Early Death.
I was going to make an attempt to be more upbeat, it is Spring after all, but yet another person I know has died 'before their time'. Living so far out on the moors, I don't see the papers every day so although I get the gist of world cruciality from teletext I miss out on the page-filling gossip. This is of course good in one way, as before not only was it impossible for anyone to tell me anything that I hadn't already read, so I spent much time with a strained smile, but I also knew only too well when somebody was repeating a newspaper story as their own. Which made me despise them, obviously.

Today I had a whole armful of newspapers as I had just come back from my weekly lift to the supermarket. Some time I must reproduce parts of the local papers, as to anyone more than about twenty miles away they must be representative of a vanished world. They have extensive 'hunt1ng reports' which describe for half a page how 'tuft3rs' 'found' in 'Old Cl33ve Bottom' etc. I hadn't realised that special hunts are arranged for big occasions like twenty-first bithdays or retirements ... Anyway ........... Flicking casually through a satisfyingly solid non-broadsheet, there was a familiar face from years of parties. 'Found dead from a suspected drug overdose in a Th@i backpacker's hotel'. But he is about the same age as me. What is he doing in my children's life? Well ...... 'Thingy spent many years fighting drink and drug addiction apparently brought on by publishers rejection of his second novel'. For f@ck's sake. What is happening to the world I ask myself.

It ties in with a news story about Chemistry departments being closed down all over England because no one wants to read Science anymore. They are all fighting to get on to Media Studies courses. A bizarre future scenario looms of everyone wandering around filming each other as the planet sinks into ill-informed chaos....
- posted by Iris @ 4/30/2004 02:06:00 AM comment

 
Canadian gold.
Ha! Finally the months of compulsively panning the 'recently published blogs' section has produced a nugget which sparkles in the sunlight. snobby-n-unemployed.blogspot.com. I have been drawn to the romance of Canada since I spent a winter's day entranced by 'Susannah of the Mounties' and this blog is a worthy successor.
- posted by Iris @ 4/30/2004 01:21:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
Love.
When I was four years old I fell in love with a little boy in a cowboy hat. He had no idea what love meant and was an easy prey. He was thrilled when I suggested new variations on his games but puzzled as to why we both had to ride on the same 'horse'. 'I don't have a horse because I was taken by the Indians and when you rescue me we have to gallop away. I sit in front and you put your arms round me to hold the reins'. We circled the playground endlessly; with me in heaven and him out on the wild frontier.

In one of the Nancy droftiM books a sophisticated older woman asks the young girl who she loves, 'You must be in love with someone - or what would you think about while you are alone?'. I was in love continuously from that first time on for about another thirty years. This love was often secret and often unrequited but it was real and consuming. It gave me the motivation to go out , to look attractive, to give parties and go to parties, to read and do and say things that I might never have bothered with. It gave me a reason to be alive. In the gaps between falling out of and into love I didn't FEEL alive.

But it didn't make me happy. I was interested and filled with adrenaline and sometimes a sort of hysterical joy but also moody and irritable and given to sudden pointless weeping. How many simple pleasures were ruined because 'he' hadn't rung or done what he said he would or been at the party? Nothing was ever as important as the state of the love affair. It was like a serious job. When I looked back at my life that was all I could see. One day I was walking along the street feeling low and hopeless. 'Why hasn't he called?', I was thinking. I came to, 'Why hasn't WHO called?'. OMG - NO ONE. You aren't in love at this moment. There isn't anyone to call or not call. This is just a mental habit and it has taken you over. It has to stop.

I told everyone I knew that it was all over. I would never let myself fall in love again and I would never have another affair. How they laughed. 'Oh right... YOU ... How long will that last?'. It has lasted from that moment - until now.

There is no drama. No passion or crying or gazing adoringly or scanning parties distractedly for that face which will make the evening have a meaning after all. But I can do whatever I like without feeling something lacking. I can go wherever I like without caring who will be there. I can spend days alone and live in the moment. Best of all - I don't notice if the phone doesn't ring. There is an element of dullness but it has the endless compensation that I am not at the mercy of someone else's whim. I am glad to have those memories but so relieved now that is all they are.
- posted by Iris @ 4/29/2004 01:05:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
Checking Mental State Through Film.
A few months ago I passed a few moments filling in the 'What mliF do you Belong In' quiz on Jo's site and was stunned to find that it came up with 'C1nderella'. OMG! How pin-pointily accurate! These quizzes are quite scary, aren't they?

Today she had it there again and with , as usual, some more moments in hand, I went through it for the second time. 'C1inderella'? Well No - not anymore. Who would have guessed? I have evolved into 'F1ght Club'!!!

The thing is that I could have predicted something like that. Maybe it is the end of a long winter or my children's lives being less worrying or some internal chemical change or playing Christina Agu1ler@ on repeat but I DO feel as if I am fighting back against my pointless depressive tendencies. Who needs an analyst when they have Qu1zilla?

