On why children should always be allowed to play in the snow, whichever shoes they have on.

The day before yesterday it snowed.

Mum and I are walking the dogs when it starts, but it isn't settling (except on the dogs and it sends them a little bit mad, like the wind does when it makes them race round and round the fields).

After we've walked them I go to get Harry from after school club and I drive there, and the snow is rushing at the windscreen and I am thinking, "You know, I'm sure it wasn't this bad when we were out before."

So I get to school and it's a bllzzard when I get out of my car, and I go into after school club and all the children have gone a little bit mad like dogs in the wind, and I get Harry and we run to the car, and then we drive to the recyling place to drop off all the boxes of cardboard and plastic and paper and glass and tin.

And normally Harry is in charge of cardboard because it's a light box to lift and also you have to climb stairs to the top of the skip and then hoy each item in, one by one. But this time he doesn't want to do it because of the whirling snow, so I do it all myself, only I have no gloves on because I didn't think it was going to be so awful, so my hands freeze and when I post the last of the old newspapers in the big letterbox of the paper skip the flap springs back and catches my fingers.

And I'm so cold that it hurts but it doesn't, you know that kind of inverse pain. So I get in the car and I try to warm my fingers up and then they really do start to hurt so I drive all the way home alternating going, "Oooooooowwwwwwwwww" with having my fingers kissed by Harry.

And then we get home and by the time we get home it has snowed so much that it comes up to Harry's ankles and the world has been whitened and quietend and the dog is staring out of the window with a look of anxiousness on his face.

So I come in and I check the internet and have a brief conversation about how lovely snow is with my friend online when I suddenly see Harry, outside, in his school blazer, school shoes, and no scaft, or gloves or hat.

So I run outside and get him to come back in and reclothe him in the appropriate garments, and I get my own coat and boots on and we go outside and we spend half an hour gooning about building a snowman and I get my stripey scarf and hat to put on him and a carrot for a nose, and Harry finds stones for his face and sticks for his arms and the snowman is totally ace.





Even if his head is a little lopsided.

In 6 years we have never had enough proper snow to build a complete snowman like this.

So of course Harry is totally wired about it and we run around and I take a picture and he says, "He won't go by tomorrow, will he?" and I promise he won't and we have tea and Harry goes to bed.

And in the morning, when we wake up, the snowman is still there, but so is all the snow.

So Harry is delighted and literally dances off to school and by about 3pm the snow has started to melt but that's OK because Harry will have had 2 playtimes at school, in the snow, throwing snowballs and playing with his friends.

***

So.

I pick him up from school and we come home and we're sitting there doing his homework (multiples of 10 in your head) and I say, "Was it fun to play in the snow with your friends?"

(Remember, he is 6. And In 6 years there hasn't been enough snow during the daytime for him to play in. This is the very, very first time it has ever happened.)

And he says, "Oh, I wasn't allowed to play in the snow because I didn't have my wellies."

And I say, "Pardon?"

And he says, "No, it was me and Hannah that didn't have our wellies, so we had to watch 'Tom and Jerry' inside, instead."

And he carries on doing his homework.

And I am livid.

Hannah and Harry had to watch 'Tom and Jerry' whilst everyone else in the whole school played in the snow for the first time in 6 years.

6 years.

His whole lifetime.

And I can't believe it. I feel so angry. Why didn't they ring me? Why didn't they ring me and say, "If you want him to play in the snow can you bring his wellies here?"

I would have brought him some wellies to school. I would have gone to the shop and bought him some wellies since he doesn't have any because he always wears his walking boots.

And why would they stop a 6 year old from playing in the snow because he had his school shoes on?

Because his shoes might get ruined?

So what? I wouldn't have cared.



And it makes me cry.

And Harry sees me crying, and he says, "Sorry Mummy."

And I try to explain that I am angry at the school for being so pedantic and that it's not him, not at all.


But he doesn't believe me, because later, when his Grandma comes and asks him if he had a nice time playing in the snow at school he says;

"Oh, yes Grandma.

