big bundle of string. In case I happen across a vagabond who need's securing till the police arrive. Or want to tie up my recycling.

81. The tiny bottle of champagne hiding at the back of the fridge. Because cause for celebration is always around the corner in my world...

82. The maroon velvet baby shoes tied up in olive green ribbon Mark bought me when we decided to have a baby. I don't miss an ounce of him, but often ache for the family I thought we would be.

83.  Zona Home. The first interiors book I really treasured.

84. My Sex and the City DVD's. Because I need more time to weigh up the merits of Mr Big versus the delectably loyal an oh so lovely Aiden. Because I'm a fool. 

85.  A trolley token with Someone Special on it. Terribly useful are trolley tokens.

86. A pink staple gun. I feel weirdly efficient when I'm stapling things together.

87. Simple Abundance. Goes without saying. But it has shaped my life.

88. The birdcage in my bedroom window. Mostly so Finley will be able to carry on jailing Spiderman.

89. I'll probably need a recipe book won't I? So I'm choosing Apples For  Jam. Family friendly Mediterranean loveliness.

90. My calendar. All of a sudden I'm one of those women who doesn't know there's a bank holiday looming unless I check the wall twice a day.

91. A bag I can sling across my body postman style and forget about.

92. My box of stencil paints. For remembering who I used to be.

93. Colgate toothpaste. The only one that doesn't put me off food for the rest of the day.

94. Tweezers. I pluck past myself.

95. The cupboard with the birds painted on it in Finn's room. Because I was hot and eight and a half months pregnant when I painted it and it's precious.

96. The heart shaped baskets on top of my wardrobe. Filled with paper memories.

97. Harvest Morn Chocolate Crunch cereal from Aldi of all places. I make a special trip and buy it in bulk. Milky cold yumminess for not so hungry suppers.

98. Red wine. Preferably a nice bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape. That I will refuse to share because it's mine. All mine.

99. High heels. They hurt and they give me blisters but I feel shuffily and sloppy without them and I like being able to see over everybody else's head.

100. Pure lavender oil. Life-saving loveliness.

101. The silver sequined top I bought last week. Because I feel like a sparkly butterfly in it. Every girl deserves to feel like a sparkly butterfly occasionally.

102. The occasional Sayers cheese and onion pasty. Because you can only get them in Liverpool. And when I'm not at home that is what I ache for.

103. The very silly glitzy ring I bought when I sold my engagement ring. My you're gonna be just dandy ring...

104. The picture of Finley looking the spitting image of a frog in the few hours after he was born. A picture only a very besotted new Mummy could love.

105. The diary of my sixteenth Summer.

106.  A cucumber or twenty nine. Oh how I love you cucumber. Please love me back for always.

107. Egyptian cotton sheets. Warm and cool. How clever is that?

109. Spanx style knickers (never to be revealed in public). As recommended by Gok. Actually scrap the ugly knickers. I neeeeeeed Gok Wan. And I will have him.

110. The goose feather filled pillow I drag everywhere. Even into the receptions of swanky hotels.

111. Bread. Any but preferably the white french kind that gives me insufferable tummy ache half an hour later. Told you I was a fool.

112. Now this may be stretching the concept of need a bit too far, but in Cedar Farm the other day I saw an olive green costume ring I can't live without. But I had forgotten my purse. Won't be long till you are on my finger Sweetie...

113. My pink cardigan. For feeling sorry for myself nights and chilly willy mornings.

114. Salt. I shouldn't but I do.

115. A fountain pen. Because it is the epitome of scrawly elegance.

116. Candles. Billions and trillions of them.

117. The book with the promise written inside.

118. My very ugly, very comfortable blue gardening shoes. For when I pretend to garden my postage stamp.

119. Good dark chocolate. Obviously. Oh and fruit creams. Or rose creams with tiny little crystallised rose petals on top.

120. The gorgeous pair of white flying rabbits hanging above Finn's bed. Rabbits with wings...lovely.

121.  My dry skin body brush. Because I like feeling tingly.

122. Heinz baked beans with little sausages. For the little kid that lives in my tummy. She who wouldn't say no to a Farleys rusk.

123. Daffodils. And sunflowers. And even carnations. Actually flowers full stop. What would be the point without flowers pray tell?

124. White bath towels.

125. BrocanteHome. And all those that sail in her.

126. Ermmmmm.... would it be terrible to say money? Just a little bit for random purchases of things I don't need.

127. And finally my latest project... a  spanking new dateless three year diary with a pale pink ribbon to keep the bestest years of my life (those to come please) secret...

Expect to see everything else I own on Ebay very soon.

The Case of the Missing Fork.

Hmmmmm.

Not long after I met Mark, his Dad left his Mum for a woman who went by the name of Mary. Trouble she was. Trouble in a feisty five foot small little Irish package.

Soon after, cushions from the family sofa and a whole collection of teaspoons started disappearing. Now far be it from me to start pointing the finger at he who was setting up home with someone else's wife, but my point is this: it wasn't me. I wasn't stealing the pillows or the aluminium spoons even though in his Mum's eyes, although she liked me awfully, regardless, I was the only possible suspect and would have to hauled in front of a cup of tea to explain my urge to create a dowry full of stolen goods...

I mention this rather scandalous state of affairs because it has become apparent that while the spoon thief clearly doesn't find my floral cushions attractive he can't keep his grubby little hands out of my cutlery drawer. The full extent of this particular crisis became apparent on Saturday night when in a fit of the hostess with the mostess I found myself laying the table for oodles of people when clearly dinner a deux would have been more fitting considering I couldn't rustle up more than two matching places at the table from two, once huge, canteens (I love that word!) of cutlery. So I concentrated on lighting too many candles and making the rest of the room look twinkly and relied on plying my good friends with wine and hoping they wouldn't notice that their knives were weightless while their forks required a forklift truck to get the chilli into their mouths...

Things disappear don't they? While it clearly won't do to point the finger at Mark and his erstwhile lady friend, or indeed his father, it is becoming clear to me that there exists, somewhere on our rose-sprinkled planet, a black hole filled with bone handled forks and pink paisley socks. Remember my darlings, the terrible case of the washing machine filter? You don't? Perhaps I never told you... I do seem to be suffering from a rather spectacular case of blog induced Alzheimers lately...

