12th March 2008

Insomnia

Suicide

It’s 3 am. An Asian man woke me up talking on his mobile in the street. ‘We must meet and discuss this.’ he said ‘What do you think of the United States of America ?’

He woke me at 2 am but I couldn’t go back to sleep because there is a terrible gusty wind and dustbins kept cart wheeling down the road, a fox shrieked and barked, Buddy banged on the letterbox and then ran away. There are rogue foxes that eat cats, they bite their legs off. I am afraid for Buddy. The baby next door is screaming. I hate London.

Somewhere out in the country there is silence. There is complete darkness The foxes slink quietly along the edges of fields looking for pheasants not cats. There are wheely bins rocking gently in the wind and all the Asian men are tucked up in bed never giving the United States of America a second thought. I want to live in the country.

Also, I am being stalked by depression. The chasm has opened and gapes at my feet, the long pale bones lurk in the periphery of my vision and I leave wet black finger marks on every thing I touch. Of course this time it won’t get me but I have to admit I am very afraid. I can’t sleep when I am afraid.

I will read a book until I am tired. It’s called Notes From An Exhibition and it’s crap. It’s cheering to read crap books that are also best sellers. Everyone in it has a silly name and it is full to the brim with extraneous information, as in : ‘She reminded him of Laura and Midge, the clean living picture restoration students whose flat he used to share.’ Clean living Laura and Midge ? Why ? Also lots of random people keep saying ‘Oh Christ.’ and eating chocolates. I do love it, it’s so cheering. My book is much better.

Has the Almighty really set his cannon ‘gainst self slaughter? What a shame.

Oh my God the milkman has just arrived and is crashing bottles about in the street. We really do have the loudest milkman in the entire world.

Wednesday March 12th 2008

Baseball

Death

Newspaper

The Huffle of a Snail in Danger.

It is morning. It is 9.38 am and I have just woken up. I went to bed at 5 am just as the blackbirds began to shout and swear in the garden. We have the loudest blackbirds in the world. I think it is because they are Cockneys.

This morning John took the children to school. He dropped the big ones at the bus stop and walked Evil round the park in the screaming wind. He said he nearly lost Evil when a bull mastiff chased her and she ran across the road making cars swerve and brake. He took Maisie to school and she told him that she was going to Lords to watch cricket.

She said the class had been very worried because their teacher was going to take only the girls to watch ladies playing cricket which, Maisie said, would have been silly. But luckily the teacher had been persuaded to change her mind and now the boys were coming too and they were going to watch men playing which was better.

“Do you know about cricket then?’ asked John.

‘Oh yes, of course.’ said Maisie ‘If you hit the ball a long way you get a home run.’

‘That’s baseball.’ said John.

John walked back from school with Claire. Paul’s father has died and she is very upset. She told him there was an obituary in The Times saying how very rich Paul’s father was and that she supposed, now, everyone would think they were very rich too. I suppose everyone will. Maybe they won’t have to go to live in the Bitter North after all.

John has redesigned his newspaper in full colour. It looks very nice and jolly but John has to work all the time to keep the design on track. Quite a lot of people he works with don’t understand the fundamentals of newspaper design.

The rival newspaper has paid £3, 000,000 to buy in a Spanish design company to take their paper into full colour and John is quite worried that it will look better. It won’t look better, of course, because John is the very best newspaper designer in the world and there is no equivalent designer on the rival to keep the design on track so I look forward to it all going pear shaped over there.

Not having a career makes one very vicarious.

Three verses from The Four Friends by A.A. Milne.

Ernest was an elephant, a great big fellow,

Leonard was a lion with a six foot tail,

George was a goat, and his beard was yellow,

And James was a very small snail.

Leonard had a stall, and a great big strong one,

Ernest had a manger, and it’s walls were thick,

George found a pen, but I think it was the wrong one,

And James sat down on a brick.

Ernest started trumpeting, and cracked his manger,

Leonard started roaring, and shivered his stall,

James gave the huffle of a snail in danger,

And nobody heard him at all.....

