Seven times Seven

Just when my spirits needed a little pick-me-up, I find I have been awarded an award by a reader new to my blog. Bush Mummy, who runs a charming blog of her own, has given me this lovely heart pic and asked me to answer the following seven questions with seven word answers.

It just so happens that I love seven. Seven is my talisman, my number, the way I think. It's odd, it's romantic, it's more than six.

And as it turns out, it's nice to have the chance to write a post which although of course about me, causes me to look at the bigger picture of the person previously known as Liv...

1. WHERE WERE YOU TEN YEARS AGO?
London's South Bank, playing the National Theatre

2. WHAT'S ON YOUR TO-DO LIST TODAY?
Try to get to bed before 1am.

3. WHAT IF YOU WERE A BILLIONAIRE?
I am, in spirit. I have Anna-mouse.

4. FIVE PLACES YOU HAVE LIVED?
Salford, St. Andrews, Camberwell, Cork, my head.

5. THREE BAD HABITS?
Going to bed too late, Procrastination, Impatience

6. SNACKS YOU LIKE?
Olives, crackers and cheese - late at night.

7. WHO AM I TAGGING?
Emergence - a new blog - great spirit, great heart
Reluctant Memsahib - recently discovered, revel in her fine writing
Stay at Home Dad - because I want to read him again

Heart Listening

Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.

Amelia Earhart, American aviator, 1898 - 1937

Why should it be that courage comes so much more easily when life appears to be falling apart?

I could just say I don't know. Lately, I have been aware of the insidiousness of those words I don't know. It's a great cover, the fence-sitting, uncommitted, undecided place of I-don't-know. Mad-makingly, it's what the Bim said, when I asked him those raging questions - But why? Why?

I have come to believe that we are often not being entirely truthful when we say 'I don't know'. I think we are more often talking about what we cannot bring ourselves to acknowledge or to say out loud. I think that we - I - frequently do know, we simply choose to live parallel lives with the information we can cope with, rather than act on the more uncomfortable knowledge our instinct comes up with all the time. Even good information can feel too much, too outlandish, at times. We seem to have grown rusty in the art of listening to our instinct. We don't live by the moon anymore, and the city cement deadens the voices of our hearts.

Take me. All summer I had an eerie sense of gloom about the Bim and me. I can write it now because I know why now, but although I was aware of this feeling, I couldn't actually live it. I couldn't stop everything, sit the Bim down and say 'Now what's all this about?'. I should have done, of course. I should have paid attention to myself. To us.

This summer's gut feeling was as powerfully negative as it was overwhelmingly positive in the twenty-four hours before I met the Bim for the very first time. I remember walking down Cork city's Shandon Street almost shaking with expectation, thinking This is odd... Because it was such an exciting feeling I was more inclined to go with it than the more recent offering, but even then I could not quite believe, until the Bim was there buying me a glass of Guinness, that some better, higher part of me just knew.

So one small, upbeat piece of news is this: I have started to listen to my instinct. Because of this, in the profound sadness which backdrops my days, I meet moments of peace. Scarily, what I've discovered is that if you listen to your instinct, you frequently have to act on it, too, so true to this discovery the last few weeks have seen me handing in my resignation; making a commitment to writing in a way that I have not previously done; handing in a proposal to get my job back in a form that would enable me to do that (freelance, part-time, doing the bits I like and handing on the rest) and writing my very first magazine article whose commission I got myself. (Okay so they're not paying me, but they're printing me. I'll work out the money thing later.)

And what of the Bim and me? Ah, well, that may take a little longer to fathom. I am listening, but my instinct is still saying 'I don't know'. We have separated ourselves out a little. We move round the house less like lovers and more like friends and we have successfullly put our own troubles aside in order to navigate Anna-mouse through her first ever week at school - but beyond this?

No. I don't know. I really, truly don't know.

Respite

She talks, and it's like listening to my own thoughts.

We have known each other since we were eleven, and I want to hear, yet can hardly bear to hear, what she has to say. I know that her clear-sighted pragmatism, softened at the edges by her love, will be far too like the words I don't want to bring to the forefront of my brain.

