Month: April 2015

21.26 (awake at 7.00am up at 7.20am)

Very sunny. 20 degrees. Sun burnt. Freckles out.

Sydney away with his dad. Sad that he is gone. Naoise in the shower. Sitting up in bed writing. Cannot really be bothered with this, it is bank holiday Monday. Spent a lovely day walking up to the pike with friends. Heard the twites. Saw a kestrel or it may have been a sparrow hawk hovering above the ridge of the hill.

I am staring at the screen, not really knowing what to say or write. Perhaps today I don’t want to share. I don’t always want to write about what it is that I am thinking. Its been an intense week, I am looking forward to a lazy day with Naoise tomorrow. I might even lie in. All the routine has gone, drinking too much alcohol, eating sweet things, trying to compensate with exercise but its not good. Need to get back to the discipline, else I will spiral out of control. Drink water, sleep early, read books, concentrate on caring for the children, don’t think too much, carry on. Run.

Took some photographs of the graphiti cut into the stone of the pike. 1988. What happened then? How old was I. Think. Looked up what music was popular. I was only talking to Syd the other day about Vanessa Paradis singing Joe Le Taxi and how young she was when she sang this song. Only fifteen years old. The words are still etched on my brain. I would have been 17 in 1988.  I would have been in the first year of my A Levels, Art, Human Biology, History (The English Civil War) and resit GCSE Maths. Learning to drive my parents car. 1988. Wigan Pier, alternative night every Wednesday. A hooded white top with tassels. Black monkey boots and jeans cut off as shorts with tights worm underneath. The Stone Roses- She Bangs the Drums, James- Sit Down With Me.

A kiss. An amazing kiss in Manchester, in a place that was once a derelict building now luxury housing. Exciting days meeting at the cafe in the Arndale Bus Station, sauntering around Aflecs Palace, looking through vinyl record stacks, not being able to afford to buy anything but a return bus fare. It was enough, just to look, to try on, to put back, to hold, to kiss.

What is the relevance of this ? Why am I writing this? Need to rest. Not even a cooker buzzer to tell me to stop. Writing off the subject, or am I exactly in the right place. When I start to write about my maternity I slip into the past, I slip into my childhood and adolesence. Perhaps allow myself to revisit this place, this time, and what relevance this has to now. Looking back I hardly recognise myself, all has changed.

 

17.59pm ( woke up at 8am up at 8.30am)

Easter Sunday

Sitting outside by the river. It is warm. The laundry is drying on the line that fills the yard and my view. I see vests and pants and socks and trousers, and the sky is filled with blue. Its warm enough to be sitting outside with just a thin jumper on.

The river flows.

Patrick is cooking dinner, my hot cross buns are rising, balanced on top of the laundry where the sun shines brightest.

Went for a walk with Syd to the pub, spilt most of a cider down my trousers. Nice to spend time with him alone as he is away tomorrow with his dad. I hate the parting and I hate our time feeling pressurised by his parting. Time together is so precious. He is a delight to spend time with, he listens and he tells me kindly if he disagrees with what I say and he offers me advice, good advice. Teenagers are amazing. So astute. So clever. So aware of the complexities of life. I need to listen to him.

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The sap is rising, the buds are budding, the rabbits are out and the birds loud with song. The fields are turning from yellow ochre to emerald. The blossom so pretty, pink cherry, white bramble, sweet smelling. Bumble bees and red admirals find nectar in the heather.

Asgarth Falls, a joyous family gathering on the banks of the river between rock and tangled tree root. The river flows. The children dip their sticks into the waters brown depth and watch when one breaks free and floats down stream. Naoise shows me all the rabbit holes and imagines the families that live within.

There is far too much picnic food on the rug. There are far too many nice sweet things to eat. There is plenty of conversation and smiles and hugs and love all around. Mum and dad rest a while on a picnic bench, they are getting old now, and they feel the cold easily and life is heavy when you are always in an upright position.

We all run up the bank and roll and throw and chuck eggs down the hill that is full of rabbit burrows. There are eggs decorated with colour and pattern. There are on lookers staring a ghast. Its a family tradition to hard boil eggs then roll them until they crack. The children love the game up and down and up and down the bank with egg after egg after egg. Fetch. Throw. Fetch. Throw.

When we are done the smiles have been cast forward and the eggs litter the bank. The eggs will be eaten by fox, badger, crow.

