On deliberately making yourself sad.

Anyone who has broken up with someone, or who has experienced the death of a person they love knows very well how to do this. You play songs, very loudly, that make you cry, that have too much emotion attached to them, that take you to places you really shouldn't be. Often you do this when you've had too much to drink, which I have, and when you aren't actually keen to go to bed yet, which I'm not, for the principle reason that I have a vague hope the alcohol might go out of my system in time to feed the baby.

I must just point out that I know this is wishful thinking. The baby is clearly just going to sleep very well this night.

Probably that makes me a bad mother.

So.

Playing sad songs.

In fact it's not so much making yourself be sad as allowing yourself to be sad. I think it's probably cathartic in many ways, actually.

The way I personally do it is to play songs that either remind me of being small, or play songs my Dad loved.

The best one for me is 'Dreamer' by Supertramp. When I hear this it makes me whirl around like a little girl in a party dress with a full skirt. And sing words like 'stupid' really loudly. Eternally, I will be six when I listen to this song and I cannot reframe it or move on and I don't really want to. I like the fact that I have a tool which takes me back to a place I can't go otherwise. You know, I don't often get to wear a party dress in my mind or in real life, so when I do I really relish it.

When you have your father near you are sometimes able to opt out of being grown-up. You can slip back into the child role, you can be the little girl who doesn't have to make decisions, or find the money, or fix it, or know things, because your Dad is the one that does that.

And that's why it's fabulous being six. Just for a little bit. Instead of being adult and sensible and Mummy, and 'in charge' and 'making the dinner' I get to shriek and dance and jump up and down and act a bit silly and twirl around and be someone's little girl with no responsibilities.

And when I do that I can really, properly remember my Dad.

On betrayal

This morning we went to the children's hospital because the baby has to have regular blood tests. He sat in the waiting room beaming at everyone and cooing and generally being charming and then we went into see the phlebotomist. In the children's hospital you have to follow footprints to either Room 1 or Room 2 when your turn comes for a blood test so we made our way to Room 2 following the prints to show the baby, because we've only ever been to Room 1 before.

Room 2 has minty green walls and a lovely smiling lady waiting for us at whom the baby promptly grins at and says, "Oooo-ah-o."

So we sit down and the baby continues his display of lovely smiles and babbly oo-aaahing and then the phlebotomist says, "Oh dear, please don't smile at me like that" and stabs him in the arm. At which point he gives her this shocked look so full of hurt that she is almost unable to draw the blood she needs, she feels so bad.

So the lovely smiley lady turned out to make horrible hurty pain and the baby learns in one tiny moment that actually it is possible to be betrayed.

This person is the reason I have not been blogging much over the last four months:



He is thirteeen weeks old, his name is Solomon and his nickname is Solly Boppit because he randomly waves his limbs in many different directions.

The other day he slept through the night for the first time and I got all complacent, but then last night I was woken up every three hours.

I am Lady Tired of Bedfordshire.

On clouds

Sometimes on occasional days when the Cumulus clouds were low on the horizon and the houses in front hid the place where they ended I used to pretend that I lived in a really mountainous place, like the Swiss Alps. I discovered that if you scrinched your eyes a little bit you could make the clouds become mountains and for a little while the place you live in suddenly because hugely exciting. I don't know why mountains made life appear to be so much more exciting. It's not that I ever really had a hankering to be Heidi or anything.

When I was a little girl I used to do this. Sometimes I still do.