While I would like to pretend to be the kind of Mummy that monitors socks with the kind of vengeance I only reserve for my stash of rose creams, most of the time socks come and go and sometimes they go away in pairs and often they find themselves living in a rather fetching little apricot and cornflower blue net bag that is the home for lonely socks in my house, while we wait patiently for their estranged partners to re-commit themselves to life on our feet. So when a teeny little fawn coloured sock went astray you won't be surprised to hear that I didn't notice.

What I did notice was that whole vials of lavender oil  weren't making a jot of difference to the stench that was my laundry. In it went, smelly. And out it came. Smellier. I was mystified so I donned my Sherlock Holmes pinny (a rather snazzy tweed affair) and got down on my hands and knees to investigate. I opened the filter and watched grey water splash my toes.

Hmmm, I said, stroking my whiskers and fiddling with my bushy sideburns. 

Hmmmmmm, I thought as I stooped to stare into the bowels of the machine and saw what looked, for all the world, like a tangled mouse. I froze. And screamed. And called my little mate Finley.

"Sweetheart, what's that in Mummy's washing machine?" I screeched.

"Its a dead mouse" he said and went back to inflicting severe punishment on his pink power ranger.

Oh dear Lord. A dead mouse in my washing machine. Who do you call? Mouse busters?

I was freaking. And a Mummy. And Mummy's aren't allowed to be scared of dead anything just in case it scars their children for life, so I pulled on some leopard print rubber gloves and dragged the filter and the mouse it contained, out, and stood in the foot deep bath of dirty water that followed it, staring at the mouse, baulking past myself and wanting my Mum. Then I got a fork and poked the mouse. Yep. That seemed like the slimy furry skin of a drowned rodent. So I poked it again to make sure, called Finley to have the matter witnessed by someone less round the bend than I, and sighed in sick relief, when my four year old looked at me like I had finally lost my marbles, and said "That's the sock that goes with my grey pants silly, can I have a biscuit now Mum?"

A sock, a lovely little sock. I pulled it out with my teeth (only joking), practiced my breast stroke up and down the river that was my kitchen and chucked the mouse stained fork into the bin. Which probably explains why one of my darling guests found herself nibbling a really rather sublime slither of raspberry chocolate tart off the end of a pint-sized Noddy fork on Saturday night.

If I ever invite you to dinner, do us all a favour and invent a prior engagement won't you?

Cohesion

I am hiding in my bedroom while two child shaped monsters systematically trash my house. Every so often one or the other runs into my bedroom and clips a  laundry peg to my fuchsia pink toe then run's out shouting "Don't be cheeky Mrs Moustache!  (General consensus seems to be that I have got a moustache. My Dad told me over lunch on Sunday but I'm trying not to dwell on it.)

It is a beautiful day. I've been into the back garden/yard/postage stamp and started my annual horticultural spring clean, which mostly involved calling said Father to get him to come and take away rusty toddler bikes, pulling out dead beetroot and avoiding looking my neighbour in the eye. But it is a start and a start is a good as a hiccup. And now after a spiky hot chamomile shower (Run it boiling hot, then before you get in sprinkle a few drops of your chosen aromatherapy oil onto the base of the shower, switch it off, wait a few minutes,then switch it back on and get in) I am here, buried in a pile of paisley pillows with a blush coloured glass of dandelion tea, talking to you. A long overdue chat methinks...

I disappear don't I? Lately I am finding it more and more difficult to be a women, and a mother and a housekeeper and a sister and a friend and a blogger and a daughter. A person with ambition. With needs. With hope and a mortgage. Somebody's child. An adult in my own right. The constant terrible quandary of trying to be both. A writer. A reader. Someone capable of honouring her body and her dreams. Someone willing to set herself aside for other people, her relationships and her son...

If it is difficult to be all things to all people, it is almost impossible to juggle our own expectations of who we ought to be without feeling as though we are dropping balls all over the place. Leaving things unsaid. Undone. Annoying the neighbours by singing too loudly and forgetting to bring in the wheelie bin. Actually walking around it without seeing it and this week forgetting to put the recycling out at all (May God and the green police forgive me). Watching things fall apart as we stitch a life up. Sewing up one pocket and seeing a bit of who you used to be, who people have come to expect you are, leaking out of the other. Buying shoes instead of soap powder and spending blissful mornings in bed when we should be up and about, chasing our future instead of living in the delicious, cosy moment. Doing a happy dance as I send my babba to his Daddy's for a sleepover so I can go out and then spending the rest of the evening feeling a teeny tiny bit evil for liking the woman I am when I am not obliged to play Mommy. The woman I become in high heels. She who casts off her pinny and dances on chairs. Worrying constantly about what other people think and in the same breath, truly not giving a damn.Worrying about occasionally feeling like I'm eighteen again when I'm (As Helen likes to remind me) in the mid to late thirties bracket. Pouting too much. Because I can. (Even though I shouldn't and someone has to pinch me to remind me to stop). Feeling guilty. (Terrible word: guilt). Feeling compromised. (Terrible word: compromised). Feeling obliged.(Terrible word: obliged). And in a strange turn of events, feeling excited (Great word: excited) about feeling guilty, and obliged, and compromised and doing bugger all about it, even if, as a woman,  these are the emotions we often allow ourselves to be defined by. Feeling a peculiar sense of freedom and ever so slightly (Lets not get carried away here!) revelling in it...

Today I'm excited about David Essex's new look. (A vintage crush!). About the crisp new edition of Vogue, still wrapped in it's plastic envelope downstairs, waiting to be savoured in front of The Apprentice tonight. About melting my moustache off (Don't tell anyone will you? Especially not my Dad. He rather likes having a hirsute daughter) and the sense of promise that is light nights as we drift into Summer. About planting broad beans and eating them later in the season mashed onto thick toast with fresh mint and mozzarella. About feeling slightly dazzled by someone I really like. About restoring order to my living room and banishing teeny little super heroes to bed. About the two parcels waiting to be collected from the postal depot. About the weekend coming and the one after that. About a silver top I'm dreaming about. About a new brand of cucumber scented washing up liquid that makes me swoon. About changing my perfume and trying on a whole new person.