We are in Suffolk on a short break, our two girls asleep upstairs. Each of us is curled up at one end of the sofa, clutching wine glasses and discussing the awfulnesses of the past week in quiet tones. The cottage is like an old friend, too, and I know that I can just about live these moments within its warm, containing walls. When I speak my stomach lurches as I let the words out into the air, but they need to be tested in this kindest of environments, with this kindest of arbiters: I give her a glance and understand what it means that she is allowing them to pass.

Earlier today I swam in the sea. A seagull wheeled above me and a long, long way down the shore one other lone swimmer bobbed. It was not a sunny seaside day. It was grey and blowy. Strangers stopped to applaud my water entry, for God's sake, on hearing my cold water screams.

I thought it might be cathartic, and it was. For the first time since the Bim said those words last week, I felt free. I was not on dry land anymore, where he was. I was somewhere else, separate, swimming, gasping with cold.

Afterwards my hair was matted. My arms were tight with salt. But it was worth it, for those few, short moments of respite.

The Moment of Marriage

I attended a Quaker wedding today. It was light and clear and mainly silent. Its simple integrity was moving. The bride and groom, who have found one another later in life, were happy. I wore a linen ensemble. People said I looked beautiful. I clean up nice, I said, with a rye smile.

It's hard to write about the past week; I think I'll only be able to do this obliquely:

Yes, he said, when I said I know you're lying and you must tell me the truth now. Yes, I am unhappy and I think I want to leave.

And when were you planning to tell me that? I said, sounding like a bad screenplay. Most of the day sounded like that; most of that day was a bad screenplay.

When I was sure, he said.

I have heard this from you before, I said. I can't go through all this again. I was unhappy for the best part of 40 years, I don't intend to unhappy for the next 40. If you have to go, then go, I said.

And then I went to leave the house myself. You see I had this deadline to get the car to its MOT, which had assumed a vital importance, as unimportant things do in a crisis. It surprised him that I went to leave. It surprised him that I didn't stay to continue the conversation. It was, he said later, at that moment that he realised what he might lose. Er, that would be me and Anna-Mouse and all that I thought you held dear, dear. Though I don't know what I think anymore. It's hard to know what to think when people lie.

I drove with speed up the road. He called me and asked me to pull over. He talked, I shouted. I think every single thing I said for the next fifteen minutes was shouted. It was a shouty conversation. But a couple of hours later I was sane again and he had found someone professional to talk to, who might help with the anger and the lying and he had told her no, there is nothing there, I want to be with my wife and family, and he was looking very very serious.

I went out and tried to get drunk and told him I'd think about it.

The thing is, we married. We had a child. We are married. We have a child. Otherwise, I'd be outta here (it's odd, this urge to bad film-speak language. I think it helps me not to feel).

Part of me wants to behave as irresponsibly as him. Hit back, kick back, go and snog someone, take the child and run. Or make him go back to Ireland and be a very brave single mum. The better part of me, the person who made herself attend the Quaker wedding today, when a wedding was the last place I wanted to be, who had to have a cry in the car park so that she could go into the Meeting House with a smile, thinks this: isn't this type of thing, this very moment of marriage, what those vows I took so seriously were made for? Isn't this why we said those things, to stop us running away at the very moment we most want to?

Something wonderful about a Quaker wedding is that everyone present is asked to sign the Quaker Marriage Certificate, which is then given to the bride and groom as a keepsake. Their vows to one another are also written on the parchment. It is an important touch, I think. I wish I had the same record of the dear witnesses at our wedding. And I'd like to re-read those bloody vows.

When it came to my turn to sign, I found myself hesitating over which name to sign. When I got married I did not automatically lose my maiden name, because it was my stage name and therefore the one I have always used professionally. This occasionally causes confusion when I can't remember which name I've given but generally satisfies the part of me that never wanted to lose my independent identity.

'Livvy..' I began in my best handwriting. And then I watched my right hand spell out the surname I inherited five years ago when I signed my life up to the sad, funny Irishman asleep upstairs.

