How I became a sour-faced spoilsport boring goody-two-shoes

What else did I give up in the Labyrinth?  Yeah, yeah, apart from my sanity (ho ho).  J

Alcohol.  

Jeez, I can hear you (no need to shout, honestly) – what a bloody miserable goody two-shoes she’s becoming.  Now, don’t get me wrong. I love alcohol.  Well, I love spirits. And the spirits love me.  I had my first gin aged about ten and I could probably still drink most guys under the table providing we stuck to the hard stuff. Wine and beer? Not so much. Mix ‘em and it gets pretty nasty. 

Alcohol has run through my life like a narcotic river.  My father was apparently an alcoholic, though a functioning one. I don’t remember him drunk; only sad. But while he went down the pub, my mother went hungry and we didn't get shoes. When he ran out of money, he brewed his own beer and the smell of malt and hops still makes me a bit queasy to this day. Yup, I’m married to a man who makes his living from the stuff – the irony is not lost.

I’ve known a few people who have battled with booze and lost the fight, losing themselves along with their work, their homes, their families, their friends, their dignity. Others came out the other side of the bar and are stronger, more honest people for it. I admire them enormously.  People joke about alcohol - time and again I've heard people laughing their heads off saying, 'Oh, I'm such an alcoholic!' like it's fun, like it's a smart thing. It ain't. It's losing your hair and killing your liver; it's vomit and piss and tears and bloody anguish. Don't ever joke about alcoholism.

Of course not everyone becomes an alcoholic, no matter how much they drink. My second father, Big Black Erik the Aboriginal Viking, drank like a bloody fish and did some pretty wild things under the influence but he could give it up pretty much any time. That was me too.  At that early point in the Labyrinth I don’t think I even talked to Marek about alcohol – he just said he didn’t drink (apart from virtually, of course) but he talks about it in more detail (and with extreme honesty) in Symphonic Bridges.

I can hear the voices again (I really need ear-plugs). Don’t be such a sour-puss, don’t be such a spoilsport.  And again, I’d say, I’m not saying you shouldn’t drink. I’m just telling you what I’ve been up to this last year and why I made the choices I did.

Possessed or pissed? Hard to tell, huh?

When we get drunk we get possessed, we really do.  We let down the barriers. The occultists say that you should never get seriously drunk because your aura becomes leaky and the spirits (yeah) can hop in and hitch a ride. A Jungian would say that being drunk lets out your shadow  (no real surprise that people pick fights or screw around when they're pissed).  A shaman would say you may meet the ally – which can be either very good or very bad (typical bloody shamans – fecking infuriating. But we’ll talk about that later).

Yes she did look like that!

When I think back to the things I did when I was drunk, I really wince.  Admittedly I was young but still….aaghhh.  Taking off petrol caps and tossing in lit matches?  Smart huh?  Jumping into the Thames at midnight in the middle of winter with snow on the ground?  Smashing my fist through a window?  Lying comatose on the floor so a passing log broke my hand in so many places they couldn't even begin to set it? Picking fights with guys four times my size in dodgy clubs? Waking up in a strange bed and talking to a poster of Farrah Fawcett-Major because I hallucinated it as my friend Sig?  Waking up in my own bed with absolutely no idea how I got there because the last thing I could remember was…no, I really couldn’t remember.  I couldn’t even move my head.  All I could do was look directly upwards and watch my bra swinging gently on the overhead light in the breeze from the open window.  I couldn’t even turn my head to see if I had anyone else in bed with me.

When I think back I was bloody lucky I never ended up raped or dead. 

But hey, you’re saying, that’s all very interesting and didn't we all do crazy things when we were young but now we’re all sensible grown-ups we drink in moderation, don’t we? We chill out with a few glasses of wine after a tough day in the office; we have a civilised G&T at “gin o’clock”. It’s sociable; it’s civilised; it helps us relax and it’s fun.

Well, it depends. It depends how you use alcohol and what you want from it and from your life.

For me, alcohol had become another deadener.  Another way to opt out. Another distraction, another diversion, another way not to face what was going on (or rather what was being denied) in my head, in my life.  It was acting as a narcotic and an analgesic.  When I downed a few glasses of wine it took the edges off; it numbed the tedium.  And I didn’t want that anymore.  I needed to see clearly.  I needed to feel acutely.

Because I was lucky enough not to be addicted to alcohol, my self-prescribed ‘ban’ hasn’t been total. I have had a few drinks this year, for various reasons – once in Stoke Newington; once with Lizzy; once at shabbat in Tel Aviv and once…but that’s another story… J.  And I’m not saying I’ll never drink not never again.  Sometimes it does no harm to disorder the senses a bit, to shake the tree.  But generally, no. 