Well about everything really....

That's a good thing right?

The Straw That Broke The Camels Back.

Consider me a camel today. Bear in mind that my back is broken and the straw that broke it was about the size of a very old fashioned tv.

The sky is black this morning. That spooky rainy kinda black the sun tries and fails to poke it's nose through. But it's snuggly here in the library. I've got myself a fairtrade hot chocolate and parked myself as far away as possible from the man who, before, standing a tad too close for comfort in the pouring rain, admired my polka dot pink umbrella, told me he suspected I had very warm blood and accompanied this revelation with a dirty wink. (I swear I could get into trouble in a monastery). But never mind- I am more than happy to deal with the odd book sniffing lech if it means I can escape the horror that is my house today.

All is not well in Chez Brocante. It's nothing major. The roof is still on and the plaster hasn't crumbled. No it's worse than that. Yesterday afternoon I returned home from an onion buying mission, walked over to the television, in the dim hope of happening across Duffy probably still begging for mercy, pressed it on. And nothing. Nowt. Nada. Somebody call the fire brigade!

So I got down on my hands and knees and did professional looking things with unidentified wires and nothing, nowt, nada. Stopped and had a cry. Poured myself a stiff gin, got out my pink girly toolbox and changed some random fuses. Because I can. Awarded myself a medal, curtsied to the queen and went to switch on the tumble dryer and nothing! Nowt! Nada! Desperate circumstances call for very desperate measures so I took the fuse out of the juicer in the faint hope that maybe all the fuses I'd changed thus far were dodgy, inserted said fuse into tv and ne fait rien. Ran into kitchen for carpet cleaner after noticing stain left by red wine knocked over by man I adored as a teenager  on Saturday night (This is what kind of lush I am: I let stains fester for days on end). Clean in a manic fashion. Notice I have been somewhat waylaid in addressing the matter in hand. Stop and reflect that this IS WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH MY ENTIRE LIFE and collapse in a heap on the fake Aubusson where son and father of my child find me sprawled half an hour later.

To cut a long story short the tumble dryer was the cause of all the trouble. After sacrificing my beloved television to the God of all things electric it staged a miraculous recovery and is drying vests as we speak. All well and good, but I am now the proud possessor of dry underwear and three portable tv's none of which are working, a screeching child in cold tv turkey and worst of all a fridge full of warm food, because the fuse I removed from the juicer plug actually belonged to the the fridge plug....

Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes. Welcome to hell. It's exhausting being fabulous.

So it is a lifetime of self improvement and plucked eyebrows for me. No Apprentice. No Emmerdale. No Horrid Horrid Henry (Thank you!). Last night I read The Making Of A Marchioness from back to front and tonight I've got a homemade Chicken Korma and Life's Too F**cking Short lined up....

Wonder if Mr Warm Blood knows anything about geriatric televisions?

Mummy I'm moving in.

Happy Birthday To Me

I turned thirty six on Friday, so in celebration I have sprouted another whisker and developed some really rather spectacular eyebrow wrinkles. Mostly because I have been out three nights on the run and can clearly no longer take the pace...

I'm exhausted. Too tired even to regale you with stories of delicious scallops sat atop the most divine jus, an Easter egg hunt at Kaths, gorgeous perfume, friends, a birthday Green and Blacks Chocolate fridge cake (recipe to follow!), a tiny tea party with Mum, Dad and Finn, spilt red wine, too much fake tan (St Tropez... I've been tangoed!), a stack of books I can't wait to read, the prettiest papier mache lavender rabbit in the world, oodles of babysitting from my lovely parents (thank you, oh thank you, oh thank you),  and the man I adored as a teenager...

Birthdays are wonderful aren't they? Think I might have another one next weekend.

On second thoughts, give me twelve months to recover from this one.

Springtime On Mars.

What can I tell you about this week? That I have taken up making a nuisance of my self? That I turn up on peoples doorstep and kind of park myself on their sofa in the hope that they will drip feed me tea and regale me with life affirming tales of good times and gossip? And that in return I will do their ironing while they bath the baby or make me a sumptuous three course meal? Or a piece of toast? Because all of a sudden I am desperate for company...?

Perhaps you want to hear about Finley? He's much better. No longer blotchy. Officially co-ordination disorder free  and able to brandish a pencil with aplomb and render myself, Kath and Diane dumb as he sails across Kath's playroom on Eleanors bike like he's been doing it all his life.  Then yesterday he informed me that having his hair brushed hurt more "than a horse having it's nut's cut off". (Yes, you read that right) and when I recovered from a choking case of shock and horror and asked him where a horses nuts are, he looked at me like I was crazy stupid and said "You know Mum, those things on the end of his feet?"...  So that will be his hooves then??

(Oh and he's got nits so thats nice.)

Hmmm, what else?  Oh yes, the neighbours aren't speaking to each other, the daffodils have died a sorry death in the front garden and I've finally got round to replacing the mat with the Christmas trees on it at the front door with a rather snazzy paisley affair. Snazzy is a rubbish word isn't it? Do ban me from saying it. My conversation is littered with  ridiculous words like this and  for the record my Dad says he is going to smack me if I say "Rightie Ho" one more time in his company.  Perhaps I should have been christened Doris or Aggie or something equally as beguilling...

Goodness what am I waffling on about? It's been a strange old day so far. I threw myself out of bed this morning and drove here to Mum's with my pink jumper on inside out. Without washing my neck or boiling the kettle or anything at all really. I have highly offended the man I went out with last week to the degree that he has informed me that we have nothing left to say to each other and all I can think about is chocolate. Rose scented chocolate. Chocolate with amaretto. Chocolate pie. Chocolate sauce. Chocolate on a butty.

Truly I've got chocolate on the brain and can't quite figure out the importance of anything else in my entire life.

Rightie Ho Daddy lets have another cup of tea. I'll iron your shirt if you make me some of your extra special cheese on toast. Must go before I reveal anymore of my awful torrid secrets. Some things are more appalling than even the scratchy little feet of head lice nesting in your babbas curls.

