The Space Between Heartbeats

My youngest child stayed behind after school today to take part in a football club. It's the first time he's shown any interest, so we've encouraged him dutifully. Even ignoring the fact that football, and indeed most sports, bore me to tears. Epic parenting on my part there I feel. Anyway. This meant that I didn't have to collect him in the usual scrum of parents and siblings. My walk to the school was eerily quiet.

On arrival at our designated meeting place (the school office), I noticed that there were quite a lot of children walking around the side of the building with their parents. I stood there for a minute, and then walked against the tide to see if we had to collect our nippers from the teacher. Finding a tracksuited chap on the playground, I asked him if he'd seen my son. To which he said, sure, he was probably still getting changed. I stood about for a nother minute or so and watched the torrent of muddy kids trickle off. And I still didn't have my child. The tracksuited chap also noticed, and went to look for him. I told him I'd wait at the front of the school, where we'd agreed to meet. I'd reminded my son of that fact three times on the walk to school this very morning.

The tracksuited chap wasn't back in a minute with my son. He wasn't back in two. And somewhere between two minutes and five, in between two heartbeats, the thought entered my head that he might not be in the school. That my child might, for some unknown reason, have gone. Our old friend the panic rat woke up from his sleep, yawned, stretched, scratched himself a bit and then began his determined ascent. Still no tracksuited chap, and still no child. It's impossible to stand still when you realise something might be wrong. I jigged, I started walking one way, then another. I'd walk around the perimeter. No, I'd wait here. He might come and I'd miss him. In this state of indecision I let my guard down, and the awful, fatalist voice which lives in us all whispered: every minute could make the difference. And in my head, I'm already debating ringing the police.

Then the dreaded sight of the tracksuited chap and a teacher walking towards me. Their faces grim. Concerned. Because they still don't have my child. And I swear, in that moment, I was reaching in to my pocket for my phone. That's when the missing child came wandering up the footpath beside the school. He'd been waiting where I drop him off at the end of the lane.

Did I grab him in relief and hug him until he couldn't breathe? Kiss his head and thank everything that is Holy that he was safe? No. I screeched like a fishwife. My terror gave way to fury. I told him he was a silly boy for wandering off, that we'd agreed to meet here, and that he'd scared me witless. He responded by getting equally furious at me, and we stalked home in stony silence.

Did I overreact? Yes, probably. All's well that ends well, and all that. But those ten minutes where I didn't know where my child was seemed to last hours. Time is so hideously elastic you see. And the most hideous ideas can be born in the space between heartbeats.

A Duchess And Her Breasts

When I switched on the telly this morning, I was greeted with lots of faux concerned people talking about Kate Middleton. Huh, I thought, did she pick up the wrong fork? Wear something that was last season? Get seen in public without her lippy? All could be crimes held againt her. But no. It appears that she was on holiday, in a private Chateau, and took her top off thus revealing that she has breasts. Like half the population.

Now, I'm a woman. I too have slabs of fat attached to my chest. Most of the time, they don't really do much. They get in the way when I'm reaching for the biscuit tin, but that's about it. Of course, they were terribly useful when I had my children, what with making foodstuffs and what not. But that's really all they've ever done. They have a temporary biological function, and mostly just hang there. A bit like, I dunno, ears. Of course, I realise that some men, and some women, find breasts extremely attractive. Fair enough. But I don't understand why it is in the public interest to see photographs proving that the Duchess also has breasts. Because, you see, I already knew. It was never, as far as I'm aware, a secret. If you were surpised, you might also like to know that so does the Queen.

So, Kate having breasts is not news. It's not surprising, or rare, or particularly fascinating. So why was a paparazzi hanging out of a tree with a long lens hoping for a shot of Royal nipple? Well, firstly, I'd say because they're bastards. With no sense of morality or empathy. That said, there is a market for this stuff. And that is what interests me and makes me deeply uncomfortable.

Because what does publishing photographs of the Duchess topless achieve? For the voyeur, it's just another pair of tits. In a world where (depressingly) there are scores of young women willing to pose topless or totally naked for relatively little money, surely there is no need to show the bodies of women who'd rather you didn't. Are women's bodies public property, regardless, now? Is it the challenge? That these are breasts you're not supposed to see, so damn it, you're going to see them?

