Boulderflies

Whilst my mid-life crisis rampages around, banging a discordrum and showing its arse to all and sundry, I find myself rather dazed by how much has changed over the last 12 months. Exactly a year ago, more or less to the minute as I write this, I was in Arizona sipping a toe-curlingly strong Margarita, moments after getting married to Matt. We had no idea whether he would even be able to come to London with me.

And then about a million things happened and now I am here wondering exactly what it all means. I feel like a train has been through my house. It is gone now but there is broken track and left luggage everywhere.

I turned the television on in the middle of a nature programme. The narrator said, “Every night this hummingbird almost dies.”

I am surprised you don’t see more people sitting in cars, crying.

Tidal

Numbed by the sheer fucking hell and carnage
All over the news, the dizzying swathes of
Devastation, the untold people missing dead.
A million tiny pockets of paradise swept away
Forever, islands shifted, lost and drowned.
The earth rocked on her axis, and whole worlds have collapsed.

I’m sitting quietly under a railway arch
Staring at soft wet brown stone
And feather-flecked netting
To keep the pigeons at bay.
It’s been raining in suburbia
But the locals are busy texting and
Don’t seem to care.

A grey train takes me into London
Past the backside of garden sheds and
Streets where people put their bins out,
Winter Poplars, white graffiti,
Towards the cranes and Tower Bridge.

There’s a pain in my gut
When I think of those big families
With their faces and their fights
And their grinning group photos,
Whilst I batter down with fists
On stone decisions I have made.

Long , slow tango

Nothing in this world makes sense. Apart from Sphenodon punctatus, last survivor of the reptilian order Rhynchocephalia. If only there were a woman like it – cold, efficient and brutal in love but also able to feed off small animals, inhabit the breeding burrows of certain small petrels and be in possession of a vestigial third eye. Zoologist M (51), possibly a little too close to his work. And his mother. Box no. 01/05

My Christmas Day TV schedule includes a pause in transmission at 3.52pm for me to cry into the sleeve of the cardigan I bought myself. Unless you want to meet up and have crazy post-turkey sex? No? No? Bloody sod you then. Man, 34. Box no. 01/09

[London Review of Books 6 January 2005 edition]

Taking the piste

This has been a strange week.

I discovered on Thursday that there is a gay porn film called “Shaving Ryan’s Privates”.

I discovered on Friday that although Bush is clearly an egregious buffoon and his malversation-ridden presidency is unforgivable, Fahrenheit 9/11 really wasn’t a very good film.

I discovered on Saturday that aborning is an actual word.

I discovered on Sunday that although I thought I was jaded, the Simpsons can still make me laugh a lot: Homer: “Good news, Marge! I’ve learnt how to walk naked on stilts!”

I discovered on Monday that people I actually know have bought this book and this book for their loved ones' Christmas stockings.

I discovered today that people in my office are weird. We just got this email: “A pair of Ski boot clips and Ski trousers have been found. Please contact Office Services on x23222 to claim.”

Say something clever then

Well, it is Monday and work is busy as all hell so it must be time for some more small ads from the London Review of Books....

‘I always begin the LRB at the personals. Then I drink. Then I weep. Then I move on to the articles. I drink some more. I weep some more. Then I hit the letters page. You can see where I am heading here? That’s right, it’s straight to the claims court and if these personal ads don’t get any better I’m going to sue each and every one of you. Depressed, anxious, alcoholic M (41) means business, so does his legal representation (M, 38, cha-cha enthusiast and M, 42, bit of chubster but cute to boot). Box no. 23/03’

‘Mimi, 64, WLTM man whose first name is composed entirely of Roman numeral letters. You must also have a degree in advanced mathematics and be very well-endowed. Box no. 23/10’

‘ “That’s soooo funny,” I said, and wedged his biscotti vertically in his over-confidant mouth. Edgy woman (my age is my business) promises to meet future courtiers in a public place with not so many potential weapons. Send photo for list of things you’re not allowed to mention to box no. 22/07’

‘These ads always seem too preoccupied with shoehorning in song lyrics. Not me, I’m the cat that won’t cop out when there’s danger all about. Complicated man (49) - no one understands me but my woman (that’s you, bad mother to 50 with big hair and bigger grits). Shut your mouth then write to box no. 22/06’

The Aftermath of the Office Party

Many of my colleagues woke up this morning bleary eyed and remorseful after a long night of substance abuse, ludicrous dancing, ill advised lunges and inept gropes.

