Shaken but not Stirred

Tuesday 10th January

I really do not know what happened to me, it is still a bit of a blur.  I had been suffering from a sore throat for a few days, and was a bit down to say the least.  My brain felt as if it was in a blanket all day, as if I hadn’t really woken up yet.  All I remember was queuing for what seemed an age for my Starbucks today, and really wanting to just sit down, and let the world go away.  I picked the mug up at the end of the counter, on that little round platform they have, and turned away to walk to the sugar station.  I particularly like a sprinkle of vanilla infused icing sugar stirred in, and just a splash of cinnamon on top of the foam.  And then all hell seemed to break loose, one minute there I was coffee in hand and walking calmly towards the sugar station, the next I am covered in coffee, my trousers soaking, coffee in my bag, down my arm and even in my hair.  I am sure I didn’t bump into anyone; no-one else was involved at all. Did my fingers slip, did the handle of the mug slide round and tip the coffee everywhere or did I have a tiny little blackout, did I slip for a moment out of the conscious world and into some other somnambulant state for a second?  I cannot even remember seeing the coffee spill; one minute it was in the mug and the next all over me.

The staff were very kind and insisted on me having another coffee, but I just wanted to get away, away from the wretched place immediately.  I almost ran out of the shop, and how I got home is still a blur.  I just needed to get in the shower as quick as possible, and even the key almost got stuck in the lock and I was pushing it hard into the lock and just delaying myself further.  My wet trouser leg sticking to my thigh was really irritating me by now.  At last I got the key to work, and almost ripped off my coffee soaked clothes and got into the shower.  Then wrapped in a toweling robe I collapsed on the sofa and cried.  Yes, I broke down and cried and cried, a mixture of helplessness and acute embarrassment and shame and even a bit of fear.  And for ages after I was really shaken, but I can remember seeing the icing sugar still floating on the foam, and the coffee wasn’t even stirred.

A Pigeon in a shoe shop

Monday 9th January

I was out wandering through the shops on Marylebone High Street yesterday, a bit bored, a bit curious – you never know what you might see.  Not that I needed anything really, and the besides the dog-end of the Sales were on, and I thought I might just see something new or interesting, or just plain sensible that I didn’t know I was looking for at all.  Serendipity is the term for that fortunate co-incidence of finding exactly the right thing at precisely the right time, and more importantly – seizing the moment, and buying it.  So often I have said to myself, ‘Do you really need that jacket,’ or ‘I didn’t even know that ………..had written this one, still, it will still be here next week, I’ll buy it then.’ And of course, next week you cannot find the bookshop, let alone the book, or everywhere you go they shake their heads and say ‘I’m so sorry, that is out of print at the moment.’   Or you are looking through your jackets to find just the right one to go with those tan slacks you bought at the end of last summer, and nothing is quite right, and you suddenly remember the jacket you saw last week, and yes, cream linen would have been just perfect with the slacks.  But the shop has sold out, and they aren’t sure but they might be getting some more stock in next week, but you know the moment has passed you by forever,  So now, if I see something that I like I buy it, because as sure as oeufs are oeufs it will be gone by tomorrow.

So there I was without a real idea what I was doing and my mind a million miles away, as it so often is these days.  I wandered into a shoe shop, quickly scanning the Sale racks and seeing nothing that remotely interested me when I heard  a scream and a kerfuffle near the entrance.  A pigeon had wandered into the shop, and was quietly examining the shoes on the lower shelves.  The shop assistants who could not have been more than twenty were looking terrified and almost running behind the customers.  At last the manageress came over to see what the excitement was all about.  She too looked terrified and at a loss what to do.  She tried shooing it but this just made the bird flutter its feathers, rise into the air and swoop over their heads to the back of the shop.  The manageress started to ask customers to leave, and I was walking past I couldn’t help remarking. “I think she is looking for a size five, but you may find she is a bit pigeon-toed.”  Hahaha …

The incredible writing of Haruki Mirukami

Sunday 8th January

Yes, and I am reading 1Q84 his latest book, which is published in three parts; I am reading Book 1 and 2 at the moment – I will review it when I have finished.  But from the first few lines, it is just like coming home again after a long walk in the cold, his writing is just so enchanting, you really never know what is just around the corner, or  where on earth the story will take you, but at the same time it is so familiar, like an old coat you put on again, and the fit and weight are just perfect, so you wrap it round you and are happy to venture wherever the whim takes you.

