The sodium smears sickly colours on the cloud base. Fifteen seconds the shutter is held open, time enough for an aeroplane to needle its trackmarks of light and flash along the sky.
Dead roses
Twisted
Shouldering the burden
Not a wonderful weekend. This is merely a vent. Do not read it. It does not add to the sum of human happiness in any way at all other than the faint and passing relief obtained by one who vents.
Saturday.
Live-in ex is unclear about his activities. “Saturday night?” and “Sunday” on the list of “when I’m going to be out” has, on Saturday morning, turned into “away for the weekend”. But departure time and the fact that this involves taking the car are not mentioned.
The latter is only revealed when I am about to depart, in the car, with firstborn to take him to a party on the other side of London. I offer to go in my van and take secondborn as well so l-ie can depart in the car at some still unspecified time. Secondborn has tantrum of Brobdignagian proportions. L-ie suggests I take firstborn in the car and he waits to leave until I get back. Twenty minutes into the journey my mobile rings. L-ie says secondborn is abjectly apologetic about being so difficult and is prepared to go in the van. Suggests I turn back. I refuse.
Drive firstborn to birthday party. One hour. During journey firstborn informs me that he’ll be staying for a sleepover. Until that point my instructions were “pick-up time 5.30pm”. No pyjamas, no toothbrush, no flannel, no advance notice = no sleepover I say.
Drive back from dropping firstborn at party. One hour.
On the way back I realise that the friend with whom l-ie is spending the weekend lives a short distance from the venue of the party. I reflect on the synergies that could have been achieved had l-ie not been the sort of person whose inflexible default position is that it is my job to transport children.
I have a new ailment – a pain in the socket of my left shoulder. It is exacerbated by driving.
Two hour break at home before having to embark on the two-hour cross-London odyssey once more, this time in the van. No heating, no power steering and no functioning petrol gauge. It indicates a completely empty tank. Secondborn’s tantrum before leaving is, mercifully, of slightly smaller dimensions than his morning version.
Half an hour into the journey a new noise joins the cacophony of loud sounds that is part of the charm of driving an ancient VW camper van. There is a hole in the exhaust.
We have just backed into a tiny parking space outside the party venue when my mobile rings. It is firstborn, begging, pleading on his bended knees, to be allowed to stay for the sleepover since the mother of celebrant said sleepware etc could be provided. I point out, at some length and rather forcefully, that I have just driven an hour across London and am parked immediately outside the house it being the time I was told to pick him up. I further indicate that, had such permission been sought precisely one hour previously it would have been far more likely to be granted. Further begging ensues. We agree that he owes me, big time.
Drive back from failing to pick up firstborn from party. One hour. Hole in exhaust sounds bigger. Petrol gauge still registers absolute zero. Which reflects the temperature inside the van. Secondborn has a tantrum because his feet are freezing. Can barely hear his screams above the sound of the broken exhaust. Decide against stopping for petrol since this would necessitate turning the engine off and thus rendering the screams audible.
We watch Gremlins 2. I decide that on balance I would rather be driving my camper van along the arctic circle.
The pain in my shoulder has spread from the socket along the top of the shoulder, up the left side of my neck and is now also drilling holes in the back of the base of my skull with a blunt, off-centre bit mounted in a hand-drill as well as stabbing red-hot needles into the joint itself. Wake up repeatedly throughout the night as I try, during sleep, to get into my preferred position on my left side – impossible because of the pain.
Sunday
Set out again to pick up firstborn from sleepover. We leave an hour later than we should do because the pain in my shoulder is so debilitating I have to take aspirin and rub in a topical anti-inflammatory (best before date: May 2005) and then wait for them to work.
Wrap secondborn in many layers of warm clothes and several pairs of socks. Discover I left the van’s lights on all night. By some miracle the battery is not absolutely flat and the vehicle actually starts. Eventually. There is a hole in the roof probably in about the same place as the hole in the exhaust beneath. Sound roars through the latter. Water leaks through the former as the torrential rain hammers on the roof almost drowning out the engine and exhaust noise.
Due to the lateness I decide to continue ignoring the zero petrol indication. We drive, for an hour, across London. On arrival firstborn informs me that he’s lost his mobile somewhere in the house. Which is large. I sit in the van repeatedly dialling his number from my own mobile until he locates his phone. This seems to take several hours. On the way back we go to the nearest petrol station where we have to queue for ten minutes to get to a pump. Maybe the gauge isn’t so inaccurate after all – it takes more than 50 litres to fill the tank.
Drive home, bothborns tantruming because I refuse to buy crisps and sweets from the petrol station. One hour. I can’t even sigh any more because, bizarrely, breathing in causes exquisite pain in the shoulder.
Leaving
The streets are paved with the ghosts of leaves, faint shadowed fadings where once colour was.
Maybe it is a chemical process akin to that used by some to explain the image on the Turin shroud.
Neither water nor oil, flowing and filming across the surfaces, are sufficient swiftly to remove these signs. I have not tried wine.
Do these atoms bonded to brick and bitumen ever return in recycled spring leaf resurrection?
My mother died, about a year ago. This off focus imprecision still stains. Black bonded scar no scrubbing cleans.
It’s sunning cats and dogs
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Sometimes I think I owe such sanity as I have left to the animals.
Other times I wonder whether they actually make things worse. Such lack of complication. Such love of the sun. Of course they fight a lot of the time too. Like, yes. Them. |
It's sunning cats and dogs
|
|
Sometimes I think I owe such sanity as I have left to the animals.
Other times I wonder whether they actually make things worse. Such lack of complication. Such love of the sun. Of course they fight a lot of the time too. Like, yes. Them. |
Links
I went to a meditation group this evening (Thursday night, it appears to be Friday morning now), led by Alistair, the teacher of the meditation course I recently took. The blog-mending Mr Hg came too.
He came along not just, I think, because I am hugely persuasive persistent but partly because I had sent him the links to my two favourite pieces of writing about the practice of meditation – Confessions and How to be Uncomfortable by Dale.
Later the same day that the meditation links had changed hands I sent Dale the link to a piece Hg had written (on troubled diva) in the period last year while he debated whether to resign his job, which, if you read post, you will be unsurprised to learn that he subsequently did. And later still on the same day that this link had been passed on Dale resigned from his.
Enough mailled links to make a hauberk.
So, to stretch a fabric not generally known for its elasticity, the basic unit of the maille is three links. On that same day (last Tuesday, to be exact) it was decided that I should work part time, at least until the end of December. Four months on half pay and an uncertain future.
I have a lot of thinking of my own to do about “work” – what I want to “do” and why and how. And sometimes, in the current circumstances, I feel very vulnerable and utterly alone. And at other times, like now, I feel less so.
frizzyLogic 