Agent of Distraction

day 19 - disappointments and illuminations

So did anyone see the meteor shower that was supposed to happen in the early hours of today? Z and I sure didn't even though we set our alarms and got up at ridiculous o'clock to trample around the garden wrapped in duvets and growl at clouds.

On the other hand we DID see the pretty pretty lights in Covent Garden, like so:

Also as a bonus, here is a picture of some symmetrical cats:

The shaved segment of Zelda's thigh always looks wrong to me, indecent somehow. The rest of her is all groomed luxirious ladylike poise and fluff, and then there's a bald patch. It's a bit like seeing the Queen with toilet paper stuck to the bottom of her shoe.

day 18 - the dangers of having an imaginative child

Before I was a psychologist I was a tarot reader and long before that I was a princess, then a captain, then a sorceress, then a cowboy, then a prince.

When I was a princess I sought out jewellery and created flowing dresses from my grandmother's shawls. I made rings from tinfoil. I collected fireflys to adorn my hair, and had the following exchanges with my mother:

N: Oh mother, mother, please give me a necklace.

M: I would love to dear, but I don't have any.*

N: But please, won't you find me a necklace from somewhere? I know you can do it. How can I be a necklaceless princess?

So rather than watch my head explode, my mother agreed that princesses must be necklaced and went around the house looking. Eventually she gave me the the chain that we pulled on to flush the toilet ("Mommy that's wonderful!It comes with a medallion!"), because that's the kind of family we were. Also, I lost the chain soon after and nobody got around to replacing it for ages, and instead my parents engineered  a complex system in which the loo was flushed using a broom instead because that's the sort of family we were also.

When I was a captain I would sit for hours in a green plastic tub that I'd been bathed in as a baby, unloading and loading dolls ("Come onboard ladies and gentlemen, come onboard! Oh no, rough seas, off the ship everyone!") and occasionally punting along on the carpet using a broom handle. If you think this sounds charming, and harmless, and cute, you should also know that when I was a captain I maintained that the bathtub had to be carried with us everywhere we went ("A captain cannot leave his ship, mommy"). Including other people's houses. Including the park.

And when I was a prince I demanded to be addressed with respect. And before engaging with anyone in any kind of conversation I would put one hand on a chair, and another on my hip (because, duhthat's how princes spoke obviously) and say gravely "I am listening" to signal my readiness to receive audience. I refused to wear skirts. Or dresses. Or trousers. I wore nothing but jumpers and boots and tights. In the most hairrasing twist of all I EVEN WORE THAT GETUP TO SCHOOL A FEW TIMES (and no one bullied me! to this day I cannot imagine why, except that either those children were the kindest children in the world or else that I scared them so deeply with my clear displays of lunacy that they did not dare). And most of all, all this my mother let me. Because that's the kind of family we were.

*How my mother, a woman profoundly uninterested in any kind of adornment, managed to produce a child who was obsessed with TEH SHINY from infancy is an enigma (wrapped in a conundrum, baked in mystery etc etc) to us all. **

**Although not qutie as much of an enigma as TEH SKINNY JEAN - why rational, non-Kate Moss, mirror-gazing women? Why?

day 17 - true crime

Arthritis, in its more 'in yer face' phases makes me tired. It's draining in an odd way because I am not actually doing anything, as such, but I feel sapped. I sleep a lot more than usually, perhaps because in sleep there is a measure of oblivion.

I can feel my mind seeking to distance itself from the body, with all its limitations and frustrations. The endless longings and achingness of flesh. On the good days, it works. My mind drifts, somewhat apart, on an invisible sea. I am not my body. I am not my body's pain. The pain flows with me, flows through me. I do not hold it inside. The pain flows through me and outside me. I flow with the world.

On the bad days, I just feel stuck.

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And now to Amayze and Delighte, here are some stories of True Crime:

Several years ago my aunt and uncle were staying in a rather swanky hotel in Nice. The windows of their room were on the third floor, built into a balconyless wall overlooking the sea.

In the morning, my aunt and uncle have the following conversation:

Uncle: How did you sleep my love?

Aunt: Not at all, thanks to your snoring. I didn't get get a wink of rest all night. Maybe I'll manage a couple of hours of shut eye this morning, provided there's time. What time is it?

Uncle: *looks on the nightstand for watch* *looks underneath nightstand* *looks underneath the bed* I can't find my watch.

Aunt: You are not only a snorer, you are also useless. *Aunt reaches out for her watch on her nightstand* *looks underneath the nightstand* *looks underneath the bed*

Aunt: That's curious. I can't find my watch either. *pause* Or my bracelet. Or my necklace.

Uncle: *helpfully* I can't find my wallet.

As it turns out while my uncle was snoring and my auntie was allegedly awake a circus performer from a guesting circus had climbed the wall using the drainpipe and Mysterious Powers, managed to slide into their room, cleaned them out and then proceeded to clean out all the adjoining rooms. Now while it is always unfortunate to be relieved of one's worldly goods, there is at last a certain ice-breaker at parties flair at having been robbed by a contortionist.

In the second installement of these Grittye and Instructive Tales:

Ten years or so ago in Belgrade when people were even poorer a promising young thug accosted a grandmother in a park, and snatched her bag. When he opened it he saw that it contained only 5 dinars (about the equivalent of 5p). This moved him to the degree that he not only returned the bag to her but gave her 2000 dinars "to tide you over until your next pension".

