Friday 16th December

Though I live and always have in a world of unrelenting reality I also inhabit another realm altogether, that of fantasy.  From as early as I can remember I would dissolve myself into this world, much as one lets a cube of sugar on a teaspoon absorb as much tea as it can before collapsing in on itself as reality resumes control and tea becomes sugar and sugar tea.

One can never be sure of other’s thoughts and thought processes, but I suspect that we are all made of much the same stuff in the end, and so I hope that this is not a solitary pursuit but one we all partake of at some time or another.   However I seem to spend as much of my time in a world of my own choosing as the one I wake to find myself in.  As a child, maybe especially because I was on my own so much, I sought refuge in this nether world of fantasy, where I was a different Catherine completely.  I would always, for a start, have masses of friends; I who was diffidence personified would be surrounded by girls of my own age or slightly older, who would chatter and gossip and exchange compliments with the very beautiful Catherine who took the place of the very plain-Jane I undoubtedly was.  And this would be a world of stunning visual beauty, colours gleaming and sparkling while all around the grey skies and rain of drab London pressed down on me – inside I was walking through crystal halls with glittering chandeliers of pure ice lighting my way.  Maybe I read too much, up their locked in my cupboard of a room, maybe Grandma’s sensibilities were netting me down to earth too tightly, maybe my search for the memory of my father’s face in the folds of a napkin or the lines on a map of Cyprus had driven me just a bit crazy.  The need to behave, to observe decorum, to be  a good girl, to be perceived as proper at all times had created this other Catherine, this secret Catherine, who was alive while the shell I inhabited in reality was like a shroud blanketing out any of the secret world from view.

And so I have continued, outwardly a model of propriety and normality, never daring to disturb the contours of a settled existence, while inside I was a raging torrent of discovery, a splendid person altogether different from the Catherine you see before you.   Here I could soar, here I was a concert pianist, who unlike Sparky, really could play the piano, and oh with what subtlety I played, as I caressed and moulded the notes out for my very appreciative and knowing audience.  Or a painter I would be, yes me who could scarce draw stick figures, would create works full of sunshine and dark dark shadows, human emotions splendidly captured in oil and varnish, I could almost smell the turpentine as I cleaned my brushes while doing the dishes or tidying my bedroom.

And so, once again the person you see before you is not the real Catherine at all, another lurks just beneath the surface.  Only trouble is I get confused, and memories blur, and reality drifts into fantasy, and fantality becomes realasy and I find it difficult to know which is which.  Even when I am walking along a crowded street I sometimes slip from realasy into fantality, or even when talking to people I am miles away really – and the strange thing is that nobody seems to notice – maybe they are in between worlds too not sure if they are actually in fantality or realasy either.