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We go to look at Grannies old house. I sit on the bench at the far end of the graveyard. Syd and Naoise scrap and squabble over a ball. I talk to Patrick and my cousin. I climb up onto the wall and sit a while, Naoise holds his hands up to join me.

I used to crawl around the perimeter of the wall. What a great performance that would make. Perhaps I should try to do it once more, as an adult, film my action.

I listen to the rooks in the rookery. I remember the sound that they made when I would wake on a sunny morning in the back bedroom. All is peaceful and quiet and the view is a delight. I remember scree running with my brother and sisters up on the hills in the far distance, I remember fishing in the river, bringing back cray fish in plastic beach buckets to show grannie. I remember collecting firewood. I remember being here and being free and being happy, and my big sister checking that I had put on a clean pair of knickers each day. I remember the gallery of drawings in the hall way, cousins I knew, cousins I did not, but all the lines that I admired, and asking questions about who each cousin was, where they lived and what they did and who their parents were. I remember  fetching slabs of butter and glass pint bottles of milk from the stone cold of the pantry.

https://youtu.be/6xp0uI07OSQ

We watch a new lamb being born. Just here by the wall that I climbed as a child, and the place that I would dream, and dream and wish a summer away. I’d like to go inside the house that is filled with so many memories, perhaps I could. Perhaps I could watch my grannie open a tin with one arm, place a lemon cake in the oven, stoke the coals, fetch embassy blue ten pack cigarettes from the local shop, eat kendal mint cake, and chocolate and chew gum, or run through the fields and meet my auntie in the next village where she would buy me a coke with ice and two straws to sup with.

The farmer caught the ewe with his crook, helped gently pull the lamb out, and pushed the small quivering body towards its mother.

There is a wall. I need to climb over, and this is it.

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The oven buzzer has sounded but I have continued to write a little longer. The river flows and the laundry gently moves in the breeze, soon the swallows will return.

 

 

7.22 am ( awake since 5.30am up at 6.30am)

The day of the Asgarth Falls- Burnett Family Easter picnic

Woke up thinking that I must remember to hard boil the eggs in coloured dye, its a family tradition, and no Easter picnic would be without them. As a child I couldn’t get excited about the cold slime nothing taste of a plain egg eaten whole. But I did get excited by rolling, chucking, throwing and lobbing eggs down hills till they cracked and then could be pealed open.

Easter picnics are always an adventure. One year my family sat on the benches just above the falls eating our food, it was very very cold and there were even foot long icicles hanging from the rocks on the river bank.

It is not raining and it is not snowing and it is not hailing and there was no frost last night. I hope it will be a clear bright day so that we do not get wet and damp whilst eating our picnic and so that tonight we can gaze up at the full beauty of the moon.

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Naoise decided that sitting on benches in the drizzle after eating fish and chips listening to adults talking is simply is an entire waste of time. Perhaps endless talking is an entire waste of time. Naoise announced I am going to play in the park, stood up and ran over the canal bridge. I watched and as he fell out of sight, I ran after him. I could have persuaded or fought him back with me to the benches but decided not too. It was just me and him alone in a wet park. It was fun. He bossed me around and showed me how I could help him climb up to the big slide by holding out my hand so that he could clamber up. He put his full weight on my hand. My hand became covered in the mud from the bottom of his shoe. The things you do for love, and I did love helping him, literally giving him a hand up.

Later he rejected the play equipment for the wild of the bushes and the muddy bank. I had canvas shoes on, I didn’t want to get them wet and dirty, but he was very insistent that I joined him. This way mummy, this way mummy, come and see. He was very thoughtful and showed me where I could avoid the worst of the mud and puddles. I weaved my way carefully and lightly through the patches of yuk. He took my hand this way mummy. We walked through pampas grass and rhoderdendron bushes till we came to a stop in a corner between the metal railings, the river and stone wall. Then he said listen mummy, listen to the sound of the water, does’nt it sound beautiful. Such a sweet, sweet observation and completely unexpected. I loved how for one small moment, he slowed the whole world down and I did listen and the listening was magic.

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beep beep beep beep the oven buzzer sounds 20 minutes gone.

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8:03 (awake since 6.30 am)

Woke up, Naoise beside me giggling in his dreams. Its early. Downstairs check the kitchen clock 6.30am. Wash all the dishes from the night before. Scrubbing off the rice sticking to the wooden spoon, swilling out a pool of yellow custard. Have a shower. Weigh myself, concerned that I have been drinking too much wine, slipping back into bad habits, I think I ate two pieces of cake yesterday though I cannot be sure.