How on earth does he do it?  He seems to be writing absolutely effortlessly, as if the trail of his thoughts is just wending its way onto the page with no real interface between what pops into his consciousness and the words unraveling before one.  And yet you know there is far more to it than that, it is all written for and with a purpose; what appear as random reflections are all being seamlessly woven into a complicated but perfectly logical pattern, that, like the way ahead on a foggy morning, slowly become apparent.  And he seems to get to the very nub of things, the important heart of what it is to be human.

I also love all the references to Japanese culture and history and the place names, and the descriptions of the food eaten, which though all strange at first, begin to seem normal after a few pages.  And the most amazing thing, though of course it shouldn’t be unusual at all, is that while he is talking about Japanese people with their strange names, their thoughts and hopes and desires are exactly the same as ours.

I am reminded of all the wonderful books of his I have read over the years, ever since my eye was caught by the title ‘Norwegian Wood’ in a bookshop years ago.  I instantly recognized it as an old Beatles song – isn’t it good, Norwegian Wood.  I picked it up and was hooked into a long love affair with this Japanese writer. And yes it was good, as all his books have been.  It also reminds me how far I am away from this sort of effortless and beautiful writing, which despite its air of nonchalance is I expect the result of many many rewrites.  I wonder if I will ever have the patience to write so meticulously myself.

Amazing declaration from Brian Paddick

Saturday 7th January

A small article on the London news which always follows News at Ten caught my eye.  I am usually not paying much attention by now, and waiting for the weather, and then a quick switch over to Newsnight for something a bit meatier.  The London Mayoral elections are coming up in a few months, not that I can find a single person who is mildly interested in the looming contest, a bit like the AV referendum of last year it is set to be a bit of a damp squib.  Perhaps because it is a re-run of the preceding one, and competent though Ken may be he is looking too old and too old hat by now.  Besides although Boris is really a buffoon, he is also a clever buffoon who carefully cultivates his image, knowing that his popularity is more that he is the sort of bloke you might like to meet down the pub than he is a serious politician.

The Liberal Democrats are also pretty desperate if all they can offer us is Brian Paddick, who came in a poor third last time.  Competent as I am sure he is, and gay and an ex-copper, he has obviously had a personality by-pass, as he really is blandness on a plate.

He was, for what it is worth, launching his campaign and he made the startling remark that despite being a Liberal Democrat you could trust him.  He specifically mentioned tuition fees, and declared that he was not the sort of Liberal who would make a pledge on tuition fees and then vote the other way once in power.  No, he wasn’t that sort of a Liberal, and you could absolutely trust that he would do exactly as he said.

I wonder what Nick Clegg thinks of that, and what a remarkable admission, by default, of the collective guilt and remorse felt by one suspects a lot of Liberals at the obvious betrayal by Clegg and Co.  Is this now to be the line by all prospective candidates – I am not one of those liars who declare a specific policy and within weeks of going into coalition not only ditch it, but vote against the very thing we fought on.   And if so, the leadership of the Liberal Democrats must be very worried indeed.

In a funny sort of a way I think people used to trust the Liberals as honest; not enough to vote for them I admit, but I believe they held them in some sort of respect; different from the other two known liars.  But now that has completely disappeared.  They have been exposed as the worst sort of opportunists and are I suspect in for a drubbing at every election until Mr. Clegg is hurriedly pushed aside.

The Stephen Lawrence Case – Repercussions

Friday 6th January

And the row goes on and on; now Diane Abbott has come unstuck in the twitter-sphere, by being careless in the use of her language.  I am not sure of the exact words she used, as is so often the case nowadays the facts become obscured by the row they cause.  In essence she was saying that white people love to, or in the past have loved to ‘divide and rule’.  Nothing so awful I would have thought in that, except the term ‘white people’.  But, in fact, it was true.  It was almost official British Colonial policy, especially in India and Africa, where local rivalries were ‘encouraged’ so as to stop the ‘natives’ from uniting against the minority but ruling ‘whites’.  It is a historical fact, and one which maybe rightly the great great grandchildren now living as a minority in this country resent.  But actually this row looks as if it has been media generated; maybe in some sort of retaliation against Ms. Abbott, who they have never forgiven for being black, intelligent and a woman, so if she slips up and appears to make a racist remark herself – then the heavens descend.

What sort of a pass have we come to though, when football players, and commentators come to that, are publicly lambasted for allegedly offensive remarks.  And the popular definition of something that is offensive is now not whether the offender meant to offend but whether the offendee felt offended by the words used.  Talk about the tail wagging the dog. Where on earth will this end, because I feel offended that this is the situation,  when people cannot say what they think.  It is hardly encouraging race hatred to say that one agrees or disagrees with a certain sentiment when it is expressed, but that is what it is coming to.  And language should liberate us, not tie us in knots.   Obviously one cannot go around recommending that certain groups of people or individuals should be persecuted (or worse) simply because of their race or nationality, but that simply isn’t the case here.  Poor Diane was maybe a tad sloppy in using the term ‘white people’, but hardly worth almost breaking the tea-cup for in this media storm.