I'm feeling irrationally happy today.

Happy Mothers Day.

Mummy remember when I was in your tummy?

Yes baby...

And remember when I was inside your tummy and you were inside Nana's tummy and we were playing...?

Ermmm I'm not sure I remember that Finley...

You do Mummy! Remember we were playing a game and I reached up to catch Nana's heart and it broke?

Remember Mummy... The day I broke Nana's heart?

Happy Mothers Day Mum.

No, I Haven't Been Burgled.

Blimey O'Reilly if any woman is capable of being the cause of her own bother,  tis I, my Darling Housekeepers.

Yesterday was the epitome of all that is lovely in the life of a single yummy mummy. Estranged man who woulda been my husband took Finley and his cousin Gabriel for a quick cavort around the Botanic Gardens to say hello to the local parrots while I took off my pinny and wandered up the lane to Kath's gorgeous kitchen where there was coffee and a crinkly packet of the simple pleasure that is  a Teatime Assortment. And there we sat , Kath, Diane and I,  moaning and giggling and commiserating with each other over all manner of woes, while I surreptitiously dipped all the fake jammy dodgers into my cornishware  mug and felt for once like the world wasn't spinning itself dizzy but was instead holding a gentle little tea-dance....

And then the phone rang. Could I come home IMMEDIATELY because Marks key was stuck in the lock and he and two whining kids were stranded in the GARDEN and for heavens sake WHY HAVEN'T YOU GOT A BACK DOOR KEY ON YOUR PERSON? And what in the name of all that is holy is wrong with you???

So I said my goodbyes to friends and peace of mind, and dilly-dallied my way back up the lane. And there they were, two Fruit Shoot hyper boys and one miserable ex packed into the sardine can that passes for his car. I fiddled about with the key jammed in the lock and walked over to the car to report that yes indeed it was stuck. And he looked at me in a disappointed fashion that got me all worked up and all of a sudden I was Rambo in wellies, roaring with fury fueled fire, because I AM WOMAN AND I WILL GET US INTO THE HOUSE BY HOOK, LINE OR BLOODY SINKER.

I am woman. And once I bashed my dad so hard I knocked myself out so I can do this. I can use power, will and intellectual might to get into MY house. And failing all that I am going to kick the door so hard it will have no choice but to succumb.

And so that's what I did.  To the astonished stares of passers by in furry hats and a van full of genteel workmen, I lifted my leg up and karate chopped the door. And lo and behold the door opened and lo and behold the glass in the porch smashed and fell out and lo and behold you wouldn't blame me if I called time on the farce that is my life right this very minute now would you?

But I am woman. And I am independent  and capable. So I walked back to the car and informed man and children that the door was now open and if they would accompany me back to the house I would escort them over the broken glass and into the cosy comfort of my living room.

Then I handed Mark a lovely pair of pink leather gloves and sent him out to deal with the glass, called my Dad and ordered his services and a piece of hardboard 36 by 48, put child to bed, ate my tea, whinged all by myself  at the sight of poor old Amy Winehouse shuffling her lovely way through The (terrible) Brit Awards, ate far too many cappuccino truffles and at half eleven took a call from Mr Nice who informed me he would be just thrilled to carry on seeing me  on the clear understanding that we do not have a future because he isn't  interested in raising someone else's child...

My Darling Mr Nice... Ever been karate chopped into next week?

I AM WOMAN. HEAR ME ROAR.

Infidelities

Last night she ran out barefoot over
the wet gravel to call him back
from the street. This morning
in the tranquility of bath water

She wonders when it was she first shivered
with the wish for more than ordinary happiness.
How did she fall in love with poetry
that clear eyed girl she was?

Late at night, by a one bar heater,
her unpainted lips parted
on the words of dead poets.
She was safer in the dance hall.

"And if you can't love poetry"
she muses. "What was there of me
all of those years ago, apart from
that life of which it is made?"

Only an inhospitable hostess
A young woman in an old dress.

Elaine Feinstein

When was it we first shivered with the wish for more than ordinary happiness? When, as  in  Mina Loy's poetic tribute to marriage, did we first know ourselves to be like Gina, a woman who wanted everything, everything, every way at once? Is it a disease we all suffer? A malady integral to the female soul, this deep rooted need for more?

More now. Please. Again. More and more and more.
Or else I shall die.

I've been watching the BBC TV adaptation of Madame Bovary. Half an hour here and there fitted in between a child requiring constant entertainment during the shock that is a half term holiday. Cringing in recognition of Emma's sheer frustration. Knowing myself to be a fellow sufferer of Bovarysme-  " a disposition towards escapist daydreaming in which one imagines herself as a heroine of a romance and refuses to acknowledge everyday realities."  And getting myself in a terrible muddle as the books I've read converge in my mind... all at odds with each other and leaving me floundering.

Tell me this and tell me no more: if we are to believe in The Secret, if knowing, wholly and simply, what it is we want in this life, and trusting the universe to help us manifest our dreams is enough to create the kind of life we dream about, what is there to stop us from wanting too much? Not so much more than we deserve... but perhaps more than we were made to handle? What if, somewhere along the line, wanting more than "everyday happiness", believing  in poetry, or in lists of dreams as long as your arm, gets in the way of the everyday epiphanies?

When does wanting more than we already have become a betrayal of all that is wonderful now?

Perhaps it is an age thing. A mood of the nation thing. This sense of entitlement to more we all feel now. Or perhaps it is the jugular frustration of mothering young children. Of feeling our souls split in two as we strain to be the women we were while giving all we've got to other little beings? The itch of temptuous  relationships battered by want. And exhaustion. Yes perhaps it is just simple exhaustion that makes another life seem so tempting?  Or perhaps like Lucy in Charlotte Matthews poem of the same name, one day we will acknowledge the darkness inside ourselves and make it the purest part of who we are... She tells me time will pass faster as I get older, that I won't want so much anymore.

And even so, more, now, again. I want life to be prettier. Simpler. I want the life I'm writing in my dreams. My own personal fairytale. Prince Charming. A beanstalk to unimaginable riches. A tiny baby floating on a lily pad.  A life without chin whiskers please. Oh isn't it awful? For or else I shall die. But then perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, all of this is peculiar to me.

