docbec.com

The Plunge

2012-02-14T21:34:00.000Z

Today I made final a decision that is set to change this journey we call Life for my 5-year old and me. We are now home-educating.

Home education is something that has been on my mind since pregnancy although, when she got to school age at a tiny 4 years and 6 weeks, I happily sent her off to a nearby school that I have come to know and admire. She got on OK. She was very quiet in class but came out of her shell a little and she has learned the fundamentals of reading and writing (and more besides) in the past year and a half.

After the Christmas break in Reception Year, I missed her so much and did some serious research into the possibilities of teaching her myself. What I discovered appealed to me but I knew that I was acting purely on emotion and decided to carry on with the 9-3 of mainstream schooling.

A year on and I just couldn't shake the desire to show her all the amazing things that this world has to offer so the research sped up several paces. I have talked to people who were home educated themselves and to current home educators (thanks twitter) and I am as sure as I can be that this path is for us. For both of us.

My daughter has been fine at school but I get the sense that all is not as it could be. Not to do with her peers or her educators, you understand, but more a feeling that she would be happier running around in wide open spaces more, interacting with the community, exploring Life.

I have talked about it with her a lot over the past month and she is very keen on the idea. We've tried it out a little, having had sessions on planets, animals and evolution to name a few. She's been writing stories and is a keen reader. She has always been a physical girl, loves to climb and jump - I want her to get more of this. She's already talking about school in the past tense and doesn't seem fazed by our new life at all. In fact, we're both highly excited.

We will do lessons in all the basic, academic stuff - the 3 Rs, science (might need help with this one), art, geography, history, religion, cookery. We aim to visit a lot of outdoor spaces and stay with communities on farms, learning about nature and interacting with others. And we'll continue to be keen theatre goers.

Social interaction is, indeed, key and we are keen to join groups in the local area. A North Somerset home education group exists with around 200 families, who meet for all sorts of reasons. Places like @ Bristol offer home education days. Weston-super-Mum is going to be our social rock! Beavers (still too young to join) and gym/yoga/dance classes will help her to bond with other kids too.

The support of my family, friends and her school has been humbling, thanks to all. However, I am not naive and know that many will not agree with my decision. I really hope that this won't be seen as a withdrawal from society but a fuller integration into the whole community.

As for other aspects our lives, these will interweave and I am certain that my work in the community and organisation of events for all will become more even important. And I'm taking The Celestial One with me.

We are about to embark on an amazing journey.

Flower Burst

2011-05-03T16:25:00.001+01:00

I bought this from Samantha Gilraine's Walled Garden artspace in Wrington, Venue 66, North Somerset Arts Week.

Where shall I throw it?

23rd April

2011-04-23T09:35:00.000+01:00

“Take it down,” she says. “The neighbours will see”
They’re supposed to,” I say. “What would the point be
“If they couldn’t?”
“But what will they think?” she wants to know
“They’ll think that we’re English. And that’s what we are”
Both born and bred, aren’t we?

“Take it down,” she pleads. “No-one else has one up”
“That’s not true,” I protest. “38've been flying The Dragon
“For weeks now”
“That’s different,” she says and she really believes it
“That’s different,” I mimic, they were the oppressed
St David’s accepted

“Take it down,” she demands. “We’ll be labelled as racist”
“Well, we’re not,” I reply with annoyance. “We’re just
"Plain English”
“I’m going to work,” she says. “You just want to fight”
“Fine!” I finger the Red Cross on the white of
The flag in my window

Doctor, Doctor, I think I'm invisible ...

2011-03-28T22:18:00.001+01:00

Ross: I'm Doctor Ross Geller.

Rachel: Ross, please, this is a hospital, ok? That actually means something here.

[Friends: The One Where Joey Speaks French]

I’ve been Facebooking with a friend, who also has a PhD. We shared our annoyance at Question 25 of Census 2011, which has 13 options to tick, asking us to give details of the qualifications we have achieved, so far, in life. A PhD doesn’t get its own tickbox but is lumped together with the option that says, “Degree (for example BA, BSC), Higher Degree (for example MA, PhD, PGCE).” We are miffed, it’s true, not through any educational snobbery but because our doctorates took us longer to complete than our Bachelor degrees.

Mine also took a hell of a lot more work, tears, a fair amount of foreign travel, years of having to work in Adult Education to see me through financially when the Studentship ran out, consultation of hundreds of periodicals, letters, trade union and government reports (mostly in Spanish) and countless secondary sources, interviews with Cuban historians, excessive organisation and a total redirection in writing style that fitted in with what other, already qualified, academics would accept.

I recently went to see someone at my local “One Stop Skills and Job Shop” and as we went over my skills, experiences and educational background, he said in hushed tones, “I probably shouldn’t say this, but you have more qualifications than many of the people we see in here.” I looked him in the eye and said, “Yes, you should. It took me a lot of hard work to get those qualifications.” Why should I be quiet about it?

On Radio Bristol today, I heard a man from Tree Aid, a UK forestry based development charity, in interview. The presenter mentioned his guest’s doctorate in Geography and the interviewee laughed it off, saying he didn’t use it anymore in case he gets asked to do heart massage on an aeroplane. Why be embarrassed about having achieved a high level of education?

I had my PhD Viva when I was 7 months pregnant and motherhood has taken full control of my whole being for the past 5 years. But the Doctor is still here and even if I never teach or write about Anarchism in Cuba ever again, this doesn’t negate the fact that I have honed my research, organisational, time management and writing skills more than I could ever have thought possible. The fact that I have finished such a massive project, drawing in so many strands, looking at the wider picture and pin-pointing a moment in time speaks volumes, to me at least. I have the confidence to see such a project through to the end and the proof that I can achieve my goals. This should be celebrated.

And, as a plus point, being a single mum, it comes in very handy when you have to tick the Status box on countless forms. No, not Miss, not Ms, not Mrs – DOCTOR!

Summertime

2011-03-26T23:27:00.001Z

It hadn’t been difficult to find him, once she’d starting looking. The barriers that she’d had to demolish in order to overcome thirty five years of rejection proved much less complicated once her mother had succumbed to the cancer that had been gnawing away at her for years.

The electoral register, followed by a fortitude to write to him, had been the only tools necessary to bring her here to seaside Essex, his home of forever, as far as she could fathom. The man she thought about every day of her life, the man who had never held her, never kissed her goodnight, had taken a couple of weeks to reply affirmatively to her request for a meeting.

Reading his few short words, she’d accepted his message with a silent coldness. He proposed that they meet at the bar of the Cliffs Pavilion at midday. She scrawled a note to say that that suited her and tried to put the whole business out of her anxious mind until today. Except she couldn’t shelve a lifetime of hurt that easily. So, on Tuesday, she had sent him another letter to serve as a reminder or to be double sure that he knew she’d be in his town at the appointed hour.

Strange to think that he only lived a fifty two minute train ride away from her East London home. Like him, she’d never moved far from the house she’d grown up in, partly because of the emotional neediness of her mother and partly because of some desperate hope that, one day, he would come searching, though she would have admitted neither.

The woman who raised her forbade all mention of he who had never given a damn. An inner void, a name, a town and a frayed at the edges photo, excavated from the collapsed shoe box her mother hid under her bed, was all she had. This, the first image of him she had ever witnessed, was of a tall middle aged man with a cleft chin and a mole on his right cheek and, beside him, a woman who actually looked happy, a woman with life in her eyes, at least 20 years his junior. She thought that, as a child, given the opportunity, she would have run her little fingers over that brown smooth blotch on his face. She wondered whether he’d ever felt the need to disguise it with a beard.

At 12:10, she watched the entrance to the bar of the Cliffs Pavilion, unable to be as cool as she’d promised herself she would be. No-one entered. Her head was empty, her glass still full.

At 12:20, she began to get irritated. How dare he be so late, did she mean so little to him? Had he always known that his genes had been climbing, learning, growing, wanting? Had he been unaware of her existence or was he simply indifferent to this life they had created. His letter never went into any detail. And anyway, he knew now. And he wasn’t here.

At 12:30, she checked her mobile phone. She’d given him her number, no excuses, but she didn’t have his. No missed calls. She felt sure that her mother had been wrong to bury her past, denying that unconfident child a present or a future, but maybe her reasons for doing so had been grounded in hurtful truths.

At 12.35, she took her first sip of wine, clasping the glass as she used to hold her nightly mug of hot chocolate before bedtime, fearful that one unsteady hand would cause her to drop it, unwilling to let it smash to pieces on the floor.

At 12:45, the fragility within her shattered. She stood up, defiant. She sat down again. He wasn’t coming. His address was in her handbag but she knew she’d never visit his home. The frightened child was finally a woman. She asked for her bill, secretly hoping the barman would ignore her and decide to cut a lemon for tonight’s gin and tonics, keeping her waiting for ten more minutes.

At 12:50, she took his letter out of her bag and tossed in onto the bar. “Fuck you, Martin,” she said with a final relief, releasing three and a half decades of expectation. She held her head high, left her insecurities and the building. Free.

At 12:55, a spritely old man with a mole peeking out of his greying facial hair took that same seat. He hadn’t seen the woman with the determined expression leave. Nor did he realise that, just a few hours before, British Summertime had begun.

#Wordless Wednesday. Black and White?

2011-03-16T13:36:00.001Z

Broody - Chapter 18

2011-02-09T10:08:00.000Z

Old Mother Time

Back in the familiarity of my own bed, I can ponder life on a more natural and even footing. It’s always good to get away but even better to come home to your own paintings, books, sheets, choice of food. Could I ever return to so-called “domestic bliss” and be constrained by another’s routine, moods, habits and mess? Mr Right is Mr No-Body in my book: nothing can beat the feeling of running your own show and being answerable only to yourself, I tell myself firmly. And this from a woman who wants a baby. A baby would necessitate forging a whole new routine; raising a child requires excellent time-management skills, at the very least. Babies have moods. Children form habits. As for the mess – sick and shit would give way to toys and crayons and all the untidiness and graffiti they entail. Am I ready? Is anyone?

I muse as to where these doubts stem from but I don’t do that for long. It’s obvious to me that Duncan’s offer is forcing my hand: bringing a new life in the world is a risky business, that’s for sure, and especially a new life without the conventions of family as we’ve come to know it (although, admittedly, fewer of us adhere to that conventionality in the Twenty-first Century). There are plenty of single parents out there but how many of them actually considered going it alone from the outset? I think of Dom. Wouldn’t she be happier to have Edward’s father in his life on a permanent footing? Or any footing? And wouldn’t her lot be made less complicated with the support – financial, moral, emotional – of Whateverhisnameis? How many women weigh up life after baby? As far as I can fathom, it often just “happens” and the real examination begins during pregnancy or maybe even much later. Is there something wrong with me? Should I be thinking this way? Should: it has always been my least favourite word, phonetically and conceptually. Should. Who’s to tell us what is right or wrong and who is the arbiter here – God, the Law, the Ego? Construct a coherent sentence using the word “should”. I should find a consenting, good and loyal man to father my children. I should analyse my actions and any consequences they may rain down upon me and/or upon others. I should talk to Duncan about all of this. I should stop being so down on myself. Shouldn’t I?

I throw some water on my face and a jumper on my back and, in the front room, I give my body to the armchair and my mind to the television. Except that I don’t. Conventionality loses again - Simon can have my body whenever he wants it and my mind along with it. That’s how I’m feeling right now. I’m exhausted from playing my own Devil’s Advocate. I want someone else to take control and, at the moment, Mr Wrong is preferable to Mr No-Body.

Debs sends a text inviting me round to their place on New Year’s Eve. A small affair, some nibbles and wine, she understands if I have other plans because it is short notice. I message back immediately, saying that I’ll be there. I can think of nowhere else I’d rather see the current year out, assuming that the two Ds are getting along ok and, anyway, it will give me more leverage when I reject Sían’s call to Paris’ house for grapes and Sol y Sombres, whatever they are, at midnight. When did I turn into such a wimp? Just say no, Michelle, you don’t need to resort to excuses. Duncan is going out with his “kinda cute” guy, Tommy, and we’ve left it open that we meet up sometime during the early hours, see how it goes. Simon will be at Paris’ but this is a guess as, still, nothing from him. Mitch is going to a friend’s party just round the corner from my house, which means it’s also round the corner from Debs’ and Deiter’s, so there are possibilities of a hook-up there.

My mobile rings. I expect it to be Debs, confirming. It’s Dom. Some chit-chat and then:

“My Mum is visiting for a few days and she’s offered to babysit tomorrow night, which, of course, I nearly bit her hand off over. Thing is, it’s too late to arrange anything and I don’t really know that many people here. Erm, I was wondering if you’d like to do something?”

“The thing is, Dom, I’ve already arranged to go to a friends’, but …”

“Of course you have, stupid me. Sorry. You’ve probably got loads of invitations to all sorts of places.”

“Well, no, but I am going round to Debs’ and Dieter’s. Why don’t you come? You’ll love them.”

“It wouldn’t be imposing?”

“No, not at all. They thrive on meeting new people. I’m sure you’ll get along.”

“Erm…”

“Come on, what’s to loose? It’s not like you won’t know anyone. You know me. And they’re a good bunch.” I couldn’t have promised this with Paris’ lot.

“What should I wear?”

“You should wear whatever you feel comfortable in. Anything goes. Really.”

“Ok, thanks Michelle. I will.” She sounds excited. We arrange to meet at Bedminster Station at nine o’clock. And, I think, it’s good to have friends, who needs relationships?

****************

I tell Dom that she looks gorgeous. She appears more relaxed and spirited than I’ve seen her on previous occasions. She’s dressed casually, as I am, and her new longish bob emphasizes her pointed chin, in a good way.

“Thanks, Shell, so do you. You know, it makes such a difference having Mum around to help out with Ed. I’m all refreshed and, oh my God, a night out! Aarrghhh”

“How is the little fella, yummy mummy, you?”

“Fine, thanks, but tonight is a strictly child-free zone. That’s ok, isn’t it? Doesn’t make me a bad mother?”

“Not in the slightest. Let’s have fun.” I want no children, real or imagined, spoiling my night either.

We arrive at the house to a warm welcome from a beaming Debs, who tells me that everything is just beautiful in her life. Is it? Or are there some stimulants talking through her? Dieter pours us some scrumpy that his friend, Albert, has made from his very own mini-press, although Albert is drinking an over-sized mug of tea and I wonder what he knows that we don’t. My scepticism shows.

“Nah, it’s the bollocks. We call it Apple Attack,” he says.

“Will it make me forget even my name after half a glass?” I ask, sniffing it.

“Depends on whether you want it to or not,” says Albert.

“She doesn’t know what she wants, that chick,” says Dieter.

“Thanks, Diet. Maybe this will enlighten me then?” I take a sip. Warm. “’Tis true, ‘tis apply.”

Annie is already there and she gives me a heartfelt squeeze. James is staying home with two of his mates, Jools Holland, and a few cans. This is a relief. I introduce Dom to those people I know and Dieter, dressed in his regulatory combats and layers with a concessionary diamante nose ring, fills in the gaps, but too manically for us to digest all of the names. Boards of Canada is the music of choice: too mellow, I am about to say but I don’t need to.

“Liven it up, Diet! No, second thoughts, I’ll do it. Shell, come,” says Debs and she Billy Whizz’s me out of the kitchen to rifle through their collection. I seek out Dom, who is in the hall, already making the most of her free time and chatting to a couple of people: the only ones, so far, in fancy dress. No need to worry about her then as she can take care of herself. Another relief. I don’t get to select any tunes because, in a heartbeat, Debs has whipped off the experimental psychedelia of the Scottish brothers and replaced it with the far more upbeat sound of Crystal Method. I revisit late nights of dancing and wildness, of Debs and I spinning in our own E-world, where I remain for a little longer than anticipated as Debs grabs my hands and whirls me around so that I slop my Apple Attack on her pseudo-physiatrist’s chair. I go to mop it up with some tissues by the telly.

“Leave it, it’s New Year’s Eve,” shouts Debs with a whoop-whoop. Must be the cider, I reason, and I wipe it the best I can whilst being danced about the room. “Chill, Shell, don’t matter.” She then pulls me in and whispers something in my ear.

“Can’t hear you,” I holler.

Louder. “Me and Big-Man gonna be sweet,” meaning that she and Dieter have ironed out any differences, presumably. I squeeze her hands to show that I’m happy for them and we spin some more, as the women who Dom was just talking to, one a pixie of some sort and the other a sexy pirate, join us and the living room is transformed into tonight’s dance floor. I need this party. I raise my glass to Debs to indicate that I’m going for a re-fill and she mimes me a “get me one too.”

In the hall, Dom and her new friends have morphed into a very tall man with his back to the wall, staring at absolutely nothing. He reminds me of a girl I once saw at a Service Station just off the M50 after the Big Chill Weekend at Eastnor Park. She was completely lost to the glare of a fruit machine and had been for a very long time, so long, in fact, that two Policemen were trying to ascertain whether she was ok and who she was with, but she continued to stare blankly at the game. I remember thinking then that maybe if I put some money into the machine and I managed to get a nudge that would nudge her too. I squeeze past the tall man and say “Hi” but he doesn’t blink. Dom is sitting in the kitchen with Albert, Annie, Dieter and Trish. Trish has a leopard print dress, making it difficult to determine whether she is also in fancy dress – best not to ask. Dom smiles and Dieter tops me up with Attack.

“Michelle, Trisha was just saying that her neighbours have got a twenty foot tall snowman in their garden. And it hasn’t even been snowing!” Dom opens her eyes wide in an expression that says “how mad is that?” “Mad”, I nod in agreement. And we get all philosophical on the meaning of Christmas, but not too philosophical, you understand.

About half hour later, Debs shimmies into the room, seeking out the drink I neglected to pour her: I’d like to say that I thought she could do with the break but the truth is that I clean forgot. She sits on Annie’s lap. More people trickle in through the door, three dressed as surgeons, “might be needing you lot later,” we joke.

“Are you really a doctor?” Dom asks a nerdy looking type with a streak of purple in his hair. She’s pissed.

“No. I’m an actor, just finished shooting an episode of Casualty up the road, actually.”

“Really?” Dom gasps. “Michelle, did you hear that? He’s in Casualty. I love that programme.” I let it go and so does the surgeon.

More cider.

“My God. How big is your orchard?” I ask Albert, who’s still drinking tea.

“Plentiful, baby.”

“Fuck yeah,” says Dieter. “There’s enough for all you sinners, SSSSS (a snake’s hiss).”

“Oh, go on then,” Annie tips her glass forward. “Not every night you’re baby-free.”

“I’ll drink to that,” says Dom.

“Oh, you’ve got a baby. How old is yours?”

“Too young to be in this conversation, my darling,” says Dom, which causes Annie to look her up and down, miffed.

“Fair enough.”

“Come on, Michelle. Let’s dance.” Dom stands up, then sits back down. Up again. I don’t recognise the music but it’s banging.

“Coming Annie?”

“In a mo.” She looks wounded but I get up anyway, worried only momentarily that I should be more loyal to one of my oldest friends. But the boundaries are blurring along with my eyesight. The living room is exclusive of men, bar the tall one with the fixed gaze, who is sitting bolt upright on a beanbag (his subject is now a yucca plant, but at least he’s no longer blocking the gangway). Dom has a curious set of dance moves, like she’s climbing a ladder and getting higher. It’s hard not to imitate. I find myself doing the opposite and push down with my palms so that the pair of us look as though we’re doing a days work on the building site, chaotically. Purple Surgeon bounces in to balance out the oestrogen a little and starts shovelling. Tall man finally realises that there is more to New Year’s Eve than paint and plants and clambers to his feet, slowly stirring the cement. And there we stay, building our new house, all new friends together, until Debs clucks around the dance floor like a mad hen.

“It’s five to twelve, here,” she screams and gives us each a sparkler. “Garden! Now!”

We follow her orders, trailing behind our hostess in a kind of dysfunctional conga, down the hall, out of the kitchen and into the night. Fireworks are already being released over Bedminster. I light my sparkler to the sound of “ten, nine, eight…”

“Three, two, one. Happy New Year,” in unison. I kiss Debs, Dom, Annie, Diet, Trish, Surgeons Number 2 and 3, a bloke in a Trilby and Sexy Pirate. “Should auld acquaintance be forgot …”

Duncan turns up with Tommy, both looking fresh-faced and shiny-mouthed, after lots of hot kissing, most likely. Tommy is camp, with the stick-thinness of a young boy, and a few years younger than my friend Duncan, who, all of a sudden, at this, the beginning of a brand new calendar year, looks gay. How can someone become so obviously homosexual just like that? I think of Wham! prancing around in white shorts and sloganed T-shirts, with pretty boy hair and make-up, circa 1984; how did we never twig that George wasn’t interested sexually in his hundreds upon thousands of female adorers? Why did it take him propositioning a cop in an LA toilet some 15 years later for us to finally accept that he was just not that into women? Denial? Stupidity? Looking at Duncan now, with his hand on Tommy’s arm, I am astonished that his gayness never occurred to me before. In the slightest! Maybe it’s because he’s standing next to just-as-cute-but-skinner-than-Will-Young Tommy or just because I know his secret, but I have to acknowledge that my friend Duncan looks like a very happy, very out, gay man. And then, as his hand brushes Tommy’s forearm and glides up over his shoulder and to his face, as Duncan goes in for the kiss, full on the lips, here in Debs’ kitchen, it becomes clear that his secret is no longer a secret. I feel at first betrayed and then mystified - betrayed by Duncan’s decision that it is ok for everyone else to know and mystified that no-one else is in the slightest bit bothered, like they all knew anyway. I don’t know why, but I need some clarification: I sideline Annie, who is three sheets to the wind.

“What do you think of Tommy?”

“Ahh, he’s lush, isn’t he? Really Duncan’s type. They look happy.”

“Duncan’s type, do you reckon?”

“Yeah, ahhh,” is all Annie has to say on the subject.

I talk to Dieter, who is rolling a huge one in the garden, next to a small fire.

“Everyone’s coupling up Diet. Duncan’s got Tommy and look; even Dom is snogging … who is that?” It’s Purple Surgeon.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it Shell, your very own galloping horse-man will come along, you wait and see.” He puts his gear on a pink and yellow piece of wood and gives me a bear-hug with one arm, effortlessly gentle considering Dieter’s size. He expresses no shock at Duncan’s explicitly non-straight behaviour.

To Debs.

“Aren’t you, erm, surprised about Duncan being with Tommy?”

“A bit,” she leans on me. “I thought he’d go for someone, like, you know, with more muscle. Each one to his own, though innit? Roll me a cig, Shell Baby, I can’t do it.”

“My God. If Super Skins Debs can’t cope with one tiny, lousy roll-up, Albert’s cider got to be attacking! Here.” I do manage to roll us a prison issue one each, with one eye closed and, probably, tongue out. Attractive.

Dom stumbles over. “Hey-y-y-y.”

“Dom you old devil,” says Debs.

“Where’s your doctor?” I ask.

Blank.

“The actor?”

Dom shrugs her shoulders. She has no idea what I’m talking about. “Loving it, rocking-nah.” She really hasn’t been out for a while. I pass her my bent cigarette. Then I lay back on the not-so-dry grass to close my eyes, listening to the hum of chatter and laughter all around me as I give myself up to Albert’s Apple Attack.

“Triple A,” I say but no-one hears me.

Something is tickling my face. Someone is telling me that it’s cold. A light shines in my eyes.

“Shelley. Time to go inside.” It’s Duncan, my caring, thoughtful, gay friend, Duncan. I stare at his lovely face and he draws me up to standing. In the kitchen, it’s tea all round. Tea and spliffs. Boards of Canada are back in their proper slot. Albert’s by the sink, washing up. Most of the guests have left, including Annie, who has returned to the security of her picket fence and Big J, Little J. Debs and Dieter look as though the party never happened and are arguing the toss about the upcoming Celebrity Big Brother – she’s loves it and he loathes it, no revelations there. Tommy has gone: no, there was no row, just gone, Duncan is matter-of-fact.

“Shit! What happened to Dom?”

“No worries, she’s curled up on the sofa.” Albert assures me. Everything in its right place, no harm done, a successful night. Apparently.

Silent Sunday - Blocked Hole

2011-01-30T19:53:00.001Z

Broody - Chapter 17

2011-01-26T12:38:00.000Z

Traffic Lights

It’s not Monday, it’s not even Tuesday. It’s Wednesday and yet that’s lost practically all meaning because it’s also Christmas Eve and, therefore, the date displaces the day. I’ve just arrived at my parents’ and the journey was horrendous, which is only to be expected in the Christmas rush. The M42 was a particular ‘mare and I broke my pre-New Year’s resolution not to smoke and my age old one of not lighting up in the car. At least it’s not my place of work so no-one will prosecute. Mum’s faffing around with the cranberry sauce and Dad’s playing Phil Spector’s Christmas Album a couple of decibels short of offensive. We’re having a night in, just the three of us, and I’m happy for it. I sip my sherry; an odd tradition, given the syrupy sweetness of the drink, but, anyway, it’s preferable to the alternative of Snowball that Mum offered me.

I am contemplative, a mood that is usurping most of my brain power since work finished last Friday and prior to that. I’m thinking yoghurt pots. Duncan’s one seduced me when I was stripping my bed yesterday and, after I swooped to pick it up, I realised that it’s not a yoghurt pot at all: it’s a thoroughly washed, thoroughly empty pot of crème brûlée, which brought something like a chuckle to my throat. The consistency of crème brûlée would preclude the act of sucking it up into the plastic dropper thingy and, if inserted into the vagina, it wouldn’t ease the symptoms of thrush, like yoghurt would. I recall the time that I asked Alex to get some yoghurt to alleviate the sunburn on my shoulders and he came back with a strawberry flavoured one. We laughed at his mistake and shared it, like in The Lady and the Tramp but with less urgency and minus the spaghetti. We came to a natural conclusion, Alex and me, me and Alex. So, not yoghurt, either natural or strawberry: crème brûlée. Does that mean anything? Did Duncan think about the receptacle? If he did, what does it mean? White, thick, creamy, sweet, caramelised crème brûlée.

