vegetating present participle of veg·e·tate (Verb)
Verb
1. Live or spend a period of time in a dull, inactive, unchallenging way.
2. (of a plant or seed) Grow; sprout.
I’m going off vegetating for a while, and I’m either removing this blog entirely or will streamline it.
For further explanation/confusion see here: Change
A short story
Violet chewed the skin around her thumbnail, and studied the way Donna held her glass; how she sipped gently without disturbing her lip-gloss whilst simultaneously making conversation and politely declining a passing tray of nibbles. She was so sensuous, so feminine. Donna’s long, even, coloured nails curved and reflected the light – in perfect harmony with the glass of sparkling wine which she held with such poise.
Violet wanted to be like Donna. Why couldn’t Mum be more like Donna: elegant, shiny, doll-like and yet animated? Even Dad seemed to prefer Donna’s company and topped up her glass more than anyone else’s. Oh, it would be nice to be admired, to feel beautiful.
Violet straightened up, sucked in her tummy and thrust out her developing chest. She would stop biting her nails and start using coloured lip-gloss.
‘Vi!’ yelled Ruby from the hall, bashing her doll against the doorframe, so that its soft, light-reflecting, pearl blonde, nylon hair bounced like a head-banger at a heavy metal concert, and its vacant blue eyes stared helplessly into the room. ‘Vi-o-let!’
Violet flicked her eyes away from Donna’s body as party guests turned to look round at her.
‘Go on, Vi,’ Mum smiled. ‘You’ve spent enough time hanging out with us oldies. You can go and play now.’
“Go and play”?! Violet wanted to yell at her mother, but instead she smiled awkwardly and ducked through the room, humiliated.
‘She’s developed into such a lovely young thing,’ noted Not-really-Uncle Marcus, as Violet swept past.
‘Oh, no. She’s just a girl, Marcus.’ Violet heard her Aunt retort. ‘You shouldn’t say things like that. You’ll embarrass her.’
I’m “lovely”, thought Violet, beaming, as she passed herself in the hall mirror, and Ruby stabbed her in the legs with sharp, plastic doll fingers.
‘Let’s dress up, Roobs,’ Violet breathed excitedly, dashing up the stairs to Mum and Dad’s room.
Through the carpeted upstairs floors, the adults’ party noises became a muffled cacophony of smooth Nat King Cole tones, waves of male and female laughter, and constant conversational murmur, as Violet and Ruby tugged clothes from Mum’s wardrobe and hurled shoes into the middle of the room.
Mum and Dad would be giggling later. They would forgive the crease and tumble of clothes mess and shoes across the floor, and the crumpled jump-dips on the bed.
Violet slid Mum’s sleeveless, wine-red, velvet special-occasion dress over her head and plonked her feet into the highest heels she could find. They’d done this for years, they’d always done this: pretended to be ladies, played make believe, chatted in hoity-toity voices, and giggled as they swaggered around admiring themselves in the mirror.
Little Ruby looked lost, daft, and hopelessly floppy and adorable: sleeves too long, shoes dangerously loose, and necklaces hanging to her naval. But Violet had grown a lot this year and Mum’s dresses were the right length on her now. The shoes fitted too.
If only someone could see her and tell her she was beautiful.
Violet opened Dad’s sock drawer and tugged out a pair of thick socks. She shoved them into her bra-style vest top and walked quietly back to the mirror. Ruby screamed with laughter.
‘Shut up, Ruby. It’s not funny.’ Violet stamped out of the room to the bathroom to fetch Mum’s make-up. They’d always borrowed Mum’s make-up.
The two girls sat on Mum and Dad’s floor, and gave each other “pretty cheeks” and “lovely eyes”; they admired, they role-played, they chatted about pretend neighbours, pretend occupations, they gave themselves names and husbands and children.
Mum’s lipstick was “Hot pink”.
They giggled as they sat cross-legged and applied lipstick to each other’s mouths.
‘This lipstick is “Hot”!’ laughed Violet. ‘We are gonna look so “Hot” in this lipstick, girlfriend.’
Ruby made an over-enthusiastic “Hot pink” mess of Violet’s face, so Violet skipped back to the bathroom to fetch toilet tissue.
As she left the bathroom she collided with Not-really-Uncle Marcus on the landing.
‘Oop. Steady on, young thing,’ Marcus mumbled, squeezing her arm and holding her firmly in front of him – as if pretending to assist her in some way, and staring down at her sock breasts. ‘What a pretty thing you are. Off out to find yourself a boyfriend?’
Violet fell silent and still. She felt the way she’d done when her swimsuit slipped down over one shoulder in front of Megan’s older brother in their parent’s hot tub last summer. She wanted to disappear, she wanted to be back in her bedroom with Ruby, wearing normal clothes, pulling her bedcovers up close under her chin and not having anyone staring at her, restraining her, calling her a “thing”.
She giggled nervously, turned her arm out of Marcus’s grasp and hurried back to Ruby.
‘What was funny?’ asked Ruby.
‘Nothing. I don’t know why I laughed,’ replied Violet, glancing back nervously at the door and looking around for her own clothes. ‘I don’t want to be a lady anymore. Let’s watch the penguin film.’
A flash fiction
Her house was in the middle of the town. It was not particularly big or small or fancy or plain. It was pleasant enough. She didn’t love it and she didn’t hate it. She liked it well enough.
She felt she had no cause to brag nor good reason to complain.
Mustn’t grumble.
Fair to middling.
She swept her driveway, pulled weeds out of the lane so folk could walk by, and clipped the hedge so the neighbours’ light wouldn’t be obscured. She didn’t play loud music or throw wild parties or keep noisy dogs.
Passers by made no comment. Passed no judgement. Offered no sympathy either.
She was just there. There she was in the middle.
She’d had love. She’d lost love. She was alone. She was lonely. But she saw that she had more than some and hid her tears. Who was she to feel sorry for herself?
She saw people come and go past her house and saw the fat people, the thin people, the old people, the young people, the rich people, the poor people. She heard love and hate in a word on the wind, violence in a drunken roar, thoughtlessness in a loud engine. She noticed differences, struggles, children crying, and she felt a need to be useful: to point out these differences.
Somehow.
But how?
So she wrote a poem and made a giant sign. For days she thought about the words, about the design. She made it by hand with brushes and ink. She thought about suffering and unfairness until her heart ached, and wiped away tears before they dropped onto the ink on the page.
She asked for those who have to care about those who have not.
She asked for people to love one another.
She asked for everyone to think about their actions.
After days of hard work, she bought an expensive frame and nailed the sign with the poem to the side of the house overlooking the lane, for all to see.
She went inside and rested.
When she awoke she heard breaking glass, shouts and knocking.
What did she know about pain and suffering?!
What right did she have to tell others how to live?!
Head-in-the-clouds poets should get a proper job!
After dark she went outside to remove the sign. It was broken. It was defaced. She was crying.
In the morning she went out and swept the drive. A passer-by spat on her broom. A driver in a shiny black sports car mocked her through his car window as he revved his engine and choked her with fumes. An old woman tutted in pity at her foolish extravagance.
She felt hurt and lonely and foolish.
She leant on the broom and controlled the tears.
She felt she had no reason to complain.
Who was she to feel sorry for herself?
A flash fiction
There’s something about having nothing that makes you feel … well, both heavy and light all at the same time.
There seems no point looking forward or back, ‘cause every time you do you feel sad and kinda hopeless. Life like this just goes on and on and on, and when you see no end to it, no better days ahead, it makes you want to top yerself. But there’s a lot of point in living in the moment. Why not smoke? Why not drink? Why not eat sausage and chips? Small pleasures. Simple things.
My health? My future?
I’m not expecting anything to be honest.
So, I stop the fags and buy some fruit?… What then? I sit here and fiddle with me orange peelings and cry about tomorrow? No. I share a fag with a mate over a cuppa tea and we get a few things off our chest. We can’t do much for each other but we’ve still got that.
And do I tell Benjy he can’t get bladdered with the lads after work on Friday so he saves a few quid? What then? His whole working week is about Friday and his friends. He couldn’t get through it if he didn’t have his Fridays. The rest of the week is bloody miserable for him. You know they don’t even pay him properly because he’s officially still training? What a load of bollocks.
Anyway… What have we got then? Forty quid and some fruit? That can’t get us a car, a new place to live. The fridge is knackered, the cooker is knackered. Megan needs a new bed. There is no future just by depriving ourselves further.
I was looking over this fella’s shoulder on the bus the other day – reading ‘is paper. Some woman had written how people who drink and smoke should pay more for healthcare. I laughed out loud, I did. The man turned and stared at me like I was mad.
I was mad to be honest. “Healthcare”?! Most people I know don’t even bother with doctors no more. We just wait until we keel over with liver damage or breathing difficulties. What’s the point of being told we ain’t living right, huh? “Yeah, sorry, doc, I lost me Waitrose loyalty card and haven’t been eating my pomegranates recently.”
It’d be funny if wasn’t so bleedin’ tragic. You know I know some people who’s not even registered with a doctor?
I think if I did have forty quid and some fruit I’d make a big bowl of punch and have a party. Share a little bit of happiness. We never seem to have any fun these days.
The only chance I was ever going to get of gaining a degree and some sort of belief in my own intelligence was through the Open University.
On Saturday 27th October 2012, at least twenty years older than the average brick university graduate, I attended my degree ceremony in Portsmouth (Just). It was one of those rare, gloriously sunny days that have been in such short supply this year – but incredibly chilly and windy too. We left the house half an hour later than intended and took an hour and a half longer than we intended to get there. My one hour contingency plan was well and truly out of the window, we arrived flustered and distraught, we missed lunch and very nearly missed the photographer. I left the camera in the car in my hurry to get to the Guildhall. My best and oldest of all my OU friends was supposed to be there but had to cancel at the last minute and I really missed her. But I got there. My six guests got there and I graduated with a massive grin on my face.
This is how I explained my feelings about the day in an email to a friend later:
The graduation itself was nice and moving, and kind of weird – lonely almost. But not a bad lonely. It’s difficult to explain. I suppose it was because we sat with other students and away from our guests for the ceremony – and with the OU that means sitting with strangers. And we’re all adults and not just starting out in life – so many of us have to be proud of ourselves whilst also being someone’s parent. I almost felt selfish!
It’s when I was sitting there surrounded by strangers wondering where my guests were sitting that I realised it was me and only me who had got my degree and I’d done it all by myself, and only for me, and only I knew how it felt. I was charged with mixed emotions, and obviously missed my dad (who died in 2009). Some of the pomp made me well up with a combination of tears and laughter at the pageantry. The ceremonies at these things are a bit daft, aren’t they? I held a plastic fake degree certificate for the photo and was presented with a card at the ceremony because our certificates were sent through the post. So in a way it was all just pretend! 
But it was the ceremonial icing on that big cake of a degree. Without it it would have been like having a birthday without a party, Christmas without school plays, like landing on the moon without plonking a flag into the ground.
It says, “I got there. I did it. Look.”
This is the point at which most people congratulated me on my achievement of gaining a BA honours.
I love the look on people’s faces when they ask what the degree is in and I say it’s an open degree and actually I could have a BSc because I studied lots of ‘ologies as well as arts and humanities. Studying with the OU is a unique experience where one can choose a specific named degree course or explore lots of different subjects.
But what they didn’t congratulate me on was the courage it took me to sign up for my very first module in 2000, when all through my life formal education had been a fairly unhappy experience, and I seriously doubted myself and my abilities to cope in many ways.
And they didn’t congratulate me on managing to find 13 modules to suit my interests that had no exams to sit in a public place – so I could see them through to the end without panicking.
They didn’t congratulate me on managing to pass 13 modules without attending a single tutorial or meeting a single tutor either.
Nor did they congratulate me on managing to learn to interact socially online and make new, life-long friends.
They didn’t congratulate me on using my educational and online social experiences to improve the way I approach my thinking about life and society.
They didn’t congratulate me on my bloody-mindedness when self-esteem hit an all time low, and I had to fight to not let fear pull me out of something yet again.
They didn’t congratulate me on managing to find time to study when I got weeks and weeks behind because the rest of adult/family life had taken priority.
What a lot of non-OU-students probably don’t grasp is that however important it is to us, for mature students with a family, study usually comes last. It’s often finding the time, motivation and the staying power that’s the difficult bit.
They didn’t realise that learning stuff was the easy bit. In comparison.
They didn’t congratulate me on battling against an onslaught of recurring unexplained physical and mental symptoms – such as headaches, exhaustion and brain fog – that regularly left me unable to function.
They didn’t congratulate me on simply getting dressed on the day of the ceremony.
People who know me congratulated me on managing to attend the ceremony and getting through the 24 hours prior to the ceremony. That was one magnificent achievement, only made possible by a swift prescription of beta blockers the day before.
You see it’s just become official that I have anxiety – and have probably had it for 40 years. The GP used the word “anxiety” in a sentence when talking about me, passing me a leaflet, and discussing therapy yesterday so I know it’s true. It was thanks to my degree ceremony that I made the call and began to start accepting help.
All my life I have let fear stop me from doing things because of the immense physical relief I gain when I back out of things. Life has taught me that not doing things is better. Facing your fears is not good; it hurts and doesn’t come with reward. It became clear to me in my late teens that it was easier to not turn up for A level lessons, it would be easier not to plan to go to university, not to have too many commitments. I feel overwhelmed and exhausted coping with a room full of people for any length of time, and can’t concentrate for long, so what would be the point anyway?
The Open University’s unique “openness” answered all of my problems: study in my own time, at my own pace, no lessons, no social commitments, no compulsory tutorials, a choice of online modules with no exam, tutors who can be emailed, online social areas.