How frightening.

Thursday 13th March 2008

My Book

AA

Ellis

Doesn’t time fly ?

I have finished Notes From An Exhibition and I still think it was fairly crap but it’s crappiness is slightly tempered by the fact that it is published and it sells.

I am always very impressed by successful novels. My novel is not successful and must therefore be very crap as opposed to fairly. Though, in it’s defence, no one with the power to publish or promote has ever read any of my novel and I harbour a secret belief that were I to dangle it in front of an agent a massiver bidding war would ensue, but then, I am nothing at all, if not a fantasist.

I have the most awful chest pains so after doing an online shop with Tescos I went on NHS Direct which said I should drop, my computer on the floor and dial 999 right NOW. I think they haver failed to take into account the fact that I am British and consequently not given to histrionics. I think I have a lung infection. Sometimes I think I have breast cancer but then I think I probably haven’t which makes me feel quite cheered.

Today I wrote this....

Elizabeth gazes out across the field to the moor and beyond to the thin, blue shimmer of the sea. She can hear the beat of the distant waves. She hs taken a break from her weeding for a minute to stretch her back, one hand is at her waist.

She is a tall woman, but lightly built. The wind lifts her heavy fair hair which she wears loose and long to her shoulders, just as she did when she was young, though now, it is faded and streaked with grey. She is forty -two today but she feels aeons older.

Elizabeth hears the regular beat of the sea, borne towards her on the warm wind and the feel of the sun on her back. Her other hand rests on the low, granite wall in front of her and slowly beats time and she allows herself to think, as she does every day, about her mother and her daughter, Kezia.

A line of poetry comes into her head, she doesn't remember who wrote it. “But neither ever found another.....” she knows that Kezia has found another mother. She’d seen her.

A snapshot, like a black and white photo leaps before her mind's eye. The young woman's short dark hair, her thin, pale face and the shielding man. A Routemaster bus is behind them, a black cab thunders by, the backdrop is of tall, grey Georgian buildings, white pillared, stony-faced..

“To stop the hollow heart from paining,”

The sea beat out the rhythm, just as it had beaten out the rhythm of Elizabeth’s days for the long intervening years.

“They stood aloof the scars remaining,

“Like cliffs that had been rent asunder.”

So then, who was rent asunder? Only her, only Elizabeth, standing before her squat granite cottage breathing the soft air, dreaming of the past, because the future held nothing for her but more of the same and an ache that seemed always to have been there.

Elizabeth had lost her man, her mother, and her baby in a few short months and the story ran in her head as it had so many times before.

“Get me a doctor.” Mummy had called her, in the middle of the night and Elizabeth had crawled from her bed and padded downstairs shivering as her bare feet touched the cold slate of the kitchen floor, so cold, that the floor had seemed wet.

She had made tea, still befuddled with sleep, pulling the old crocheted blanket from the back of the sofa as she passed to wrap arond her shoulders.

“Are you all right? What’s the matter” she’d asked, 'I've brought you a cup of tea.” She’d switched on the bedside lamp so the room glowed amber. Her mother’s face was livid. Elizabeth had put her hand on her her forehead and felt it clammy with sweat.

The doctor came. He’d injected morphine until her mother’s eyes had rolled back in her head. Elizabeth had sipped cold tea, standing in the bedroom doorway.

“Will she be all right?” she’d asked but the doctor hadn't answered, telephoning for an ambulance without asking if he could use the phone first.

“As quick as you can.” He'd said into the receiver. They’d taken Elizabeth’s mother to the cottage hospital at the top of the town. Elizabeth had dressed, and followed the ambulance on her bicycle and in the early hours of the morning her mummy had died. She’d been fifty-one.