Cartwheels

My mother Esme couldn't make Anna-mouse's birthday this year. Some pixie pushed her down the stairs on her way to the loo in the middle of her first night's stay with my brother in his rented Italian villa, and wouldn't ya know it, she fractured her arm in three places and badly sprained her ankle. Ah, the joys of chemotherapy's side effects: it's a bit like that song, 'Your hip bone's connected to your thigh bone'... she falls because she can't feel her feet, and she can't feel her feet because of the peripheral neuropathy and she has peripheral neuropathy because she had chemotherapy and she had chemotherapy because she had cancer, and she had cancer because - gosh, I'd make alot of money if I could answer that one, and maybe save alot of people alot of heartache.

Anyway, I digress. Or should that be, for long-term readers, 'obsess'?

Esme couldn't travel for Anna-mouse's birthday treat this year (a trip to the seaside instead of a party - all that enforced social interaction and themed table napkin stuff just doesn't appeal to my free-thinking just-four-year-old, which, in my recent strange and fragile state of mind, was privately a blessed relief). So I took Anna-mouse to Esme, instead.

None of your Barbie nonsense for Esme! She decided in her inimitable way that it was of enormous importance that Anna-mouse be taken out to lunch at Kenwood House in North London, and thence into the wonderful Adams-designed house to see Esme's favourite painting - a luminous self-portrait by an elderly Rembrandt.

I have always nursed a special affection for Kenwood, with its studied grounds dipping down to the lake; its cake-top house and its small but special art collection. There are rooms full of oils of varying eras, the best of these arguably the Rembrandt and a small Vermeer. I used to come here alone on the 210 bus as a dreamy teenager and wander the elegant halls.

So it is quietly moving for me to come here with Anna-mouse and Esme, especially in my present, reflective state. This became doubly so when we took our slow, uneven perambulation round the house to its entrance - me in the middle flanked by daughter on one side and mother on the other. We have made many such walks over the last year and a half, and I am aware that our mutual progress has slowed as Esme's strength fades, almost imperceptibly, like the air from one of Anna-m's balloons, which bob around the playroom for days after their initial, first-day glory until they die with a desultory pop to my midnight knife.

We stop at a bench framed by two huge pots of agapanthus for Esme to rest. Anna-mouse runs this way and that on the wide lawn in front of us and then comes to flop at her Granny's side. Esme begins to tell Anna-mouse about my gymnastic prowess when young.

And your mummy used to do cartwheels! Do you know what a cartwheel is?

Anna-mouse looks at me no small degree of admiration, and then shakes her head.

I bet you can't still do them, can you? says Esme to me. Can you? It would be lovely if you could show her.

Of course I can! the girl in me cries. The nearer-to-fifty-than-forty-year-old Livvy does a couple of quick, sensible shoulder rolls and then, in a glorious moment of frozen time, I throw myself at the lawn, the challenge and my own, disappeared past and show Anna-mouse not one, but two beautiful cartwheels.

Esme cheers. Anna-m takes up the gauntlet and rolls around the lawn showing her Fifi knickers, shouting But look at what I can do!

After a moment of pain-free triumph, I feel my entire body jar and I know that I'm lucky to have escaped serious damage. Esme and Anna-mouse continue their way to the house entrance with me trailing behind, making 'ouch!' faces, and rubbing my thigh.

But only when they're not looking.

Missing Myself

I've been missing myself.

It came to me finally a couple of nights ago. Three in the morning, insomniac, seeking comfort in Anna-mouse's room. I sat on the chair at the end of her bed and breathed in the sweet, peaceful darkness.

What happened, I wondered, what happened to you, Liv?


Where's that nervy, excitable, energetic girl who, yes, could be and was plagued by a darker, depressive side but who nevertheless had adventures! Where's that strong, singular creature who danced naked on rooftops in the rain; knew how to move an audience with a turn of the head; smoked, drank gin, made love with more than one man in a day? Where's that flat-stomached, muscular girl who could get away with that gorgeous little sundress - the girl who never, never looked her age?