It’s been awesome and I’ve been on the OU website 3 times this week drooling over all the subjects I’m still interested in or think might be useful.
I will really miss the OU – it’s been my lifeline. But I simply can’t afford it anymore.
I got there. I did it. Look.
Tumble, tears, tumble.
Today I will not stop you.
I gave the sign and now the guide rope has been cut
The ground has been flooded
The shrinking ledge on which I perch is now but a brief resting place:
A hard climb up? A painful fall down?
What is at the top?
What is at the bottom?
If I stay here in this tiny place with only room for one -
One scared
One unprepared -
How long before I tumble?
Let all the jobs be finished
Let all the people be gone
Let all the phone calls be done
Give me only one sound
One sight
One purpose
Let the door be open
Let me wander
Let me take small steps
To a salty ocean
Or a mossy oak
Or a heathery moor
The suck of mud underfoot
The grab of a bramble at a sleeve
The pulse of steps and of a heart
Take away internal battles
Make it easy to go
Make existence my purpose
Let me be scorched by sun
Or bitten by wind
Or beaten by hail
Let sleep visit
Let mornings be welcome
And let nights be a reward
Let me be spiritual without a god
Without a church
Without a meaning
For it is the search for meaning
That leaves everything so meaningless
And my life without a purpose
Right now I feel the need to go to a special place I go to sometimes in order to survive.
It is a free place – and a very cheap place – in my head.
It is simple solitude with no outside contact.
It might seem like a dark, lonely, troubled place to an onlooker, but to me it is called peace; it is my long hot bath or my book on the beach or my trip to Mexico (only cheaper).
If I can’t get there I feel frantic – hunted almost, and trapped.
I don’t want to fight this feeling, and I don’t feel I need curing, rescuing or stopping from going there – simply going there in itself is the cure.
The deepest dark washes over my head like an inky tide and then it sucks softly away leaving me levelled like a beach freshened by the ocean.
Afterwards I can walk into the light again feeling soothed and rested.
But I need to go now, and I can’t.
I went for a walk with the dog earlier today and tried to put my feelings into words. But when I feel like this everything seems tangled and busy and thoughts are difficult to map out in a straightforward way. It’s as if thought processes are scrumpled up; it’s all there – there’s nothing new or bigger or different to cope with but it’s confused, messy.
Tangled.
I feel childish when I’m like this. Sulky, grumpy, at the mercy of others.
Perhaps I could write a childish poem, I thought – as it’s National Poetry Day.
So I plished through the wet fields, whilst Dylan ate cowshit and carried a cricket in his mouth (- so gently it survived!), and I typed a few words into my phone:
They are strange these days: of feeling like a child;
Neglecting the domestic and desiring to run wild.
Fighting against life.
Sulking because it’s raining.
“I haven’t eaten!” (Whose fault is that?)
I thrive on this complaining.
Perhaps a hug or an icecream?
An early night or a good scream?
I’m tangled and I’m messy
I’m sticky and I’m stressy
Turn down the lights, stroke my head.
Whisper “There, there” and put me to bed.
I don’t want this! or that! or the other!
Leave me alone – you’re too much bother!
But don’t say “Act your age!”, whatever you do
Because today I am barely more than two!
It’s such a selfish and guilt-ridden feeling, having what I have decided to call “A charmed strife”.
Life should and can be good – but part of that being good means giving my head time out on the naughty step. Otherwise I feel permanently unhappy.
I think standing in the mud and staring into puddles helped a bit today.
Bug in Muddy Puddle, by Rachel, aged 2 and a lot
We currently have a bunch of people making decisions about our country who most of us did not vote for.
These people do not care about:
Children – or those who care for them or work with them
Sick people – or those who care for them or work with them
Poor people – or those who care for them or work with them
Homeless people – or those who care for them or work with them
Disabled and elderly people – or those who care for them or work with them
Animals
Our natural environment
Public transport
The planet
The oceans
Equality
Renewable energy
The future
Not only do they not see how important it is to protect all of the above, but they have set themselves on a course to bugger up all of the above.
The awful, heartbreaking and barbaric decision to allow the murdering of badgers is a perfect example of the dangerous way they make ill-informed decisions. They either don’t understand what they are doing or they do understand and they don’t care – either way they are a very dangerous group of people.
I’m angry. Very bloody angry. And desperately sad.
A flash fiction
What was strange, Florrie noticed, clipping Mabel’s overgrown fringe behind her ear the way she’d seen Mum do it, was all the stuff they said that she’d never heard before; stuff they could have said years ago if it was bothering them both so much.
‘Does it hurt?’ she asked as she tightened Mabel’s pigtails.
Mabel sat there trance-like; white-faced and red-eyed and smelling of Marmite. School mornings in winter were hard enough without being woken up by Dad coming home at 2am.
‘No,’ she whispered in reply like a ghost, staring blankly at the window as if there was nothing beyond it.
Mabel was silent until they reached the school gates. And then in a voice as thin and high as the frail winter cloud trails, she said, ‘I’m being good and quiet and it’s still all going wrong.’
Florrie took her hand for the first time in years and walked with her as far as the infants’ entrance.
‘It’s not your fault, Mabel. It’s nothing you did,’ repeating what Grandma had said to her.
But did she believe it?
She would carry on not being a nuisance too. Just in case it helped.
When I finished my degree with the Open University in May, I decided that as soon as I got my final result – and if I passed – I would write about studying with the OU.
My result arrived at the end of July but I realised I didn’t know what to write, or – more to the point – what not to write. It’s been an on and off experience that started twelve years ago with the last three years being the most intense so there’s a danger of a lot of back story. I sat down and started to write something two weeks ago, but it became a rather dull account of the courses I’d taken, and as I was writing it I was saying to myself, ‘No, this isn’t it. This is crap.’
I don’t want to jump up and down yelling, ‘I’ve got an honours degree!’ I never began adult learning to get a degree and I’m glad I didn’t take that approach. I took courses because I wanted to know stuff and I wanted to use my brain. I became addicted to opening my head and tweaking with the wiring. The degree has been a bonus – which has arrived just at a time when I can’t afford to take any more courses (now called modules).
There are points I want to make about learning and thinking; about the connections between learning and society, and about how less statistical, less mechanical-based learning and a bigger focus on discussions, ideas and theories might not only make us more curious and open-minded but might also make us better and more useful members of society ready to consider new ideas and with the skills to challenge things.
Of course there are facts, of course there are statistics, of course there are rules in any field, but I think they should all come with a zipper like a luggage bag that we can open up in order to challenge the contents and ask who put them there. And, I think most importantly, that this “Did you pack your bag yourself?” type question should apply to our own brains too. We need to examine what’s in our own heads: Did you pack your own brain? Did you look at what went into it and why? Do you know what’s in there and who put it in there? Is it all stuff that you need and is useful to you? I see you have the times tables and periodic tables in there – is that really going to be useful to you where you’re going? And your holiday reading: ‘Exact and Accurate Facts About the Romans: you’d better believe it.’ by Professor Pompous N. Narrow-minded – Hmmm… are you sure you wouldn’t prefer ‘How to Make an Interesting Picture of Roman Life Through Archaeological Finds’ by Many and Various?
School seems to have tried (pretty unsuccessfully) to teach me who did what and when, what happens when you mix this with that, how to sit quietly, how to obey rules. How not to think for myself… I didn’t see the point of carrying on with this kind of education and I still don’t find it very useful.
I remember sitting in a physics lesson and the teacher telling the class “this does that” and “that does this” and me thinking, ‘Why…? Why though?!?’
In history lessons, we were told, “So and so did this”, “another person said that”, “the people thought something else.” ‘But, how do you know?’ I thought. ‘You’ve only given me one person’s word for this.’ And as for telling me we know that God and Jesus said and did things based on some books that a bunch of blokes wrote down years later…! Well…
Other people seemed to accept the “facts”, the rules, the processes as sets of information to be memorised and regurgitated. They repeated them in tests, they scored the points. I didn’t learn like that. I don’t learn like that. I needed a point, a reason; proof of how we know something and how it might be useful. I want to see things working, being applied to life, otherwise what’s the point?
I don’t mind uncertainty, experts having different opinions, and having to weigh up a rough probability based on different evidences. I wish I could go back in time and try this approach on the young Rachel. Would she have responded differently? I know that when our youngest comes home from her Church of England primary school telling me that God did this and Jesus did that I want to shake her and say, ‘Question your sources! Don’t accept things just because that’s what the person telling you believes! Your beliefs should be a result of looking at all sides of things.’
Some people’s studying always has an end goal by choice or by financial/career necessity. But having an end goal, studying for that one purpose, concentrating on what it takes to pass, managing to stick with that, achieving that and getting the desired job that requires that set of knowledge doesn’t fit with the way my mind works. It doesn’t fit with my idea of educating people for life.
What I’ve found through studying many and varied courses with the OU is how to take a good look inside my own brain. It’s taught me to think about what I think and why, what I want to know and why, and how new knowledge from many different academics in many different fields has helped me not only to see that learning is not the same as facts, but that being anxious about memorising stuff was seriously hindering my learning process.
I don’t think I would have come to the place I am today if it wasn’t for the Open University. Where else can you chop and change course like that, have many many interests like that, obtain a degree that’s in not one, not two, not three but several different areas like that? How else can you improve yourself like that without even leaving your house, fit everything around family and work, and send assignments sitting up in bed at midnight? I’ve realised that I don’t come easily packaged, I don’t want to shine in one area, I am happy to be a jack of all trades – easily distracted by something I haven’t tried before. I am a human being first and foremost. An imperfect, curious, questioning, open-eyed, open-minded person. I’ve learnt to question myself, and challenge my intolerances (most of which I had no right to have) and preconceptions. I’ve learnt that poetry is not actually scary or that difficult! I’ve learnt that statistics are a feeble way of trying to prove an argument, and I’ve learnt that people can’t be trusted and yet people can be trusted. I’ve learnt that having a degree is not necessarily the same as knowing loads of things or the same as being a good learner.
I think it’s really important not to plonk ourselves in one field in life: to only look at things from one perspective. I think it’s important to see thinking and information as unfixed, as fluid, as never-ending.
I studied technology, social sciences, the arts, psychology, health and social care, literature, creative writing, and in my daily life I am interested in music, in writing, in taking photographs, how the news is reported, how we are affected by TV and media. I’ve seen how philosophy runs through all of these things: how we think the way we do, why we live the way we do, and most importantly how we must observe ourselves and all of humankind and discuss these things.
Many times over the last 2 weeks whilst thinking about writing this piece, I’ve thought how things I’ve heard or seen apply to what I want to say here. That just goes to show really how important learning and keeping learning, how thinking and discussing and challenging must be available to all and must be encouraged.
We can’t just rely on packing our brains with preconceptions, or unchallenged information delivered mechanically.
We need to know ourselves to improve ourselves.
I’m proud of myself. Very proud that I’ve looked inside my head and allowed it to be challenged, tweaked, added to and, for the purposes of being a life-long learner, I’ve had a zipper fitted.
I’m glad I’ve got a degree but above all I’m glad I improved my way of looking at things. I KNOW it has made me older, fatter, messier, untidier, frustrated, cynical… a much better person.
There is a tide.
It is strong.
It pulls at the ground, at the air, at the people.
People are drawn, excited by its power. They join hands; excited by the noise, excited by the enormity, excited by other people telling them to be excited. They are excited by a need to be excited by something.
There is much noise, much enthusiasm, but very little discussion about why they are doing this and what they will leave behind.
Everyone (it seems) is overwhelmed by the sounds and they are getting into boats and sailing away on the tide.
I squint into the distance from where they have come, behind and beyond the queues of people, and see tiny dots left on the land.
I am thinking, “But…”
And yet I say nothing.
I am wondering, “Why?”
And yet I say nothing.
I sigh.
I have doubts about the tide and how long it will last and what good it will bring to go out on such a powerful tide. But such a great number of people can’t be wrong, can they? And there is such enthusiasm.
They take a lot of money, a lot of provisions, and all the newspaper reporters go with them too.
I don’t wave goodbye. They don’t wave goodbye. They think I am angry or mad because I don’t go with them. I don’t feel angry, I don’t think I’m mad, but I wonder why I don’t find the tide as mesmerising as they do.
And so I look at the ground, at the sky, at the dots, and find many things to distract me. I am happy for a while. They have their thing out on the tide and I have my thing. I find comfort in this for a while.
But every day, every hour, every minute my thoughts are disturbed by messages washing up on the beach about the tide; how it is strong, how it is good, how there are new heros to worship, new distractions to concentrate on – over and above any of my things, and apparently everything bad has faded into insignificance.
I walk away from the mess the messages have left on the shore and travel to the dots only to find they are people.
“We were left behind,” they say. “Why did you say nothing when you saw us?”
“I didn’t want to go against the tide,” I say.
“You may as well have gone with them then,” they say. “You’re no help.”
I see the boats return on the next tide.
The people returning are poor, are hungry. It turns out the money wasn’t for them – it was used to make the noise. But they say they have memories and they have heros.
I hope it is enough for them.
I see it is no comfort to the dots. The bad things didn’t go away. They got worse.
I wonder if I could have gone against the tide and what good it would have brought.
As a writer, as a mother, as a member of society, as a musician, as an ex-school girl, as a small business person (I’m not particularly small though!) and as an observer of the media I’ve seen the effects of and discussions around competitiveness throughout my life and something is bugging me. It’s this statement:
“Competing is healthy.”
Well I’m here to say, just a cotton-picking minute! That statement is incomplete!
There are all sorts of words and opinions excluded from that.