It was fun."

The Sufi mystic Mansur Al Hallaj was meditating once, when he suddenly exclaimed "I am the Truth! And there is nothing in my Turban but God!" There were a number of devout Muslims around who heard him, and they immediately assumed he was blaspheming, so they took him and burnt him at the stake.

That night, one of the killers had a vivid dream. In it he was looking at the stake, when he saw the soul of Mansur Al-Hallaj leave its body and ascend directly into the Seventh (i.e. Highest) Heaven. This troubled him. He cried out: "Allah! When Pharaoh said 'I am God' he was damned for blasphemy! But when Al-Hallaj said it he is taken up into Heaven! How can this be right?"

Thereupon, he heard the voice of Allah: "When Pharaoh said 'I am God', he forgot Me and thought only of himself. But when Al-Hallaj said 'I am God', he forgot himself and thought only of Me. Therefore in Pharaoh's mouth it was a curse; but in Al-Hallaj's mouth it is a Blessing."

Sleep is where I get to be a Viking!

Ralph, The Simpsons.

House!



Isn't it sweet?!

Simple Things.

This makes me so happy.

In a little javascript window when you enter one of the Ashtanga Yoga sites I know it says: Namaste. Welcome to Indian Yoga. Have peace and health. Happy Surfing.

How cute is that?

Normally those windows say things like: You have not entered your correct telephone code and you are therefore thick and stupid. Go back and do it again.

And by the way.

Happy Birthday Dad.

I guess it's still OK to say Happy Birthday? Even though you're not here anymore.

Random Yet Strangely Interesting Conversation Of The Day

In the carpet shop, buying carpet (no, really?) for the new house, the carpet salesman and I had this conversation:

Me, pointing at horrible flowery carpet samples: Who on earth buys those?
Him: The further north you go, the more patterned carpets are sold.
Me: Is that true?
Him: Yes. It's a well known fact in the carpet industry.
Me: Really? But why?
Him, sagely: Just think of Blackpool landladies.

On Why Ebay Is No Longer A Good Thing.

See this little guy?



This here is Peter Rabbit. He's a bit bigger that he looks in the picture, in fact he's 18 inches tall. I know this not because I have measured him but because I have just bid (and been outbid) for him on Ebay.

Why did I want him? I didn't, but Matilda (see previous post) did. She just didn't know it yet. And Matilda's Mum wanted him too. And the reason they wanted him is because currently there resides in this house a Peter Rabbit exactly like that one, only 6 years older and therefore 6 years more cuddled. Peter Rabbit who lives in this house (as opposed to the one who lives on Ebay) currently has velour on his tummy that is so thin he's going to need major patching surgery soon. Currently Peter who lives in this house has no carrot, since it was chewed off by Harry when he had no teeth and was less than 6 months old. Currently Peter who live in this house sleeps wrapped up next to Harry in his bed every night and has done for the last 6 years and 27 days.

You see, Peter Rabbit who lives in this house was bought for Harry 6 years and 27 days ago on the day that he was born, and the person who bought him was Matilda's Mum.

Harry's Godmother.

My very, very, best friend.

Peter Rabbit who lives in this house has been Harry's companion for every day of his life apart from a two week stint where he was left behind at someone's house and no-one could track him down (and Harry was distraught so we told him that Peter went to the pub and would be back soon. Why this should make things alright I don't know, but it did, and to this day Harry still refers to the time Peter went to the pub).

So you see it's only right and proper that Matilda should also have a Peter Rabbit and that it should be the exact same one that her Mum bought Harry all those years ago. Only the company which used to make them doesn't make them like that anymore, which is why I spent 3 hours Googling this afternoon seaching for a shop which sold one but to no avail, and which is why I ended up bidding for him on Ebay this evening.

So I bid. (It's worth noting at this point that I have never been outbid before so it never occurred to me that I wouldn't win.) I set my limit at 30 dollars. I thought, 'that's enough, who the hell else would pay 30 dollars for a stuffed rabbit?' Apart from me of course.

