Month: January 2015

10.25 am

I am not sure that I am writing this blog at the right time. Maybe after the school run would be better, it would make more sense as after a walk I feel awake and thoughts travel more clearly in my mind. I am drinking coffee, strong coffee with no sugar. I promised not to eat any refined sugar this week. I am trying to loose some weight, I ate and ate for comfort, that’s what happens when I get depressed or stressed. Something about sweet food cake, chocolate, biscuits that brings me such joy when I cannot make any sense of my self the world or others in it.

I’m good at including images of the children and Patrick here, but I struggle to turn the camera on myself. I guess I don’t feel that confident about me and what I look like on the outside. Loosing weight, getting fitter will make me feel better about me, it will make me want to turn the camera on myself. I don’t like what I see in the mirror, a bloated face, boring hair, werewolf eyebrows tracing along a furrow. I wanted to be honest so whilst on the tops I turn the camera on myself. The mobile  phone becomes a mirror. Half here, half not, hair blowing wild with the wind.

I pause in the Quaker grave yard, sit on the bench and listen to the wind in the trees, blowing, blowing strong and in every which direction. Four neat gravestones in a row. I talk to Patrick about stuff, he is a good sounding board, I like to hear of his opinions. I talked to Patrick as we drove in the car to Ikea on Sunday last week. I wondered about what the focus of this blog should be, I wondered if it should be known that I have a history of suffering from bipolar disorder. Should my identity, my arts practice be framed by this condition in any way ? I don’t like the label. I do except it as a part of  me.  It does have a bearing on what I say, what I believe, what I think, maybe even distorts what I think of me and others. I walk for two reasons to keep me happy and to loose weight. The walking through clears everything. What is it about keeping moving that makes everything seem ok ? Is it some primitive thing ? Is it about the body remembering being in the womb, traveling around inside our mothers bodies. Now the earth, all of it outside, a body to walk between.

The Quaker graveyard is really desolate, I make a little film and even when leaning against a tree it is hard to stay still. There is a circle of stones beside the bench, remnants of a fire. You could have a good fire up here as the square wall parimeter provides some shelter from the wind. The coffee is thick as tar. I pour more, its probably not a great idea to drink so much of it, my head will thump with the caffeine. I think about how much nicer it would taste with a spoon of sugar. This sugarless week is going to be long. Once there is less fat on me, will I be happier, will I have transformed into a better person, will I be different when there is less of me ? I want to be lesser. I want to be able to wear all my nicest skirts and trousers again, to catch a glimpse of myself and not be disgusted by what I see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=053Ghx7jnfs

I wanted to try to be honest here. I wanted to be honest and brave. Its easy if you are Steven Fry or Ruby Wax or some other celebrity but if you are ordinary there is more to risk. Who reads this thought? Who really reads what I say ? Probably won’t make any difference. I am not ashamed, but I have always been fearful of those that judge, those that may think oh she is mad, she can’t do this job  or those that may feel sorry for me. The last thing that I want is pity. I don’t need pity. I do need a job, I do need to pay my bills.

I read an article the other day- Is depression a kind of allergic reaction ? , they suggested some supplements to take, I am going to buy them. I look them up, I write them down; omega 3, curcumin. I do anything that I think would help because I refuse to take medication. Lithium hurt. Lithium turned the whole world black and white. I stopped taking it, as I didn’t want to be an ever ready battery, and I wanted to have children. It was a long time ago that I took it. I stopped in the year 2000, the year I was completing my MA at  The University of Salford. It seemed sensible to me to take the risk of going mad whilst studying than whilst in employment. I needn’t have worried all was ok. Perhaps the thoughts race now, perhaps they do, but the world is full of colour, and if I can catch the racing thoughts then maybe its just all ok ? Are you ok with this reader, are you ok ? I am mainly writing this to me. By saying this, I want to convince myself that it won’t have a detrimental affect, that it will be ok. Its a sort of outing of the ghosts.

Maybe I do want to make work about states of mind, feelings that I have. Maybe I do. So now it is written, not in blood but with the light streaming in from the computer screen.