I look up to see Mum dangling a spoonful of her red jelly in front of me and I catch a little. I say it’s nice although the taste of sherry already filling my buds tells me that it’s a bit tart. She does some sort of quickstep and starts to sing “I saw Mummy kissing Santa Claus, underneath …” Party of four – Mum, Dad, Me and the Ghost of Christmas Present.

**************************

I chose to clean, descalp and score the sprouts, which suited my meditative state. But really, how many Brussels can three people eat, even on Christmas day? No doubt we’ll have bubble and squeak with our fry-up tomorrow morning so I prepared extra. It’s now four-thirty on 25^th December and we’ve had a killer turkey dinner, accompanied by a spot-on cranberry sauce (it was the sherry talking), we’re all getting along well and the paper cracker party hats are placed wonkily on the heads of mother, father and daughter but this table needs to be injected with new life, of that we are all aware. The Elephant has exorcised my Dickensian spectre and crashed onto the fourth chair, waiting to be fed.

Mum doesn’t believe in dishwashers, she’s one of those people who actually enjoys housework or at least she gives that illusion. I wash up, taking pleasure in the way the bubbles melt on my hands, noticing the rainbow colours within them: it’s something I learnt to do in my Buddhism for Beginners book; observe the minutiae of everyday life and, then … let it go. A particularly large bubble bursts without sound or fuss but, all the same, I jump. So focussed had I been on the pinkie-purple of the dome that, for a split second, I mourn its death. I splash my hands about in the water, trying to recreate the effect but the froth has almost disappeared, goose fat dulling my game. I dredge the remaining cutlery from the increasingly lifeless, dirtied water, empty the sink and refill it, hotter than before, pouring in more Fairy Liquid than is needed.

“Want me to dry, Shell?” Dad. I nod a “yup”. He already has the Welsh Recipes tea towel in his hand.

I look at the clock, 5:30.

“If you two want to go to the Lamb later, that’s ok. Don’t feel that you have to spend the whole evening with us,” says Dad. “Us two” are Scott and me.

“Thanks. Maybe we will. Depends on what time Grace goes to bed. We’ll see how it all pans out.” They’ll be here soon and I’m apprehensive - a little excited, a little dreading the whole bloody thing. Aside from the birthday greetings, contact between Scott and I has been minimal lately. On my part, this indicates a reluctance to redefine our relationship too quickly, facilitated by the reality that we do know each other pretty well already. That reluctance, however, isn’t purely practical. Truth is I’m still not sure about Scott. We don’t have that frisson that exists between Simon and me (at least I think Simon gets it too?). When Simon kisses me I feel the electrical charge of chemicals being stimulated. When Simon touches me, minute bumps appear all over my body and I experience heat and ice contemporaneously. When Simon’s hand tickles my upper leg, I am wet instantaneously. None of that with Scott. Scott is steady , though I don’t mean to say boring. He’s a good friend and we share a patch of common ground but am I guilty of entertaining nostalgia? On the other hand, friendship and trust are lasting, excitement rarely is. Practical or Emotional? Treadmill or rollercoaster? One of Mum’s plates that she keeps for special occasions escapes my grasp, too many suds on my fingers, other things on my mind: no-one said that mindfulness was effortless. Dad catches the plate and saves the day. As parents do.

I’m helping Grace with her Girl’s World, a gift from Santa, showing her how to thread beads into the synthetic blonde hair – my dexterous female hands and my youthful eyes are most suited to this task, apparently. The doll’s head didn’t come with beads in my day, just with extending hair and lots of the blue and pink make-up so typical of the 1970’s. And I swear that my head was bigger than this one but then I remember the time I revisited my junior school as a teenager and the chairs and tables that I used to sit at seemed so much smaller than they had a few years before. Just the way it is.

“Put a purple bead on next, please, Meee-shell,” she requests. So polite. I comply, appreciative of the diversion. I suggest a red bead after that, irritated by the little girl’s insistence in using only girlie colours. Irrational, I know. We make just one plait and, as Grace continues to groom “Molly’s” hair, I have to stop myself from telling her not to get the little brush caught up in the braid and ruin the whole effect. I won’t be like that as a mother; I will exercise restraint and allow my child to explore unhindered.

“Molly’s got very pretty hair, hasn’t she?”

“It’s lovely,” I agree. “That’s because you brush it so well.” Patronising? She’s 5, so what?

“Daddy’s friend Lucy has got yellow hair too,” she offers. “Lucy is a pretty name, isn’t it? Kieran is a boy’s name though.”

“Lucy is a good name, it means light.” I tell her. I am educator. I don’t know what Kieran means but the reverse of light comes to mind.

“Oh.” Her eyes flicker into the air and then lock into mine. “She doesn’t look heavy.” Grace is so proud of this observation and I don’t laugh. But I do think who the fuck is Lucy? Irrational, again, I know.

“Grace! Michelle! Christmas cake!” coos Mum, and Grace jumps up with a “cake”, leaving the brush in a tangle-dangle. I extricate it gently and tease the doll’s tresses, undoing a tiny knot with my, it turns out, dexterous fingers.

Served with a glass of spicy mulled wine, I nibble at the fruit cake, separating the marzipan from the icing, something that I’ve done for as far back as I can remember. Why is everything so sweet these days? Scott eats his Christmas cake without breathing, devouring it, exhibiting his voracious appetite, which suggests to me that all his appetites may be equally healthy. I like that about him. I file this information on the “pros” column of the puerile “Scott - Pros and Cons” list in my head.

I'm in the Lamb with Scott and I’m surprised by the volume of people in here. Tonight Mal has opened the pub as a thank you to the locals for their custom throughout the year and even our first drink was on the house, despite us being non-locals. My enjoyment of the vodkatonic is deepened by Mal’s generosity.

“Cheers,” says Scott and we clink. The woman who served me last time I was in here approaches the table and offers us both a mince pie. I take one off the plate with a smile, even if I am full to the brim. She inclines her head and sits back down with her friends and/or family; she’s not working tonight but, you know what they say, “once a barmaid, always a barmaid”.

We discuss Grace and our parents, a safe topic, an icebreaker, if you like. Scott wishes me a belated happy birthday and I thank him for his messages, the first time I’ve done so. The conversation steers towards work. I tell him about my our night out at the Middle-eastern place, but not about Mitch, and Scott goes quiet momentarily, as if he is weighing up something. Then he drops the bombshell.

He’s been seeing a woman from work. He’s a hospital porter, she manages the café. I already know that she has blonde hair and that her name is Lucy. She’s a single mum with a little boy called Kieran, who is just a year older than Grace. Cosy. They’ve only been out a couple of times so it’s nothing serious but mummy and son, daddy and daughter have recently had a successful foursome. I say that I’m pleased for him but I sense that he doesn’t believe me. I don’t believe me. I think he might be about to apologise for something that never happened between us and I head for the loo.

I stay in the cubicle way past the time it takes to have a pee and, still seated, I draw my hands through my hair and mouth the f-word, over and again, berating myself for being so conceited, so presumptuous, so pissing arrogant. Why did I think that Scott would wait around for me to decide that I wanted more than a kiss from him? I mean, five weeks without as much as a “thanks for a good time.” He was hoping to take it further, I’m sure he was, but I was stuck on amber and, in the meantime, those appetites of his and the practicalities of everyday life have guided him towards someone who is already glowing green, someone with her own family to raise, someone who lives in the same city as him and as Grace, someone whose life slots into his quite comfortably without upsetting the status quo, and his into hers, no doubt. Someone who fits.

Under dim light, I check my face and brush on some Touche Éclat. I put pressure on the jagged vertical lines etched between my brows to iron them out and I stride back to where Scott is sitting. He pops his mobile back into his pocket and asks if I want another drink. I decline and suggest that we reconvene with our elders back at the house. He understands perfectly but says nothing that would embarrass me as he downs his pint. We head to my parents’, plumping conversationally for the always safe subject of music. I don’t want to be here, I want to go home, back to my own space, my own life and whatever that is becoming. I stay up until the Griffith family has left to give the impression that everything’s cool, I help Mum to tidy up the plates and glasses and then I go to bed, all at once relieved, deflated and debased. The Ghost of Christmas Present gives way to a bleaker Future.

****************************

I awake to a Boxing Day text from Mitch, which indicates that he has been thinking of me over Christmas but that, as we’re just friends, it would have been unnatural to send a message on Christmas Day itself. But in what capacity has he been thinking of me: as a pal or as a potential shag/lover/girlfriend/soul-mate/mother of his children? His text suggests the first option: “Happy Christmas MeShelley. Did you survive it?” He means did I survive Scott and the anguish I described at spending time with him, I’m fairly certain of that. I text back: “Happy Xmas to you too! I’m a survivor. There will be zero action here. Guaranteed. How’s yours? :).” I finish with a question, inviting him to answer me so that we can continue this thumb action conversation. Not a peep out of Simon, nor did I expect one. Weak as I am, it’ll be much simpler if Mr Larkin doesn’t get in touch with me at all, ever. When we have no contact I can be objective and tell myself that he’s a waste of space but if he texts or phones me, or even worse if I see him face to face, my resolve ebbs and I’m back in his arms a la Scarlett O’Hara. He’s a waste of my time.

And number two man, Scott? Any opportunity I ever had with Scott is already in the past, it seems, and, really, I don’t feel that there’s anything there worth fighting for, which tells me that that liaison was never supposed to be and that I was clutching at straws. As for Mitch? You know, I reckon we’ll continue this friendship just as it is: no pressure, no expectations, no disappointments. My phone bleeps: “A quiet one for me too, no surprises here either x.” No mention of his date last weekend and I feel it best not to pry; he’d offer the information if there was anything he wanted me to know. I reply: “Nice one x.” We’re being non-committal, while notifying the other that we are still single agents. Yes “just friends” – that’ll do nicely. And anyway, what’s the problem, I’m going to be carrying Duncan’s baby soon, aren’t I?

Broody - Chapter 16

2011-01-11T18:31:00.000Z

Cracks

Siobhan is sitting at the foot of my bed. Her hair is cut short and she looks old, as though her face is collapsing. My brain tries to compute her age in years. Is she still here, on this earth? She points to the waxing moon outside. “28 days,” she says. “Cycle upon cycle. For all eternity. And everything depends on timing.” She cuts a line of coke on my mattress and snorts it slowly so that I can see her nostrils contract then flare and her pupils dilate. Her irises turn the colour of a Somerset sunset. She blinks hard and the sun disappears, her eyes restored to an inky blue. She crawls over to me and starts to cry. “I’m hungry.” She pulls away the quilt to expose my breasts. She takes my swollen, cracked nipple in her mouth and begins to suck.

I am 35 years and one day old. Simon phoned rather late last night to wish me a happy birthday, got the date wrong, he said. I didn’t care; I was thrilled to hear his voice and I went all gooey – again! We made no plans to meet up though, which disheartened me. He’s got a lot of work to finish off before Christmas and is unsure when the next quota will come in, so he needs to maintain reliability. He’ll be in touch, I’ll be in touch, whatever.

One working week remains before the staff of the West of England Language School are liberated for the end of year festivities but, because most of us will be scurrying away as soon as the final school bell rings next Friday, we’re having our Christmas party a week early. We’re in a North African/Middle Eastern themed restaurant/bar/club/whatever-will-sell-it: an everything under one roof extravaganza. The flyers assure us that it is “one of Bristol’s premier nightspots”. Boredom isn’t an option. Outside, the illuminated St Mary Redcliffe Church is majestic: only a dusting of snow could complete the quintessential Christmas card view. Inside, the atmosphere screams “enjoy yourselves everyone, it’s Christmastime”. Inside my head, a voice says, “Let yourself go. Have fun.” This wisdom is being communicated to me by my very own Ghost of Christmas Present and, like Ebenezer Scrooge, it’s the future that I fear most, so I decide to go with the voice and immerse myself fully in the here and now.

The meal is over. The richness of marinated lamb and the salty bitterness of black olives cling to my palate, despite the sickly sweetness of the six mini-desserts, which were served up, pointlessly I thought, on a lantern. I sat between Hamid and Moira and opposite Irina. Like at the last supper, there are thirteen of us but the infinitely long tables here mean that our group of world representatives was sandwiched between two other “office parties”, the gaggle to the right of me being particularly vociferous. I would bet on it that they were civil servants. Their already excited mood was elevated further when a full-figured raven-haired belly dancing beauty introduced her talents just after the first (lantern-served) courses. She approached our group and I was tickled to witness Hamid’s coyness as his eyes darted all over the room in an attempt to dodge the temptress, while my approving pair focussed mostly on her wobbling breasts and quivering stomach – she reminded me of one of those jelly cola bottles you used to get in a 10p sweet mix from the newsagents as a kid, all gelatinous and shapely and probably just as tasty.

The after-dinner lounge is cavernous. The grandiose, sweeping marble staircase seems to press onto us a wintery Sirocco, giving the whole room an external, chilly feel. It’s not unpleasant but I sense that many of those patrons not yet drunk enough to dance are doing so anyway, just to keep warm. I know I am! I’m laughing, partly because we’re all interpreting this Arabesque sound differently, as evidenced by our dissimilar dance steps, and partly because, maybe one of the few in here who is feeling at one with the music, Hamid has discarded his shyness and is now saddling up to a bejewelled and veiled redhead with enviable naval muscle-control.

I’m so transfixed by the sway of Hamid’s dancing partner’s hips, at the suggestiveness of her pelvic thrust, that I only just register the friendly stare of the man a little to her left. I do see his arm raised slightly in the air, fingers fanned in a tiny waving motion, but I put it down as just another anything-goes dance move. I am aware of his upwards turn of the lips, but everyone is in a jovial mood tonight. It’s not until he shuffles over to me in an exaggerated John Travolta move that I think that I might know him. I take a little while to compute the white-blond hair, the cleft cheeks and naughty-boy smile and, when I do, the shape of words and letters, of texts and emails, floats into my head.

“Mitch?”

“Michelle.”

And we hug. Me and my almost lost mate-date.

We find a seat in the alcove under the stairway, sheltered from the imaginary icy wind flowing down its speckled slabs and far enough away from the heavy boom of the speakers to make conversation possible. Mitch is also out on a work’s bash. He’s the marketing manager for a publishing firm in town (another reason that he should be gay) and the bunch of female colleagues who he’s here with keep trying to stick their tongues in his head.

“And that’s a problem?”

“It is when you know their relationship histories. Relationships which most of them are still in,” he says.

I don’t ask whether he’s in a relationship. I know he’s not. I can tell. He has an open face and a scar beneath his lower lip. When he smiles, the wound evaporates and his dimples deepen that I resist from squeezing a finger inside.

“So, did you have a good birthday?”

“Yes. Thanks.” I remember now his message. “I had a quiet one. I don’t think that I’d have had the energy for this otherwise.” I scan the room and notice Irina doing some kind of Cossack move. I laugh. “Everyone’s reverted to their own style of dancing. It’s like they’ve all got different tunes in their heads.”

“Maybe they have,” he says.

Maybe we all have. I hear the voice of Christmas Present counselling me to go with the flow, but, actually, right now, I need no spectral guidance, no alter-ego. I am my own director and no-one else, imagined or otherwise, can really steer me. We talk about our luck, and bad luck, with members of the opposite sex. He did meet a woman at Fast Love, Abbey, who he went out with a few times but she was still hung up on her ex-boyfriend, so much so that, often, when they were alone together, he witnessed her in another place, with another man, so that relationship was dead in the water. His mate, Chris, fixed him up with Sarah, a blind date, and he thinks it went rather well; she’s bubbly, intelligent and easy going. Anyway, it went well enough for them to have arranged to meet up again this weekend. I wish him luck. I too confide in Mitch – about Daniel, who didn’t work out and about Scott, who I haven’t thought about, not in any depth, for a few days or longer. I reveal to him my thoughts on Simon, that although we’ve been getting extremely friendly, fundamentally I not sure that he’s the right person for me. It’s the first time that I’ve admitted this even to myself and it’s a relief to come clean. Because, there is something about Simon that tells me to leave well alone, even if I do keep going back for more. My life is changing, I’m changing and the people with whom I surround myself are not the same ones that I felt “at one” with just a few months ago. I tell all this to Mitch because he’s invites confidence, because I enjoy being self-deprecatory (occasionally I find it cathartic to have a laugh at myself and the mistakes that I make) and because he’s just a mate. Isn’t he?

*********************

Debs comes round on the bike that Dieter refashioned for her, all sunflower yellow with pink spokes and frames.

“It’s very girlie,” I say as she leans it against the wall in my hallway. We stand there for a few seconds, just staring at it. Debs turns to me and pulls a comedy face.

“I feel like Sandra Dee,” she says. I wonder if her “Grease” references are confusing to anyone who hasn’t seen it a zillion times. But I have, so I laugh.

“This is from us, a belated birthday present. I’ll leave it to you to work out.”

She hands me a small, empty coffee jar, adorned with painted flowers of yellow and pink (a job lot?). Inside is a T-light and the screwed on lid of the jar has been Stanley-knifed to cut away a swirling pattern. It’s unusual to say the least.

“Thanks, Debs. I love it.” I think of that other empty container, that yogurt pot under my bed with its thin plastic friend, awaiting acknowledgement, anticipating its rebirth as the makeshift vessel for Duncan’s biological donation to our baby-making initiative.

“Excellent,” she says. “When the candle’s lit, shapes form above it, and if you hover this piece of card over it and spin it around, it’s like you’re in a trance. It’s well trippy.”

“In that case, maybe I’ll put off lighting it till I’m stoned!”

“Probably the best way,” she agrees. She is trying to be breezy but I can tell that something is wrong. She has clouds in her eyes: something is brewing in her mind. Once the tea is made, I dive in.

“So what’s up?”

“Nothing.” But as soon as the denial is out she starts to cry. Right there on my sofa, the woman who is always in control has tears streaming down her pretty face. I hold her for some minutes. Her sobs subside enough for me to get the gist; she is confused, she never thought she wanted it but now she thinks she might. And it’s all my fault.

“All this talk about finding the right man to have a baby with. I can’t shift it. I mean, you know, is Diet really the man that’s going to be the father of my children, the man who will stick by us, no matter what? I love him, Shell, you know I do, but I know nothing about him, not really. What was his life like before we met? I mean, his spirit didn’t just materialise when we got together, did it? But he’s a closed book.”

“Have you talked to him about it?”

“Whenever I do he just says, like, it’s today that’s important and that we only need to be happy with what we have here, in the present. I understand all that but how can you really love someone you know bugger-all about?” So she hasn’t shared her maternal instincts with him?

“No. I have to sort my own head out first,” she says.

“It might not be him, then?” She wants honesty, I hope. She certainly needs it. “Maybe you have your answer right there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” I say. “If you were sure that Dieter was the one that you wanted to start a family with, wouldn’t you know it?”

“Shit! You’re probably right.” She cries some more then suddenly stops.

“You ok?”

“Absolutely.” She takes a Zippo out of her purse, lights my coffee pot birthday candle and then the pre-rolled joint that she seemed to pluck out of the sky, and says, “Right then, let’s get dizzy with it.”

The card is all spun out and so are we. We’re lying on the floor, head to head, staring at the ceiling, creating our own images on the blank canvas.

“So? Is Scotty the one?”

“No,” I reply.

“Don Simon?”

“Er, no.”

“Not too sure about him then.”

“No.” My chuckle holds no humour.

“Anyone else you neglected to tell me about?”

“Nope.” No need to mention Mitch, nothing going on there.

“Right, then. You do the tea and I’ll roll the spliff.” A portrait of the man with a wide grin dissolves into the whiteness of the chipped paintwork above me and I pull myself up to sit.

Debs eventually peddles off on her statement of femininity and I decide to have an afternoon nap. I’ve got ten days to worry about Christmas presents. I lay there on my bed with the yogurt pot underneath me and I think about bats. Wouldn’t be great to be a female bat? To mate (do bats enjoy sex?) and then go into hibernation, awakening some months later, fully replenished, able to fertilise the eggs in your own time. That’s the way to do it. I picture Val Kilmer’s pert, ripe-for-biting bum in Batman Returns and I remember the scene where he is in Nicole Kidman’s office: he interprets a seemingly random splotch on the wall as a flying rodent. He sees what he wants to see. I get out of bed and dash back downstairs to the front room and, supine on the floor, I endeavour to place myself in the exact position I was in a couple of hours ago. Nothing. All I see now is a ceiling in need of repair. And, besides being cold, I feel stupid.

****************

Mitch meets me at Stapleton Road Station and we walk to the pub. His scar is resting snugly under his bunched-up grey scarf: at least I think it’s not - I hope it’s not - a snood that he’s wearing. That would be too much. Then again, he strides like a man, his voice is passably deep and he hasn’t displayed any signs of waving his arms about like the employees you see on the apron at Bristol Airport. What was all that at Fast Love then? I have false memory syndrome? He had nervous-energy overload? He had taken a slug of helium? Maybe I’ll ask, maybe I won’t.

If I had to recall the on-foot journey from the station to the Sugar Loaf pub, I would most certainly get lost, as I am paying no attention whatsoever. My oversized black woollen cap restricts radically my view and I’m concentrating on being warm. The roads are iced up; maybe it will be a White Christmas? My mind is also being commandeered by all this Duncan Baby business. If we did decide to go ahead, would the yogurt pot really be necessary? The man has been married, for God’s sake, doesn’t that make him bi? Even if he is now 100% homosexual, couldn’t he make an exception? It’s not like he hasn’t got it up on many previous occasions (but admittedly not with me). Or am I being naïve? Unreasonable? Crass? Insensitive? All of the above?

“And the thing is - I don’t even eat oysters.” Mitch is relaying one of his hard-luck dating stories with a girl called Caroline. Or was it Karen? I’m not paying due attention. Is he picking up on my wandering mind and reading it as disinterest? Is it disinterest? I get back in the conversation.

“Try putting a coat of chilli sauce on them. You tend to focus on the burning sensation rather than the slipperiness of the oysters. But then there’s no point in that either is there? If you don’t fancy someone, then you just don’t.” I’m dangling a hook.

“I suppose. Aphrodisiacs should be the resort of those who want to put fire into a stale relationship, not for those embarking on a new one,” he says, not taking the bait. I think.

“Fire by aphrodisiac or by chilli sauce, either would do,” I say as we approach the fairy lit spectacle that is the pub.

We sit at a table that offers a view of the comings and goings of other punters and I think of the time that I was here, years ago in the early days with Alex, and no, I realise, even we didn’t need oysters back then. I feel the slightest pang of loss but none of regret. The familiar taste of Natch heightens my nostalgia and then passes as, once again, the ghostly voice in my head commands me to stay in the moment. I let my eyes linger on a poster of Marilyn and I speculate as to how lonely she must have been. She was only a year older than me when she died – she had it all, had nothing.

“Over-rated film if you ask me,” says Mitch.

“Some Like it Hot? A classic just because they say so? Maybe.”

“Whoever they are,” he says. I let it go because I’ve only seen the film once and I barely remember it, so perhaps he does have a point. “So, when do you leave for your folks’ place then?”

“Um. Monday, I think. Or Tuesday. I have to do my shopping first and there’s a dearth of shops where they live. In fact, there’s a dearth of everything where they live.” I say.

“Sounds like a good place to unwind then. Will you be seeing Scott?” He remembered his name, which is unnerving. Then again, at least he listens.

“Scott?” I try to be breezy. “More than likely, although we’ve made no arrangements. He’ll be hard to avoid really.”

“You want to avoid him?”

“No. Yes. I’m not sure. I just hope that it won’t be awkward, you know. I mean, nothing really happened between us but ….”

“It could have,” he says perceptively.

“Um, yes.” There’s no reason that I shouldn’t discuss this with him. After all, I offered him the Scott/Simon/Daniel (but not Duncan) information the other evening. And Mitch and I are only friends, this being the sort of things that only friends chat about.

He tells me that he’s meeting that blind-date of his, Sarah, tomorrow night. He thinks they’re just going for a drink in town and then, if it all goes to plan, they’ll hook up again after Christmas. I seize upon the subject of Christmas and ask how long he’ll be staying in Ashton-Under-Lyne.

“About a week, it’ll take that long to do a pub crawl. A dearth of pubs they don’t have. Any plans for New Year?” Oh my God, New Year. Here I am footloose and fancy and I have no plans for New Year’s Eve. That’s a first. This is confusing.

“You know what, I don’t think I have! Usually you can take your pick of parties but I don’t know of any. Yet. I must be out of favour,” I say with a shrug.

“You, MeShelley, out of favour? Never. If you haven’t been invited to at least five by the 31^st get in touch, I’m sure we can arrange something.” He smiles.

“Thanks.” I might just do that.

Irreparable

2011-01-03T16:26:00.000Z

Broody - Chapter 15

2011-01-03T13:32:00.000Z

Coming of Age

It’s Thursday and it’s my birthday. I woke up alone, as per, went to work, taught two classes and conducted one-to-one assessments with four of my learners and now I am heading home, on the train. Thirty bloody five years old. 35! I’m not sure that I’m where I thought I would be at 35 but then, is anyone? I’ve never done the five-year plan or even a five-month one, so I guess that I couldn’t anticipate what my life would be or will be like. My impulsiveness, a love of travel and that reluctance to be tied down have dictated my path in a way. A typical Sagittarian; at best spontaneous and natural and at worst reckless and irresponsible. Fire. Not earthed. Capricious. Not steadfast. Do we become our astrological signs? Do we convince ourselves that an accident of birth predetermines our personal traits? Can 1 in 12 people share such peculiarities? There must be countless attributes of The Archer that don’t explain Michelle Ainsley but maybe I’ve chosen to disregard them, wanting to put my faith in something (another Sagittarian characteristic), seeing as the Church never worked for me.