Now I am going to do the quiz every month and chart my progress. I think a combination of 'one step at a time' AND a long-term goal. But what should these be? Not immediately and definitely not the final stage but at some point I think I should reach the 'Be@ch Blanket B1ngo' moment. In this film, apparently, 'Timothy yeraC ... is wild as a pool-playing, biker s@dist and kidnapping t@p-dancer ... ' and this video can be purchased from 'thevideob3@t.com/teen@ger_be@ch_drugs.htm'. Now why was I originally Googling those words? Funny - the reason totally escapes me....
- posted by Iris @ 4/27/2004 09:02:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
Wetness Ends.
All sentimentality is over. I gave the soul 24 hours to find me but now I have to reverse the title as usual. When I first discovered blogging I was so excited that I rashly told quite a few people, also mentioning the name of the book which had led me into it. By the time I realised that their finding the same 'world' as me would totally ruin it, it was too late. But luckily none of them followed it up straight away and by the time they were saying, 'So, what was that 'weblog' thing you were talking about? That sounds quite interesting'. I was able to reply, 'Oh, I don't know. There are so many and most of them are pretty dull. It is probably better if you type in some words at random and see what turns up'. Not one of them has bothered to pursue it after their first try. Mwahaha...! Oh... actually, perhaps I should feel mean about this?
- posted by Iris @ 4/26/2004 10:27:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
Hommage a Badger.
THE RAF TNATSID SUXO.

A year ago today I typed the name of this book into my computer and my life was changed for ever. I always write the titles of books backwards to prevent anyone finding my blog by accident but for this one time I am putting this here in case it helps another sad soul to find happiness.

I was sitting, staring at the rain, brooding about my life's having reached a plateau of loneliness and despair. The computer was only used, drearily, to research facts for my children's school work. For some reason a memory of 'The faF tnatsiD suxO' drifted into my brain - a book I had loved when I was young and which is set only a few miles from here. 'I wonder if the authors are still alive?'. I thought. Only a second later Google had found three sites - two useless - and .......... Badger. 'Badger bag - messy, surly, full of books'. 'Wednesday, April 23, 2003.' 'poetry, books, books, books.'

I had never seen a blog before - I had never heard of a blog before. I was afraid. Who IS this woman? After reading one or two entries ... I knew. She was a goddess. The benevolent spirit of the computer who had come to save me from my downward spiral.

From that day my life has been transformed. I have been introduced to fascinating new worlds; 'met' people whose company I enjoy in a way that I thought was gone for ever; been forced to re-think my insular political views; heard totally new music; found out riveting insights about myself through the medium of 'quizzes'. I could go on and on ... but I will just say ....

Thank you, Badger.
- posted by Iris @ 4/25/2004 11:13:00 AM (0) comments comment

 

- posted by Iris @ 4/25/2004 10:49:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
Just checking that anyone Irish reading this understands that I not only have several Irish friends but also at one time considered MARRYING someone gorgeous and Irish. So if life had gone differently I would probably be writing little snide comments about English people by now. Anyway, everyone over here does it - trust me.

As part of the long haul back to some semblance of my old personality after many, many years of selfless motherhood, I decided to make more effort with the 'making sure that the small everyday objects around you are beautiful' school of thought. Every morning, instantly, I have strong coffee from a huge, white and very ordinary breakfast cup. (Which I found to my horror holds ONE PINT - no wonder I can type super fast at this time of day.) So yesterday, in the post, came an expensive, almost one-off, hand made breakfast cup and ... saucer! (I haven't seen one of those for years) in an evocative shade of Mediterranean blue. This morning I went down and made the coffee and turned to pick up the new blue cup. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a sad, white object; well-washed and 'put away'. Oh Noooo .... you poor, faithful old thing ... we have been through so much together. I picked him, I mean it, up and filled it with coffee as usual. The blue one will be used only in the afternoons, for tea - well it has got a saucer after all. The moving on from the ' motherhood' thing is obviously going to take more work than I thought.

I had an odd dream recently - don't leave the room, it is quite short. I was walking along a street in ohoS, where the roads are very narrow and the pavements only wide enough for one person. And saw that this street was being used as a 'burning tahg' so that every few yards there was the horrible remains of a body surrounded by ash, abandoned, or one actually on fire being tended by someone in a turban, so that I had to step out into the road to get past. It was very realistic in that it was a grey, dreary day and the 'tenders' looked bored and depressed and I was thinking, 'This really seems a bit unsuitable. Surely it is taking the acceptance of foreign religious customs too far'. But at the same time I felt prepared to put up with it and certainly wasn't going to complain.

It seemed to be based on my daughter's descriptions of the real ones in India and how the bodies aren't burnt very well at all and tourists are always nastily surprised. And a documentary I was watching about the singer whose body was stolen by his friend and burnt in the Arizona desert (I think). They have just made a film romanticising this which I would quite like to see as I now feel armed with the true 'facts' - it was a good documentary. As apparently the friend did a rather sloppy job and just threw petrol over the body, fairly near the side of the road, and didn't realise quite how much you would need to turn a person into a neat pile of ash. Anyway, it is quite annoying to have dreams like that some time after the information has entered your brain. What happened to all the sweet, cute things that I have seen and read lately - rise to the surface, dammit.
- posted by Iris @ 4/24/2004 09:49:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
What am I doing here at 11.45 am on a beautiful day? It is the farcical weather which has gone from ski-suit wearing freezingness yesterday to boiling, too hot to be outside, today. I was going to dig over part of the vegetable garden - how dreary and boring is that? Well - unbearably - so now I'm not. Where are all the 'men' who used to do stuff like that. I think they were called 'gardeners'. They certainly don't exist around here; I suppose everyone is too middle-class to do manual work now...

