Arnie in the conservatory.
Meet Arnie
Been a long while since I posted. So much been going on, about my mum’s residential care home closing. Been a long journey for me, resulting in my ME flaring up as bad as it was before I retired and my mum now in another home, finding the situation very difficult, confusing and stressful. She, along with the other residents, the families and the staff, did not want it to close. But money matters more than people, apparently. One positive thing is that Arnie, who also lived at the Home, has now come to live with us, as no-one else could have him. He is a very gentle, goodnatured cat, very used to people around him. More later about the Home closing, as it’s a long story which needs telling.
Westgate beach in very cold February weather.
Extract from part of the book.
As I said, some of it is based on my past experiences, more in terms of the emotions and perceptions than actual events or characters; most of it is completely made up. The flashback part of this excerpt is one of the former (I was a naughty hippie girl way back all those years ago!)
The chap who invited us in,” I continue, ignoring her dramatisations, “was the one talking to us in the café on Saturday, although I don’t think he lives there. The woman is called Luna.”
At this, as I expected, she doesn’t hide a satisfied smirk.
“Let me guess. Her daughter is called Sunbeam.”
“How do you do it? Sophie Sunbeam, actually,” and I can’t resist adding, “and her husband is Stardust.” Later, I might tell her he is called Bill. Before she meets them, I suppose it had better be.
“Sophie and Frankie got on well after a bit of initial shyness. Power Rangers drew them together.”
“Were they all smoking puff and saying, hey man?”
“No.”
“But I bet they had incense. Which reminds me, there was a definite whiff of incense in here when I came in. Obviously it is contagious.”
“You want to keep out of the way, then. Now, tell me about those people you met.”
“Oh, they’re students from the uni.”
She’s sixteen, and has to make her own judgements and decisions about people. Even so, I want to gather information as some kind of talisman against these unknown influences against whom I have no control. Logically, though, I resist this, knowing that collecting their names and personal data is about as effective in this as looking at an atlas to see into the deep, mystic heart of the forest.
“There’s Stuart, Lisa, Jasmine, Danny and … oh, Ryan.”
The hesitation tells me who she’s really keen to meet again.
“What are they like?” Instinct is stronger than logic, here. I’ll collect the facts and build a rickety watchtower with them, on the outskirts of the forest.
“They’re all right. Lisa lives in Westbourne with her mum; the rest live in Brighton, in a flat.”
“I’m glad you’ve met some people,” I say, which I genuinely am. I’m just a mother of a sixteen-year-old girl, and it’s hard to find a suitable variation on ‘Why don’t you invite them home for tea?’ So I don’t, but she probably knows where my thoughts are running, so I say, “I know you’re sixteen, but I can’t help feeling cautious. Just don’t be too trusting.”
“As a matter of fact, I was thinking the same thing about you, Mum. You’re not that used to meeting new people yourself.”
*****
Joelle went to bed about an hour ago. It’s past midnight but my head is still buzzing too much for sleep. It’s those incense sticks, something to do with them; and what Joelle said. She clearly thinks I am unused to dealing with meeting new people. No; to making friends. No again. To having friends. Is this how she sees me? How did she ever grow up so gregarious?
The thick woody scent of the joss stick rises, mesmerisingly. Shadows of feelings and images are half stirred. There’s me, fifteen years old, long flowing skirt stretched over my crossed knees, the close pressure of the scarf tied round my head, with its ends brushing on my shoulder. This is my first smoke. Sounds, voices and music play around each other. There’s a lot of dark and deep, and burnished points of light. Through the large convex mirror on the wall the ceiling beams curve and stretch endlessly.
The party had split into two groups at around midnight. One group, the larger, carried on dancing and drinking, while the select group moved into the sitting room of Steve’s absent parents’ home, this quiet, grown-up room. It was Eliza who had mentioned the party to me, perhaps because I lived two doors down from Grant, an older boy, who had an aura of cool about him, and Eliza, together with several others of her group, was keen to get closer to him. So, when she went into that room, she took me with her. We sat with her next to Grant. I went right over to him, knowing this was part of the deal. Grant often said hello to me, so it wasn’t difficult. Next to me was Nigel. I got on better with boys than with girls, and we managed a few words, before the inevitable effects of the joints being passed round left us more inside ourselves. My face was a mask, from behind which I observed myself sitting there with the others. The girls were all so composed, wearing their just-so fledgling hippy uniforms and speaking occasionally in silvery smooth voices, laughing like little tinkling bells and in tune with each other. I drifted in and out of music, happily, until the ceiling beams began to extend out from the mirror into the room, or else it was from the room into the mirror.Uncertainty about this began to feel very unsettling, and I was starting to panic about this, when Nigel must have noticed and asked me if I was all right.