This is more like it:
“It is believed by many that competing is healthy but it is by no means necessary have competition in order to be happy, fit, or successful in what one does. Although many enjoy competition, many others do not and, unhappily, find it is forced upon them. Competition is about winners and losers. There are many areas of life and many situations where winners and losers are not appropriate and competition can actually be damaging or destroy one’s enjoyment of an activity. Whilst some people may feel they need to compete, their views should not be imposed upon those who don’t and can cope perfectly well – if not better – without competing at anything.”
(Those are the words I’ve come up with just now. I will probably think of one hundred more throughout the day)
Competing is not for me. It doesn’t make me feel healthy at all. I don’t want to stop other people competing but I wish I could stop it being enforced on those who don’t enjoy it and don’t benefit from it. I also wish I could dispel the myths about competition because I think many of them ARE myths – especially when people say that competition is THE way to create team spirit and communal sense of achievement. It is not THE way, it is A way. There are many things that can be created, built, achieved and enjoyed (including physical activity) together that create community and bonding without winners and losers. In fact I’ve been more physically active whilst deliberately avoiding the Olympics and it has involved absolutely no competition whatsoever.
I don’t enter writing competitions, for instance. I am aware of writing competitions and had a period of about 2 months of my life where I attempted to enter about 3 but I found that I wrote badly and lost my natural flow when thinking about being judged. I write for the sheer love of it, for the almost physical need to just do it, to create, to share, to make something. I don’t want or need to win anything. I have also been involved in reading writing that is being judged and can see how damaging it can be, how subjective it is and how not only does good writing not always win but the winners are not always my favourite. I worry that people think they need to win things in order to feel a sense of fulfilment in what they do. It’s not for everybody but I think people are swept up into tides of common thinking and don’t always stop to think what suits them.
As a mother I see how awards and grades and comparing oneself with others all the time creates neediness. Children find they feel a need to always be better than others and when they can’t be they can be unhealthily disappointed, or even quite unpleasant. These outcomes could be avoided if children were just encouraged to enjoy what they do. I’m not saying, ‘No competitive sport.’ Those that want it can go get it rather than everyone being forced into it and feeling they have to opt out like loser. When I was a school pupil I felt the constant comparing almost unbearable and not a true measure of ability. Top grades does not mean most intelligent yet those who don’t find themselves at the top of the class feel less worthy. I think we are teaching the wrong sets of values.
It upsets me incredibly that we have an almost pack-like mentality in that we have to arrange ourselves into some sort of order like dogs. The angriest, the fastest, the greediest, the bossiest – the most competitive of us all is considered the best. But it’s simply not true that he is. The cave man who runs the fastest, pushes other cavemen out of the way, grabs the meat and gets to eat it all himself is the pushiest but he’s not the best and he has deprived others. It’s an attitude I see in business and instead of being applauded it should be frowned upon as Neanderthal.
Recently the obsession with winning has exploded because of the Olympics. Games with winners and losers as entertainment seems to work. It’s fun (as I have observed! I don’t enjoy it at all though). But whole lives centered around winning and losing?
I don’t think so.
Please stop thinking competition is good for everyone or a necessary part of civilised society. Because it simply is not true.
It isn’t.
No it just isn’t.
No. Shut up.
A flash fiction
We are allowed to watch a film on a doctor’s fold-up computer in the camp. It is a film in a language I don’t understand with people so different from us it is like they are from another planet. Their clothes are plain and pale and flat. They speak too loud and too fast and there is never any still or any quiet.
A translator tells us it is a film popular with children all over the world.
There is a girl my age in the film. But she is not like me. She sits with her family at a table to eat but she doesn’t like her meal and refuses to eat it. I can not imagine ever refusing food.
The girl in the film is shouting at her father.
When the floods came and the mud and the house moved down the hill and we tried to run away I shouted at my father. But he didn’t hear me.
The girl in the film says a word: Yuck.
I would like some yuck. I would eat some yuck. I want to pull her flat hair and sit in her place and eat up all her yuck and show her how hungry I am.
I live in an area where the scream of an emergency vehicle’s siren is such a rare occurrence that I think about each and every one I hear.
I might hear one a day in the summer, when the population momentarily swells with holidaymakers, and wonder if a child has fallen on rocks, or someone has crashed driving too fast around a corner on our narrow lanes or if people are trapped in a burning building. I’ll take a few seconds to remember where each of my children currently is and if it might be one of them. I will think about the day our son came off his bike and landed on his head and my stomach will flip with remembered anxiety. I will think about the respective times my father was rushed into hospital with angina and a head injury and I will think about who I know that might have a heart attack or a fall. Has my mother fallen down the stairs in her cluttered house? Has my mother-in-law had breathing difficulties again? Is it a fire engine, a police car or an ambulance and where are they going?
When my father was receiving treatment at The Royal Marsden hospital in Chelsea I would speak to him every day on the phone and I could hear a siren in the background every minute. Each one of those sirens symbolised pain, death, heartache, violence, fire, and fear to me and I wondered how people cope living with those sounds constantly.
I wonder now how long it would take me to get used to it if I lived in a city. How long before I would have to put up a barrier, block out my empathy, sympathy, worry for others and just let those sounds of pain, death, heartache, violence, fire and fear be background noise in order to survive. You can’t be worried, anxious, distressed and empathetic all the time. It’s not possible and it’s not healthy.
Maybe we shouldn’t be living in situations where we have to though. Maybe being overexposed to an excess of human suffering means we switch off too much. Do we become desensitised?
In the nearest town to where I live the few homeless people there are remain relatively hidden. You’d have to actively go looking for them. I know they are there because I’ve read about them but I don’t know where they sleep. Occasionally there’ll be someone asking for change in a shop doorway and it’s so rare I do give them money. I couldn’t give money to every homeless person if I lived in a major city though. After a period of guilt and discomfort I suppose I would just learn to walk past them faster like everyone else.
The news from all over the world is available to us constantly. If we choose to we can read about violence, famine, drought, destruction of rainforests, bloody revolutions, religious hatred, murder, evil dictators, the regular reports of the complete cock-up the government are making of the NHS, schools and welfare all day and every day. Or if we choose we can completely block all of that because ‘there’s just too much sadness in the world’ and read about which celebrities have had a baby or lost weight, who’s broken a rule in a football match, who’s won one of the ridiculous number of talent shows on TV or whether Adele’s voice is all better now…
I wonder if we know too much now. If we share too much. Is it becoming necessary to distract ourselves more and more from the constant distress? Do we become fixated on pointless things – while refusing to believe they are pointless – in order to fill our hearts and minds with lighter emotions? Has life become a series of shallow, petty obsessions about appearances and fancy things, sport and light entertainment to jolly up our sad world?
Everything’s become too big for all of us. Is that it? It’s too overwhelming. It’s not manageable, so we switch off?
I live in a village popular for weddings and I think about the wedding bells each time I hear them. I think about love and commitment and new beginnings and how wonderful love and marriage can be when they work out. I think about nerves and excitement and promise. But I can never help myself thinking, I hope they haven’t put everything on this one day; I hope it’s not just thousands of pounds on showing off and a dress and flowers never to be seen again and food for hundreds of people who they hardly know. I hope they’ve thought about the rest of their lives and the serious commitment and the future.
I often wonder what people are really thinking about. Is everyone constantly trying not to think about anything really serious? And I wonder what I am actually achieving by thinking about serious things.
Will you still love me when I’m ugly?
You are ugly
And you love me?
Yes
Will you still love me when I’m old?
You are old
And you love me?
Yes
Will you love me when I’m wrinkly?
You are wrinkly
And you love me?
Yes
When I’m embarrassing?
You are
And you…?
Yes
Was I ever beautiful…? And not embarrassing?
No
And you’ve always loved me?
Yes
Well I wish you’d said something
What? And spoil your fun?
The person with the new and different idea is wrong!
The person with the new and different idea is wrong!
We are unfamiliar with this way of thinking. It is too new!
We must keep repeating old mantras
We must keep repeating old mantras
The person with the new and different idea must be made to fit!
And if they don’t fit they shall be outcast, dismissed, looked at curiously and slightly sideways.
The person with the new and different idea is questioning our ways!
The person with the new and different idea is questioning our convictions!
This person dares to ask us for evidence that our ways are best and the different idea might be wrong!
But we don’t need evidence for common knowledge.
What a fool…
There are more of us.
We all agree
The person with the new and different idea can not be right.
But the person with the new and different idea is putting that idea into practice!
The person with the new and different idea is not failing!
We will ignore the not failing part and concentrate on old mantras.
That way will not work
That way will not work
The old ways are the best
Alternative ways of thinking are too scary
We must keep repeating old mantras
We must keep repeating old mantras
I heard someone actually tried that in another country and it might have been okay, quite good even… Old mantras? Right… No it doesn’t fit those…
We’ll shout them loudly so the person with the new and different idea can’t be heard.
I’m celebrating 2 years since my first attempt at flash fiction by sharing that first story from July 2010 (which is in fact more like a short story than a flash)
(Isn’t it funny – and rather worrying – how only 2 years ago I thought of sponsored academies as fictitious)
‘Zophar, listen.’ Luna crouched before him on the pavement. ‘You can get out whenever you want, okay?’
Zophar nodded, looking past his mother to the others. His body was poised in politeness towards his mother but in anticipation of other children, his eyes looked ahead to his new schoolmates and he willed her to say goodbye.
‘Did you Anti-Germ your hands?’
Another nod.
‘Where are your disposable toilet seat covers?’
Zophar patted his backpack.
‘And mask? Remember which pocket?’
More nodding.
His father opened the driver door of the car and the airlock was released with a Clop. Shhhhhhhh. He stepped out carefully, holding a green canister, spraying into the air as he approached.
‘Another squirt of Pollute Repel for luck.’ He misted the air around Zophar’s head and tiptoed back to the car, as if trying to avoid making contact with the ground. ‘One last button test, perhaps Luna?’ he called, slipping back into the car and sealing himself in.
‘Yes. Quick button run-though,’ said Luna. Tell me again.’
‘Emergency Back-Off spray, emergency water purifying tablet.’ Zophar’s fingers ran downwards over the buttons on his blazer at speed as he rushed through the list. ‘Emergency anti-viral pill, emergency contact button, emergency detox spray button.’ He touched his cuffs next. ‘Panic buttons. Now can I go?’ The five-year-old jiggled impatiently.
‘Anytime at all, if you are worried,’ continued Luna, ‘if someone touches you, if someone coughs near you, if the toilets are dirty. Any reason. You hear me? We’ll get you out straight away. Just press those cuff buttons. And when the car brings you back remember: shoes in the porch, through the first entrance door, blazer off, then through the airlock and straight to the arrivals shower. Don’t come in with your shoes and blazer and don’t touch the cruise control in the car on the way home. You hear me?’
‘I know, I know, you said. Now can I go?’
‘Okay.’ Luna kissed the air, not touching Zophar. ‘Go baby. Take care. Remember: buttons!’ She mimed pushing buttons as he ran off. ‘And don’t run or you’ll fall and touch the ground and I’ll have to take you home!’
Luna clasped her hands in front of her chin. ‘Good luck. Come home safely,’ she whispered.
Zophar scampered up the steps as fast as he thought he would get away with. He was more happy and excited than he could ever remember being.
This was better than birthdays. There were other children here.
The entrance was massive. It took up one whole side of the building.
‘Prevention Pharmaceutical’s Academy of Learning and Science welcomes you all and asks that when you enter the building, you do not share a door pod with anyone else,’ came a voice from within the walls.
Robotic eyes shifted around and each pod spoke instructions through hidden speakers as one hundred children at a time were allowed to enter the first segment where they were instantly separated by screens that held the children in stalls as they were scanned for identification and viruses.
Immediately three boys were locked in and a voice told them to wait until cars arrived to remove them.
Some newcomers were familiar with screening and airlocks. They stood patiently while the eyes and scanners moved around them. But the others, from older housing out of the city had not experienced Entrance Pollution Prevention.
Zophar could hear cries of ‘I want to go home,’ ‘I don’t like this,’ while others sobbed and tried to back out.
Luna had told him about the entrance and how other boys weren’t used to it. ‘They’ll soon get domesticated,’ she had said. ‘Everyone learns eventually.’
Next they were filtered into a huge glass cube. It was one of six on three levels. A voice told them to wait for the professors to collect them.
In this mix of trained and untrained five-year-olds, the difference was obvious to Zophar: the untrained boys had less shiny clothes and they didn’t have emergency blazer buttons. Zophar worried for them. But they didn’t look bothered. A few of them started talking to each other and they even tried to talk to the trained boys. Luna had said to keep away from untrained boys because they weren’t treated. He wondered if it would be safer to hold his nose then he wouldn’t be sharing their air. He held his breath for twenty seconds and gave up.
An untrained boy had been watching him. ‘I can hold my breath loads longer than that.’
‘Ludo’s the best at holding his breath. He swims underwater,’ said another boy.
‘He goes swimming?! Wow…’ Zophar stared.
‘Ye-ah, loads of us go. It’s really good for you.’ The boy threw off his blazer and mimicked breaststroke. ‘Gives you strong muscles. My dad said so.’
Zophar, Ludo and some others took off their blazers too, giggling as they ran in circles pretending to swim.
‘Why are your buttons so big?’
Zophar turned to see Ludo wearing his blazer and fiddling with the cuff buttons.
‘No! Don’t!’
The airlock opened and a robotic sensor promptly identified Zophar’s blazer. Ludo was shunted gently towards the door pods.
‘Please wait until your car arrives,’ said a voice.
From the door pods Ludo was directed into Zophar’s family car and within minutes he was lowered out at Zophar’s house.
