Moment.
As it seems 'of the moment' I might write about committing su1cide. I tried to commit su1cide twice when I was younger but long before I had any children. Since then it has obviously stopped being an option although I did feel a couple of years ago that no one would really mind if I just slipped away .. and the thought of going on drearily into the future seemed so unbearably .. dreary. I decided that I had been born just as a bridge between two generations and that my work was now done. When I mentioned this, lightly, to my (now pretty grown-up) children their faces actually blanked with shock and one of my daughters burst spontaneously into tears. Riiiight. Complete and total miscalculation there then.

That was just a passing thought - but the other, earlier, attempts were real. They were not a 'cry for help'. As far as I knew, what I had done would result in death for sure. They were both triggered off by love ... love gone wrong. I wrote before about how much of my life has been wasted being in love, as if it was some kind of career. Each time it would take me over completely and become the sole focus of everything, so when it stopped being a wild, dramatic exclusive melding of two beings I would be devastated. (Of course, I had SOME affairs that just petered out boringly).

The first time was when I had been suffering through the aftermath of the loss of the great love of my life. And looking back so many years later he WAS the love of my life and no one else has come anywhere near, so I wasn't THAT stupid. It had been the classic moment of 'either we get married or break up' and he felt too young to get married (and was) but I didn't (though was). I went away to do a course at the S0rbonne in Par1s and thought that I would come back cured and ready to go. And then it wasn't like that at all. He was still at the centre of all social life and tremendously popular, charismatic and pursued by every other girl (and often caught). The student board1ng house we had set up together was still full of all my friends but I now had to rent a room in the un-cool part of town. There was literally nowhere fun or interesting that I could go where he wouldn't be .. invariably with another girl and crowds of hangers-on. The idea of ever fancying another man was ludicrous.

In true hippy style he asked me round one evening .. to our old flat, still looking as if I had walked out yesterday ... to have dinner in a 'civilised' way with him and his new girlfriend. Who turned out to be living there. I got through it politely and then they BOTH came to the door to say goodbye ... and she was holding MY (once our) cat in her arms. I walked home 'blinded by tears' and knew that I was too drained to go on. And go on to what? A year before I had had a pr3gnancy scare and this was in pre-ab0rti0n on demand times, in fact it was totally illegal. However, there was an underground trade in very expensive 'ab0rt10n pills' from abroad. No one had any idea what was in them but they had worked for several of my lover's friend's girlfriends ..and he managed to procure some. And then I wasn't pregnant after all.

I dug out the dusty old packet. On the front was a large skull and cr0ssb0nes and the word 'DANGER'. 'Take no more than two pills .. if this dose is accidentally exceeded go straight to a hospital with a sample of this 'medicine'', it said in illiterate foreign printing. There seemed to be about twenty pills inside ... so I took them all ... and lay down to wait for death.

I must have fallen asleep for a bit as I was woken by someone pounding on the downstairs door. When I opened it, there, to my amazed delight, was one of my oldest girlfriends who had emigrated to Australia a few years before. We rushed up to my room, hugging, and sprang into endless chatting and gossip about her new life. An hour must have passed before she said, 'Sorry, now let's talk about YOU. What are you doing now?' 'OMG! .... I'm DYING!' I told her all and for some reason it started to seem more and more idiotic until we were rolling around laughing. 'But seriously, come ON, shouldn't we get to a doctor?' 'Oh god, but it's so late now I don't know where to go. What if we wait until I have some kind of symptom .. and then go?' We waited ... and then fell asleep on the floor .. and then woke up in the morning .. and I had had NO symptoms ... and never did.

The next time was years later and I was having a secret affa1r while in a serious relationship with someone else. I was madly in l0ve, as usual, made worse by the difficulty of seeing him and that he was 'free' and not utterly reliably faithful. I was leaning towards leaving the serious one and becoming serious with him instead but he was not quite as keen as I would have hoped. One night we were all together after some pr1vate view. A vast group of us had gone on to dinner and were seated at a huge table with me opposite him. My 'serious' partner suddenly said that he was feeling ill and was leaving and would I be all right on my own. 'Well, YES!', as that meant I could zoom back with my lover and spend the early part of the night with him. A rare opportunity.

