Acropropblog

my new kitchen - lovely, isn't it?




I’m beginning really to irritate myself. For those endless two years when we were trying to sell the house I had this mantra that everything would be hunky-dory, ‘when the house sells….’ Everything would be wonderful if we could only get our dream house and move into town, back to civilisation. Well, the house sold, we’re here, where we always wanted to be and am I happy? Am I heck. Admittedly 2008 has been possibly the nastiest year on record since 1970 – and we’re still only four months into the damn thing.
Part of the frustration is not being able to write about it all in lurid detail. Writing has always been my means of working things out of my system and blogging has been the most powerful form of therapy I’ve ever encountered. I think a lot of my black dog blues have been created by the effective gagging order on my writing – that and a deep grinding sadness that my motives were so misunderstood. I’m also flipping furious with myself for being so naïve. Heaven only knows, I’ve had enough warning shots that a Blog is for the World to Read. I guess I have never really really thought that anyone much would be bothered to read my ramblings. But people Google themselves (seemingly with monotonous egocentric regularity) and bingo up pops my darn blog. You know, it had never really occurred to me before to Google myself. Yet bung me into the search box and what do you find? Yup, there I am, splattered all over the Internet, like diarrhoea.

Anyhow, enough already. Let’s talk about something else. Like the Bonkers House. Lately I’ve taken to singing a tuneless little ditty that goes like this…..

Ten green acroprops holding up my wall…..
Ten green acroprops holding up my wall…
And if one green acroprop should accidentally fall…..

We laugh nervously at this little joke but I fear there could be a nasty ring of truth to it (just like Ring a Ring O’Roses viz the Plague). Work continues slowly, so slowly. After the first flurry of excitement, the heady joy of Something Being Done, we seem to have hit one of those endless bogs you encounter in dreams – no matter how hard you trudge, you never seem to arrive anywhere. The firemen are working solidly, doggedly, but the poor house is even more decrepit than we or they imagined – timbers are rotten and need replacing so the whole house looks like one of those stilt huts, held up by slender rods and our collective willpower.
We’re more or less living in one room – tripping over dust sheets, getting on one another’s nerves. The phone is out in the (freezing cold) hallway and yesterday my teeth were literally chattering so hard the person on the other end of the phone had to ask me to repeat myself. Given family issues over the last few months I have barely been able to work so money, inevitably, drags heavy on my soul. I have visions of the cash/credit running out and the whole place gently teetering onto its side and collapsing with a sigh.

We now have scaffolding all along the road side of the house, effectively creating a bottle-neck on the way out of town. Which means, of course, that we’re now living in a doll’s house – open to the world, or at least to the firemen.
‘Five minutes to ETA,’ bellows Adrian at 8.10am and an undignified scramble for the loo ensues. Our loo window is so high up that there have never been curtains or blinds in it – only the pigeons could see in. Not any more. You could easily find yourself, happily ensconced flipping through Homes & Gardens and find a cheery face waving at you. So now I tend to cross my legs or plunge down into the subterranean depths of the Loo of Doom. The seat is sub-zero and the walls ooze damp but at least it’s private.

However today the sun is shining fit to burst. There’s a magnolia (stellata, not my favourite but never mind) flowering its heart out and, even shrouded in dust, the house is putting on a tentative smile. It would be churlish not to smile back, wouldn’t it?

Black dog, red dog, yellow dog, blue....

It’s time, I think, to introduce you to my own black dog. The more we haul these dogs out into the bright light of day, the more control we have over them. Obedience classes for black dogs. Muzzles on, choke chains checked, heel! Sit. Good dog. Except, of course, it doesn’t really work like that.