But someone did. Someone paid 33 dollars precisely. If I had have known, I would have paid 40 dollars, 50 dollars. Who knows? But I didn't. The winning bid was a last second entry, possibly courtesy of those tiny Ebay outbid pieces of software, you know the ones that crash in at the last second and win the prize.

Anyway.

So now I don't have him.

So Matilda doesn't have him.

So Matilda's Mum doesn't have him.


Fucking Ebay.


Where the hell am I going to find one now?

Matilda.

My best friend has had her baby and she's called Matilda. She was 11 pounds and 5 ounces. She had her just now.

Hello there Matilda, do you look like your Mummy I wonder?

How utterly, utterly lovely!

Hmmm. Maybe I should stop using this blog as a 'one way mouthpiece.' A change of subject is very much in order I think.

So, today's subject is:

Getting The Very Best Out Of Yourself.

When you have a big thing to do (a project or a big decision) if it's something life changing and something which is really important to you you owe it to yourself to give it your best.

Giving something your best is never easy because there are always other factors which can get in the way. But there are a few simple rules which can only help you to be the very best you can be whilst you are doing your big thing. Of course, they are things that we all know, they have to be, because they're simple rules. But sometimes we all of us need a little bit of reminding.

The Simple Rules

1/Eat.
Eat well and often. If you are the sort of person that forgets to eat, each morning plan every meal that you will eat that day, and make sure you have the correct ingredients. And eat good things, but ones that you like.

2/Sleep.
Sleep properly and at regular times. Go to bed early and get up early. Going to bed late and getting up late makes anyone feel slack and the worst thing you can feel when you have a big thing to do is feel slack. Anyway, when you sleep you dream, and dreaming is a seriously special way to while away some hours.

3/Drink.
Drink water. Lots of it. Mordant Carnival has already said this once today so I find myself repeating her because she is right; If you don't have one, buy a pint glass and drink out of that. You need to drink at least two and half pints of water a day to make your head clear and your eyes shine and your skin bright and get that all round feeling of wellness. And it makes you look beautiful which means you're more inclined to feel beautiful inside and if you feel beautiful inside, well then you feel confident. (see 12/).

4/Don't Drink.
Don't drink alcohol, that is. Or rather, drink in moderation. Having a glass of wine or a beer in the evening is fine - I'm talking about drinking pints and pints all in one go. Drinking alcohol also makes you smoke more, and smoking as we well know is bad, bad, bad for all sorts of reasons - you can pick whichever one suits you best.

5/Don't Smoke.
Don't smoke, or if you can't not smoke, smoke less. Smoking sucks.

6/Enjoy The Nervousness.
Feeling nervous is good. It's your body's way of preparing you for the task ahead and as the very best actors all say, once you stop getting nervous your performance goes downhill.

7/Don't Fret.
Worrying about something can't change it, so what's the point in wasting time over it? Plus, also, big things are not usually embarked upon unless the embarkee is either good at them or knows deep down the decision is right. So there is no need to worry anyway.

8/Enjoy The People Who Care.
The people who care are our life-support systems and they are a good, good thing. If you have one, or some, or even many (in which case you are very lucky) bask in their caring, and welcome it. It's a strong energy they are giving you and you can use it for your big thing.

9/Focus.
Focus on the project/decision/plan/task and visualise it all being perfect. But don't focus too much or you're back in the 'Don't fret' bit, going round in circles.

10/Occupy Yourself.
Occupy yourself doing things that you enjoy, or if you have chores to do, do them. But don't sit about navel gazing and generally being introspective. You don't have to do huge tasks, because, don't forget you're preparing yourself for the main big thing in front of you. But if you are a bit proactive and get-go-ey then at the end of the day you'll feel tired and want to go to bed early, and...oh look....we're back in the circles thing again. (See 2/).

11/Get Some Exercise.
Go for a walk. Go to the gym. Whatever. Exercise is all good.

And finally...

12/Have Confidence.
Have lots of confidence in yourself. Keep telling yourself that 'you are, you can, you do, you will'.