Apparently it is Saint George's Day, the patron saint of England. I say apparently because no one here knows or cares and it drifts past unremarked. Unlike the sad Irish who have to make a big thing of theirs because they have done nothing else ... According to an AOL poll, in which I also voted, 97% of people think that we SHOULD have celebrations and run around cheering - Oh well, why not. With massive population migration predicted I suppose it's important to keep traditions alive or everything will turn into a grey sludge. It also asked what you would like as a National Anthem and I was surprised to find that my own choice 'Land of epoH and yrolG' came out on top, narrowly beating 'God evaS the neeuQ'. Which has the drawback of an agonisingly dull tune. I am so bored with us apologising for the past when in fact everyone in the world was behaving in exactly the same way and the English were relatively decent in rape and pillage terms, compared to many countries which I will not mention. If you just remove some of the references to showing off about world domination from L. of H. and G. it is a really rousing and totally acceptable anthem and will take us proudly through the coming century. Well that is my opinion, along with 56% of my fellow Englishpersons.
- posted by Iris @ 4/23/2004 12:13:00 PM (0) comments comment

 
I was thinking that I never say anything about books that I like and that is partly because I saw a great list stretching out and I couldn't take the strain of having to write all the titles backwards. But then ... I thought, 'Why don't you just write down one or two at a time?'. Hmm.... interesting. The other problem is that although it must be obvious that I am very, very intelligent, I spend so much time alone under spooky circumstances that I read a lot of quite 'light' reassuring kinds of literature. Oddly enough this includes vast amounts of detective stories because for some reason I can read the most gruesome and chilling descriptions of death and lurking weirdos without feeling a speck nervous. Whereas the feeblest horror FILM stays with me just about for ever and makes going downstairs in the night totally out of the question. My children are the opposite and sit up until 3.00 am alone with curtains undrawn watching vile nastiness on ovarB. And then when I offer them something to read they spring away saying, 'Aaargh! Not one of YOUR books ... Noo .. don't even show me the cover - I'll have nightmares'. Bizarre.

So here are just one or two at a time. They are all 'light' and all famous so anyone reading this will know them already, probably, although they are all quite old.

Aunt ailuJ and eht retirwtpircS. M. sagraV asolL.
tarB rarraF. Josephine yeT.
Thus saw sinodA Murdered. haraS llewduaC.
The sdilasyrhC. John mahdnyW.
An nailatI Education. miT skraP.

There must be an easier way of doing this. It isn't really a reading suggestion list - it is more just a list of books I have enjoyed at various times. Which I was thinking of adding to every week or so. Does anyone ever take up reading suggestions on blogs?


- posted by Iris @ 4/22/2004 10:07:00 PM (0) comments comment

 
The slope of field opposite this window, with the big chestnut tree, that was covered with fallen leaves and pheasants last time I mentioned it, is now covered with baby lambs. They are so agonisingly sweet and run about naughtily in packs doing silly chasing and jumping from just a few days old. They were only put into this field a week ago and I had forgotten how things worked, so when I heard desperate baa-ing as dusk fell I thought that some had got out under the gate and would spend the night shivering and alone... Oh Nooo .. I had actually gone to bed very, very early ready for reading and TV watching of a cosy nature, especially as it was pouring with rain. But I rose again in a selfless manner and dragged out into by then near darkness and soppingness. It was also fairly creepy.

The baa-ing came from several directions so I was forced to walk a long way round the edge of the field, which rises sharply so that sheep kept disappearing over the horizon at a worried trot. I had pretty much circled it, with no sign of any lambs trapped outside, when the milling and trotting suddenly struck a chord. It was the nightfall gathering. For f@ck's sake. All day the lambs gallop about cheerfully alone while their mothers potter around eating and wandering out of sight casually. Then, the second that the light starts to fade, the sheep become totally hysterical and comb the field wildly with hoarse cries until they round up their personal twins and then keep them close until dawn. It is very cute... but I wish I had remembered it an hour or so earlier. Walking home, soaked, I felt part of a long line of shepherds reaching back over the centuries. Or maybe part of the parallel line of rather dim, untrained people who never quite reached the heights of meriting their own crook.
- posted by Iris @ 4/22/2004 09:05:00 PM comment

 
As usual I feel much better for getting some moaning down on paper yesterday and obviously anyone with any pride would erase it as it does not reflect well on an objective, positive thinker like myself. But, as the blogging guide said, you must not write to please others or you will lose your original voice. All righty then.

It would be interesting to sit and write for the whole day from first getting up until going to bed. One's mood changes so often during that time and it is totally random when you have the chance to actually put something down. I could easily have written a perfectly cheerful piece yesterday if I had had time in the morning and the other one would never have been.

RIGHT. Some activity is called for. And some self-improvement. It is always annoying when self-improvement turns out to be transitory though. A year or so ago I started to learn Ancient Greek, just because I didn't know it and it seemed stupid not to. I only wanted to know a little bit - the alphabet and a vague chance of reading some simple inscriptions. I found the perfect book, ('Learn tneicnA keerG' by reteP esnoJ'), which takes you to that level and far beyond in twenty weeks and has a pronounciation tape, so that you will be easily understood if you are transported back in time. I stuck at it for about eight weeks and felt clever and scholarly and laughed lightly as I translated the Ancient Greek puns which littered the excercises. And then, for no reason, I stopped. And now I can remember NOTHING except the first half of the alphabet and then a gap and then omega. When I was tidying I found the book again and was re-inspired. I LOVE Ancient Greek, even if I do have to go back to the beginning and now I have the authentic Greek church candles from the catalogue and I could read A. Greek aloud with my perfect pronounciation by the light of them and maybe buy some Greek wine through the internet - cool.