The table was incredibly wide but I caught his eye and signalled discreetly. He looked puzzled and turned back to the attractive girl next to him ... a little later they both GOT UP. WTF? All caution tossed away, I shot round the table and pulled him to one side, 'What are you DOING? Didn't you see that thingy has left? We can go home together'. 'Oh, sorry, I didn't notice, I've just arranged to give B1mbo a lift'. 'Well, UN-ARRANGE it!' 'No, I'm afraid I really can't do that now. Look you are making a bit of an obvious scene, it's embarrassing me'. 'So you don't care that this is a once in a lifetime chance for us to be together?' 'Don't be so dramatic, ha,ha.', eyes drifting away. 'I'll give you a ring tomorrow' .. and he was gone.

I dragged home to the flat I was sharing with 'serious' and found an irritating note saying that he felt so ill that he had decided to drive out to his parents' house and see his old doctor in the morning. Anal creep.
My great love didn't care if he saw me or not. I was worthless. No one wanted me ..what was the point of it all. And I was very, very, very drunk.

A comforting and brilliant thought struck me. 'If I was dead none of this would matter. Da DAH!'. At the time I regularly took 'd1et pills' which were actually a very strong version of speed. As in the previous scenario the packet had serious warnings of the dangers of even the smallest overdose .. and I had several packets. I didn't want 'serious' or my parents thinking that they were in any way to blame for my actions so I wrote a long and detailed explanatory letter and placed it at my side. Then I washed down a massive number of 'speed' p1lls with more neat whiskey. And passed out instantly. What seemed like a moment later - but was actually several hours - I woke up. It was a nice sunny day and I felt fine .. never better ... fresh and without even a trace of a hangover. 'F.cking weird!' I thought. I picked up the letter wondering what on earth I had written. I will never know. The whole thing was page after page of wild scribble, completely undecipherable.

All I could ever work out was that by total fluke the amount of alcohol in my system had been exactly balanced by the overd0se of speed and they had cancelled themselves out.

So . .. it shows that supposedly rational and not depressed person can be driven to suicide by 'Life'. But then again it was under the circumstances of Love which affects your brain with a form of madness ... so ... who knows.
- posted by Iris @ 10/21/2005 09:32:00 AM (1) comments comment

 
Path.
I was washing my hair this morning when I heard a woman talking outside. No one ever talks outside here because it is very, very isolated ... also it was pouring with rain. Then there was massive knocking on the kitchen door. 'Oh, f.ck OFF', I thought but then decency took over as she might be a lost traveller or some such. Leaving my hair wrapped in a towel to show that she had disturbed me annoyingly I answered the door.

Standing there was an irritating-looking hiker with a laminated map hanging round her neck on a chain and .. such an amusing touch .. giraffe skin printed wellington boots. And a really nice golden labrador. 'You don't seem to have any SIGNS marking the footpath', she said in bossing tones. 'Well, there's one up by the road and the path goes straight on down'. 'No, no .. the OTHER path'. Bugger.

When we bought the house we took into consideration that there was an ancient bridleway running through the old farmyard and .. more worrying .. an ancient right of way, leading from that, quite near the house and away over the fields. But it was just a now unused connection between us and the next farm and the few people who DID go past were all on horses and had to stay on the bridlepath.