She remembered coming home after the funeral. The vicar had been very nice, Elizabeth had meant to thank him for his kind words about her mother, although she hadn't gone to church and he hadn't known her. The coffin slunk shamefacedly through the curtains at the crematorium. Elizabeth had wanted to rip them apart, to tear the lid from the coffin. This was surely a terrible mistake. Mummy could not be dead, in a box.. Her sister, Ruth had sobbed desolately beside her, her brother in law, Simon, had taken their children for a walk on the harbour beach. Elizabeth felt her heart break.

“Come back home with me.” Ruth said after the funeral. “Stay as long as you want,” she’d hitched two year old Jack higher on her hip, the wind whipped lank hair across her red-rimmed eyes as the gulls screamed overhead. It began to rain.

Simon waited in the car, behind the two women, with the engine running, the wipers squeaking rhythmically back and forth across the windscreen. Ruth had her husband, her home and her children. Ruth would survive.

When they’d gone Elizabeth returned to the cottage she and Mummy had shared. The key stuck in the salt-rusted lock of the front door as it always had. The hinges creaked, and she was alone in the silent kitchen.

Later, she’d stood in her attic bedroom looking out over the grey, slate rooftops of the town and she’d rested her head against the cold glass of the window. She remembered how the baby inside her had kicked suddenly and convulsively making her cry out. A splatter of rain had hit the panes, the house shuddered in the wind and she’d stood back, doubled over, and the tears had come hurtling out of her, like vomit.

I don’t know if I will use it though. So much of my book is about structure and I’m not sure that I haven’t created something stupidly unwieldy.

Oh well.

Ellis is coming with his childen after school for chip night. Ellis’ builders have knocked a giant hole in his house to make space for the new basement windows but the glass isn’t arriving until next week so Ellis says they are all freezing all the time and everything is covered in a thin layer of brick dust. A friend in need is a friend indeed. I will put the heating on before they arrive.

The only trouble with Ellis coming is that we always drink too much. I think there is a very good chance that we are a bad influence on eachother.

I might go to AA and then I won’t be allowed to drink too much. I will be shocked into teetotalism by dreadful stories of lost lives and excruciating embarrassments. Ellis would respect my newfound puritanism because Ellis is a Quaker.

AA would also be very good research for my writing and if I go in an upmarket area I might meet a lovely ex-alcoholic man to flirt with. Although, obviously, he would have to be black or he wouldn’t want to flirt with me and I am not sure black men go to AA.

I haven’t actually been to AA so Ellis and I dranki too much.

At 3.30 pm I picked up Maisie and Billie from school. Maisie and Billie have been to Lords. They say they are ‘big fans’ of ladies cricket. Maisie says she wants to be a lady cricketer when she grows up.

‘But I thought you were going to see men cricketers.’ I say.

‘We think lady cricketers are better.’ says Billie.

‘’Yes,’ says Maisie ‘We are big fans.’

Billie looks very happy but she says her parents keep going on and on about how her grandpa has died. I say ‘ ‘Well fair enough.’

Ellis arrived at about 6 and we went to get chips from the Chinese chip shop man.

‘You have lots and lots of children don’t you?’he says ladling vast quatities of chips into little cones.

Ellis orders a sausage for his youngest and when we get home Hannah is really cross that Ellis hasn’t bought her a sausage.

‘I am so fed up with all this favouritism,’ she says.

‘It’s not favouritism.’ says Ellis ‘I didn’t know you wanted a sausage. How was I supposed to know you wanted a sausage? He’s having a horrible time at school, he’s only 8, I bought him a sausage. How is that favouritism?’

‘I’m fed up with you always saying he’s only 8. When I was 8 it was always “You’re a great big girl of 8. Grow up.” says Hannah ‘And everyone has a horrible time at school. School is horrible, it’s not something that only happens to people’s favourite little sons. I had a horrible time at school and at home when I was 8.’

Hannah finishes her chips and steals the last bit of her little brother’s sausage before rushing off to feed homeless Poles at the local catholic church for her Duke of Edinburgh Award.

Claire arrives at 7. ‘This is all incredibley difficult.’ she says ‘I feel awful. I feel surronded by death.’