And have perfect bare feet, which somehow goes with Greekness, although an ongoing task.

BUT ... I have the new Michel samohT 'learn Spanish with nil effort just by listening to these CDs for a few hours' course. And the dual language books and a couple of ravodomlA DVDs and my dusted off copy of 'Mallorcan yrekooC'. Aaargh! What shall I do? It obviously IS possible to learn two languages at once as we did that at school. It just seems rather unnecessary. But I can't choose so I will have to. My idea is to learn them on alternate weeks, giving the brain time to process each section of information fully. I will start tonight .... alpha, beta ........ (I also found an old Berl1tz Spanish CD from 1998 and was reminded that I am CERTAIN that the person saying the English translations on it is 'Giles' from yffuB. It doesn't give their names anywhere.)

Also I am going to finally make the ultimate herb garden and two massive herb books arrived from Amazon this week. I had a decent herb garden at the house in Norfolk with quite rare medicinal things as well as everything else but it was so easy there because of the drier climate and a huge and extensive garden centre only a couple of miles away. It is more 'challenging' here because of about a million tiny black slugs to the square foot ... and the rabbit... and the lack of garden centre. I would like the garden to be not twee or pretentiously historically accurate (as if) but still have a monkish air ... hmm... this seems unlikely. Also, I notice that these new books, ( akkeJ racivcM - the herb goddess), have got very nervous about medicinal herbs and are full of warnings and in fact lack of suggestions about which cures they could be used for. Instead leaning heavily towards tisane recipes. I think the most disappointing herb garden I have seen was the endlessly photographed and drooled over one at tsruhgnissiS. Which was dull and just not attractive. Strange.

Totally nothing to do with anything but I meant to mention it before. My three children were born relatively far apart and I have always been obsessed with them being friends and having stuff in common. So I sent them all to the same schools all the way through so they'd have shared memories of teachers etc. and did all I could to stop them feeling jealous or competitive. (On each one's birthday the other two both had one largish present of their choice, for example - only while they were small obviously). Anyway, they are pretty close, considering, and compared to most of their friends. The weekend after the younger two got back from Thailand they had arranged to go out in a big group with their older sister for the first time for ages. My son was keen to get his hair bleached beforehand so he would look extra gorgeous and shot out to the hairdresser early. Later, my older daughter came down wrapped in towels. She had decided to home-platinum her hair. We were just checking a strand for maximum whiteness when my middle daughter came through the front door - with platinum bleached hair. All of them had done it on the spur of the moment without saying anything to the others. They went out that night like some ludicrous Swedish pop group. But afterwards my older daughter said, 'I thought it would be really embarrassing but actually I kept looking at the other two and thinking, Yeah - my family, and it was really comforting and nice'. So I felt glad.
- posted by Iris @ 4/21/2004 09:25:00 PM (0) comments comment

 
Just now there was a rainbow in the fields outside my bedroom window and I could see exactly where both ends went into the ground. Last year one end of a rainbow was actually in the garden only yards from the house and I thought then, 'I must hire a really good metal detector and dig up that pot of gold'. How could I possibly have forgotten? And now I have three places to choose from.

When we were rebuilding parts of the house and putting in massive drains, the land round the house was disturbed for the first time for maybe hundreds of years. And we found nothing whatsoever - not even a coin. The builders couldn't bear it and brought over a huge borrowed metal detector and criss-crossed the ground in their lunch hour. (I watched them from behind the curtains in case they made off with some Roman hoard). They even went up and down the ancient bridle path which is called 'Ch@nge Lane', it is just a narrow field track but was once a main horse and cart route between two villages. Nothing.... I suppose everyone who lived here was either poor or 'careful' and remembered to pick up their gold coins and diamond earrings. Massive disappointment. All we did find were lots of broken Victorian glass bottles stamped with the name of some sheep liniment. We kept the better ones in a pointless, sad sort of way.
- posted by Iris @ 4/21/2004 08:03:00 PM (0) comments comment

 
When I was writing that everything is in place for a second I thought, 'Don't write that because it is asking for trouble'. But then I thought, 'Why should I never be able to say that things are all right without something out there then purposely spoiling everything for me. F@ck them - I will say whatever I like'. So - something obviously didn't care for that.

I had decided that although spending my entire time alone might once have been a useful thing and I still enjoy it, it also leads to rather depressing time wasting, brooding and possible eccentricity of the less attractive kind. And eating. I felt and feel a kind of pride that I am capable of this life and I don't know anyone else who could do it. But I also feel angry and jealous of my husband and the way that he has taken over the fun, social way of being that was once mine and that he had no experience of before he met me. He is constantly telling me about the amusing, interesting people he's met and I think, 'But I would have got on with them so much better than you. I would have got closer and maybe ended up as friends, while you are just their acquaintance.' It is so maddening when he meets writers I admire or actors I like and he has never heard of them so it is totally wasted. He takes a stand against 'popular culture' and is unbearably annoying about it. I was watching 'lianhtiW and I' with my son the other night for the hundredth time and if you want an idea of my husband then look at Uncle ytnoM. Remove the hideousness and the gayness and the sexual innuendo and leave in what his house looked like and the tinkly classical music and the expensive wine and the bustling about cooking obsessively and the never knowing what was actually going on and the being really quite boring and the having to bend the facts to appeal to his snobbishness - and then you get the picture.