My beast first appeared at my heel when I was ten years old. My father died of lung cancer – at a time when death wasn’t discussed and counselling wasn’t offered – everyone (children included) were expected to take a deep breath, brush themselves down and get back on with life. My diary page has drawings of tears all down the margin, my writing very wobbly, slanting wildly down the page. ‘My dear Daddy is dead. Poor Mummy didn’t know how to tell me.’
I suppose we cried then. I suppose we comforted one other but I can’t remember any of that. What I can remember, clear as day, was being taken to see Born Free by a neighbour on the day of the funeral. I’d seen it a few weeks before but didn’t like to say anything and politely sat through it, watching the parched plains of Africa, sucking the salt off stale popcorn, cringing away from the neighbour’s kindness. Then I was sent on a coach trip to a safari park (more bloody lions) with some Sunday School kids and I can still see one organiser talking to another, glancing over at me, and muttering ‘Yes, she’s the one whose father died. No, don’t say anything to the children’. But of course it spread like wildfire. They avoided me like the plague, as if by associating with me their fathers might die too.
After that the black dog bit me hard. I developed asthma and would sit in my tiny damp bedroom, staring bleakly at a line of gonks that seemed to belong to another age, to another child. I went from being a bright, bolshy, even a bit pushy, girl to a silent shy ghost. I didn’t mention my father. I got by. I didn’t cry. Not until I was eighteen and at university and I met a girl whose father had died when she, too, had been ten. She spoke about it openly and frankly and that night, in my room, I drank half a bottle of gin and sobbed until I felt sick.

Those were the ‘don’t care’ years – when I would walk around the toughest areas of Manchester, deep in the night, figuring I would give Fate the chance to finish me off. Sometimes the whole world seemed so unreal I would cut my arm or face to feel something, anything – even pain is better than not existing.

I left college but the dog came with me back to London. However I found that, if you pushed yourself hard enough, if you worked hard, played hard, took the right amount of alcohol and the right drugs, you could pretty well kick it out of the way.
But it crept into my dreams. A dark shape, sometimes a dog, sometimes a cat-beast, sometimes just an amorphous shadow. A sick feeling would wash over me and I would just know it was waiting in the shadows, waiting to bite. I had one of those dreams a week or so ago. I was standing at the top of a flight of stone steps leading down into somewhere dark and frightening. I heard the tick-tack of claws clicking on stone and the familiar sinking feeling washed over me. Looking down I saw a small black dog climbing, slowly, in no hurry. It knew I wasn’t going anywhere. It’s always pointless to run. It drew level with me and grew, stretching up and out until it was the size of a Labrador. I could feel its breath on my hand, hear its breathing and then, oh so slowly, it took my hand in its mouth. I could feel the damp softness, so gentle as if my hand were a gamebird, perfectly retrieved. Then with a horrible sense of the inevitable, I felt its teeth sharpen and draw back and it bit, hard, deep, straight through the sinews, crunching the bones of my hand.

As many of you know, I suffered from post-natal depression after my son was born. In retrospect, I had pre-natal depression too – born of moving out into the middle of nowhere when I was pregnant, away from all chance of support. I was working furiously and did so up until a week before the birth. There were complications, I had an emergency section, then got an infection and ended up on a drip with a blood transfusion. Nonetheless I was back working a couple of weeks later. My doctor was pretty dismissive when I told him how low I felt: how I was barely sleeping; how I was so paralysed with anxiety that every time I left my baby I thought I’d come back to see the ambulance with lights flashing outside the house, Adrian’s face trying to form the words that my child had died. ‘Welcome to parenthood,’ he said cheerily. ‘You’ll get used to it.’
After nine months I diagnosed myself and asked a different doctor what she thought. She plonked me on Seroxat and, luckily, it helped. It pulled me out of the hole. I came off it after six months though as I was terrified of becoming addicted. Since then I have battled the dog with a mixture of herbs (Magnolia Rhodiola complex), exercise, positive self-talk and long lists of gratitude. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The last few months have been really hard – life has hit me on several sides at once and the dog has been having a field day.

However, I am noticing something interesting. A psychologist once told me that depression always hides other emotions. That it’s a kind of coping mechanism for when other emotions might overwhelm us. Of late, I’ve noticed that my black dog is being joined by other dogs, by a whole pack. There’s the red dog of anger and pure fury, snapping, snarling, biting back for once….. The yellow dog of fear, cowardly, cringing, sideways glancing. The blue dog of grief, of sudden sobbing tears, welling up like a huge wave threatening to break over my head. Anything can set it off. I was reading Cait’s blog a few days back and Halleluyah was playing. I felt a catch at the back of my throat and that was it. I howled for about an hour, great wracking sobs.

