a recent email exchange with a friend culminates in this from me:
i’m going home to do my banking / balance my cheque account (be easier to balance Brazil’s account to be honest) and watch a 1970s Doctor Who.
cos I is a big gayer, innit 
and from him?
“You? A gayer? I think the c*ckcsucking sort of gave it away before the Pertwee obsession.”
Cheek!
I used to be a blogger, back when blogging was simply what one did; back before one was daily conflicted by the issue of whether to tweet or not to tweet; to update directly on to facebook or msn with mates? Back before the question of whether it was nobler in the minds eye to chat with friends via facebook chat, or take arms and skype the world became all-encompassing.
And, back available online forum, I recall a friend of mine asking Why? I was, effectively, keeping a public diary.
“I mean,” he asked, “Why would you want to share every single aspect of your life – every thought and deed with the whole world; and why – more importantly, perhaps – why on earth would they want to read it?
It’s a good question (or two). Not that I have any answers. I used the site to write about how David and I met, about our courtship, about the build up to and the aftermath of our wedding. I used it, in the leadup to my 40th, as a way of chronicling my life to date (which, written like that, sounds as though my struggle to avoid pomposity and self-importance has not quite been won yet). I wrote commentary on the world around me and the life I was living; on the books, music, TV, theatre, film, clothing, that was, at any point influencing my life, and I did it so that I could look back, from time to time, and see “Ah, that’s where I was.”
Then, last year, I stopped.
Not completely – there were a few postings over the course of the year, but by and large I stopped writing.
Not because there was nothing going on; not by a long chalk. There was too much going on, to be honest, and all of it seemed to be bad. But none of it was mine. Everyone – dear friends, my husband, family – seemed mired in illness or stress or work shit that just filled the year with one drama or tragedy after another. And at the centre of it all was me.
But I didn’t write about it, because in the past, when I have written about how I’ve felt when bad things have happened, they’ve been my bad things, happening to me. But this past year, they’ve been filling my life, without me having ownership of them, and thus without my having the right to share them with a world full of strangers.
And then, this past weekend, whilst updating my diary, I went through last years diary and was amazed at how much good stuff I’d done, and how much had slid past without comment – some fantastic trips, meeting enw people, seeing places and things I can’t believe I finally got to see and meet; amazing concerts seen without me even putting a note down here about them; records (or digital downloads) that rocked my world and shot to the top of my charts.
It was a year when – interestingly – I resumed my voracious reading habit, working my way through a number I loved, a few I adored, and a handful that convinced me I could do better in a coma. As I child, I’ve come, lately, to realise, I read to escape. To get away from situations I didn’t like, or to get to places or feelings I did, to escape the seemingly terminal boredom of waiting for ones life to begin, to escape from being me, and become, for a while, someone else.
And, of course, as I’ve said before, I do think I got to be the creature that I meant to be: Not an enlightened being by some way yet, but happier.
Perhaps, as an adult, I write a diary to strangers as a way of making a mark of saying “I am / was here.” Perhaps, by blogging, I’m trying to escape the inescapable; for one day – no matter how many friends or followers or readers or commenters we have, we will Not be here.
But, for now, what’s not here is 2009. It’s gone, and with it has gone much of the grief that filled last year. I’ll try to do better in 2010; I’ll try to keep some record of what I’m doing, of where I’m going so that, when I look back in January 2011 I wont say “How could so much good stuff have happened last year yet it still felt so bad?”
I’ll live more, love as much as I always have, and learn to let things that I can’t change be. But I’ll try to stop, from time to time, to look at my life, to see the individual flakes of good and bad and to consciously review and comment on them, ratehr than just letting it all – all this living¬ – just wash over me.
Already it’s shaping up to be a great year.
My mam has been admitted to hospital.
I spoke to her a couple of hours ago (Praise the mobile phone), and she had been out of bed rooting around for a switch to turn on the light above her bed so she could read the latest goings-on of the celebutardii, which she refers to as “The poor girls,” which, when you think of it, is quite sharp of her.