I’ve had birthday texts from Scott, Duncan and Debs, who never did bake that cake, Christmas Fruit or Birthday Chocolate, a call from Sían and a call from Mum and Dad. I’ve also had a number of Facebook birthday wishes. And one from Scott, again. For me, the Scott scenario is getting to be a case of “outta sight, outta mind” rather than “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. As expected, nothing from Simon, who I had some sort of sex with at Paris’ house, after our vodka and coke-fuelled night. It wasn’t that sort of sex, the right sort that might lead to conception, but, as ever, it was completely enjoyable and I’m left wanting more. Maybe that’s his strategy? Keep me hanging on, awaiting The Real Thing. Despite myself, it’s working. And, also despite myself, I was impressed with Paris’s wall-mounted 50-inch HD ready Plasma TV (as a Sagittarian, I am given to displays of vulgarity too), even if a larger than life Andrew Marr was a downright frightening Sunday morning experience to my wired brain.

I get home to two 1571 messages.

Annie: “Hi Shelley. Happy birthday. Er, hope you had a good day, maybe catch you later. Happy birthday again. Bye-ee-ee.”

And Duncan: “Happy Birthday. Sorry. Not accepting your quiet night in. It’s just not you. Be round about eight. See you later, loverlee.”

For probably the first birthday ever I had decided to stay home alone, opting to hide away from being one year closer to middle-age but it’s always good to see Duncan. A handful of cards from the usual suspects sit on my hallway mat: jokes about age, a couple with horribly cute animals on them and a “to our darling daughter” one my parents. I arrange them on the fireplace, open a bottle of red and run a deliciously bubbled bath, which hides the veins on my legs that are more pronounced than they were yesterday, when I was 34.

Towel-dried, dressed and made-up, I welcome Duncan into my home with a big hug. I’m really happy to see him and I tell him so. I pick up my mobile and see that I missed a call while in the bath. It’s from Mitch and he’s left a message: “Hi, it’s Mitch. Happy Birthday MeShelley. Facebook informed me of your big day, sorry not to catch you, hope you’re having a great time. Bye.” I have two immediate thoughts. That, though it’s never bothered me before, I really must remove my year of birth from my Facebook Profile and that Mitch doesn’t sound half as camp as I thought he did. It’s actually the first time that I’ve heard his voice since Fast Love and my suspicion is building that he’s not gay at all, unlike my gorgeous mate sitting right here. I’ll reply later; right now I have to get back to Duncan.

“Have you eaten?” I ask. I haven’t but, tonight, I could take or leave food.

“Yeah, thanks. I had a very late lunch. At about 5. Was that dinner then?”

“Yup.”

I pour us both wine and we sit in the living room, in the same chairs that we always sit in. I tell Duncan about my day, about how, although I could quite happily have asked out Alejandro, the dish from Toledo, a couple of months ago, assuming he wasn’t my student, that is, today I had a tutorial with him and I became aware of the huge age difference between us.

“It’s exactly the same difference as it was yesterday.” Duncan, very rightly, observes.

“Yeah, but now I’m 35. Why would he even entertain a date with me if he could have his pick of twenty year olds?”

“Lucky you’re his teacher then and your ethics wouldn’t allow any funny stuff.” He won’t indulge me. “Better off not mixing the personal and professional anyway. Remember that bloke I told you about at work, Danny?” I nod. “He actually pinched my arse yesterday.”

“No! What did you do?”

“I just told him to fuck off. In a friendly way, like. But how close to home is that? Not that I would reciprocate, even if the whole place knew.”

“Knew what.” Of course I know what he’s talking about but I want him to get used to saying it.

“That I’m gay, Michelle.” So matter-of-fact. Oops, he’s rumbled me. “I’ve got you a birthday present.”

“Ooooh,” I say playfully

“You ready?”

“For what?”

“For your birthday present? What, got Alzheimer’s?”

“Fuck off.”

“Ah-ah.” He mock scolds, waving a finger. “Present!”

“Oh yeah, I forgot, haha.”

And then he just sits there. I look around to see if he’s deposited a big box of chocolates in an obvious place but I fail to locate them: I still see nothing. I look at Duncan, who is now fidgeting and sitting on his hands, like a little boy. A crease has formed between his neatly arranged eyebrows and he is staring straight ahead, his front teeth nibbling his bottom lip.

“So?” I don’t mean to be infantile but it’s not like I’ve had sackfuls of gifts today.

“Yeah, I’ll just get it.” He stands up, grabs his jacket from the back of the chair and, from it, he pulls a small parcel wrapped in brown paper, one pink ribbon going lengthways, a blue ribbon crossing its width and both meeting in the middle in a swirl of elegant loops. The shape of the artfully decorated package gives little away: definitely not a CD or a book, I surmise.

“Ooooh, this looks interesting. Can I shake it?” I ask.

“If you like. Shouldn’t do any harm at this stage.” He’s looking at me both eagerly and uncertainly. I feel a bit sick.

“It looks so lovely, I don’t want to spoil the effect.”

“For fuck’s sake, Shell, just open the thing.”

Jesus! Now, clawing at the misshape, I take absolutely no care in unwrapping it. The pretty ribbons are pushed aside, all desire to keep the aesthetics intact for posterity gone. My impatient, grabbing fingers uncover an empty yogurt pot and a small plastic syringe-type device. I stare at the two items on my lap and am unable to speak. My mind is more or less blank and I feel like Homer Simpson when he has been asked a question that should be effortless to answer but, instead of images of Duff beer and doughnuts drifting across my near-to-vacant mind, I hear a cacophony of sounds: sex noises and the cries of newborn babies, mostly.

“Shell?”

“Right. Okay.” I finally muster. “So, it’s a yes then?” I can’t look at him. I know I should be ecstatic but I am numb. I’m in shock, probably.

“Yes, it’s a yes,” Duncan is saying. “Look at me, Shell.” And when I do, his clear, dry eyes inform me that I have been crying silently. “Isn’t this what you want?”

“Yes,” I say meekly.

“But?”

“But …. nothing. I didn’t expect it, that’s all.”

“Listen.” He takes my clammy hand and wipes my cheek. He’s so sensitive, so tactile. How did I never guess? “It is a yes but I think we need to sit on it for a few weeks, you know, to give us both the opportunity to assess this fully. To be absolutely sure that this is the way forward, for you and for me and for anyone else who comes along.”

“Yes,” I agree. “We need to be absolutely sure.”

He’s gone. And maybe I feel more alone than I ever have done before. What’s wrong with me? As Duncan said, this what I want. Isn’t it? He’s agreed to do the biggest favour that anyone could ask of a friend and all I feel is detached, without a hint of the delirium I think I should. Not even a faint rush of excitement, no elation. What’s more, I’m an ingrate. Poor Duncan.

I’ve heard that even women who want to be pregnant more than anything in the world experience a flash of doubt when they find out that they actually are. But I’m nowhere near pregnant: I’ve simply managed to secure a sperm donor who may not even be suitable. It’s the first step of the stairwell, that’s all. But will it lead me up to heights I never imagined or down to the depths of despair? I, a person who has always welcomed change, who has always been up for a challenge, now feel comfortable in the security of my mezzanine, stuck between the ups and the downs. My own cosy limbo. Suddenly, the thought of having a baby like this, without a steady partner, more or less on my own, terrifies me.

Even trees need to keep warm

2011-01-02T18:30:00.001Z

Broody - Chapter 14

2010-12-02T13:52:00.000Z

Gay Abandon

“God, it feels like ages since anyone visited. And it’s important that Edward gets to meet other adults too or he’ll think that the only people who exist in the world, other than me, are those he sees on CBeebies or at the Aldi checkout. Cheese?” I look at the bowl of tomato and vegetable pasta that Dom has put before me and I think that, yes, it could do with a zing of protein in it.

“Please.” I wonder whether I should ask for a fork. I cast my eyes toward Edward’s hands, which are shovelling fistfuls of saucy twirls into his eager mouth, and I decide to make do with the spoon provided. Dom piles a hill of grated cheese on top of my food.

“’Scuse fingers,” she says. “Help yourself to salt. Everything I cook these days is sodium-free.” She nods once at her son and then makes a tutting expression with her eyes and brows. I scan the table for a cruet set but don’t locate one. “Hope it’s ok.”

“Lovely, thanks,” I say but I can’t taste very much at all; it needs garlic or pepper or chilli or something. Salt probably. “So what did you do before you had Edward? Work wise, I mean.”

“I worked in HR for Browne’s Insurance. We got relocated from London to Bristol about three years ago.”

“Oh, right. So how long were you with them?”

“I started working for them in 2000 and, actually, I thought I’d go back after having Ed but it didn’t work out that way. I did try for six weeks, when he was seven months old, but I couldn’t bear it, you know, not seeing him all day. I tried going part-time but that didn’t work out either – my job wasn’t shared and I felt as though I was playing catch-up all the time, doing a full time job in two days was beyond me. So I left altogether.”

“It must be difficult,” I say, patronisingly. “You couldn’t have been in Bristol long before you fell pregnant, then?”

“About ten months,” she looks away. She obviously doesn’t want to talk about it.

“Would you ever think of going back to London? That’s where you’re from right?”

“I’m from just outside Basildon, an Essex girl. Nah, I like it here. It kind of rural but very city at the same time, you know?” I nod. “I really like it here. I don’t really know that many people but somehow it feels, well, it feels like home. And it’s safer for a child.” It’s a good point. Is his father here, I can’t help thinking.

After lunch, Dom heaps our used plates on top of an existing stack of dirty dishes next to the sink and, refusing my offer of help, insists that we go into the living room with a coffee. She switches on the telly and Edward loses himself in an armchair disguised by Thomas the Tank Engine and Noddy cushions, from where he stares unblinkingly at the screen. A jolly round man is talking to camera and doing sign language to a group of cute kids with learning disabilities, mesmerising not only the son but the mother as well.

“It’s part of the ritual,” Dom explains. “Ed loves Justin. That’s him.” She points to the bloke with the friendly face, who has transformed himself into a clown. “And because he gets so involved, I kind of do too. He’ll be asleep by the time the programme has finished. Always is.” I mouth an understanding “ahh” but don’t engage in conversation, not wishing to disturb the stillness and, sure enough, as Justin sings and signs a goodbye song, heralding the end of his slot, Edward’s eyes start to shut, the magic working.

“Never fails,” says Dom. “He seemed to take to you.” Did he? Since I got here an hour ago, all I’ve experienced of Edward is his messy play with tomatoey pasta and his appreciation of a TV show for kids with special needs. His only acknowledgement of me was when he flicked a diced carrot at my head. I turned quickly to him wearing an expression of mock-disbelief; he found this entertaining and repeated the action, till his mum told him to stop. By convincing herself that he’s comfortable with me, it will most likely be easier for her to leave him in my care at a later date. “This is my chill-out time, my second favourite time of day.”

“The first being…?”

“Bed-time,” Dom says. “His, not mine. God, that sounds awful, doesn’t it? I suppose it’s like when you’re at work all day and you can’t wait for lunch break. But then the real unwinding comes when you get finally get home and open a bottle of wine.” That sounds familiar, I think. “Edward’s my job. That’s the way I look at it.”

“That’s a good philosophy,” I say. “Does it work?”

“Well, sometimes. I’m just not getting paid very much for it; I get no holidays and no sick leave. I tell you Michelle, if you ever have kids, make sure there are two of you. Or preferably more,” she says, having no clue as to how pertinent all this is to me right now. She allows a smile to overtake her face. “Shit, I sound like a right wingebag, don’t I?”

“A bit,” I laugh. “But I’m sure millions of mothers all over the world feel the same way. So, what do you do when he’s gone to bed?”

“Open a bottle of wine,” she says, chuckling. “I either watch telly, phone people or read – depending on how much of the wine I polish off.” I’ve seen the reports about health dangers to women, particularly middle-class women, who drink at least half a bottle of wine every night, without considering the damage that this regular consumption of alcohol is doing to their bodies. Because they’re not getting drunk, they think it’s ok. I don’t fit into this category; I fit into the category that is made up mostly of women in their twenties – go out, get pissed, get lairy or laid or both – women who don’t yet have that all-important and time consuming family to occupy their days and nights. Experts would say that we are both symptomatic of the society we live in; two females in a nation of self-abusers. Whatever happened to individuality? I wonder.

****************************

I run to the phone, towel on head. “Hello?”

“Hi Shell, it’s Debbie. You ok?” It took her three days to ask but at least she has. I did call Annie, to keep the peace, although we didn’t discuss the comments made by James or the absence of support from her. Or of anyone else for that matter.

“Yeah, I’m fine thanks. You?” Does she deserve more?

“A bit tired. I was up half the night, writing an article with Dieter about the allotment for a blog he’s started. It’s all about his efforts to be self-sufficient. Pretty good stuff, I reckon. Shall I send you the link?”

“Ok.”

“Right, I’ll do that in a mo. Erm, listen, you know that we’re on your side about this baby thing, don’t you?” This baby thing.

“Thanks. Listen can I phone you back? I’ve just got out of the shower and I need to dry off.” I’m still feeling angry, let down.

“Sure. Catch up with you later.”

“Right. Bye.” And I hang up. I’m in no mood for a post-mortem with Debs, not just now.

I put on my dressing gown and fall onto the sofa with a huff. “This baby thing” – is that how it’s phrased, like I’m in the middle of a fad, like Marky. Well, this is no fad and this baby thing is about as serious as I’ve been about anything in my entire life. Ever. And so what if I’m on a spunk-hunt, as Dieter might call it? Isn’t that the least complicated way of doing this? Until now, I have resisted all temptation to search out details on sperm donor clinics as, in common with any want-to-be mother, I would rather go about my pregnancy via the conventional route, i.e. by having sexual intercourse with a genetically suitable male, especially seeing as there is probably no biological reason to do otherwise. Still, my thoughts turn to Option 1: “ask a friend to impregnate me”. I phone Duncan.

Duncan arrives at my house looking as immaculate as ever. He tells me all about his trip to Westonbirt Arboretum and I relay to him my shitty evening at Annie and James’.

“He was in attack mode, Dunc. I was made to feel that I hadn’t thought things through. It was humiliating.”

“And have you thought this through? I mean, really thought it through,” says Duncan.

“Yes.” Haven’t I? Admittedly, my side of the debate was a little lacking and I certainly wasn’t poised for a heavy defence. Nor did I give one.

“So then, you’ve got nothing to worry about. You’ve just had your first taste of someone else’s opinion on what’s a sensitive issue, especially to a new father. If you don’t feel that you need to justify yourself, then don’t.”

“No, I suppose. Thanks.”

“Have you thought anymore on how you’re going to go about this?” He slips his long fingers into the biscuit barrel. I look at him, straight into his eyes. “Silly question, I’m sure you’ve thought about nothing else.” Ok, Michelle, do it now!

“It’s almost all I think about. And I was wondering…” Go on, it’s the perfect opportunity. He licks a few rogue crumbs from his lips and tilts his nicely shaped head, as if to urge me to carry on, so I do. “How do you feel about helping me out?”

“What, you mean go with you on another speed-date or something like that?”

“Not exactly, no. Erm, would you be the father? A sperm donor? Whatever role you play after that would be completely up to you, of course.” There.

He looks ever so slightly taken aback but not completely gob-smacked and not even a little uncomfortable. Did he have an inkling that this was coming? “Well, I’m flattered. Why me?”

“You’re smart, good-looking and no health problems that I know of.”

“Shucks.”

“And I want you in my life. For the rest of my life. If that’s what you wanted.” At this, he comes close, gives me a big hug, kisses my check and brushes his hand gently on my face. Like in the movies. I feel a twinge and wonder whether he might kiss me. My eyes search his and his mine.

“That’s probably the nicest thing that anyone has said to me, Shelley,” he says.

“But?”

“But we need to talk.”

“Yeah, of course.” I’ve been holding my breath. I exhale. “This is massive so you need more time to mull it over though, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t want to talk about me being the father to your child. Well, yes we do need to talk about that. But there are a few things that you should know about me. One thing in particular.” Oh my God, he’s dying? He’s getting married to an invisible woman? “Michelle, I’m … I’m gay.” I see, he was saving all the being gob-smacked stuff for me.

“What? Fuck. Right. Erm, I had no idea,” I say, but it’s all fitting into place now.

“No, not many people do. Well except for the regulars at The Old Market Tavern.” His laughter has a bitter twist. “Are you ok with this?”

“What? No, get out of my house right now, people like you sicken me.” He doesn’t react; he understands my sense of humour/defence mechanisms. “Of course I’m ok with it, Duncan, why wouldn’t I be? It’s just …. It’s a surprise. God. So why aren’t you, you know, out?” And really, it does seem odd; I mean he’s well into his thirties.

“It’s like the longer I’ve left it, the more I’ve covered it all up, the harder it’s become. I don’t know. “

“Have you told anyone?”

“No. No-one outside of the community, anyway. Just you.”

“Not even your ex-wife. Not even Paula?”

“Well, it was the reason we split up. But, no, she never knew,” he looks sad now.

“Do you feel ashamed about it?”

“What? God, no. I’m just trying to deal with it all. But, you know, I think your honesty about wanting a baby has brought it home to me. You’ve been so forthright and so strong and that’s helped me see that want … I need to be open about my sexuality now. I think.”

“Well, look at this as your first step. It can only get easier now, can’t it? So, has there been anyone significant?” I’m only just starting to realise how little I know him and how much about himself he has hidden away from me. From everybody.

“Not really. I have met this guy who is kinda cute. We’ve been out, an in, a few times but we had a big falling out.” This is weird.

“What about?”

“About this. About me denying who I really am.”

“So, maybe it’s time then?”

“Maybe.”

*****************

Duncan didn’t give me an answer to my mammoth proposition. Actually, I think he’s got enough on his plate. He did say that he felt much better for having got his gayness off his chest and his relief in having done so was almost tangible. His Mum died of cervical cancer a few years back and he’s an only child, which, I suspect, has always fomented our own friendship, both being alone in the world, as such. He’s got a good relationship with his dad, which he is loathe to jeopardise with his disclosure – I’ve met his dad, Derek, once. He seems a decent bloke, though I suppose that doesn’t mean anything, does it? You never know with people: they can appear free-thinking and even enlightened, when in truth they are intolerant bigots who are distrustful of anyone who doesn’t fit their world view. I’m not saying Derek is like that but you just can’t tell. And Duncan says that he’s never been ready to talk about his sexuality at work, on the post, although he is confident that a couple of his work-mates have sussed him already, which niggles at me, being so slow on the uptake myself. One “male-bag” in particular, Danny, who is gay, keeps giving Duncan the come-on. Duncan hasn’t bitten, mostly because he thinks that Danny is “too camp and trashy”. I have a lot to learn.

Selfishly, I am sure that Duncan’s sexuality could work in my favour. After all, he is unlikely to grace his dad with any grandchildren now, is he? Well, at least not in the usual way, so I could be his one chance for fatherhood. But it probably goes without saying that I don’t want to burden him further with my own needs and demands and therein lies the problem: I’m so impatient to conceive that I’m not certain how long I am prepared to wait for Duncan to make what will surely be the biggest commitment of his life. Self-interested? Maybe. But I am unwilling to hold back for months or even years until he is certain that this is what he wants too. So, in my head, I’m putting the whole Duncan-as-Father initiative on the back burner, where it can simmer along nicely with his Secret. Perhaps the whole pot will boil dry. If so, I am left open to explore other possibilities.

Which other possibilities, Michelle? I struggle to think of them because I had started to pin all my hopes on the “ask a friend” one. How short-sighted is that? And how totally unfair on Duncan, seeing as he was the only friend that I’d thought of asking (Gareth, my old university mate in Birmingham, is currently in love with a beautiful Ukrainian dentist, so he’s out). Oh yes, “Go to a sperm donor clinic” or “shag whoever”. I seemed to overlook “get a willing boyfriend” but, because I don’t envisage the whole dating, getting to know each other inside out, falling in love, living together/getting married and THEN having a baby thing all happening in that order, I’ve somehow lumped that option in with the one that goes “shag whoever”. I wonder whether my lifetime friend, Scott, is a potential “shag whoever?” Is Simon a “try to shag whoever but don’t quite get there?” And if I really did consider sleeping with any old Dick or Harry in order to become a mother a real prospect, why was I so dismissive of Daniel? He has all the credentials for breeding as far as I know. And that’s exactly my dilemma; I don’t fucking know!

The realisation is forming that, deep down, I do understand that to go ahead and “shag whoever”, thus depriving my unborn child of a father, is irresponsible and selfish, just as James opined. I reflect on my relationship with Alex; the man I left behind, the man with whom I could quite easily have had a baby and with whom I very nearly did. Well, not nearly, not really. I think of that oppressively hot day in August, a couple of years back, when the two thin blue lines on the home pregnancy kit confirmed that I was indeed pregnant. I’ve never been strict enough with myself to take the contraceptive pill every day and, anyway, the little sex we were having didn’t inspire me to be as conscientious as I should have been. I was mortified. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with a man who preferred fiddling with his Marlin Sportster kit car to fiddling with me. I couldn’t see any future with a bloke whose idea of a good night out was sitting in the local pub, watching football. So while I was panicking about what to do about the foetus growing inside me, my body had plans that tallied with my brain and I miscarried before I even had the chance to discuss it with Alex. My lucky escape, or so I saw it then, only confirmed that I had to get the hell out of the relationship. So I did. My longing for a baby stems from that encounter with the two blue lines in my sweltering bathroom and set me on this path to seeking a mate to mate with, which is where I now find myself; miserable and confused but entirely sure that this is my destiny, although with whom and how remains, as yet, unanswered.

**************

I really need to let my hair down so I acquiesced to Sían’s offer of a night out (I know, I know, but I also need to get some grit on Simon) and I’m heading to the Tavern, looking as hot as I can manage. When I arrive, on time, she is already at the bar, ordering two vodkatonics and two pints of Stella.

“Bloody hell, mad lady, isn’t it a bit early for wife beating chasers?” I ask as we hug.

“Nah, it’s after eight, isn’t it?” She giggles. “Grab them will you?” And, picking up the short glasses, she squeezes through a small crowd of men who look like rugby players with a flutter of the lashes and a curl of the lips. She leads me to a sofa where Paris and Simon are waiting. I had not anticipated this, it must be said, but I’m ok with the arrangement, even if I didn’t sanction it. If it’s fun I’m after then these three have it in abundance and, at the same time, I can find out more about the man first-hand.

Simon tells me I look great, while Paris nods in agreement and tries not to stare at my cleavage. Sían puts her hand protectively on his thigh and asks me what I’ve been up to. I talk about work, a bit, and about my trip to Oakham for Beth’s wedding but I don’t mention Scott, and Sían, in a rare display of sensitivity, doesn’t ask. Neither do I say anything about my falling-out with James, for equally obvious reasons. Not that I get a chance to go into much depth about anything at all because everyone appears just as eager to talk about themselves. “Why ask then?” I think. A polite habit, I suppose, although not listening to the answer is more discourteous than not asking in the first place.

“So,” Sían is saying. “There might be some redundancies at work but I know that I’ll be safe. I mean, I did such a fantastic job on “And the Booby Prize Goes to…” that they couldn’t possibly even think about getting rid of me. No, I think Dale and Rocky will be for it, their imagination is really lacking, if you ask me.”

“So when’s “Booby Prize” on?” I manage to ask, though I couldn’t care less. It’s a reality TV show about mammary enhancements gone wrong, basically, for which Sian was Producer.

“In just over a month’s time. It’s going out on Sky 3, which is just about the best. I mean, it’s a free digital channel so absolutely everyone’s got it. And I’ve got the eight o’clock slot. Paris is throwing a launch night for me, aren’t you Baby? I’ll send out invites the week before.”

Paris jumps in. “It’s going to be such a good night. And Sían really deserves it; she worked really hard on that gig.” He has Sían’s word for that as they weren’t even together then. “I’ve got a wall-mounted 50-inch HD ready plasma TV to watch it on.” You would have – vulgar, pretentious prick. “It’s the business. And I’m setting up a bar, cocktail waitress included! I’ve found these glasses in the shape of a pair of breasts, they’re unreal, you should see them. And I got a mate who …”

“Paris! God, listen to him; they’ll be no surprises left! Oh, Shell, I’ve got this fabulous dress for the party. I can’t wear any underwear with it at all, but that’s ok, you know, seeing as it’s a boob-centric party.” That and the fact that you’ve been a meticulous researcher, having had implants yourself, so there’s no way those pretty babies are going to point southwards, supported or not.

“All this talk of boobs and see-though dresses is making me hot under the collar. Simon?” says Paris. And the pair of them leap up and head towards the Men’s.

Now I get it. My companions, who have super-inflated egos on any given night of the week, are doing the first-person singular to death because they are all coked out of their heads. No wonder I can hardly get a word in. It also explains why Paris is eyeballing my cleavage, why Sían keeps brushing her tongue over her front teeth and her hand over the top of her boyfriend’s leg (she hasn’t quite got the Dick’s dick out yet, but it could happen) and why Simon’s has been banging his knees together. Coked-up, sexed-up and agitated. And all the most important people in the whole wide world.

While the boys are quite literally powdering their noses, Sían bangs on about how she’s just changed hairdressers because the one she’d been going to for the best part of a year just isn’t up to the job anymore and how she needs to be at the height of fashion in her profession.

“And Gabriel, my new hairdresser, is totally boss. He’s a wizard with colours and he gets that I have to look the absolute part…” And here I drift off, partly because she’s boring the fuck out of me and partly because Simon is heading towards us, looking my way with a big, sexy grin on his handsome face. My stomach does a little twirl and I smile back.

“Ooh, come to the loo with me Shell.” It’s not a question and I know where this is leading.