A woman’s voice from a wall speaker said he could try school again tomorrow and she was glad he was home. ‘And remember:’ she said, ‘shoes in the porch, through the first entrance door, blazer off then through the airlock and straight to the arrivals shower. Don’t come in with your shoes and blazer on.’
Luna waited outside the bathroom with clean towels. She stared; horrified at the sight of the strange, untreated boy and then she hyperventilated.
Zophar’s father left Ludo in the entrance while he arranged his collection. Then the house and car were treated before the car was sent to collect the right boy this time. It had all been too risky and too stressful – Luna would home-school Zophar from now on.
This story is now published as an e-story from Ether Books:
(N.B. Thanks to Norman Geras – @normblog , who very kindly supplied me with the inspired prompt word: “prompt” when I asked on Twitter!)
Do social networks change us?
Do they cause more rows?
Do we feel safer “having a go” online?
Perhaps people seem less “real” and we think can forget our manners online… Perhaps we push things a little further than we would in a face-to-face situation? It’s okay to fight with someone we’ll probably never meet, right? Maybe the part of us that normally says, ‘Leave it now, don’t forget his mum does your mum’s hair,’ doesn’t come into play in online interaction.
Maybe people really are nicer to people that they physically spend time with than those they meet online because they don’t really care about those with whom they social-network. That’s why there is so much more animosity online than you would see, say, between people chatting together in a coffee shop, right?
Well, no, I don’t think so.
I think it’s something else: I think outside of social-networking – in the “real” world if you will – interactions are more about body language, powerful voices, confident speakers, even accents perhaps… I think presence often dominates over content and the Internet takes away unfair advantages, meaning we don’t have to let go of issues that we really care about.
I think the Internet provides a level playing field. Those fears, concerns about our appearances, a lack of confidence, a speech impediment, an accent, worries that we won’t be listened to or respected and tens of other physical/social reasons get in the way of us being convincing or feeling like we’re being convincing. These things don’t matter or exist online.
I suspect a lot of people arguing online are not just arguing with the person they are interacting with – they are releasing arguments they have had to internalise when they’ve been overwhelmed, or quietened by a louder character or felt swamped in the physical world. For all its problems the Internet is freeing, it’s fairer, it brings us into contact with people we may never have met because of age, culture, location, or people we may have avoided meeting because of pre-conceived ideas about appearances.
There always has to be a last word though. Face-to-face disagreements generally end before things get too heated. We can physically see if someone’s going to shout us down, try to make us look like a fool, out-wit us with speedier reactions. Or we can tell that we’re going too far and risk losing our audience. And a verbal disagreement often can be interrupted or diverted naturally. We can get distracted or cause our own distractions in face-to-face. In an online chat this stopping seems to be a problem.
Real life, face-to-face situations may seem more pleasant but they are probably only more pleasant on the surface. People are just not always saying what they think. To a point this is surely a good thing. Yes, some things are best left unsaid. And there has to be a point at which we let someone else have the last word – even if we feel they are wrong, or they have insulted our intelligence by misinterpreting what we have said. Otherwise it doesn’t stop. We can end up defending ourselves and not our position.
Online we probably don’t shut up soon enough.
In face-to-face we often shut up too soon because we are not confident enough to defend a point-of-view.
I know which I think is worse.
I didn’t want this post to be about me, but I am adding my personal experience from the comments (below) here so that you can see where I’m coming from:
In over 12 years of online communicating I have come across many situations where things have been said that I know I wouldn’t have been involved with offline. That was the whole point of this: to emphasise that online conversations – on the whole – are good and useful and freeing.
I had one friend at school with whom I felt I could be myself and argue safely with. We were very close friends despite being polls apart politically. When she left at 15 I had no one that I felt safe to argue with. I’ve spent my life feeling dominated and frustrated by other people’s physical presence – even most of my family and my in-laws – so have sat through SO many discussions quietly whilst screaming in my head that I disagree or have an alternative viewpoint. I can’t emphasise enough how big of a problem it’s been for me.
3 years working in a pub taught me a lot about human behaviour too and I noticed a lot of bullshitters dominating discussions whilst quiet clever people looked on. It’s absolutely astounding how many people are fooled by physical presence, or a well-spoken or loud voice.
It wasn’t until I began using online forums with the OU in 2000 that I began to find the security to argue again. But it took time and I made a lot of mistakes, and I still go back to scaredy Rachel in face-to-face situations.
I love the Internet for taking away the bullshitters’ unfair advantage – I call it cheating – of drowning out other people or talking down to them. I wouldn’t even be able to begin counting the number of times a tone of voice has stopped me dead and I’ve allowed someone to “win” (only in their tiny little minds though!) just because they are overbearing. It happens all the time.
I did a psychology course in 2010 and a chunk of the course was about computer-mediated-communication. One of the course tutors remarked (it may have been mine, but I never have anything to do with the tutors!) that an online social life is no substitution for a real social life. And THAT’S why I wrote this post – because I think it can be a VERY good substitution for a “real” social life so long as we remember that we are still dealing with real people and it is actually “real”.
Even online I still think some ignorant and stubborn people have an unfair advantage, perhaps, because you’ll never get them to understand your thinking and you simply have to give up. There will have to be times when I state my opinion and leave it because I’m getting nowhere or I have been misunderstood. It feels like you’re letting someone win and so I find that very hard (perhaps compounded by the fact that it’s been happening all my life and so I LOATHE having my intelligence insulted!) but it’s one of the most important skills of online communication: to know when to let go, and I’ve noticed recently that I’m getting much better at it. 
Or: Being a ‘What if…?’
“Because it is egotistical, controlling, over-inflated, self-important & meddles & ruins all things good, I think I’ll call my anxiety Dave,” I tweeted this morning.
And then I remembered Jo had recommended that I eat bananas. (Thanks, Jo, if you read this!) So I fetched a banana and wondered why it would do me good. I looked it up on the Internet and found out about the benefits of bananas to our mental health.
I have a mental health problem: I suffer from anxiety.
Anxiety is a rotten thing.
For me it’s also a constant thing.
I live in a permanently anxious state. It’s in my blood, it’s part of who I am. It’s somehow linked to my furtive imagination, and sometimes that can work in my favour and be a benefit (and, I hope, perhaps to those around me too on occasion), but sometimes it works against me. I come from anxious, imaginative parents so it’s bound to have rubbed off or been passed down or both. Most of the time it’s bearable and I wouldn’t recognise myself if I woke up one morning and wasn’t repeatedly taking the real into an unreal place anymore. Being a ‘What if…?’ person is the best part of me. (Well, it’s the part I like best anyway!) Everyday things can be turned into adventures. News stories can be turned into fictional stories. There’s a feeling that nothing is impossible. When I see that positive side of us ‘What if…?’ people in others I realise that the world needs quiet imaginative people having sometimes crazy, sometimes useful creative ideas.
But I have times when it can be more extreme. And ‘What if…?’ isn’t very helpful. In fact it’s downright disruptive. I am on edge all the time and far too easily startled. I hate surprises and sudden noises. If I have more than a split second to think about doing something I take the possibilities further than they need to go so that I am imagining myself in a situation where I am unable to cope or incapable of being myself or presenting myself normally. Put simply: I imagine deaths, accidents, public embarrassment, failure; I imagine anything that could go wrong but also things that couldn’t possibly go wrong. I might find myself feeling increasingly overwhelmed by an impending social situation, for example – something that is, to others, normal and everyday. I can actually freeze for a whole day if I know I have something vaguely socially demanding to do in the evening. Or I can lie awake all night practising in my mind how I will get everything done if I have a lot to do the next day. I believe a lot of people do this but perhaps not to a point where they become unable to function properly. If I have guests I will be so busy worrying whether everyone has everything they need and if the towel needs changing in the loo that I become unable to make conversation – and I will have worried myself stupid that exactly that would happen! But I can’t stop it because I find myself physically as well as mentally overwhelmed. And that’s the other problem: anxiety comes with a whole host of physical complaints. Headaches, sleepiness, shakes, skin problems, stomach pains and digestive problems, hot flushes, caffeine intolerance, weak muscles… The urge to crawl away and sleep in a dark corner comes over me as an answer to all my problems regularly.
For most of my life I haven’t talked about this because I didn’t even admit it to myself. When I started to notice at some point in my childhood that I seemed to need more time out than other kids I didn’t want it discussed, I just wanted to be left alone. As a teenager, dominated by hormones, I fought against the anxiety and tried to block the imagined disasters for a while and tried to be more outgoing, more active, but I look back now and realise my trying-to-be-normal behaviour was just daft and out-of-character. My life seemed to be full of much nervous garbling and much exhaustion. So worried was I by my own silences I thought I had to fill them by speaking tosh.
Still in denial – and possibly rather afraid of the outcome of any self-analysis – I struggled to maintain what I perceived as normality by watching others. I copied patterns of behaviour that didn’t necessarily feel comfortable for me but that’s what we humans do, isn’t it: try to fit in with majority behaviour? The fact that I would often find myself pacing up and down the sitting room crying and biting my fingers until they bled didn’t suggest to me that I was becoming a little like a caged animal by denying myself my instinctive behaviour, no – strangely, I would just move on and pretend it hadn’t happened and carry on looking to others for clues.
But it was when I started to get the more frightening ‘What if…?’ disaster feelings every day about three years ago, that I started to worry about myself and wonder if it would ever stop. I compared myself with people who wrote about their food intolerances, depression, bipolarism, and saw similarities, but not enough to feel that any of those were what I was struggling through. Why was I so frightened all the time? Something told me this wasn’t about needing medication, major life-style changes or forcing myself out of this. I began to feel that this was more to do with understanding and accepting something rather than fighting. But understanding what?
Starting writing helped. It helped a lot and it has continued to help. Throw a lot of ‘What if…?’ situations into a short story and Hey Presto! my imagination’s had a little outing and it’s happy and bothers me with less with the madness, and I’m happy because I’ve created something and have given myself a present. Separating the real from the imagined like that is therapeutic, I’ve found. But what also helped was taking writing courses that included life-writing. Hesitant and embarrassed at first, I was convinced I had to nothing to say, nothing that anyone else would be interested in, but a wealth of strong emotions and memories came tumbling out. There was a lot of guilt in there: guilt for not appreciating my father while he was still alive, there was an enormous sense of loss that I hadn’t dealt with, but there was a surprising amount of childlike vulnerability that I didn’t recognise and wasn’t sure if I liked it.
And then recently I discovered the connection between grief and anxiety. My anxiety had become slowly worse just after my father had died. (It seems crazy now – that I hadn’t made this connection but I suppose when you are not only denying that you have a problem but that you are worthy of any analysis you are not looking for solutions.)
I had anxiety. Of course! It was okay to accept that, and in doing so to begin to manage my life a little bit better around it. So now I know that when I am being irrational by imagining the worst too often it is because I have suffered a great loss in my life.
But all this has opened up some very very old wounds indeed and made me understand something about myself that I had been blocking for nearly forty years…
Thirty-nine years ago, when I was three years old, my 13-month-old sister, Beatrice, died.
I rarely talk about the death of my baby sister. I don’t like to “use” her (for want of a better word) or my family. I don’t feel like I own the monopoly on the pain that her death left. My parents, of course, were totally devastated when she died and I always felt that the greatest portion of the pain belonged to them. I also felt that my sisters have suffered in their own very different and individual ways because of what happened to our family, and I couldn’t take my own loss and discuss it separately. It’s been a bit of a taboo, I suppose. But the life-writing, the feelings after my father’s death, reading about anxiety, and the sudden increase in fear and the childlike feelings that were emerging made me remember dreams I had when I was four: I kept dreaming that my new baby sister was going to get hurt. Bad, bad things had happened and could happen again, I must have thought. This must have given way to the extreme and terrifying dreams. Too young to realise or explain my fears I suppose I absorbed them and turned them into dreams and now they are part of who I am: anxious.
Today had Debilitating Anxiety written all over it from the start. I’m not sure what the trigger was (perhaps concern about my Open University degree) but I knew it wasn’t just regular anxiety – it was Dave. I began to blow everything out of proportion. So, I ate the banana. I organised my thoughts. I gave myself permission to write.
There’s a still a young, vulnerable part of me who needs to express those emotions she bottled up for so long, but I’m feeling less anxious already just because I’m accepting everything.
And because I ate a banana, I expect
A short story / flash-fiction
It’s still there, like a trophy, on the kitchen windowsill – the bottle you drank from on Wednesday night.
I don’t drink beer. Anyone who knows me knows that.
I wonder how many people have walked past the house and seen it there and thought, ‘She’s had a man in her house. At last.’
I looked at it on Thursday morning, sitting in the sunshine, the last swill at the bottom evaporating into the morning air. I breathed the deliciously dirty, left over smell into my head and drank in the memories as I thought about your deoxyribonucleic acid still on its un-rinsed neck. Still on my neck. The words you knew I wanted to hear repeating in my mind, caught on a loop. Later when Mum saw it but said nothing I felt I was holding that night like a clandestine cloak around me. Memories still so physical I couldn’t share them. Not yet. Maybe in a couple of weeks I’d tell her about the man known by his friends as The Deer Stalker.
On Friday the stale beer-warmed-in-the-sun smell accosted me at breakfast, as if to taunt me: ‘He didn’t phone. You’re used and dirty,’ it said. I held it in my hands for the first time since Wednesday night and examined the neck, hoping I hadn’t made a mistake and fallen for a man who was easy with his DNA after all. I played the evening back like a film and smiled at the blank table top as if it were your face. I dipped the back of my neck into my shoulder as if it were your hand. And then I closed my eyes and pressed the warm rim of the beer bottle to my mouth as if it were your kiss.