I can't understand why I react to people being horrible by withdrawing. When the children were still little I was always having screaming arguments with people and crying and rushing around pouring out every detail of everything to anyone who would listen and it was very relaxing. It was when they got old enough to notice and be hurt that I had to calm down and back off and keep everything locked inside. If you can't have screaming arguments any more or encourage people to be in love with you or get really drunk to blot it all out and have to stay at home being a steady, stable mother then naturally your old wild crowd don't find you much fun. And you don't find the people who are drawn to a steady, stable mother are massive fun. So in the end you find it easier to just be on your own. And when you do occasionally go out to old haunts you have to bear your husband, who once hung about on the sidelines, being accepted as one of them just through familiarity, as he has never felt any need to stay dutifully at home, while newcomers to the 'scene' ignore you as some dull hanger-on of HIS. It is so maddening that I no longer go. So actually that is a reason why I withdraw. And the fact that it would not be like this if most of my favourite friends and the old lovers, who would be talking to me and putting my husband in his place and showing new people that I was interesting and worth knowing, weren't all dead...

So anyway, I never seem able to win and it makes me think there is 'something' out to get me. At every tiny level, every tiny plan is f@cked. Why do I now have a weird sinus pain that recurrs whenever there is a holiday and ruins it? Why does my ill cat have a scary relapse every time I think I will go to London and try some new form of life for a few days? Why does my husband decide to fill the house with ugly superfluous parent's furniture just when I was about to make huge efforts to make it attractive and have people to stay? Why did the favourite university have to bring in a positive discrimination policy against private schools this year when otherwise my son would have walked straight in and now he is having sad second thoughts about the other one after all and he doesn't deserve this and I have to keep on worrying and 'being there'. Why did the fashion place have to write to my middle d@ughter out of the blue and say she had to start immediately so that we can't have the little holiday together next month that I REALLY wanted? Why did my computer have to get this virus which f@cks up many of its crucial functions just when I was going to spend time learning how to use it better? Why did my older d@ught3r have to be called for jury s3rvice just when we had agreed that she would come and live here much more while we turned one end of the building into a separate house for the children with a kitchen and they would then have masses of friends to stay and it would be fun. And out of the forty people waiting to be chosen why did they pick her today for a trial that is going to last for TEN WEEKS so that the house plan and the other little plan of her taking her s1ster's place for next month's holiday and her doing her gr@phics course and starting a new life are all totally destroyed?

I don't care if this is self pitying and irritating. There are lots more 'Why' things that I can't be bothered to put. I just feel doomed to rot here for ever with nothing ever happening and each sadly hopeful idea for escape, or even pathetically making the best of it or myself, blasted by fate before anything can happen. I also don't care that my problems are trivial - I have had untrivial ones in the past. Trivial things can also have a devastating effect.





- posted by Iris @ 4/19/2004 10:18:00 PM comment

 
It is Sunday so I will definitely see no one and can spend most of the morning in bed watching the London nohtaraM. Always especially enjoyable when it is pouring with rain, both here and there. Not so good this year as there seems to be nobody English in the top group, unlike last time when we Won.... but still it is an uplifting occasion. They all look so fragile - how can they possibly run so far?

But lo ... what is that noise? It is 10.00 am on SUNDAY. How can there be a loud, rude car horn blaring outside? And I am wearing a strange Arab robe-thing and have mad hair. But as it is obviously a serious emergency I will run downstairs, regardless. On the doorstep is a huge butch woman in a navy boiler suit, (do they still make these - or is it amusingly retro?). 'Look, can YOU tell me exactly where your husband is? We have been hanging about for half an hour now, you know'. 'But ... he's in London?'. 'WHAT! We made this arrangement to inspect the cow weeks ago. This is simply not good enough'. Light dawns ... 'Ah ... no, no. You are looking for the FARMER. He is usually lurking, I mean working, by the far barn'. 'Well, there's no sign of anyone. Can you give me his phone number?'. As I riffle through some stained notebook on the kitchen table I find that she is standing behind me, her face screwed into an odd shape.

After she drives away I take stock of my surroundings, as a stranger might. With limited time and strength and interest at my disposal I have been concentrating on the garden for a few days. As it was meant to rain today I had sensibly put off house stuff until now. Especially as NO ONE was going to enter the building until at least Monday. It's so unfair ... even my exceptionally low standards usually include keeping the kitchen unembarrassing. I have fresh flowers on the table for f@ck's sake. Not today ....... I think that the first thing a stranger would notice is a cat litter tray in the middle of the floor, (moved there to remind me to empty it first thing), so heavily used that the contents have been kicked contemptuously into a circle round it. Then possibly the THREE large Easter flower arrangements in the room, now not only totally dead but giving off that pungently horrible scent of fleshy decay. The rubbish bin, so full that the lid is propped open. Several plates of half-eaten cat food, abandoned as I had forgotten that they hate the chicken flavour. Various chairs with drying jerseys hanging over their backs. All the children's muddy outdoor shoes in a heap ready to be moved. A sink full of washing up. And a huge casserole dish full of off meat remains from the fridge which I was about to throw to the 'wild' cats. Plus myself - possibly as near to the opposite in looks to someone with neat short hair, subtle make-up and a pressed boiler suit as one could imagine.