Because if that's the motivation, it's really rather frightening. It smacks of a deep seated 'Women: know your place' mentality. A public shaming. How dare you reveal your breasts, Duchess! You should be covered and demure and behave as we say you should at all times! We will conveniently ignore the fact that you were in private, with your husband, in a place you felt safe. And if you're going to get 'em out at any time, then we want to see! If you're not going to set yourself apart and behave as we see fit, then we're going to treat you just like any other woman and stare at your decorative bits. But if you breastfeed in public, by Christ we're going to be disgusted.

Quite frankly, the whole thing gives me The Rage. I have no doubt that Kate Middleton is embarassed by this episode. Not because she has breasts, but because her privacy has been grossly invaded. And because a part of her body that we, as a society, deem only to be sexual rather than functional, has been splashed across newsstands for people to gawp at. She will perhaps worry what people will think. Well, I hope that the vast majority think: How awful. That woman's privacy has been invaded and the media seem to be trying to shame her for having breasts. How ridiculous.

I really, really hope that that's the way it goes.

Writing: Blocked

I've been really busy this morning. I put the washing machine on a maintenance wash, cleaned the dishwasher and found a new place for the slow cooker to live. See? Busy. I have not been avoiding writing. Nope. Not me. No siree. I just needed to do...stuff. The kind of stuff which could be put off for a few hours, but at the same time needs doing. So I did it. Yay me.

So yes, there's the best part of half a novel lurking, neglected, in my laptop. Sure, I haven't sat down and deliberately lengthened it in a while. But, you know, the skirting won't dust itself. And the puppy absolutely needs training and walking. Plus, I have a sick chicken to tend to.

Ok. I'll level with you. I haven't touched my novel for, ooh, 7 months now. I last worked on it before we moved, way back in March. And now I've reached an impasse. I know it's there, lurking patiently on my hard drive, taking up memory space and biding its time. With just a few mouse clicks I could open that document helpfully titled 'Novel' and all 36, 000 odd words would pop up in front of me. The cursor would be blinking under the last line, hopefully expectant.

Yet I keep finding reasons not to open it. I haven't run out of ideas, or lost sight of where it's going. In fact, the whole book has been written in my head for a few years. I wish I could download it from my head and be done with it. Of course, I can. I just need to open the bloody document and start the transfer. So why don't I?

Well, mainly it's because I'm a little secretly scared that when I read back what I have so far, I'll realise it's utter bilge. That those sentences which I thought at the time were well crafted will read like a chimp banging away on a typewriter. I'm a bit worried that the passages which frightened me as I was writing them will just be a bit...'meh' in the cold light of day. Distance gives perspective, and all that.

So instead of actually writing anything, or even rereading it, I spend my time cleaning things that don't need cleaning and researching 'writer's block' via google. Which makes me a bit of a prat, really. Does anyone feel like giving me a gentle kick in the derriere?

Panic Rats And Barking Dogs

I'm a huge Stephen King fan. I've read everything he has published apart from the 'Dark Tower' series (sorry, Steve, I just don't get it). One of the things I love about him is his ability to explain a complex or hard to grasp notion with a simple image. I can't remember which book it was in now, but I vividly recall reading about one of his characters having a 'panic rat' climbing up through their chest. And I remember being blown away by that image. Because a panic attack really does have teeth and claws.

I've suffered with anxiety since...well, as long as I can remember. It waxes and wanes, sometimes so terrible that I walk around in a constant state of fight or flight. I don't suppose I am a particularly restful person to live with. I have long suspected that my brain has a glitch. Put it this way, if my brain was a gadget with a fruity logo it would have gone back to the shop some time ago. But we're stuck with whichever brain genetics decides to give us, so I have to work with the faulty one I've got. That's not to say that all of it is faulty. It generally functions quite well. I can see, and hear, and speak, and dance, and have all kinds of wonderful thoughts and ideas. The bit that is broken is relatively small. It's the bit which percieves threat. This bit is bloody useful if you're about to be eaten by something, or are living in a war zone. It should theoretically be idle when you're living in suburbia, happily married with a couple of sproggs and enough money to pay the bills. But mine gets bored. So to shake things up a bit, it decides to create threats from seemingly unthreatening situations. If that doesn't work, it steps it up a gear and invents entirely imaginary ones. Those are the worst. It is very hard to reason against an imaginary disaster. Let me give you my bastard brain's current example.