Yesterday was cloudy. I washed and tumble-dried my sheets, and the house smelled of me not you or your beer. I looked at your bottle on the windowsill and told it to call me. I told it I was going to be out all day but I would have my phone with me. Over lunch I protected myself with hands in front of my face as I told Anna about my encounter with The Deer Stalker. She tore up her seeded roll doubtfully and gave me half. I found I couldn’t eat as she suggested reasons for your nickname.
After a silence, she asked, ‘What was it like? Are you glad he was your first?’ But I could tell she was cross.
I said, ‘Sorry.’ I was sorry I hadn’t told her sooner.
But she said ‘No.’ It wasn’t that. She was sorry I’d had to find out this way.
I didn’t understand.
I had this daydream this morning that I could take your DNA from the bottle and make a baby. I could give birth to you. Hold on to you. If I couldn’t have you then I would have a beautiful copy of you. Maybe you would find out and you would see me with this baby and realise you loved me. And then it dawned on me that maybe I’m already pregnant. As I showered I wondered if perhaps you’ve lost my number and you’ve been trying to contact me.
But now that Anna’s told me what she found out about you last night I don’t want your DNA. I’m holding the bottle under the hot tap and allowing myself, and the ghost of my virginity, one last memory of my defeat. I admire your stalking talent; your ability to watch patiently from afar until you’ve learnt a woman’s moves. That’s a clever technique to appear as if from nowhere and catch us offguard. And then the softly-softly charming, not touching, always getting closer and closer – winning trust, moving gently. Bit by bit. You won’t hurt. How could someone like you hurt? You creep. You creep.
Right.
(Clears throat)
I need to write a blog post about a book. I’m not sure what I’m going to write yet (at the moment I haven’t even thought up a title for this post) but here goes:
(Draws breath)
I have to promote a book.
I have no idea what I’m doing.
That’s right. You can laugh if you want.
Actually… No. That’s not true. I have plenty of ideas about how to promote a book. I have seen lots of ways of promoting books over the last few years and I’m not sure if I want to put myself or my friends or family or anyone I know on the Internet through that. I’m terrible at this kind of thing. And I’ve seen how embarrassed other writers get when they have to promote themselves.
Have to promote themselves…
You see no one’s career is at stake here. No one will profit from this book – other than Lulu and Amazon. Oh and Royal Mail and any other delivery companies used in transporting the books hither and thither. Oh and Fotolia where I bought the cover photo. Oh and maybe any independent bookshops that choose to stock it.
Erm. So why do I need to promote it?
Well I need to promote it because 40 people wrote short stories for it for free, 15 people read stories for it for free, I gave up my time for weeks for free, it would be stupid to make a book and have no one read it. I need to promote it because I owe it to the people who donated stories for it. I need to promote it because Amazon sales rankings are addictive and watching them change last night was the best ever fun. Okay, not that, but I do really want people to read it.
And why should people read it?
Well people should read it because not only is this an interesting book if you’re into flash-fiction, but it’s interesting if you want an introduction to flash fiction; there are some very good and very enjoyable tiny stories in there that will make you laugh, giggle, cry, nod your head, gasp, wince. People should be made aware that there are some exceedingly talented writers living in the west country – FOUR of whom are in North Devon – which is where I am! (Oh, no that four includes me… that’s self-promotion) THREE of whom are in North Devon – which is where I am! It’s a format that you don’t have to commit to. It can be flicked through and stories picked at random. It can be read story-by story over a period of sittings (standings, lyings, waiting-in-queue-ings, lunch-breakings, sitting on the loo-ings, etc..). People should read it because it was put together for National Flash Fiction Day and we’d like more people to know about flash fiction – to read it, to write it, to appreciate it. Some people don’t understand flash fiction and slag it off – can you believe it?!
So what’s my angle? My title? The crux of this blog post?
“Read this book and show the flash slaggers how wrong they are”?
No. It’s this:
“I think you should buy this book”.
(I wish it could be cheaper but it’s not. It’s an expensive business – self-publishing a book.)
I’d like you to read it. I think short stories and flash fiction are wonderful and I want more people to enjoy the freedom and blasty funness of them (do please Google “blasty funness” and tell me if I’ve just been unintentionally incredibly crude). I want you to appreciate the talent and hard work of people scribbling away at home for little or no fame and little or no profit but purely for the love of writing and giving an experience to their readers.
I do feel for those ordinary hard-up writers self-promoting because they have to. It’s not easy.
Oh yeah. Almost forgot the link – ha ha!
Kissing Frankenstein & Other Stories by Flash Fiction South West – Now available at Amazon
Don’t buy it to make me happy.
Buy it to make you happy.
I know! – I should work in advertising, yeah?!
No?
Try another line?
Please find it in your pockets to spend £7.50 so that 40 writers will feel loved, appreciated, and – most importantly of all – read.
You’re still laughing at me right?
Oh – alright: Tania Hershman wrote one of the stories! Now will you buy it?!
The first thing you notice as a child is how it feels like you’re not having to wait so long for Christmas to come around again each year. The next thing you notice is that you’re old enough to leave school, then old enough to drink, old enough to vote – officially an adult! Oh – boy – how you can’t wait to leave your parents’ house and use all your new adult rights. 18th, 19th and 20th birthdays seem to come almost back-to-back. Whoosh! Where did those teenage years go?!
But when your parents celebrate big birthday milestones: their fortieth, their fiftieth, they seem old, and really properly growing-up still seems like a long way off for you yet.
But those Christmases still keep coming thicker and faster, and before you know it you’ve celebrated twenty Christmases, twenty-five Christmases and you can’t believe how quickly summer comes and goes each year. Is it really time for Wimbledon again? you ask yourself.
And then suddenly you find out you’re going to be a parent and you have 8 or 9 months to get used to the idea and then before you’re ready you’re holding a screaming baby in the supermarket with sick on your shoulder and your clothes on inside out and an irritating old woman tells you to ‘Make the most of it. They’ll be grown-up before you know it.’ But you don’t know it and you don’t want to know it because you haven’t slept and you want to tell her to piss off.
And then it’s a baby’s first Christmas and then it is Grandad’s last Christmas. And you yawn, scream and plod through the terrible twos and troublesome threes and Wimbledon again. And then the kids are at school and you’re giving away toddler toys and you notice for the first time how old your parents are looking and you scratch your head and think Gosh am I really a parent? What happened there? And the kids make mess and they make noise and they need less and they want more: they want food and things and money and they write Christmas lists and they write Christmas lists and they write Christmas lists and then one of them looks up thoughtfully and says, ‘Cor. Christmas again already. That year went fast.’
And then taking down the Christmas decorations seems to lead directly into Wimbledon and it hardly seems worth putting the boxes away because you’ll be getting them out again in a minute. And then you catch your reflection in the hall mirror wearing a waterproof jacket and holding a garden centre list as you head downstairs with a thoroughly grown-up serious face just like those you saw on your parents’ faces. And someone in the garden centre tells you your eldest daughter looks just like you used to at that age.
It wasn’t such a long way off after all.
And then you notice that the apples have started growing on the tress again already and it dawns on you that it is precisely 18 years since you first found out you were going to be a parent.
I’ve been waiting recently.
Waiting to get back to normal.
I’ve felt wrong – sometimes unwell, sometimes tired, sometimes exceptionally withdrawn and unable to communicate effectively. I thought this would go when my studying finished, when the children were all well at the same time, when summer came, when we’d recovered from the shock of losing both our fathers, when… well… I suppose I was waiting for a period of unease to become a period of feeling more light-hearted.
I’m not sure what I was expecting. I suppose some kind of lifting of dark clouds, a new energy, my mind and body sighing with relief. Cheerfulness maybe.
My plan was that every night I was going to go to bed with a book and read for pleasure again, free my mind of academic pressure, enjoy not feeling stressed or gloomy or overwhelmed by study pressure or family worries. I was going to spend more time with my husband and we would laugh more, talk more, and feel released from (some of) the confines of stress that we’ve had to deal with recently.
But it hasn’t come. I’m still not laughing. I still don’t feel released. I’m still not reading – books feel like a commitment for which I can’t promise my full attention right to the end. And I guess I’m scared: scared of reading something demanding – emotionally or intellectually – perhaps. And I don’t want to be disappointed either. Life has disappointed me too often in the last 4 years. God forbid I should read a disappointing book on top of everything else!
I still feel stuck in a new way of regarding life – as a serious of difficulties, stresses, worries and losses. I still feel uneasy and troubled. I am fluttery and nervous like a butterfly unable to land on wet ground for fear of drowning. I don’t trust life now. It’s as if there is no dry land anymore.
Maybe it’s something about being British – or English perhaps – a certain avoidance of the realities of life and death. So that when our lives do throw those realities at us it is so unexpected that we recoil and struggle to readjust. In seven years the very shape and makeup of my and Richard’s families have changed drastically through several deaths (and births, but mostly deaths). It’s not something we were ready for and maybe that’s a fault of our culture in this country: denial of the reality and brevity of life.
I now know how quickly life can change and life can go. I can’t assume old age will be awarded to everyone and I think throwing myself into things that demanded that I got outside of my own head for years and concentrated on other people’s words helped me avoid dealing with what had happened inside me and around me.
The shape of my life and the shape of me have changed. There is no getting back into my cocoon like an uneasy butterfly longing for my caterpillar years. I have to learn to deal with who I am now – what I have and do not have now. I have fewer of the people I love in my life now and so does Richard. We have both lost that youthful security that being surrounding by elderly relatives provided.
We can’t go back. We can’t ever feel how we did before. We have to sift those lighter moments from each day and enjoy them for what they are and live with less expectation.
So instead of living with a ‘Phew. I’ve got through that. Where’s my reward? Now let’s get back to normal’ mentality, and thinking I might go back to less stressful times, I now have to learn to flap my wings even though I feel heavy. And I have to land occasionally – even though I sense danger – because you can’t flutter forever.
I suppose a period of readjustment takes time as well as swapping expectance for acceptance.
Richard’s recently acquired a new catchphrase from somewhere: ‘It is what it is, isn’t it?’
It is.
PS. Books: If you’re reading this and know of a cast-iron guaranteed page-turner that’s not too demanding intellectually or emotionally but also not disappointing please let me know. (Not a youthful rom-com that reminds me that I’m past it either!) I think it’s just the kick up the butt I need to get me reading again.
I stared at a retweet on Twitter just now: “Streets of #Braunton look busy and patriotic in Red, White and Blue #Olympictorchrelay #NDevon”
I thought about this for a while. I’m not a flag-waver, I never have been and all this fuss in my local area for something which costs ridiculous, RIDICULOUS amounts of money is making me cross on many many levels.
There are people who simply cannot afford to survive day-to-day living costs and the government is telling them to keep tightening their belts – that there is no money – and yet we can afford this???
*&%$+?”*±§\ !
Our youngest daughter’s school are walking to watch the Olympic torch (well, one of 8,000 torches!) pass through the area today. I love the idea of taking kids on a walk out of school with a picnic to take part in something with kids from other schools. Bring on integration and fun and getting outdoors more often – Hooray!
But for this?
I’m also not impressed by the attention the Queen’s jubilee is getting. More expense, more pomp, more hype, more flag-waving. More ‘little people looking up to big people’ mentality. Can’t people see what’s happening here?! The have and the have nots divide has just exploded. I thought we were trying to undo that inequality in this country. We’re very quick to criticise other countries for it.
So I don’t like the Olympic torch relay.
I don’t like the Queen’s jubilee.
I don’t like flag-waving.
Does this make me unpatriotic, I thought?
I looked at the word ‘patriotic’. I looked at the dictionary definition. I thought about my country, my life, my loves and I decided I am most certainly not unpatriotic. Far from it.
I love the coastline and birdsong and badgers and butterflies and foxcubs and bees and gardens and countryside of our country. I love our scraggly little misshapen, tea-drinking island plonked in the ocean. I support our farmers, our fishermen, our schools, our NHS, our wildlife, our eclectic culture. I am so patriotic it hurts when I see any of those things suffering.
I think all the forced pomp and ceremony is distracting – at the moment it feels deliberately so, but I can completely understand people’s need to get excited about something, to be positive about something, to feel part of something – especially right now. One of the most wonderful experiences of my life was when I took part in a combined schools concert in the Queen’s Theatre in Barnstaple as a teenager. The feeling of being part of something big and public was so wonderful that when the first notes were playing I felt as if my heart was bursting out of my mouth. That feeling is unbeatable and unforgetable and we should have opportunites to feel like that more often instead of stapling children to their desks. I just think the costs of all the ceremony in 2012 outweigh the benefits way and above anything patriotic. I think it is all false. And I am sad. Because I love people and worry for them and because I want to protect what’s real. Because I am patriotic not because I am not.
Later:
I’ve just read this: The Olympics represents the triumph of that class of people who used to obey orders without question, and have ascended to giving orders in turn. In consequence, there is order, hierarchy, “stand behind that there barrier”, and a belief that what really matters about your nation is that some bloke can suspend his education for years and at the end of it jump three inches further than a fellow from Papua New Guinea on here: Olympic Torch Route, day 3 – Philip Hensher explains why he is not feeling the wow factor as the flame makes a ‘historic’ visit to Exeter. He’s an associate professor of Creative Writing at Exeter University, don’t cha know, and he’s just got himself a new fan.
It was the flit of the butterfly’s wings that changed everything.
When she saw it, perched perfectly still on a nettle, it was dark – like her.
She liked that.
Quiet and dark.
And alone.
Folded up against the world.
She drew her elbows into her sides and watched its antennae twitch. ‘We’re the same – you and me.’
But then it lowered its wings and she saw that she was wrong. It showed off its rich red-orange and its bright purple flashes and powder-blue-eyed stare.