Next to me sits The journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962, it is a bible of a book, my hope is that she will give me strength, that her words will guide mine. I look to any reference of an artist that has lived or depicted some personal struggle with mental health. I look to them. I was struck by the beauty of Christina Riley’s  work in the Feature Shoot magazine,  a series of photographs titled “To hell and back” where she captures her struggle with mental illness. If its ok for them, its ok for me to explore this subject. This subject of mental fragility.

If its not general prejudices about mental health then its the paranoid hat of maternal surveillance which stops my flow, stops my utterances. This is not a confessional. If it helps though, I will write it down, for me, for me so that I might see. So I can see myself more clearly.

See how my thoughts wonder from the subject. I catch them again, catch the string, hold it. I read Sylvia’s journal for Wednesday 7th January, 1959, I was struck by how the domestic battled with her creative endeavours, I was struck with how she felt so down about herself, about her face and her appearance, I was pleased that she too was questioning about when it is the right time, the optimum time to write ?  I feel great empathy with her. Sylvia and the wind on the moors will help. I will go and visit her grave one day soon, she is such an inspiration. I guess that this is some sort of self-help.

January 7, 1959

Wednesday

The abstract kills, the concrete saves (try inverting this thesis tomorrow). How an Idea of what Should Be or What one should be Doing can drive an eating, excreting two-legged beast to misery-). How dusting, washing daily dishes, talking to people who are not mad and dust and wash and feel life is as it should be helps.

Boston is filthy: a drift of weekly soot on the windows, the windows smeared with greasy cooking exhalations, dust under the bed and all over, appearing miraculously every day, thrown and shaken out of the window, and seeping in again.

Don’t wake up in the morning because I want to go back to the womb. From now on: see if this is possible: set alarm for 7:30 and get up then, tired or not. Rip through breakfast and housecleaning (bed and dishes, mopping or whatever) by 8:30. Ted got coffee and oatmeal today: he docent like to do it, but he does it. I am a fool to let him. Alarm-setting gets over the bother of waking at ragged odd hours around nine.

Be writing before 9 (nine), that takes the curse off it. It is now almost 11. I have washed two sweaters, made the bed, folded the laundry and stared in horror at my face: it is a face cold before its time.

Now podgy as a leaking sausage: big pores of pus and dirt, red blotches the peculiar brown mole on my under-chin which I would like to have excised. Memory of that girl’s face in the Med School movie, with a black beauty wart: this wart is malignant: she will be dead in a week. Hair untamed, merely brown and childishly put up: don’t know what else to do with it. No bone structure. Body needs a wash, skin the worst: it is this climate: chapping cold, desiccating hot: I need to be tan, all-over brown, and then my skin clears and I am all right, I need to have written a novel, a good of poems a LHJ or NY story, and I will be poreless and radiant. My wart will be non-malignant.

The Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962, edited by Karen V. Kukil, Pages 456-457

The buzzer sounds 30 minutes gone.

7:00am

Been awake since 6.24am, shower, get dressed normal routine. Its much later than usual, I slept heavy, last night I was looking after the kids on my own. I like our own space together. We had a good evening. It began with a trip to Nathans the barbers in Hebden. I love having a peek into a male space, I wonder if the conversations are altered with the presence of a mother. There are young men, older me, and me with the boys. Nathan manages to talk as he chops and gets his cut throat razor out to neaten the back of Syd’s head. Syd decides on how he gets his hair cut now, he has a very clear idea. I love it when his locks get long and thick and wavy. He has such beautiful characterful hair.

Later at tea time my friend knocks on the door as the kids are eating supermarket take away indian from plastic trays. My friend laughs and jokes about the fact that my Christmas decorations are still up by referring to herself as the “community police” ! They will have to come down today, but we left them up for the kings and my boys don’t want to kiss them goodnight quite yet.

Sip of stewed tea with soya. So dark outside, but its warmer much warmer. My walk on the tops yesterday was muddy and boggy and slippey. I frightened myself with imagining a fall on he tops, I was high on a path beyond the fields of a friends farm. I was walking a path that I don’t ordinarily take. I hadn’t my mobile phone with me, I should always have it with me. If I had fallen, I may have been waiting a long time to be found. What morbid thoughts that I have? Did I used to worry like this ? I think that before, before I was a mother, I was less concerned, I had less fear.

Should have read that Sylvia Plath extract from the 7th January, maybe there will be time later, after the school run, the madness of the morning. More cars on the road.