Good Friday. A wet miserable day for christ to die on the cross, or to see a mummers play. Must make hot cross buns. The cross on a yeasty bun is as christian as it gets in our house. Perhaps later the house will fill with the gorgeous smells of cooking yeasty bun.

My cousin comes down stairs. I make her tea and toast and we discuss the meaning of dreams. Dreams about the Men an Tol in Cornwall, fertility, and a baby being born. A baby a perfect baby , held in arms and cared for. What does it mean to dream of a baby? Is it a maternal wish for a child? Does the baby suggest that the self is being re-born. I feel so alive Is the baby an inner child, a part of a person wishing to be known, to exist. To dream of a baby. I’m sure that I do dream but I don’t remember any of my dreams right now. I day dream instead.

The only good thing about the red traffic light that has appeared on the main road directly outside the front of the house is that it is slowing the flow of the traffic. It is far quieter and calmer.

I cannot be bothered to write anything else, I would rather speak to my cousin.

 

 

20:51 pm Awake since 7am

Sunny, warm, dry, blue skies.

Hold back the river…..Sydney singing guitar.

Naoise watching Clone Wars 

Walked all the way to the Pike from our house. Twites singing. First clouds of midges. In the ponds and puddles frog spawn. Stop at the beach by the corner of Gorpley resevoir, sun rays on the smooth surface. No breeze, a perfectly still day.

Spent the morning drawing, painting, reading, baking and making domestic volcanoes cooked up from bicarbonate of soda, vinegar, washing up liquid and red food colouring.

Still coughing, sometimes unable to talk. Sitting in bed. Hard to write. Another job rejection email, I don’t understand where I am going wrong, need to be stronger feeling that making a living seems close to impossible.

My beautiful cousin and her daughter are visiting so the house is full of wonderful female company.

At the pike a macho man standing on a rock looking out at the view, his paraglider packed up blue. Back along the track we saw a shy green woodpecker, and new born lambs fresh on their feet and I thought that I glimpsed two swallows dancing in the air.

All out of energy, need to rest.

 

12.39am ( awake since 7am)

Is it one day or the next. Wednesday or Thursday.

It is past the witching hour, beside me a red cheeked child gently breathing. Downstairs my cousin is talking to Patrick.

100 posts. 100 days past.

I ran. I knocked on my friends door, he has a yellow corridor, I collected the keys to his music studio on route to the garden centre. I managed to buy the seed potatoes. I had been concerned that there would be none left. I was lucky that there were still some and they haven’t been replaced by the lily bulbs. I buy two different types of potatoes, shallots and red onions. The allotment will need working on, I have neglected it over the winter, again another year without manure for the rhubarb.

Going back home the ruck sack heavy with vegetables, I tried running but it hurt my back, so instead I walked at speed. I past a middle aged couple walking their dog and talking about DIY. I past an older man with a dog who remarked that somebody had drained the canal. A barge was grounded on what little was left. The canal is surprisingly shallow, so it only takes a couple of lock gates to be left open or closed to purge it of water. Sometimes the draining  happens in the summer and you can see the large fish lying still in the murky sludge of the bottom, probably close to suffocation.

Not much to say. I spent the day trying to get Naoise to use the toilet as he is extremely constipated. I have tried everything, water, fruit, lactolose, back to water again. Massaging the stomach. Warm baths. Warm showers. Encouragement. Kindness. Cuddles. We had a pyjama day.

I blew an egg for him to paint.

I sorted and tidied and sorted and tidied and cleaned and dusted and hoovered and washed dishes and cooked dinner for my parents. I washed dishes and laid tables and placed clothes to dry on a radiator, and washed the stairs, placed shoes together answered messages and cooked soup and cooked pasta and warmed up an apple strudel. I did the same when my cousin and her daughter arrived. Then we cleared more plastic toys and bits and bobs and this and that and found the bed for her and her daughter  to sleep on and I apologised about the horrid black mold on the walls. It is a damp, moldy old house. It will always be a damp moldy old house.

I am bored and this is dull and its not the triumphant 1oo th post that I had envisioned. I am tired and there is not much to say about a day spent inside, inside, inside. I hope that my dreams take me somewhere else other than here…. perhaps to a field of sunflowers heads full of heavy seed bowing towards the sun.

Naoise breathing is so sweet, the air being inhaled and exhaled, a gentle rhythm. He breaths and breaths and breaths.