“You’re not well,” I said, “haven’t you got a button to push for a nurse?”
“Well, I didn’t like to bother her,” she replied. “It’s only a switch.”
“Jesus, woman,” I remonstrated, “They’re called nurses for a reason. You’ve spent your life slogging your guts out. Let someone else do the work.”
And there we are; my mum is ill. But still my mum. Still slogging.
Still reminding me that it’s almost exactly a year ago that we were all in New York.
“Of course, I don’t remember much of it,” she said; “Only, I loved dinner on that roof top, and the lovely trip around the bay. And that brilliant street fair on Broadway. And the look on your father’s face when we announced that he hadn’t missed Borders books, ‘cos it would be open til midnight. But other than that, I can’t recall a lot. ‘Twould be lovely to go again, though….”
And then we got back to the business of her being unwell, and I was assured that she’d be well. Again.
And I felt less unsure.
So, backtracking: prior to this conversation, I’d been feeling a little tense. A tad unsure of things; and so I did what my people always do when we need to let the bad go and embrace the good. And by “my people,” I mean the people who are, historically, predisposed to expecting tomorrow to be worse than today; the ones for whom untold wealth and perfect happiness is always something others have; the folks who refuse to believe – until it’s too late – that life can sometimes be actually perfect.
I did what they do, and have always done: I cooked.
I made Torte de Bergere Americaine.
You’ve never heard of it? Unsurprising, really. I made it up.
Back in March D and I were in NY to see our dear friend Whit, and her parents were also in town, and they had pre-requested us to advise them of our favourite Kansas City BBQ sauce, which they had then handed to us in vast quantities.
And I had chosen Bryants, which has a grittiness and spice lacking from some others (though I’ve since found that its absence of honey, sugar, molasses or God’s Gift to American Cuisine High Fructose Corn Syrup makes it a little thin when subjected to high heat), and which I have been using –slathered on chicken, poured onto pork chops, and, when I got the hang of it, rubbed slowly and sensuously into a couple of wonderful steaks which were then quick grilled on the garden barbecue.
And tonight, there was a few spoonsful left, which were added to the last of a beautiful bounty of Herbes de Provence which the lovely Julie had given me a long time ago (I know: they’re supposed to go ‘off,’ but you try making dried rosemary and lavender lose their scent), a pack of minced beef, two and a half onions, three carrots, a few handfuls of frozen peas, salt, pepper, passata, some leftover dolcelatte melted into the mass (not kosher, I know; so sue me) and a topping of mashed potato with grated parmesan and cheddar.
It’s Shepherds pie, made with gifts from people who gave the ingredients with love, and cooked at a time when we needed a hug.
And it was a great big hug.
And it was eaten – flicking through a Dan Brown, as the sun went autumnally golden behind next doors fence (can you tell I’ve been reading Dan Brown), and we listened to bits of Young Frankenstein, and we remembered last Autumn in New York, before the financial industry collapsed.
And then I called my mother, fearing the worst, and ended up laughing with her as she discussed my husband’s propensity for drama, justified her own semi-nocturnal treasure hunt for the Missing Light Switch (“I’m sure I’ve just switched off half the incubators and two thirds of the dialysis machines in the place, and I still can’t see what Cheryl Cole’s wearing on her feet this week!”), and avoided the future potentialities of her prognosis (“They say I have a disease,” she said, in the same tone she’d use if someone suggested she had, say, a knockoff pair of Gucci sunglasses: We don’t do cheap, vague or mundane, in my family. It’s all Drama! Explicit! And Receipts!!!)
Summer’s ending. Winter’s coming. But, between it and us, we have a potentially golden autumn, filled with new births (hello Pat), hugs scented with Barbecue and Rosemary, hope (It’s only a disease ferchrissakes), memories of golden autumns past and anticipation of great times to come.