'The OTHER path? Good god .. you are only the second person in the past ten years who has ever used it. It doesn't go anywhere'. She made a patronising 'uhh' sound. 'I think it does if you are taking a CIRCULAR walk. Now I am an official of the noveD* R@mblers and it is VERY important that all paths are signed clearly. You can obtain these signs very easily from our office'. 'But no one ever uses it ... and .. it's obvious that you have to go over the stile and then you can see the next farm'. 'No, it is important that you have these signs. I am on the side of the farmer you know', fake smile, 'You don't want people wandering around your fields, lost, do you?' 'Where would I put them?' 'I think you need quite a lot here, starting AT the bridleway, on this gate and also that gate and of course on the stile and the two far gates .. '. drone, drone. She is obviously carried away beyond reason with her tiny moment of power and bossing. My house would look insane. There is no question of even one sign you stupid b1tch ... as if I want to encourage dreary hikers anywhere near me .. I live here because I DON'T WANT TO SEE ANYONE. 'Yes, of course. I will look into it. I hope you have a nice walk'. Smile ... and smile again ... and shut door. And shut door on any chance of signs you self-important c.nt.

And not a massive chance of a nice walk as, quite apart from the pouring rain, you will have to climb down an almost vertical slope - quite slippery today I fancy. Then, at the bottom, get through a sometimes fairly shallow stream but I would guess that today the water level would be fractionally over the top of those charming giraffe patterned wellingtons. Still, that's what r@mbling is all about, apparently. Fresh air and exercise in the open countryside. Nothing at all to do with bossing people and interfering and insisting on keeping paths open when they threaten peoples privacy and no one actually wants to use them. Or chippiness over landowning, however modest. Stupid r@mbling f.cks.

(You may not understand that it is very different here from the wide open spaces of America. R@mbling is headed by a collection of very aggressive left-wing townee people who see it as a political cause to end up with no land barred to them at all. It goes with trying to ban all field sports etc. No real country person would have anything to do with them.)
- posted by Iris @ 10/20/2005 08:43:00 PM (0) comments comment

 
Happiness
My son has just gone back to univers1ty for the Autumn term and things are not so good. Uniquely amongst my children, he managed to have a perfect first year ... making masses of friends; coming pretty much top in his subject and (by accident) having one of the nicest rooms in the 'best' college on campus. The only flaw was his not finding the girl of his dreams but that was mainly due to his reluctance to 'commit' for more than a few days.

The second year seems to be all downhill. They can no longer live on campus and are moved out to dreary student lodgings in the town - an annoying bus journey away. Meaning horribly early starts in the morning and a feeling of isolation the rest of the time. All his once vast group of casual friends have cliquily nested down into their various houses and usually 'can't be arsed' to drag out just to have a drink. Against his will he was emotionally blackmailed into living with a group of just boys and that has been made worse by his finding that during the vacation they have all started 'going steady'. One of them, inferior to him in every way (apparently), even with a girl he had seriously considered himself.

I had encouraged him originally with the fun thought of hundreds of new F1rst years. Bound to consist of co0l, charming guys and g0rgeous girls .. all eager to befriend a suave and impressive older man. Errrr .... 'Who do they F.CKING think they are?', a furious voice on the phone. 'Every time I even speak to a F1rst year girl she gets this stupid bitchy smile as if I am trying to pick her up in some sad way .. I'm OFFICIALLY meant to be helping them all for god's sake. And the boys are all F.CKING dull BUT for some unknown reason SO f.cking over-confident. AND the jock tw@ts who used to live next door have got in first with some twisted gossip about us so the only group of faintly attractive girls whisper and sneer when they see me ....'. I'm starting to f.cking HATE it here'.

His sisters are very, very unsupportive. 'Chr1st, do you remember MY Sec0nd year?' They said in unison. I had forgotten ... but it is true that they were not good. My older daughter rashly moved into an otherwise boy house with an acquaintance from school she had bumped into in the street. She suffered a year based around dirt and football. Most evenings she would arrive back to find all her food already eaten and, often, her 'friend' lying cosily in her bed where he had obviously been all day. 'Your room is so much nicer than mine'. Her clothes drawers had invariably been rifled through (EEeuuuwww) and usually coffee spilt on her duvet. You'd think she would have moved but was going through a major breakup and feeling weak and low and nothing else was on offer. Then her favourite lecturer jumped off the suspens10n bridge and a dead body was discovered in her train compartment (at the other end) just as she was on her way back from a recuperative weekend with us. And towards the end of the year a drug-fuelled schiz0 student fell madly in love with her and stalked her constantly and madly. Soooo .....