I found some images on my phone, I have been allowing Naoise to play on it too much. He seems to have worked out how to download games. He has discovered an odd game about extracting teeth from cute monster characters. Playing dentist.  I thought that these monsters that he had drawn upon were so sweet. Am I being too sentimental ? Boys are sweet. Observations can be sweet. I particularly like the one where he has used plasters on the monster. I found the bathroom cupboard sealed up by plasters. Anything that you can stick. He also loves to draw on my sanitary towels and stick them around the house. I’d like to create a workshop around sanitary towel drawings. My mum thought that it was “disgusting”. I sometimes think my mums comments are mad, now if it had been a used sanitary towel he had drawn on yes, but a clean slate of a towel and some sweet marks, no.

I had to watch some dreadful film with Naoise called Hero Factory,he has become a little obsessed with it. Perhaps it needs to get lost for a while. Me and Syd then watched the second half of the Bob Marley film. It was so amazing, inspirational, what a hero, what a rasta hero he was. The concert to celebrate the independence of Zimbabwe was particularly poignant, I was nine at the time, I have no recollection of it.

Marley sings; “emancipate yourself from mental slavery, non but ourselves can free our minds”

The buzzer sounds its 20 minute deadline call.

6.30am

Awoke early around 5am, the glow of the bed light, a sequence of primary colours. I can see the computer throbbing its standby light on the bookshelf. Shower. Up. Washing in the washing machine. Chugging around, a zip catching occasionally on its door. Creaks from the sleeper in the bedroom above. On the table Naoise reading book, The Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962, a metal tea pot, soya milk, my blue jumper, sellotape roll, the three saints postcard leant against the green vase of red roses and pussy willow, an empty packet of guitar strings.

Hands are swollen again with arthritis. Sip tea, I could and probably will drink the whole pot. The 6th January, day that the three kings arrive with their gifts, day that the Christmas decorations come down and all will feel bare. Bare and sad. It is a relief that the children have gone back to school, and the house is once again my domain, that objects will remain still and unplayed with. I told Naoise yesterday that it was sad that he was going back to school and he said to me “but mummy we have been together for a long time now”. How sensible my youngest son is, and how his face glowed up with happiness as he saw his friends arrive in the classroom.

I hear a bus trundle past. It is warmer, no need to turn on the gas fire. It is markedly warmer.

The holidays are pretty much a free for all on time and watching tv and going to bed late and getting up late, so there is plenty of readjustment to do. Got Naoise to sleep at 9pm last night. I was falling asleep before him. Read him 4 books including the wonderful Three Robbers by Tony Ungerer. Santa brings great gifts to my children, I adore his narratives and illustrations. Naoise was pretending that him and his two friends at school were the three robbers and working out who would have which weapon. Naoise shows no signs of settling down after the books. I get Patrick to bring up soothing warm milk and cheese on crackers gromit, hoping that this will lull him into sleep.

He wants to draw, he wants to look at his new knight on a horse that grannie bought him, which is still affixed to its box. I separate it form its packaging and Naoise proceeds to charge knight and stallion around the bed. I am weary and tired myself. I lie and just look at him playing. He tries to poke the knights sword up my nose. It is too much, too much. Need to sleep. Eventually I get him to concede and he switches the main light off and we cuddle and fall asleep together.

It would be better if I could stay awake beyond the hours that the children are, but I am a morning person, I struggle at night. I struggle with total exhaustion. I will try to be kind to myself. The new year hangs over me as a dark cloud of tax return. I am genuinely excited about writing the PhD application, I read through an example, it is so clear and concise. I am still fumbling around with mine, something about the everyday, maternal embodiment, drawing and working with mothers. Is it mothers that are artists that I am interested in or women that are becoming mothers. It is something to do with the becoming, the feeling of falling of a cliff and awakening to a world that is so different. So different but the same that it can feel frightening.

Often I feel that I am still that little five year old girl up on a branch in the damson tree, just looking down, just observing, not wanting to partake, I just want to watch, to take it all in. As I watch my children. I am the watcher, the observer, sometimes struggle to participate. Being poked in the nose by a plastic sword at the end of the day is funny and sweet and nasty all at once.

