A Whisper Away

It's that time of year again, that time when you can smell droplets in the air, when the bulbs have been planted, and the soil fixes on the lines in skin, in the heart line, and the life line, and underneath nails, dry and chipped. I feel viral. I feel tired. But I have seen a russet moon, the colour of a dog's tongue.

Summer is being covered in yellow leaves and toadstools over the lawn. Is it a toadstool or a mushroom or a fungus? I never know the difference, and the spores make my breath rasp, my chest yearn for inhaler. But it has disappeared, the heat, the longer days, and with that I'm fattening up on crumpets and cake, sausages and mash. Most things baked and fried.

I love all the colour, it's just all these damn colds.

And she, she is six weeks into year one. The stories. How so and so chased so and so. The ongoing battle of girls against boys. Who is marrying who. The grazed knees and the cut fingers. It's hard to keep up. She is happy, she has friends, and I am happy too. She is reading, she is eager to spell. When I write a letter to a friend, she must also write one too. Mummy, how do you spell birthday? Mummy, how do you spell friend? And now she has discovered a love of numbers, loves writing number sentences she says. 4+2 = 6. 15+3 = 18. I think she has her father's precise mind, he's an engineer, a lover of logic and solution. Where as I, well I'm not sure, my brain is.... I was branded unclassified in maths.

Her new thing is sewing. I draw the picture on the material, a shape, a butterfly, and she carefully eases the needle with the red thread through. Her stitches to begin with are a little erratic, set wide apart, and then she finds her flow following the pencil, finding the coordination in her hands. She prefers it to the IPad. She prefers it to Pinky Pie and Princess Twilight Sparkle.

Any clues to Summer have now faded from my face. The colour. The freckles. All gone. I look a little wan, a little waxy under the eyes. And I try pulling back the warmer days but even their memories are as pale as my skin. A holiday home - an old vicarage. An ancient town built on a hill. The harbour. The cobbled streets. The tea rooms. The back garden disappearing under lavender, under holly hocks, under fallen apples. The wonky floors and the old beams. A princess castle with a moat. A grand old house with old, old wall paper and the smell of dusty, unread books - the smell of history. Days on a beach over-turning shells, adding height to sandcastles, running from an incoming tide. A weekend spent with Granny, and an aunt in her new pub. And a few days in a forest lodge with dappled sunlight and roaming deer. The discovery that peacocks can fly and the gift of a fallen feather. A morning spent purifying in the steam of a Japanese salt bath and the eucalyptus of a Turkish Hamman... It all seems a whisper away now.    

And half term is around the corner. She has a new coat and new wellies. The zip on my coat is broken. And the winds are coming and so is the rain. One last mow of the lawn. One last pruning back of the shrubs and the clemetis overgrown.

I have my light box switched on: I am galvanising myself for shorter days...

So Far...

Motherhood. I haven't thought about it for a while. Have stopped observing myself going about the daily routine. I haven't clocked off though, still there amid the breakfast making, the tooth brushing, the reading, the spelling, the tucking in of the duvet at the end of the day. I am still very much her mummy; it's just I haven't asked myself how I'm doing in this job - the decliner of wants, the administrator of can't haves, the peddler of pleases and thank yous - for many, many months. I can only guess I'm doing okay, I guess.

And now the summer holidays. Play dates. Summer camp. Crafting anxiety (on my part). I took her to the hospital the other day. Glue ear. In the right one. She's had it for over a twelve months now, and I've lost count the times I've had to slug gloopy yellow antibiotics down her throat. She had a hearing test. The specialist deemed her hearing fine, although he agreed her canal looked dull. So there won't be any grommets yet, and instead we will have to battle on with pain killers and antibiotics every time her ear becomes infected which seems to happen at regular intervals of six to eight weeks. In the mean time, she's started pulling faces, scrunching her face as if about to sneeze, or tasted bitter lemon, to get, as she says, the gunk out. The specialist said she's trying to pop the pressure. Apparently research suggests blowing up a balloon with a nostril, and with a special nasal piece, is good for glue ear. Handy - we have a glut of bright water balloons stashed under the sink...

I have lived life internally this year. Not introspection as such, more a bombardment of characters and narratives and finely-crafted sentences. The novel has been the entire focus which in one way is good. I have shut my self away, got on with it, completed a third draft, and in the process raised £350 for The Birth Trauma Association. I am going to The Writers Festival for the second time this September in York. Two years ago I only had thirty thousand words to my name, this year I go with a more completed product, and maybe I will feel more confident in my one-to-ones with agents. Afterwards, a full and proper edit, further polishing, and then it will be as complete as it can be; I may even have a finished novel by the end of this year. A couple of weekends ago, in a gauzy field at the Latitude Festival, I was struck down by an idea for a new story, another novel sized adventure. The idea came from the sparks of another idea I'd had - a dystopian that needs a lot more work and research. This new story came complete, the characters fully formed, and I'm itching to get started. It's set in the Lake District (any excuse for a trip to one of my favourite places) and is another coming of age story. I love coming of age stories as there are no full stops, life a continuum, a cloud that puffs and flattens and dissolves at the end.

