City evening

It's the blue-grey gentle light of the evening. Not dark yet, not even twilight but the lights are on in the houses and the birds are singing about bedtime. She sits in the garden on a wooden chair drinking cider and listening to the sounds around her. In the distance someone is playing a piano. Above her a pigeon flaps in the Birch tree, trying to find a roost.

Gently all the little birds are warbling about nighttime.

There is a police siren.

She listens. 

She can hear the boy racers on the dual carriageway having their Saturday night show-off. Next door are cooking curry and she can hear the sizzle of the frying pan, she can smell the garlic and onion. A bird chip-chip-chip-chips in the big Evergreen tree a few doors down. Is it a blackbird? She doesn't know.  The cat that lives outdoors comes to see her, with it's rubbish miaow and bony body. She picks it up and strokes it, teases out the tangles, tries to straighten the tail that somehow once got broken, strokes it's little Bat-like leather ears. 

It's supposed to be Summer but it's not very warm.  None of the flowers are blooming that should be. 

She can hear the city and the ring road and in the distance the motorway. A car drives up the road, a rap music crescendo. 

Somebody shouts, somebody shrieks. 

It's too noisy and it's too crowded and there is nowhere to go to find peace. 

Another siren passes.

A poem by Alice Walker.

When I no longer have your heart I will not request your body Your presence Or even your polite conversation. I will go away to a far country Separated from you by the sea -on which I cannot walk- and refrain even from sending Letters Describing my pain. Alice Walker

Confession number 2.

They say it's not normal to feel as if killing yourself is a viable option, and that you should tell someone.  It's a 'red flag' in the mental illness stakes, a big ol' tick in the ALERT! ALERT! FUCKING DO SOMETHING box for any kind of mental health professional who may or may not be interested at any particular moment.

But I feel like this all the time, all the fucking time, so it's pretty normal for me, actually. It's normal.  And I'm not doing anything specifically worrying am I? I'm not stockpiling drugs or engineering motorway fates or casually sleeping with clearly unhealthy partners...I'm not measuring rope in Homebase or wobbling on the edge of the Selfridges bridge looking for a hole in the wire fence.

All I'm doing is just vaguely plotting. 

That's all I'm doing.

Constantly vaguely plotting. 

The downward spiral of Therefore.

Since I have not been able to skate (around mid-March) I have put on about a stone in weight, because cake + no derby = maximum storage.

As a direct result of this extra weight, I feel horribly unattractive and want to hide and I don't want to get my body out at the gym or anywhere that people who don't know me might see me. I don't even want my husband to see me and he's already said he loves me in all my seasons, fool that he is.

With nothing to do (or rather nothing I can cope with doing which involves exercise) I stay at home and find other more gentle, nurturing things to do.  I am very good at cooking.

I cook, therefore I eat.

Standing at the cooker, cooking when you know you shouldn't be is a demoralising, horrible, loathing feeling of failure; a lack of willpower and spinelessness.  Often there is cheese.  If there is cheese then I will eat it.  

Therefore I get fatter.

Therefore I feel horribly unattractive and want to hide and...hang on....

I seriously do not know how to extricate myself from this.

I think you'll find it's called roller DERBY, not roller blading, and let me tell you the two things couldn't be more different.

It's very difficult if people don't know about derby or understand what it is, to make someone realise how awful having it taken from you can be.

My consultant said, "I know you're worried abut your roller-blading" in a somewhat patronising voice.  Number one: It's not roller-blading, I don't swan up and down by the duck lake on the occasional saturday in the sunshine, I play a full contact aggressive sport that involves a lot of twists and turns and pivoting movements, which is the exact thing my knee is fucked from doing.

Number two: The longer I am not skating the fatter I get, the more unfit I get, the less relevant I get, the older I get.  I'm 40 playing a contact sport in a world where everyday the skaters are getting younger.  There is not long for me and I do not have much time.  Sitting about wasting three months isn't my idea of recuperation. 