I repeat ..... It's not fair.... If she had come at this time tomorrow, when I am expecting various deliveries; a 'fencing conference' (wooden ..); and coffee with the tree-planting man, it and I would have appeared not only unexceptional but even maybe charming. Now she will tell everyone she knows round here God knows what - except I can imagine only too well .... F@ck..

So I have pointlessly redressed and rushed around de-crapping the kitchen, at least roughly, and missed the rest of the marathon and my morning is totally ruined. And naturally no one will be here again today so I needn't have bothered but I had the fear. Grrrrr.
- posted by Iris @ 4/18/2004 12:53:00 PM comment

 
I just need to say quickly that I failed totally at Easter. Having a piercing pain boring straight into your head makes amusing light verse an impossibility, let alone dressing up teddy bears as Gandalf or whatever was going to happen. 'Why don't you give it a miss this year, you seem a bit hysterical', said one of the children. So I did. Instead we played a croquet tournament for chocolate. Involving one-off new rules where everyone was really nice to each other although competitive at the same time. The first person to win each hoop could choose from the egg selection - which turned out craply as my son is a million times the best player so soon had a huge pile of stuff, while my older daughter was lying by the first hoop crying with laughter, madly unable to get through after about a hundred tries.
- posted by Iris @ 4/17/2004 08:34:00 PM (0) comments comment

 
One of those rare moments when everything seems to be in place for a second. My middle d@ught3r has been offered her dream job; her first paid work as a fashion designer for a real famous name brand. Even though it is two months probation I'm sure they will keep her as she has this special smile which puts even hateful French waiters and middle-aged saleswomen in expensive boutiques into a trance of niceness. (It involves showing all your teeth with the edges just touching - I have never known it fail. Except in my own case). My older d@ught3r has signed up for a part-time gr@phics des1gn course and will take over her s1ster's work for 'D@ddy' while continuing our secret spying operation into what he actually does with the money and the property. (We have a feeling that there is a hidden seam of low level chaos in there somewhere).

In the typical weird way that Life has. Because my son had one grade that was fractionally low, his tutor suggested that we 'try out' the university entrance process this year while really intending to re-take French and apply properly next year. This 'trying out' involved applying to places that he definitely didn't want to go to and seeing what they said so he could perfect his next application. At the last minute he cracked and also wrote to his favourite even though they are cold and cruel and never make grade exceptions - but he had a wild unspoken hope.
Unfounded, sadly. BUT - two other universities with exactly the same grade requirements as the favourite offered him unconditional places, without having to re-take. BUT - of course they were ones that he had chosen for their total unsuitability. (Too far away; hideous cities; no one in the known universe had ever gone there etc...).

Idly glancing through one of their prospectuses before throwing it into the bin I was struck by the odd phrase .... ' ... stunningly beautiful architecture ... heritage site ... university of the year ... in top five of research table ... charming lakeside campus ... MODULAR courses ... LESS THAN TWO HOURS FROM LONDON'..... OMG! This is perfect! I woke him up and reeled off various choice passages, repeating the word 'modular' several times. 'So, what do you think? It would save so much trouble and suppose the favourite said 'No' again?' 'Hmm .... but I've got used to the idea of having another year off. That's why I haven't done much so far. I was thinking of hanging out in Spain .....'. 'Doing what?' 'Err ..... Oh, all right ... I suppose I might as well go. Where did you put the acceptance form?' And so are the great life changing decisions made.
- posted by Iris @ 4/17/2004 08:03:00 PM comment

 
I have also realised the obvious thing that if I get up earlier and write here around now - 8.00 am - it is around midnight in America and everyone is actually there, excitingly. I was just putting a little comment on Badger's blog when she wrote something herself at that very minute. The thrill of it.

I am going to write some (slightly more) interesting stuff but not until this evening as I have decided to stop being so crap and sort out the entire house and garden before I am too old and then go away for a week with some combination of children. I was thinking of Greece as I have never been there and (pathetically unoriginally) my favourite catalogue, which I mentioned here, is set there and I bought some hand dipped church candles and a volume of modern Greek poetry along with a bathing costume. And was inspired by the scent of the candles and the romance of the words. (A Greek tetniuQ. yeleeK and drarrehS).

Speaking of poetry ... many of the random blogs that I pick to read seem to be written by illiterate teenagers around the world and have a certain sweetness. The latest is called ylliwtsua.blogspot.com (backwards..) and I love the poem 'Y...?' which I will be sending to my son.
- posted by Iris @ 4/17/2004 08:41:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
Ten days have gone past since I was here last? How is that possible? The final person left yesterday and now I will be alone for at least a week or more. I am now totally out of the habit of writing and of being by myself. I realised that it is not so much the aloneness that I like so much as the lack of responsibility and drudgy servitude - as I have come to think of the cooking, washing up, laundry etc. which sets in when family arrive. When five people are here, even if they help, total chaos sets in if I don't wander round constantly 'picking up' or planning food buying/preparing etc. as they don't have the habit-like understanding of how the house runs. Even dusk activities like cat feeding, window closing, fire lighting which have to be done on time or the house gets freezing.....

For the last week I was left with my son and older daughter and we are the ones who potter on together with least argument. We ran our parallel lives in total harmony, even cooking separately. Drifting together for an hour or so in front of 'legnA' and then apart to computer or book or obsessive knitting (my daughter). And THAT is my perfect arrangement and not the sometimes scary at night and sometimes wild brooding by day hermit life, after all.
- posted by Iris @ 4/17/2004 08:24:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
The Easter gathering of children is almost complete, with only one to go, which means that I will have nil computer access for several days. Especially as my middle daughter is making a portfolio of all her designs now that she is on the short list for her dream job in fashion.