Sometimes my capacity for gratitude flutters out the window. So au revoir to all that. Au revoir.

Female Inheritance

"As I was going through drawers filled with old linen embroidered with my grandmother's and great grandmother's monograms, I came across a small plastic bag in which were two coat hangers covered  in blue wool with a label my mother  had written, undoubtedly intended for me: "Crocheted by Bertha Kaufmann in about  1920".
So my Mother had gone to extreme trouble, at some unknown date to anticipate my future discovery. She knew that one day I would have to  carry out this testing, nostalgic, heart-rending task of choosing what must be kept or not kept in the family house. She must have foreseen that moment when she would not be there, and so she had left me this information. She had wanted to draw my attention to it. As if she were addressing me, post mortem, to say to me: "Look, this is precious, keep it or throw it away, but know where this object came from.It was your great-grandmother who crocheted this. I would like you to keep it in memory of her and me. Give it to your children and the children of your children. This is testimony of a long line of women who were dexterous with their hands, attentive about fine linen, caring about their family's well being, take good care of it, as I have done before you. This is your female inheritance."

Lydia Flem. The Final Reminder.

Perhaps tomorrow it will be a lovely, twinkly sunny day. You will dress in a pretty  rose spotted skirt and a fair aisle cardigan and  kiss your babies have a good day at the school gate. Then you will walk into  town, swinging your green basket as you go, waving hello to old Mrs Hambledon and stopping for a moment to admire the daffodils in the market square. Across the street you see a milky blue jug in the window of your favorite little antiques shop, a jug that will look divine sitting atop a pile of vintage hardbacks, holding a pretty spray of flowers picked from the garden. You see it and you step across the street to get it, but what you do not see is the car that knocks you over. The car that takes your life.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps  instead there will be time to say goodbye. Or a lifetime of hello's and tomorrow's. We none of us know and yet we live within the spectre of death daily and most of us make peace with it. But what we don't do, beyond the simple act of financial insurance and will-making, is prepare for it. Not in a way that will resonate in the hearts of those who would grieve for us should the very worst happen. We do not take the time to mark our place in the world, to give provenance to the things we have made or the places we have been. Too many of us don't make a ritual out of record keeping on our children's behalf. We don't catalogue memories, photographs or dreams in any meaningful way and we don't write down all that we would say to the grown people our children will one day become. 

This isn't meant to be morbid. Nor intended to deliver a little bit of misery to another shiny weekend. It is instead a reminder. A reminder to hold what we have dear. It is a call to arms. A gentle push to make this the weekend we stick those piles of photographs into an album and bless them with handwritten memories and quips from the day. The afternoon we too will spend hand stitching monograms on to our collection of fine linen, or ordering  labels to be sewn into the clothes we have knitted for our children. Let's make this the weekend we put our financial affairs in order, or pour a big glass of wine and write letters to our children on the day they turn eighteen. Let's walk our children around the house and tell them why this picture reminds you of your Nana, why this tiny little brass maid matters so much to Daddy. Let's continue to fill our journals with all our unspoken thoughts. To not censor ourselves for fear of discovery, but to write in blood, what is. To offer our children the opportunity to one day fully know the woman we really were.  And let's give them the gift of themselves: scrapbooks filled full of their first scribbles, a file of their own full of personal documents, a tiny notebook with all the funny things they once said in it...

We cannot know what will  matter to them when they are gone. Memories are too personal. After the recent death of her Mother, Martha Stewart was gently thrilled by the care her Mum had taken to bestow upon her something she knew Martha would hold dear...

"That night we gathered at my brother George's home and were each handed  envelopes prepared by my Mother. In mine were documents I had never before seen- my birth certificate, my Baptism certificate and communion papers, my diphtheria and measles shot certifications, a $10,000 savings bond, and a note from the pediatrician saying I was fit for school. Only Mom, with her sense of organisation, would have known that these would touch  my heart like nothing else she could bestow upon me. Thank you Mother."

Perhaps tomorrow won't come. Or perhaps like Martha Kostrya we will live long, rich, satisfying lives. Who knows? But what we do know is that this is our job. To stuff our days with memories worth keeping. To be memory keepers and do our very best to leave nothing unsaid when we are gone.

To say our goodbyes every time we press a kiss on to their foreheads.

On Love. Because It's Valentines Day.

"But this kind of love also knows it's own rapacious madness. And so must live as fast and fully as it can. It must spend everything. Spare nothing. There can be no sense or reason to it. No time for reality or awkward truth; no space in which to consider. Pain and hurt gather like storms on its vortex. Yet still such lovers contrive to lead each other further and further away from the world, from the duties and considerations that come to compromise our lives, from the things we need for our fundamental sanity and survival. there is no road back and the bridges are forever burning. And when the end comes, it is terrible and absolute because there can be nothing left, no friendship, no future, nothing. Everything must be destroyed in order to outlive it. Otherwise it will reincarnate itself- more virulent, more demanding, more urgent."

Edward Doux, Obsessive Love, Vogue, March 2008.

Ah love. We don't talk about it much. Not really. Not truthfully. We can't. Mustn't. Mostly because we cannot make sense of our own experience of it without dramatising it, draping it in Hollywood  pathos or perhaps worst of all, diminishing it's importance in shaping our lives.

I was in love once. That terrible thing, in love. For four deranged months at the end of 2006. Go through the archives and you will mark us... In love, that heady, demented destructive kind of love that Edward Doux so eloquently  describes above. Just once in my thirty six years on this planet.

I don't talk about it, because there isn't any point: it doesn't make any sense, you weren't there. My best friend wasn't there. My Mum wasn't there.  And now I don't even let myself think about it,  I try not to let it possess me in case yearning for it, for him, for us, brings me to my knees all over again.   Because how am I to compare fifteen years of caring for somebody, of committing my life to him- with four short months of terrible, soul destroying bliss with someone else to which nothing, no-one,  will ever compare? Should something enduring, pure and familiar be compared to something wasted, yet so fully lived? Enduring love brings responsibility, children, bricks and mortar. The other kind, merely heartbreaking destruction we will crave for the rest of our lives.  The kind of love that says come with me: move your world to be with me. We, this, is all that matters. And then implodes upon itself, leaving a stupid gap inside us forever after. Leaving us feeling a bit silly. Like we gave too much and can never have it back.