Sían pushes me into a cubicle, steps in after me, hoicks up her skirt, pulls down her knickers and hovers over the seat, all the while gabbing about how special Paris makes her feel. The job done, she puts down the lid and masterfully cuts and lays two neat lines of whiteness onto it. I am amused by this. She wouldn’t sit on the seat to have a pee but she’ll put her face on it, almost, to get to her drugs. She hands me a small plastic tube.

“There you go Babe.”

I take it. What the hell, if you can’t beat ‘em… And anyway, it’s not like I’m pregnant or anything.

The Lunar Society in Birmingham and its role in the Abolition of the Slave Trade

2010-11-25T17:48:00.001Z

Tonight, the Bristol Radical History Group is holding an event called Cry Freedom, "a celebration of roles played by St. Wulfstan, Thomas Clarkson and the Seven Stars pub played in gaining freedom". This jogged my memory and propelled me to revist some of my own work about men and women who have fought for justice and freedom.

I wrote the following based on my research for the Three Continents, One History project that documented Birmingham's links with the slave trade. As their website is no longer up and running, I doubt whether anyone will mind me sharing this chapter with you.

The Lunar Society

And better in th'untimely grave to rot,
The world and its all its cruelties forgot,
Than, dragg'd once more beyond the Western main,
To groan beneath some dastard planter's chain,
Where my poor countrymen in bondage wait
The slow enfranchisement of ling'ring fate.
Oh! my heart sinks, my dying eyes o'erflow,
When mem'ry paints the picture of their woe!
For I have seen them, ere the dawn of day,
Rouz'd by the lash, begin their chearless way;
Greeting with groans unwelcome morn's return,
While rage and shame their gloomy bosoms burn;
Thomas Day, The Dying Negro, 1773

Formed in 1775, the Lunar Society was made up of a group of wealthy, educated men who met in Birmingham at around the end of the eighteenth century to discuss scientific, cultural and technical matters. Innovative men with an impressive range of skills and backgrounds, they made headway with new inventions and sometimes controversial ways of thinking. Among its prominent members were the physicist, Joseph Priestley; the philanthropist and writer, Thomas Day; the potter, Josiah Wedgewood; the botanist, Erasmus Darwin; the gun manufacturer, Samuel Galton Jnr., and the businessmen and engineers, Matthew Boulton and James Watt. Some of these names appear on the Birmingham's streets, buildings and structures - Galton Bridge or Matthew Boulton College, for example.

The Lunar Society, so-called because it met on the full-moon (lighting was scarce then and the moon lit the way to make the journey easier), often gathered at Soho House in Handsworth, the home of Matthew Boulton, owner of the metal works, Soho Foundry. The men discussed many contemporary issues including the slave trade and slavery. The slave trade was an extremely profitable business in Great Britain and although the Lunar men voiced opposition to it, some played an ambiguous role in the whole affair, making huge sums of money through the trade in enslaved Africans, not as slavers but as businessmen.

Soho House, Handsworth

Like their contemporaries, such as those who had formed the Society of the Abolition of the Slave Trade in London, the Lunar men, as a collective, did not call for the the abolition of slavery but only of the trade. The logic was that if the supply of African men, women and children to the Caribbean were cut off, then slavery would have to come to a natural end. It was an erroneous supposition. Perhaps as importantly, the abolitionists believed that a bill to end the trade would be more likely to make it through parliament where, after all, sat so many planters, merchants and company directors, who needed slavery for the security of their own financial futures. This wealth was not only of the utmost importance to planters and the like, but it was also vital to the coffers of the British Government.

That the members of the Lunar Society had different ideas about the slave trade becomes evident on closer inspection of the individuals belonging to it. It should be remembered that this was not an anti-slavery society but a type of debating club that merely discussed the trade as one of the many issues affecting society at that time. And so, while some worked hard to educate and to propagandise, others felt that they had far too much to lose by fully supporting abolition.

The Lunar Abolitionists
Those Lunar men whose actions demonstrated their commitment to working towards the abolition of the slave trade included Wedgewood, Day, Darwin and Priestley. Day's poem, The Dying Negro, above, is an early example of literature being used to break the silence about slavery. Based on a true account of the frustrated love affair between an enslaved African man and a white female servant, and the the man's resulting suicide, it was Day's first of many literary assaults on slavery. Likewise, his friend and fellow poet (and many other things besides), Erasmus Darwin went on to slam the trade in human beings, most notably in this lengthy The Botanic Garden, written between 1789 and 1791. His home in Lichfield was one of the more frequent meeting places of the Society.

The Staffordshire potter, Josiah Wedgewood, also used his creativity in his support of the abolition movement. In designing a cameo that is still recognisable today, Wedgewood brought the 'slavery discussion' into many homes and meeting places across Britain. Originally commissioned by the Society for the Suppression of the Slave Trade, Wedgewood's work became a symbol of the abolition movement and could be found on many fashion items, including brooches and cuff links.

The image intended to, and succeeded in, awakening people to the horrors of the slave trade and his work was an accessory that became synonymous with the abolition movement in Britain and beyond, working in rather the same way as Oxfam's Make Poverty History bracelets did this decade. It is of note that, a Friend of Thomas Clarkson, Wedgewood was also a shareholder in the Sierra Leone Company, which attempted to create a colony for free slaves on the West African coast.

Fellow Lunar man, Joseph Priestley, also took a prominent role in the abolition movement and, in Birmingham in 1788, he gave a sermon that was then published as A Sermon Against the Slave Trade. In it, he spoke out against the mental and physical suffering of enslaved Africans and he stressed the slavers' role in the degradation of women and the separation of families. Even more unusually, he promoted racial equality, a subject rarely touched upon in the 1700s. Such outspoken and controversial opinions made Priestley very unpopular with the powers-that-be and his radical viewpoints won him the reputation as a dangerous dissenter and revolutionary. His home and laboratory at Fair Hill were destroy by the mob in Birmingham's 1791 riots (sometimes referred to as the 'Priestley Riots'). As a result, he fled to the USA to live out his final years.

It is evident that some prominent and wealthy men living in Birmingham and Staffordshire, such as Priestley, Wedgewood and Darwin, did use their particular skills and influence when trying to enlighten others about the slave trade, slavery and the abolition movement. This was not true of all members of the Lunar Society, however, and three, in particular, stand out as men whose financial interests could not be reconciled with their conscience.

The Lunar Would-be Abolitionists
In 1789, Olaudah Equiano had published his Interesting Narrative, which told of his experiences as a man captured in Africa, enslaved in the Caribbean and living as a free man in England. The promotion of his Narrative led him to Birmingham, where many notable persons had already subscribed to his work, including the Lloyd banking family and the Lunar Society member, Joseph Priestly. Two other Lunar men were on his list of subscribers - Matthew Boulton and Samuel Galton Jnr, both of whom welcomed Equiano to Birmingham.

Galton came from a family of gun manufacturers that supplied guns used to police slave ships and to put down insurrections by enslaved Africans. At this time, the head of Galton & Son was Lunar man, Samuel Galton Jnr, a subscriber to Equiano's narrative and a Quaker, that religious group that had long been opposed to slavery (in fact the Quakers presented the first abolition petition to British Parliament in 1783). Galton ws not alone in confusing morality and business. One of the men there to welcome Equiano on his brief sojourn to Birmingham was Matthew Boulton, the locally-based businessman and engineer, who, alongside his Scottish partner, the engineer James Watt, had designed and patented the steam engine, a machine that proved invaluable on the sugar plantations of the Caribbean. Boulton's Birmingham Mint also produced the currency to be used in Sierra Leone, where some Africans from the Americas were resettled.

That Watt was outspoken against the slave trade is evident from his letter to Messrs Beguye & Co., written less than three months after the start of the slave uprising in Haiti (Saint Domingue). In this correspondence, Watt damned slavery as "so disgraceful to humanity" and said he wished for its abolition. The duplicity of their thoughts and actions is plain. Sometimes, it seems, "the right thing to do" had no role in money-making.

Be they philanthropists, creative men or businessmen, members of the Lunar Society had something to say about the slave trade and some even had a role in it. While some fought for the good of mankind, others fought for the good of themselves. It is surely a picture that was replicated the island over. There were men and women in Britain who wished to play some part in halting the injustices of the slave trade, and ultimately, slavery, be it through raising money or awareness for the cause. There were also those, who, even if they had some moral grievance about the plight of millions of Africans, would not let that get in the way of personal financial gain. Birmingham, like the wider British society, had its very own heroes and anti-heroes.

Broody - Chapter 13

2010-11-19T14:31:00.000Z

Friends

I met a woman today, while I was staring at my cup of peppermint tea, thinking that I should have gone for a mocha with extra sprinklings of chocolate, which wouldn’t have helped me purge my abused body of the toxins built up over the weekend but at least it would have tasted of something other than a chewing gum wrapper dunked in hot water. The café was busy so she asked whether she could share my table, a request to which, naturally, I acquiesced. She was about my age but the puffiness around her eyes and the strain on her face gave her the appearance of a woman of my age at the end of her tether, like she could hardly bear another afternoon without sleep. She’d opted for a caffeine boost instead of forty winks and, because she so obviously needed the intake, I couldn’t begrudge her the double espresso that she was piling mountains of sugar into. My contemplative state (I was mulling over the normal stuff; Scott, Simon, babies) gave her permission to open up to me and she told me of the day she’d had.

“Of course, I love him, who wouldn’t? It’s just that sometimes I feel, I dunno, like, couldn’t I give him back? Just for a day?” The object of her affection was a boy of one and a bit years old, asleep in his red and black pushchair. “I mean, look at him, not a care in the world. Whereas I…” And she started crying.

“Isn’t there anyone who could help you out? Have him for a couple of hours while you have a rest?” I said. It was a bloody stupid question; if there was anyone offering, she would have accepted happily.

“Not really,” she sobbed. “My mum lives in Edinburgh and all my friends have kind of disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Well, you know. Have you got kids?”

“No,” I replied.

“I thought I had some friends here. And to start with, when he was a baby, they came around with presents and stuff, all ahs and ooohs. But the novelty wears off and they stopped visiting after a while. Got their own lives to live, I suppose, and a toddler isn’t nearly as exciting as a newborn.”

“What about those parent and baby groups? Aren’t they a good place to meet mums in a similar position to you?”

“I’ve tried a couple of them but I must have left it too late because cliques had already been formed and I found it really hard to penetrate them. I used to stand on there, sort of on the edge, looking in, hoping that someone would talk to me. I could never think of the right small talk. It’s hard. And then lots of them were so much younger than me: I felt as though I was in the wrong place. And they knew it too. The few older mums I did manage to strike up a conversation with seemed to shrink away from me when they found out that I was a single mum. Maybe they thought that I’d be competition for them, which is ridiculous. I mean, look at the state of me.”

“Rubbish. You’re lovely.” She was stunning, if a bit washed out.

“Thanks, but I don’t feel it,” she said.

“No-one does when they’re really tired. What about playschool or something? Just for one afternoon a week? Wouldn’t that help you out?” I really did want to help her to find a solution.

“Too expensive. I’m not working and things are tight enough as they are. His dad isn’t interested and I don’t really want to ask my mum. Pride, I guess. He’ll get a free nursery place when he’s three, but I’ll be dead by then.” She tensed as her son stirred in his sleep and, when it became clear that he was not about to wake up, she relaxed again. “I’m sorry; you’ve come here for a quiet drink. I’m sure you don’t want to hear all this. It’s just I’ve got no-one to talk to.” And she gave a tiny, tight laugh, presumably to stop herself from crying again.

“Not at all.” I said. And then, I’m not entirely sure why I did this: “I’ll give you my phone number. Do you live in Bristol?”

“Yes.”

“Take my number and if you ever need a chat or a couple of hours off, just let me know. I work during the week but apart from that, I’d be happy to meet up with you. Is that too forward?”

“Um. No, that’d be great, thanks.”

“Michelle.” I said with a smile and offered her my hand.

“Pleased to meet you, Michelle. I’m Dom.”

************************

I am alone, searching for something. A mobile phone rings out from the corner of the darkened room and I can see its face light up as it hums “Hey Diddle Diddle.” I walk towards it. If I answer in time, maybe someone will tell me how to escape. I pick it up and put it to my ear. A female voice sings, “The little dog laughed to see such fun and the dish ran away with the spoon.” The moon outside is full but nothing jumps over it. “Michelle,” the voice says. “Did you locate all of them?” I look at the wall, scanning across to find the letters I need but they’re not there. “Listen to me,” the voice demands. “Leave it for tonight. It’s not the right time. I’ve told you before that timing is crucial.” She hangs up and I throw down the phone. I run my fingers over the unfinished alphabet on the wall, willing it to form fully. I touch an “S”. It is sticky, wet, freshly painted. The “S” springs from the wall, landing on my belly and, as I watch it uncurl, it snakes further down my body and comes to its final resting place just below my pubic area, on my upper thigh.

My period has started.

********************

“How was your weekend MeShelley? x” I like the way that Mitch texts me in full English. He says that, because I’m an expert in languages, I deserve nothing less. Actually, he didn’t say it, he emailed me it.

I reply. “Fun thanks Babe. Danced a lot, had a snog. The usual wedding stuff. How was yours?” He’s been to Stockport; his friend’s little boy was two and they threw a birthday party for him.

“Good too ta. Had lots of jelly and ice-cream. Can build a mean brick tower now x”

“What? You mean the party really was for the children and not the adults?! x”

“You are one experienced lady. Yeah, was a bit of both as it happens ;) “

Once again, I find myself standing up on the train, overwhelmed by the extra bulk of coats and scarves that everyone wears on cold days such as this. My mini-conversations with Mitch have become part of my working day and, since our five minute meeting at Fast Love all those weeks ago, cyberspace has become the main media through which we conduct our friendship. I have no idea what his voice sounds like, though I think of him as a bit Alan Carr, camp and northern, but that could be a false memory. I’ve had to go onto his Facebook profile a couple of times just to see his avatar because, when I had attempted to draw his features to mind, all I could evoke were images of Tin-Tin. His photos show a cheeky faced man with dimples etched into both cheeks and white-blonde hair but he isn’t what I’d call boyish, well, at least not from what I can determine from my computer screen. One day, I promise myself, we will meet.

I can’t be bothered to cook tonight so I stopped at the express-supermarket for a chicken tikka masala ready meal and, as I throw the compartmentalised black plastic tray into the microwave, I am reminded of the Indian take-away that I never had at Simon’s nearly two weeks ago, substituted as it was by yummy snacks. Those little tasters have become symbolic of our non-relationship – teasers – not quite the suggested, fuller menu but something to get the taste buds going. I am famished and, if Simon keeps up this drip-feed for very much longer, my stomach will shrink altogether and I won’t be able to tolerate any nourishment at all. The microwave pings and the diarrhoea-brown mass that I put in five minutes ago has transformed into a bubbling oil-drenched platter that smells good enough to eat.

I dollop the curry onto a large white Ikea plate, to give it more appeal, and try to separate the yellowing grains of rice that have formed into one dried-up, unappetising block. I pour a glass of milk. I flick through the terrestrial channels, then the digital channels, looking for the inspiration that is never there. It’s like looking into a fridge that you know is empty but you check again and again, just in case a bag of fresh produce has appeared miraculously while the light was off. I end up watching an episode of Friends that I first saw when I was a student and that I have watched countless times since and I switch my brain off, spooning my dinner into an untasting mouth. That out of the way, I open a creamy strawberry fool. Some months back, I heard on the news that women trying to conceive should opt for full-fat dairy products, especially ice-cream (whoopee!), as the fat helps to protect the reproductive organs. See, there is a plus side to everything. Still, I can eat all the fat I like, but I won’t get a bun in the oven until I start having penetrative intercourse, I remind myself grimly. There’s a knock on the door and, as if he has received my freshly transmitted and rather desperate sexual signals, Simon is standing there, a bottle of our wine in his hand. Just in time, I think, to replenish my urges, to get the juices flowing again.

I open the wine, we chat, we finish the wine, we have sex, I orgasm. A routine is forming here but, this time, I fondle his rigid cock until he comes over my sheets. Progress, of sorts.

After Simon has left, I make a hot chocolate with marshmallow floaters and get back into bed. I haven’t changed the sheets or had a wash, I want to luxuriate in our fluids, feel the stickiness of our excitement and smell the union of Simon and me – it is confirmation of my prowess and that all of the essential ingredients are in stock: they just need to be mixed together in a fertile place. I go to set my alarm for morning and I’m startled to discover that it’s not even eleven o’clock.

******************

James has prepared home-made fish, chips and mushy peas with an exceptional tartar sauce: tangy and smooth all at the same time. It’s Annie’s birthday and she preferred to have her close friends round the house rather than go to the hassle of getting a babysitter and venturing out into winter. Debs is arguing with Dieter about the need to impose a stricter immigration policy, James is clearing away the dinner plates and setting up new ones for dessert, while Annie is checking on Jacob, who is asleep upstairs (he’s always asleep when I come round!).

“Ok, so who was the last person in your family to come and live in the UK from some other country?” Dieter challenges Debs.

“For God’s sake, you know the answer to that.”

“Your grand-parents were Polish Jews, right?”

“You fucking know they were. All I’m saying is … (sigh) … is that we can’t keep letting hundreds of thousands of migrants in every year, whether they’re working or not. The social system – health, education, housing, and all that – just can’t continue to support that level of new citizens, or whatever they are.”

“Ha. What about you, Michey. Are you full-English-blooded?” I wanted, as far as possible while sharing a table with these two, to keep out of the conversation.

“My paternal grandparents are from Cork. In Ireland,” I say

“There you fucking go. None of you’s English. Who says you lot got more right to be here than Mr Somali or Mrs Twenty First Century Pole? You both come from political or economic refugees, now someone else needs that shelter. You are a narrow-eyed-bat-woman, Deborah!” (I think he means short-sighted).

“Aahhh,” Debs screams, pulling at her hair for dramatic effect. “But it can’t be sustained, you fucking numbskull. Tell him, Shell.” She looks to me for help.

“Um. Well, at work, I only come into contact with those who really want to make a go of it here. They’re learning the language to a high standard so that they can be more a part of society and earn money – whether to spend it here or send it home depends on the person, I suppose.”

“Ok, but they all need somewhere to live, don’t they? They all might need medical treatment one day, right?”

“I think most of them are house-sharing. And the majority of mine are young people wanting to do something with their lives. You know, improve their lot. They’re not out to scam the system.”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all. Jesus!”

Annie creeps in and shuts the kitchen door. “Keep it down, you lot! And be friendly to each other. It is my birthday.” She’s being theatrical but it has the desired effect and every one shuts up, right on cue for James to dim the lights and present her with a chocolate covered birthday cake. We all sing, but not too loudly.

“Ah, thanks. You didn’t make that too, did you?” She asks James, incredulously.

“Debs can take every inch of the credit for the cake,” says James.

“Or the blame. You haven’t tasted it yet,” says Dieter, to a mardy look from Debs and probably a kick under the table.

“Ahh, thanks Debs. It looks lush.”

“You’re welcome. It’s my birthday present to you, my darling. I don’t have to spend a fortune on unnecessary gifts, you see. I am inventive and thoughtful.” Said to Annie but directed at Dieter.

“We love Debs, we love Debs,” chants Dieter. I laugh and he tries to ally with me. “So, Michey, you had any action yet?”

“Er, a little,” I say. I really don’t want to talk about my sex life, not here. “Yum, this is scrummy, Debs. I hope I’ll be getting one in a couple of weeks.”

“I though I might make a fruit cake that would do you for Christmas too.”

“Meanie,” I say.

“Blue Meanie. Haha,” says Dieter and no-one seems wholly sure why he finds this so funny.

“So, which lucky man got the action then, Shell? Scott? Don Simon? Do tell all.” I thought that I’d got away with it but Debs is trying to detract attention from herself and avoid another row with her man, who is in a particularly mischievous mood tonight, it must be said.

“I saw Scott at the weekend, his sister got married,” I say, hoping that will suffice.

“What a nutter,” says Dieter. “So? Did you screw him?”

“No. I didn’t. Nothing happened; we just had a really nice time.”

“True love and he didn’t lay a hand on ya? Sounds like a creep to me,” says Debs, quoting Rizzo in Grease. Her jokiness displays that, despite their bickering, she is at one with Dieter. She always is. They always are. I resist the temptation to answer her in Grease-speak. In fact, I don’t dignify the reference with any response at all.

“So, he was a real gentleman then?” Debs probes.

I sigh. “We had a bit of a kiss and spent a lot of the weekend chatting and dancing.”

“Well, that’s promising. And Simon?” Annie joins in. Shit.

“I’ve seen him a couple of times and we’ve had a bit of fun, but again nothing too serious.” Will it ever be?

“You still not fucked him then? You ain’t never gonna get a little Michelle or Michael like that, you know.” Dieter, of course.

“Leave it out, Dieter,” says Annie. “It’s the biggest thing she’ll ever do in her life. She needs to be sure that she’s got the right man, don’t you, Shell?”

“Hey, the man don’t matter, does he? She just wants his sticky liquid to make a kid. Right?” He really doesn’t mean any harm; he’s just telling it like it is.

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly put it like that.” Every one looks at me as if to enquire how I would put it then. “I’m having a look around, leisurely, like, for the right, erm…”

“Spunk!” Says a helpful Dieter.

“Sort of, yes.”

“But you don’t intend to partner up with anyone, do you?” Asks Debs.

“Well, no. I don’t think so. I just think it might be a bit late for that, you know, like it might not happen,” I say.

“So how old are you, then?” James; I was expecting an interrogation at some point.

“35, almost.”

“35! There’s plenty of time. Jo Wiley’s just had a baby at 43.”

“Yes, I know. But she’s in a stable relationship. I might not be so lucky and by the time I meet someone, a baby might not materialise and the later I leave it the more chance there is of genetic defects and stuff like that.”

“Don’t want to be cracking no bad eggs,” says Dieter. Fuck off!

“Crap,” says James. “So you’re going to shag someone to get a baby? Just like that? Does he get any say in it?”

“Well, I’m thinking about different options, sort of weighing it all up.”

“But you’d consider having sex with someone for the sole purpose of getting pregnant?”

“Um, yeah. It’s a possibility.”

“How fucking irresponsible. What about the father? Would you even let him know?”

“Of course,” I say. “But it might not even happen that way.”

“But it might?”

“Yes,” and I shrug my shoulders.

“And what about the kid?”

“What?”

“What about the child? Would he have one parent? Would you let him know the dad and vice versa?”

“Well, it all depends. But, God… Look, it would have so much love. And who’s to say that a relationship would last anyway? Having a baby together is no guarantee of that. Isn’t it better to have one dedicated parent who really loves the child and is happy than two who hate each other?”

Annie shoots a look at James. “But you’d make it work. For the child’s sake.” She doesn’t come out and say it but it’s clear what Annie really thinks as she makes no attempt to defend me. Why should she? I’m just a mate, James is her husband.

“And make two, probably three, people totally miserable in the process?” I point out.

“Fucking Hell. It’s worth a try.” James is getting upset now. I notice that, after instigating the conversation, Debs and Dieter have cosied-up at the back of the cinema and are enjoying the show. I feel like asking them if they want some popcorn. “And what if the bloke doesn’t want kids? Or what if he does but he wants to have them with someone he loves? Come on, humour me. What if he’s some crazy fucker who wants a family, a wife? And you don’t give him that option? What then?”

“Shit, I don’t know, James. Like I said, I’m only thinking of different means to an end. I just know that I want a baby and I’m scared of leaving it too long. Anyway, I don’t know whether I could dedicate my whole life to one man.”

“But having a baby is the biggest commitment anyone can make. It’s for ever! You haven’t even stuck it out for more than, what, a year with the same person. You’re always looking for something better that might be round the corner. But it isn’t, is it? That Sían is just the same. Talk about fucking shallow.”

“Easy, James.” Annie says, at last.

“Well,” he says. “The whole thing is so selfish, if you ask me.”

“Please, let’s not argue,” says Annie.

“Sorry, Annie.” I say, although I’m not entirely sure why I should be apologising. “Hey, don’t worry, it’s fine. James has got a right to his opinion. Listen, I’d better be off anyway. Happy birthday.” What else can I do, this is his house, her house. And I’m becoming an unwelcome guest. Four faces follow me out of the kitchen door, each showing different emotions – regret, embarrassment, bemusement and resentment. Leaving my coupled-up friends to the warmth of the family home, I step into the cold darkness. Unattached. Unencumbered. Alone.

Understanding Anarchism

2010-11-11T12:54:00.001Z

All this talk of anarchists infiltrating yesterday's student protests and turning this demonstration against government plans to hike up university fees into violent chaos at Millbank Tower, the Tory Party HQ, has got me thinking again about the nature of anarchism.

Do these “hijackers” call themselves anarchists? Or is it a word that is bandied about by the media without understanding the true nature of anarchism?

Can we Define Anarchism?

The flexible nature of anarchism makes its definition extremely difficult as, historically, anarchists understand their system of beliefs and values to be evolutionary and not static. A central anarchist manifesto does not exist, nor does its amorphous nature facilitate in the creation of one. To attempt to theorise anarchism, arrange it into a logical sequence, leads to over-simplification because, within it, opinion varies. As anarchist, Rudolf Rocker, pointed out, “one cannot assign (to anarchism) any definite terminus or fixed goal.”[1] The whole premise of anarchism relies on its flexible nature and the liberty to think and act freely. Anarchism is amorphous, organic and spontaneous, possessing neither leaders nor anyone to impose his or her will onto others.

Where does Anarchism stand in relation to other ideologies?

Socialism

Anarchists have traditionally fought against authoritarian socialism as a viable option in replacing the existing social order, maintaining that socialism amounts to the oppression of the masses by the few. The debate as to whether a transitory state is needed after the revolution has been constantly thrashed out between Marxists and anarchists since Marx and Bakunin waged that ideological battle in the First International. Although both channels of thought agreed on the same ends, society without state, the means to achieving them differed.