How have I become so dreary and joyless? I had somehow blanked from my brain the other little tradition which is still with us. The making of the Hot Cross Buns. 'Oh crap', I thought automatically, 'Not again'. NOT AGAIN? It is like mince pies - you only do it ONCE a year. It has a charming quality and is FUN. Just get on with it..... and smile.
- posted by Iris @ 4/08/2004 11:18:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
I have personally and acidentally found out what is wrong with the computer but I don't think that anyone here will ever be able to fix it. One of the many small annoying and/or vitally important things that are wrong with it (like not saving any word documents) is that when you turn it on several grey boxes appear saying that they cannot find a file called exe.rdltnf (this is written backwards). After weeks of staring stupidly at the screen I was suddenly moved to type this file name into Google and found that it is a famous VIRUS. For f@ck's sake. There are reams of desperate messages from every caliber of person asking for help.. and ... reams of suggested help, each bit of help totally different and even more complicated than the last....

Does anyone know where there is an easy and straightforward bit of help printed? (Oddly the only site which has the classic porn-related symptoms when you access it and which you are now supposed to avoid at all costs is 'enyaL'.)
- posted by Iris @ 4/07/2004 09:49:00 AM comment

 
I am hoping that an exciting new, multi-lingual life is about to open up. My son DOES have to re-take his French exam and is being casual about actually getting round to doing anything about it. The words 'later', 'not NOW' and 'Why do you always have to start on that when I was just feeling happy?' are used, I think the phrase is, 'With wearying frequency'.

BUT .... yesterday I came across an article about 'The l@nguage teacher to the St@rs'. For a mere $25,000 per course he has taught prctically everyone you have ever heard of to speak European languages fluently.... and in only a couple of weeks. He is called lehciM samohT, (www.samohtlehcim.com), and on his site are testimonials from M. nosbiG, M. thiffirG, B. dnasiertS etc. and his most famous success W. nellA, who apparently took only one week to reach a point where he could be interviewed in French on French TV.

In order to spread his revolutionary teaching discovery a little more thinly, M. samohT has brought out a series of CDs at a quite reasonable price. (Here £45.00 for the entire course). Which is the same as two private lessons from a tutor. I have ordered them from A...on and they should be with me, (or us), by tomorrow. They assume that you know nothing so will be well below my son's level but then again he seems to remember nothing, so having the basics fixed in his brain can only be good. If this works I am buying a different language for myself but it is so hard to choose .... Spanish, Italian, German? F@ck it ... I'll get them all.
- posted by Iris @ 4/06/2004 11:11:00 AM comment

 
It is strange how even quite weird living conditions become accepted as normal once they have turned into a daily habit. This morning I was reading a magazine peacefully in the 'bathroom' for a few minutes and when I 'flushed' hardly registered an outbreak of wild squawking and flapping apparently coming from inside the lavatory. Every year, in Spring, several pairs of jackdaws appear like salmon and rebuild their nests in holes in the walls and under the roof. The entrance to one of these is with the outflow pipe and obviously widens into a comfy space under the floor beneath the 'bowl'. Our family has become totally deaf to all this but when a passing visitor uses the facilities it is not uncommon to hear an echoing scream of 'OMG!!'.
- posted by Iris @ 4/06/2004 10:45:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
I still keep up the habit of picking an interesting-looking blog from the published in the last 2 minutes list as I am signing off. As I usually choose ones with the stupidest names, or the most foreign, I don't always strike gold but each little look into another person's mind has its rewarding aspect. One of the latest not only had an unusual title, ('The ylurnU tnavreS', http;//ovaihcsleahcim.blogspot.com), but also a certain 'something' in the choice of typeface etc. Frankly, it reminded me heavily of some of my husband's more pretentious friends and I sprang into it with a joyous sneer. BUT .... not only does he write perfectly well (although on the p.... side) but also his links led me to all sorts of literary magazines that I had never heard of, some on-line and some published. Also - amazing pleasure - I had never heard of any of these people, although they were obviously quite well-known generally. There is a whole new world out there......... I have already signed up to a year's supply of 'niT esuoH', the first of which should arrive this week. And am tempted by 'saiseoPiM' or however you spell it. Are these magazines famous in America or just the ramblings of self-obsessed academic cells? Actually... I don't really care..... I love finding things by accident as if my hand is being guided for some reason.

I do talk a lot about higher purposes and God's will etc. This may be a way of avoiding lower purposes like sorting the house out and arranging the Hunt.
- posted by Iris @ 4/05/2004 11:44:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
The re-creating idyllic Victorian family life compulsion that I had - now fading - also extended to Easter. When the children were young there was ludicrous egg overkill. This would start with their being sent to the chicken house where - surprise! - the hens had laid coloured hard-boiled eggs with their (the children's) names on. When they returned the table was set out with a fest of chicken and rabbit shaped egg cups, plates, salt shakers etc., green napkins and vases of primroses and violets. (We lived in the country, obviously). Even the toast was in rabbit silhouette form.