Motherhood. No, I haven't thought about it much at all. As I write this, there are mothers I know who are struggling with their daughter's diabetes, or in unparallelled shock their child has gone. I feel blessed, lucky for the luxury of not having so many worries about her. I only have the one girl. It's easier with one, especially now she's through reception, all dancing, all swimming, reading and writing. Sometimes I feel a fraud, that I'm not in the same league as those mums who are harvesting two or more, or those who are battling on their own with little or no support. Yes, by comparison, I have it easy, have time to roll out the yoga mat or have a mandala inked on the top of my foot, or my hair chopped every four weeks and highlights painted through. I am in a privileged position. I am time rich, a fortunate woman. And that is why I know I must get back to work, live a life in the external, to observe the everyday as well as the gallivanting images inside my head.

#Once upon a time - Alchemy. Part One.

Once upon a time .....

I held a one way ticket in my hand. Destination unknown. I was thirty years old - a watershed age, still in the hangover of my twenties, not too old, or so I thought, to consider the grown-up decisions - marriage, mortgage, kids - of my thirties. I was still playing at life, gambling with choices, motherhood nowhere on the radar.

A question mark over the DJ'ing, a recent redundancy in my pocket, I was headed south with no job, no five year plan, no sense of my next move. Surely I should be established by now? Should know myself like the blue and red veins on an ordinance survey map? Who was I now? What shape would I become?

I nearly bottled it, an inch from grabbing my bag and running like a hounded rabbit down the platform, back to familiarity, to comfort, to fish and chips on a Tuesday evenings with Grandma. But there was a shudder, a jolt, as the train quietly eased - the rhythmical clack and a clack on the track - out of the station.

Decision made I guess.

I looked at the rectangular card between my fingers. I could always return if this adventure fell on its fat face. I knew these streets so well, the junctions of my child hood, my teenage years, my twenties. Yes, I thought, I could always swim up stream, back up the M1, a tried-it-but-didn't-work-out salmon returning to fertile ground. But I never did. I knew even then, months and months before, slumped on the top deck of the 96 grumbling up Otley Road, autumn rain drops crying on the windows, the inner voice asserting 'time to move on, get out, do something new', that I wouldn't be returning to my birth town.

London was a like a giant spread of tapas - the olives, the calamares, the chorizo al vino, the patatas bravas. An endless selection of choices and ideas and inspiration. I discovered tai-chi and yoga and street art and new friends and just how rude commuters can be. There were windy walks on Hampstead Heath and picnics in Regents Park. Proper sushi. The finest vanilla ice-cream in candlelit restaurants on Upper Street. Watching gigs on sticky July evenings at Somerset House. Admiring installations in the Turbine Hall of  the Tate Modern.

I temped in grey offices, over views of the city - the monolithic pillars of Canary Wharf, the overbearing slabs of concrete caging Liverpool Street. I watched as tiny workers on ropes filled in the missing pieces of the The Gherkin, sometimes their limbs completely lost in fine, spectral mist. Then one day two towers crumbled - the fire, the bodies, the blood - and I smelt the death and sadness in the empty tube carriage, images of grief and horror on forgotten pages scattered on the floor.

I didn't get along with finance, with the starch uniforms, and the bare, bored walls. I was formally told off - a bad, bad school girl - for not ironing my shirt, for not combing my hair, for not making enough cups of tea for the team. A manager who clearly resented me. And the feeling was mutual. What was I doing working as admin in a risk department in Aldgate? How had I managed to swap my decks for a flat screen and the in-and-out tray and a hole puncher? The rent.      

The first home was a shared house in East Finchley, messy and cramped. The second, a flat on The Holloway Road - day and night the traffic never stopped, a constant noise of engines and sirens and horns. It  was broken into, DVD's and books strewn about, both my beloved Technics stolen. Then a flat I loved, large square rooms, a separate kitchen and lounge, opposite the Geffrye Museum on the Kingsland Road - a hop and a skip away from flowers and fresh coffee on Columbia Road or the vivid colours and curry houses of Brick Lane.  

