potbound

I brought the library plant back home for the summer holidays. The school library is a small, square room with no natural light. I put the pot on an upstairs windowsill that catches the morning sun.

September came, school began again, the plant stayed on an upstairs windowsill a road away from the small, square room with no natural light.

Gareth said the plant would have to have a name if it was to lodge here for the summer. Because of the small room with no natural light he put up Gollum. I said I couldn't do that to a small, struggling plant in a black, plastic pot. A dull, commentless plant no one would choose for a spot they loved. I said it had enough without that. I named the plant Precious.

In the new growing season I'll swap the black, plastic pot for something a bit fancier. Less black. Less plastic.

I leave Precious every day and go to sit, round-eyed, quietly hissing, muttering at the tricksy small people, flat-foot stomping around my small, square room with no natural light.

support

daughter: I got two housepoints in P.E today, and nobody else got anything!

mother: creep.

spread

I asked for Christopher Eccleston

I sighed

and they sent me Christopher Biggins.

Had he not been busy snorting his tea across the lawn,

I asked for Servalan

he could have replied

and they sent me the Death Star.

blahnik

eee, but it's just like Sex In The City out there.

But without the legs.

Or the hair.

Or the shoes.

Or the theme tune.

Or the city.

Or, for that matter, the sex.

So what it is out there, really, is a large vehicle driving through a larger puddle just as you walk past.

It's wet out.

hawthorn

Had a phone call from Zig's physio at teatime. She asked if I would give my permission to refer Zig to the orthotist to be fitted for a twister brace. His feet and legs twist in increasingly as he picks up speed and, being eight, gives his thought to the next part of the game, not to turning his feet out and straightening his legs.

I'm not happy. I'm sad. And somewhere deep deep down and deep I know it is the circumstance that necessitates (apparently) the brace, not Zig's legs.

This is a young physio who drifts in once or twice a term; the date rarely coincides with the date Zig's helper has been given. Consequently, thus far I've made it to her visits just once. At the end of the call today I asked her in future to ring me with each appointment. She said that parents aren't usually present at school-based physio sessions (but there are no home-based NHS physio sessions for school-aged children). Perhaps they are - perhaps there is a parent present at every school-based physio session she runs. If the degree to which she included me in her instructions the time I was present, and the amount of eye contact she engaged in is in anyway representative of her general manner, there could well be.

She and the orthotist are representatives of a healthcare system which is only interested in treating symptoms. High blood pressure? Take a pill for the rest of your life, then a pill for the side effects, then a pill for the side effects, then a pill for the side effects. Let's not poke around in the circumstance of the patient, or their reponses to that circumstance. Twisting legs? Let's brace them, from the hips down. Let's not ask why the child walks with straight legs when he concentrates. Let's not implement a consistent system of gentle, encouraging, funny reminders for the hours he is away from the non-count parents. Let's not believe that if he fakes it - eventually - he will make it.

It's the system that necessitates the brace, not the cerebral palsy.

This is the thing with C.P. A standard issue person takes the smallest distance from A to B, taking a step is a simple straight message from brain to muscles: when they need to drive to Manchester they pop onto the M66 for a few minutes and there you go. Zig - when Zig takes a step - when he needs to get to Manchester - he chuggers along up into Haslingden, Rawtenstall, Burnley, across onto the moors, into Haworth for a half hour of Bronte breathing, through Heptonstall (hello Sylvia), Hebden Bridge, Todmorden, and then bugger knows how many weaving back roads that criss-cross the M62. And then he gets to Manchester.

He gets there. And has a kebab in Rusholme.

But the NHS doesn't give a shit about this. The NHS's map to Manchester has just one thick blue line that is the M66.

At the weekends, evenings, holidays, there will be no brace. We will explore all the little places that take time, find the tracks and footpaths, hear the skylarks on the moors, poke around the hedgerows, and pick dandelions and sow thistle for Brian.

And we will get to Manchester in time for a kebab.

swearbox

Arsehole is ten pee. Bugger, fart and arse are allowed. I missed the boat with bloody and shit, crying freedom of essential expression to no avail. Ten pee piece apiece.