In a multi-coloured flash it took off.
She watched the creature’s papery flight lift and bounce and then disappear it; losing itself in a medley of yellow dots, orange silk hearts, green spikes, purple tongues and bright pink spears. Light petals fluttered, heavy pompom heads swung like upturned pendulums, and grasses waved. The colours altered as the wildflowers danced and bobbed in the sunlight. How inspiring nature was to have evolved a creature that adapted so cleverly to its habitat.
Sitting cross-legged and gazing out across the grasses and flowerheads, she tried to match long-unused names with remembered images: the red admiral, the tortoiseshell, the painted lady… but she didn’t know what this one was. Butterfly spotting had remained in her childhood with so many other ephemeral memories.
She wanted to take a photo. One day she would take the perfect wildflower meadow photo: sky, flowers and one other element: a bee, a bird, a distant hill, a butterfly perhaps…
One day…
She looked down at the unopened corner-shop-vodka, with the wonky label, hammocked in the lap of her long summer skirt and squeezed the pills in her fist until her palm begged to be relieved of the pain. Then she stood up – letting the bottle drop to the ground and walked back to the hospital, shaking out the pills like seeds along the path.
They’d said his eyelids had fluttered.
There was still hope.
I’m sharing a quote I’ve just scraped from one of my OU books. It’s an amusing paradox because although it’s in my course book, I can’t follow its advice. In a way I have to do the opposite and write about a lot of literary criticism (some of which I’m not making sense of and I’m not sure I want to).
It’s from a letter written by Philip K. Dick in 1981 where he responds to a
critical article (about one of his own novels) he has been sent and confesses that he finds it unreadable.
He writes:
‘Criticism, to be valuable, must make sense and must relate in some way to that which it analyses … [E]verything bad about academic literary criticism is found in this article; it is dull, it is pointless, and its only purpose – if indeed it has a purpose – is to exhibit the education of its author, who, I feel, really should read fewer books and, instead, play frisbie in a park somewhere with some little kids (and I might take that advice myself, in view of my recent writings).
Perhaps we are all spending too much time thinking and reading and writing when we should be out in the sun.’
Dick, 1981
(From The Popular and the Canonical, an A300 coursebook)
Unfortunately, I now have to spend too much time reading and thinking and writing.
About good people doing good things
Kissing Frankenstein & Other Stories
Back in October, a strange man approached me on Twitter and asked me to follow him.
Even though I had my own puppy and don’t particularly like sweeties, I did.
He beckoned me over and said he’d heard I was good at writing flash-fiction and he wanted me to join in with some brand-spanking new flashing idea he’d had.
Me? Good? Spanking? Flashing?
(okay, maybe he didn’t say “spanking”…).
Must be some other Rachel, I thought, but I decided to see what he had to say.
His name is Calum Kerr and I, for one, had never heard of him before (sorry Calum). He said he was organising the first ever National Flash Fiction Day in May 2012 and wanted to get a few fellow flash-fiction writers on board from all over the country. Did I want to be part of it?
Well, I love being asked to be part of something. I always say, ‘yes,’ and think later.
So I said, ‘Yes.’
And thought later…
When I got an email, a few weeks later, asking all writers to provide a short biography about themselves saying where in the country they were and a brief bit about themselves, I got a knotty, twisty feeling of doom and failure in my stomach. I left the email for a while, wondering what on earth anyone could be interested in about me! You see, I have no Credentials. I just like to write.
Another few weeks later, another email came, saying could those writers who hadn’t provided a bio about themselves yet, please do so.
So I looked online at the National Flash-Fiction Day site, read a few of the bios already there and got that knotty, twisty feeling of failure and doom again.
I didn’t belong there. Other people had Credentials. So I emailed Calum and told him I thought maybe I wasn’t what he was looking for to promote his venture. I said something daft and pathetic about how I’m not anyone – I’m just a mum in Devon who likes to write, I’ve only being writing for 3 years and writing flash-fiction for 2.
I get the ‘I’m worthless rubbish, you don’t want me’ thing from my mother. We don’t believe in bigging ourselves up. We’re much better at listing what we’re not good at. (Which is why Mum never got past the interview to be an Open University tutor…)
So, anyway, Calum would email me back and say, ‘Oh, okay then. What a shame. Maybe next time?’ Yes?
No.
And this is where my faith in decent human beings was restored (and continued to be for several weeks)…
He told me to stop being so silly and write a truthful bio, and he would put up on the site whatever I came up with. He told me that numerous people had told him I was good at writing flash-fiction and that’s why he asked me to take part.
Thank you, “Numerous people”, whoever you are!
So. I did as I was told and this is what I came up with: National Flash Fiction Day – Rachel Carter
And then…
And then, what?
Well I looked at me on the site just sitting there and saw that other people were doing things in their own area, and I wondered what things a shy person like me (with no Credentials) could do in my own area?
By mid-February nothing much seemed to be organised for the South West and, noting that it was only 12 weeks until National Flash Fiction Day, I felt a bit guilty. So I decided that the least I could do was provide an online place where people from the South West could send their flash-fiction. It would be a way for writers to showcase their writing whilst also publicising National Flash Fiction Day and awareness about the genre.
I emailed Calum again and said, ‘How about I do this thing I’ve thought of?’
And he said, ‘Yes! Do it! Let me know if you need any help.’
So I did it.
I wrote a blog post and asked for readers and writers and 15 people offered to be readers immediately and people started sending stories immediately and emails were coming in every day and Calum promoted it on the site and people started trusting me to do this, to get this sorted, and – whoosh – I did it.
I did it.
I said if there was enough interest I’d make a published anthology (Interviewer: ‘I see. Have you ever done anything like before, Rachel?’ Rachel: ‘NO!’) and there was enough interest and the readers kept reading and the writers kept writing and I kept sorting and flapping and emailing and squeaking, ‘Help!’ and. And we made an anthology.
I did it.
We did it.
I’ve made mistakes (at least 3 people are nodding their heads now…) and I’ve learnt a lot. But, above all, I’ve learned that people are prepared to be helpful, supportive, reliable, and to be all those things for free, for nothing, simply because people like to do good things, to be part of things.
Thank you to those 15 readers who stuck with it – you’re amazing, thank you to all the writers who threw stuff madly down the Internet into my email inbox – including brand new writers and experienced, published writers! – thank you to all the people who have been available to reply to my strange, flappy emails: to my mum, to Martha, to Pete, to Gail, to Calum, to Elizabeth, and to Natalie ( – the world’s best retweeter!).
We did it. We have a flash-fiction anthology, written by writers from all over the west country to celebrate National Flash Fiction Day 2012.
(Ta-dah)
This is my “reject” flash-fiction that I wrote for the Flash-Fiction South West anthology* and submitted anonymously. The readers put it through but, as editor, I rejected it on the grounds that it was not quite good enough!
Oh, the thrill of wielding my own power over myself!
DETERGENT
This one was more like his mother, he noted, tasting ironing starch on the air and inhaling the heady commercial washing powder aromas rising from his crisp shirt as he tightened his tie. He didn’t have to do anything for this one.
He thought back to the times he used to take breakfast up to his first wife in the mornings and the way she planned her gardening jobs in bed, her soil-ingrained fingers curled around the tea-stained mug; long, dark whorls of naturally moulted hair decorating the pillows and un-vacuumed carpet, washing left uncollected until the weekend.
These days his dirty underwear, toilet splashes and still-warm, half-drunk coffee were disappeared before he had a chance to feel mortal. Artificial scents masked the “real” and the repeated pish, pish of ‘A hint of spring breeze’ into the air replaced opening a window. Vases of plastic flowers sat watching Gardener’s World with them each week, while this one tutted at the women with filthy fingernails.
‘Just like “she who must be obeyed” hey, Tony?’ She would dig him in the ribs with her elbow. ‘Just like your ex with her filthy boots in the house and inability to do her own laundry or cook a decent meal.’ Echoes of his mother’s ‘Above and beyond the call of duty – what you do for that woman.’
Now the slap on the back of the hand, dressed up as playfulness, when he was caught making a sandwich in his own zero-point-zero-zero-one-percent-chance-of-germs-kitchen.
Now the silence of invisible glass doors, once noisily, nosily marked by playful dogs.
Now polishing the cooker hob with a tissue for fear of being discovered if he fried an egg when she was out, and hiding the frying pan before it could be used in retribution.
Oh no, he didn’t have to do anything for this one.
He didn’t dare.
As he walked to the bus stop the crack of his backside itched, raw with dermatitis.
(*The chosen flash-fiction, written as our contribution to National Flash Fiction Day can be read here: flashfictionsw.co.uk)
Dear Children,
Despite some things you might be told or you might hear or you might read about always trying your hardest, trying to be the best at what you do, and making choices in early life about how you might live your adult life, I – as your loving mother – see things slightly differently.
You see, I’ve thought a lot recently about this being the best thing and what I’ve noticed is that while people are trying to beat everyone else they are not necessarily being the best and nicest person they can be.
I’ve noticed too that constant testing makes children, parents and teachers anxious about performance. Performance? Isn’t that a word for the stage? For car engines? I don’t think you should expect yourselves either to act a certain way or drive yourself a certain way as if you are a machine.
No. I want you to be yourselves.
Over the last 2 years, the system which has taken over your childhoods, has made me worry that my youngest child hadn’t learnt to write and spell by the age of six (six?!), that my middle child was “lazy” because his handwriting isn’t neat, that my eldest child might suffer under the strain of having to choose a university and future career before she’s finished growing.
The system made me think for a time that always doing one’s best, always working hard was important.
Why?
So I stopped. I thought about this and I thought about you three and I thought about myself and I thought about those “at the top” status-wise, power-wise, money-wise, fame-wise, in all sorts of different areas of life and I thought, ‘Is that what my children want? Is that what I want?’
What do I want from you and for you? I wondered.
Well. I want nothing from you. That is my gift. It came when I gave you life.
But what I want for you is happiness, I want you to live, I want you to know about what is real, I want you to look around you and see other people and wildlife and the world you share with them. I do not want you thinking you are better than other people or lowlier than other people. I do not want you always striving for status, money, power or recognition. I do not want you worrying about performance but about reasons and enjoyment when you choose to do something.
I want you to remember that life is short and can sometimes be shorter than we expect.
I want you to remember to watch sunrises and sunsets, to listen to birdsong, to follow the waxing and waning of the moon, to fall in and out of and back in love. I want you to cry at the suffering of others not at a C instead of a B. I want you to be out of the range of judgement but because that is impossible I want you to know how false all judgement is. I want you to appreciate what you can do because it gives you pleasure not be constantly comparing yourself with others – or worse still a fake set of standards about what is better.
Striving for positions, for power, for a big bank balance, for notoriety, for the “top” always comes at a price. Being a good, genuine, caring, life-embracing human-being comes with rewards.
There are different types of respect that come with the different paths one can take in life. I can’t tell you which ones to take but I’m certainly not going to push you down one that gives you pain.
You were born with five senses and big brains on a beautiful planet surrounded by other creatures that could do with a bit more respect. I hope you come to realise that the rest is less important.
Don’t be fooled by what others – who are too caught up in made-up stuff – tell you is good and bad. Be happy, be good, be kind, be open-minded, and think of life not as giving, taking, and succeeding but as being for a while. Being you.
Enjoy.
All my love, always,
Mum
PS Please stop leaving the lid off the peanut butter
A flash fiction
‘Oh, isn’t he lovely?!’ they said, with only his wide smile, smart suit and ability to buy a round of drinks to go on.
Didn’t they so want to be one of his friends when they saw how he dominated the room?
Didn’t everyone laugh at his jokes?
Didn’t the women smoulder under his charm?
Wasn’t he the perfect host?
Wouldn’t it be marvellous to do all this again? Oh you must come to ours next time.
Cue the hand slipping around the shoulder and the pithy upper arm squeeze. Yup. There it was again.
One pace away for every year of marriage, the exclusion had become tangible. She was out of his circle. Had she moved or was she pushed?
Her performance hadn’t been up to much after all. Not quite the double act he’d been hoping for. The gregarious social couple moving in all the “right” circles hadn’t touched the feminist issues she’d expected it to. She’d begun to feel like 1950s arm candy. A secretary, an assistant. A PA. A Smiling Thing.
Where had her political life gone? What happened to her opinions? She felt around in her coat pocket for a tissue. She missed the feeling that she was standing for something, doing anything good. But she’d found that her inner strength had made her quieter, strangely. Tears of fury pricked at her eyes as she watched the stage and the repeat performance. Fools. They were all fools.
‘Not stopping?’ laughed Daisy from the office, as she walked by heading for centre stage, poking at the coat and not waiting for an answer.
Daisy. Daisy. Oh he’d be glad to see Daisy. He was half crazy for Daisy.
She wanted to tell Daisy she was welcome to him. Him and his fake teeth, his personal grooming products that took up more room than hers, his slow, degrading, emotional bullying.
But she wasn’t going to be tipped out of his net like an accidental catch. She was going to make a bloody great hole in it. She’d seen a TV programme about huge fishing trawlers that grab everything in sight and chuck back the dead and damaged things they don’t need. Ruining life that needn’t have been touched and then moving on without a care in the world. Maybe he needed unhooking from the bottom.
Eventually.
She slipped off her coat. Threw back her gin. Breathed in deeply. Stood tall. She practised her smile on the faces around her, the beam growing and spreading like a contagion. Oh, the power of a clique grin. The false togetherness of a room full of people all in it for themselves. She touched the arms of the inner circle with well-practised political matey-ness, and hissed in Daisy’s ear to piss off out of the way. Please. With wide, endearing smile. Oh, and mine’s a gin. So kind. You are wonderful. Isn’t she wonderful? Two can play at this game. I’ve learnt from the best after all.