But you see, that's the plan. I've got an official diagnosis:  I have a partial Anterior Cruciate Ligament tear in my right knee.  I was informed about this on Monday when the consultant was imagining Starlight Express or something equally as ridiculous.

Because it's only partial and my knee is strong they want me to do physio for three months and see how it goes before they think about operating.  Operating is bad and recovery takes a long time, I get that.  But you cannot repair an ACL naturally, the body doesn't supply blood to the area so it remains permanently torn.  What you can do is either strengthen all the muscles around the knee, or operate and sew up the tear and graft a piece of new ligament from somewhere else on.  Hurray then right?  Because option one will work, my knee will get strong and everything will be ok, yes?  Well...no.

No, because that usually only works on people who are fairly sedentary in their life and I am not.  I play a full contact sport, a full contact sport I practice 4 times a week which involves a lot of being...er not very sedentary at all.  I also do cross training for it. So either the consultant (who specialises in sports medicine) is confident that by some miraculous means it will be alright just by physio, or he has underestimated my activity level drastically.

I am reckoning on the drastic underestimation.

Another thing is that I need a knee brace but clearly the NHS being what it is these days and David Cameron basically deciding to personally sign the chit for every cup of doctor's tea, I'm not going to persuade the hospital to give me one, so I shall have to fund it myself.  The correct sports knee brace for an ACL tear is a CTi Off-the-shelf and comes in at the tiny little price of £399.  Which is just ridiculous, even if it does come in a range of exciting colours.

So now I'm stuck.  

Things I can do: I can cycle, and I can swim.  I HATE swimming. It makes me want to stab people.  Really, actually.  I can do weights and kettlebells.  Did I mention I hate the gym?  And I'm going to have to do all these hideous exercise type things that I hate not even to get better at skating, but just so that I don't get fat and unhealthy, whilst all the time trying to strengthen my knee, and what if non of it works in the end anyway?  

What if that?

All the everything is too overwhelming. 

Misery

Today I got the results about my knee from the consultant.

I am completely, totally and utterly gutted. I don't want to talk to anyone or see anyone. I just want to stay in bed and cry, I wish it would all go away. 

Things I know to be true list number four.

1. The rain in Spain doesn't fall mainly on the plain, it mainly falls over the Northern mountains, actually.

2. An afternoon nap is invaluable if you work at a job which needs dexterity and concentration and the twenty minutes you invest in sleep manifests in several more hours productive work. 

3. If my knee doesn't get fixed soon I am actually going to kill myself and then I won't have to be miserable anymore.

4. Working with my husband is delightful and inspiring. Lots of couples couldn't manage to be together all the time like we are, but it works for us. 

5. Spring came really late this year, the world is going crazy and not many people are even interested, let alone doing anything about it. 

6. There is no such place as 'away'. Where is away? When you throw something 'away' you are just making it a problem for someone else to deal with. 

7. Buying fresh flowers is worth it just for the smell your house is filled with when you come home from work. 

8. When people say they're really busy it just means you're not important enough to be part of their life. If you were, they would find time for you. 

9. On the subject of busy, most people use busy as a way to deflect from having to have time to think. Because thinking causes problems and is worrisome. 

10. Doubloon, indicative and ossify are all beautiful words. Glistening however, is not. 

Confession number 1.

Standing outside in the pouring grey dawn rain trying to feel less alive. Even in the Summer five A.M is an unearthly hour.

Every one of us has done something in their lives that they are ashamed of and that they cannot undo. I have done several. When I was 14 I pushed my Mum down the stairs in a fit of teenage temper. I forget what I was angry about, I expect she'd told me I had to be in by 10pm or something equally as reasonable.

I pushed her down the stairs and she hurt her knee quite badly and the next day she was due to go on a skiing holiday, the first proper holiday she had had in years.

She didn't get to ski much.

Things I Know to be True, List Number Three

1. You should never open the cheese before you need to because you will just eat it in tiny little slices.

2. It doesn't matter how careful you are with your children's attitude to gender, as soon as they reach school age someone else's kids will tell them boys don't cry at sad things and only girls wear pink.