This is our dog.

 

 

He's a spaniel. He is insane. In this picture, he is chewing a feather. We all adore him. Well, most of us do. You see, that little part of my brain that likes to shake things up is obsessed with him. He is the sun which my anxiety orbits. When we first got him, my brain fretted about allergies. And bites. And fleas. I cleaned like a demon, interrogated my children over every sneeze or sniff, and generally worked myself up in to a state of such anxiety that my shoulders took up residency around my ears. After several months, when no one was savaged to death or ended up in ICU with an asthma attack, these scenarios bored my brain, and it let them go. I had a few brief weeks of happy respite. Then, the dog got a tummy bug.

 

The tummy bug meant he barked for four hours straight through the night. The whole house was kept awake. It took me several hours of barking to realise what the problem was. And barking is one of those noises that goes right through you, makes sleep impossible and can drive you to tears. The dog needs to go out, he barks. These things happen, right? A sick animal, trying to obey the rules, keeps his humans awake for a night. No biggie, huh? But you see, now my brain has a new script. Now it can latch on to the possibility of the dog waking up and barking, thus making sure no one gets any sleep. And maybe, maybe, he'll start doing it every night, whispers my mischievous brain. Maybe it'll become a habit. And then everyone in the family will blame me, because it's my fault we have a dog in the first place. And then I'll have to rehome the dog, and it will break my heart because I love the dog. Except when he's keeping me awake all night. Which he might do. Tonight. To reinforce this idea, he has done it twice more. Once, his nemesis (the hoover) attacked him in his sleep (fell over in the cupboard). He woke up in a panic, barked, and settled again as soon as the offending nemesis was banished to the hallway. On the other occasion, he ate rather too much yorkshire pudding (don't ask) and politely barked to be let out so he could vomit spectacularly under the trampoline. After evacuating the offending pudding, he trotted back indoors and curled up on his bed and slept the remainder of the night. Unlike me. Who lay awake anticipating more barking, and repeating the evil brain script. King's panic rat curled up on top of me, and slept like a baby.

 

This script has been repeated, and is now ingrained. As the sun goes down, the panic rat begins it's scratchy, snuffling ascent in my chest. I know what's happening, I know why, and I know that it's illogical. So why can't I just...stop it? Huh. I have no idea. I can distract myself. I can trick my brain in to thinking other things. But underneath, the well worn groove of 'The dog will bark...you will be woken up...everyone will be angry with you...the dog will have to go...' plays on. It's like my brain has hiccups, and keeps jogging the needle back to the start of the same old song.

 

Experience tells me that at some point, this particular bout of hiccups will end. I know this because there have been other suns for my anxiety to orbit. These intrusive thoughts have a certain lifespan, and then they lose their power. At least, they always have in the past. But while in the grip of it, it is hard to see the wood for the trees. Being this tense is exhausting. Worrying about such trivialities feels so utterly self indulgent. But I just can't switch it off.

 

So I salute Stephen King and his panic rat. Because he has that one image totally and utterly nailed.

Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out, Summer

Do you know what I like about September? Well, there's all the obvious, like crisp, bright days and clear blue skies. There's the heavy silence of the early morning and the dew scattered grass. That delicious pause before autumn really takes hold but you can smell it in the air. All that. But, also, I love it because it allows me to give up on summer.