My hair is wet and matted with knots, I feel its cold on my ears. The washing machine has begun to chug and spin and rattle on the kitchen floor. There are now many cars on the road passing. Chugger chugger chugger, woosh, woosh, water, water. My washer is an orchestra of sounds. The cars travel with speed, more than the permitted 30 miles per hour.

Sylvia beside me, I had an idea that I should read the corresponding day of her journals, I looked to the 6th January, I couldn’t find an entry for that, but there is one for the 7th. I will read it and see if there is anything that I can pull from it, any parallels, juxtapositions, similarities in what we say. It is a black time of year. I walk each day to battle the gloom. I call Sylvia and I will call on Anne Sexton to help me. I feel close to these women and their words.

The buzzer on the cooker sounds. Beep beep beep, Beep, beep, beep, beep

6.55am

Two brothers,

Two pairs of lungs,

One womb,

Two ovaries,

Two eggs,

One, Two

Back at school today. Buzzer set on oven timer for 15 minutes. All the boys and men sleep. The cars are whooshing past. Lots of them. Its all a rush. A rush back to normality. The new year. The tedious routines of coaxing children to school each day. The rythum of homework and guitar lessons and the time in-between for art and job searching, sole searching, planning to loose weight, acts of self improvement.

My hands are inflamed with arthritis. All this damp cold weather. They don’t hurt they just look swollen around the knuckles. Still feel asleep. Didn’t sleep too heavily as knew I had to be up this morning, to be sharp and with it about getting the kids together. Sip of tea. More whooshing of cars on the road, makes me realise how silent the festive season has been. Now all awakened from the hibernation. All bears awake. I feel fed up. I am growling.

I have all my family back together. It os such a relief. An equilibrium. The scales  are balanced. Where there is one, there is two. Two boys with two sets of lungs breathing, breathing soundly and deeply.

On the way to ikea, I spoke to Patrick in the car. I am not sure he really agrees of me writing this, posting pictures of the children makes him feel uncomfortable. He talks about the historical trace of Naoise life that will exist online as he grows older. I argue that it all comes from a place of love, and that I do not wish any harm to anyone. He has a point though, home is a sanctuary. A place where you can lock out the world. Home a place where a private life can be had. I keep opening the curtains on the inside. Electronic light, blue light streams into our home. The blue light fills the faces of the children. What am I adding to anything by writing this. Is there any sense to documenting and recording our lives ? I am not sure myself, I need convincing. If its art there may not be any particular aim. I naively hope that it will be a transformative experience. That my clunky writing may improve, that I may find that I can express difficult emotions and circumstances.

It is so hard when Syd leaves his dads and re-enters our lives, our home. How strange this must feel. With his huge sense of loss for his fathers time and attention, I feel a huge sense of relief and comfort that he is once more with me. There is a disjuncture between our emotions, I struggle to empathise with him. I read him a book, a chapter of some comedy. He is sad, there are few laughs. We watched a documentary about Bob Marley. It was so amazing. The tin shack that had been his home, the words of passion, his rise to success. “No woman no cry, no woman no cry.” I sing “No boy no cry, No boy no cry to” Syd in his dreams.

The buzzer sounds and there are footsteps on the stairs.

7:45 am

Much later than usual, the kettle is on, Naoise snuggly asleep in bed, its almost light outside.

Tea made. Beside me the metal pot, a hex bug spider in orange, the , oven gloves, butter dish, a green vase full  of red roses and pussy willow, a card depicting three saints leant against it, paper bag containing my great aunties birthday card, she will be 99 this week.

Sip of tea and the awakening of the gas fire pushing through heat, no longer flaming, Patrick removed the dust that was causing the flames.

I am writing about the now but the images I post are about the near past…..is this problematic ? Its a little confusing ? I wonder if it may make more sense to write at night so the image and the words sit more harmoniously together. The thought and the time frame don’t necessarily work as one.

I am tired, I look at the pixel pig upside down on the round table, his eyes watching me. I started a little drawing using Naoise new fine liner pens, motifs of pregnant women. Sydney returns today, I will then be at peace. I have felt so stressed the last two. Stress building up in my shoulders, I have felt less like walking out, I have felt like creeping back to the womb. Hiding in there. Try to forget that he is not here. He will be back by four, he will be home. The tension will then dissipate, and I will be back to juggling two boys again.