You are.
You can.
You do.
You will.


So there you are. A little bit more from the Olulabelle bird in the gilded cage, singing lovely things especially for the people who are listening carefully for the sound.

...Please keep your hands down
And stop raising your voice
It's hardly what I'd be doing if you gave me a choice
It's a simple suggestion can you give me some time
So just say yes or no
Why can't you shoulder the blame
Coz both my shoulders are heavy
From the weight of us both
You're a big boy now so let's not talk about growth
You've not heard a single word I have said...
Oh, my God...

Snow Patrol, How To Be Dead.

On Not Having Something, Or Ownership Of People.

Not having? Not having?
He's not a thing to have. I don't want to have him, I just want to look after him, love him, care for him, run his bath and make him scrambled egg which he doesn't want to eat.

Not having? Not having?
So he doesn't need me then? Doesn't need the person who shines his shoes and irons his trousers and remembers his tennis racquet and changes his bedlinen (and always asks him who he wants on his bed this week) and buys the right soap and knows when it's Show and Tell day, and never forgets the crisps and owns the dog that he loves so much?

He doesn't need the person he runs to first when he falls and scrapes his knees?

Not having? Not having?
Could you really be so angry with me, could you really feel so hurt that you would go against everything he has said that he wants, just to upset me? Could you really be so angry that you would go forego everything that is best for him, just to make a vicious, pernicious point?

Not having indeed.

The Little Minder Monster.

I have a little Minder Monster.

It sits on my shoulder and it checks.

What do you think it is checking for?

It used to sit on my shoulder and stop but it's suddenly lost its stop power, so now all it can do is uselessly check instead.

I wonder what it thinks it might find? I wonder what it thinks it might do if it does find anything anyway? It can't stop anymore.

___check check check check___AHA WHAT IS THIS?___Computes___OH. IT IS SOMETHING THAT I CANNOT STOP.___check check check check___

You think I am horrible about it? Horrible to it? I don't mean to be. Poor little redundant Minder Monster. I feel a bit sorry for it to be honest. It must feel useless sitting there checking for nothing in particular. Stopping was a good job, a real, vital, active job. It must have felt worthy, strongly alive when it was stopping.

If you ask me, checking is a rubbish job to have.

If I were it, I would give it up and get another more worthwhile pastime instead.

Religion, Great Aunts and more dire funerals.

When I was five my strict, challenging, lovely Great Aunt got down on her hands and knees and let me ride around the garden on her back because I was pretending she was a horse.

When I was eight she washed my mouth out with soap and water because I said "Bugger." Once. Quietly.

When I was sixteen and got my G.C.S.E's she said, "Of course they're not bad, but you could have done a lot better if you had just applied yourself a little bit more." She was a Headmistress you see.

When I was twenty five she said to my husband when I took him to meet her, "I'm sure you must be very handsome, but I can't see you until I sit down." Because by then she was so bent over with Osteoperosis that her main view was mostly of the floor.

This is the Great Aunt who spoke fluent French and German, and who (according to her passport stamps) spent a long time in France during the war, but who denies ever working for the Resistance.

This is the Great Aunt who had a different pair of coloured leather gloves for every single occasion. And a hat to match.

This is the Great Aunt who's retirement plan was to travel around the world in her car, but who's 'God' took her sight away before she could.

This is the Great Aunt whom I am named after. 'Great Aunt Isabella', or to me and you 'Auntie Ella'. And randomly, nearly everyone else knew her as 'Katie' but no-one seems to have any idea why.

This is the Great Aunt who's funeral I attended today. And what a lot of them there seem to be lately.

But this one is different. This one is really High Church. Since she was very religious they have pulled out all the stops. There are at least three Vicars, a Canon, several Lay Preachers, heaps of prayers, five hymns, a ceremonial reading, a lot of 'committing this body to God', pomp, circumstance and me busily studying the upside-down prayer cushion for most of the service, trying to decipher the date that it was stitched in.