This is written, by the way, not for sympathy or even empathy. It’s written for me (because I can’t write about everything that is happening in my life but I figure I can still write about how I feel about it). It’s also written because I truly believe that keeping depression, and all forms of mental illness, hidden and secret only increases the taboo, the shame, and stops other people from seeking the help they need. My black dog is, like my real life dog, pretty badly behaved – but at least I can own it, stick a microchip on it and a name tag on its collar. What is known is always less frightening than the unknown. Just maybe, if I can own my anger, grief and fear, I won’t need that black dog so much.

On hairdressers and not using real names

The flu is abating. These are probably famous last words but I am feeling vaguely human again. Helped, in huge part, by braving gale and flood to get to the hairdressers. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Adrian. ‘You’ll get stranded. Phone up and reschedule.’ No way, mate. The one thing men never understand is that one’s entire mood is affected by the state of one’s hair. If I want to reinvent myself, up my game and so on, I’m never going to do it with hair like brambles (with a solid inch of roots to boot).
No, it was a case of ‘come hell or high water’ (and most definitely the latter). OK, so there was a pretty hairy bit when I had to negotiate through a river that had decided to veer across the road (avoiding the unfortunate car that had been abandoned with water up to its windows) but it was worth it, every heart-stopping second of it.
I love my hairdresser. I found him when we first moved to Somerset – then lost him when we moved out to wildest Exmoor (when there was absolutely NO point in having even vaguely decent hair – a woolly cap was the only way to go). On moving into town I decided it might be a blast to go back. I did wonder if he would still be there – he wasn’t exactly a spring chicken twelve years ago – but, oh yes, nothing changes in the world of…… Hmm, I shall learn my lesson and call him, let’s see - Barry.


Barry is a true phenomenon – and, if you go by looks alone, possibly the man least likely to be a hairdresser. Short, stocky, face crinkled like a walnut, clad in a black suit – he looks like he ought be to a Mafioso or a dodgy car dealer. He is also most definitely Not Gay.
‘Hey, baby…’ he drawled, as I came into the salon, ‘Looking goooood.’
Yes, I know, it sounds unbearably irritating and was one of the reasons I abandoned him on my Exmoor move. But, as one gets older, it becomes amusing rather than predatory and, by heck, he is darn good with hair. His tiny ‘salon’ is fabulous too – polished boards, the most VAST ornate gilded mirror and a stonking great chandelier dripping with crystal – totally oversized, a heck of a lot of style statement crammed into a small package (bit like Barry really).


I don’t think I have ever heard anyone talk about holidays in this place. It has the feel of a club and nine times out of ten, everyone will join in the same conversation – which can range from politics to art to cookery to local salacious gossip (the latter always the best bit). It’s not unknown to be handed a glass of champagne (quite free – no silly overpriced menus here) or for Barry to rush out yelling, ‘I need chocolate’ and come back dispensing Galaxy bars to everyone in sight.
This time I picked his brains on log burners and we had a bit of a gossip about the locals (see, how good am I? Not a name in sight): who had been thrown out for having a love-child; who might be having an affair; who might be selling up and who was spending an obscene amount of money doing up a house they will only use as a second home (grrrrr). Then we got into the juicy rumour that a certain ex-prime minister might be moving down to Exmoor. No, see, his name will not pass my lips – but it doesn’t take Brain of Britain to figure it out.
‘He wouldn’t last a minute,’ opined Barry. ‘They’d tear him apart.’
Maybe. Maybe not. I wouldn’t give much for his chances in Exford (capital of hunting) but elsewhere on the moor, they’re a pretty tolerant bunch. The major problem would be one of security. This isn’t the kind of place you can sink into obscurity. Everyone knows everyone’s business – usually before you know it yourself.
I have to say, the idea of his wife shopping for shabby chic in South Molton has a certain charm, but I can’t see it happening. Still, it’s a jolly thought, one to get us through the dark days of January. That, and my new hair which is shiny and glossy and flicks up fetchingly at the ends. Or as Barry said, with a twinkle and a wink, ‘Foxxxxy.’