My other daughter, who is only happy when her surrounding are clean and ordered, also made the miscalculation of moving in with a random old school acquaintance. The friend was older and there was a subtext that, due to a wildly social climbing mother, she had some very, very smart friends. Not only did none of these ever visit the house but the friend was exploring her crusty (and druggy) side and the place became st0ned party central. My daughter's room was sadly above the sitting room and she lay sleepless while loud druggy music and st0ney laughing carried on night after night. She kept a little pile of clean cooking stuff in her room and crept to the festering kitchen when the house was empty. 'It was as if my entire carpet was woven out of old vomit. Nothing, even steam cleaning, got rid of the smell and I think the person before me used to pee in the corner'. She ended up spending four days a week in London that year as it was only an hour or so by coach. Often commuting to lectures just for the day .... So ....

For some reason I had read recently three different famous people talking about their discovery that spending your life expecting to be happy was depressing and pointless. It was better to try to make your life full and interesting .. and let happiness appear where it may. So I passed this idea on to my son .. interrupting him mid-rant ... and he was quite struck with it. As am I. Suddenly a huge burden is lifted. I have not managed to overcome all difficulties, super-humanly. I am not happy because I am not famous or successful or wildly popular or have a sparkling clean and impressive house and I am not charmingly dressed with perfect hair. But I am not TRYING to be happy. So those things don't actually matter so much.

Scenario: Wakes up. It is raining. Looks in mirror ... hmmm. Reviews present life situation .. hmm .. HMMmm. Thinks. 'Well, none of this is a cause for happiness so I must feel a terrible failure'. Re-thinks. 'But as happiness is not my major goal then I don't feel SUCH a terrible failure after all'. Which makes me happy.
- posted by Iris @ 10/19/2005 08:22:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
Cat.
An example of the difference between cat and man. I had been clearing out the piles of crap which had settled around the computer and left various heaps about to be moved off elsewhere in the house. (MY form of 'clearing out' which ensures that nothing ever actually leaves). Given many exciting opportunities to spend the night in a new bed I wonder which you would choose? I think I would go for the HUGE mound of soft woolly blankets set out ready for the dry-cleaner. Rather than a small shoe box lid dropped carelessly right beside them.

But that is the unbridgeable difference between cat and man.
- posted by Iris @ 10/19/2005 08:09:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
Actual 'Don't'.
Funny - I sat down to write something completely different. That's why the last post was called 'Don't'.

I was thinking that now I am not so depressed and slug-like and have recovered a little of whatever I was before, perhaps I would be happier with a lover. All these trillions of years when I was determined that any kind of love affair would be disastrously horrible for the children because I would be ratty and distracted and not put them first ... quite true I'm sure. But now .. no longer the case ... because they are not here.

I was 'thinking' this. One huge drawback ... I haven't fancied a real person since I can remember. Or .. I haven't fancied a real person who isn't twenty years younger than me since I can remember. One of my oldest friends, a man, has dealt with this by starting late in life to make a hobby of sleeping with pr0st1tutes. He is/was so handsome and charming but with massive lack of self-esteem and wasted his entire youth lurking about feeling unworthy. Now, bizzarely self-trapped in a second marriage of mutual despisingness, he is sleeping with more beautiful young girls than he could ever have imagined. (And I'm sure they are thrilled to have a client that they would have pursued in real life).

I am obviously not in this position in any way. I was just saying. And I like to have an 'affair' with endless chatting and being stupid as well as 'other things'. So really it is not likely to happen. But the fact that I was even considering it was a real step ... in some direction ...