(And also noticing that the Canon obviously smoked a lot of gear in his cassock in his spare time since he had a lot of hot rock burns in it, all down the front of it.)

So I deal with the pretence of prayers and the miming of hymns I don't know, and the eulogies, but then if that wasn't bad enough we the family have to follow the pall bearers out of the church whilst everyone else stands and watches, and I am aware of them all looking at us to see if we are crying, all of them staring at us and silently accusing us of not being the perfect family, of only caring for her now she is gone, of only wanting the inheritance, and not being bothered about the illness, of not putting her in a good enough home and what was she doing in a home ANYWAY...

...tut...

And we have to follow whilst they carry the coffin round to the graveyard, and then have to stand by the side of the weirdly deep hole (why is it so deep?) And do the whole "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust" thing, and we throw little Sillers onto the coffin because they were her favourite flower and my Auntie Rosie picked them in her garden especially, just before the funeral.

But it was exactly what my Great Aunt wanted. She would have loved the ceremony of it all, the importance, the fact that in her final moment she was having all the glory after her years and years and years of selfless Churchy service. Because she spent thirty years dedicated to this particular little village church, writing prayers, reading sermons, organising flowers. Generally caring...

So why is it that when I know this was what she wanted and had specifically requested, why is it that the whole time we are burying her I am picturing her being dead and being in the coffin and slowly rotting away, and the worms coming and the mould coming and the maggots coming, and I am just wishing she had chosen to be cremated because it's so much cleaner, so less messy, so much more dealable with. For me.

But she was worried, you see.

She was worried that if she was cremated then there would be nothing to resurrect.

She was worried that if she was cremated then there would be nothing to resurrect, and this mattered to her because she truly, utterly, totally believed that One Day The Resurrection Definitely Would Happen.

Bless her.

The cottage that Harry and I will move into in just under 3 weeks is teeny. And very old. Teeny, higgledy piggledy house, with twisty weird steep stairs and peculiar cupboards in odd places, and hardly any kitchen at all. To get to it you either have to drive through the Longleat estate if the gates are open, or go down an impossibly narrow and winding road, or go 10 miles out of your way all the way round to the other side of the village and come in past the muddy farm.

Apparently the cottage used to belong to an old, old lady who had lived there all her life and who was either a bit mad or a Witch, depending on whom you ask in the village. (I am totally in the Witch camp myself, since you ask.)

And it's all totally fine, only I've got a picture trauma. A picture-which-you-hang-on-your-wall trauma. (Well, it's not so much a trauma as a small problem as I guess I can find somewhere to store them, but still...)

You see, the problem is that the whole of the new house is about as big as just one of the rooms in this one, so I have all these weird Victorian prints and photographs from my Dad, and random paintings by obscure artists and whatever that I really like and belong especially to me and which I really ought to take, but which are just not going to fit. In any shape or form.

And it galls me slightly, since I do tend to subscribe to the 'A house with Art in it is a better place to be' school of thinking.

But in thinking about that I have also noticed that when I don't seem to be feeling very artistic myself I tend to surround myself with other peoples creations, and maybe that's why I now have such a pile of it in the Bella's stuff corner of the sitting room.

So I think what I'll have to do is this: I'll just have to keep the 'Art in the cottage' by making sure that this time, this time I'm doing it myself.

On the way back we see a cloud of tiny birds, there must be thousands of them all flying together like a swarm of bees. They don't seem to be going anywhere, the cloud stays mainly in the same place, just changing shape over and over.

They could be starlings since they flock in winter, a murmeration of starlings. Or swallows. A flight of swallows.

Anyway, it's beautiful to watch. They look like seaweed does when you view it underwater; each tendril separate but creating a feeling of gentle conformity as together they follow the movement of the sea.

I watch the cloud as it slowly twists and turns, morphing from one shape to another; a circle, a V an S, a wave, a curious, curvy flower. Each bird must be working furiously to keep its correct place within the cloud: up, then left, then down, then left, then right, then left again, and over and over, but from down here it looks so perfect, so simple and easy.