PS - the pic is NOT my new hairstyle, nothing to do with Barry (who would doubtless sue if I suggested it was) - but one from many MANY moons ago.....

On resolving to reinvent myself - and soggy wallpaper

It’s tough to reinvent yourself when you’ve got flu. It’s also tough reinventing yourself when you live in the House of Doom. No, the builders still haven’t come. ‘Why are you surprised?’ says Verity. ‘They’re builders. Their job is not to come. Their job is to drive you to psychosis. Come to think of it, they’re probably getting paid a packet from the local psychotherapists.’ Maybe in Marylebone, but not down here matey. There was only one psychotherapist and we viewed her house. Why was she selling? ‘Not enough custom,’ she complained, ‘Down here, people either get drunk or top themselves if they get low.’ On Exmoor, if you go mad, you go mad alone.

The house isn’t helping. A drawer in the kitchen gave up the will to live and collapsed and then three others decided, lemming-like, to copy it. The cabinet doors thought this looked like a fun game and two dropped off. Copycats. Mysterious holes keep appearing in the walls. Strange stains erupt on the carpet (and not even sure it’s Asbo Jack this time). Huge drafts are blowing through the windows and up through the floors and in through the ill-fitting doors. The fluorescent light in the utility room has started flickering in best horror movie style.
The dehumidifier has been chugging away in an exhausted fashion and we have been frantically emptying it. How much water can one house generate? An entire reservoir, by the looks of it. So much, in fact, that as I was coming up the stairs from the front door I put my hand on the wall and my fingers sank into several inches of soggy wallpaper. I’m one of life’s natural pickers (scabs, peeling sunburnt skin, candlewax, I’m not fussy – if it’s loose, I’ll pick it) and so my fingers naturally tugged and two yards of molten wallpaper collapsed onto my head. Adrian was outside, talking to someone about beer (naturally) and, in the time it took him to debate the merits of Pale Ale over Porter, I had excavated almost the entire lower hallway. I also gained an insight into life in 1963 – as under three layers of thick wallpaper the walls had been lined in the Daily Express.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Adrian, choking on a miasma of dust and mould spores. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Look at this,’ I said, trying to distract him. ‘There was a time when the Express didn’t talk about Princess Diana.’
He didn’t fall for it. ‘That wall’s going to collapse now. The wallpaper was the only thing holding it together.’
He had a point. We all walk Very Carefully up the stairs now as the slightest heavy clump of a boot sends another pile of dust and plaster cascading down.
Anyhow, getting off-point now. I have realised that, if we ever want to get this house sorted, it’s going to cost a darn sight more than our meagre savings. I am going to have to work MUCH more. Walker and my agent have vanished into the ether together and aren’t responding to emails. I bought two lottery tickets – on the basis that once in a while you have to give Fate a chance - but have somehow managed to lose both and am now convinced of course, that they were the ones that would have made our fortune. So I have to get back to work properly and Earn Money.

This, of course, would be easier had James not purloined my computer during the holidays. My desk is now piled high with notebooks covered in code, test-tube aliens blinking viciously and sweet wrappers. When I turn on my PC I find I the Northern Lights gleaming biliously at me. Every key makes zoo noises and my cursor is blinking yellow. A rash of weird icons litter my desktop and if I gaze out into space for more than ten seconds multi-coloured bubbles bounce mournfully over my screen. Nothing is sacred.
I write a feature on ‘creating a sanctuary in your home’ and laugh hollowly at myself telling people to ‘find a space that can be entirely your own.’ I don’t even have a desk of my own anymore. Hot-desking in your own home? It’s ridiculous.