The house is starting to look tidier. I spent a hellish day sorting, clearing, folding, putting away, removing dust, mold, throwing out welcoming the new year with house work. The house has got the better of me. Mold grows everywhere, a combination of living by a river, an old house and drying clothes on the radiator. Mold, get in your lung mold. The weather has turned all moldy, it is so so wet, rainy and grey. I draw the curtains, it is all a fog, icy fog. Orange street lights poking out from within. Must have been colder in the night as the car windscreen is covered in ice. Some cars passing.

Sorting my bedroom I found photographs of my mum of me and Sydney that had slipped behind the dresser. I found a found about writing and drawing. I found a white double sheet covered in Naoise drawings. Me and him made this at the start of the summer. I lay it out to cover the bed. There is a picture of all our family, Me, Patrick (with beard), Syd, Naoise and our cat Frida Kahlo, who sadly died over the holidays. She now sits on the bookshelf, dust in a box. Dust in a box.

Dust bread, I remember the dust bread that I made. Loaves baked from flour and dust from our hoover. I also experimented with making pregnant women and children. I was interested in the rise in the oven, the rise of the loaf. “Oh higher- riser, my little loaf” plath calls in her poem “you’re”. I remember the musical adaptation of this poem that me and Syd made.

The oven buzzer sounds.

6.35 am

Wiping the sleep from my eyes, the crackle of the gas fire, 30 minutes set on the oven buzzer, sip of tea with soya. Eyes still adjusting to the glow of the light form the computer, I avert my eyes and look at the keyboard and fingers tapping letters making words. Train rumbles past.

I was lying in bed, Naoise little leg wrapped around mine, so warm, so cosy. He asked me before he went to sleep last night that could I stay in bed for exactly the same time as him. He likes to be cuddled and held and adored.

The front room is much, much tidier. I am trying to remove the piles of dust and build up of domestic detritus, paper work, toys, cracker plastic, objects whose function I am not sure of. I cleared the top of the record player so that Patrick could play his music. I put a bulb in the red lamp which now shines in the corner, lighting up my Louise Bourgeois embroidered handkerchief, which reads ” I have been to hell and back and let me tell you it was wonderful”.

Guzzling tea, almost gone. I was thinking that I want to have some sort of celebration to mark the beginning of writing this blog, maybe a coffee morning. Never held a coffee morning in my home. I have plenty of christmas cake. It will be a little gathering of my friends that I talk to at the school gates and other creative women that live near by. I wonder if they would come, maybe hold it on a Friday after the school run, needn’t be anything too long, an hour would do. A coffee morning it is with all my lovely women friends who make my life good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RayPkhDvWNE

Tea already finished. Rubbing eyes. I will go back to bed after this, I am tired, my throat is a little sore. I spent yesterday on my own, I didn’t go outside, I felt sad that Sydney wasn’t home. Some pleasure was had in sorting CD’s and DVD’s, finding lost items, reuniting. placing, controlling, bringing some order.

Patrick and Naoise went to Eureka. Its lovely that they do this together. Its a simple day out reached by the train. Patrick showed me photographs of Naoise breaking into the safe, shimmying around the side of the carpet so not to set off sensors. Naoise showed me his bank of Eureka money and his requests for withdrawal forms. Naoise wanted to buy a srorbree tree (strawberry tree), hcoklut (chocolate), a dog, a kat (cat), toys, moysee modror (moshy monster), a kar (car) and a foan (phone).

Yawning, looking at the clock in the kitchen, time passing slowly.

Not looking forward to the kids going back to school, the rush of the morning and the lists of to do’s. January is a hard month. Main jobs to do are the annual tax return that as usual I have left till the last minute, and I want t attempt the PhD application. I must get better at filling in forms. I have to exist outside of the confines of this home, I have to.

The studio and the home are great but I want to earn money, to be adult. I feel like a leach, like an overgrown child, I need some independence, its been almost six years now. How can six years pass so quickly. Six years of being local and caring for my family. It is a job, unpaid. I still have to convince myself of its value. Care doesnt seem to be valued in our society. This is sad. Care is everything. Love is care. Care is frustrating and rewarding and absolutely exhausting. I will be happy to exist outside of just care. I will be happy to use my knowledge to help others. Not being able to teach has made me feel sad. The ten week course that I ran at Artsmill was so great, I can continue to run private courses, but I really want to be part of a university again. I need a library, access to knowledge, people and the support of an institution.