Have there been consequences for me?  Quite a few…  Let’s have a look…

Advantages of not drinking:

No hangovers

Skin becomes much softer (less de-hydrated)

Eyes become clear and bright – goodbye to that fetching bloodshot look

Tongue loses that furry covering (actually that’s a bit of a disadvantage too as I kinda loved scraping that off).

Mood evens out. Yup, alcohol is a depressant to the central nervous system.

Weight loss. Oh yeah, alcohol packs a hefty calorific punch and you also need to take into account the nibbles you eat while you’re drinking and the big fat takeaway that calls to you as you leave the pub.

People dump you. Seriously, it’s the best way to find out who your real friends are.

You see clearly.

Disadvantages of not drinking:

You see clearly. 

The Ashes

There’s something that’s been bothering me for the last…how long? Two and a half years probably.  My mother.  Well, more accurately, my mother’s ashes.  She died nearly three years’ ago and at first…well...  Her long cruel illness, her awful death…I simply couldn’t think about it.  I buried (except…but no...) all memory of it. 

She’s been residing at the funeral ‘home’ (Home? Really? Surely not?) Funeral 'parlour'? Interesting. An ‘audience chamber’ – where we talk with the dead? Anyhow. Whatever. It wasn’t right. I hated the idea of her there, sitting on some shelf with the rest of the dispossessed, like baked bean cans in the supermarket. 

My family is small and far-flung.  We got as far as deciding that we’d scatter (rest act) her at Cerne Abbas, where she’d lived as a child, on Giant Hill (which she loved). Which bit, exactly, we hadn’t decided. I rather favoured his erect knob (as that would have amused her).  But anyhow, we didn’t agree a date and months passed and then (time flies) years.  I started getting perturbed, a vague psychic wrongness. 

I asked Adrian if he would go to pick her up.  He said yes but forgot. Again and again and again.  

Why didn’t I go myself? Well, because the place gives me the willies.  I’m not squeamish, not remotely, and I don’t get spooked easily, but there’s something about the suburban banality, the tin-tacky denial of a funeral home/parlour that sends shivers down my spine. Anyhow, it had become a point of principle.  I don’t often ask Adrian to do stuff for me – I’m not the helpless type.  This was symbolic though.  A bit like the skirting board.  But that’s another story, from twenty years’ ago… Yeah, I have a long memory when it suits me. :-)

So you could have knocked me down with a feather yesterday.

‘I’m fetching your mother today.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve phoned them up. They’ll have her ready.’

Huh?

So he dropped me off at the health shop in town and reappeared twenty minutes later.  I had a large bag of muesli, soya yoghurt, tofu and a bar of Green and Black’s.  He had…nothing.

‘Where is she?’ I hissed as the guy behind the counter weighed the muesli.

‘Eh?’

‘My mother.’

‘Oh. In the car.’

The guy smiled benignly. 

‘What’s she in?’

The guy looked puzzled.

‘Huh?  Oh…don’t worry,’ said Adrian.  She’s in a bag.’

‘A bag??’  I held up the muesli.  ‘My mother’s in a bag?’

The guy hastily gave me my change and busied himself with re-arranging herbal cough pastilles.

‘Noooo.’  Adrian shook his head vehemently. ‘Not a bloody paper bag. It’s more of a pouch.’

A pouch? It was getting worse. I began to wish we’d never started this. 

‘Anyhow, if we’re going to watch James play rugby, we’d better go.  Look…’ He smiled reasonably. ‘…she’s coming too. She’d like that.’

I frowned. Was he really suggesting I stand at the touchline with my mother tucked under my arm…in a pouch?

Anyway.  We got home eventually and James sprinted off leaving Adrian and I to unpack the car.  Needless to say, neither of us had told our son that his grandmother was in the boot, in pieces, in a pouch.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘Are you going to look?’  He nudged his head towards the boot.

‘What?’

‘Your mother, for pity’s sake.’

Oh.  So I looked, eyes half-closed, squinting, wincing.  And there it was.  A sort of drawstring bag, a bit like one of those fabric doorstops.  Maroon. Velour. It looked vaguely Christmassy, in a sort of tacky way.  Who chose maroon, I wondered?  Is there a catalogue that funeral home/parlour people flick through, choosing colours, fabrics?  Could you get other choices?  Perky gingham? Jaunty Cath Kidston?  Conservative tweed? Why didn’t we get Timorous Beasties, FFS?

I picked it up. She weighed more than I would have suspected.  I undid the bow, opened it up like a present.  Inside sat a grey plastic container.  Like some kind of chemical container. Industrial.  Banal. That’s it?  A bald label. So you know you’ve got the right one, I suppose.

‘It’s not her, you know,’ said Adrian.

‘I know. Well…’

‘No,’ he repeated, firmly. ‘It’s not her. She’s up here…’ He pointed at his head.