Bastard and bloody can be used only in context. With expression is context enough, I pout. But no. Wanker: ten pee.

Fuck, fucking and fuckfuckfuckerybollocks are out. However I hope for a single charge for the compound, it'll be forty pee in the pink piggy piggybank, won't it, my kids being ruthless little shits. See, that was going to read ruthless little bastards: I now have economy of silent cuss, even.

I don't think they've heard cunt, so cunt is unclassified. I will have twat. Motherfucker is american, so disallowed.

Feck is free. Pee is nowt, no pee.

I can't help but feel that had I been organised enough to sort out regular pocket money, I wouldn't now be sucking my lips together and chewing on my tongue.

Arse.

postcard

Do you have a cat called Tommy?

Have you got a cat called Tommy?

There's a white cat with odd eyes, called Tommy...

Um, it's about a cat called Tommy.

Tommy.

Tommy?

Tommy.

So good of the fluffy fuckwit to keep in touch. The lack of fingers scuppers texting and phonecalls a bit, but those two braincells bounced against each other, a stunted dead tin noise, and he bounced from door to door, Road to Street to Close, offering up his torpedo name tube and only biting one child (I know of), as we bounced from Cornish village to town to beach to cliff. He begging tuna and chicken, pretending unfed and unloved, as we scoffed icecream and whitebait, pretending slim enough to take the excess.

Back in the wee smalls to a strangely mowey Dave. Mow, mow, mowowow. Washing machine on and on and on again, then to bed, Dave atop his sleeping Molly.

Catflap clutterdug gone half-two. Bell on the stairs, fluffy fuckfit a pile of purr in my arms. Not left since, except for pee and poo.

Yup, we've got a cat called Tommy.

ba[sic] hygiene

Sorry I was a long time in the shower, mum. I had to use the Felicities.

What's Mol doing, mum?

She's using my deoderant.

What's videoderant?

since when

we've had a rethink and bought a melodica from eBay, and the very nice and batshit crazy recorder aficianado has shipped in the finger cymbals and the chime bars.

skylawks

We have an A. Ladies and Gentlemen. We have our first A.

Left thumb over the hole on the back. First two fingers on the top two holes. Three new moons. (Waxing crescent, gibbous, disseminating, balsamic fingers make not an A but a squeak, a squawk, a bat's cat call, an irresistible play dead to a deaf dog.)

And tight spastic fingers can do it. It takes longer. It's too clenched, too brittle, too first quarter for instant A.

But the A, when it happens, is sweeter.

But then, is there anything salty, lemon juice, deaf dog sweeter than a tumbled slightly farted room of seven and eight year olds having their first recorder lesson with the school's batshit crazy and very nice recorder aficionado?

Afterwards, pressed into the soft tip pad of the left thumb, the first two fingers, are three full moons.

Next week: G.

with your fetlocks blowing in the

wind.

Transiting Neptune hooches up to natal Mercury this year. Look who turned up last night, said they were here for the longterm:





Bugger me. Which would be a transit of a different colour.

Hello hello. Good to see you. Honest. Is there anything I could do? Shall I put the kettle on? What d'ya fancy? Tea? Coffee? Something light and China might be good in that hunk of gold you're carrying? Sorry? Oh, wine it is, then. Ching.

I could be doing with some bigtime clear roadsigns for the next year or so.

oh i say

We forgot big shed

poop poop

This year I must move. I must start to move and keep moving. I must keep moving.

Last year scares me: no movement, no momentum. Nothing to report.

Another year of last year just would not do. Years of last year would be the death of me. Seize. Congeal. Ossify.

This year I must move. I must.

travelling shoes

The sales brought Molster the Shoe of Shoes. Well, Shoes of Shoes, as one wouldn’t be much cop, Mol being standard biped.

Shoes Supreme.

Mol adores her Shoes Supreme. When she wears them, and she is standing, or walking, and you are talking, and it’s about the wind or Isobel or chocolate shells or Tracey Beaker or Christmas lights or Michael Morpurgo and not at all about shoes, not a bit, her eyes will light from the outside corners in - just for a second, twinkle and gone - and you’ll know that without looking down she is remembering she has new shoes, Shoes of Shoes, Shoes Supreme.