I'm British. Which means I spend the first half of the year yearning for the sun on my face and hoping for temperatures in the high twenties. Then June arrived, and I started thinking about barbecues and paddling pools and bedding plants. It rained. Or was unseasonably cold. I sulked. But, hey! There's still July! July won't let us down! So I bought a sun lounger and insisted on force feeding everyone salad and burgers done on the grill. Because it was still raining. In fact, it was not so much 'rain' as a monsoon. Drains were overflowing. Areas were flooded. But it's July! So I made the kids wear shorts while putting the heating on. August won't let us down! We clung to hope like rats to a sinking ship. And that's what was happening. Our summer was sinking. The drought we were all warned about at the beginning of the year with scaremongering headlines about stand pipes had turned in to the wettest summer since records began. To add insult to injury, just when we thought about giving up hope, the weather gods would chuck us a few warm, dry days. Then as soon as you started to relax in to it and bought sun cream, the heavens would once again open.

It was depressing. It was a total washout. It meant that my summer wardrobe barely saw daylight and I was wearing a jumper and slippers when I should have been moaning about the heat. Because of course if it had been hot, we'd have all bitched and moaned about melting, and the lack of air conditioning, and how it wasn't fair. We're terribly fickle like that.

But now it's September. Summer's leaky ship has sailed. Sod you, summer. Now we will look forward to Bonfire Night and Christmas. Maybe Halloween, if you're so inclined. But from now on, it can rain. And be cold. Hell, it can even snow. Snow! We quite like snow. It causes the same kind of disruption as the rain, but it just looks so pretty we don't really care. Unless it stays for more than two days. Then it gets dirty looking and icy and it can nob off. Let it always be said that the Great British Public are fickle.

But, yeah. September can hang around for a bit. It marks the end of summer hopes and the beginning of the slide in to winter darkness. And as the kids are all back at school, my walks with the dog are wonderfully peaceful. Me and September are friends.

Fraying

This morning, at 7.25, he walked out the door and didn't even look back. He was a little early, but wanted to make sure he didn't miss his bus. I watched him walk down the hill from the living room window with a mixture of pride and maternal dread. Yes, my eldest child has today started secondary school.

As I anxiously watch the clock and try to picture where he is at this very moment, what he's doing and who he is with, I hope I'm the furthest thing from his mind. Like thousands of other mothers up and down the country, I have been preparing for this day for a very long time. Yet somehow, you never really think it will arrive.

For some reason, as I was laying out his new uniform and labelling everything in the vain hope that at least some of it will come back, I kept thinking about his feet. This is partly because he now has feet almost as big as mine and I keep going to put on his converse instead of my own. But it's also because I remember the tiny, soft newborn feet that I used to squidge and kiss. How he'd slowly wriggle his toes as if they were tentacles feeling the air. And now he has giant boy feet, and his shoes look like canoes parked by the door. What strikes me about this, and makes me strangely sad, is that I can't remember the inbetween phases. It's like his feet have gone from tiny, in-the-palm-of-your-hand miracles, to humungous, stinky proper feet. The years inbetween these two states seem less tangible and impossible to pin down.

Of course, I remember feeling anxious about his first day at primary school, too. I remember vividly thinking that from now on, my precious first born would be influenced by the wider world, and how much I did not like the concept. And I remember realising that letting children grow up is a series of letting go's. It's not so much a case of cutting the apron strings, as gently and relentlessly fraying them, thread by thread. Hopefully, the child barely notices as each tiny strand loosens and gives until one day, they're grown and independent. This is the right and natural process of things. Honest. What I didn't realise is that this process is not passive on the parents' part. It's a choice. You have to wait for the right time, judge how many threads to loosen, and do so without grimacing. That last bit is bloody hard.

As my son ran off towards his future this morning, I was grimacing pretty hideously behind his back. I no longer worry that he'll be influenced by the wider world. Now I worry that he'll embrace it fully and I'll lose more of him than I'm ready for. Because that is key, I think. You have to loosen the threads when they are ready, whether you are or not. You have to pretend that you know what you're doing, even when you're flailing around obsessing about feet.

So when my son trudges back up the hill this afternoon, I will make him a cup of tea and try not to quiz him. I'll ask him about his day and take whatever information he decides to share. I'll try not to quiz him on the other children, or enquire if they're 'nice', in the hope that he'll tell me if anyone has flushed his head down the toilet or dangled him from a window by his ankles. But accepting at the same time that I will now know much less about his school life, and that I will rapidly become an embarassment.

I will comfort myself by seeing that there are still plenty of strands left, and I'll always have photos of those precious little feet.