Summoning the energy to do anything is virtually impossible. I can’t even be bothered to bitch about semi-famous people anymore. Who cares if newspaper columnists lie in print? That’s what all journalists do, right? Maybe that’s why I’m finding it so hard to get back into journalism – I’m sick of bending the truth, making things sound better or worse or wilder or madder than they really are. Maybe I need a new job altogether. Perhaps I could fill the natural void and become the Only Psychotherapist in the Village…. Then again, maybe not.
For the moment, my solution is to lie low, wrap up in a large blanket and sip sloe gin while watching episodes of Ugly Betty back-to-back and thanking my lucky stars I don’t work at a fashion magazine. Reinvention can wait until spring.

On seething and impromptu sex education

‘I’m warning you now, Jane, if there is any remote inkling of audience participation, I’m out of there. And no seething.’ So said my friend Rachel with a steely stare as we drove off to Taunton for one of our rare ‘evenings of culture’. Last time it had been the play Glass Eels, with absolutely loads of seething and writhing in, around and amidst the withy beds and rhines of Sedgemoor. Water had flooded the stage as the pent-up lust of the protagonists had oozed all over the show. We weren’t madly impressed. This time (my choice again, so no pressure there) we were off to see Derevo (Russian for ‘tree’ or so the programme said) in something called Ketzal. The troupe was founded in St Petersburg in 1988 and adhere to a ‘rigorous aesthetic derived from Japan’s postwar performance style of butoh’. The blurb went on to say, ‘Wiry and shaven-headed, the company members lead lives of monastic theatricality at their base in Dresden.’
It sounded suitably austere, suitably non-sexual. No seething here, no siree.
As I came back from the loo I spotted a notice that read something along the lines of:
‘Warning.
There will be loud noises.
There will be flashing lights.
There will be scenes of a sexual nature.
There will be semi-nudity.’

Rachel looked at me, looked at the notice and raised an eyebrow. We trooped in, following the usual Brewhouse crowd which tends to be middle-class to a woman, all tweedy elderlies and arty middle-ageds wearing ‘interesting scarves and jewellery’ and either cropped or flowing hair; a few sullen teenagers; the odd precocious child.
We were halfway up the stairs when Rachel tugged my arm.
‘Oh my God, look at that..’
There was a man tumbling over the seats, over people, clasping a large plastic black bin-liner. Suddenly he stopped, lunged and thrust the liner over an unsuspecting man’s head, bundled him up and bustled him off.
Poor Rachel looked desperately around but there was no way out.
‘Please don’t let him see me,’ she hissed as we sat in our seats trying to look as small and inconspicuous as we possibly could.

It was absolutely incredible. Six performers – three men, three women (though I only realised that three of them were women about half-way through – and this even given the fact that they were all topless and wearing only some sort of nappies or thongs). There was writhing (lots). There was seething (tons). There were births and deaths and sex and God knows what really – including a very realistic elephant, whirling dervishes, spinning gonks and a man with a large arm instead of a penis.

I couldn’t begin to tell you what it was about – apparently it’s a ‘déjà vu of the body’ which tells you….well, nothing really. Except that you will never see bodies like that; or images of raw gut-clenching beauty like that. Or be shocked and amused and horrified and scared all in the same 90 minutes. Oh, and there was water too. Obviously the Brewhouse have a bit of a thing about the fact they can flood their stage – because it started with drips, flashing jewel-like in the incredible lighting and they ended up sliding and (yes) writhing and seething in it, like aquatic creatures from the primordial slime. Then smashing and crashing it so it flew up in sheets and drenched the front rows.
Several tweedies walked out, sniffing with horror. The precocious children looked a little shaken. Rachel and I shot out as they took their final bows before they got any ideas about bundling us up into bags and taking us back to Dresden to become sinewy seething monks.

‘What about the bit where they were all born like a rope of babies?’ said Rachel on the way back. ‘That was pretty disturbing..’
But nowhere near as disturbing as the conversation I had with James a couple of nights later.