Liberalism

Anarchists have also compared and contrasted their model to liberalism: Italian anarchist, Errico Malatesta, pointed out that, “Liberalism is in theory a kind of anarchy without socialism, and therefore is simply a lie, for freedom is not possible without equality, and real anarchy cannot exist without solidarity, without socialism.” [2] According to Rocker, Liberalism is “that government is best which governs least’”, while anarchism maintains: “that government is best which governs not at all.” [3]

Capitalism
Literary Critic, Terry Eagleton, discussed the opinion that capitalism nurtures revolution and that it is the oppressive nature of capitalist society that forces the downtrodden to question their own existence, or, capitalism creates revolutionaries [4]. Anarchism can here be defined as the antithesis to capitalism: it is combative, in short, the ideology of anarchism is a form of defence against capitalism. In the words of Malatesta, anarchism “is not necessarily linked to any philosophical system. (It) was born of a moral revolt against social injustice.” [5]

Anarchism goes against the existing socio-political order: it is dual-edged, being an amalgam of the awareness of other ideologies and systems, such as socialism, liberalism and capitalism, and a response to these, but it is also based on day-to-day experiences. Like any set of ideas, anarchism may be passed onto the masses by the theorists, through education and propaganda, and may be interpreted by anyone outside of the ruling class. Theory and practice come together here and anarchism becomes a synthesis of that which is made clear to the oppressed through teachings and that which is experienced first hand.

From Bakunin to present-day anarchists, it has been widely accepted that anarchism must be fought on two fronts, through education and direct action. It now remains to uncover whether those who attempted to destroy a government building in Central London were anarchists. If so, how are they translating such education through direct action and what do they hope to achieve?

Footnotes
1. Rocker in 1951 from Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, Freedom Press, London, 1993. 14
2. Malatesta, l’Anarchia, August 1896
3 Rocker in 1951 from Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, Freedom Press, London, 1993, 10
4. Eagleton, Terry, Ideology: an Introduction, Verso, London, 1991, p103
5. Malatesta, Pensiero e Volantá, 16/05/1925

Pig on a Plane

2010-11-07T15:18:00.008Z

Last week, on an internal flight from Santiago de Cuba to Havana, a plane crashed into the central province of Sancti Spiritus and claimed 68 Cuban and non-Cuban lives.

I’ve never flown with the ill-fated state-owned and -run AeroCaribbean but I shouldn’t think this airline differs much from Air Cubana, which, in 1995, was one of the only ways of getting from the UK to Cuba and which ran most, if not all, of the island’s internal flights. When I booked a one year open return in the summer of 1995, just one flight a week flew direct from Stansted to Havana. I recall Iberia offering a fare that made stopovers in Madrid and somewhere like Managua but the Air Cubana flight was cheaper at around £1000 and it meant only having to be up in the clouds for nine hours.

The Internet didn’t exist for me then, so I never had the opportunity to google the safety record of Air Cubana and, anyway, it’s probably best not to know these things, but I do remember someone in London telling me that it had the worst record of all airlines anywhere and then someone in Havana informing me that it was the safest and the best airline in the world. That people who live in capitalist countries and those who live in ‘revolutionary socialist’ ones often have opposite viewpoints is something that I would soon come to learn.

I was thrilled to see a very tanned Judith Chalmers at our Essex airport as my little party of well-wishers waved me bien viaje and I stepped into the unknown, eager to immerse myself in this new culture. The flight was more than half-empty; it was about a quarter-full. This meant that I could lay out over 3 seats to sleep for much of the journey. As a traveller hotspot, Cuba most certainly gained in popularity in a short space of time because, when I returned from my journey of discovery exactly one year later, thinking of (non-hallucinogenic) mushrooms and a pint of Guinness – the two things I missed most about England - the flight was full.

I got there safely. I got back safely. The long-haul flights were non-eventful, thankfully.

I also took four internal flights during that year, all Air Cubana ones. For 365 days, I didn’t step foot off Cuban territory, even though many of the locals urged me to go and see other parts of Latin America. I didn’t want to: I could do that another time. No, I should and could really get to know intimately this geographically phallic-looking little country. Much of the travel that I did do involved taking up to 17-hour train journeys in carriages where the broken air conditioning was on full blast, the only time I have ever been cold in Cuba; much shorter rides in a horse-drawn cart; sun-loaded trips balancing on the back of trucks with dozens of other wind-swept people, whose skin was much more suited to the sub-tropics than mine; braving scary bendy buses or the ubiquitous stretched Lada.

My most memorable internal flight was a half hour hop back from the Isla de la Juventud (Isle of Youth), previously Isla de Pinos. I met a woman at Jose Marti airport in Havana, who asked me where I was staying when I got to the tiny island directly to the south of Havana, plonked there in the Caribbean Sea, a few miles away from the mainland. I didn’t know: it’s the kind of detail you sorted out when you got to your destination, as, to the traveller with divisa (foreign currency), there was never a shortage of rooms in private houses for 5, 8, 10 US Dollars per night. I ended up staying with her mum in the capital of the island, Nueva Gerona. No-one has ever made such a big first impression on me as this large black woman, who opened the door of her dusty but never dirty house, dressed in a blue Batman t-shirt, an elastic-waisted skirt, rollers poking out from underneath her headscarf and a stonking great cigar in her mouth. She was fun and she was hospitable.

The daughter and I decided to fly back to Havana together so she could take me home with her, where I stayed for another couple of weeks. It was Christmastime and this meant one thing, it would soon be 1st January 1996 and a time to celebrate. The festivities had less to do with the beginning of a new calendar year than with the commemoration of the victory of the Revolution that had been won decades earlier by Fidel and his army on 1st January 1959. You have to have rum to celebrate. And a pig. Those living in rural areas can rear their own pig for slaughter but if you live in a flat in Centro Habana, this isn’t so easy, and that wasn’t a problem because Batwoman in Nueva Gerona knew a pig-rearer where such an animal could be purchased. All that remained then was for the daughter, me and the pig to make it back to the mainland on a leaky plane. Simple.

And it was really. My new friend went off to see the man about the pig and returned to mum with a freshly butchered animal. She’d paid full-price for it but had come away without the innards and some other part of its body (feet or head, I don’t remember which). Her mother went crazy; she could have made any number of recipes with that, you don’t waste anything in this country, do you hear!? She had a point. My friend, though, was only thinking of the logistics of the smuggling exercise (I say smuggling but I don’t think that anyone really cared).

We had now to get a big fat dead pig back to her home and we were travelling by plane. How to do it? Chop it up a little more and squeeze the whole lot into a suitcase and then just check it in as you would your holiday wardrobe. This is what we did. Back in Centro Habana, we ate the pig, I ate too much pig, I can still barely look at pork. It’s what is called overkill. Speaking of overkill, remind me to tell you about the dance and song they call Salsa one day!

Home Grown

2010-10-26T11:50:00.000+01:00

Broody - Chapter 12

2010-10-21T17:30:00.001+01:00

Couplings

The week has whizzed by and is about to open up to another weekend. Work has been hectic; Hamid, Jamil and Nula were off with a nasty virus that has been hanging around the place for weeks and management could only get one temp, so we all mucked in to cover their classes. This has meant doubling up on students in the daytime, within my capabilities but extremely tiring, and teaching a couple of evenings, which I usually avoid full-stop. I was “at the office” until nearly 10 o’clock on both Wednesday and Thursday and so, once again, my mate-date with Mitch had to be abandoned but we had planned to go to The Sugar Loaf on Wednesday with a couple of his friends. And now it’s Friday, the day before Beth’s wedding. Hamid and Nula have recovered, so taking time off in lieu was less problematic than it could have been and I managed to get the hell out of the building at just after one.

I’m feeling less energized than I’d like as I take the familiar route east, passing through several counties – Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire – to Rutland, the home of my parents and the home of Scott’s parents. The thought of Scott makes me unsure of many things but mostly it reminds me that I am playing a dangerous game with him, with Simon, with Daniel and with myself. Actually, the Daniel thing is pretty much over. He has been in touch a few times since my uneventful visit to Weston and at first I responded with lukewarmness but either he has a very thick skin or else he’s barmy because he carried on mailing me, so now I’m not responding at all.

Neither have I replied to Sían’s email, in which she provided me with minutiae of her extravagant night away with her new man, giving details of the “utterly to die for suite”, including the temperature of the Jacuzzi, the steaminess of Parisian sex and the gastronomic delights on offer at her exclusive manor house. I am so infuriated at the preference she has shown towards Simon that now I’m not contacting her, being too incensed to express my ire via electronic means. This brings me neatly to Mr Flavour of the Month, Simon.

My depleted blood sugar levels got the better of me and I awoke from my post-cunnilingual slumber to a king-sized bed devoid of its owner. I stared into the darkness for what seemed like an age with no idea of the hour, agonizing over whether to get up and investigate Simon’s disappearance, like a ravenous and rejected Nancy Drew. Eventually, I located his discarded sweater, threw it on and tripped over one of my own shoes, which had been kicked off in an impassioned frenzy and was positioned precariously at the top of the stairs, although I live to tell the tale. Light coming from under the living room door directed me to my current lover, who was eating cheese on toast whilst playing his X-Box, a multi-tasking accomplishment that any woman would be proud of. He smiled at me, nodded in the direction of a butcher’s block stacked with snacks, and completed Level 12, before placing the controls carefully on the floor and furnishing me with a picnic blanket.

He was sweet, I was quiet to the point of timidity and we devoured most of the food, retreating thereafter to the warmth of his bedroom. Simon spooned me and drifted off to sleep in a matter of seconds, while I lay awake, consciousness of his gentle snoring and my racing heart. A few hours and a cup of tea later, I was back in my car, more baffled than when I left it the previous evening.

And there’s been no word from him since, apart from a very brief text to say that he enjoyed Saturday night, which is something, I suppose. He hasn’t confirmed my request that he become my friend on Facebook, so I’m no closer to discovering more about his social life, or more accurately, his love life. I did bite the bullet to phone him this lunchtime but there was no response so I left a flat message, informing him of my absence from Bristol this weekend and suggesting that we meet up when I return. Truth be told, I’m anxious to find out how the land lies between us because that might influence my relationship with Scott. I’m not a particularly skilled juggler; I usually drop all of the balls, more from lack of confidence than from aiming high or fast, leaving them scattered about on the floor and me empty-handed, with nothing to play with.

I set out on my journey early enough to miss the pre-weekend rush and I’m all set to arrive at Sleepy Village at around four o’clock, giving myself plenty of time to relax, eat and shower before I set out on my much-anticipated date, I mean night out, with Scott.

*********************

This wasn’t quite what I had in mind. We’re in The White Horse and Scott is relaying the story of how a punter once swapped the letters around outside the pub so that the sign read The shite WHore, an act of vandalism that caused outrage in the local paper for weeks. Letters written to the Mercury by indignant members of the community only provoked copycat word jumbles, and led to wholesale consonant/vowel removals from signage all over the county, so that the United Services Club in town became teds vice Club and Fluffy Ducks, a toddlers’ playgroup, was turned into Duff Fucks. I observe that the originality and the simplicity of The shite WHore, coupled with the fact that it used up all of its letters, should guarantee its place as winner in the Wonky Wordsmiths’ competition taking place only in our heads. Scott agrees, as does Janey, Beth, Cindy, Mum, Doreen, Dad, Bill, Arthur, Rachel, Nikki and the bloke with the big scarf on, whose name I can’t remember.

We’ve pushed three tables together and everyone is excited, apart from Beth, who seems tired and anxious, and Janey, who looks worried about her daughter. I have no idea why I didn’t anticipate this. I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Scott is Beth’s big brother, of course he’d be with his family the night before her big day – that’s almost as big a tradition as the after-wedding speeches. His aunt and uncle have joined us to toast the bride, as have two cousins and two of Beth’s closest friends. I’m still glad I came; if nothing else I’ll know more people at the wedding tomorrow. Cindy is over the moon that she finally gets to be bridesmaid, while Nikki is thankful that she’s just a guest really, as she’s already had that honour twice “once for my best friend, Jodie” (there’s emphasis on the “best friend” part) “and once for my sister, Tabs. You know what they say - three times a bridesmaid, never the bride!” I want to bang her head on the table but instead I say, “Oh yes, best not to mess with superstition,” at which Scott pinches me playfully on the thigh, where his hand remains.

Beth hasn’t said much to me all night, but then she’s hardly spoken to anyone, apart from the odd whisper to Cindy and a moan or two at her Mum. The three of them leave early “to get their beauty sleep” and to relieve Grace’s babysitter of her charge. Their self-removal lightens the atmosphere considerably. Nikki is flirting like mad with the cousin in the big scarf and he is responding with vigour, while Rachel is filling the rest of us in on the lives some of her other cousins, a few of whom I will no doubt meet tomorrow. Doreen, Rachel’s mum, is shocked at some of the gossip, especially the part about Fleur’s new job as a pole dancer in a West End club; “she gets paid shit-loads for it, she’s not even that pretty!” says Rachel. Maybe not, but she’s nineteen years old, I think. The image of a silky-haired fertile peach of a girl is invoked in me, a flower in full and glorious bloom.

Last orders are called at the bar and Nikki suggests that we carry on at a late night spot in town, with which Big-Scarfed Cousin, Vince, agrees – no surprises there! I’m not so sure. For one thing, I’ve had enough to drink and for another, the only night club in Oakham is Bella’s, which I’ve been to once and I was appalled at the lack of inventiveness of the too loud music in there.

“But we’ll be hanging for the wedding tomorrow,” I say, putting my practical head on.

“Nah,” says Nikki. “The church service doesn’t start until three, plenty of time for a lie-in.”

“Come on Shell,” adds Scott. “It’ll be fun. We can take the piss out of the bumpkins.”

Not wishing to be a kill-joy, I capitulate, and anyway, Scott is up for it. We say goodnight to the rest of the party, all of whom are being put up at Bill and Janey’s.

“Where is everyone going to sleep?” I enquire.

“Everywhere,” says Scott. “All over the house. I’m in the bath. Again.”

The ‘club’ is heaving. It has the appearance of someone’s house, as though the proprietor has decided to plonk a bar along the back wall of the living room and rip out the kitchen, making way for a tiny dance floor. Rhianna’s Umbrella is demanding that half of the clientele (the women, mostly) sing along “ella-ella-ey, ey,ey”, clutching their bottles of Blue Wicked. We elbow our way to the bar and order four Smirnoff Ice’s, which seems appropriate, and Nikki pounces on a sofa that has only just been evacuated by a gaggle of girls who jumped up to strut their stuff to Katy Perry.

“I love this place,” gushes Nikki, without a hint of irony.

“Yeah. Right mental,” Scott adds, sarcastically. She pays no heed to his put-down and gives her full attention to Vince, who must be absolutely sweltering in his Tom Bakeresque neck accessory. I look around at the eclecticism of the customers – young, old, chavvy, snobby, army boys in their civvies, Emos, mini-skirted mums, college dudes and so on. They all have two things in common as far as I can see; everyone is totally pissed and they all think they’re having the time of their lives. It’s the sort of venue that you can try to hate but there’s no point, might as well just go with it and join in the party – the straightforwardness of the place and its inhabitants sucks you in.

“You alright?” Scott asks, touching my hand.

“Yeah, I really am,” I say truthfully. “Looking forward to the wedding?”

“I am now,” he says with a smile. And I smile back, amused yet thrilled that we are holding hands like a couple of kids out on their first date. Maybe it has something to do with the innocence that surrounds me.

“Your little cousin is having a good time,” I say, pointing towards Vince and Nikki. Nikki is pulling at his scarf with both hands, making it easier for her to stick her tongue down his throat. Cousin Vince has no chance of escape although, if he did have one, it’s unlikely that he’d employ it.

“Vincey has always been one to let the woman take the initiative. I, on the other hand, am old-fashioned.” And he kisses me, as though he’s wanted to kiss me all of his life. I kiss him back, as though I’ve been expecting him to make that move all of mine. We snog, we flirt, and we even dance, mostly to chart music I recognise only vaguely. We join the ranks of Oakham’s die-hards and have a thoroughly enjoyable night.

Outside my mum and dad’s house, I say goodnight to my companions and they wave to me as the cab disappears into the darkness.

****************

My parents have kindly let me sleep in and I pad down the stairs to a warm kitchen, where Dad is tackling The Telegraph Crossword. Mum’s in the dining room having her hair done by the trusted Marie, who visits her at least once a month.

“Marie can fit you in, if you’d like, Michelle,” she says.

“Oh, that’s good of you, Marie. Thanks, but I’m going for something simple,” I say, not wishing to hurt anyone’s feelings. Bouffant is not for me.

I check my mobile. No show from Simon. Well fuck him, then. And at precisely that moment, I jump at an incoming text from Scott: “Any idea how to tie a neckerchief? x”. I think about that bloke at Fast Love, the one with the cravat on. “I’ve got enough problems trying to attach my fascinator x”, I joke; as if I’d be wearing one of the hat/hair slides that were all the rage at the last wedding I attended. “Let me fascinate cha? x”. “Deal ;) x”. This could be fun.

22nd November is an inauspicious date on which to pledge your lifelong commitment to another human being, if, indeed, anyone really does imagine that marriage is for all material eternity. 22nd November 1963 was “the day Aldous Huxley died,” so sang Sheryl Crow, his passing forever eclipsed by the assassination of John F Kennedy a few hours earlier. And then, on that day thirty four years later, Michael Hutchence was found dangling from his own belt in a Sydney Hotel, a tragedy that enveloped my twenty three year old self in a paradoxical sadness. I mourned the loss of a man I had never met, a singer who had influenced my personal teenage journey, while simultaneously grieving the ephemerality of my own youth. I had recently graduated from university and I believed that the world was mine without constraint: no children; no mortgage; no significant other, just a young woman at the beginning of an enviable, but daunting, stage in her life. I had passed unnoticed into adulthood, an awareness heightened suddenly by the death of the INXS front-man from auto erotic asphyxiation. Had it really been eleven years ago?

Another coming of age was 22nd November 1990, the day that Margaret Thatcher announced her resignation as prime minister of Britain, an event that was as significant to me as, later, the death of Diana would become to so many others. I was one of Thatcher’s children – at almost seventeen years old, I had known no other head of government – she had always been there; hated and adored. My dad, like many of his aspiring southern peers, held her in high esteem. After all, without the policies of her administration we might never have bought our red-brick council house in Battersea, a purchase that eventually enabled my parents to live out their chocolate picture-boxed village dream. In her apparent determination to prove that Society didn’t exist, Thatcher had stifled the dissent of the rioters in our neighbouring borough of Lambeth and flattened the country’s grumbling unions, whilst encouraging an entrepreneurial spirit. And now the mother of capitalism was no more and the 1980s were well and truly over. DEAD.

But today belongs to Beth and Mark. Beth stands self-consciously in her high-waisted velvet dress of crimson, an off-white fur band resting above the barely perceptible swell of her abdomen, her face a combination of trepidation and joy. Life for Beth is about to change indescribably and in less than five month’s time she will present her new husband with a tiny son or daughter. I wonder which of the two occasions she is feeling the most anxious about. I hazard a guess. Her fiancé, Mark, by contrast, looks relaxed and fully ready to take the plunge.

Unlike the Catholic services that I have become accustomed to, the vicar doesn’t dwell too much upon the sins of man and the whole affair is comparatively more upbeat than our “Irish” weddings but the shindig that follows may be an entirely different matter, of course. My view of the bridal couple is restricted to the space not filled by the crowd of coiffured heads, including those of Scott and Janey, who are sitting a few pews ahead of us, leading the multitude of Beth’s family and friends, separated from Mark’s posse by the narrow church aisle. I can still feel Scott the Usher’s fingers pinching my bum as he directed me unnecessarily to my seat. His demeanour expresses no sorrow at the collapse of his own coupling to Laura but, then again, they were never married in the eyes of the law or of God, although it seems to me that the begetting of Grace carries more conjugal weight than any legally-binding contract ever could. She is proof of their union, of the fact that they once loved each other. I am relieved that Laura isn’t here.

Another benefit of being at a Church of England wedding is that the congregation is not subjected to overly-long, sleep-inducing services, which I have always acknowledged as a penitent act observed by practising Catholics and, for that matter, lapsed ones (I stand guilty before you). So, after the vows we’re out of the church before you can say “Holy Matrimony”, congratulating the happy couple on their marriage and their canniness in choosing clairvoyantly such a sunny day on which to conduct it. Then a skinny man with a camera lens larger than all of his internal organs put together instructs the photo-taking part of the day with bored authority and it really does start to feel like November. Coming under the genre of “all the friends together”, I have to hang around till the very end of the photo session and I’m appreciative of the wisdom of my age, which convinced me to wear my long black winter coat today, unlike some of the guests, including Nikki who, unsurprisingly, is without stockings or coat, her only protection against the weather being Vince’s hand in hers.

Feeling like a fed up fifteen year-old, I hang around with my parents until the meal, when I am seated between cousin Rachel and a bloke called Greg, one of Mark’s work-mates. First course is pie and mash (“so WAGgy and totally last year,” Sían would say), followed by a delicious treacle pudding and custard. This combination makes for Stodge City and, by the time the best man taps his spoon onto the side of his glass, alerting us all to speech time, everyone is either nodding off or dribbling into their coffee. The best man, Mark’s brother, Phil, is very uneasy and I send him positive vibes so that he might overcome his nerves and treat us to a cracking speech, one filled with wit and originality. I have been bored all afternoon, brought momentarily to life only by Scott’s bottom-pinch three hours ago: whoever thinks that all women love a wedding is seriously deluded. New faces will arrive soon for the evening reception and, although I enjoy a party, that meal was not conducive to dancing or flirting. My lethargic indifference is heightened by Phil’s Powerpoint presentation. Powerpoint! I am propelled to the boardroom, to meetings, to training courses, to places that I don’t ever want to be. Places that always instil a rebellious apathy in me: I don’t want to listen so please don’t force me to. This is always my reaction, regardless of the content of the presentation or the acumen of the presenter. So I groan inwardly and convince myself that I am not going to enjoy this, which only makes me feel irritated when everyone else starts laughing. It’s like watching a comedian that you just don’t get and you can’t understand why others find him so funny; you tell yourself that they are the imbeciles and that you are the one on a higher, more sophisticated plane but in the end you think that, just maybe, it’s you who has missed out. And now I wished that I’d paid more attention from the start, because Phil seems to be giving an extensive and illustrated account of the devoted Mark and of the beautiful Beth and of their written-in-the-stars relationship and of their fabulously patient families and of their loyal friends and of the time when the bride and groom courted unwittingly in a dogging area and people they didn’t know were peering at them through their car window and it was all bloody hilarious. But I don’t pay due attention and all I catch are snippets, like I’m flicking television channels while the rest of the room has stayed with the film. Phil concludes with a photo taken in the churchyard after the service today and downloaded straight onto his computer (now that is commitment) to rapturous applause. I clap because I’m pleased it’s over and I add a smile when I see Scott, Grace on shoulders, making a beeline for me. My day is just starting.

I begin to have fun as Scott introduces me to “some of the more interesting members of my family,” including eccentric Great-uncle Len, who I notice is still wearing the Harrod’s bag, as the Queen would her handbag, that I saw him with at the church; leggy cousin Fleur, the pole-dancer; her flamboyant brother Archie and his partner, a very pretty Pakistani boy with sorrowful eyes called Falik. I wonder whether Falik’s parents know where he is tonight and with whom.

We go outside for a smoke and spot Vince and Nikki necking next to a holly bush.

“Do you remember how we used to call each other ‘cousins’?” I ask Scott.

“Mum still does! We’re incestuous,” he says. Well, not quite, not yet.

“Quick,” says Scott, discarding the joint and whisking me by the arm back to the frivolities of the reception. “Mark made his own playlist and we all got a choice of song, this is mine. Can’t miss it, Shell. Time to get out the guitars.”

It’s Nirvana’s “Smells like Teen Spirit” and I am taken aback. Of all the tunes he could have gone for, Scott has chosen one that means something to me. I wonder which song Simon would have picked. We get on the busy dance floor and jump around with Uncle Len and his green and gold plastic bag, which is where we stay until sweat forms on our brows. Take That comes on.

“Thank God,” I say. “I need a break.” And we park ourselves on seats adorned with abandoned hats and ties. Bill comes over with half a bottle of still-chilled champagne and clean flutes. I relish the way the bubbles tickle my tongue.

“Mum took Grace up to bed. Jilly’s with her now. She’s asleep, exhausted,” he says. They’ve rented a room in the hotel and hired the services of Jilly, a trusted local girl, as babysitter. Scott pours another glass of champagne to take up to Jilly and leaves me with his dad. I see him pile a plate full with buffet food for her and I am touched by his thoughtfulness.

“It’s good to see you, Michelle. You bring out the best in Scott.” Is there a conspiracy going on?

“Thanks, Bill. It’s a terrific wedding. You’ve done Beth proud.” I know that he has paid for the lot, traditional to the last.

“I can’t take any credit. Beth, Janey and Cindy did the work. They’ve been scheming like the Brink’s Mat robbers for weeks.” It sounds as though it cost him more than he bargained for.

“Well, they got the gold. It’s been a fab day and Beth looks happy,” I lie. We clink glasses. Seconds later, he pulls me up to the sound of Tony Bennett. Like father, like son. Janey joins us, followed by my parents, then by Scott and we all partner up – me with Dad, Mum with Bill and Scott with Janey, as Frank Sinatra croons, relaying to us his life in months of the year. It could be Dad’s choice of song, or Bill’s or any other 60-something year old man’s in the building – “Each time I find myself flat on my face; I just pick myself up and get back in the race…” Good Ole Blue Eyes.