So .. because of these thoughts ... while I was looking at 291* site to try to find the address of one of my older daughter's friends as a surprise for her. (I will digress quickly .. she just saw a magazine article about his having a main part in a Tv series and hadn't been in touch for years but he had fancied her endlessly when they were at school and then drifted apart and couldn't find his address now). So ... having not been successful as he has a rather ordinary name and wasted nearly an hour looking back through the net .. I used up my credits on the site checking on old boyfriends. And at the very end of all interest I typed in a man I had a passionate affair with when I was 22 and in a fairly low-level job on a national newspaper which was meant to be my first step up to being a serious journalist. He was a lot older than me and we used to 'joke' that if he had been a naughty schoolboy he could have been my father. And .. he was my boss. And .. he had a wife and four children. I cannot lie. BUT ... he slept around like a maniac and I was probably the hundredth person since he got married. And but ... we were really in love and he wanted to marry me and I had to talk him out of leaving her constantly not only because I was actually engaged to someone else myself at the time but because he had children and I did have some kind of conscience.

It was all really romantic in a strange 50's black and white film kind of way. All the newspapers were still in vast ancient buildings in Fl33t Street with the printing done in the basements and the whole street filled with journalists all the time. And in the evenings all the local bars full of writers talking about their stories and contacting and drinking ... it was so cool and exciting. Now all the papers have dispersed all over London and everything is gone. He used to stand in the street staring up the hill towards St. P@ul's Cathedral and say 'My god, I love this place'. It was SO cool.

And ended craply of course because he was rather cowardly and unreliable and an alcoholic like most journalists then.

We parted on very spiteful terms, on my part at least, and I didn't see him for years. Then .. my mother died very young and I was so shattered and didn't really go out for some months. One night an old friend made me go to the theatre and we stopped afterwards at a S0h0 pub which was once my favourite and I was sitting on a long bench feeling trembly and out of it and the place was packed full. I was squashed by a man sitting down next to me .. and it was him. He was with some very young girl but still started to flirt and try to get through to me and I just said 'I can't speak .. my mother died .. '. And he looked so depressing and 'tawdry' is the only right word.

So ... I looked up his address. The thing was that he had a complex about being uneducated. He had been a brilliant natural sportsman and had got endless sports scholarships but had especially not really read anything. So while we were together I did a teeny 'School of 0ne' scenario and ran him through all my favourite books. It was something that drove his wife mad as he sat around every weekend riveted by the world's classics. He really loved it. We would spend hours drinking away after work in intense conversation about literature and all the hard old journalists would come over certain we were talking about sex and then be amazed. He had the weirdest upbringing because his parents were incredibly poor and had five children with him the oldest. He was very, very good looking and when he was twelve this rich gay man took a fancy to him, also because he was so good at sport, and ... his parents SOLD him to him. How unbelievable is that? BUT ... the man was totally saint-like and although in love with him, never touched him or even made the slightest advance and just paid for his expensive school and sports training and was supportive and amazing. BUT .. as soon as he was old enough to leave he shot away as he found the whole situation unbearable and he never forgave his parents or the man. He told me this story one night while we were, as usual, drinking heavily in a Fl33t Street bar and I felt so sad for the man that I spent hours breaking down his resistance and saying that he MUST ring him and tell him how grateful he was and apologise for leaving in such a cruel way. And finally he wove off to the pay phone and RANG after many years. And came back and cried because the man had died a month before.

So I looked up his address, in fact thinking that he was probably dead from drink, himself, by now. Only one address came up in the whole country but it is him because his name is quite unusual and it had the same middle initial. It came up on the electoral role, with just him and no one else living in his house. Although it was not a house .. it was a caravan, on a farm, in the countryside, not far from the town where he used to live comfortably and expensively.

From boredom and a memory of disappointment and vague annoyance I sprang, instantly, into a stupid motherly 'Oh, No!', mode. 'Poor thing, alcoholic and alone, how sad ... perhaps I should write ... he would be so pleased .. how could he have come to this .. where are his four children ... '.

And this is where the title 'DON'T' came from.
- posted by Iris @ 10/15/2005 01:40:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
Don't ...
I am just flicking over my blog with a rather expensive ostrich feather duster, which I bought from a homemaking catalogue of the 'd0mestic g0ddess' variety. This is the first time I've used it as it was far too pretty to get dirty.... That's better ...
As you have sworn that you don't mind reading incredibly boring drivel I will carry on as usual.