Who is it that I am talking to, who is listening ? Who cares ? All this talking to myself. What is the point of this ? Am I writing about anything of interest ?

More cars on the road. Sit up straight, find something less banal to write. Write about who you are now, not what you want to become. Who am I now ? A person that neatly piles the washing on a chair, that tenderly hugs her child in bed, that tries not to have arguments with her partner, that makes art with and  in-between the domesticity. Is this who I am ? Perhaps I have more time to question to consider whilst Sydney is away.

My neighbour knocked on the door yesterday, she asked that I collect some lemons to nurse her cold. Patrick bought some back for her in the early evening. She talks about how tall and handsome Sydney was growing. He is going to be so tall, a tall man, taller than me. I found videos that he had made on my computer. Videos of him singing and playing his guitar. I found tiny bits of footage of him as a 17 month old baby dressed in a frock pushing a pram. I had dressed him up as a girl. I think that I was re-imagining my own childhood, this wasn’t a comment about gender. I just wanted him to become me. He pushes the small pram with the doll. He is playing. He repeatedly pushes the pram away from him and then catches it as it rolls back his way. He walks into the neighbours front gardens. I love this footage.

5.45 am-6.30am

Is it night, or is it day ? It is dark. There is some traffic on the road. I awoke cuddling Naoise in the attic, I still have my cotton tights on from the night before. Probably not a good idea to wear tights ion bed but I am warm and cosy. I visit the loo and decide to go and cuddle Patrick.

Is it night, or is it day? It is dark. I wonder what the time is. I try to guess by listening to the amount of traffic on the road. I hope that it is not too early as my brain is waking. Thoughts start racing. I think of the tiled victorian floor in my friends house and it brings me back to Etwall, Derbyshire and the hallway of my childhood home. My dream house. I am walking across the tiles. In places pieces of triangular blue are missing. It is a huge jigsaw puzzle geometry of joy. I imagine a bed covering sewn together from all these pieces, covering my body keeping me warm.

The wind rattles down the chimney and the gas fire whooshes and crackles. Flames gather at a section of the fire that has disintegrated. Sometimes I think I smell gas, is it dangerous ? Am I slowly being gased ?

Is it night, or is it day ? I sip my tea, milky with the soya. I think of poor Naoise last night, overtired, crying out for a digital device to play with, both me and Patrick refusing to budge. “I am bored, I am bored”, he kept crying. I remember being bored. I remember just sitting and watching. I remember time moving slowly. I remember sitting in trees and in the hayloft. I remember my childhood. I remember mud pies and poking small flower heads into them. I remember the garden, the high red brick wall, the walnut trees, the gravel on the path through it, the sound of the birds. I remember the dew on the grass as I walked bare foot through it. I remember the snowdrops in the winter time, all pushing through hope.

Is it night, or is it day ? I sip my tea, the mug is almost empty. I think of Brockhall Village. David Parr came to visit on his way past last night. David Parr, my dear friend, lover of cars and art and films. Friend of Marianne Faithful. Original thinker, critical, open hearted, painter. I remember the corridors. The corridors that led from warm central heating to nothing. Part occupied, part derelict building. The nurses living quarters, now the place where artists lived. I remember the colour of the water, yellow like pee. I remember the Christmas tree that we placed in the foyer area, I think we felled it from the woods at the back. I remember the chickens who used to live in the room on the derelict side. A bedroom of chickens, they were safe inside, after all there were foxes in the woods. I remember my bedroom on the lower floor, I was the only one who lived in this corridor. Bathroom down one end and my studio up the other. Life was simple. Life was good, this place was full of inspiration. Parquet floor inspiration. In the derelict buildings where the water had got in the wood bellowed up as if a pregnant belly. A room pregnant.

Is it day, or is it night ? The train passes to Manchester, to Leeds, can I guess which direction by just listening ? Naoise had so many accidents yesterday, am I being neglectful. These silly things that I think. How could I be responsible for a fall on the stairs or when his friend played too rough and he hit his teeth on the floor. His teeth bleed. Sometimes I feel that I bleed too. The scratch on my hand from Naoise feet in the night looks sore and infected.