By Midnight, the bride and groom have waved their guests goodbye and disappeared upstairs to the honeymoon suite, where, Janey tells me, they will spend the night, before heading off to Barcelona for five days. This makes me wonder whether La Sagrada Familia looks any different from the last time I visited Catalonia. I doubt that anything seismic will have occurred in two years, although the breathtaking gothic-but-not-quite church will surely seem a little more complete, a little more whole, like a person you haven’t met in a while; apparently unchanged but somehow altered. Beth must be going through a comparable evolution right now; physically the same woman as this morning but one who is aware of an imperceptible shift at her core, a subtle realignment. Maybe that’s why the modern woman still casts off her own family name at the alter and adopts her husband’s: beyond mere patriarchy, it’s her way of labelling what has just happened, she repackages herself in name, being unable to put a finger precisely on why she should or does feel different. That Beth is now Bowles instead of Griffith is tangible proof of that change. Beth Bowles, I ponder, what a crap name.

And there I go again. I might have gone on to analyse my unravelling dislike of Beth if I didn’t have enough to get my head around already. Scott has invited me back to his Mum and Dad’s, his own place being twenty odd miles away, but they’ve got guests and I wouldn’t feel comfortable. It’s already been decided that Janey is staying over at the hotel room with Grace, which I suppose is just as well: it’d be wrong for me to go up there with him, his five-year old daughter curled up, soundly asleep. I could ask him back to my parents’ place but that also feels a bit weird to me. After all, this is Scott, who Mum bathed as a kid, who Dad taught to ride a bike. He’s got a closer relationship to them than some of my cousins have. And then, I wonder whether this is all just my way of getting us both off the hook. Scott is maybe too eager, though I’m not entirely sure why that should be a problem. But it is. He is. Although we’ve known each other all of our lives, it feels too soon to take things to a sexual level because Scott’s not a person that I could sleep with just to catch his seed, and that’s all I seem to be thinking about right now. We’ve got too much history and an inescapable future, simply as offspring of our own parents. No, it’s all or nothing with this man. If it’s nothing, I’ll continue tonight and if it’s all, what’s the rush?

Our taxi arrives and Dad clambers into the seat next to the driver. There are a million stars out tonight, I notice, as I give Scott a hug.

“I’ll phone you tomorrow,“ he says, his warm breath forming a cloud in the freezing night air.

*****************

It’s tomorrow and Scott hasn’t phoned – he’s turned up! I haven’t been out of bed for long and I’m still a little crumpled. If Simon had just arrived unannounced I would be mortified but with Scott I’m not, which is unnerving. It doesn’t bode well, does it? I mean, if I was anything like serious about him I’d be a touch more concerned about my appearance, wouldn’t I? But I leave my hair tied back and my mouth unglossed, blanket draped over my shoulders, and accept the cup of coffee that he’s made me, dunking in a biscuit for energy. I think that I’m grateful for Mum hovering in the kitchen, preparing the vegetables for Sunday lunch.

“Has Beth been in touch, Scott?” Mum asks, scoring the sprouts with masterliness.

“She spoke to Mum this morning. She’s feeling a bit queasy but they’re both dead excited about the honeymoon.”

“She’s probably just tired. It was a long day, especially in her condition. The break will do her good,” Mum says. God, pregnancy isn’t a bloody illness, I think but decide not to vocalise it. After all, what would I know? “It was a beautiful wedding,” she adds. “Everyone had a lovely day, I must phone your Mum and Dad to thank them.”

“It was a great day, Sylv. It was all over too quickly though. I could have gone on all night.” Was that a dig?

Clocking my blanket, Mum gives me a reproving look and says, ”Michelle, why don’t you take Scott into the living room, it’s much warmer in there. Dad’s just lit the fire.” I jump down from the stool, cast my eyes upwards for Scott’s benefit and we vacate the kitchen so as not to get under the cook’s feet.

“It’s a shame you can’t stay around a bit longer. Sure you can’t be tempted to throw a sickie?” Scott grins, managing to look sincere at the same time.

“I can’t. I’ve already had a couple of days off this month and they all know that I’m away this weekend. Too suspicious.”

“Yeah, sorry. I understand. It’s just that it’d be good to hang out together a bit longer, you know?”

“There’s always Christmas, will you be around?”

He looks deflated and I can hear him thinking that Christmas is a whole five weeks away. “I’m bringing Grace on Christmas evening, Laura’s with her for the morning Santa bit.” A pause. “Maybe I could come up to yours before then?” Get off my case!

“Maybe.” Is all I can muster. Mum pops her head round the door.

“Do you want to stay for lunch, Scott? There’s plenty.” She asks expectantly.

“Oh. Thanks Sylvie but I have to get back for Grace.” And that’s what he does, while I’m left wondering whether I could have been a little more enthusiastic and whether I just fucked it all up or whether I really care.

Broody - Chapter 11

2010-10-13T21:43:00.000+01:00

Doubt

“And the next thing I know, he turns up with a rusty old ladies bike. Out of a skip! Even had a tinny ding-a-ling bell on it.” Debs is telling me about her boyfriend Dieter’s admirable but aggravating mission to recycle pretty much everything. “I mean, it’s one thing sorting out your tins from your bottles for the binmen or reusing your Waitrose bags but … for God’s sake! Rummaging through someone else’s shit. If it was any good they’d have given it away or wheeled it down to the nearest charity shop.”

“Well yeah,“ I concede. “Especially in this economic climate.”

Wrong. “Don’t you start! Like I told him, the only climate I’m concerned about is the one outside. And I’m not riding that clapped out old thing around here in this weather!”

“You could do it up for summer?” I suggest.

“Dieter is round his mate’s garage right now doing just that,” she says.

“Ah, he is sweet though.”

“Sweet. Ha! I never know what pile of rubbish he’s going drag home next. And I dread to think what he’s conjuring up for me this Christmas.” Her words are harsh but there’s a faint smile on her lips.

Last year, at six o’clock on Christmas morning, Dieter presented Debs with a large rusty key wrapped up in a tea-bag box and the previous Saturday’s Guardian Weekend magazine. Just that. He wouldn’t divulge to her which lock or door it paired up with. Instead, he insisted that she get dressed and double up with him on the back of his own skip-rescued bicycle. It was still dark and the weather was icy cold. She was hung-over and unimpressed. He was “as energized as a kitten with a ball of wool”. A joyful Dieter rode a miserable Debs along the uncharacteristically devoid-of-traffic main road and down towards the rail track, by the public loos opposite the White Swan. There he stopped peddling and, in his excitement, he stopped so abruptly that his passenger fell off and hurt her wrist. Now more miffed than ever, Deb’s mood improved little when she discovered that the key opened a padlocked gate that gave way to a strip of allotments. She spent two Sundays in March raking over her patch and since then her Christmas present has been in sole custody of Dieter, who regularly brings home too much broccoli or too many raspberries and the prettiest roses or beautifully fragrant rosemary. Early Saturday evenings, after a jog, Debs sometimes meets him for a drink over the road at the Swan, him all sweat and mud and her all velour and headphones. Their differences apart, they work together fabulously.

“Maybe he’ll stuff a dead cat or something for me, if he wasn’t a veggie.” Dieter seems to exist on a diet of unpronounceable cheeses, olives and home-grown produce. “What are you up to at Crimbo, then?”

“Oh. Mum and Dad have invited me up there. I haven’t spent Christmas with them for years so I’ve said that I’ll go. It’ll most likely mean time with the Griffiths – they usually get together with Bill and Janey on Christmas night, so it’s charades and mulled wine for me!”

“And Scott with a big ribbon on?” She widens her eyes to resemble an insane Furby.

Scott. My head still hasn’t resolved that one. The wedding is next weekend and it looks as though I could well become the chief bridesmaid to his best man, although Scott is only an usher and I am the friend of the family who the bride feels she has to invite. I can’t be certain but I have an inkling that he will be a part of this year’s Christmas stocking, his split from Grace’s mum kind of dictates that he’ll be “at home” with his parents this yuletide.

My silence and downward glance push Debs to dig deeper. “What, don’t you fancy him, then?”

“I dunno, Debs. It’s complicated.” I sigh.

“What’s complicated about it? You like each other and if you tell me that you haven’t thought about extending your friendship to the bedroom or wherever then you, my lovely, are deluding yourself.” She’s right of course but I won’t know how I really feel until I see him again. And again.

“But what if we do, you know, consummate whatever it is and it doesn’t work out? It’d be so awkward,” I say.

“Shell, don’t be so defeatist. Anyway, you only see him once in a blue moon, don’t you? What’ve you got to lose? You’ll never know if you don’t do it! It’s not like you’ve got no idea what his dick looks like.”

“Stop! I haven’t seen it since he was, like, six. I hope he’s grown since then!”

“Only one way to find out,“ she grins. And I think that I agree.

“Well, maybe I could …” At which point my attention is claimed by a six foot two dreadlocked German, beaming at us through Deb’s kitchen window and holding up a pair of gleaming handlebars.

Dieter rolls a fat joint and tells us elatedly about the progress he’s made on the skip bike, assuring Debs, “you’re gonna love it babe.” Although I do sometimes wonder how my friend puts up with her Teutonic lover, his eagerness always rubs off on me and I leave his presence convinced that the world is a simpler place than many of us choose to make it. No-one knows where he really comes from geographically, which sometimes makes it difficult to work out where he is coming from metaphorically and at other times it doesn’t matter because his point of view can be so simplistic that it transcends roots. He is who he is; no stories of the past and no discernible baggage (although, in truth, he probably has invisible rucksack after invisible rucksack piled onto his ever-so-slightly hunched shoulders). He also has a tendency to string words together to make a whole new language: English but not quite – like big-tailed-tree-rat (squirrel) or million-word-meaning-book (dictionary). It’s endearing, or wearing. It certainly keeps you on your toes.

“And the metal-inside-wheels (spokes?) are gonna be painted …. Oops, it’s a surprise but it will knock your boots off!” He enthuses. “So what’s up, Michey?” No-else would get away with calling me that. He always does.

“I’m ok thanks. Getting on with it.”

“So, you got knocked up yet, then?” And I forgot to mention he is blunter than a paper butter knife. I shoot Debs a look that I hope conveys “share it with the world, why don’t you?” but if she hears me, she doesn’t strike up a dialogue, which is unsurprising really; I should know by now that she tells her bloke everything.

I try to disguise my embarrassment with a rosy cheeked giggle and “I’ll have to have sex first, Diet. Know anyone?”

“OK. The scene’s dead, is it?”

To which Debs guffaws, “Yeah right! She’s like one of those strips that you hang from the lampshade to catch the flies in summer, our Shell. She’s collecting them but doing nothing with them.”

“Ah,” says Dieter. “You need to be more of a spider then. Catch them in the lovely fucking web and aahhuumph. Um, yummy.” This is followed by a licking of the lips and a witch-like cackle, tremendously high-pitched for such a big man.

“To be fair, though, she did get Don Simon on his knees,” says Debs.

“I see!” Then Dieter starts singing. “You got him begging you for mercy, yeah, yeah?”

Not exactly, I think. More the other way around. But I play along. “Oh yes. Totally captivated by my silk …. knickers.”

“See, easy-peasy” says Dieter. “A bit more of that and you’ll be baby-tummied before you know it.

I doubt it. He’ll have to get in touch with me first (he still hasn’t replied, three days after I invited him round. Ouch!). Then again, there are plenty more flies in the air, I remind myself.

****************

I leave work bang on time, not able to get out of the West of England Language School quickly enough today. We got silly-giggly last night and I ended up talking complete nonsense with Debs and Dieter until I don’t even know what time and then, when I eventually tried to sleep, I couldn’t, the weed and the nicotine buzzing around in my brain, keeping my eyes hot and my thoughts going off on tangents, light in a prism.

In my English for Business class, two of my learners came to blows because Clemence was explaining the difficulties of being a gay man in Zimbabwe and Naomi, a young girl from Japan, kept tittering and putting her hand over her mouth, which only drew attention to her apparent amusement. Clem thought her naïve, when really it’s her way of handling nervous energy, which is heightened in uncomfortable situations, and he accused her of being homophobic: I was impressed quietly with the high standard of vocabulary he, in particular, used. Clem was being overly-macho as is his bent (pun intended) and, after his openness, I think we all understand why he is sometimes given to displays of extreme masculinity. Naomi burst into tears and ran out of the shared learning area, which made me look incompetent in front of my colleagues and anyone else who hadn’t actually heard the squabble. More importantly, I should have been able to nip the whole thing in the bud and prevent two good students from getting so distressed. So now I feel like an inadequate tutor and nowhere near the people-person that I’ve always prided myself on being.

As I step out into the new evening, I rub my forefinger gently under my eyes, attempting to erase signs of both tiredness and my nine-hour old make-up, when I hear “cheer up love, it might never ‘appen.” I don’t need to look up to know that Sían is standing outside my workplace looking fabulous.

I smile, “Hey, wotcha. Nice surprise.” Actually, it is rather good to see her; she possesses an oomph that can lift spirits, even today.

The week without contact doesn’t appear to have dented her confidence in our friendship and she links her arm through mine with an “isn’t it-cold?” shudder. On auto-pilot, we steer ourselves to the Tavern, order our regular poison and position ourselves by the fire, Sían yapping continually about her subordinates at the TV production company where she is manager.

“And anyway, I told Briney that, no, I wasn’t going away to Paris for the weekend, I’m going away with Paris for the weekend, so she’ll have to make sure that everything is in place for the shoot next Monday or else come in on Saturday morning to finish off the preparations.” She puts her hand up to the flames, “I can’t wait, I’ve already packed twice; the five day weather report keeps bloody changing.”

“Take layers,” I suggest. “So where you going?”

“A seventeenth century manor house in Lower Slaughter,” she gives a knowing nod.

“Lovely. The Cotswolds.” I’ve never heard of Lower Slaughter but gamble on the information I have already acquired from Simon. It’s an appropriate place name for a shagfest.

“That’s it - the most beautiful village in England. And we’re staying at a very highly regarded country house. It’s where they all go, you know.” She sighs. I don’t enquire into who they are. ”Paris did amazingly well to get a booking at such short notice. And he’s arranged a private massage for me in our suite as soon as we arrive. To make sure I’m completely relaxed and rag-doll like, he says.”

“How the other half live, eh?” It’s a flippant remark but I can’t help wonder how they do it. Almost everyone else I know is feeling the strain of the economic downturn: most of us, at the very least, are eating out less and going on fewer holidays and I consider this to be one of the reasons why it has been so easy for Paris to get a pre-Christmas luxury break in the Heart of England.

“Anyway … enough about me and my love life. I hear yours is hotting up!” What? How could she have found out so quickly? My face, as ever, betrays my emotions.

“Don’t fret – it’s not common knowledge,” says Sían. “But Simon did come round mine on Sunday evening and he told Paris and me all about your fiery chilli.” Did he now? So that’s where he was when I was awaiting his reply text that never came.

“So, he liked it then?”

“Well, he is a dreadful gossip. Actually, I’d steer clear of him Shell, if I were you.”

“What do you mean? Why?”

“Just a couple of things Paris told me about him and the ladies. You ought to be careful that’s all. He’s got quite a reputation.”

“A reputation? As what?”

“A bit of a tart, you know.”

“No, I don’t, give me an example.”

“He often has more than one love interest on the go at the same time.”

“Does he now? We’re well matched then. I spent all day Sunday with Daniel. Our second date. He took me to see a great band called Jaded and then he cooked me dinner. What a cook!” I embellish. Why am I playing these games?

“Oh?” The tone of her voice is as good as shouting out that she is fully aware that I invited Simon over the very same evening. I can just see the three of them reading my text together over a bottle of Sancerre. “Good genes?”

Oh my God. “You haven’t told Simon, have you? About me wanting a baby?”

She is emphatic in her denial but she’s hiding something. I know her too well. If she has told him then no wonder he hasn’t been in contact; he must think that I’m out to ensnare him. Could there be a scarier prospect for any man than a woman he hardly knows trying to lay him just because she wants his seed? Maybe Simon imagines that I’m after the whole package – home, ring, husband, baby. He’ll scarper, for sure, and who could blame him? How could I even begin to explain that that’s not the deal, that I don’t want any of that? I just want the baby. I would come across as selfish, callous and manipulative. And maybe that’s exactly what I am.

*****************

Comfortably top-to-tail on my sofa, Duncan and I have created our very own two headed snake, a jumbled Gemini symbol. He has agreed to watch one of my all-time favourite films, L’Appartement, and has brought round a large tub of Ben and Jerry’s Strawberry Cheesecake and some very dark chocolate with orangey bits in (“to remind you of all the great things out there”). Bless him. I phoned him shortly after my solitary drink with Sían. I didn’t stay with her for long; I said I had a date with Mitch, which I didn’t, of course. We have yet to meet, although we have become firm text and internet buddies. I was controlled but Duncan is intuitive enough to have worked out that all isn’t hunky dory so he suggested a “girls’ night in” on Friday and, I must say, it feels good. But what feels even better is that Simon called earlier this evening to propose that we “catch up” tonight. I had to decline, although, inexplicably, I did go a bit butterfly inside when I explained that I had other plans and I went even more so when he asked if I’d like to go round to his tomorrow night instead. Sían’s words of warning flashed in front of me momentarily but, against my better judgement, I said yes. Hhmm, I thought I might have seen the last of him. Maybe Sían hasn’t said anything to him about me wanting a baby after all? Or maybe she has and he wants the same thing? Impossible – why would a man like him want to father a child without the benefits of the mother, the home or any of the other trimmings?

“Ice-creeeeam.” Duncan has nudged me on the chin with his foot. I’m thankful that he’s such a clean person.

“What? Sorry. I was entranced. Uh, no ta. All ice-creamed out,” I say.

Actually, I was unfocussed on the screen, paying no attention to the Parisian café in which Max is examining the voices in his head. I am in as much turmoil as our handsome protagonist, perplexed as to which boulevard I ought to take. Where will it all lead? Duncan picks up my little toe to knead it. I relax and get back in the moment.

“What did you think?” I ask as the credits role, stretching out my legs and kicking Duncan in the face. “Oops.”

“I found it a bit frustrating at times but then he is frustrated and so I suppose from that point of view it works. Everyone is so …. stunning, especially her. And it really makes you think about the arbitrariness of our lives. We are blissfully unaware of what is in store for us. One decision, and the decisions of others, has the power to change it all forever.”

I sit up and look at him, allowing the tears to fall. Many men would be embarrassed by this but Duncan draws his legs under his body and leap-frogs over to me, giving me a strong embrace when he gets there. We sit like that, crossed-legged, my head on his shoulder and his over mine, for a few minutes. Until I can cry no more.

************************

My underwear drawer is not as cheerful as it once was, lingerie purchases having been cut mercilessly since the on-set of the credit-crunch and the ensuing recession. Although I do wonder whether expensive knickers and bras are gratuitous now that I need, more than ever, to be seductive. Then again, does it matter? Once I’m down to my smalls with a man, haven’t I already seduced him, whoever he is? I select a pretty, feminine, cream matching set with purple flowers – alluring but not too obvious, I hope. Or maybe I should be obvious, considering the last time I was with Simon, he kept his eye region in very close proximity to my “white bits”. Using my woman’s prerogative, I change my mind and squeeze my boobs into a black, lacy number and cover my lower region with a frilly thong, hoping that the latter won’t cut me in two if Simon does a re-enactment of our preceding play. I go for broke with a wrap-around nearly-black and almost-transparent top, the one that makes blokes have conversations with my breasts, rather than with me, and I take a little longer than usual in applying my make-up.

Checking myself in the full-length mirror, I’m happy with the result – the look reveals none of my current insecurities and I resemble a woman who knows that she can bag anyone she chooses. I take the car in a gamble that I will be able to have a few drinks and not worry about driving home; I’ll be staying the night.

Twenty minutes later, I am standing at Simon’s front door. The glass panel announces his approach so I take a deep breath, lifting my chin, pulling my shoulders down and pushing my chest out.

“Hey, bienvenue à chez Simon,” he says self-mockingly.

“Merci, mon petit, je suis très contente … que …être ici.” Merde, I always forget my subjunctive under pressure.

“Wow, the mademoiselle is au-fait with the language of lurve. Very chic. And very sexy,” he says, eyeing my cleavage with such obviousness that I half expect him to draw a pencil out of his back pocket and test whether it will stand unaided.

He hands me a glass of the same wine that he brought over to my house, “because it seemed to go down so well,” and he explains that he isn’t much of a cook, so we can order a curry a bit later on. I haven’t eaten since lunchtime and wonder how much later “later on” will be. I don’t wish to appear ungrateful so I say that it sounds like a plan and ask him about his week.

“It’s been a bit unexciting really,” he admits. He could have called me; I would have given him something to alleviate the boredom. “I took a week off work and spent most of it lulling about. Trouble is I work from home so it was more like an unproductive working week than a holiday. I did catch up with a couple of people though and I tidied my sock drawer. Wanna inspect it?”

“Only if you’ve folded them – I can’t bear socks that have been rolled into a ball.”

“Ahh, that might be a problem,” he says. He ogles my legs and I contemplate giving him a thrill a la Sharon Stone. “So, how was Weston-super-Mud?”

Un-fucking-believable. “Weston? It was ok. So, you’ve seen Sían then?” Or you’ve been chin-wagging with her on Facebook, I think.

“Er, yeah, I saw her with Paris. I reckon she’s smitten,” he says. With you? With him? “They’ve gone away and by the sounds of it, Sían’s taking a bag bigger than the one that I took to Australia to get me through six months. For one night up the road!”

“And she keeps you well-informed of my life too, does she?” I can’t let it go.

“Not really. Just said that you’d been busy and that you’d been on a date there, that’s all.” Now we’re both defensive, although I have more reason to be than he does. Where’s the loyalty? She told me nothing solid about Simon, just insinuated. Either I pursue this and we end up in a row and I leave or I change tack. I’ve made too much of an effort to sit on my own at home, all dressed up and no-one to shag, and so I re-steer the conversation to one that doesn’t include Daniel, Sían or Paris.

“Life is sometimes non-stop. Do you ever think that we, people, spend too much making ourselves busy and don’t stop to appreciate just being, contemplating, feeling?”

“Maybe, although I like to think that I have slowed down, compared to how I used to be,” he says. “I’ve got this mate who is an engineer at Filton. He’s been married to this woman for two years, they’ve just had twins AND he’s doing a PhD in his spare time.”

“God. Does he have any?”

“He’s just disciplined, I suppose. A Doctorate isn’t for me, how could you fit anything else in?” But babies are for you? I deduce.

“I guess it comes down to what you want out of life, but you’re right, it does all sound a bit hectic.” I say.

“So, what is it that you want, lovely Michelle?” He is so forward but reveals next to nothing about himself. Why should I be sole soul-bearer? I try to think of a smart reply, one that makes me seem mysterious, but instead I just look at him. My stillness seems to have the intended outcome because he grins at me and nods as though I’ve said something astonishing. “I’m glad you’re here,” he says.

“Me too,” I say. For a moment I think he is going to jump up and rip off my clothes to get another fix. But he doesn’t, which, actually, I endorse: I’ve only been here ten minutes.

Within the hour, Simon is leading me to his bedroom and I am already half naked. He isn’t. If I’d had time to scrutinize his bachelor’s room, I might have queried the red lights around his bed, the pale orange of his silky sheets and the colourful scarves adorning his walls. If I wasn’t so consumed with passion for this horny man, I may have been taken aback by the femaleness of the place. If I wasn’t fumbling in vain to expose his virility, I probably would have questioned the smell of rose permeating the increasingly airless room. After reaching orgasm, twice, I do speculate as to why he still has his pants on but by then I am curled up on his chest, sleepy and blissfully spent.

Disillusion

2010-10-10T21:26:00.001+01:00

The Garden of Forking Paths

2010-10-01T13:10:00.000+01:00

Broody - Chapter 10

2010-09-27T11:31:00.000+01:00

Choice

The sky is clear and the sun is out. So are the stars, shades of purple against blue. The sun is a glitterball and tiny flecks break away from it, thin streams of energy escaping into the void. Down below groups of people dressed in white are dancing by rock pools on fine sandy beach. There are more grains of sand in a single handful than there are stars in the sky. I approach a cluster of individuals who are running in single file under a waterfall so high that the source is unfathomable. The faces are serious and the pace is fast. I look quizzically at a beautiful woman, who is waiting her turn, and she senses that I am a tourist. “The trick is to run through at a rate faster than the speed of light without getting wet,” she informs me. I shrug as if to enquire into the importance of such an exercise. “If even one drop touches your skin, well, it’s the end.” She points to a huddle over in the distance, separated from the dancers and the runners by a tempestuous stream. “You end up with them, the poor fuckers.” The huddle is troubled. Heads hang in defeat and arms touch the grit that is their sand. A genderless being looks up; the dull, colourless eyes meet mine. It is old. Very old. Its yellowing clothes are torn and its feet are bare. I refocus on the people this side of the stream. Everyone is young, everyone is beautiful. The dancers are oblivious to the goings-on at the waterfall and the runners are oblivious to everything but the steady rush of water, psyching themselves up for the sprint of their lives. Three runners complete the course and emerge bone dry after which they dart towards me then shoot upwards, becoming light itself. A slim, elegant young man takes his pose to run but something distracts him. His eyes are boring into me, holding me. Mine, in return, urge him to let me go, to concentrate on the race. He sets off but his spirit is disappearing. He is wet. It’s too late. He stops dead and his face starts to wither, his muscles soften then disintegrate, skin sagging over bones. He hunches. His hair grows, long, thin, white. He is middle aged, then old, then older than age. Like Ursula Andres in She. Pulled under with the current, he is swallowed up in the torrent. He is unappetising so the angry stream spews him out and he lands, with a clatter, on top of the huddle. Troubled. Defeated.