It's a thoughtful place to be, the mid-forties. It's a reflective time. I've been forced to reflect after a quarter of madness. Four ridiculous months spent in an escalating state of imbalance with myself, my family, my life.

How are you? said the wise lady doctor this evening. I could tell by the way she was looking at me that I must have been very very bad, those three weeks ago when I could hardly breathe. I reminded myself before I went in today that I didn't have to make myself sound better than I am to this person, like I do to so many others. That I wasn't going to worry her if I didn't sound too positive.

I discovered as I talked that it isn't that I'm not positive - just that I have a silken shawl of many melancholic colours of sadness about me. The lady doctor wants to see me again in September, after I have re-started The Job.

Ah, the Job. Well as it turns out I couldn't have decided to make a bigger life-change and - hands-up - I entirely underestimated what its effect would be. Everything about the situation was change, from the Bim and me swopping places (me the main breadwinner, him at home with Anna-m, with all the endless guilt that entails); to being behind the footlights rather than in front of them; to having a pay cheque at the end of month - which, after thirty years of freelancing evoked in me a surprising degree of ambivalence - and finding myself organising for other people to be creative, rather than being the one organised for.

The first, honeymoon weeks were a joy. I couldn't believe my luck, couldn't believe how much I loved the Job. I threw myself into every task asked of me with gusto. Quite how I went from this to working fourteen long, long days on the trot, lurching from one sickening deadline to another and barely laying eyes on my family is... strange.

I hit a wall. One day I was this super-efficient, impressive newcomer, the next I was staring at my laptop quite unable to go on. I have to stop, I thought. I have to stop now.

I walked out to my car and phoned a friend. Go home, she said. You must go home now. My dear, special boss thought a long weekend would do it, but three days of sleeping and weeping later the wise lady doctor was writing me a Sick Note for 'Work-related Stress'. A counsellor friend of mine was appalled: How long have you been in the job? she said. Well it doesn't take very long to lose yourself when you're not looking.

And still I couldn't stop. That's the thing about nervous exhaustion, you may be exhausted, but the nerves run high. (I like to think I've been 'nervously exhausted' - wish she'd written that on my sick note; it evokes a gentler, more romantic age of illness, Katherine Mansfield's, perhaps, or Keats'). I insisted on staggering into work a few more times; had several helpful discussions with lovely boss; by sheer strength of concentration managed to complete a couple of outstanding duties and finally, finally, weary, battered and considerably drugged against the rising panic in my chest, got myself to holiday time.

So here I sit, ten days since. There's a cat beside me, lightning outside and the heat hangs heavy. I shouldn't be up this late - it's part of my new thing, not to be, at least until I come right again - but the words wanted out tonight, and who am I to argue?

The answer is that I don't know.

I do know that love beats keenly in me these days, now that I have the space to feel it. For my extraordinarily beautiful, skipping child. For the Bim. For my two flawed families and, most particularly just now, for my friends. I miss my friends. I miss some of them so much it hurts. Especially the ones who knew that Liv then, the younger Liv, the one I'm trying to reclaim.

There's obviously a trick to ageing. You don't have to know it when you're young - you wouldn't understand it then anyway. It's something to do with holding a sense of the bigger picture - of the long view. Otherwise it becomes all about the moment and the immediate feelings. But I don't think it can be done without review. My review list, the one I might write in the morning, goes like this:

Spend time with husband and child. You feel better this way.

Sleep, eat well, sleep.

Start to write again.

Contact your friends. The ones who shared the gin and cigarettes, who know what you looked like naked, or wished they did, who saw the performances, kept the faith - the ones who will forgive the long silence.

Tell the friends: Liv has been missing herself. Perhaps you could help find her?

Three-and-Three-Quarters

Is it because I see my child less these days that I revel in her even more?

She is three-and-three-quarters, but if you asked her she'd say three-and-a-half because she likes the sound of it better. 'Three-and-a-half' is bragged about with pride; 'three-and-three-quarters' dismissed with scorn.

