Playing House

Reduce yourself to nothing. Boil yourself down until you are nothing but eyes and ears. And a heart. And then re-assess the importance of things.

Meaning and value are what's important here. They say lessons repeat until they're learned. Well this is my daily lesson:

Here is as good as there.

I've played at being a housewife. A domestic goddess, a grown-up who sweeps the kitchen floor. Living alone allows for this kind of reinvention. I've played at being a well-heeled drunk. Luckily I was only playing. I enjoyed the pose of the lush: sleeping late, staggering up and down the stairs to stock up on Tesco discounted wine. Knocking back 2am mint tea, lukewarm and pointless, missing the yoga sessions which I always miss anyway, sobriety aside.

I flirted with drug abuse. But too many waking hours made me depressed. Being awake when all others are sleeping and I can obsess alone over the missing screw on my mailbox does little for my sense of worth. Couldn't a human hand fit in there? Couldn't they then easily turn the latch? Doesn't the postman know very well that it's loose and know very well that a single white female lives here alone, slightly saner and less tough than Jodie Foster. What's that? Oh, a pigeon fluttering busily on my roof. But what's that? It's the ventilation being rattled by the wind... isn't it? Given enough time in the dark and I will beat myself up so no one else has to.

Give myself a kicking for not renewing my driving licence photograph since it expired in 2009. Trip myself up with my lack of an NHS number. Oh God. Must register with a doctor. Must get a GP to discuss a few things. And what about this definitely-chipped bone in my elbow which should surely be more painful? Look at this stack of unread newspapers, building up along with the tidemark of my own guilt. I really should read up on what's happening in Libya. And what about Japan? Everyone's forgotten about them. And my Amnesty membership has lapsed. Must phone them and donate. And get internet. And fix the fucking washing machine so I can stop hand-washing or just buying new clothes whenever I run out – which I never will because I cant stop buying new clothes on a daily basis. At least the profits are going to charity. So prattles my inner monologue. While the other half goes 'Hmmm another cuppa tea/piece of chocolate/chicken/beer/line/cigarette/shag? Of course'.

Which is why it's better when I'm on a bicycle. Or a dancefloor. Or in a book. I can hypnotise myself with another activity, distract the child in my head for 5 minutes of peace.

Like most 21st century females, I have settled into an uncomfortable obsession with looking 'hot' or 'stylish' or 'cool' or 'clever'. When really, none of those things are related to how I look. I should be spending time nurturing feeling all of those things for good reason – like just having completed a really amazing short story.

So here it is...

The Journey From The Door to the Edge of Sanity.

'A trip of three steps down the palette to tap, at three on the teeth.'

I am continually searching for meaning. Of course I am. Aren't you? And I cannot find it on a screen. Who cares if 'Kylie Goes 3d!' who cares about 'hot girls in tights?'

Too much information. Absolute Information Fucking Overload. My mind freezes like a PC when I just click click click refresh. Anything but refreshed. Click through rates, traffic, but the traffic is actually a sedentary person looking for meaning, sitting frozen in a chair looking for meaning. They will not find it here. Leave! You will not find it here.

Check out my own lack of meaning. Check out my unbridled confusion. I want to return to the 70s when everything was on vinyl and you had to go to a library to look up a fact. Really. I am not joking.

And the fact that this is the first uninterrupted 26 minutes I have spent all day is proof of the scourge of the internet. The erosion of my concentration is proportionate to the amount of windows I have open, multiplied by my number of facebook friends and cubed according to how near a Friday (or Monday) my current situ actually is.

Fucking heck – life with your face in a book and a honeyed tea on your table is so much sweeter. So much slower.

A return. A hark back. I'm off. Off to the country hopefully to slow things down a little.

I wonder what I would have been like if I'd never encountered the internet. Or hair dye. Or rizlas.

If I'd been a 70s child would I have grown my pit hair because it was a political statement?

If I had a clue.

Blue Monday

'And I was feeding on the need for you to know me, devastated at the rate you fell below me.'

In times of hardship, I turn to Fiona Apple, to Donna Tartt, Gwendoline Burns, to the strongly artistic, creative women I admire. Women who explore and express their own hardships in their art.

Reading back, it's always on a MONDAY that I quote songlines which grate my emotions raw, wring them out, stretch them over my body, wear them as clothes, my beating heart transparent beneath.

It's always on a Monday that I make my plans to run away, Pack my knapsack, knot a red spotted handkerchief and sling it glibly over my shoulder, meeting the eye of no one as i slink off to a new life where no one knows me and responsibility is something you can shrug off like an itchy old jumper. Discard for the dogs to chew and scrap over. I want no part of it.

By Tuesday I'm reconciled to staying where I am, picking up the pieces, re-assembling, feeding on the great and the good. Wednesday improves with age, Thursday is positively industrious, Friday and the glow stretches from here to there, from me to you. A lifetime of temporary relief?

A & E

Everyone should spend an hour in A & E to reaffirm their self-love and redress the balance of smiles over scowls. It very effectively quashes the niggling, maggoty itches of irritation with your life and your lot as it thrusts you deep inside the lives of those who are a lot more fucked than you are.

'Hi honey' a *junkie drawls languidly as I pass. Oh God.

Taking my Colles fractured wrist and Phillip Roth with me, the barking receptionist at Royal Barts Accident and Emergency room appraises me testily and does her best to ignore my politeness. The collection of poor souls collected here on this uncharacteristically sunny Friday - exactly a week since the fated Friday 13th incident - are, for the most part, in more pain than me and wretchedly moaning.

I crave health, sun, freedom and a friendly face/gin and tonic. I have a sudden burning lust for my life and it's populace. Being immobilized is a worthy - if annoying - exercise in appreciation of the simple things and the delay of my gratification is necessary to bang this particular lesson where it belongs - in my face. When the fun and the freedom finally arrive it will taste all the sweeter.

*An assumption, a hasty jump to conclusion and a vastly unfair stereotype. But I'm the boss.