Ellis pours her some wine. Claire looks exhausted. ‘Paul has to register the death. The funeral is happening when I am lecturing in New York. It mustn’t upset the children’s exams. Pauls brother says we won’t have to go and live in Stalybridge now. I don’t know what to do.’ She really does look awfully tired.

‘Paul wants to go ahead with Stalybridge.’ she says ‘But I’m not sure now.We could buy a London flat and still go to Stalybridge. What shall we do ?’

Abigail comes downstairs and cooks herself an enormous bowl of broccoli. I wish she would eat some protein. My mother sent her a book while I was away called ‘Getting Better Bit(e) By Bit(e)’. ‘I wouldn’t have minded the absurd title if it had been better written.’ said Abigail. ‘Honestly it’s such light, trite shite.’

Ellis says he thinks that, for Claire and Paul, now is not the time for life changing decisions. He says he thinks that Zac shouldn’t have told on Abigail and that seeing a sibling being sexual before you are, is incredibley difficult for adolescents and that perhaps Zac’s concern for Abigail was rooted in sibling rivalry rather than any real concern for her welfare.

Ellis is a very good psychiatrist.

I say I think it’s quite sweet when a young man wants to protect his sister.

Ellis says ‘Well, I think you may be missing the point and that his motives may have been entirely different.’

Abigail says ‘You just love Zac. You love all Zac’s friends. You’re always flirting with Otto, calling him ‘O’ and stuff. It’s really embarrassing.’

That is actually very unfair and very untrue. Next time The Vowels come over I won’t speak to any of them.

John comes home. He has been interviewing Kris Kristofferson in the Tescos carpark on the Cromwell Road.

‘Why?’ I say ‘You could have invited Kris Kristofferson for supper. It would have been nice.’

‘Kris Kristofferson is quite attractive isn’t he?’ says Ellis.

‘No,’ I say ‘His nose is too small. Why do you keep interviewing people with tiny noses John? Nick Cave has a tiny little nose too.’

‘I don’t actually choose my interviwees by the size of their noses.’ says John ‘And he was in the carpark because that’s where his tour bus was parked.’ John hasn’t had anything to drink yet.

“I went into Tescos after I’d interviewed Kris.’ says John ‘And I bought this bottle of wine. I didn’t realise until I got to the cashdesk that it cost £30. Shall we try it?’

Claire goes home and we drink the £30 bottle of wine. It gives me a headache.

16th March 2008

Divorce

Japanese Tofu

Tonk

Ankara Okacbasi

John and me don’t get on.

Every weekend he is too tired to move. he sorts out his CDs, he watches Dr Who on his iPod, he hates his children... all except Maisie.

Abigail is very ill.

We went to Fresh & Wild today to buy her some protein supplements. We bought her Japanese tofu and she spat it in the bin saying it tasted horrible. I tasted it and it tasted of nothing at all.

Tomorrow Abigail will ‘phone the doctor, she must be mad if she thinks Japanese tofu tastes of anything. She agrees that she must see a therapist. I hope the therapist is good. When I saw one he wore stupid ‘ART’ shoes and dungarees and he said ‘Why does no one in your family help you ?’

John hates Zac and Abigail. He makes Abigail cry. He hates Zac’s friends. He picks at me all the time.

‘Why should we stay together ?’ I ask.

‘Because we love eachother.’ he says. I don’t think we love eachother enough to stay together.

He is very sad.

I think we will get divorced.

When we get divorced I will go and live in the Third Arrondissmont in Paris. I will buy an apartment in a ski resort too. I will bring Maisie up as Euro Trash. I will write best sellers and John will live in the Barbican and watch Dr Who.

This is very depressing.

I hate March.

I am Tonk ! Tonk like a Gonk ! I will have to lose weight before I go to live in Paris.

Before we had the row, we went to eat in a Turkish restaurant called Ankara Okacbasi.