The beaming bastard had a powerful edge to his voice that cut people short and as she approached him her personal space was invaded by his vibrations.
Those fishing trawlers were damned noisy and ugly when you got up close, she recalled. The little boats hadn’t stood a chance.
How rude he was. How charmingly rude.
A flash fiction
‘In the war…’ said Grandma…
Here we go, thought Sally.
‘… even though we wasn’t the ones fighting, we was like an army, we was. All working together. All gettin’ on with it for a common good. None of this – whatcha callit – image thing. All this wow factor that you gets on telly now. We was teams and chums and you fell in love because you had a nice chap that cared.’ Grandma said “cared” like Sally had never heard of the word before.
‘You all wanna be something special naradays, you lot. “Think not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country”!’ Grandma waggled her candy cane forefinger at Sally who pretended to scratch her ear so she could look at her watch.
‘Look, Grandma. I have to…’
‘Appearances!’ Grandma interrupted firmly. ‘Stop judging people on how they look, stand, talk, smell, and what-‘av-you. It’s what’s inside that counts.’ Grandma thumped her chest a little too hard and Sally knew there would be bruises. She bruised so easily these days.
‘Yes. I’ll try to remember that… but I must… I’ll see you next time I get cover, okay?’ She kissed Grandma patting the bed ineffectually.
Back along Brick Lane she passed the familiar hunched shoulders and pinched nose of the man whose body language screamed, ‘Don’t touch me. I don’t even want to breathe the same air as you!’ Grandma was right – she had judged him by his withdrawn, unwashed appearance, his faded, leaning stacks of pre-computer-age unwanted kids’ games, and his apparent disregard for fashion. She wondered what he “cared” about. From now on she would be civil to him. She offered what she hoped was a friendly smile in his direction. If he smiled back or said hello or anything like that maybe she would offer to fetch him a coffee and perhaps sometimes they could help each other set-up.
His top lip curled on one side.
‘What are you smirkin’ at, you smug bitch?’ he growled, folding his arms.
Why is everyone telling us to keep calm and carry on so much recently? Have we decided that the war years were better than life today? From what I’ve heard it was vile for everyone and we’d do well to avoid history repeating itself.
As for keeping calm and carrying on, well I’ve recently discovered that stressing out a bit, questioning why you’re doing something, stopping for a while and deciding what your reasons for carrying on are is a much better option.
Carrying on is not always necessary.
I flapped, lost the point, and gave up my literature module (see previous post: Flooded Engine ) I stopped for 2 weeks, had a think and started again. It was a mad rush getting back into it but far better than trying to keep calm when what I actually needed was a break.
I had to read masses of course materials and write an assignment in 10 days, then read loads more course materials in order to have another assignment written by this Friday (which I haven’t started yet… ahem…)
The latest assignment question reminds us to develop own our argument, and avoid recycling course materials and quotations.
This the point at which you know you have “done proper learning” and are ready to think for yourself. For course after course after course it has been, regurgitate, regurgitate, regurgitate the things that other people tell you until finally you get to a stage in your learning process where the stabilisers are taken off and you can ‘GO’ – pedal, balance and whoosh all by yourself with the techniques you have been learning for years.
I’d love to continue my learning and carry on expressing my own arguments based on what I’ve read. The next natural progression academically would be an MA but I can’t afford the time, the money or the stress.
What I can do, though, is apply that motto above to the rest of my life.
A flash fiction (written from some prompts given to me by facebook pals *)
She was the only woman in the bar and he the only man.
She was looking for a well-presented man. He hadn’t shaved and had long, dark, greying hair.
No good. She’d always imagined her future husband to have short, blonde hair.
She liked quiet Sundays indoors with softly-scented pampering products, a movie and the clean, ever-cleaning cats. Everything about him said ‘muddy walks with dogs’ (particularly the presence of his two filthy dogs and the mud-caked walking boots he wore).
The List was not going well. She wanted to walk back out of the pub. He did not fit the criteria of her perfect partner in any shape or form. But he saw her and walked over.
‘Hi. I’m Steve,’ he said in a Belfast accent, holding out a rough hand to shake hers firmly.
‘Oh Jesus,’ she thought, in a Home Counties accent, slipping her manicured digits back through his calloused, soil-stained grasp.
But perhaps the ‘Suitable for parents’ criteria wasn’t really worth keeping on the list now that both her parents had died of old age.
She mentally referred to her list. The list she had written at eighteen, now etched on her memory and referred to every time she met a man:
Where were the blue eyes suitable for her future babies? His were brown.
Where was the evidence of security and financial stability for the family they might have? He had holes in his t-shirt.
Perhaps, as her friends had pointed out, she was too old for children now. Perhaps, as her sister had pointed out, a good companion was more important than money.
She had to do this. She’d promised. She would make polite conversation, smile, have a couple of drinks, swap phone numbers, thank her friends for setting up a blind date and then never call him. In a couple of weeks she could say it just didn’t work out. There was no way she was committing herself to this guy while Mr. Right was out there waiting for her.
3 hours later, he led her into his house and showed her the hall, the bathroom, the kitchen, the sitting room and the lizards. They wouldn’t be languishing so lazily under their heat lamps if her cats were in the room, she noted aloud with a snigger.
He laughed too and cleared some papers from the sofa so that she could sit down.
Real ale seemed good for the inhibitions and the OCD she noted with a belch, plonking herself onto a stinking dog blanket and grinning.
He grinned back fondly and sat himself opposite her. ‘You’ve a good sense of humour. I’ve not laughed so much in a while.’
‘I don’t usually make men laugh,’ she tilted her head, thoughtfully. ‘It must be the beer.’
‘No. It’s not you. It’s the men you’ve been dating. You should always make sure someone’s got the same sense of humour as you. It’s number one on the list.’
‘You have a list?’ She leant forward in interest and nearly fell off the sofa. ‘This could be the start of something really ugly,’ she laughed, righting herself and pointing to a rotting half-eaten apple on a corner table behind his elbow.
‘I wondered what the smell was, ‘ he said, jumping to his feet, grabbing the apple and running to the kitchen bin with it.
She watched as he washed and dried his hands carefully and then returned looking about him as if in shame.
He was making an effort for her. She realised she liked that in a man.
Why wasn’t that on The List?
…
( *The prompts: ‘Presentation isn’t everything.’ … ‘There’s a half-eaten apple on the table in the corner of the room. Why?’ and ‘Lizards languishing lazily’ (yeah, thanks, Mandy…) )
Written in a hurry and not edited. Life on the edge, huh?
A short story/flash fiction
High fencing, topped with barbed wire, surrounds the house. I sit in the car thinking about what I’m going to ask Tom. But this is such a peculiar story I think I’ll have to assess the situation as I go along.
The facts:
The missing man’s name was Darren and he was a diver. He started behaving oddly after losing a foot in a diving accident five years ago. Recently his family reported him missing and that was when the rumours started… Tom was the only one he had allowed to see him in the last five years. The family will talk to no one. The police will talk to no one. The marine biologists have gone very quiet…
The stuff we can’t be sure of:
There’s a rumour that the policeman who went to search Darren’s house after his disappearance was so disturbed by what he found that he took to drinking and was last seen huddled in the entrance to Plymouth Marine Aquarium, dressed in old fishermen’s clothes, telling tales of a horrific half man/half sea creature with only one foot that expelled waste from his head and killed himself with his own poisonous tentacles.
It’s disturbing and I don’t want to do this but I’m the only one Tom will talk to so I guess I’m flattered really. Besides if I get nowhere no one need know and if it’s a good story then I can afford Bella’s university fees. As a freelancer I have nothing to lose. Except perhaps my sanity…
He’s waiting for me inside the fence, restraining a large, angry dog on a chain.
‘Sally.’
‘Tom.’
He’s changed. I hardly recognise the man with guarded expression and stiff posture as the effeminate boy who swapped Pokemon cards with my eldest son fifteen years ago.
He takes me to a sparse, windowless utility room at the back of the house. As he shuts the door the insistent dog barking and the hum of traffic cease. There is a soft electrical buzz but otherwise the room is quiet and intense. Tom points to a plastic chair and I sit down and reach for my laptop. As I turn it on he spots my Internet dongle and swiftly confiscates it while he begins to talk…
‘Darren was my diving instructor. I worshipped him. We spent time together on dives and trips around the world – just the two of us. He had this special interest in anemones, you see, and didn’t care for the more extensive dives organised by other people. I fell in love with him. I assumed that he was gay too because he didn’t seem to like women. But as the months went by I began to realise he didn’t feel that way about me. I stuck up for him when people said he was going mad although deep down I wondered if I was wasting my time. He collected anemone eggs and sperm samples to take home and became fixated on asexual reproduction. Bits of anemones can break off and form into new anemones, you know? He said he wanted me to help him with some research and although it sounded far-fetched I would have done anything for him. There’s something a bit obsessive about loving someone you know can never be yours… I hung on his every word, agreed with everything he said, became as passionate as I could about everything he was passionate about.’
I nod. I know all about misguided loyalty. ‘I’ve seen photos. He was quite something,’ I say.
‘ “Was”? He’s not dead.’
I fumble, not wanting to stop him talking. Then I remember the rumours. ‘He changed though? Put on weight? Grew pale?’
‘In the early days, when we first started going off on our own, the other divers said he must have suffered decompression sickness because his face swelled up and he forgot people’s names. But he told me he didn’t dive deep enough.’
‘Weren’t you with him?’
‘I was on the boat.’
‘So he might have. Didn’t he suffer from weak joints too?’
‘It wasn’t that though. He knew what he was doing.’
Now, I’ve researched the bends and it sounds to me that – as it went untreated – that was exactly what brought about his madness and demise but I feel I am on the brink of something so I wait.
Tom seems to read my mind. ‘Just because someone displays the symptoms of something doesn’t mean that is what they have. He’s a genius who knew exactly what he was doing. The foot wasn’t an accident. That was part of his research.’
I feel sick.
He unlocks another door and beckons me through. I hear bubbling and splashing and taste salty air. In the dim light I make out three head-height glass tanks taking up the walls of the room. Dark shadows and bright flashes move everywhere. Tom takes a fishing net from behind the door, scoops something out of the nearest tank, and carries it to the tank at the far end of the room. I follow.
As my eyes become accustomed I see what looks like a human foot on the bottom of the tank. It is enlarged and viscousy but as I slowly make out toenails and an ankle I see that it is definitely human. I clench my teeth together and try to swallow the disgust pushing at my throat as I see, growing up from the enlarged ankle, several giant tentacles waving as they stun and trap in a split second the fish that Tom releases into the tank. The tentacles lower the fish into an opening in their centre.
‘He started injecting himself with the anemone samples ten years ago. That’s when he swelled up. Then he cut off bits of skin and ear, thinking if he could keep growing himself on from bits of his own body that he would never die but when they didn’t grow he intensified his treatment by injecting his brain, his heart, his groin. But he couldn’t do it on his own. The injections were making him ill. So he cut off his foot and instructed me how to look after it – to make it survive on its own just like an anemone. And it worked – to a point… The rest of his body became a giant anemone and he began to drown in the air and his tentacles poisoned everything except his other foot. That foot found in his house won’t survive in the hands of the scientists… But this one will.’
A flash fiction
‘Okay. What’s eatin’ you?’
Lily didn’t look up as Jack sat himself down opposite her and leant his arms on the table. She wanted to get her words in the right order. She felt his gaze and kept her eyes down as she spoke.
‘I just wanted you to know that you really annoyed me – that way you whistled and shouted out some leery sexist comment when you first saw me.’ She stared at his suit buttons.
‘Oh. Right. Yeah well. Gosh…’
Silence.
‘It’s not funny, Jack.’
‘Who’s laughing?’
Lily looked up. ‘You. Your eyes are laughing. I just had to tell you.’
‘Well, I promise I won’t do it again.’ Now he was laughing. ‘But I do fancy you. I’ve always fancied you. Nothing wrong with that is there?’ He smoothed his smart new mauve silk tie like a pet guinea pig.
‘Will we do your cake in a minute?’ a voice interrupted.
‘Oh yes, thanks, Fiona, thanks… You made me feel like an object, Jack. Cheap. That’s what you made me feel. And in front of all the lads from work. I felt like you were just doing it for their benefit.’
Jack reached across the table and took her hands. He fiddled with her engagement ring with his thumb. ‘You’re not cheap. You never were. I’m truly, honestly, sincerely sorry if I offended you. It was never my intention. I’m just a bit shy with the girls and it was the only way I knew how to make the first move. And I’ve been good to you ever since haven’t I?’
‘Mostly.’ Lily smiled her wicked smile and Jack knew he’d been forgiven.
‘I thought it was love at first sight, you know?’ He looked thoughtful.
‘Oh?’ Lily had thought so too. Secretly. She twiddled with the white lace cuffs of her dress, looking down again to hide her disappointment.
‘But how can you really know what love is at twenty?’ Jack lifted Lily’s chin with his fingers.
The noise in the room began to build and they realised that their names were being chanted.
‘We’d better go over.’ Lily nodded behind him at the expectant faces.
Jack helped her to her feet and they walked, arms linked, over to the semi-circle of guests around a large white cake, as people began to clap and cheer.
‘Speech. Speech. Speech!’
Lily held back as always but Jack raised his hand and cleared his throat.
‘Sixty years ago. I married the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. I didn’t think you could be in love anymore than I was then. I really thought it was love at first sight and I’d scored a real corker.’ He stopped and placed a shaky arm over Lily’s shoulders.
‘But I was wrong. I fell a little more in love with her every year. This is what love really is. It’s knowing someone inside and loving them more as the outside falls apart.’