Kingsland Road - Image Courtesy of Google

Columbia Road Flower Market - Image Courtesy of Google

Brick Lane - Image Courtesy of Google

The DJ'ing still continued, infrequently, in dusty warehouses and clubs under railway bridges and on boats moored on the Thames. I attempted at promoting my own night, 'No Fishes For Missy', the first foray a success - I paid the guest DJ, I broke even on the door, just didn't have the energy for another, couldn't muster the patience to spend evenings dropping flyers around every bar in Shoreditch. Something inside was deliberating, changing. I began tiring of late nights and vinyl shopping. Clubbing lost its shine - the days of waiting in queues, head-over-heels excited at the night's line-up, felt like a drag - so many nights over so many years, it was like going to work, like the nine to five. I always thought I would DJ forever and forever, until arthritis froze my wrists, the very last record cued aged seventy-eight.

When I reached my thirty-third birthday, I'd had enough.

One cold January afternoon the flat on the Kingsland Road was broken into, record decks snatched again. Faced with bent bars on the security grill, the front door wide open - 'come, come in - take anything you want' - I simply sighed with defeat, a resigned shrug of the shoulders, knowing what I would discover on the other side. The mixer and a box of best-ever records had also disappeared, and strangely a bottle of perfume. On the laminate floor, a pair of audio cables lay coiled, smothered in exhumed dust on the spot where my equipment should have been. At least the three thousand records lining the living room walls remained, stoical  amidst trauma.

And then I knew, truly knew - life waving its large, bright red flag - that over a decade of DJ'ing had taken its final bow.

A week later I met Younger Dad.


So once upon a time, what did you enjoy (or dislike) doing, seeing or creating? It could be anything. What were you like many moons ago? Do you have a once upon a time story to tell or picture to share? It could be a happy, sad or humorous tale. The skies the limit. So do link up below and grab the badge code ... and don't forget to tweet #onceuponatime. This is a monthly meme.

You can read my other once upon a time stories here.

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Life Style is...

...A way of life or style of living that reflects the attitudes and values of a person or group.

Apparently.

Over the last day or so, I've been mulling over the style of my living - the daily routine, my values - or lack of, my emotional well being, my physical health. And I felt flummoxed after these brief analyses between loading washes, sealing up removal boxes - the best I could come up with was frustratingly undefinable, nebulous, smokey-grey. I'm er... my days are... I value - umm? Oh! I am a stay-at-home mum!... Er, er I write, um, I'm a writer... I'm healthy - pah! - you're kidding yer sen!    

I can say with absolute conviction that I'm not living in any style at present - the hair needs a radical re-colouring, the bed covers - well less said the better, there's strange green stuff - straggly seaweed - frozen onto the back of the fridge, and come Wednesday evening - today - we will all be eating pizza out of greasy cardboard...

...and... and... I bite my finger nails.

Life and the stylising of it, was once so simple, well it certainly felt that way, like furnishing a shop window display - every activity, every thought, every feeling had it's place. Life was ordered. Controlled. I meditated. I yoga'ed. I ta chi 'ed. I ran. I cycled. I swam. I had a job. I studied at college. I wore flattening'ish clothes. Even The Pendulati - my cumbersome breasts - knew their size, maintained their position above waist height. And life felt emotionally easier too - I had time to process, contain, accept. Feelings flowed, weren't buried under the demands of others...     

My life now, is, well, sort of more abstract, in a Mark Rothko kind of way - colours blending, merged, lacking any definition. I don't mind at all. It's just that it's a far cry from what I was once accustomed to. After three years, I am still acclimatising to motherhood. My days are a vacuum filled with routine and dirty dishes and folding clothes and emotional holding and meeting the demands of Little A. Don't you know this kind of day so well? And before I go to bed, waving another farewell to the hours behind me, I take my anti-depressants. I need them.

After the shock of birth, the trauma, the sky-raising anxiety, the depression, the one thing that has pulled me from domestic quick sand, that has moulded me into back a woman - a functioning one, has been my writing - this blog.

So I was really honoured, extremely taken a-back, to find that I had been shortlisted in the Britmum's BiBs Awards under Lifestyle. If I am honest, I was surprised to find myself in this category. I would never in a million years have classified my blog as a lifestyle one - I don't cover crafts or health or fashion, but I guess I do tell stories about my life. Still, there are readers out there who beg to differ. Thank you all very, very much, I am really grateful for your votes of appreciation.

I have never plugged my blog in this way before. I feel a little shy doing it. But as this is a once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity, I thought why not!  The next stage of the nominations is the voting which closes on May 12th. There will only be six finalists, two chosen by Britmums. Er, so, I am appealing to your generosity, your good will, to vote for me one final time. I would love to make the finals and Older Mum in a Muddle is up against some very stiff competition in this category - some really, really talented writers.

Your vote really counts - I'll buy you a bottle of champagne, make you lemon drizzle cake in return!

Thank you for reading Older Mum in a Muddle.

Vote Here
XXX