It was Friday night, the night before his birthday and I was sitting on his bed, wistfully remembering when he was born.
‘What were you doing this time nine years ago, Mum?’
‘Watching Lowri Turner in Musgrove hospital, if I recall.’
‘How big were you?’
‘Oh, vast…..out here…’ indicating an improbable distance from my stomach.
‘Wow. And how big was Daddy?’
Hmm. I had a bad feeling about where this was going and had to resist the urge to say ‘never mind’ and tuck him up and scarper.
‘Well.’ Long pause. ‘Men don’t get pregnant.’
‘So what’s their bit in having a baby?’
No, this so wasn’t fair. We’d agreed – five years ago – that Adrian was going to have this conversation when it came up.
‘Is it……?’ He pointed downwards with a grin. ‘Willies.’
‘Yup,’ I said firmly. ‘It’s willies.’
Hopefully that was it. But no. A look of focused determination came over his face.
‘So does the man put his willy in the woman’s belly button.’
‘Er, no. Bit further down really.’
Pointing vaguely and feeling my face start to burn bright red. Remembering all the books I’d read that said you should call a spade a spade and well…..
‘Vagina. It goes in the vagina. You know? You did vaginas at school, didn’t you?’
A look of shocked amazement mixed with total glee that he had information that would doubtless whiz round the playground come Monday.
‘Eeeuw, that’s disgusting. Does it hurt?’
‘Er, no. It’s rather nice actually.’
Then, realising I had a parental duty here to avoid teenage pregnancies, ‘But of course it’s something you don’t do until you’ve left school and are with someone you love and want to stay with for ages.’ Which sounded unconvincing even to me.
‘Eeeuw. You had Daddy’s hairy old willy in your vagonie? That’s disgusting.’
‘It’s not hairy.’
How did this happen? How did I manage to find myself discussing Adrian’s penis and our sex life with our nearly-nine-year old son? This was so wrong. Heck, we’d get into writhing and seething next.
‘But Daddy said that when boys get older they get hairy.’
Eh? So he’s got that far but hadn’t carried it through? I could have murdered him.
So I had to explain how some bits got hairy and some didn’t and then James started giggling his head off and going into flights of fancy about hairy bottoms and hairy poos and thank heavens it all dissipated and I was able to say goodnight and escape downstairs to drown myself in cognac.
It was obviously in the air, all this seething sex. So I’ve told Rachel that she can pick the next cultural outing – and meanwhile I’m going to buy James a nice book that explains all the ins and outs, hairy and non-hairy bits. From now on this is a non-seething house.

Size Zero Mother drives me to chocolate

I am being driven to chocolate, I really am. I am sitting here binge-eating Mars bars straight from the freezer. Actually I have now run out of Mars bars and have moved onto Milky Way which isn’t nearly as satisfying. When I run out of those I shall probably have no choice but to finish off the Apple Strudel cake. I have been so good too, eschewing all sugar and chocolate and what-have-you in an attempt to banish the dreaded candida (yes I did Grouse’s spit in the morning test and my glass was positively LADEN with strings – sorry, you didn’t really need to know that, did you?). Anyhow, I have been good, HAD been good until Size Zero Mother started on me.

It began yesterday. Not the best of times as I had a truly vicious hangover thanks to Paddy at Oaks who fed Jane and I several more large glasses of Armagnac than two women who had already consumed several bottles of wine have any right to drink.

She phoned up and launched straight in as if we had just been talking and one of us had popped out the room for a wee or something and then come back.
‘So, when you go to Marks and Spencer, you can pick me up a coat. I desperately need a coat now it’s getting so cold.’
I was slightly nonplussed. Not only because it’s the mildest November I’ve ever experienced but because….well…..
‘But, Mum, you don’t go out. Why do you need a coat?’
A sharp intake of breath down the phone. ‘I don’t go out because I don’t have a coat.’ Said very sharply with more than a tinge of asperity.
‘Right. OK. What kind of coat?’
‘Oh, you know. A coat.’
‘How about if I come over and we look through the Next catalogue and you can show me the kind of thing you want.’
‘I don’t want it from Next. Their clothes don’t fit me.’
‘No, I know. But if we find one you quite like, I can get something similar from Marks.’
Much harrumphing and irritation palpable down the line.
‘I just want a coat.’
‘Yes, but what kind?’
Long, short, mid-length? Wool, tweed, polyester, cotton? Zipped, buttoned, toggled? Hooded, collared, non-collared? Colour? Style? Parka, military, swing, cloak?
‘Just a coat. For God’s sake, it’s not that difficult. You know what I mean.’
Last time I checked, I wasn’t a mind-reader. I am guessing a sort of padded casual jacket type thing. But really, who knows? Whatever I get it’s bound to be wrong.