Is it day, or is it night ? I spoke to Sydney on the phone. He feels so far away. So far away in London, in Hendon. I remember the house in Queens Road, 19 Queens road. The front door and the porch filled with coats. All the coats I remember being black, some were fur. Are they black because they are just not remembered as they were ? The patterned carpets, swirls of flowers green at the front through to crimson as you past through the house to the kitchen. A blue, a navy blue kitchen. Sometimes we walked in the garden, sat on the grass, under the willow tree. Walked right to the bottom. Perhaps he held my hand, kissed me. I cannot remember much about the love that we shared, most of it has been hidden so that it doesn’t hurt me. All my paintings stacked in his mothers front room. It wasn’t for too long, but she did become annoyed and that is why they are still wrapped up in a roll under my bed. Death to my paintings, my beautiful paintings. Perhaps the death of this relationship began here.

Is it day, or is it night? I wonder Sydney, you are probably still asleep. I think of you living your double life between me and your dad. It must be strange. Sydney when you are gone, I feel love sick. Sydney I hate to be apart from you. When washing up I picked up the last Sydney plate. I look at the name on the back and the crackling in the surface of the ceramic. The crackling reminds me of skin. The fragility of the surface between the outside and the in. I asked you to talk about your double life, you didn’t want to elaborate. Was my question cruel ? May be it was.

It is day, or is it night ? I set 30 minutes on the clock. What spills from a mind in 30 minutes. Half an hour. Half day, half night. The buzzer sounds incessantly beep, beep, beep, beep………beep, beep, beep, beep. I press it to stop so as not to wake the sleepers.

7pm this evening

I am disorientated.Didn’t write this at the usual time. Now piecing together some notes and some images that don’t quite make sense, time frame blurred. Head blurred.

9am this morning

Not at home, I can hear a mobile phone alarm, now switched off. A white rabbit. A cockerel crowing. Wet, damp, grey day. The rabbit looks at me, its munching hay. The sound of the television. A turquoise bowl filled with the crimson of pomegranate seeds.

Naoise and Patrick asleep upstairs. We stayed up late, saw the new year in, drank too much red and bubbly. Set off the fireworks that had been hanging around on the bookshelf in our front room for the past 13 months. We lit them in the park, the rockets woodshed above the wood line. They had fantastic names; golden fountain, tidal, and morning sunlight. These small domestic size fireworks were unpredictable but fun, so much fun.

Last year ended with a bang this year started with a pop and bubbles. Afterwards we sat and laughed, talked nonsense about “bog art” and Bear Grylls cooking veal on a tampon and collecting water in a condom.

I am wearing my onesy, I am warm, I am snug.

Sip the tea.

The kettle boils again.

Its all different here lighter, quieter than our home by the main road.

Sip the tea.

The ice under feet. The ice on the stones. The wilds above Widdop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQky5qmRcXg

Already children knocking at the door, wanting to play with their children.

Washing up, should help.

I’ll help.

Later 10 more minutes at home around 11.30 am

The new year has messed up my routine. Sipping coffee and sobering up. House a pickle. Naoise making stop motion animations on Patricks phone. Thankfully dinopaws is now switched off. Bag packed with home made bread and a quarter of mums christmas cake. Its still grey and cold outside. Naoise is making an animation  with his star wars model, Patrick is helping him. Its windy, you can hear the whooshing down the chimney.

The scratch on my hand from Naoise toe nail seems to be infected.

I rang Sydney in London to wish him a new year. I could hear his little brother playing in the background. I still feel he has been stollen from me. I keep busy, play with my friends.

I love the soundtrack Naoise is making as he plays with his star wars models.

Trees sway, some traffic on the road, but it is mostly quiet.

“Yoshimi battles the pink robs….yoshimi battles the pink robs’ sings Naoise.

Hair wet. Wind Wind. Can’t really write anything, think straight with Naoise and Patrick in the room. Need to be alone with my thoughts.

More discussion about animation, needing tripods. Loops of sound repeating. Patrick directs, Naoise moves the lego characters.

Buzzer sounds on the oven, ten minutes past.