He didn’t stay: Simon. After my mini-explosion we each lit a clichéd cigarette and finished off the rest of the wine. We ate chilli without rice and scoffed the chocolates down with a cup of strong espresso. An evening for fine living, indeed. We had a scrumptious, teenage kiss and talked a little more. And he left. I went to bed with a grin on my face to read The White Tiger but, mostly, I stared at the same page for I don’t even know how long, my mind elsewhere. I drifted off in a haze of well-being.

And now, it’s Saturday and I’m staring unseeingly at the TV, thinking that I should probably cancel my date with Daniel tomorrow. It doesn’t feel right after begging another man to make love to me just yesterday. Neither of them would ever know, but I would, and I reckon that I need the distance of at least a few days between encounters. Anyway, the weather is rubbish and set to stay that way for the weekend, not really conducive to walking hand-in-hand on a half dug-up Victorian seafront. Sorted; I’ll just have my bacon sandwich and then I’ll call him. I’m sure he’ll understand, not that I know what I’m using as an excuse yet.

I’m deciding which would sound more plausible – “my mum and dad have just turned up out of the blue,” or “I’ve got an important presentation on The Role of the EAP Tutor in Helping Non-English Speaking Students to Succeed at University to give at work on Monday morning and it doesn’t look as though I’ll finish it today.” – when I receive a text message guaranteed to stop me in my tracks, from the very man, Daniel: “Got tickets for gig in pub @ 2, low key but great band so get train? Hope you like lamb? Ck ur email. Looking forward :)” Too late! He’s gone to a bit of trouble and, now that I know about it, it’s going to be more difficult to let him down. OK. A band in a pub sounds pretty harmless; he probably won’t attempt to jump on me there. And an afternoon Sunday roast is, I am sure, much less likely to lead to anything sexually charged than a Friday night one-pot meal, isn’t it? I decide that, yes, I do possess self-control, that I can make the effort and that, as it sounds more like a day out with a friend than a date, the whole Simon-Sex-thing shouldn’t get in the way too much. So, I text to say that I’ll see him at the station at about one o’clock and that I’ll finalise all details when I’ve checked the train timetable.

Then I get to thinking about Simon again. Is it OK that he didn’t even unzip his fly? What was all that about? Should I have attempted to pleasure him? While it’s obvious to me that I needed to bring an unorgasmic few months to a close and dust off my vaginal cobwebs, shouldn’t I have taken control and helped make it more of a balanced experience? I start to feel a little twitchy that he didn’t feel the need for penetration (after all that’s pretty important to me right now) and I scold myself. For God’s sake, Michelle, it’s only one night, what’s the big rush? I remind myself that these are very early days and it’s no big deal. Maybe he’s being tantric about the whole thing and, if he is, it is surely inevitable that, in holding out for that ultimate thrill, he – we – will eventually reach a climax. Besides, Simon seemed happy enough with the way the evening went and there’s always the next time. The next time. We didn’t arrange anything and yet I feel sure that we will pair up again. I like him, although a couple of the things that he revealed about himself did make me wonder a little.

There was his confession that he has never lived with a woman. Ever. At 37. I’ve lived with two men, in the biblical sense, and I consider sharing a home with someone that you sleep with on a regular basis to be a right of passage. I know very few people, if any, who have not, at some point in their lives, shared their tomato ketchup, toothpaste, washing machine and bed with the same person, day in, day out. How can you approach 40 without ever having experienced that? He was matter-of-fact about the whole thing, not finding the scenario unusual, but to me it indicates a lack of maturity.

And he didn’t even mention other women, not once referring to “my ex-“. Maybe he thinks that there’s no reason to fill me in on past loves and, so early on in the relationship (or whatever it is), I tend to agree. So, why was he so interested in the blokes that, seemingly, I’ve made mistakes with? If his past liaisons are insignificant, why aren’t mine? I’m also troubled about the speed of our physical intimacy; we barely know each other and yet he found his way to my bedroom and into my drawers faster than you can say “commitment”. However, I must concede that a coupling is made up of two people and I didn’t exactly hold back and, let’s face it, it’s not the first time I’ve jumped into bed with a virtual stranger. So why should I care that I’ve done just that with Simon? It was clear very quickly that we do share a sexual chemistry and so I refuse to berate myself for ‘putting out’ on the first date: it just seemed the natural course of action to take. Despite myself, I switch on my computer and Google him.

Simon Larkin. Results 1-10 of about 1,1300,00 for simon larkin. It’s a hell of a lot to plough through so I click on “pages from the uk”: results 1-10 of about 63,000. Well, he doesn’t live in Norwich, he lives in Bristol, he’s not a web designer, he’s a social researcher, freelance. Ah, there he is – Paragon Research, home – “Paragon Research delivers rigorous qualitative research to various sectors. Paragon Research clients benefit from ….” It’s a sales pitch for his business and includes nothing that relates specifically to Simon, well at least nothing that I want to know presently. I click back to “results” and realise that the sort of grit I’m after is available to me via his Facebook page, but we’re not “friends” yet. I can’t really invite him to be my friend now, this minute; it would be too invasive. I click on his name anyway, where I can at least look at his profile picture and check out those of his friends. His photo shows him standing between two dark-haired women: his sisters? He has 153 friends and we have two mutual friends – Carrie Carenzo and Sían Stucklie. Sían? How did she get in there so quickly? I’m a bit peeved that they are sending each other messages and updates on their lives before Simon and I are sending each other messages and updates on our lives. I’m the one who’s shagging him, which isn’t strictly true, I know. But I’m the one who’s had his tongue in my vagina, not her! And how does he know Carrie? Carrie is one of those people who are recommended to you as a friend by someone else that you know, one of those people who, when I was a novice at the web’s world of social networking, I accepted just to make my profile fuller and to enhance my popularity. I no longer do that. My criteria now is that if I wouldn’t go for a coffee with her or him then neither is s/he invited to read my wall or be any part of my life, virtual or not. I’ve never messaged Carrie or she me, as far as I can remember, so I’ve got nothing on her. I can’t resist taking a peek at the other 150 people who make up Simon’s cyber life. He’s got a lot of female friends. Do I have that many male friends? I go to my own friends’ page.

126 friends. I scroll down. Maybe 40-50% of my friends here are male and, glancing at their names and faces, I calculate that I have maybe been up close and personal with four of them. So the number of Facebook friends of the opposite sex that a person has proves nothing, right?

I check my inbox. There are messages from Sían, from Scott and from Mitch and from Daniel. I open Sían’s, entitled “Duvet Days”:

November 8th, 12:24

hi shell babe,
sorry I haven’t been in touch, feeling lousy these last couple of days, been watching daytime tv in bed. think I overdid it at firework party. you should have come, it was a riot. jerry m was running around with lit rockets, he was scary-mad, lol. paris is totally cool, will tell all when better. simon cried off anyway - he had an invite to a display/party out of Bristol – bit rude isn’t it? speak soon,
love ya, SS x

My first reaction is, “I’m supposed to be the one who is blanking her” (juvenile, I know, and it’s not exactly a blank, more of a steering-clear) and my second is “another invite?” Simon said that he fancied a night at home and that he didn’t go to Sían’s due to my absence. Who is telling the truth? Maybe they both are and Simon got more than one offer and refused them both. Or else he just used that little white lie as an excuse to get out of going.

What does Scott have to say? I wonder:

November 8th, 01:32

shell,
went to a retro-90s night – can you believe that 90s is retro?!?
missing you,
S :(
xxxx

He’s “missing me, :("? I clock the time that he sent the message: half one in the morning. He was probably pissed and can’t even recall sending it. Still, it’s sweet. I mail back: “maybe we can create our own retro night next week? x”

That’ll make sure he revisits the sensation of having to fill my void, I think with an involuntary smirk.

Daniel has sent me a MySpace link to the band that’s playing in Weston tomorrow – Jaded: a brother-sister outfit, a fusion of west-country funk and English folk, whatever that means.

And Mitch, my mate-date that I have yet to meet, has posted me the Brubaker Wedding Dance. Like he says, “We’ve all seen it before but can we get enough of the funk?” It’s true, this video has been doing the rounds on Facebook for years now but the sight of the newlyweds taking their first dance beyond the conventional norms is a sight that always raises a smile. They are in love and I hope they stand the test of time. I am a romantic. Mitch says: “I’m going to have to dust off my dancing shoes. Strictly Ballroom should be for us plebby non-Celebs too. I got rhythm. I could outdance a rugby player any day. A man needs muscles in the right places! You much of a mover, MeShelley? x” I reply with a quick “Lol, love it, Mitchy Bitch x.”

I turn off the computer and catch myself humming a high-energy number from my school days: “so many men, so little time, how can I choose? So many men, so little time, how can I lo-oo-oo-se? Quite.

**********************

The pub is packed but we manage to bag a couple of chairs and find ourselves perched round a tiny table with two grungy looking types, who are flitting between sipping cider and nipping outside for roll-ups. Everyone looks so provincial. I remind myself that I am the grockel here, the city day-tripper (I imagine that they still use the term “yuppie” in these parts). Daniel doesn’t appear to know any of the other punters, which surprises me, but I don’t mention it, not wishing to embarrass him.

The band-o-siblings, Jaded, produces an odd sound, “Eliza Carthy does Hammond”, I observe to an empty reaction from Daniel, who is evidently loving them. I am aware of his sideways glances to verify that I too am “digging the scene.” I’m not, although I do gives whoops and claps in the appropriate places. He nudges me, nodding, giving me licence to become a living, breathing part of the experience. I smile (or grimace?) and make a swirling gesture in the air with my right arm, wishing that I really did have a paper to prepare for tomorrow morning’s staff meeting.

We leave the pub ever so slightly more light-headed than when we entered and head back to Daniel’s, “a five-minute trot away,” he assures me. ‘I’d rather be trotting in the opposite direction’, I think, but I take his lead up a steep hill to a leafy residential area, where front gardens haven’t yet been tarmacked into driveways. It’s a million miles from the depravation of the town, with its tall, stone Victorian houses and windows so huge that, from the inside, I envisage all you can see is sky.

“Just here,” he says, keys in hand.

The front door opens up to a large living area-come-kitchen and a waft of lamb and rosemary travels straight to my stomach. I am hungry and that smells good. Daniel hands me a beer and puts on something by Double Entendre, “a shit-hot ten-piece from Toronto who I saw at Glasto.” I’ve never heard of them but feign enthusiasm, taking a pew on an armchair covered by a cannabis-leafed throw. Daniel busies himself with the contents of his slow-cooker (‘so it is a one-pot meal after all’, I think with a jolt of inevitability, noting the darkening sky outside), while droning along to the lyrics of Double Entendre.

I take in the magnolia-with-a-hint-of-Seville-orange walls and the Buddhist hangings, remnants of his travels in Asia, I presume. A wooden Ohm symbol rests on the at least 32 inch screened television and I marvel at the unashamed juxtaposition of East and West, a sign of our confused, or all-embracing, times. Daniel hands me a bowl of lamb stew and I swallow greedily a mouthful before my stomach has the chance to rumble again. It is delicious and I tell him so. He looks pleased and apologises for the lack of a dining table. Not a problem, I reassure him.

We finish the meal and Daniel shows me a selective photo-diary of his time in India, “not enough to bore you but enough to get the flavour,” he says. The scenery is breath-taking and he looks happy and relaxed in his shorts and baggy cotton top, his hair blonder and his body leaner than those of the Daniel perched now at my side. But I am not drawn to the way that the sea and sky form a single sweep of blue or to the delicacy of the sand, neither am I drawn to Daniel, whose whole being is seeking my approval. He is the playful Labrador puppy to my cantankerous old bitch refusing to chase after the muddy stick.

In the cab, on the way back to the station, I text Simon.

*******************

I get home a little after eight, irritated at Simon’s failure to reply to my text but more annoyed at myself for having invited him over in the first place. It’s been a couple of days since our “date” so I’m not exactly being a bunny boiler by contacting him now. At least, I don’t think I’m being overly-keen. There’s probably a legitimate reason why he hasn’t texted back, which has got nothing at all to do with me. Maybe he forgot to charge his phone or has left it at home or he’s having dinner at his parents’. Maybe he just doesn’t want to see me again and would rather tell me face to face. I wonder why it is that I want more of him. Is it because he made me come? Is it because the physical thing is already underway and, so far, it fits? Is it because there is an element of “you’ll never have me” about him? Because it’s easier to have more sex with someone who has already tasted you? Or is it that, because of the speed of our sexual intimacy, I don’t necessarily think him good father material and my subconscious has already decided that I’m going to do this on my own? That’s as worrying as having to find that one, perfect man to spend the rest of your life with. Both come with conditions, a certain criteria to be fulfilled. And then there’s that ethical dilemma that is still lodged in my brain - what effect would a pregnancy, a baby, a child have on Simon’s life? And what effect might an absent father have on my baby’s life? I have so many more questions than answers. In fact, the only answer I do have is in my gut; a synthesis of maternal instinct, ideal timing, longing and spiritual guidance.

I don’t take the bath I thought I wanted. I don’t even brush my teeth. My bedside lamp remains unlit and I drop, exhausted, into bed, praying for a dreamless sleep.

Mabon

2010-09-23T22:20:00.001+01:00

The sun crosses
The Celestial Equator
Day equals night
Night equals day

Symmetry

Respect the dark
Relinquishing light
Reflect on the past
Rebalance is now

Hide and Seek at Worlebury Camp

2010-09-19T21:09:00.005+01:00

She counts to 20

Always skips 15

Somewhere around Dymond's #9

I hover for a moment

And then I climb

Into History

With Carboniferous limestone

Breathing
and

There among the Natives

I Am

Together
with 10s of 12s of snails

Hiding

Broody - Chapter 9

2010-09-17T20:23:00.001+01:00

Fire

There’s mild euphoria in the city this morning. I noticed it at the newsagents, on the platform and on the train. People with whom I’ve stood side-by-side five mornings a week for the past Christ-knows-how-long, who have never so much as nodded in my direction, suddenly greeted me with hellos and smiles. The self-importance of the ticket collector was magnified and he looked me in eye, more challengingly than cheerily. And now, in class, there is excited chatter. An imprudent hope exists: it reminds me of May 2nd 1997, the day after the defeat of the Tories, when so many in this country held the misguided notion that New Labour was about to alter the fabric of British society. It’s November 5th and Barak Obama has just been elected the first black president of the United States: there’s an optimism rarely experienced on such a cold, grey English day.

I decide to go with it and have set the learners on my “English for Academic Purposes” course the online task of browsing news pages from their native countries and from Britain. Concentrating on Obama’s victory, they must then compare, contrast and analyse:

a) opinions about the outcome of the election
b) the layout and style of the articles
c) images used

We have a quick group discussion and I answer any questions that the activity throws up. I supply them with a list of British web publications and then I sit down to write my lesson plan, leaving them pretty much to it for the next 45 minutes. This job involves endless paperwork – plans, assessments, evaluations, reports and on and on – that, if I didn’t get most of it completed during what are supposed to be tutor/learner contact hours, I’d have to take it home, which would probably result in a blurring of the home/work boundaries, nothing short of dangerous. Realistically, there should be enough time around lessons to get all this done but I can’t find it.

After the cyber-news analysis, we will study collectively the front pages of some of today’s nationals, which I picked up before I caught my train from a noticeably brighter than usual Mrs Patel, and decipher the headlines (my personal favourite is the Mirror’s “GOBAMA!”). Then the learners will break into smaller groups and create their own catchy headlines, or at least ones that make some kind of sense. Paying the required attention to detail, I am typing all this mechanically onto a pro-forma’d lesson plan, when my mobile whistles a loud text alert and almost every head in the room turns (phones are banned during study time; I set a poor example). I don’t recognise the number: “Fireworks round Sían’s tonight @ 8. Simon coming. Paris ;-)” Fuck! I almost say it aloud.

My anger rises at the assumption that I have nothing better to do on Guy Fawkes’ Night (I haven’t) and that I can just drop everything with a few hours notice. Furthermore, I’m really not in the mood for Sían, fireworks or Paris, especially not for Paris and, anyway, who has given him my number? Why didn’t she contact me herself? And how typical, I think, that Sían should have been attracted to the most see-through, least-fanciable bloke ever to have speed dated through Fast Love. Over the past few weeks I have been re-evaluating my friendship with Sían. Admittedly, she was a boon when my main incentive was to network the Bristol Scene; she is unique among the people I know in her capacity to strike up new relationships and, if I do not know truly that many people, I have become acquainted with countless, primarily thanks to Sían, during the past couple of years. Lately, however, her hunger to be accepted and, probably more accurately, adored is wearing so thin that it is stretching beyond all limits. To me, she has become as transparent as Sellotape. I began to worry that I was being disloyal, a bad friend, that I owed her something for securing my entry into the Local Social Directory, but that worry has gone down the same avenue as my tolerance of her clique and I am starting to question Sían’s place in my life and mine in hers. There was a time when I felt appreciative of her attentions and even, dare I say it, indebted to her. I failed to see why she should show unfaltering interest in someone as ordinary as me but now I know that I lacked self-belief. And so if, in any way, my friendship with Sían has boosted my confidence, I really do thank her for it. The point is I now understand that the equilibrium was never tipped as heavily in my favour as I had imagined and that there have been advantages to both parties. Quite simply, I have remained consistent in my failure to refuse an invitation, any invitation, being as eager as Sían in my need to be liked. That’s what has kept the friendship going, that’s why she thrives on having me around; I never say no. To anything! I flinch at the memory of the two of us bundling ourselves into the back of an Audi Quattro at the suggestion of two men we didn’t know but who promised us an awesome party, deplorable behaviour for professional women in their thirties (it was an excellent night and we were safe, but that’s beside the point). I had thought that I was displaying my spirit of adventure but, in truth, it exposes my unassertiveness and lack of judgement. We have become a double act, partners in the Department of Acquisitions of our very own troupe – the Superficial Twins of Desperation. And it seems to me that now is the time that we were de-Siamesed. I need no mirror-image, no unnecessary weight to haul around.

And so, today I will begin this delicate operation by declining the Capital of France’s spur-or-the-moment offer of whizzes and bangs. I’ll let Simon know and we can arrange another time to meet, just the two of us, to see if we can’t start any fireworks of our own, without the pressures of our two wildly attractive and oh-so-sure-of-themselves friends. I feel relieved at the decision and a little empowered. I am about to text my apologies when Xio, a softly-spoken girl from somewhere in southern China, claims my attention with the question, “Please, Michelle. What mean better the devil you know?” I am thrown momentarily until I realise that she is referring to journalistic opinions on US politics. I tuck away my phone and get on with the job at hand.

*****************

By the time I get off the train, the night sky is ablaze with rockets and there’s not a cat in sight. I pop into the shop to buy ten fags, reasoning with myself that I’ll give up when, if, I get pregnant, and a pint of milk. Mrs Patel has been replaced by her inattentive and extremely pretty teenage daughter who, syncing her head with what appears to be a very fast rhythm emanating from her headphones, doesn’t say a word to me throughout the whole transaction, undoing all the hard work that her parents put into customer service with a smile. I hurry through the firework-lit night to my front door, staving off the cold, impatient to get into the warmth of my home and happy to batten down the hatches, for tonight at least.

I open the door to a ringing telephone. It could only be Mum one of those ghost-callers as everyone else contacts me via mobile. I ignore it; if it’s the former I’ll call later, when I’m relaxed and comfy, and if it’s the latter, well, “se ya.” I put on the heating and the kettle and, still in my coat and hat, I sit in the darkness of my living room, lighting a cigarette. I run through a mental list of people I need to contact:

Scott – still haven’t replied to his email, is that leaving it too long?
Daniel – has invited me to his place on Sunday, I may as well go.
Mitch – to rearrange a meeting.
Simon – to arrange a date.
Debs – need to catch up.
Mum – if that was her. If not, can wait till tomorrow.
Gareth – I may reconsider.

I thank God for emails and texts as most of this can be achieved without actually having to throw myself into lengthy conversations with anyone. Sían hasn’t replied to my earlier refusal of her invitation. Maybe she’s still in shock. Simon, on the other hand, said that he’s free on Friday if I am. I think I am. The trouble is that, in embryo, so to speak, Friday seems like a good idea, assuming that I will actually want to engage then in conversation with a person who is almost unknown to me. I certainly wouldn’t want to put myself up for that right here, right now, but will I in two days time? I’ll invite him round here for dinner. I know the venue isn’t exactly neutral but he won’t mind, will he? How should I know? I know nothing about the man. I’ll just ask him and see.

It now occurs to me that I’ve been having far less sex since I decided that I want a baby than I did beforehand. In fact, not so much as a hand has touched my clitoris for more than three months. Maybe not even my own! And my Rampant Rabbit has remained battery-less, a prisoner in my knickers-drawer, for longer than any recommended hibernation period. Have I become sexless in my pursuit of procreative sex? Should I be worried? I light another cigarette while I ponder this.

Maybe Duncan is right; I know what I want so why don’t I just go and get it? It’s not brain surgery and, although my brain is aching, and a bit of tweaking here and there might not go amiss. I need to alter my way of thinking at the very least; I’m being down on myself and surely that makes me a less attractive prospect from the point of view of a relationship or even a one-night stand, depending on the bloke, I suppose. Mr Wrong would be more interested in the shape of my body than in the state of my mind and haven’t I decided that Mr Right isn’t right for me anyway? Potentially, there are enough suitors to fulfil my need but am I being callous, selfish, unrealistic? Would getting pregnant purposefully by an unsuspecting man, who is simply seeking a bit of fun, be whipping away all morality? Do I care? I concede that I must care or else this internal boxing match wouldn’t be lasting so many rounds. A loud bang coming from somewhere very close releases me from the battle in my head, as if the firework has been placed under my bottom. I reach for the mobile in my coat pocket and text Simon, inviting him over on Friday. Then hesitating momentarily, I inform Daniel that I would love to visit his manor on Sunday. Preparations are being made, the ball is in motion. Let’s see where this leads.

***************************

Friday evening, just past 8 o’clock and the chilli is simmering away nicely. I’ve gone for something simple, having neither the time nor the inclination to create anything fancier. Chilli will do. And a bottle of Merlot. I adjust the lighting, not too forget-the-food-and-put-your-tongue-down-my-throat sexy but subtle enough to give the room a warm, ever so slightly romantic, glow. I tune my radio to Chill fm, hoping it does what it says on the LCD and doesn’t get too mushy. I’m wearing a simple black dress, whose décolletage is revealing but not daring and have kept my make-up light. And I’ve stuffed all the clothes that were scattered on my bedroom floor into my wardrobe, just in case. I open the bottle of red, pour myself a glass while I wait and, taking a sip, nearly spill it at the sound of rat-a-tat-tat at my front door.

Simon hands me a small box of fair trade chocolates and sort of kisses me on the cheek. We stand in the hallway for a few seconds and then I lead him into the front room and offer him a drink. He draws another bottle of red wine from his coat pocket and I disappear with it into the kitchen, returning with two full glasses.

“I couldn’t remember whether you said you lived at 62 or 64, but the people-carrier next door cleared that up for me. I couldn’t see you driving around in one of those,” he says.

“Very perceptive,” I say. “I’ve got no need for one of those. Mind you, neither have they.” I pause, “Actually, I hardly use the car I have got.”

“I know what you mean. I got rid of mine. My good old bike does the trick for short journeys. And it keeps me fit.” You bet it does, I think.

Silence.

“Did you go to Sían’s?” I ask.

“Nope. Anyway, I think Paris wanted her all to himself. If he did, he was disappointed. She’d invited a posse over and it sounds as though the evening was anything but intimate. It ended up being a full-on mid-week party, by the sounds of it.” That figures, Sían just can’t help herself. “I had a quiet night in, in the end. I was only going because I thought you’d be there. This is much more up my street. Cheers.”

We clink glasses. “Same here. You hungry? It’s all done; I’ve only got to put the rice on, so nothing will spoil if you’d rather eat a bit later.”

“I can wait a while, if that’s ok?” It is. I sit down and relax.

“So, my Sían and your Paris are getting it together. Hope he’ll survive.”

Simon shifts in his chair. “Er, yeah, he’s a survivor.”

“It’s just that he might become one of her collectables.”

“Collectables?”

“Well, you know, she, erm, likes people. I always think of her as collecting them.” Swallow me up, now!

“Right, I get it. She and Paris are very well suited, in that case. She should embalm him. They must’ve got on like a house on fire.”

“Like a bonfire,“ I agree.

“Are you one of her prized possessions then?”

“Me? I was, I suppose, for a while.”

“Have you fallen out?” He asks, looking at me expectantly.

“Not exactly.”

He can see that I’m becoming slightly agitated and he offers a way out. “Paris is dead set on seeing her again anyway. He’s asked her to go away with him next weekend, some country house or other in the Cotswolds.”

“Wow, that was quick, he must be minted.”

“Nah, just careless. Carefree, he calls it.”

“Un-credit-crunchable too! Another thing they have in common.” I say.

“It must be fated.” He smiles, knowingly. I’m not sure whether he is having fun at my expense but, for the moment I’m willing to go with it.

“More wine?” I say. The sexual attraction here is palpable. Fuck the chilli.

We talk and I find out a few things about Simon, as much between the lines as directly. I won’t bore you with the stuff about him being the youngest of four and the only boy, which goes some why to explaining why he is so at ease with women, or about his disillusionment with some of his friends of a similar age (he’s 37), who are killing themselves with tedious drugs and too little sleep. You want to know if we have sex, right?