I must be growing up. This is the least fucked I have ever felt after an office party. I don’t have a hangover. I am not remotely shaky. There are no parts of the evening missing. Nothing I wish that I hadn’t said. I am shameless, bright eyed and bushy tailed.

But I seem to be alone in that. The Mighty R has reheated his Pumblechook’s Supreme Coffee seven times in the extremely suspect office microwave but he is still too tremulous to finish it. He’s got “Big Hat, No Cattle” syndrome and verbal diarrhoea. Ponyboy is trying to convince him that everyone has a dormant ginger gene. People are slumped at their desks mortified by the memories creeping up on them as the events of last night get slowly pieced together. Kitty just got an email from a friend across town: “Got cunted at the jolly.”

Four years

My head hurts. I smashed it on the boot of my car on Saturday. There was blood, which scared me, frankly. But the real low point of the weekend was when I trod on one of Tip Little’s pintsize turds, in socks. Tip was so eager to rejoin his brother, with the aim of beating the living fucking daylights out of Poodle Murphy in his penguin suit, that he erupted from the cat litter box mid-poo, trailing miniscule dung in his wake. It all happened so fast that before I knew it, there was a perfect circle faecal feline squish on the hall floor, which is boarded not carpeted, thank goodness, and sock squelch.


It is four years since I first met Matt since I first got that fantastic floaty sinking never going back feeling since I fell into the well of terrifying high wire tremble walk finding faraway stranger crazy endless emails pictures phone calls stories secrets first meeting making promises heart giving four years since true love came crashing over my head since that moment we said out loud that we were everything to each other. That we were forever. I was living underwater until four years ago when I first saw his beautiful face wobble and shimmer with bright lights up there on the surface and I flew out gasping for air, into the sound of another incredible world.

A deficit of wonder

Our trip to the Centre for Reproductive Medicine at Barts was rather a let down. It turns out that making a baby is quite a long process. Who’d have thought? We were very nervous. So much so that we both managed to get our ages wrong when the doctor asked. I was pretty sure that I wasn’t 36 but it was hard to believe that I was actually 37. My bumbling confused Matt who knows for sure that we are always 9 years apart so he declared himself to be 45, before realising that we are both in fact a year older. The quack looked bemused but our fuckwittery didn’t seem to have an immediate bearing on whether we were deemed to be fit to raise kids or not so we blundered on. He was not the brightest spark I’ve ever met and kept asking how long we had been trying for a baby. “About 20 minutes” was the truth of the matter but he eventually put an entirely random “Two years” in his notes. An hour later we left feeling a tad violated (some things just shouldn’t ever have to be said out loud) with handfuls of chits for various stomach-churning tests.

I decided to take the bull by the horns and embark upon these at the earliest opportunity. Waiting for blood tests (for Rubella, Hepatitis and HIV) at the Royal London, I was seated next to a sweet little girl, early to mid teens, who was with her Dad. Like me, she was clutching the referral form for the tests and I noticed with some sadness that in the box headed “Reason for Investigation” her GP had scribbled “Depression”.

We have kittens. Tip Little and Poodle Murphy. We went to Worcester past burning fields and blue-bummed sheep, through Autumn mists and one-way villages to pick up two little black kitten boys. They were teeny and timid and sat on Matt’s lap all the way home. Poodle puked silently – a shiny clay-coloured regurgitation the size of his head – over Matt’s fleece, car sickness presumably, but we didn’t mind because they were so damn cute. I have since discovered that these kittens were actually spawned in the depths of hell and are determined not to rest until our flat has been completely destroyed. Minnie and Madge are nervous wrecks, afraid to sleep or eat or pee or poo. These big old tabby cats have no sanctuary from the trails of havoc and devastation wreaked by the tornado twins. Meanwhile, us lumbering humans look on speechless, at once enchanted and horrified, wondering where it is all going to end.

There are some photos of the little buggers here.


Tom Waits says: "This is what's wrong with the world. "Everything is explained now. We live in an age when you say casually to somebody 'What's the story on that?' and they can run to the computer and tell you within five seconds. That's fine, but sometimes I'd just as soon continue wondering. We have a deficit of wonder right now."