She likes to dance (Let's do a welaxing dance to the bathroom, Mummy). She'll rip off a sock and dance barefoot in fruit puree at the drop of a hat.

Magazines are still mazagines, croissants are crustles: I hold on tight to these anomalies, like I hold on to her when she lets me. I don't correct her because I know that her fierce articulacy won't keep her ignorant of them for much longer.

She has a host of imaginary friends, the most vivid of whom is her Uncle Norgat, who has been there, done that - whatever it is, Uncle Norgat's got there first. I am deeply, irrationally fond of Uncle Norgat.

Occasionally, like tonight, when I'm singing the goodnight songs by her tiny bed, she sticks out a hand, asking for mine, and there we are in the dark, hand-holding, sleep-falling, until her breathing stills to a steady rise and fall, and I make myself let go.

I love three-and-three-quarters.

At Home to Mr Shingles

My mother Esme looks old and ailing. I am pained by the stories in her face. 'Shingles' ought to be a playground game, or the name of a children's entertainer.

She hands me the tiny volume as I busy to leave: Shakespeare's Merry Wives soft-leathered in miniature.

We both know why, she says.

The job that saved her, all those years ago.

On the cover, four tiny words: The Play's the Thing.

Anthology

It's glossy. There are stars! It looks far better than I thought it would.
I knew what it was by the postmark, but it was still thrilling.
It's slim but undeniably book-like: the paper smells new-made.
First timer, that's me!
It's probably my best, sweetest and quietest triumph.

Five Lines

What shall I do? I asked dearest Dee over drunken dinner (you can tell it was tonight, that's quite a bad sentence, alliteratively speaking). I love my blog; I love my blog readers. My blog is what taught me to take my writing seriously, it's the best thing I've done in years - and I am stretched so thin I don't know how to keep writing. What shall I do?

Write five lines, she said. Regularly. Commit to that. If you just write five lines...

Dee's good on ideas.

So here they are. Tonight's Five:

I have become one of those juggling people you read about in the papers.
Our lives have turned themselves upside down.
I feel as though I have grown limbs, each one pulled for a piece of my time.
I weep for the moments I no longer have with Anna-mouse.
And I .. ( go on, Liv, say it)... I love my new job.

Alchemy

I have been offered a job.

I, Livvy U, who has never had a proper job in my life; who has remained avowedly freelance through thick and, let's face it, lots of thin; who turned down jobs-a-plenty in those faraway days when I went out to temp to stay true to my vocation as an actress - I, who had my doubts, re-trained, and still clung to my Schedule D number, my pathetic list of expenses and a fading sense of myself as a dyed-in-the-wool bohemian - that same Livvy has been offered a job.

A job-job. A titled job! A job-job with a salary!

For those who have never trodden the freelance path, it must be hard to imagine the magnitude of this change, but change for me it would be in profound and subtle ways. These ways drove me to spend most of the week before the interview in a darkened room, holding my head and agonising over just how much, and what constituent parts, of my artist I would be abandoning by taking this job, were I, who had not a hope in a million, to be offered it. Would I ever act again? Did I really want to give up the driving passion of my life before the Bim and Anna-mouse came along? Would there be time to continue writing, my newest-found love?

Then there were the nights spent agonising over the hours. I did not want a full-time, 37 hours a week, 52 weeks of the year job. I knew this. This much was clear. Rushes of guilt swept over me at three in the morning that I could even be thinking about leaving Anna-mouse for this amount of time, let alone compromising the re-built, fragile closeness with the Bim.

On the Saturday before the Monday interview I told the Bim that I did not want the job.

He said, like everyone else, that I must attend the interview. "Ok, ok," I said, in a bad-tempered kind of way, knowing that he was right and that I had to, just to see the wretched process through.

On Sunday night I got out all my old Community Dance Studies files (because I had, after all, got a Distinction, I'd simply never used the knowledge, because I met the Bim and... well, you know). I realised that not only did I love this subject but that it is something I feel passionately about. I was born with the arts in my blood, I am utterly convinced of their power to change and empower people... Why not just jot a bit of that down and have a little think about it so that I didn't disgrace myself in the morning?