lessonsfromfantasy:
You’ve no right to walk into people’s castles and take their guitars. (from ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ by Diana Wynne Jones)
www.lessonsfromfantasy.com
If you’ve ever read this book you’ll understand why I reblogged it. If you haven’t … then read it!
After a little think
Thinking back to the Occupy Thanet thing - that is actually as important in its way as the big Occupy things. It is the little people standing up and having their say, about what they believe in, and not being swallowed right up by the big sharks. And that actually really matters.
Like I am taking a bit of a stand against the company that is closing down my mum’s residential home. I don’t think it will stop it; but I want to take that smug smile off their corporate face and make people aware of some of the ways they have (in my opinion - no libel here!) stitched us up, and not thought about the very people they are meant to be protecting and keeping secure.
ithinkimgoingcrazy:
Oh I just want to scream when people start that sentence..
reblogged.
I know that feeling! Next on the hatelist are: “Well, we are all feeling exhausted…” ; “Maybe you’ll feel better when the weather improves …” ???!?
(Source: chronicillnesscat)
And about time …
it’s been a long time since I posted and evidently I have forgotten how to type, judging by the number of spellcheck red lines appearing as i write (will sort them out shortly).
Quite a few things to write about: How M.E. is doing; how retirement is shuffling along; my little holiday all on my own in Westgate; Diana Wynne Jones and Neil Gaiman; my mum’s residential care home is closing - oh those b……rds. More about that another time.
The first few weeks of retirement were, predictably quite bumpy and a bit strange. It only felt like I wasn’t going back, towards the end of the Christmas holidays, when I had a distinct lack of planning to do, which was quite liberating, even though I felt a little like I was getting away with something. On the first day of term, on the way to town, going past the same bus stop where i would normally get off the bus for school felt a bit odd, too. In the holidays (because of that strange love-hate relationship I have had for the past 5 or so years with my job (love the teaching, hate the crappy for-the-sake-of-it paperwork etc, and hate what the job does to my health and wellbeing) I historically gave a mental (sometimes actual physical) fingers-up to the school - “Hah! i’m on holiday and i don’t have to go to work for x weeks! Take that!”- But this time it kind of lost its edge. “Take that, nasty school cos i am retired” didn’t have the same delight!
Anyway I do love the place too and it is a good school.
I had been kind of intending to go back and do one day a week intervention group work, after Feb half-term, but the person who was going to be doing it til then said they couldn’t, so I started doing that just 3 weeks into the term! felt very strange the first time, to come home and know i was not working for another week, but hey I can get used to that!
The M.E. thing: I suspect, in my illogical (of which there is probably plenty) space in my brain, I more or less believed that ‘not working’ would = ’ M.E. disappearing’. But of course it didn’t. And it has taken quite a few weeks to discover where my limit really is, because at work I was always pushing myself so beyond that limit, and periodically falling flat because of that. Also, l think that because that last term was SOOO difficult for me, M.E. wise, (really, it was an endurance trial) I actually slumped quite a lot and needed to recover from that.
I have bought some vitamin B12 tablets. I know they are not as strong as having B12 injections, but as I am vegetarian, I am quite possibly a bit B12 deficient anyway.
I took a few days break away all by myself at the end of Jan / beginning Feb, which seemed a good time to kind of mark the transition and have some inside my own head thinking time. Was it cold?? North-East coast in minus goodness knows what, plus wind-chill? OH YES!! Glad I had two mega thick jumpers and thermal vests (I wear vests in winter and I’m not ashamed to admit it!!) and my snow boots. I had some beautiful walks (you couldn’t stand still for more than 10 seconds, without icicles growing) along the beach, and made myself get into doing yoga stretches every day (sounds impressive but actually its just the warm-up stretches!) which I have more or less carried on. Made myself think of a bit of a plan, list things I want to do, and how i can organise them. Decided the story I was writing actually isn’t working for me yet (don’t feel I’ve internalised the characters yet - they are still ‘characters’ rather than people) and I want to return to the one I began years and years ago, based a little bit on my experiences and set in a place quite like Westgate. Those are about people: I can see from their eyes, feel their feelings, feel the events unfold and be moved by them. I think about them during the day, think about what they might do and say; about how the plot needs to move; and I’ll tell you what - reading is a double activity, cos as well as enjoying the story itself, a little bit of my thinking is about how the writer works, what they do to make it good.