I'm not stupid. I understand that love, the enduring kind, is what makes the world go around. That  it is what Valentines  Day is all about: a hallmark celebration of I forget to tell you how much I love you and hey you know what I could love you forever and a day. And I also understand that the obsessive, crazy kinda love is temporary by necessity: that it exists to show us our best selves, to dazzle us for a while and leave us all the better for it. But that in its midst it is  blood and guts and you are the only person I've ever told, not hearts, flowers or even chocolate lollipops. No pink slush ever that raw.

Why am I telling you this? Perhaps because I can't tell him. Because I read Edward Doux in this months Vogue this morning and remembered...

Because it's Valentines Day and I know what it is to have been in love. And more than that I know what it is to have been part of the kind of love that builds walls and raises children. I know why it matters.

Scenes From Yesterday

Saturday

The week passed.  And too soon it is Saturday.

I tuck a kiss into Finn's coat pocket and wave hello to peace and quiet. Today there is a book, a lunch of split pea cinnamon rice,  eight hours of relative freedom, and a salt and pepper dog called Penny, lying, almost permanently, across my feet.

Though I spend all week wishing my little boy away for five minutes of every given hour, when he is actually gone, I find myself bereft. Morose. Conjunctivitis and a nasty cold sore have rendered me too ugly (trust me, this is borderline she-devil disease) to leave the house in daylight, and though the rest of the world is hideously blurry, I can see with startling clarity the shape of every dust particle dancing a merry jig on a beam of Winter sun. I can't resist cleaning the windows again.

Afterwards I fling them open and boom K.D.Lang into the garden, declaring myself a temporary social nuisance and feeling mildly thrilled when I see a woman in a pink beret go past mouthing the words to Miss Chatelaine under her breath. I want to run out and dance with her. To make her tell me where her children are today,  how it is that even at eight o'clock on a Tuesday morning she always manages to look like a young Vivienne Westwood...all quirky frills and yummy confections of  salmon and olive green. And a hat. Always a hat. Today a beret, last week a little pill box affair perched upon peach curls. How it is that she seems so deliciously unaware of how wonderful she is? A walking smile on a cloudy day.

But of course I don't. I don't. I hide in my little ochre  cell and settle into my armchair with The Secret Mothers Club, a book with a deceptively perky  chick lit style cover disguising the kind of truths that bring the roar of tears into my raspberry rippled eyes...

"Motherhood is not a trifle. It is not a zabaglione or a dessert of frozen berries with melted chocolate. Motherhood is the ultimate matrix- between life and death. When all the romance and glory is stripped away, it is a wasteland with no consolations for the errors, mishaps and sins we unwittingly commit in the juggle between "doing the best we can" for those we have brought to life and staying alive ourselves."

Motherhood is not a trifle. On Saturdays granted the freedom I live in day to day hope of, I am lost, even to myself. Stripped of the do this and do thats, the constant take your fingers out of mouth and the do as I say not what I am's, I am lost.  While I secretly despise woman who live through their children, who let themselves be defined by them, without Finn here my life loses shape and there isn't sufficient time to mould myself into anything worthy. I am strangely uncomfortable. Vulnerable, without the armour that is my child. I clean, I eat, I read.  I chase new favorites around the music channels and field how are you texts from a man I want don't want want don't want. A man who doesn't want me but remains thoroughly committed to playing a pointless game of friends. Maybe easing his guilt. Maybe tucking me onto a shelf for a rainy day. I want to tell him that I am a rubbish friend. To go away and leave me alone because the game is beginning to bore me now. Or climb into bed with me,  trail a finger down my spine and watch me shiver. Watch me dissolve, why don't you?

I write. A book shaped by the quagmire that is single motherhood. I worry. About Finley's tendency to over-react to everything in his wake.  About the meeting I have to attend with child therapists on Tuesday. What do you think is wrong with him Miss May? Why is it that his goddamn pre-scissor skills are so hopeless? Why Miss May, if his conversation is littered with big words and poetry,  does he struggle to hold his pen the way we demand he should? How come he can draw pigs and elephants and drawers full of socks but he can't yet write his name? Why Miss May? Can you tell us why? We think perhaps it is you...   

And then he is back.  A bundle of corduroy energy. I throw myself at him. Smother/ Mother. I run a silent check. His cheeks are rosy. Tick. He is clean. Tick. Giddy happy (to see me: ah the arrogance of maternal love). Tick. Apparently uncompromised by our circumstances. Tick. Surviving his parents chatty indifference. Tick. Writing what goes unsaid under thick childish skin and storing it up for years of therapy. Tick. Thriving on it.

I feel all of a muddle. Giggling like me and the paternal part of our familial equation are flirting in a bar. Then wearing my ice queen hat and demanding answers. Has he ate? What was it he ate? Has he been good? Did he go the toilet?  Desperate to know,  but all at once desperate to escape the boring details of gluten free pizza and a tantrum in the park, described in detail by a man who only has to father him once a week.  How bloody dare you criticise? Already feeling the grip of loving my babba too much suffocating me and  shaking him off in fear of consuming him. So unwrapping his arms from tight around my neck and putting on my coat,  then tying the lead onto the dog we are minding and letting myself out into the navy blue sky. Standing in front of a new Dallas mansion built where there was once a dignified thirties villa and dissecting another families life. Shuffling to keep warm in the dark while the dog pokes around in the dirt and watching their lives like so many soap operas.

Feeling outside of the Mother I am supposed to be. Living in fear of bald patches on his  little head.  Proof  that I am dragging him, kicking and screaming  through a life  blurry at the seams.  Peeling him off the front door  he has barricaded when life is splintered all over again by his Daddy's see you soon mate, be a good boy for Mummy.

Be a good boy for Mummy. Be a good Mummy for your boy.