Just like the slippers. ‘They’ll have to go back, you know.’ They were exactly the same as the ones she’s always had – same size, same style, same colour. Aaaghhh. Big big deep breath. Buddhist daughtering came to mind. Centre, Jane. Ground yourself. Follow the breath.
‘Oh, and don’t cook me anything else. I’ve got the freezer jammed with meals. You don’t need to do any for ages.’

Well, one good bit of news at least. Except that today, while I was out, Adrian took a call from SZM in which she told him that she was ‘nearly out’ of food and that all she had was celeriac soup which she couldn’t possibly eat because ‘as Jane well knows, I can’t eat celery.’
He told her it wasn’t celery but celeriac.
‘Which is the same thing,’ she said.
‘Er, no, not really. Related but not the same,’ he said. Then continued, ‘Out of interest, why can’t you eat celery?’
‘I’ve NEVER eaten celery,’ she replied vehemently. ‘When I had rheumatic fever as a child I was told never to eat celery and I never have.’
Except she has. She always has. I remember clearly the celery soup that was her favourite (and my most loathed). And her saying you should always add celery and cut down on salt. Really, it’s getting mad.

So tonight, when I was hoping to sit down and try to catch up a bit with Nanowrimo, I will be frantically cooking batches of very odd meals. Just great.

Funnily enough my Nanowrimo ‘novel’ has suddenly spawned a harridan of a mother, a true fairy tale evil witch of a woman and a poor pathetic middle-aged daughter who spends her entire time bitterly mulling over her blighted life. What is really interesting is that it’s the daughter, not the mother, who is driving me really potty. Why on earth is she such a doormat? Why doesn’t she stand up to her vile mother? What in the name of heaven is the matter with her that she can’t just say ‘no’, that she is consumed with guilt and self-loathing?
Ah, how art mirrors life….

PS - the pic is of the Loo of Doom. So horrible that I refuse to go anywhere near it and really only remember what it looks like by looking at this picture. I keep hoping I will go down there one day and it will have vanished.

PPS - apparently I am arranging tickets and a bus trip to see some band called The Dropkick Murphies with half the reprobates from the pub.....this I don't remember. One of the dangers of too many armagnacs.

PPPS - my dear friend Jane is not happy with me. While at Oaks I was telling Paddy (owner) how she really needed a good man with a labrador (and actually the man wasn't totally essential) in what I thought was very sotto voce. Jane (who was standing at the bar) was apparently wincing as my voice was carrying rather too clearly and every single bloke there was, she said, looking her up and down 'to see the sad cow who can't get a bloke.'

I need to redeem myself so, if anyone happens to know any nice labradors (with relatively decent men attached), do get in touch.

Nice surprises and nasty shocks

I love surprises. I like to think I relish the unexpected. But as I grow older I am becoming aware of a growing tendency to try to keep things safe; under control. It’s something I intend to fight, tooth and nail. Partly because it is the first step towards acute anxiety and I can see all to clearly where that leads with my poor Size Zero Mother – who can barely move for neurosis; who can’t stand it if even the tiniest thing is out of place or if people don’t behave precisely the way she expects them to. It’s a slippery slope and I would hate to follow her into that particular madness. But also, and more importantly, it’s hard to enjoy life if you aren’t open to a little spontaneity, a little wildness, a little anarchy.

