Awoke at 6.30, cannot rest or fall back to sleep. Covered up Naoise with the second duvet that had fallen onto the ground, its cold. Crept downstairs to be greeted by piles of dirty dishes, mugs, wine glasses and kitchen carnage from yesterdays dinner. I stack and clear the table, I cannot write in a mess. Lumps of wax on the table from Naoise experiments. He is fascinated with the stuff, warm clay in his hands.
Gas fire on, click, woos, humming. I draw the curtains on the dark and the last day of 2014. Top up my stewed tea pour in some soya, watch the man going to work get into his car. Orange street lamps still lit. The man indicates and pulls off.
More cars passing, busier now that people are back at work.
I slept better, no anxious dreams of flats that I had vacated and rent unpaid. Visiting Roger Hiorns Seizure had sparked memories of the council flat that I had occupied in Moss Side and the Maisonette on the Bemerton Estate. I remember the cockroaches, the electricity meter and the view over to the primary school at Moss Side. I remember the downstairs toilet, the pigeon poo balcony and the metal front door of Naish Court. Here I sit the train parting behind the house, the gas fire on, the security of a home. I am blessed by these four walls, this stone floor, the furniture that remains in the same place, the years of family detritus filling.
Sydney, my eldest son is in London with his dad visiting his Booba. Perhaps he will walk to Primrose Hill to watch the fireworks tonight. He told me that last year they walked to Parliament Hill, but they couldn’t see a thing because a new building was blocking the view. Our house is quiet. The fireworks that have remained stored on the top of my bookshelf will be lit tonight. We have an invitation to a dear friends house in Hebden and they have a garden and food and love and comfort. Ordinarily I fall asleep on our sofa watching Jools Holland and that is my new year. Its good to start with a bang. Its better to make noise that to snooze through life.
45 minutes on the buzzer. This writing perhaps needs to be more structured, I need to settle on a time frame a number that reflects what it is I am aiming to write about. Maybe it should be more free flowing, life is unpredictable, full of interruptions and side turns and washing up and laundry. The bus zooms past its empty.
I remember the New Year of the millennium, running down the street in near London Bridge, holding my friends hand. Running against the flow of the revellers. Running and squealing. That was a time before children, another time, a far distant time away from now. I am slower now, perhaps I will run again. Run across the moors and the bog and the heather. Run to the tops and look down into the cragg of the valley. Say hello to the heron and the brown trout in the canal and the little owls and the sheep on the hill. I will run and I will struggle to catch my breath and my sides will ache and it will just be me and my feet and my body. Perhaps I will run again.
Doesn’t seem to be getting any lighter outside. Lost now. Yesterday I was a “regular elf” playing my part in a hobbit walk with my Naoise and my friends children. I had a small plastic bow, pretend arrows and sturdy boots. Traversing the gorge we raised swords into the air and battled invisible orcs. The children drank hot chocolate from plastic cups and some posh biscuits speeded our way. The snow was melting, but still ice in places. On the return route I spotted a fox bolting into the bracken. Its red coat the same colour. We played in the playground. We had a battle, the battle of Gorpley Clough, then placed the children on the sea saw and watched and watched. It was cold so cold.
Another empty bus passes.
The blue of the day is lifting the dark of the night. I’m thinking of eating marmite on toast. Head a little sore after drinking cheap white wine. Must stop drinking its dissolving my brain. A man walks past in a high visibility jacket. I look around the front room for inspiration. Pixel pig lies on the sofa with some pyjama bottoms. A folded double duvet hangs over the side of the sofa, this is Naoise comfort blanket which he affectionately calls “sniffle”. When you sit watching television he spends his time poking the corners of the material up his nose, twisting the fabric like an umbilical cord around his arm or spinning the ends around and around in front of his face.
Here I am in my sheep onesey tapping out some words that are unstructured, free flowing uncontrolled. Do they really reveal what I am thinking ? What am I thinking ? Anything or nothing. More cars, more cars and headlights. The drawings above the gas fire being blown by the heat. The clock in the corner of my laptop. Glitter of a disco ball hanging at the end of a curtain pole. Glitter on the tree decoration made by Naoise. The red of the gas fire. Damp towels folded on a chair. The metal teapot.
I am bored so I check the buzzer on the oven door. It tells me there are nine minutes left to write, but I am kinda stuck here and I have reached an ending. Nothing profound or particularly thoughtful to say about this last day of 2014. Day 365.