That old woman was my downstairs neighbour. I don't know what she did with the money but I'd like to think that she blew at least part of it on gigolos and beer.

day 16 - next step, a job in advertising

ACT 1, SCENE 1

[Lights up]

[Stage Left, Nina and the Father's Worker are succesfully neglecting paperwork by talking]

Fathers Worker: I need a catchy title for a new activity for fathers that I am planning. Something similar in vein to Dads Do Playtime and Dads Do Dinner. A catchy name for an afterschool club for dads and their kids. Something simple, but effective. Ideas?

Nina: Sure. Dads Do Detention.

day 15 - my husband will never be a hairdresser. another dream shattered.

This is what living with chronic rheumathoid polyarthritis feels like:

An ache that is constant and low-grade and pervasive. It moves from joint to joint. It saps a little of me at a time, nibbles like a school of small fish. It is draining in a way I can't quite name, where my body feels like a pent up breath.

It migrates, striking at different joints, unpredictable. One time the knee - turning chairs and stairs and car rides into ennemies. Another time the shoulders - combs become inaccessible, shirts and sweaters labyrinthine. Small joints cause trouble much bigger than themselves. The ache stretches out until I forget what the absence of pain was like.

The body becomes both captive and cage. I move cautiously through the world's new boundaries. I vary between helplessness and rage, sadness and resignation. When I cry it's out of frustration. Also because my husband's engineery skills do not extend to proficiency with pins and brushes with the end result that I look like I've slept in Vader's helmet and may as well just start developing dreadlocks to save time.

On the positive notes:

1. I'm sure in the wargames against my future children I could cower them into instant submission with"If you...., then your father will do your hair and send you to school looking like that."
2. Although the lack of a working shoulder precludes me from participating in all manner of menial household chores, I can work the TV remote just as succesfully with my left hand.

day 15 - i spy with my little eye

Do you like pictures? I like pictures. Also, my new camera.

Here be a random selection of things I come across in any given day, with bonus commentary , because that's how much my readership means to me.

1. An amazingly ladylike creature. Also an amazingly fluffy creature. The shaved bit of her leg looks like someone removed a huge chunk of cat. At least 40% of her volume is due to fur.

2) Million Dollar

3) The garden, at night

day 14 - rites of passage

Today we took Small Cat to be neutered and the most traumatic part of that experience was trying to get her to sit still at home. Small Cat is congenitally incapable of inaction and has proved to be a regular little Houdini when it comes to escaping from her plastic post-op-don't-lick-your-wounds-neck-funnel-thing.

The shaved patch of skin on her flank is unexpectedly marvellous - grey, soft as velvet. Z is quite enchanted and proposing to shave the cat entire.

Bonus riddle:

Q: When is the winter coldest?

A: When you happen to have no hot water, or heating and haven't for five days because 'pipes have failed'.  We are all holed up in one room, huddled under quilts, desolate as refugees.

I will break off typing here, to attempt to ward off frostbite that little bit longer.

day 13 - in a sense, two thousand words

Head still too pent up with Stuff to order thoughts and post coherently, so I have resorted to channeling myself into images instead.

Autumn in Regents Park

>A work in progress - having run out of paper and canvas, I've resorted to painting the walls of my office

Day 12 - Remembrance Sunday

In accordance with Remembrance Sunday, I've been thinking about those who have gone before and I was going to make a rather well-thought out and substantial post, but it's been such a long, emotionally-charged day that I just want to curl up with chocolate mousse and some books.

On the other hand the First Cat has been reminiscing with the joys of his kittenhood (a kittenhood free of the presence of Second Cats Wot Attack Tails, O Cruel Life) and deciding that he is never too old to chase the cursor across the computer screen. His second favourite pursuit of the moment is lying on top of the ironing board which I'm too lazy to put away. He looks very decadent sprawling on it, like all he's missing are some hot young Persians peeling strings of sausages to feed into his maw.

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Z and I went to the Unitarian Church where we sometimes go (I love Unitarians - The Anything Goes religion) and we walked into some kind of intimate circle-time at the evening service where everyone sat around a small table of unlit tealights and orange flowers and those who chose could get up, light a candle for someone and say who they were lighting it for.

And Z got up and lit a candle for his parents, and I just started crying like A Big Girl because he doesn't cry and it kills me to watch his jawline, listen to the sound of his voice when I know that the tightening of his throat is the only sign he'll ever give of the immensity of his loss.

And afterwards as we sat in meditation I watched all the small tealights in the dark and it felt like a very warm and lovely thing, this glow, this idea of having been loved on earth.

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And I thought of a dream I had years ago in which my father and I meet between worlds and stand at the edge of a cliff, watching black birds and orange leaves flying, falling. We stand side by side, but don't touch, we speak without voices. The shadow of words, the blessing he offers, hovers in the air between us. Live your best life.

day 11 : love in the time of scorpio

Ooops, I married again. Although in reality it's more like oops, I forgot to pay the registrar but I got married with clarity of mind and fullness of purpose.

It was a thoroughly low key, nice day. Signed all the right bits of paper, kissed legally, went for dinner and drinks with our witnesses. Strolled around Covent Garden admiring the lights and running into D-List Celebrities.