Like a beautiful balletic sculpture in the sky spelling out symbols especially for me to see.

The sole survivor of an atomic war,
Who was also a bit of a joker,
Arrived in a land where
Everything had forgotten what it was.
He said to an old tree,
"Repeat after me, I am a bomb."
"I am a bomb," said the old tree,
And promptly exploded.
This goes to show,
You can never be too careful
You are the sole survivor.

Roger McGough.

Oh.

*Breathes.*

*Whispers*...the house...

It looks like this might just be alright, like it maybe could actually go ok. This time. Relief too soon? But what can happen?

Can anything happen?

I wish I could go to sleep for the next three weeks, wake up on the 12th March and it all be cool.

What is this?



And should I open it?

And, by the way, ...

The opposite of love is indifference, not hate.

That is why I can laugh on the phone with people who call me. Because I am indifferent to you now.

The biggest and the hardest thing to learn when you have been criticized and made to feel stupid for years and years, is that it isn't actually who you truly are.

You have to recognize the beginning of the feeling (I feel stupid, I am stupid, everyone hates me, my family hates me, I am always wrong, I am worthless) and halt the feeling as soon as it starts.

You have to say to yourself "I am not stupid, this person is only saying this to be controlling, this person is angry with me, my family loves me, I am not wrong, and I am not worthless."

For a while I have actually been saying this to myself whenever the situation occurs, but it is difficult because everyone looks at you like you're a maddist. *Thinks.* (Actually, this could be more learned self criticism, and no-one actually thinks that at all.)

But anyway. I have found that the easiest thing to do to get out of the critical/self critical cycle is to mentally visualise myself knocking the thoughts on the head cartoon style with a great big stick.

Whack! And away flies the feeling of worthlessness.
Whack! And away flies the feeling of stupidity.
Whack! And away flies the self-hate and the self-rejection.

So when you say my family and my friends are all terrified of me because I am such a horrific person, and that is the only reason why they say they are on my side, I say:

Whack!

And you can no longer control me.

Whack!

And your viewpoint is irrelevant.

Whack!

And I can feel sorry for you because you seem to be unable to survive without someone to control, to hate, to viciously maim.

But the victim you had has learned how to get out, and is getting up and going...and is gone.

And before anyone tells me, I do know they're not as powerful if you don't make them yourself, but really, do you think I have the time?!

All day I've been reading advert after advert for houses to rent and they almost all exclusively say; NO DSS, NO CHILDREN, NO PETS.

No pets? Well maybe, but he's only a little dog, not a great big barky Alsation. But no children?

Sorry? No children?

*sigh.*

It's all so depressing, and you know, once you decide to do something, you've just got to do it haven't you? You don't want to sit through the atmosphere and the underlying current of fear anymore, you don't want to wait for available in April you want available NOW. Now this minute, give them the money, get your stepmum to say what a good tenant you are, get a van, get some crap furniture from Ikea or wherever, get the few things you're taking from home, get the dog, get the boy, get there, get in.

And then. Then what?

Sit on the floor and sob for a while about how you managed to fuck your life up this badly, dust yourself down, start to unpack, smile about how you've done the right thing for everyone, open a bottle of wine and get unpacking.

Oh.

I wish I had a real fairy godmother to magic me a house *Tommy Cooper style.

Doesn't anyone with time on their hands who is good at sigils fancy making me an urgent one for it?



* justlikethat.

It's so easy to say, I know, but breaking up a marriage is never easy. Even if you're doing it for all the right reasons and you both agree that there is no other solution and it's all gone wronger than wrong, well it's still awful and there's no getting around the fact that you feel like you've let everybody down, it hurts everyone, it's utterly horrible, it's financially ruinous and emotionally devastating.

Because, in the end it doesn't matter who said to what to whom about who and when or if they said it, or who did what to whom because of who and when or if they did it. The fact of the matter is that when you first embarked upon the marriage you thought it was forever, you thought you would be together till you were old, you were so determined to never, never, ever walk in your parents footsteps and repeat the cycle all over again.