Daffodil Days

Pay attention closely and you realise that this life of yours is cyclical. A gently binding circle of rituals and routines you wander in and out of. A marionette dancing to a distant tune, twisting and turning, but never quite resting, because the music changes but it never, ever stops. You notice now how much you stand outside yourself. Observing. Sometimes there is housework, spells of cleaning that destroy your fingerprints. Because you should. Sometimes there is nothing, too much to do, nothingness. Dreams of someone you could have belonged to. More housework. The femme fatale scaring even herself. Because you can't help yourself. The must be dones...

A marionette in the palest pink ballet shoes and a dress made of promise.

It is the end of January. You wonder at the sheer effort it must take for the daffodils to force their pretty heads up out of the earth. You guard them silently. Dreading another frost. Holding your breath for the blossoming of your beloved chamelia. Desperate to carry just one bud into the house and consume the very certainty of Spring. Adoring the ritual of the seasons.

Your legs ache but you don't know why, imagining it is just the weight of Winter. Exhaustion from carrying the layers of cosy quilts it takes to keep you warm at night.

Night time. In a frenzy of self-improvement you write lists. 101 Things you want to do in your life. 30 things you want to do by March. 5 things you musn't forget to do tomorrow. You sit each night, shiny, scrubbed, clean as a new pin and count the books you have taken from libraries in two different counties. 39 books waiting to be devoured, bothering the back of your mind like you have been employed to read and time is running out. And so you read. Speed reading your way through other peoples nightmares, crazy schemes, and poetry. Far too much poetry. Scrawling words that resound with you into a notebook crawling with fronds of ivy. Writing three different recipes for tomato chutney next to them in absolute certainty that though you don't like chutney, you are a grown up now and you will teach yourself to like it. Chutney and olives. You will teach yourself to like olives. A rainbow of the funny little things stuffed with feta probably because it is the only way you can even begin to imagine they can be endured. It is on your list...

You chat on the phone. Text like a teenager. Wait breathlessly for the jingle of a return text and occasionally turn down the sound and stare unblinkingly at it, waiting for it to flash: for the outside world to come tell jokes in your living room. Then you go to bed and overheat, staring in astonishment at the rash flooding your chest, blinking in the sudden light and listening to the woman next door choking on laughter all of her own. Why is she, another single mother in her own little box and me in mine? Aren't houses funny? These barriers we build between loneliness.

Daytime. You go through the car wash all by yourself and feel you deserve some kind of brave lady medal. Your little boy is worried about child-thieves. He says he is sure one is going to take him away and then he will never be allowed back, ever, never, ever. He isn't worried. If it happens it happens, he says. For the shortest of seconds you imagine him safe somewhere else, a child thief just like Mary Poppins. You allowed to walk out the front door at night, to go jogging. Running like the wind. Though you never run. Wouldn't know how. But that tiny taste of freedom is enough to bring the bitter taste of disgust at yourself dancing through your veins all over again. You are the kind of mummy who wishes her little boy away. You are a bad person. Simply typing these words, telling the awful truth is enough to prove that. You pack a gluten free flapjack into his little french nursery suitcase and hope he never discovers who you occasionally are.

Then you go to the library again. Frustration at your broadband problems making you feel snarly, then suddenly calm again. Sitting at the keyboard and letting your fingers make sense of everything. At home there is banana bread, wrapped in foil, on the delicious verge of staleness.  Later your little angel will snuggle up on the sofa with you, twisting your finger through his ringlets and talking nonsense, revealing more irrational wonder and worry and reminding you why. Why. Why. Tell me why little baby. I suspect you have the answers...

Because there is tomorrow Mummy? And banana bread? And 101 things to do before you die?Because we mustn't miss another episode of Horrid Henry? Because I love you?

Parking Ticket Mantra.

My head gets in a terrible fuddle in January. My inner perfectionist whispers "Yes but shouldn't January be a month of fresh starts and clean slates and brand new knickers?" My Mum says "Alison it's January baby, thats all. It'll all be over soon". And the rest of me pouts like a badly done to five year old and shouts "I know, but does fresh and and clean and new have to spell downright bloody miserable??"   

Tis officially miserable. The Daily Mail said so and you know what a font of wisdom they are. Apparently yesterday was "Miserable Monday" and it's all downhill from here. At least until those fuzzy wuzzy lambs are born and the Easter Bunny starts wrapping Swiss chocolate in extravagant bows. And lets face it, we haven't even got close to the endurance test that is February. In fact let's not bother with the whole caboodle. Sign my petition to do away with that particular lifetime of Valentines and leap years and lets eat chocolate instead.   Marks and Spencer's are now stocking a fine little box of violet and rose creams and blissful culinary oblivion is my own personal method of survival when life is leaving much to be desired.

We have you see acquired a vicious traffic warden who has seen fit to issue me with two £30.00 parking tickets in one week. The Man I Adored As A Teenager could fall in love with me, but ermmmm maybe not now...  and Finley is being assessed for dyspraxia tomorrow and upon questioning his teacher told me that they had decided to go down this route because he falls over a lot and cannot pedal a bike. Well yes said I, but I don't have a garden and thus he doesn't get much practice, to which she replied (brace yourself), well we are aware that there are social issues in the family. SOCIAL ISSUES! Hell's bells, as if being a single mother wasn't stigma enough in this little town, it is now clearly to blame for all manner of dubious health problems. I mean REALLY, could I not have tried harder to stay in my unmarried but still cohabiting (and thus almost socially acceptable) status and not inflicted a lovely little house with a happy little yard (but no garden) in the most affluent lane in the Northwest of England, upon my poor Coeliac ridden little boy???

It's enough to make your blood boil. But luckily I prefer my blood lukewarm and so I am doing my up-most in very trying circumstances to stay calm and rational and address those issues I can address and not bother worrying about all those things I cannot change. And so I have thrust upon myself a to-do list of wot nots that have been bothering the back of mind since around July 2005. I am in a fit of the "must be dones". Ironing everything I own. Printing off lists of bills so I can see things in black and white and not through my rather lovely rainbow tinted glasses. Filling boxes full 0f paperbacks read and albums full of photographs. Chucking out more than just the chintz and creating order where there is none...