After breakfast came the terrifyingly exciting moment. Had the E@ster Bunny 'been'?. Deep in the garden was a cute 18th century, thatched summer house, (tiny), an obvious choice for a passing rabbit. Every year 'he' would make a huge nest of straw and coloured tissue paper and fill it with the large, hideous commercial Easter eggs that they longed for. (When they were older I would search out the most trashy and un-Eastery possible - 'for fun'). It was quite sad that they weren't totally sure that the Bunny had remembered them and always ran through the garden with slightly nervous expressions. I had never used him and his basket as a threat - odd.

Lunch - more Easterama - chicken, (naturally), followed by some kind of chocolate nest-shaped pudding with tiny eggs etc...

THEN ... THE HUNT... which tradition still exists to this day. Little did I realise in those sunny early years what hours of torment I was storing up for myself. When I was a child my father would make a fairly short but complicated hunt for me around our smallish garden. He was a talented writer of doggrel verse and master of literature and his cryptic clues took hours to work out. He and my mother rested quietly in deckchairs with closed eyes while I wandered through the bushes, occasionally sobbing with frustration. However, a gap of twenty years had left me with nostalgic memories only and as soon as the oldest child could walk I was inspired to make them a Hunt of their own. This began as little piles of minute eggs with big paper arrows pointing on to the next one but soon escalated. The better their reading skills, the longer and more complex the Hunt.. and now the clues were in verse.

Fast forward fifteen years. The sophistication and expense of the Hunt has reached a peak. Not only does the Hunt now have at least twenty clues (in verse) but at each clue-point is a small but Easter-related gift for all three of them. This would be a purple pencil with rabbit-shaped eraser on top, say, cheap in itself but when multiplied by twenty ... and then having to FIND these little objects. It took weeks. My middle daughter, the most straightforward, finally spoke out. 'I don't want any more tiny Easter stuff; I have nowhere to put it. And I am not eating chocolate this year as I'm on a diet'. Gulp... 'Okay.. so we will stop having the Hunt then'. 'NOOOO, No, No ..... I didn't mean THAT. We LOVE the Hunt. Perhaps we could do it differently - with less 'things'?'

That is when the horror began. I decided that to give the now 'thingless' Hunt a point, it would instead have a 'theme'. Several years have passed and I am all themed out. Two Easters ago I re-enacted the 'Wiz@rd of zO' with twenty clues, (in verse), and with each clue-point a tableau of dolls, teddy bears etc. staging a vital moment of the story. Last year was a pinnacle from which the only way is down - the story of the journeys of Odysseus, done in an exactly similar way to the W..of..O, but with all names, episodes etc. changed to become sweet-related (Chocysseus and so on). It may sound pathetic but was actually f@cking amusing.

BUT.... the time is now. I have to start again. Where? What shall I do and how? I am ill and slumped but this is the only Easter tradition we have left. The girls have even brought their boyfriends to stay especially for it - not this year Thank God.. What great literary epic have I left unsullied? It has been so long, there have been so many ......
- posted by Iris @ 4/04/2004 12:18:00 PM comment

 
How is it possible that I always get ill just when I have made serious plans to start an exercise programme? This has happened so often that it cannot be a coincidence but then it must be a coincidence.... At least five times in the last two years I have either been doing the 'programme', whatever it might be, for a couple of days at the most or , like this time just THINKING about it, when I get a virus type thing with cold symptoms, high temperature etc. Also the last three times I have been on holiday, two hot and one in snow, I have developed agonising sinus/ear pains preventing me from swimming or skiing. What, what is going on? This time I was only READING a book about yoga but obviously that was enough to trigger the resistance mechanism. How is this mirrored in Nature, perhaps that would hold a clue. Non-exercising creatures? Python - tortoise - sloth ... err... Do sloths live for ever? Maybe it is important that I live to a great age and become a wise tribal leader of the people of the moor after the end of the world as we know it.

This is a test. It is nearly 11.00 am my time. 3.00 am your time. My last post took over eight hours to appear although saying that all was normal inside here.
- posted by Iris @ 4/04/2004 10:58:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
Thank you so much for searching for me, (especially Melanie, whose clever, amusing comments I have long admired on other blogs). I have been lying, feverish and incoherent, in a lonely hut out on the moors, tended by a kindly old shepherd skilled in ancient lore. Yesterday he proudly produced a leather flask of reddish liquid which he held to my lips, muttering gutterally of 'rare herbs' and 'ewe's placenta'. The smell alone appeared to have magical properties as I found myself staggering quite briskly through the heather in the direction of some distant chimneys. Which turned out to be those of my own dear farmhouse - from whence I am now writing these very words.

(By the way - if anyone did need to recognise me for some reason in the future - I look scarily similar to G@ladriel. Both as she appears in the film and in your head).

As well as the above I have been in a no-computer situation in London and here as they both managed to 'go wrong', as we call it, at the same time. Luckily my older daughter's boyfriend is staying in London and has spent about a week replacing the hard drive or something. Here is worse as no one knows what is going on or what to do. I will just bore on for a moment as we a re slightly f@cked. It is as if there is a programme running secretly in the background all the time which interferes with basic computer functions. Like when you shut down - it won't - and says that you have an unfinished task. Also some live g@mbling programmes installed themselves and one is still there but not actually active and not listed on programmes but just has the logo on the screen saver....... Also periodically the mouse slows right down for a bit......

Sorry - I can feel the faintness about to overcome me and must return to my couch but will write more this evening.
- posted by Iris @ 4/02/2004 11:36:00 AM comment