annanotbob's Diaryland Diary
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Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Before we get started, I'd like to state for the record that since the New Year Jane has set sail into the world of internet dating AND I HAVEN'T WRITTEN A FUCKING WORD ABOUT IT. Sometimes, I don't know how I've managed it, I tell you.
Anyway, back in my world it has been a pretty intense day and not in a good way. Forgot to put the fucking mouth thing in again so the pain in my jaw has cranked up a notch. Just going now to put it in plain view, so I don't forget again... OK.
Not a good start to the day, but I didn't want to let myself go down the path of self-recrimination - yes, I brought this on myself, but it's done now, so on we go. Next.
I faffed my way through the morning - there was laundry involved, blowing sweetly on the line and drying in no time - keeping myself just the right side of steady, with a wing and a prayer, then off I went to writing for nutters, up at the hospital.
The group meets in the art room of the mental health building, which is a pretty cool room, festooned with all kinds of artwork. Today I sat facing the window for the first time and realised there's a view right out across the valley, up the hills on the other side of the city and to the countryside beyond. I watched the double-decker buses going up and down the road along the crest of one of the hills, tiny in the distance.
The nice curly-haired woman who runs the art class was there today, sitting in for H who is on holiday. K went over the ground rules about phones and leaving the room and about the purpose of the group being to forget ourselves and our worries for a while by plunging into an episode of creativity. Fair enough.
The subject is space - ten words or phrases about space. I can't remember much of what I wrote - it all seemed pretty obvious to me, but everyone else had different things, which I always enjoy. Then for the second, extended piece, we were to imagine a journey into outer space - the spacecraft, the voyage, the landing, the circumstances. So not my thing, but what the fuck.
I started writing a story about a woman who'd won a prize of a rocket trip but didn't want to go, then had a bit of a flash about a planet like earth, being used as a dumping ground for all the inconvenient people, like lefties and intellectuals. It all seemed too huge to condense down in fifteen minutes, but then suddenly I realised my jaw was clamped rigid again, painfully so. I made a break for it, out for a smoke.
It's kind of nice in the smoking place - a small garden with picnic tables on an attractively paved area and a roof to make shade or shelter. Notices all around say NO SMOKING - they're obliged to have those as this is a hospital, but we're nutters, we smoke, no one will try and stop us. The other woman 'service user' came out immediately after me, lit a fag and drew deeply on it. I found myself blurting tearfully, 'I don't like this topic, I'm scared enough of flying in a plane, without even starting to think about going into outer space, I don't like it!' Boo hoo, etc. She agreed with me, quite vehemently, and we had a quick exchange of horror stories - her trip tp Greece, mine to Italy; the joys of Valium (though she's young so she calls them diazepam) and how we don't like coming to writing group and it making us upset.
We go back in and I write a thing that starts, 'I like to keep my feet on the ground. I can jump if I have to [not true] or in a drunken dance, but don't ask me to visit you in your tenth floor flat, because I won't come.'
So I felt I did manage myself there, but fuck me, it was hard work. I came home and lay on the sun bed reading On Chesil Beach and I have no excuse to offer. I've never forgiven McEwan for A Child in Time yet I keep reading his books. Usually I dislike them because I don't believe in the characters - they always feel like cyphers who've been barely fleshed out to demonstrate some clever structural device. I never lose awareness of myself as a reader and the words as his creations. That wasn't so true of this one - I did believe in the people, but he's still right there in your face somehow, inviting you to collude with him in thinking yourself better than these poor fools.
I nearly went to see Shazia Mirza at the udderbelly this evening:
but no one would come with me and I couldn't quite face it alone. British Muslim female stand-up - not a lot of them about. She used to open her set with, 'Hello, my name is Shazia Mirza. Or at least that's what it says on my pilot's license,' which I liked, and she's also done good stuff about hairy women.
Hey - postcards. I sent fifteen from Italy, all at the same time. Today I discovered that one only arrived yesterday and another has definitely still failed to appear. I reckon loads of them just vanished.
Grateful for:
1. Sara cooking dinner
2. A visit from Ren
3. Not falling for the allure of the pharmeceutical solution. Not entirely, at least. Not yet.
4. Finding a place to park just outside the house
5. Having hoverflies in the garden already, eating those aphids as fast as they can
Sweet dreams xxx
|10:47 p.m. - 07/05/2008
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