‘What? She’s possessing…’  My eyes widened.  No.  Let’s not go there. My mother is most certainly not possessing my husband.

He frowned and shook his head. Dislodging the thought? Because, of course, you don’t need actually to speak the words for them to reach the psyche.  ‘I meant in our memories. By the way, do you still want her in the drinks cabinet?’

‘Absolutely. She’d like that. In amongst the spirits, of course.  Next to the gin, probably.  Up above the Knob Creek.’

And there she is.  In the Oak Room (made of pine).  By the fireside.  In the drinks cabinet with the weird carvings (which may be oak, come to think of it).  On the top shelf (of three – nearest to heaven?).  She’s living with me… as she always wanted.  And, you know what?  It feels good, it really does. 

Nearest I'll get to an OSCAR

Crikey, I’ve won an award. This is so rare that it makes me think back to the (very few) prizes I’ve achieved in my life. There was the pink rosette I ‘won’ at my one and only gymkhana (for taking part) which was, for years, my most prized object (pinned to a silver egg cup in the hopes that the short-sighted might imagine it a first prize – the red having faded perhaps? – for showjumping. Then there is Finland – its Land and People, an art prize awarded while on a school cruise with the SS Uganda. Impressive you might think but I feel forced to point out that mine was the only entry. The only other one I ever won was a prize for Effort and Achievement in the lower sixth at school – a really unpleasant version of the Complete Works of Shakespeare printed on loo paper in miniscule print. A bitter memory as it marks the tipping point of my academic career. There I was all, the archetypal Good Girl, diligently practicing my Latin verbs (and due to sit the Oxbridge exams for modern languages) before discovering, a few months later, that there was much more fun to be had with gin, poppers, fast cars and naughty boys. It was all downhill from there and I was a Sorry Disappointment to my teachers.
But I digress.
The lovely and highly talented Zoe (sorry, still no umlat) has awarded me the Arte y Pico award for this little old blog. It means a lot as Zoe has monumentally high standards and her own blog is a Thing of Beauty Unsurpassed (if your soul is harrowed it’s as refreshing as a week in a top-class spa) so this isn’t just some nice pat on the back from a mate. Now, of course, I have to do the really hard bit and pass it on. This always worries me because the danger lies in an award just doing the rounds with one’s nearest and dearest blogging friends. So I have tried to venture a little further afield in the sure and certain knowledge that all deserving souls will eventually be handed it.

Here are the 5 rules of the award (it’s all rather strict)

1. You have to pick five blogs that you consider ‘deserving of this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and which contribute to the blogging community, no matter what language they are in’.
2. Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his/her blog to be visited by everyone (though not sure how you can force everyone to visit, but hey ho, whatever).
3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given him/her the award itself (once again, it’s a bit bossy but I suppose if you invent an award you can set whatever rules you like – whether you choose to follow them or not is entirely up to you).
4. The award winner and the one who has given the prize has to show the Arte y Pico blog so that everyone will know the origin of the award (aha, so we have a need for recognition here – methinks the poor soul that started this never even won a pink rosette or a grotty copy of Shakespeare).
5. To show these rules.

Oh I don’t like rules. At this point, I’m scratching my head and wondering if it is really fair to burden anyone with all this. But then again, it’s a rather pretty award and there are some blogs that I think deserve wider recognition so, here we go (in no particular order).

1. Milla at Country Lite for making me laugh out loud (and, as regular readers know, it takes a heck of a lot to make me even snigger) at her simply brilliant takes on the minutiae of everyday family life. You Must Read This (she will give it to Rot, so don’t need to do him).

2. Cait at Dear Diary for a multi-media blog that is inspiring and always makes me think (and sometimes makes me cry). She makes me read poetry (which I would never do of my own accord) and reminds me to count my blessings each and every day.

3. Casdok at Mother of Shrek for opening my eyes. Casdok is the single parent of C, a 19-year old non-verbal autistic young man about to venture on a new stage of his life. Her blog is constantly challenging, entertaining, thought-provoking and also very beautiful. You Must Read This too (sorry to be bossy but it has to be said).

4. Sorrow at Walking the Labyrinth of Life. A brand new blog to me (found via the wonderful Bollingerbyrd) but one that lures me back at the moment as there is so much to explore. Fascinating links and deep thoughts.

5. Diane at 60goingon16. I love this blog for its intelligence, humour and breadth of subject matter (I never know what I’m going to find – how lovely is that?). Great book and music links too. Another must read.

So, have fun….. Hope I’ve introduced you to a few new wordsmiths. There were loads of other blogs I could have nominated – you can catch more of my favourites on my (new) blogroll. This is still a work in progress so please don’t be hurt if you’re not there yet…..so many blogs, so little time….