They are a bit flappy at the back. She doesn’t mind at all. It won’t last a bit. She’ll grow into the slight flap. And out the other side.

I can wish nothing better for you than that you find your Shoes of Shoes. That they take you into 2007, and through it, and out the other side. And that when you are standing or walking, and talking about bills or work or food shopping or the broken washing machine or car repairs or frozen ipods, and not about shoes, not a bit, that your eyes will light from the outside corners in - just for a second, twinkle and gone - and you’ll remember you have Shoes Supreme. Without looking down.

housewarming

It doesn’t take long for a house to act unwanted. Three nights, two whole and two bit days.

The key is stiff to turn. December damp makes chill rooms chiller. Too much cat food smelling up the hall, cat resentment on the stairs.

It takes a sparked up boiler, a squirt, a scrub, a lap apiece for two cats, new lights you’d never choose but are glad to be given for a neglected living room window.

Still, I hope I hope next year will bring a new house to warm. This is not an easy country for that to happen. Still, I hope I hope.

woodshed

There are tucked away corners to England. Growly corners, glooming with consistent family misunderstanding, tooth-singingly tense with purpose.

Here foreign is fearful. Unless it's Italian food. Here you’ll find no net access, no dial-up compatible phone line, no hope.

East Anglia has the grandest swoops of skies in the UK - imagine the dark force of will necessary to keep everything in such bad, bad light.

Back Saturday.

monster

Late last night I was caught by what has caught everyone. Or will catch everyone. I’ve been assimilated, deleted, made like them. Resistance is useless. Futile.

My brain has swollen, pulsing and vague, my head is a foreign place. My limbs are stiff, my voice is altered, I feel squeezed all over.



I’m seeing double, treble, oodles.



Gareth feels similar, but with more wind

stuffed

Merry Christmas!

A very merry Christmas! God bless us evr’y one

Merry Christmas!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS.

James Brown! Ow!

James Brown - Ow!

James Brown OW!

JAMES BROWN! Eh?.. Oh … Ow!


Picking aromatics for the cavity this morning, a V formation passed over my head. I called out Gareth, come quick:

Oh look, there’s a gap.

Turkey next year. Or chicken. Or nut stuff en croute.

sinister santa

From Cameroon to Nigeria in five minutes. That’s not bad, not bad at all. You can tell the fog’s cleared up.

Five minutes is the time it takes for Gareth to supervise Zig arranging a carrot and a mince pie on a small plate, and for Mol to measure marsala into a sherry glass. I considered the level before saying I felt the man in red might appreciate a little more, just a drop, up, up, woah.

Mol made loud comment, as they left for bed with A Nightmare Before Christmas and a long wait til morning, that she’s left the glass left handed because that might make it easier for, um, him.

seemed like a good idea at the time

Between the bedroom and the bathroom I had an idea of what to write today.

It was Christmas, but wasn’t a spiky holly idea, all prickles and hoopla. It wasn’t a bauble, a small planet of sparkle and potential shatter. It wasn’t a present, a past, a virgin birth, or a polite pagan throat-clearing from under the hedgerow.

It had solidity and the fruity, slightly boozy bulk of my Christmas cake. I knew it as I know my cake, as something I’ve mixed and baked and fed brandy and painted with apricot jam and smothered in marzipan and beaten the eggs and sifted in the icing sugar to dollop and swirl the royal icing and swoop over a final, edible silver dust. Like my cake, my idea was made through formulae from the inside out over weeks; but it wasn’t round and wasn’t iced, however, it felt white on the outside. It was a bit of a cube, squashed a bit flatter, with the corners rounded. A hard caramel. Sucked a bit.

It referenced something, or reflected something, which was its own shape, a darker shadow it overlapped. A fourth year pencil still life. The year you are given charcoal and learn about drawing the shape around the thing, not the thing itself.

That’s about all I remember about my idea of what to write. I had the idea, liked the shape; liked that it was contained, and moved on to have a shower, clean the loo.