On Cloud Nine

‘Welcome to Tesco Credit Card, this is John speaking how can I help you?’

‘The people who are cremating my horse today need paying upfront and they said my credit card payment has been declined, could you tell me if there is anything wrong with my account please?’

Thus my big, brave day continued.  To John’s credit he was quick, professional and kind, not missing a beat to deal with this unusual request.  I get the feeling the call centre training pack probably hasn’t got a section for customers with dying horses, but we found out the problem: the cremation people put in the wrong CVV number.  So it wasn’t my fault, which oddly, was a great relief.

Singular becomes Plural

Well, this is a turn up for the books.  Or perhaps I should say 'be careful what you wish for'.   I have wished for respite from the seemingly unending suffering time and time again.  Why the reprieve now?  As my students, not readers of this blog I should imagine, would say, post hoc analysis is inadequate.  It would be convenient, as life seems to be going my way for a change, to attribute my actions and good fortune to some plan we all know really happens.  But does it?  Have I done my time in Heart Break Hotel, or even just thinking such thoughts, has the Man with The Big Book got me on a list to knock me down to size when he's a bit bored again.

Turkish Delight

I’ve been told that you can wish yourself into a situation, and I’m not sure to what extent this is true.  My sensible, logical brain, which is largely offline as I sit by the pool at the Hotel Era, Ovacek, Turkey, tells me that children with cancer have not deserved what they get, the responsibility for your fortune, good or ill, is not yours to determine.  My psychotherapist and I argue about this one at regular intervals as he tries to tease out of me what my part has been in my own destiny.  A prevalent thought of mine has been that I have been a victim of others’ bad behaviour, but he is quietly and irritatingly persistent I had a role to play.

truth or lies?

I'm not going off the bridge any time soon, it would be much too theatrical, I feel. But it would be nice to know there was some point to all this struggle; for it to be worth such restraint.

Desert Island Discs

Yes, this is perhaps a predictable blog topic, especially as DID is in its 70^th year.  I love Desert Island Discs, have it as one of my regular podcasts.  Sunday is my day for the horses, so if I’m left with the mucking out, I’ll plug in the headphones and lose myself in someone else’s story for a bit. Very rarely am I bored or disappointed by the guest, but then being asked to be a guest on DID must be terribly flattering and exciting, and Kirsty Young is so splendidly good at her job, gently probing and revealing the human beneath the status and title.  The only thing that disappoints me with the podcasts is the restriction on the length of time the tunes are played.  Usually the ones you like most are tiny snippets not the whole thing.

Wanted

Handsome prince on charger to rescue damsel in distress.  Kissing skills particularly important.  Happy ever after to be discussed.

One of those Waiting Nights

So, for better or ill, I'm having a go at internet dating again.  To be honest I don't really want to do it, but I feel I'm going stale, chasing fantasies, not of the Absent Father, no, maybe that's the problem, I have moved away from that safe, but so unstable harbour.  Now I am really single. So what happens next?

The Guilty Party

Have you ever done anything wrong?  I know, silly question, but today I am considering guilt and culpability.  Of course, the Absent Father wasn’t the guilty one, according to my solicitor.  Oh no, adultery was a ‘failure of our marriage’ not his fault.  Yes, are your hackles rising too, not his fault, has the world gone mad?  

Memories are Made of This

What do dates mean to you?  Do you remember anniversaries?  I do some and not others.  It’s peculiar what is retained as important for commemorating and equally what is allowed to fade into the shoreline as the waves of time pound steadily over the memories.  Sometimes it’s embarrassing when days you should remember just fail to remain steadfast.  My Ex-In laws both have birthdays that slip right past me.  It could be argued that these dates might well be just the things to consign to the past, but it is awkward as my Mother-in-Law always remembers my birthday and a neat little card arrives promptly for the day.  It seems as if I’m not observing some decent manners through all this, but it’s not like that.  Just the hooks my memory hangs its coats on function for a different purpose than for simple good manners.

Still Standing

I haven't written any poetry for a while, and I'm really not sure about the title, but this is really my first attempt at gentle humour.  It isn't about me, not really, more a composite of that 'morning after' feeling when you float upon a sea of ecstasy, fading quietly when you realise the heat of the night has cooled to the 'oh no I didn't' feeling.