So, that is the one to get on with. But it won’t write itself - needs some discipline here. Also needs some firmness from me to get my son off the computer - he is an avid LOL player)! (Joking, if you read this David!)) Wrote about 100ish pages years ago, then went back to it a few years back and started revising it as I wrote it again (I had printed it as I went along, luckily; our PC refused to do anything and was unrepairable, so I had to start copying it all again and edit as I went.
OK - Westgate. I went to Margate one day, which is a poem in itself. Such a place of contrasts, such potential and so wasted, but in a way there is a kind of beauty in that, too. Went to the Turner Contemporary and saw Rodin’s THE KISS which is on loan to the gallery. That was quite moving - you see it in pictures so many times (and I hadn’t even thought it was all that wonderful) and then there it is in real. Amazing. (The guy does have extraordinarily large hands, I thought.)
Then outside the gallery was a little cluster of tents, with a few people and a dog or two - OCCUPY THANET a notice said. I don’t think they’re going to change the world but good on them for making a point they believe in. And I think they have a lot of good points. A strange time we live in - the capitalist way, worldwide, seems to be falling apart at the seams; what next, I wonder. (Now, there’s a whole blog - but bnot now; for another time.)
The Occupy Thanet thing kind of brings me round to a whole circle of links: I follow a blogger called Amanda Palmer (Dresden Dolls) but I am ashamed to say I haven’t listened to her music; I got onto her blog by checking out something that related to Occupy in USA, which she was quite involved in.
I mentioned this blog by Amanda Palmer, to my son, who said she is married to a writer he likes, Neil Gaiman. Now, I very much am into reading fantasy novels. One of my favourite authors of all time is Diana Wynne Jones (now sadly passed away) and i periodically reread her books (most of which I have. I have a whole Diana Wynne Jones shelf on my big bookcase).
Now - following still? - a few months ago, in one of her books I noticed the dedication to Neil Gaiman. I told my son this, too, and he gave me a Neil Gaiman book for Christmas. (Very good it was, too) Then while I was in away on my little holiday I reread Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones. It is one of those books that (for me anyway) stays with you, in your feelings well after you have finished it. The story is based on a traditional tale about Tam Lynn. So I looked up Tam Lynn to see if it was a made-up mythical character or a real mythical character (if you get the idea) . As you do, I followed a few links and found a whole section written by Neil Gaiman about Diana Wynne Jones and I realised how close friends they were. It seems as if she was in a way his mentor. And there i was in Margate, in the Gallery cafe, looking out of the window in between reading Fire and Hemlock, and seeing OCCUPY THANET in the foreground outside.
Since returning from Westgate, I haven’t done anything in particular, except write letters to the management of the ‘charitable’ (how charitable they are not - and i bet the managers get a good enough salary!)) trust that owns and is selling the home my mum lives in; and visit my mum a lot. She has had a chest infection which has really knocked her out a bit; she ate hardly anything for over a week, and has only just started to eat reasonably well again and get up and sit up for an hour a couple of times a day. I think that in the back of her mind, worrying about what is going to happen and where she will live is playing on her mind. And mine. The really good thing about where she is, is that it is five minutes walk for me, from where we live, and i can see her often and stay for a long time. I am so angry about them closing it. But I’m not starting on that now; suffice it to say, I believe there is something dirty in the dishwater about the sale.
So that’s a lightning run through from ‘then til now.’
I know I need to make sure i don’t slip into laziness or a mishmash of undefined, unproductive drifting. I have it in me to just get too inside my head, all introspection and no action. Reverie/ reflection is good, can be (and has been) inspirational or revelatory; but there is a balance between action and reflection that I need to mark!
Brief article about massage and effect on pain; interesting as it also mentions mitochondria which affect energy levels in the body.
Don’t know why, but this made me laugh out loud.