Everyone was there. The artist who Elllis loves but thinks has tiny feet was there. His ex partner and his two children were there with our picture framer Steve and so was Maisie’s friend Bobby’s mum’s ex- lover. I wish we’d known they all went there on a sunday and we would have gone somewhere else.

I hate London. It’s like a little claustrophobic village.

17th March 2008

St Patrick’s Day

Gardening

Liposuction

I sorted out the garden today. I raked up all the dead leaves; I removed all Evil’s poohs; I chopped the ceonothus about to the point where it is unlikely to recover ( good ) and I threw all the cuttings into the neighbour’s garden. Ha ! Gardening is very therapurtic, perhaps Abigail should take up gardening.

My mother rang today and said that Abigail should have liposuction and then she wouldn't have to eat nothing but peas. I said I would love to have liposuction too and my mother said so would she perhaps we could all go together...I don't think that would be healthy for Abigail. Also how would I broach the subject with her?

'Anyway Abs, I've been discussing how very fat you are with your grandmother and we've booked a joblot of liposuctions with Melina from the Boltons sister's plastic surgeon. What say you ?'

I asked Abigail if she would like plastic surgery in place of starvation and she said 'Don't be so gross. Ugh that makes me feel sick.' then she put her hairband on like a belt and said 'Look, it fits.'

If it is St Patrick's Day I think I should go out and dance a jig with a pint or two of Guinness because my grandmother was Irish and I think one's ethnicity is so important don't you? Ellis could come too and we could embrace our essential Celticness. It would be fun.

18th March 2008.

Gay Wedding.

Things Are Looking Up.

Paul McCartney

Ellis’s Extension.

Hurray ! We have been invited to my cousin Pablo’s gay wedding in Barcelona. Pablo is marrying the very sweetest man and they will be very happy. The wedding will be huge fun and very glam. What shall I wear ? What shall I get them for a present ?

John and me are getting on again so we won’t be getting divorced after all. John says that he is a bit depressed because he is 50 and that’s a bit depressing. He says that he has someone to transcribe his Kris Kristofferson interview which is a load off his mind. He says that, what with Shannon Matthews and Heather McCartney he has had too much to do.

It said in The Sun this morning that, as soon as the judge had left the room, Heather McCartney poured water over ‘ top lawyer, Fiona Shackleton’s head. ‘ How very stylish.

According to insiders, Paul McCartney used to call Heather ‘Peggy’ which, in my opinion, is worth £25, 000,000 of anyone’s money. But it didn’t say that in the Sun because The Sun are very much on Paul’s side.

Last time Ellis came over, on the night that Kris Kristfferson didn’t come for supper, he left his briefcase here. Sometimes there are very interesting case studies in Ellis’s briefcase which are good research for my writing and I like to have a sneaky look, but this time I forgot.

Anyway, last night he came over to fetch his briefcase and we drank a cup of tea together instead of going out to The Paddy McSheedy on Holloway Road to celebrate St Patrick’s day and our Celtic roots.

Ellis told me he is having such a nightmare with his kitchen extension. Apart from the brick dust, there are huge cracks around the windows and the shutters won’t shut. There are beam-ends in his kitchen at knee height. The whole back of the house is falling off. The cat fell through a cavernous hole and disappeared and his youngest has a piano exam tomorrow. I am going round later today to soak up the atmosphere.

I am a bit worried about my voice. Yesterday Zac told me that one doesn’t actually hear one’s own voice as other people hear it and that recordings of one’s voice are much nearer the actuality.

This means that I sound like a 5 year old Julie Burchill. It also explains this pervy phone call.

Me : Hello

Him: Oh, is your mummy in ?

Me : No

Him: Oh, well is your daddy in ?

Me : Well, no actually. I am 44 and haven’t lived with my parents for 26 years.

Him : Oh, good. Great. Then could you chat to me for a bit while I masturbate ?

I hung up of course. John said I should have said ‘Absolutely, as long as you do the same for me afterwards.’ I think that might have been a bit encouraging. Perhaps I should have elocution lessons like Margaret Thatcher.