Breathing deeply

I've been half watching Titanic through the evening but never settling to the whole film.  I've never seen it before today, and I have only caught a few minutes.  There was the gorgeous bit when Kate Winslet takes her kit off (no surprise there) for Leonardo di Caprio to sketch her, and then much later all the bodies frozen in the water.  The reason I've never watched it is I don't fancy seeing people drowning. Being an asthmatic breathing has always been a challenge.  I'm ok now, as long as I know where my inhaler is, and the thought that people losing their breath as entertainment has always been disdainful to me.  I know only too well that feeling as your lungs constrict and fill, it's the dread that follows me.

Finding Chairs

There comes a point when you don't know whether you're in the new place, or it's just a false dawn, and any pleasure at things will be knocked out of you as the universe belittles your arrogance.  I suppose that's why I haven't written anything for a while.  I haven't been looking back, but enjoying the present and the new challenges it has been offering.  But also I have to admit that having been through the ups, and the downs that have always followed, I am very nervous to admit that I'm enjoying life, just in case the pressures that are inevitably part of adult life increase, bumping me back into a holding pattern of pain and coping.

The Good Friday Thought for Today

I wasn’t sure the the piece that follows this introductory blurb would be appropriate for the blog, it’s a very personal piece I wrote early on when I was trying to grapple with the pain of living without The Absent Father.  If you’re a regular on the blog you’ll know this is a recurrent, if not dominant, theme.  The great news to report is it is getting easier.  Whether this is the passing of time, or the amount of times I’ve regurgitated this pain I don’t know, but it is getting easier.  This was about the first time I found my way into any form of peace and although I lost that peace relatively quickly, it is interesting for me to read now, mark the changes in perception, see more clearly where I’ve come from and who I am now.

High Days and Holidays

There is a moment before every holiday when I rather wished I wasn't going away.  It happens every time and my loving and tolerant family try to be understanding and tender as I get myself more and more worked up over the impossiblity of attempting indulgence.  The multiple layers of guilt that unfold as I set myself more and more impossible tasks to complete before day zero approaches can, if unchecked, limit, if not ruin, any benefits of going on holiday.  Which is silly, after all, why go on holiday if not to enjoy yourself?

Well, yes, that is, of course, if you appreciate who you are and what your value in the world is.  How many people go on holiday because it is expected, or perhaps a badge of membership of a group you think you belong to, hope to belong to or comfortable staying within the bounds of?

Why go on holiday?  It was a question the Absent Father would raise to me, a question I couldn't answer because I've always gone on holidays, and he hadn't.  It was not until long after he had left that, well now, really, that I have thought about it and pose today's question: what is a holiday for?

A Sunday Afternoon in March

My dear and lovely friend Jacqueline, who happens to be a follower of this blog, indeed was my first follower, is helping me edit some of my poems ready for publishing.  I've decided my Golden Year will be celebrated by me getting a book of poetry together.  I'm so grateful for her precise and clearsighted expertise, her ability to correct my somewhat slapdash punctuation and her belief in my writing.

Perspectives, and other views of the Bridge

There comes a point when you have no idea if what you write is good or bad.

I strongly suspect this is awful, but I quite like it anyway.  In my mind it's never been about the First World War.  Or me.

What do you think?

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

How does it feel
To know that you have failed?
When decent men are asked
To form a queue,
Your name will not be called.
Men who know what trust,
Respect, faithfulness and reliability
Really mean.
They stand there quietly chatting
In skins that fit them,
Lives that are not perfect,
May not be easy,
But are lived with dignity and strength.

And so you watch from the side
As this throng of grown ups walk
Through that gate and out of sight.
And you turn away.

Do you know what you have missed?
Or has something shiny caught your eye,
Distracted you again,
And you cannot see
What lies beyond the gate.

Day and Night, Night and Day

I've been a bit stuck recently, with regards to writing.  I'm not sure why this is, but I think I need to try and push on through and see if I can find any way of illuminating this problem.