Well. We’re discussing the lowering standards of popular culture, as we see it, when a slither of mother-of-pearl from the necklace I’m wearing to accentuate my cleavage slides between my size 36Cs. I am about to retrieve it when one of Simon’s long fingers slips between my breasts to fish it gently from my exposed skin. He draws his free hand to take hold of the foreign object and places it carefully on the sofa arm, the original hand staying put. He parts his lips and I lick mine, just in case there are any traces of the one and a half bottles of red wine we have been sinking, ready for the kiss. But his mouth bypasses mine and finds its way to my already hard nipple, which he bites, very lightly, until I feel a draw in my lower regions, pulling on the thread connecting my tits to my solar plexus. I gasp and he interprets this as enjoyment and a signal to caress me further, which it is. He slides my dress over my shoulders and unclips expertly my bra as his mouth moves down towards my stomach, his warm breath always a chin’s-length away from my dress, which now seems to be lowering of its own accord. His teeth gnaw at the curve of my waist and he nibbles the soft area above my hips. I feel extraordinarily female. My hand brushes against his cock and he feels extraordinarily male. I want to grab his erection but he has moved out of my reach, coaxing me into a prostrate position on the sofa. I do not resist, how could I? My dress is off and my bra has long gone but my matching French knickers remain, imprisoning my womanhood, which is screaming to be released. He tugs softly at the silky material with his teeth until it is sucked into my moistness. “Fuck me,“ I plead. He doesn’t. But he does liberate me. His nose, his chin, his mouth explore all of me and I sigh, my back arched, trying to hold on. I do try. But I can’t. I come, I scream and my head explodes with the force of more fireworks than you could shake a lighted stick at. And I think, “Rabbit Schmabbit.”

Cuba Cuts Drastically Public Sector Jobs

2010-09-14T06:41:00.002+01:00

A month ago, I wrote about surplus workers in Cuba. The news today is that the Cuban government is set to slash a million public sector jobs and rapidly: half a million of these surplus workers will be handed over to the practically non-existent private sector within the next 6 months. This is not to be taken lightly in a country with just over 11 million inhabitants, of which only around four million are economically active.

New private enterprises will be set up or else these out-of-workers can go self-employed.

One of the things that struck me about Cuba, and something the locals always harped on about, was their ability, read necessity, to inventar. Inventar is a word used to mean make do or get by, literally "invent". In the mid-90s, it seemed that everyone earned some money on the, if not entirely black, then grey market: doctors moonlighting as taxi-drivers; teachers selling home-baked cakes; students flogging their exoticness and their local knowledge to tourists for night out or a meal (these men and women weren't known as prostitutes, and deservedly so because many didn't necessarily sell sex, though some did. They were called jineteros, jockey in English, which I always thought an interesting translation as I was never quite sure who was riding who). And then, I couldn't begin to count the number of private homes I've stayed in for as little as $8 US per night.

But why, for example, would a doctor need to double up as a taxi-driver? Well, Cuba has an excellent health service but far too many doctors and, $20 US a month being the average Cuban wage and a bottle of cooking oil costing around $3 US, there is far more to be made in ferrying around a tourist if you're lucky enough to bag one. Though, it must be said, there is a surfeit of taxi drivers too but what visitor to Havana doesn't want to jump in a 1957 Chevy with a local guide who can tell you anything you need to know? Doctors seem to be good at this, for some reason.

The black market does exist too, naturally. I once bought a box of very cheap cigars, which should have been very expensive, from a security guard who was employed at a State tobacco factory. He barely disguised the theft and the dealing took place right outside the building he worked at in Centro Habana. In Santiago, I got a taxi back to the Universidad de Oriente and the driver made a detour to a house in Reparto Los Pinos in order to buy some pink diesel (for tractors) from a house there. "No digas nada, chica." Why would I have told anyone, who would have cared?

So, there is some entrepreneurial spirit on the island it must be said. But how will they handle self-employment? It's a bit different from doing a shady deal on the side, innit?

I have limited experience of self-employment in Cuba because self-employment has always been limited in Cuba. Most of my knowledge comes from my regular use of Paladares, small restaurants set up in people's homes, where you could get a decent meal for $20 pesos or so (around $1 US). The most popular item on the menu was carey, turtle, which is an endangered species if you ask anyone else in the Western Hemisphere. It's a curious meat, reminiscent of chicken with a hint of beef. Whatever, it's a great source of protein and anything goes brilliantly with moros y cristianos or rice and beans. My favourite paladar was on a roof terrace with fairy lights in a mostly dark Santiago de Cuba under the stars, never crowded as 20 seats was the national limit.

Paladares were a new thing back then and since, they have flourished all over the country. You can also find hairdressers and beauticians who go self-employed: I had a very relaxing foot massage in the barrio of El Cerro in Havana for $1 US, something I wouldn't or couldn't pay for in the UK.

Trouble is, the Cubans have been patronised for so long that this may prove to be a big shock for them. Who, exactly, will employ them? Can the state pull it off or will the foreigners move in? And, if so, will Cuba once again become the Millionaires' Playground that it was famed for in the 1920s?

Time will tell. A relatively short time, at that.

Day of the Dead Fox

2010-09-14T04:23:00.003+01:00

Dunking a dark chocolate digestive into my tea, I listened to the TUC boss, Brendan Barber, call for joint industrial action if the UK Coalition government goes ahead with its plans to cut public spending and services. I drained my mug as delegates at the Congress backed the motion. When the acting Labour leader, Harriet Harman took to the stage, I turned the telly off because I’d been told there was a dead fox practically outside my door and I had to go and see whether it had been removed (it had).

My daughter has just started school and, for the first two weeks, these new, tiny pupils attend for less than two hours a day. Her school isn’t close enough to home to return for such a short time, so I’ve been spending my limited freedom from motherhood holed up in a café or sitting in the local park. On the day of dead fox, I opted for the café, seeking shelter from the early autumnal bluster and threatening rain. The café’s copy of The Sun newspaper was a welcome distraction from Steve Wright in the Afternoon and the gossip emanating from the table next door, though I did have to open my ears for the part about the smelly girl who one woman employed: should she tell her or not? And how to broach the subject? “Hell, let the poor girl know so she can fix it,” would have been my reply, had my neighbour actually been talking to me.

“TUC dinosaurs and carthorses,” accused The Sun, Britain’s best-loved, most hated tabloid. The recently ousted Labour government was responsible for this mess, it bemoaned, because it had got the country into so much debt to begin with. Yes it had, with its increased spending, some of it unavoidable, much of it not. The fall in tax revenues, particularly in Corporation Tax, also factors in the poor financial state of this country today, as does the recent, massive downturn in the world economy.

Blame can be apportioned to the banks who lent too much, the people who borrowed way, way beyond their means and a government who offered giveaways they could ill-afford in the first place.

But here we are. So what do we do?

Bob Crow, General Secretary of the RMT, is calling for civil disobedience. I am 20 years older than I was in 1990 (we all are) and much less radical but I can’t help thinking there must be a more productive battle cry to see us through.

Like?

Like pulling together as communities, curbing our spending on rubbish we don’t need, recycling, using all the food we buy, enjoying the natural outdoors instead of paying through the nose for second-rate, manufactured entertainment, walking or cycling, hosting our own parties if we feel the need for them, fixing things instead of buying new …. and yes, taking a flask to the park and embracing the weather, whatever the weather, instead forking out for tea and a bap and listening to gossip in a café.

Of course, none of this will empty our bins, educate our children, provide excellent health care, pay our rent, fix our roads or lend us books. Will it?

But, then again, at least we're not in Cuba!

Things I learned today

2010-09-13T19:06:00.006+01:00

Although the odd 13-hour sleep and lay-in until 10 am is luxurious in the extreme, it is not and never will be enough

You can get £30,000 for a kidney on the open market

Collecting conkers is great fun. Searching for their cases so they have a "bed" isn't

Although we probably don't condone gossip, it's extremely difficult not to eavesdrop, even when the juice is about someone we'll probably never know

Dead foxes are cleared from public spaces at an impressive speed

Andy Warhol talks to Lady Gaga in her dreams every single night

I am middle-class

We are woefully deluded about our addictions

Not everyone likes to get it right

I have a childish urge to poke Nigel Ashton

Someone might consider erotic asphyxiation by locking himself in his own £150 North Face bag

Community matters

Even though it appears to be a fact that if it is going to rain on any given day it will invariably do so at school-picking up time, the majority of parents still do not realise this and so are not prepared

Black pudding works very well in a Breakfast Bap (with sausage and mushrooms)

It is true: the British have terrible teeth

The taste of pineapple, even the fresh fruit, will always remind me of drinking Malibu when I was 16

Steep Holm

2010-09-12T20:17:00.000+01:00

A stone's throw to Glastonbury

Sincretism

2010-09-10T23:47:00.002+01:00

Home fermented cane
A Communist offering
A sip for you, a glug for me

Hallucinogenic sap
A Capitalist with wings
Overseeing you, understanding me

Yoruba God
Catholic Saint
An altar to you, no sacrifice to me

First day of school

2010-09-08T20:53:00.000+01:00

Alone in the playground
Sizing up parents I haven’t yet met
Windswept and waterproofed
Tired feet and wisdom

Alone in the classroom
Checking out playmates she doesn’t yet know
All piggy tails and red checks
Unscuffed shoes and promise

"Broody" - Chapter 8

2010-09-06T21:12:00.000+01:00

Searching

31st October: Halloween and party time at Martin’s. His two storey townhouse is one of those residences that people splash out on because it has potential, which is shorthand for “need to invest a lot of time, patience and money in order that it become habitable.” He began by rewiring, plastering, double glazing, decorating and furnishing the lounge and the master bedroom (he lives alone so, strictly speaking, he only needs one bedroom, two at a push – he has four) but got a bit carried away on the “lot of money” part of the definition for “potential” or, at least, he didn’t foresee the near-collapse of the British economy, believing falsely that Capital One would continue to throw finance at him and ask for little in return. The upshot is that, although the two rooms that house his telly and his king-size bed are opulent in the extreme, the kitchen still has its cold-to-the-touch concrete floor and practically no cupboard space, while you have to throw a bucket of water down the loo every time you’ve finished your business. On a positive note, the kitchen, which is large enough to house an Aga, a walk-in refrigerator, a breakfast bar and a dining table (as one day it might), is perfect for the odd shindig – there’s little to wreck, so everyone can do as they please. And do as they please, they do!

Tonight it is infested with zombies, bloodied surgeons, dominatrix and Leatherfaces. Fake blood is being thrashed around the kitchen, which is bare except for about two dozen people and a table laden with plastic cups, local scrumpy and grimacing, if slightly skew-whiff, pumpkins. A fire has been lit in the garden and there are a couple of casualties dancing round it but their bandaged faces make it difficult to determine whether or not I know them. The Stones are belting out Sympathy for the Devil from the Halloween Playlist on Martin’s iPod Classic and the sound quality is so clear that you can almost feel the spray from Jagger’s rubber mouth on your face. A vamped-up Katie Price aka Jordan look-alike (but smaller busted, naturally) is pogoing and “Ooh Who”ing, the orangey-yellow cider leaping from her glass and the flame-red hot pants disappearing up her rear. She must be a professional dancer; how else could she spring so high on six inch heels?

It’s a great party – or it would have been six months ago. I can’t get into it. I do look like a native in my charity shop wedding dress, my black biker jacket and the essential Bride of Chucky make-up but the vibe is missing for me. I am out-of-sorts, ungrateful, sober but, most of all, miserable – what is wrong with me? I feel as though I’m going through some major life-change and everything that I believed to be important is now being unveiled for what it really is. And what it is, or so it seems to me, is shallow titillation: a superficiality highlighted by this Spook Fest. I fantasize that my Irish ancestry is reclaiming some part of me, demanding that I acknowledge this ancient Celtic New year, Samhain, now observed globally by festivities such as this, where the fancily dressed revellers give no concession to the pre-Christian origins of Halloween. My forbearers are reminding me that now is my time for change. Or it could be that I am at the end of another seven year cycle (I’ll be 35 in six weeks time) and my biology is ready for the next phase. Either way, there’s a rotational thesis going on here.

But I cannot give vent to such notions while surrounded by intoxicated ghouls and their mates dancing to Werewolves of London. I don’t want to be here. I contemplate leaving, then I spot Duncan, dressed as Sweeny Todd, chatting to someone in the hall and I slip out the back door.

I am no longer aching to marry a crazed fictional doll. I have removed my make-up, stepped out of the bargain dress and am now slumped in front of another Ricky Gervais gig on Channel 4. My phone whistles, alerting me to a new text. It’s from Duncan: “Whr ru? Hd enuf? x” Bless him, now I feel unfriendly for running out of the party to avoid him. I text back, “Yeh. At home chilin. U ok?” He replies, “Nah bored. Fancy company?” It’s 11:30, still early for a Friday. Shall I invite him over? Maybe it’s a good opportunity to discuss what’s on my mind, away from the pandemonium of Halloween, of parties and of mutual friends. He’s not only a great listener but he’s really good at being objective, although that could change the minute I put my baby-plan to him. “Cool :)," I agree.

He arrives holding a plastic cut throat razor and wearing a waistcoat, shirt and neckerchief. His pretty boy looks, his dark hair, his mascara’d and kohled eyes and his pale skin (accentuated by some kind of very well blended powder) give him the appearance of Johnny Depp rather than of Ray Winstone and he manages to emit both vulnerability and menace.

“It’s a good look,” I say. “But you’ll still be haunting the locals on your round tomorrow, won’t you? The amount of sleep you’re going to get?”

“It’s my Saturday off. I’m going to spend it dozing and reading the papers, all anyone should be expected to do at the weekend.” He plonks himself down on the sofa. “So, you didn’t rate the party then?”

“I’m just not in the mood for it tonight. Or any night lately, you know?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. It gets like that sometimes. It’s good to have some time out on your own every now and then and not be subjected to fuck-wits screaming in your ear and jumping on your toes. Do you want me to go? I won’t take it personally, promise.”

I don’t want him to go. In part, he gets where I’m coming from and a little empathy could just stop me from beating myself up about this. “Not at all, it’s good to see you, Dunc,” I assure him. “Wine or tea?”

To my relief, he prefers tea. That’s another bug-bear of mine at the moment; the relentless consumption of drugs and/or alcohol that is a certainty at almost any social gathering these days. Our constant inebriated state means that most events roll into one; experiences are no longer new and each occasion feels the same as the last. I return from the kitchen with two steaming mugs to a Duncan who is taking off his home-made Halloween mask with my make-up remover, his fingers handling the cotton wool pads with startling proficiency. It feels both odd and somewhat voyeuristic to witness a man performing this most feminine of acts. He has the look of an accomplished actor just come of stage and I half expect him to throw his hand over his eyes in a dramatic “I can take no more of this life” gesture. He is suddenly lovely. I turn of the telly and put on the radio in an effort to busy myself.

“So what’s up?” He asks, ruffling his hair.

“Oh, I don’t know.” But I do. “It’s sounds like a cliché but I just feel that I want other things out of life, you know? Everything seems so meaningless at the moment and, if I’m honest, it’s been going that way for a while. Sían keeps badgering me to go to New York with her but I don’t actually need to go there or, well, anywhere really. It’s not about this place, I don’t need a holiday, I just want ….” I trail off with a shrug.

“Maybe you’ve outgrown it all and you need to go progress onto the next stage, whatever that is. There is more to life than partying, eh?” He’s bang on there.

“That’s it,” I say. “It’s like I’ve become a grown-up all of a sudden and my priorities have changed. I don’t mean to dis anybody but I want ….. other. And it’s not that I regret my life so far, I really don’t, but ….” Why can’t I finish a sentence?

“Don’t be so down on yourself, Shelley. Things do change, people change; it’s what keeps life interesting. Fresh. If we didn’t accept that we’d be stagnant, dead in the water. And you’re a doer, an achiever. You’re not the sort of person who lets the weeds grow. Go with it. Embrace it.” He says all the right things, which is why I love him.

“Yeah, I know. You’re right. But it’s not always that easy, is it?”

“Depends on what you want. Once you know what that is then just go for it, I reckon.”

“Reach for the stars? The world is my oyster? Isn’t that a bit simplistic?” I ask.

“Course not! You set the target and then work towards it. You’re in a good position, aren’t you? Young, intelligent, healthy. You’ve even got a bit of capital wrapped up in this house, if you need to use it.”

“S’pose. Things is, what I want is … to be … a mother. But there’s no father.” There, it’s said. Phew.

There is no shocked reaction, no chuckle, no raised eyebrows. Just a slow, genuine, infectious smile. “So, you’ll just have to find one, won’t you?” he says.

I don’t blush nor am I flustered. I simply look at him nod. He reaches across and takes my hand. “Don’t worry, Shell. It’ll all work out, you’ll see.”

********************

It’s 7:30, very cold and the clear sky is awash with stars. And I’m going to be late. But isn’t that a woman’s prerogative? And is that outlook pre-feminist and dated or post-feminist and forward-thinking? I neither know nor care. But what I do know is that I am late for my first cosy date with Daniel, on whom I have some information gleaned from the few email exchanges we’ve had. He’s 33, works with disadvantaged teenagers and still lives in the place where he grew up, about twenty miles away. That worries me. I remember him as witty and smart but how can he be if he’s never moved away from a dead-end seaside resort like Weston-super-Mare? Surely even the citizens of the most exciting city on the planet (wherever that is?) need to escape to a different life at some point? Not to do so shows a lack of ambition and adventure, doesn’t it? Or does it display commitment and stead-fastness? The best thing to do, Michelle Ainsley, is to meet him and find out.

I arrive at The Watershed Bar, on Bristol’s Floating Harbour, at 7:47. It’s a venue that’s friendly, without being too intimate, and always buzzing with energy and people. I glance over all the single folk who are seated at the small, round wooden tables but I can’t see Daniel. He could be on the balcony, in which case I’m glad that I’ve worn layers, the one under my coat being of wool. I am about to check when I hear my name, intoned with a question. I turn to the bar and see a blonde, broad-shouldered man with a luscious mouth. He’s dressed casually, a good sign, in my book, and raises his hand to me. I walk over.

“Hi, my cab was late.” I lie. “And I didn’t have your mobile. Have you been here long?”

“I’ve been waiting about an hour and got fed up. I’ve just bought my fellow blonde here a drink." He gestures to the invisible woman beside him and smiles (his mouth is amazing!). “No. Been here about five minutes, my train was a bit late too. What you having?”

I choose half an Arbor’s, keeping it local, and we sit under an intimidating hanging plant. I take off my scarf and coat and, as Daniel does the same, I can’t help but wonder if he has a strict gym routine. But I don’t ask him, of course. Instead I say, “I was the Bride of Chucky last night.”

“Ah, you’d never know. You seem much less deranged this evening. Your disguise is excellent,” he takes a swig of beer. “I was the grumpy old bloke getting egged by every pesky kid in the neighbourhood,” doing an upper body and dual-hand Scooby-Do wobble.

I laugh. “You didn’t get away with it this time either then?”

And we’re off, the conversation and the ale flowing effortlessly. We had decided not to eat out tonight, which was my idea initially, just in case our meeting was a complete disaster and I had to make a quick exit. As it happens, we could have gorged ourselves on a four-courser and taken all night about it, as I have no desire to escape and neither does he, by the look of it. I’m enjoying finding out more about him. He moved back to Weston two years ago after travelling around, mostly Asia (“because I needed to loose weight,” he jokes, following it up with a story about hospitalisation for dysentery in Kerala), and then settling for a while in North London. A split from his ex, a girl from Wexford called Siobhan (and yes, I do shudder!), gave him the opportunity to reconsider his options so he decided to go back to his roots, where his Mum still lives, and look up some old friends (“thanks to Facebook”), although he found that he had little in common with most of them. He’s met a few new people through Gumtree, who are mainly gig buddies (he loves live music), including Chris, who I remember vaguely from Fast Love. He’s working his balls off at the moment, doing overtime, and has saved up all his holiday entitlement as he’s taking a month off in Feburary/March to go back to Goa.

I tell him about all the places I’ve been to – “mostly European and less exotic,” I say modestly but he disagrees, wishing he’d seen more of our “backyard” but still, plenty of time – and my university days at UWE, getting animated about my time in and around Toulouse and Naples during my year abroad. I wax lyrical about my job, the fabulous concert venues in Bristol and nights spent at the Tavern with my mates. But I don’t share with him the most important piece of information about myself, it doesn’t seem appropriate.

On the face of things, though, it has been a successful evening. We arrange to meet up soon in his neck of the woods. Now that will be interesting!

****************

I awake to a text from my mate-date, Mitch, crying off. His pal has a spare ticket for the Bolton/Man City game, which is about as local derby as it gets and he’s a die-hard Man City fan. He’s already set off up the M5. He hopes that’s ok? His passion for Premier League football surprises me - a ticket to Sing-A-Long-A Abba at the Bristol Hippodrome would be more his thing, surely? I text back, through one eye, giving him my blessing and suggesting that we do it another time. Actually, I’m relieved; I could do with a free Sunday. Anyway three men in as many days would have been setting myself up for a testosterone overload, especially seeing as Mitch might have more of it than I first imagined.

I make a brew and sit in silence, thinking about Daniel. He is attractive, exciting and funny and he would have been somewhere in the region of my perfect partner in a bygone era. But there’s something missing; he’s the kind of boyfriend that would be great to go clubbing/gigging/holidaying with; the kind of boyfriend that the old Shell would have stood to attention for. But now? I’m not so sure. He still has a lot of hair-letting-down to get through, which is absolutely fine but I don’t really need another play-mate, I need a different sort of mate. And he’d be better off with a girl who is still into travel and concerts, not one who is tiring of that lifestyle and wants a baby. In fact, he’d be the ideal addition to Sían’s collection of Beautiful Things, even if he does live in Weston. Maybe I should introduce them?

I put on the Archer’s Omnibus for background noise and start up my computer, staring blankly out of the window. Once it has been through the motions (I swear it takes longer each time), I check my inbox. An email from Scott!

hi shell,
how’ve you been? all good here – grace has been on half term so had couple of days off work, took her to diwali celebrations in leicester. was amazing – had to stop myself buying a sari, her mum would never approve! and spent time in rutland which got me thinking of you. really had a laugh the other week. beth is starting to show and worried that dress won’t fit! looking forward to seeing you at wedding. when do you get here? fancy going out the night before?
speak soon, scott xx

Oh my God. What am I playing at? I have a flash vision of my own personal variation on the Romantic harem – a modern-day westernised version. There I am, in my polyandrous haven, summoning one tasty man after another into my lavish boudoir while those surplus to requirement bring in the spondulicks and cook me sumptuous meals. I look after my beautiful babies, keeping their willing daddy-nurses on hand for my essential rest periods. And – whoosh – back to the here and now. So, ok, I need to keep my options open and that’s all I’m doing, right? I decide not to reply to Scott straight away and to give myself some time to sort my shit out. It’s not that I don’t want him to think me too eager (I don’t care anymore; I’ve had enough of adolescent games), it’s just that I don’t wish to appear ambiguous or, worse, nuts.

I decide that what I need is some female company; I have to get away from my own head and concentrate on someone else for a while. Not bothering to shower, I take advantage of the cold weather and cover up my bed head with a bobble hat and hide my scruffy clothes with a wrap-around coat, grab my keys and slam the front door behind me.

I arrive at Annie’s house to a serenity that doesn’t seem to exist anywhere else: how can that be when she’s got a baby under one? Annie is reading the Times in the front room and James is busy in the kitchen, peeling the vegetables for Sunday lunch. Jacob is having his morning nap and looks nothing short of delicious curled up on one of the sofas, his little fingers and mop of dark hair peeping out from under his Igglepiggle blanket (Igglepiggle appears to be a blue phallus with a red Mohican, which can’t be right for a character invented for pre-schoolers, can it?). I feel a stab of guilt at not having visited in weeks, exacerbated by the warmth emanating from Annie.

“Wow, you look great!” I say. And it’s true; she certainly looks more relaxed than the last time I saw her and she’s put on some much-needed weight.

“Oh, thanks Shell. I’ve had a lovely lie-in this morning. And breakfast in bed. James has turned into some sort of domestic god. He won’t let me do anything. I feel a bit redundant to tell you the truth, but don’t let on,” she chuckles and nods in the direction of the clattering pans. “What’ve you been up to?”

Where to start? I tell her about my action-packed, man-filled weekend, about the Halloween party and Duncan’s midnight visit, about my date with Daniel and the email from Scott. She looks amused.

“Go girl! You’re obviously in demand, then,” she says.

“Well, I have been putting the feelers out, flaunting the pheromones,“ I confess.

“And they’re well sniffing around you, lapping up your irresistible bait, by the sound of it!” She laughs. She is a tonic. I’m happy I came. “But which one are you going to reel in?” The fundamental question. All of them? None of them?

“Your guess is as good as mine. Anyway, how was Bath?” My obvious attempt at changing the subject.

“God. It seems like ages ago. Yeah, it was great, thanks – a real boost. I didn’t miss Jacob at all. Weird. But, shush, that’s my guilty secret. And then I figured that he’s here for life so one night away couldn’t do either of us any harm. Tell you the truth I don’t even think he realised that I’d been anywhere. Mum was in her element, spoiling him rotten – he knows what chocolate tastes like now!” She reaches over and strokes his brow with absolute gentleness.

I look round as James pushes the door open with one foot, carrying a tray laden with freshly-made coffee, frothy milk, sugar and biscuits. “Elevenses for you ladies,” he mocks and he rests the tray on a massive wooden chest, used now-a-days as a toy box (how could a baby need so much plastic entertainment?). He backs out the room in a mock bow and bangs his bum on the open door. “Fucking ouch,” he says and then, remembering that his first-born is asleep on the sofa, he mouths an “ooops.”

“See what I mean?” whispers Annie. “He’s driving me flipping mad!”

“You shouldn’t complain,“ I say. “Milk it while it lasts.” I approach the tray and do a double-take. “Oh my God, are those home-made biscuits too?”

“Yeah, but don’t get over-excited; Auntie Pam made them for the church fête and gave us a shit-load of misshapes. James isn’t THAT far-gone – at least I don’t think he is!”

“Thank f-f-fudge for that.” And we dissolve into fits of giggles.

What's that smell?

2010-09-05T19:12:00.000+01:00