And then the morning came, and with it the alchemy.

It turned out to be one of those blessed days where every little thing comes together in support of the bigger picture. I could almost see the universe organising it all for me. I could certainly feel it. A friend had told me to go in 'all guns blazing', and I did - but really it felt as if all I had to do was turn up. The rest had already been decided.

It was an amazing hour. I found someone else sitting on the sofa with me, speaking with vision and passion and clearness of thought. Someone whose company I hadn't experienced before. Turned out to be the person I've become since having Anna-mouse. It seems that profound things happen when you let the profoundest things in life happen to you. I was astonished to discover that the last three and a half years have been working an alchemy within me all of their own. Quite something for the woman whose brain became so fuzzed by the initial shock of childbirth that she thought she'd never think straight again.

They began to look at me in a particular way and I began to realise something was going on here. The objections, logistical, practical, emotional to my taking the job began to disappear. Don't want to give up acting? We have no objection to your going off and doing a couple of jobs a year! Don't want to work nine to five because of your daughter? Of course you'll be on flexi-time! Don't want to work 52 weeks a year? Would it make a difference to you if we made the job term-time only, which was actually our original plan?

I don't want to put any pressure on you, he said an hour and a half later, calling to offer me the job, but we really do want you.

Sometimes you just have to listen to what life is saying.

So I said yes.

The Comeback

I shall come back quietly - though life has not been quiet.

I will honour my promise, and curl myself round the Bim's warm, sleeping back at 11pm.

I will write just a few words, dear words, oh-how-they-comfort-me-words.

I remember moments of the last couple of post-less months. I remember that I could not write here anymore, much as I wanted to hold onto the precious, un-met fellow writer-readers who come here and are unerringly kind. I discovered that people you have never met can feel close to you, and vice versa, and that this is bolstering and affirming in troubled seas.

It's true that crisis equals opportunity. We decided to look at it that way.

Following the semi-comic tragedy that was a moment in our marriage, the Bim and I took a long hard look at each other, wondered what the hell we'd been doing, and set to putting things right.

The hurt of it all ravaged my immune system and I spent weeks fighting one thing or another, or nursing Anna-mouse through the night, or holding my migrained head in my hands.

The Bim returned to work after the Summer of the Bad Back and promptly discovered he was being hounded out of the building. One night just before Christmas there was a loud banging at the door and a man handed him a letter, Special Delivery. Come to a meeting it said. You are going to be disciplined. You may well lose your job. A couple of hours later, when Anna-mouse was down and the house quiet, we looked at one another and knew that another chapter was over. He resigned the next day.

Christmas with no income, hmmm!

But mysteriously and wondrously we were happier people for the changes wrought.

Once, the recent past came to remind us of what we had escaped - I met the Woman Down the Road in the street, we managed a pleasant conversation, I just about made it up the hill before collapsing into the Bim's arms at our door.

For several, nervewracking weeks we have clung to the vision of a new existence - and yesterday, quite suddenly, it paid off, in myriad ways.

And of course the girl who drives us continues to run into the wind, her hair backlit gold by the winter sun.

Atishoo! Atishoo! We All Fall Down

Does anyone know who might be the God of Good Health? And what I need do to get into his/her good books again?

We are the House of Sickness! I may as well wear a nose bouquet, paint a cross on the door and have done with it. First, there was the migraine (mine), then the wobbles (mine) then the cold-virus-flu thing with the temperature and the sore throat and the funny tummy (me and Anna-Mouse simultaneously - we had simultaneous doctor's appointments with different doctors, too, which made for rather a stressful visit, seeing as only me and her were there, and I could hardly send her off on her own); then came the cough, the dreaded nighttime variety which wakes everyone up as soon as everyone is asleep (me and Anna-Mouse); then came the sinusitis-with-the-worst headache ever (the Bim) - oh please let it end.