Is it a problem?  Should having to write be regarded as a healthy thing, or an odd obsession?  My trouble is that rather than just writing for the sake of it, it would appear I now have an audience.  Maybe it's performance anxiety.  I've developed a style, you've developed expectations.  But am I the person of these posts, or was that just a transitory phase in my development and recovery, and the person you have come to read about doesn't exist now.

Ad Victorem Spoilias

I wanted to try and take a poem apart, but I'm aware it's very personal, and more than a bit raw.  However I think I should try and explain about it, as I want to share it.

I do remember people reading it at the time recoiling at the savagery in the imagery, but I'm hope I can temper this with some explanation.

Respect. Find out what it means to me

So today's word is respect.  A word I tend not to use much, but maybe I should.  The trouble is I find people who bang on about the importance of  'respect' tend to be stuffy, stand on ceremony types I have little time for, and,  oddly, they have little real respect for anyone.  How much are the problems of our society due to a lack of respect, and how has that respect been lost?

Sunday Afternoon Blues

More old poetry this afternoon.  I'm in something of a reflective mood, but nothing terrible original is springing to mind to try and explain my mindset.  So I turn backwards to see if I've been here before, does anything fit the bill.

The Grief Machine

If you have been bereaved, you will know that numb feeling when it seems there is some form of thick glass between you and the world.  You can see the world, but live on your own, the walls invisible but nevertheless totally solid. The Grief Machine was written a week or so after my father died when I felt I was a shell with a vast hole bored through me.  I was never sure that 'vortex' was the best word, to me it felt as if I had my insides gashed out leaving totally emptiness and that's all I could find to try and explain it.  'Vacuum' seemed wrong, as that implies nothing, and your emotions swirl, just removed from everyone else.  A lot of the time you do seem empty, operating like an automaton, going through the motions because to let your feelings out would be to tumble out of control, and as you seem to have no boundaries or edges, such a thing is quite terrifying.

The Death of My Father

I wrote the original piece in the weeks after Daddy died.  I have always be proud of the piece, and grateful that I wrote down how it felt in those early days.  I have edited it somewhat so hopefully the rawness isn't too toe-curling, but coming up to the third anniversary of my father's death, on 18th January, dear and lovely readers of my blog, I suggest you find the hankies before you read this.

I have, to use those loathed and much disputed words, moved on, but I can remember feeling how it was.  I will add the poem I wrote about his death nearer the anniversary, but for now dear friends I give you a piece from January 2009

The Death of My Father

The train slowed and all those people, for whom their lives depend on getting off first, rustled and stirred. Tidy people who tidied away the small things that mattered in their lives so that they could be five seconds ahead of the pack. Does this give them the advantage on the rest of us, or make them first over the top? It’s one of those thoughts that rushes through your head several glasses of red down sitting on the train out of Liverpool St, mind filled with warm thoughts of close restaurants and final goodbyes. How many of us sit there in emotional transition back to the life expected of us?

My father was very fond of painting before his heart attack, and, much to my mother’s astonishment made rather a lot of money selling his paintings of penguins, my favourite being penguins standing at a railway station, not one looking at another. I think an art expert would generously call the style ‘naive’ but they betrayed an emotional intensity that some woman coming to the the local village Art Show one year was so affected by she uttered those long hoped for words ‘do you have any more of these’ and such was her enthusiasm, her cheque paid for a nice holiday I believe. I remember joking with my mother that she should lash Daddy to the easel to fund any more holidays they would want, but of course his inspiration was not as strong once a commercial imperative was established, and after his heart attack he never returned to the easel, six and half years before his death.

And a Happy New Year to you too

Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.

5th January
I've had a cheerful start to 2012. Despite massive over indulgence over the Christmas period.  But here I am facing the first of my 'Sad Days', the anniversary of the Absent Father leaving, 4 years ago today. 

The period of sadness tried to descend last night, when memories of that last time when he returned home from the train as usual with that otherness about him. I didn't even need to ask, I just knew he was off.  I remember getting horribly, horribly drunk with mindless grief, and then trying to be normal.  I so regret that last response, my memories of the AF looking fed up, glad he was at last getting rid of the trouble.

But all this was a long, long time ago.  Am I a different person now?  I really hope so.  So much time and pain has passed my way, it would be sad to think this last four years have meant nothing.  However the one thing that really, really irritates me is being told it is time I should move on.