‘Charming.’ Lily dug him in the ribs. But her eyes were shining.
‘Will we give the other residents some cake, if there’s enough?’ asked Fiona.
They didn’t know why they were such good friends. They just were.
They’d met on Twitter, electronically laughed and teased one another about the North-South divide, shared early morning tweets over their respective cups of tea, and chatted about Classic FM and noisy neighbours. They hated the same television programmes and shared a passion for lemon drizzle cake, they discovered.
It had been many months before they knew the extent of their age difference, background differences and physical differences. But by the time Carla found out that Joanna was in fact a tall, bony, soon-to-be great-grandmother of sixty-nine, and Joanna had found out that Carla was in fact a short, plump, childless, 27-year-old with a history of drug abuse it was irrelevant to the strong bond they had already built.
They’d got to the core of each other, you see – the bits you often never even find in those you see every day.
They agreed to meet, on neutral ground, on the Norfolk broads and for half an hour they simply took in each other’s appearances and recovered from each other’s accents, making self-conscious small-talk. It was all so polite, none of the usual teasing, and – if they were honest – it felt a bit wrong. As if they’d met up with strangers.
After awkward tea and sickly cakes, surrounded by quiet old couples in a small café, they set off for a walk. Side-by-side they battled, heads down, against the Easterly wind and slowly began to wonder at the sheer horribleness of the whole experience. Tears of wind-beaten pain glistened in their eyes as they turned to each other and roared with laughter. They preferred honesty. They were the same.
‘Fuck this, Jo,’ Carla screeched. ‘I could have shown you a better time in Bexhill, love!’
No one else ever called Joanna ‘Jo’ and she’d always liked reading it in Carla’s tweets. People weren’t pally with Joanna but Carla was pally.
‘All right. How long will it take to get there?’ Joanna offered.
Carla grinned up at Joanna and took her arm as they turned back inland towards the carpark. ‘Bloody hours but we’ve even got pies. You’ll feel right at home there, Chuck.’
‘And mash?’
‘We’ll mash up your chips for ya. You’ll probably need everything mashing up, won’t you, old girl?’
‘Fuck off.’ Joanna laughed but she wanted to cry with happiness. She’d never got to say that to anyone before. It was great. ‘Did you like those cakes?’
‘No. Too sweet.’
‘Far too sweet.’
Avoiding the assumptions
What are you? Who are you? What do you do?
What type of person are you?
Can you define yourself in a few words and guarantee that those few words will remain an accurate description of who you are for many years? Or, like me, will you need several words and the option to change your mind at any moment?
I’m sure there are plenty of life-changing moments within all of our existences where we redefine ourselves because of a change of direction or some sort of realisation. Or we discard a label because we find it too limiting and it groups us with other people that we feel we have nothing else in common with.
I recently read Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and came to the conclusion that we should go no further than ‘human’ or ‘person’ in terms of categorisation. Anything after that – and in the case of her story ‘male’ or ‘female’ – can be subject to argument.
This morning I listened to Hermione Lee talk about the writer, Edith Wharton. Edith wrote about feminist issues but strongly refuted any suggestion that she was in fact A Feminist. Hermione Lee said, ‘Many women write about feminism but don’t call themselves feminists.’
That’s because we don’t like labels and all the connections and assumptions that go with them, I thought. Once you admit to being an environmentalist, for instance you get placed into a box with a label ‘profit of doom’ or ‘hippie’ and the lid firmly closed on you. Isn’t it more sensible to avoid labels and leave everything open to conversation or we may end up inadvertently fitting someone else’s view of what our particular label means?
Are you clever or stupid? Do you see other people as clever or stupid? Do you judge people by whether they have a degree or not? Is it that simple?
I have strong socialist opinions but I am not a Labour Party supporter.
I am a writer but I don’t have a cat sitting on my lap. (I don’t particularly like cats. But that doesn’t make me an animal-hater either!)
I am a mother but that doesn’t mean I want to sit around with other mothers talking about my children.
I keep getting sent forms from the OU, asking me to fill in details about my current situation since finishing this, that and the other course. I can’t do it. I don’t fit the boxes.
Then within the same radio programme as the Hermione Lee interview, an American writer was interviewed talking about her book about optimism. (Look her up if you can be bothered. I’m not sure I can!) She stated that we all have optimism ‘hard-wired’ into us – that it is a human trait. Now any sort of blanket statement like that is like a red rag to a bull to me. How dare she make sweeping assertions like that?!
She then muddled her argument by saying that only 80% of people are in fact optimistic the other 20% are clinically depressed. Gosh. Which box do I fit in? Hmmm…
Oh no… but then she said that British people are pessimistic, because we are really optimistic but we are culturally pessimistic. We put on our pessimism.
Scratches head
Well I had a good long think about this. I am not naturally optimistic. I am not depressed either. I am British. But I am not putting it on. I am plagued by pessimistic thoughts and I fight them regularly. But I love life and never want it to end. So I think I must have fallen out of my box and got lots of different labels stuck to me on the way down. So maybe my parents lied and I am not British then. Or maybe I’m not human.
I did a light-hearted survey on Twitter this morning, by the way, and many – UK-based – people came forward to say they were in fact optimistic.
It must be time to make up a few more box labels because not everyone is fitting neatly into the ones we have so far.
Or shall we just say we are who we are and that’s that. (And even that is subject to the day of the week, hormones, the moon, what job we are doing, who we are hanging out with, what we are eating, and life experiences. Let’s face it – sometimes we just don’t feel ourselves)
Some descriptions are useful for helping us cope or stay away from those who might make us unhappy. I believe being diagnosed with Asperger’s is very useful, for instance, but it’s only one part of who a person is.
I’d probably stay away from someone who defined themselves as a child-hating, capitalist, diamond-obsessive because I’m a family-loving, socialist, sandal-wearer.
But that’s just me.
Or is it?
These ‘not necessarily what it says on the box’ thoughts that prompted me to take the above photo made me think about my Dad.
I have a box in the shed that he wrote on:
What’s in there is definitely not what’s on the label, as he wrote that for a joke. Mum won’t throw anything away (well, not much) because almost everything should be re-used or recycled. Her intentions are good but she never actually deals with all the boxes and piles. She would call herself green and an environmentalist, a recycler… but is she if she doesn’t actually get around to recycling…
I guess that makes her a hoarder.
Or does it?
I’m not wearing sandals today, by the way.
Today I am A Fluffy Boot Wearer.
Grabs labels and indelible pen…
A short story/flash fiction
‘It’s what I know. It’s all I know. It’s my whole life,’ she had said.
It had seemed like a fine answer. She’d known she was going to say it. It was true and convincing. All at once it would epitomise commitment, experience, loyalty. She would put in the hours. She would dedicate herself to the role. She knew that was what they would be looking for.
But when she heard herself say it she sounded pitiful:
‘It’s all I know…’
It’s all I have ever done…
Charlie had thought her presumptuous to write an email of resignation so soon after the interview. But of course she wouldn’t click Send just yet, would she? She was getting ready, that was all – preparing for the future. Optimistic. He liked that in a person.
You keep at it, you go up and up, you get more money, you have more choices in life, you have fewer and fewer people telling you what to do, you finally get to the top and you gain control. That’s how the system worked. Why on earth would anyone want to be one of the minions, thought Charlie, doing everything for less money and less respect? Other people clearly didn’t have the drive, ambition or talent that he and Ellen had. Their loss.
Charlie poured them a glass of Pinot Noir while Ellen stared at the screen and chewed the skin around her thumbnail.
‘D’you think you’ve got it then?’ he asked. ‘You seem pretty certain you’re leaving.’
‘Hmmm?’ Ellen was lost in thought. Her eyes scanned left to right to left, quickly, as she read.
‘How long before you hear? Did they say?’
‘Oh yes. I’m sure I’m leaving.’
‘But when?’
‘Now.’ She pressed Enter with a pronounced gesture and closed her laptop.
She was shaking. Her eyes were still flitting and she looked half-crazed as if she would explode into hysterical laughter at any second.
‘Jeez, El’, what if you don’t…?’ Charlie paused and necked his wine.
He’d always admired her gutsiness. ‘My missus has got balls,’ he often joked proudly. But he suddenly felt the exhilarating terror he’d experienced when he’d tried the fast slopes at Aspen for the first time. It was great when it all turned out all right in the end but the loss of control had scared the crap out of him. He began to shake too and poured himself another drink.
‘What are we doing with our lives, Charlie?’ she asked, standing up and pouring her wine down the sink.
‘Hopefully we’re getting to the top – that’s if you haven’t just become unemployed.’ He rubbed his forehead as panic made it sweat.
‘But why? What do we want?’ She was holding her car key and turning it over in her hands – as if it made them dirty.
‘A nice house. A bigger house. No mortgage. Nice cars. No one telling us what to do. To be in control of our lives. You know… and stuff. Holidays. Things. Comfort.’
Ellen released a huge breath and pressed the key onto the kitchen surface. She lined it up neatly next to her phone and her laptop and stepped back pushing her hands into her jeans pockets.
‘I’m going on a self-sufficiency course in Powys. I’ll get the train. I’ll phone you from the landline when I get there.’
‘You what?!’ Charlie spat wine and jumped towards her, reaching out for her shoulders. ‘You’re tired and stressed after the worry of the interview. Just sit down and we’ll talk. I think you’re having a nervous breakdown, love.’
‘Well, if I am, I thoroughly recommend it,’ Ellen laughed lightly and released herself.
Charlie squinted at her. ‘Are you leaving me? Are you having an affair?’
‘No. No. You can come too. I just didn’t think you’d want to.’
‘How long have you been planning this?’
Ellen looked at her watch. ‘About 47 minutes.’ She walked to the front door and opened it, picking up a rucksack from the floor.
‘And what about the job?’
‘What job?’ She raised her eyebrows and kissed Charlie’s cheek.
‘You can’t not work.’
‘Oh, I’ll be working.’ Her phone rang from the kitchen as she stepped outside and slung the rucksack on her back.
‘No. Earning a living. Just imagine for a minute not having the security of knowing you can afford a mortgage, go out for dinner, drive a car, be part of the financial world…’
‘I know. It’s exhilarating.’ Ellen grinned, wide-eyed. ‘I can feel the wind in my hair already.’
Her phone rang again and she strode away down the drive, swinging her arms. Charlie had started to follow her but he ran back up into the house and looked at her phone. A text appeared on the screen.
Charlie stared at the screen and downed another glass of wine.
A 100-word flash fiction
He didn’t understand it.
There they were – sat under the electric light, leaning across the table to hold each other’s hands.
So that was that, he thought, as he lowered his binoculars…
She really was with who she said she would be with, and doing what she said she would.
Why?
Why wasn’t she lying, cheating, finding comfort elsewhere?
Women stole from him, went off with his sister’s husband, changed their phone number, laughed in his face.
He got satisfaction from being right when it all went wrong.
If she really was “working late” tomorrow, she’d have to go.
There’s a competition run by National Flash Fiction Day (UK) to write a micro-fiction of 100 words or less, here: National Flash Fiction Day Micro-Fiction Competition
UK writers only. Entry closes 31st January 2012.
Oh – and there’s this music-inspired, 100-word one too, for the One in Four charity which looks interesting: Caroline Smailes: A Challenge and the chance to see your story in print
Where do I go with these feelings…?
I’m supposed to be a good girl and calm down and go to sleep now but I can’t. All I can do is tap one-fingered on this phone app and hope that something can be gained by opening the wound and letting words flow, messy and dripping, like blood.
The Thing is visiting again. The thing we now know to call anxiety. Such a cute little word for a total, life-wrecking bastard
It’s floored me.
It’s attacking my skin, my concentration, my moods – God! My moods!… my heartbeat, my energy, my appetite, my whole body. I am swollen, heavy, tearful, angry, confused, uncomfortable, exhausted – yet wide awake, lost.
Lost?
Yes. Lost.
Where do I go?
I walk in a circle. And another circle.
I turn on the washing machine. I forget the detergent.
I burn toast. Again. And again. And again.
I look outside. I can’t go out today.
I’m distracted. But distracted by what?
What was it this time? Christmas worries. Money worries. Family worries. There’s no escape for an imaginative mind that one day imagines perfection and can only be disappointed when it doesn’t deliver, and another day imagines discomfort and can only feel vindicated when it comes true.
It’s late. My chest aches. I want my day back, my week back, my life back.
And I have to get up and do it all again tomorrow.
There are coloured beads on the table: yellow, green, pink, blue, purple, red, orange.
I hear something on the radio that’s relevant to the pink beads. It makes me think about the pink beads. I say something that connects that thought, those beads and whatever it is I heard on the radio.
“What about the green beads? You are greenist!” shouts a voice. “Life is not all about pink beads!”
“There’s more to that discussion than pink beads!” shouts another. “You’ve missed out the bit about what happens when you put blue and pink beads TOGETHER! I don’t think you know your beads.”
“Oh, pink beads…” whispers a new voice. “I’m so glad pink beads are your favourite too. Let’s you and me be best friends and only ever talk about pink beads.”
Oh fuck.
If a butterfly has only a right wing or a only left wing it cannot fly.
If it only has a middle it won’t get very far.
If it has an extreme right wing or an extreme left wing it can only go around in circles.
If it doesn’t have legs it cannot land. After all – flying isn’t everything.
If it doesn’t have antennae it cannot know what is going on around it.
Butterflies need food and drink – too much is not good, not enough is not good.
They need a healthy place for their young to grow and develop properly.
Being a butterfly is by no means all about trying to look impressive.
Balance is everything.
(Photos by me. Please ask if you want to use them)