I was thinking how much better I feel 'in myself' than I did two years or so ago when I started writing this. Massively due to knowing you and reading about your lives and especially the little things like music recommendations and stupid quizzes and detailed accounts of exotic sex parties. And the other reason is living on my own. My daughters were saying how odd it is that so many of their friends have mothers who have disappeared off to the country to live by themselves, while their husbands ponce around London having an intensive social life. But if you are my age you have probably spent at least twenty years being a selfless mother and crushing down your own personality (crucial ... as it was formed in the '60's and is not one that anyone halfway decent would inflict on their own child). While your husband carried on as if his family hardly existed. 'It's weird .. but Daddy really seems more as if he is some kind of uncle or godfather or something. Not a close relation at all'. said my son, only last week. 'I expect that is because he is HARDLY EVER HERE', (and never has been), I replied. With only a touch of bitterness because I am so used to it. And of course now, in the way of things, I so much prefer it when he isn't here as we have a much more fun time.

Weirder, is that for the past few months he has been really, really, nice. Not that much unlike the aimiable, pleasant, not at all mood swingy or screamy person that I chose to marry. He even said to me, after I had shouted at length about some annoying behaviour of his, (the old me also re-surfacing), 'Okay, point taken'. WHAT? 'Point taken?'. You have no idea how unnerving it was to hear that. After probably, well, fifteen years. In the interim (?) the normal reply was a variation on 'F.ck you'. With added very loud shouting about my endless shortcomings and invariably followed by stomping off and slamming the door.

Anyway, what I meant to say was that all these husbands have gone on having a social life on their own right through the entire child rearing process and their characters have hardly been touched by the fact of being a father. So their poncing around now is not odd, as my daughters were saying, it is just them carrying on as always. But for the women this stage of life is a serious change and starting all over again moment. If the last time you were 'free' and had no real responsibilites and were setting up a social life amongst people your own age, which has nothing to do with children, was twenty five years ago .. you find that relying on old memories of how to 'be' is not that helpful. It has to be faced ... THEN .. you were really attractive and cutting edge and amazingly dressed with a thousand friends and endless people in love with you .. and now ... YOU ARE NOT. Any of those things. Talk about the Past being a foreign country. 'Now' is more alien and peculiar than I could ever have imagined.

And that is why so many middle-aged women want to live on their own for a year or two. Not just to try to find some vestige of interesting personality maybe still alive in there but to get out of the habit of self-denial and servitude. To be the head of the household, yourself. To not cook a meal or even make a cup of coffee for another person for days or weeks. When the phone rings it is always for you. To go to bed and get up when YOU feel like it. To never wash or .. Yes! .. iron a single thing that isn't yours. The only music playing is your choice . The only television programmes are YOUR CHOICE. No one criticises or 'looks' or sighs. If you eat a biscuit in the midle of your diet week no one says anything annoying. No one makes an exhausting mess or picks up the book you're reading, glances at it and puts it down again silently.

These endless small impositions and insults and habitual undermining no longer happen to most women younger than me. We are the generation in between the old and the new. Though lots of women my age ARE like my own mother it is obviously so much more difficult to be the ones who broke through, because .. as I said .. we are getting old in a way that has never been done before. It has taken me more like three years to ''re-find' something like the person I was 'before'. Except, it is good. The person now, even without the helpful shortcut of sexy looks, is, ... actually because of that ... more like the pre- teenage person. Who liked doing things and knowing stuff and talking for hours without subjective emotions colouring everything. I was discussing with Squid whether Arth.r Rans0me was an author that her daughter would like and although I love him myself it's hard to know if he'd seem a bit dull to a child today. But I do and did love him just because he was so enthusiastic and got on with things and never moped around because someone didn't fancy him. (Well, maybe not in true life.) And I re-read his books every few years because they are so comforting ... and .. getting older seems to be a bit like that. And the more you can be yourself, even if that means being mostly on your own, the better it seems.
- posted by Iris @ 10/15/2005 12:00:00 AM (0) comments comment