Nice surprises light me up like a child. I still wait, eagerly, for the postman – hoping that there will be something exciting amidst the relentless bills and press releases on pile treatments: some thrilling news; some soul-catching letter or image; something just plain nice. Like a copy of Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black maybe. A padded envelope with unfamiliar writing…open it up and there is a slim volume, with a chillingly spooky cover and tucked inside a note from Kitty. It's a ‘just because’ gift, a ‘what the heck’ gift…..how totally perfect and just before Hallowe’en too. Bless you, Kitty. I am reading it slowly, savouring it, only allowing myself to read it in the Oak Room in front of a big fire. Ghost stories should always be read thus – and this is a great one, in the fine tradition of M R James and Lovecraft. It makes me smile every time I go in and see it sitting waiting on the coffee table.

The garden is throwing up surprises too. As we peel away the layers of bramble and choking ivy, the carpet of thick weeds, we find odd things, forgotten things. A pathway, or is it the top of some old wall? Old bird boxes. A trainer (large, black, yuk). A woman’s shoe (small, red, old-fashioned, weird). Old plant labels. The remnants of a trug.

James continues to surprise me – as I suspect all children do. He has, all of a sudden, decided he doesn’t like football any more and has given his allegiance to rugby. So we have swapped Wednesday evening football training for Sunday morning rugby training. Gone is the shiny, slippery red nylon football kit and in comes solid black and white cotton rugby shirt. It’s a nice surprise, this one. Rugby seems a far more civilised game (despite its close proximity to warfare) – plus we’re greeted by the cheering sight of an open bar and by the scent of bacon sizzling on the grill.

He’s going deep too, my little Scorpio. I found a piece of work in his school bag – they were practicing questions.

Who will die first in my class?
Is the black hole real?
What will it be like in the year 6,000?
Will God ever die?
Who is the coolest person in the world?
Will England win the World Cup?

Crikey. But what really surprised me was that his teacher had made no comment – merely calmly corrected a few spellings and added a few capitals. Are all eight-year olds concerned about black holes and the demise of God?

Surprises are one thing but shocks are something else. Last night I went to aerobics and, before the class, I was chatting to my friend G who lives on a nearby farm. The music started up and we were just about to start marching on the spot when G said, ‘Oh, by the way, our new neighbour is going to be a journalist. Works for the Mail – I wondered if you knew her….’
No, surely not?
‘Liz Jones.’
Well, knock me down with a feather. It turns out she’s buying the absolutely gorgeous farmhouse next to G’s – where Adrian and I once went to a deeply strange dinner party in which the hostess (possibly the most painful snob I have ever met) fell asleep on the sofa in front of all her guests. But reading her latest column in You magazine I am beginning to get a bit worried about her (Liz Jones, not the snobby hostess). It appears (if you can believe a magazine column) that she wants to escape London and her miserable failed marriage and set up an animal sanctuary where her ‘fur babies’ (aka cats) can be ‘safe’ as there are ‘no roads or fast cars’. Hmm. I almost feel I ought to email her and warn her that Exmoor is pretty red in tooth and claw. She is moving into prime shooting country and one of her nearest neighbours is chairman of the local staghounds. Her fur babies will need to watch out for foxes and badgers (the very ones that stopped dairy farming on G’s farm after generations). Although her lane is small and narrow, we have boy racers here as well as anywhere and there are fatalities a-plenty. Most of all, she wants to do a Garbo and ‘be alone’ – should she be told that the whole of Exmoor will know her business within weeks, if not days or even hours?
‘She’ll write a book about her born-again farming experiences,’ I muttered to R as we sat drinking wine and eating almond brittle in the breakfast room (a fine post-aerobics tradition).
‘Or she’ll do a Madonna and start wearing tweed and take up shooting,’ said R with a shudder. Poor R. She has, in desperation, turned to Buddhist parenting in the hopes of taming the Mistress of All Evil (her nine-year old daughter).
Then again, who knows, Ms Jones might turn out to be a perfectly normal, decent ordinary person. Now that would be a nice surprise.


PS - I am so sorry I haven't been able to read many blogs of late - I will try to catch up ASAP.

PPS - anyone know how to get a black and white rugby shirt staying black and white (as opposed to black and brown?)