Yet still. Still you do.

And it's all just so utterly, awfully sad. All the dividing up of things, the splitting of possesions, the "Your Mum bought us this, so you have it and I'll have that because my Dad bought it"-ness. Pointlessness decision making that you have to go through because somehow, someway you have to divide up the life you spent so long creating and make two new separate lives out of the parts of the old one.

(And I don't even know if it's possible. How do you create two new things out of one old one without someone missing something? Surely there must be a vital, central component which nothing functions without but which someone ends up not having?)

And you accumulate so much stuff along the way.

Torches and old pillowcases and pictures and maps and old suntan lotion and crap saucepans that the handle is broken on so you should have thrown it away long ago, and noticeboards and gardening gloves and watering cans and hold-all's and boxes of spraypaint and never fitted light-fittings and lamps and chairs and...and...drawers and drawers full of odds and sods which no-one particularly used or wanted when you were together, so why the hell would anyone want it now that you are not?

And it's the stupid little things like who gets the shoe cleaning stuff that get me. How do you divide that up? I mean, we both have shoes; we both have black shoes. So we both need it. Maybe we are supposed to get a little knife...(but who gets the knife?)...and cut the polish down the middle really evenly?

And the dog and the cat and the Hoover and the iron and the old tins of paint and the bathroom mirror and the box of useful card and the plants and the Hodder clock. (Oh. No. That's yours because it came via your family.) And the assorted crap mugs and the wedding present glasses, and the cheese grater and the potato peeler and the telly and the stereo, and let's not even get started on the C.D's.

And the clock-radio that has woken you up for the last 6 years.

And the marital bed.

And the framed photograph of you at your wedding that hangs in your bedroom and that you were so confident about and that you treasured so much when you got married that in the back of the frame you hid a letter for your future children to read when you die...

Eeeny, meeny, miny, mo.

Who. Gets. What?

But the totally devastating, unmentionable, impossible, properly heart-breakingly sad bit of dividing things up is this:

How do you divide up a child?

How do you divide up a tiny little boy who is totally innocent, who loves you both equally, and wants more than anything in the world for you to be friends again and for it all to be alright?

How do you divide up a little boy who gets out of the bath and says, "I love you soooo much Mummy," and you say "Well I love you soooo much too." And then he says, "And you love Daddy too, don't you? Say you do? Please, Mummy, please, please, please say you love Daddy?"

How do you deal with that?

And then you have to have this kind of conversation with your tiny little boy on the subject of renting a new house without Daddy in it:

Him: "Mummy, I am not happy about this house moving thing."
Me: "OK, well, why don't you tell me what makes you unhappy?"
Him: "Well, if it's someone elses house will it be full of their toys?"
Me: "No, darling, no of course not. We're borrowing the house because we won't own it, but there won't be anything in it apart from our things. We'll take all your toys and clothes and whatever you want to take. But some of them will stay in Daddy's house here for when you stay here."
Him: "Can I take my Lego? ...And Peter Rabbit?"
Me: "Anything you want. And you'll get a new bed and everything."
Him: "Hurray! Can it be a bunk bed?"

Pause.

Him: " But Daddy won't be there with us?"
Me: "No darling. He'll be here in this house, but you can see him whenever you want. You can ring him up whenever you need him or want to see him. Whenever you like. You can see him as much as you want."
Him: "Oh."



Big pause.



Him: "Mummy I've decided. I've decided I want to stay with you for one week and then Daddy for the next week. But you first."
Me: (Trying really hard not to cry)"That's a really good idea, sweetie. You are clever at making decisions."

Pause.

Me: "It'll be alright you know, in the end. There'll be no more arguing and you won't feel so worried and you'll still see me and Daddy all the time."

Him.
Unconvinced.

"Mmmm."

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings...

La, la, la...my Auntie Ella died yesterday.

I wish everybody would stop dying around here.

You can be cross. You can be as angry as you like but it doesn't change things in any way. All anger does is serve to fuel the bitter, raging, hating creature that is eating you up from the inside out, and by fueling it you are allowing it to eventually become you.