The Stephen Lawrence Case

Thursday 5th January

The news is completely full of the Stephen Lawrence case, and in many ways quite rightly so.  And what a change that is, from the time when the murder was first committed, or even at the first and subsequent trials, when the media were luke-warm to say the least.  And even though the eventual evidence was microscopic and to be quite honest not all that convincing, after so many years one does wonder if there could have been some cross-contamination, the general consensus has always been that the police knew all along who the guilty gang were, but without a confession it was going to be nigh on impossible to find them guilty.  Let us just hope that they can somehow pin the others at some point soon in the future.

And, actually the sentences of about fifteen years each, was just about right.  I have severe doubts about sending anyone to prison in the first place, although what other punishment can possibly be imagined for such a crime I do not know.  The judge said if they had been adults at the time of the crime he would have sentenced them to serve far longer.  But what hope is there for us as a society if we just believe we should lock people up for longer and longer; are we saying that there is no hope at all for these people, and of course the longer you do lock them up for, the less hope they have and maybe any possibility of redemption is lost.  I know; and I cannot actually imagine this pair ever becoming decent people again, but we might as well go the whole hog and become like America, where locking people up so that they will die in prison is considered not only normal but some sort of deterrent.  Well, when you look at the crime rates in America that idea does not appear to be working either.

So, I just hope that given a little time, these two, still young men may begin to repent their crime and maybe assist in bringing the others to justice too. And maybe that will be the greatest deterrent for the future.  It isn’t the punishment that deters, it is getting caught.

But by Jove – It was windy today

Wednesday 4th January

After my post of yesterday about the wet and mild weather I was truly put in my place by the ferocious gales that followed almost immediately after I had sent it on its way.

But isn’t that just the way of life; just when you are snuggled up safe and sound and sure of yourself, along comes some great big slab of reality to blow away your pretensions.   I suppose you might think that I have it made, don’t you; with my very nice house all paid for, and a bit of money in the bank and quite adequate income, and my settled little life with puddy-tat.  But you couldn’t be further from the truth.  Maybe it is innate in us human beings to never be quite happy, to never know true satisfaction, to never really be content.  And content and happy I am not, not really.

I wrote at the end of one of the chapters of my book ‘Catherines Story’, the ending little refrain from dear Mr. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair – Oh Vanitas Vanitatum, which of us is truly happy in this life, or having happiness is truly satisfied.  It was of course meant ironically and as a warning bell to the Catherine in the story (maybe a totally different Catherine than I – it was a work of fiction, after all) that her moment of happiness was just that – a moment, and that having grasped it, would she truly be happy.  I am not so sure that life is that cruel however.  We can sometimes bask in reflected happiness, the sheen that comes back when we prop the mirror up against our memories, and yes we can see it now, just how happy we were back then.  It is just a bit harder to recognize when it is happening to you; that is all.  And then something changes your state and you realise you were quite happy actually, though you would be hard-pressed to have known it at the time. A bit like the sudden cold and windy weather of yesterday, calm dreary rain, pale grey skies and then out of nowhere a really gusty old day to blow the cobwebs and sureties away.  I wonder what tomorrow will bring now.

Wistful Weather

Tuesday 3rd January

I find the current warm but overcast and predominantly warm weather a bit wistful, don’t you?  It is almost as if we haven’t even begun to have a Winter yet; it feels far more like Autumn.  ‘And is that a good thing?’  I ask myself, and of course the answer must be no.  It is good for the old-age pensioners, my mother included, who after a lifetime of thrift, where saving money has always taken precedence over actually wanting to spend it, find that the usual winter quandary of ‘eat or heat’ no longer applies.  Not that my mother is particularly hard-up, she still has quite a really large sum in the bank, left over from when we sold the old house in Putney, and has her pension, and no mortgage or rent to pay, but I know that despite my protestations she is saving this up for me, who needs it even less than she does.  But generally with heating bills rocketing in the last year, we should be thankful that we haven’t had a cold snap this Winter.  Also for the poor beleaguered NHS, where the freeze brings with it multiple broken bones and flu-related illnesses, at least this year seems to be giving it some relief.