I think you see, that this urge to tidy up when life feels so very messy is a very human trait. A reaction to all that won't obey the universe and do as you would have it done to you. I want parking tickets to disappear in a puff of smoke, men who declare themselves not good enough for me to let me make decisions on such matters, and  woman who are, like me, single parents through no fault of their own to never have to have their marital status referred to as an issue. To never again have to endure a raised eyebrow when it is duly noted that their surname differs to that of their child.

Goodness I'm in a rage! Don't panic, it won't last. I've never been able to bear a grudge. Not even against myself. So it's onward and upwards. Curry with a new man on Saturday night (And I don't even like curry!!). Parking tickets paid at the expense of goodness knows what and a meeting with the Special Needs lady tomorrow who will I think find me both defiant and determined to do the very best for my very very special child, dogged as I clearly am in their eyes, by all manner of problems said Daily Mail could  probably have a field day with...

But I would like, so very much, to learn to quiet my mind. To not feel the itch of frustration in my (broken) fingertips and listen instead to the sound of nothingness filling my mind. I've been reading Eat Pray Love and find myself consumed with envy at her ability to meditate, to sit at one with who she is and find forgiveness for all she couldn't be.

I find myself consumed with envy on a daily basis lately. Tis a terrible thing is envy. But this too will pass. This too will pass.

This too will pass. My very own mantra.

Never Dance By Yourself.

Bless my dotty socks. Bless me and  my crazy urge to bring  harm upon myself. Bless my urge to dance all by myself and do myself a damage.

On Boxing Day morning I was wandering up the stairs dancing to my own theme tune, when thwack! I swung my arm out in a diva kinda fashion at the height of my internal chorus and bashed my right hand so badly I keeled over in a dead faint in a rather fabulous impression of a badly insulted Victorian laydeee...

Pass the smelling salts please.

Then I came to,  threw up and took half an hour to get down the stairs and put in an emergency call to my Dad who arrived on his chariot and delivered me to my Mum, who said "There, there..." and that was the end of the matter. Except that it wasn't. Because first my typing hand swelled up like a big balloon. And then it went black and blue. And everyday tasks like tying my hair up,  filling the kettle, and writing my shopping lists were stupidly hard but had to be done regardless. And I carried on with all the delights of Christmas and dating and dancing and clapping so hard at a wedding I went green and then a kind of elephant lady deformity appeared and it became apparent that a trip to the minor injuries unit might be called for so I took myself there and wasn't even remotely surprised when the x-ray lady said, well, well, weelllll, never seen a fracture like this one, how on earth did you manage it? And I explained about my morning dance routine and she said well, perhaps it's time to lower the volume because you have fractured a bone in your hand and there is a bone in your little finger splitting and  how IN HEAVENS NAME have you been going about your business??

And I said I'm one tough cookie, and she said no you are a broken biscuit, and leaving it for two weeks before you came here was downright silly because the bones are already mending and the finger is splitting and who knows what we are going to do now? And I smiled in a positive fashion and agreed to see a specialist on Thursday and to never type, or write, or breathe again and  yes, it certainly seems like there is no end to my calamitous life....

But never mind. Because there is a splint till Thursday and horrible talk of a cast, and my hand is as gammy as my brain has always been,  but the rest of my world is kind of  scrumptiously happy...

But I'll tell you all about that next time I see you.

Festive Snapshot

It is eleven o'clock on Christmas Eve. You are lying almost naked in bed: still enough to hear the jingle of Rudolph's bells as he munches through yet another carrot, when you feel a flutter of something on your thigh. You ignore it and carry on reading something utterly scrumptious, sipping from a warm glass of cinnamon milk and feeling that the world is as it should be, when buzzzzzzzz, flitter, flutter, buzzzzzzzzzz, something crawls across your (slightly rotund) tummy and instinctively you swipe your hand across your stomach to catch it, throwing back layers of patchwork quilts, swearing like a fishwife and staring in astonished slow motion at the giant wasp attached to the little finger of your left hand.

Yes people, in the midst of a British Winter on the most festive night of all, a wasp had the downright bloody cheek to sting me! A wasp! Did he not know he should have died three months before? Had he been sharing my bed for all that time just waiting to inflict a teeny bit of festive misery upon my ample person?

When the scandal of it all was over and I had called almost everyone I know to report said misdemeanor (I suspect many thought I'd been on the juice), I lay awake worrying about the possibility of a hive of mean bee's in my mattress and thinking about the wonder that is Christmas and how the magic of it all never quite goes away even when you are thirty five and  nine months old. It maybe for children but it also exists to remind oh so dull grown ups that it is ok to shake off the monotony of maturity and wear a silly hat while you sup a glass of egg nog...

I'm Skippy the Kangaroo at Christmas. Stupidly delighted with teeny pleasures. Thrilled to bits with the mini pretend silver hip flask I got in my cracker and feeling full of festive cheer for people I don't particularly like. I'm the first one to shove a paper hat on my head and that person in the family determined to fit the sheer heaven that is a late afternoon nap into my Christmas Day. I go through my present pile a hundred times over piling on a quite ludicrous combination of scarves and slippers and necklaces and lipsticks just because someone cared enough to wrap them up for me and drink my last alcoholic drink with  my last mouthful of  turkey and start whining about  a hangover  as the credits start rolling on Coronation Street.

And so now another Christmas is over and the tingly freshness of a New Year full of promise is dancing in my exhausted old veins. The house is full of an exuberantly horrible amount of toy packaging and I simply cannot wait to make my annual excursion to the shops to select a diary resplendent with invisible joy and the kinds of teeny stings we swallow daily and if we are to become better people, set aside and smile long enough to start believing in our own contentment regardless.

I believe in it. I really do. My broadband still hasn't been re-connected and my piggy bank is empty. My darling son told me my eyes were "cracking" yesterday and his estranged Father wants to come home to a life less ordinary than the one he once chose to set aside for another day. My book remains a twinkle in my eye and the only thing sharing my bed is a overgrown wasp and yet and yet and yet...

The house is cosy and warm. I am wearing the cutest white fuzzy Nordic patt