If you are not careful, very soon all that you will be is the bitter raging hating version of yourself, and the other bit, the bit that people once loved will be permanently, irretrievably gone.

Stop it.

Stopitstopitstopitstopitstopit all of you.

None of you owns me. I don't belong to any of you. I am me, mine, my own, belong to myself and that is all.

On and on and on until it kills you, what's the point? Really? What is?

The frustrating thing about dreaming is that sometimes you just don't get it. And you know you are destined to spend the whole day wandering around wondering about it and muttering insanely to yourself as you try to figure out what the hell it means.

I hate me.

I look back on this blog and all I talk about is Harry.

Not that there is anything wrong at all with talking about Harry, but still, you know...


I imagine I'm boring you all witless.

I've got this funny little gadget which is a bit like a Pedometer only it's not a huge wheel, and you don't have to push it in front of you whilst you're walking. What you do is, you set your step length (0.54m) and your weight (not telling) and then you press 'go', clip it onto your belt and it tells you a/how far you have walked, b/how many steps it took and c/how many calories you burned doing it.

It's a great thing to have for walking the dog because it makes you feel like you are achieving some sort of personal fitness level whilst you're doing it.

Today I walked 3.58km, which was 6650 steps and I burned 250 calories, which isn't very many. That's equivalent to, at the very most, 1 piece of not very fattening cake.

Anyway, it's a really clever pice of tiny technology. I don't know exactly (or at all) how it works but it certainly has something to do with movement, because you can't just press 'go' and go nowhere because if you do the data doesn't change. We've experimented. You have to move (or shake the thing about) to make the data change which has to mean it records actual movement rather than time.

I am totally foxed by it. Today I said to Harry, mid-walk, "I really don't know how this works. It's very clever. How does it know how far I am going?"

I wasn't really expecting an answer. But he looked at me and said in all seriousness, "Perhaps it's got tiny eyes which we can't see, and it's counting really quietly."

Yes.

Perhaps it is.

And you know? I much prefer the idea that there is a litle gremlin inside the machine, secretly looking where we are going and counting my steps really quietly to any suggestion that there is a serious technological explanation for how the thing works.

I'd far rather support his reasoning than subscribe to one of those dull yet sensible rational scientific explanations.

Wouldn't you?

On why having only a little reading ability can lead to a lot of confusion.

We've got this game. It's called 'Travel the World', and it's supposed to teach children basic Geography. It's a great game, not in the least because I know know where Venezuela is. I know this on account of having spent four consecutive go's missing a turn with my little yellow piece sadly sittling in Caracas because I couldn't spin a boat to get out of the goddam country. Because obviously, as everyone knows, you can't cross the sea in a bus or a car.

Anyway, there are two ways to play 'Travel the World' and the second way involves one player choosing a 'postcard' card. There are heaps of postcard cards, each one has a city written at the top, and then a picture relevant to that particular country. So, for example the 'France' postcard has a picture of the Eiffel Tower and the word 'Paris' on it.

The idea is, a player describes the picture or reads the capital, and everyone else guesses which country it is. (And by the way, the capital of Zaire is Kinshasa, if you didn't know.)

Simple no? You'd think so, wouldn't you? But what happened for us was this:

Harry chooses a card and says the following: "You find them in fun-fairs, they're big, scary but lots of people still like them."

Blank looks all round.

We think. "Big wheel...London...UK?"
Harry: "No."
We think some more: "Roller Coaster...Orlando...America?"
Harry, gleefully: "Nope!"

After about ten minutes of racking our brains, wrongly guessing and Harry dancing round and round the table apparently delighted at our uselessness I finally take the card from him and have a look. Instead of describing the picture (of two people Flamenco dancing) and reading the city out, he's apparently decided to try and describe the city. The city is Madrid.

Me: "But Harry, this says Madrid!"

Big silence.

Harry goes red.

"Oh," he says, sheepishly.

"I thought it said Mad Ride."