But for me, despite being no impediment to my daily walks, the lack of snow makes me wistful and I almost yearn for the kind of Winter I love.  You know, those cold frosty mornings where every twig and each blade of grass has its own delicate crystallized pattern etched all over it, and your breath condenses into tiny cloudlets as you breath out, and you come in with damp nose and eyebrows and red red cheeks, and have to sit with your overcoat and scarf still on as you fumblingly make a cup of coffee and sit by the fire,( well the electric coal effect mock wood burning stove that passes for a fire these days) until you feel warm enough to get undressed.  And you look out in the morning across the few square feet of lawn which is now covered by a fine layer of eider feathers, with just a few tracks of hopping robins to show there is any life out there at all.  I miss these signs of a real Winter, in fact I almost yearn for it.  I look out now in the mornings at another drizzly overcast day, with the sun barely visible at all  behind those thick whitey grey massing clouds and the temperature of twelve or even fifteen degrees is absurdly warm, and I get wistful.  Wistful for the real winters I remember from my childhood, and even the one we had last year, but also wistful for the Spring days which followed.  It still feels like Autumn to me, and I have an awful feeling that we may have to wait until late February or even March for snow this year, and so even longer to wait for Spring.

So, yes, while in some ways a mild Winter is welcome, I feel sad for the winter we haven’t had yet.  Maybe it has got lost somewhere mid-Atlantic.

The Holidays are over

Monday 2nd January

Eventually, well almost, the long Christmas break is over.  A quiet day to look forward to at last, I seem to have been inundated with visitors and invites to parties I simply couldn’t refuse.  Not that I do not enjoy them when I get there, it is the anticipation that I do not like, the day seems not my own if I know that I will have to be expected to be bright and breezy at seven for drinks and nibbles at Jennifer’s or a small dinner at Marjorie and Martin’s, and so I find I cannot settle to anything with the knowledge that I will have to get showered and dressed and ready to go out later in the day.  Please don’t think I am ungrateful, but everyone seems to want their own parties these days, myself included, that there really aren’t enough days to fit them all in. Today I have nothing planned and the whole day ahead.  So, a start is to be made on the new book, mapping out a few ideas, and a start to the writing itself; I hope it goes well.

I may also begin to take down some of the decorations, they are beginning to look a bit jaded.  Also an inventory of the fridge is needed; I am out of a few basics and have at long last finished up all the cheese and cold meats.  Maybe a slight diet regime may be needed too; I seem to have put on a few pounds again this Christmas, so more veggies and salads on the way for Catherine I think.   And I will start again my walking regime, which with so many parties to attend and my mother being here I have sadly neglected for the last two weeks.

In many ways the whole rigmarole of Christmas is a bit of a nuisance, upsetting even the best laid plans; if only it came around just every two years, we might appreciate it more.   Missing out each alternate year might actually whet our appetites a bit. But no more excuses, the holidays are over and it is back to some sort of normality.  Thank goodness.

This year I am resolved to keep my resolutions

Sunday 1st January

How many times, how many years have I gone through the rigmarole of making New Years Resolutions, even writing them down in neat little copperplate letters in my diary.  And how many times have I given in; the answer, unsurprisingly, is almost the same.  I did write my book “Catherines Story” but that was hardly a serious New Year’s Resolution, more an afterthought – it had been on my mind for years really, but in a funny sort of way it seemed almost disloyal while Edward was alive to be writing of such a passionate phase of my life, when my loyalties and in fact my whole idea of myself were challenged to the full.  The book had been an idea which was germinating for maybe a few years before I put pen to paper at all; probably when I first knew that Edward wouldn’t be around forever.  I had always written and have started two books before this, both incidentally started on January the first, one when I was thirteen, and a more serious attempt when I was in my late twenties.  The latter was, of course, autobiographical, but told in the third person and about a girl called Amanda, who like me had a sad and lonely little upbringing, but it was far too soon after the events I wanted to delve into, and it petered out quite soon, I haven’t re-read it.

So, to this year’s resolutions; and the first is maybe a bit of a surprise.  I am going to carry on with the blogs, though heaven knows who the 15 or so people who read it each day are, but I may write slightly shorter pieces – the trouble is, once I get started it is quite difficult to know when to stop.  The second is as I said yesterday, to see my reluctant parents a bit more often.  I call them reluctant because neither of them really made enough effort to be a real parent to me.  My father could and should have made more of an effort to get past Grandma’s obstructions, maybe it suited him to let go of me in this careless manner; and my mother who though she has always been around had never really been here at all, except just once or twice when the crisis was breaking between Grandma and I, only then and sporadically did she even begin to get involved in my life.  But now it is time to forgive them both, because for better or worse, they are all I have.  The third is to start a new book, and I already have a title of sorts.  No, I will keep that to myself for a bit if you don’t mind.  So, three resolutions; and not so hard to keep, I think.  In any case I am resolved to maintain them this time, and I think I will.