3. It is always worth spending money on an excellent haircut.

4. Dogs leave massive holes in the material plane when they are dead, or even just not where you expect them to be.

5. It is impossible to feel gloomy on the first day it is warm enough outside not to need your coat.

6. If your child saves up all the toilet rolls to make a forest for dinosaurs you should definitely find the time to do it. My child did this once and I put it off and put it off and never made the forest. Seven years later I still feel bad about it.

7. Running away for a while sometimes works.

8. The investment Birmingham is making in its infrastructure will pay off.

9. Waiting is hard.

10. The Buzzfeed '50 people you wish you knew in real life' is always funny, however many times you've looked at it. I've looked so many times and I still like it just as much as I did the first time.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/people-you-wish-you-knew-in-real-life

What's the time, Mr Zombie?

One of the most interesting things about having children is how they start to want to look after you as they grow older, and they start to feel that you are their responsibility. This morning son number one showed me a Zombie Apocalypse bracelet he had made for himself out of four rubber bands. 'You should get one' he said, 'What if you need it and you haven't made one and you don't take my advice? Then you'll be dead.'

Obviously I don't need a rubber band bracelet, however necessary it might be during an actual Zombie Apocalypse but now because of son number one's insistence I'm starting to feel as if I might be unprepared and regretful if I don't fashion one, forthwith.

But it's alright though because apparently Even though I am hideously unprepared and not taking it seriously enough he's going to look after us all anyway and would never leave us to defend our weak selves. He with the four-rubber-band defence system of possibly being able to snap the arses of Zombies. Or something.

The subject of Zombie Apocalypse is so prevalent in my house that husband and he have an exact and specific objective for what to do in the event of one and I feel like I'm letting the side down if I haven't at least considered a basic survival plan. (I have, but I'm not telling you because it's a really good idea and I don't want anyone to steal it.)

So yes. Prepared for Zombies we indeed are.

Relief abounds.

In other Zombie news the smallest child revealed this evening that his favourite playground game is, 'What's the time Mr Zombie?' My mind boggles slightly at this; whatever happened to, 'What's the time Mr Wolf?'?

I asked if he knew what a Zombie was. 'Yes' he said, 'It walks along with its hands out front like this (holds hands up) and goes Wooo Woooo. And if it touches you, you're dead.'

So there you go.

The ghostliness of nothingness.

I don't have a list of three things, or two things or even one thing that is good about today. I don't have something clever to say.  I don't have a spiel about Feminism or a fancy little argument about the toys we foist on girls.  I don't have a deep rooted anger about supermarkets, or child-rearing or the lack of creative invention in a mono-culture, mega-factory based world.  I don't even have an inherent sadness and a willingness to detach myself anymore, which is slightly depressing; at least the overwhelming despair and secret plotting of self-destruction is an actual feeling.  This lack of anything is like being the pale grey mist on a drizzly Monday morning.

People keep emailing me.  Some of them are telling me they like what I write and it resonates.  That makes me sad, don't feel like me.  it's a crappy place to be.   Some of them are asking for advice (I don't have any).  Some of them are asking me to give opinions on things I genuinely wish weren't happening, some of them are cross with me for caring.  Some of them want me to pay them money I don't have and they're not even from Nigeria, they're real legitimate people with genuine monetary requests.

I'd like to go to bed and wake up somewhere else, as someone else, but ideally with none of my own memories too.  Someone else can be me. Like Orlando. I can be Orlando and Orlando can be me.


I'm failing at the list of good things about today so instead here is a list of some things I would like:

• Some really good smoked almonds from somewhere, like the kind I had in the Albert Hall.  I found the company who make them and I emailed them and they said I could buy 3kg for £40.  That feels like it might be a lot of smoked almonds.  Excessive, maybe.

• Some more commissions.

• For the car to stop breaking down ALL THE ***** TIME.

• Marmite crisps to be readily available in all supermarkets.

• My knee appointment not to have been put back another week.

• Not to always feel stuck in the middle and not really much wanted. I'd really like to have an actual value.

• A good night's sleep.