We are also the House of Drugs: paracetamol by the packetful, cold cures and herbal potions and can I just say - where, oh where would we be at 3 in the morning without Calpol, other than at our wits' end... And although we've all rallied rather valiantly, we have also had our moments with the generally gloomy spirits that accompany such a pox-filled house.

So having very little but the colour of the four walls to write about, I find myself writing about very little at all. Makes a change from cancer, chemo and marriage wobbles, I suppose. But it feels good to fill the box, press the button, remember there's a bigger world and that in the Big Scheme of Things all this means nothing, nothing at all.

Now, I've a date with a Benylin bottle. There are some compensations...

Quiet House

The house is quiet. It is empty but for me, the cats and my thoughts.

The cats arrived this summer – a small, friendly tabby and a feisty three-legged tortoiseshell. I didn’t know she had only three legs when I fell in love with her, but that’s me all over, picking up the waif and stray before I know what I’ve let myself in for.

Earlier in the house today there was piano music. I let the notes soothe and rise. We acquired the piano this summer, too. The gift of a Quaker friend. An old German upright that’s been passed from family to family, wherever the wish arose, the only stipulation being that when we no longer want it we must pass it on ourselves, no charge.

My fingers move creakily across the keyboard. I think of the annual Open Day held in my teacher’s sitting-room; pupils gathered to play their best pieces to parents. I wore my white bell-sleeved lacy blouse and three-quarter length trousers. There was probably a ribbon in my hair. I was thin, studious, seven. A bit of a star pupil.

I play on, giving the Mozart a go, having better luck with the Haydn. It doesn’t come easily anymore, though I can imbue anything with feeling. I think of winter afternoons, then, in the playroom at Malts View Road. My sister Hope and I making up vast concert programmes for my mother to sit through, costumed from the dressing-box, accompanied by me on the piano.

Which song do you like best? we would demand after every show. Pick one! Pick one! You have to choose! I was triumphant when my mother chose Cockles and Mussels for me to sing again. I was a shocking romantic.

Then my piano teacher changed and I got one who smoked and I didn’t like him at all. Plus, I was thirteen and too many other changes were happening. I never took formal lessons again. Over the years I’ll sit down when there’s a piano and not too many people listening and let my fingers make the slow journey back to Clementi’s trills, or Satie’s stillness, but even the muscle memory of those dear favourites is beginning to fade.

So I’m cheering myself by learning some new pieces. I found a bundle of tattered sheet music tied up with string in the piano stool drawer. Most of it’s brown, and dry as parchment, but the notes are all there. My sight-reading is agonisingly slow, but just occasionally I perfect a little run of something that doesn’t sound at all bad. I round off every session with a very loud rendition of She, because it’s the only song my fingers can still remember from start to finish. When the silence is particularly odd, I sing along with it, giving my best impression of Charles Aznavour…

They are in Ireland. Planned for months. We didn’t know those months would fall now, when there’s so much to think about. Anna-mouse is being feted, at the absolute heart of her Irish family, which makes me happy. The Bim is getting another Celtic infusion, too, which he needs. I had plans for when they were gone, painting the house, sorting the garden, that sort of thing. Instead I find myself sitting for hours in my pyjamas, hugging a cup of coffee. The physical and mental toll of the last few weeks is being taken and I am, finally, allowing it to happen.

When I look back at the week I realise the two things of note I’ve achieved are learning how to play O Come All Ye Faithful for Christmas, in a vague but positive gesture towards having a happy one, and sorting my writing papers. That’s all.

It Happens Like This

It happens like this. One moment you're going along, and you know it's been a difficult year - your mother's had cancer; your child turned three and temporarily lost the ability to sleep; you're been told you're post-menopausal way, way before your time; your husband's been off work all summer with a wretched back injury and an employer with less compassion than a gnat -but you're coping.

You're not only coping, you think you're making it work, and in fact you've finally cracked the writer's block and the confidence stuff and you've discovered you can write words that make other people cry, and in many ways, yes it's been one hell of a summer, but you're personally happier than you have ever been. You don't notice that you've taken your eye off the most important ball. You notice the anger, and the mood swings and the apathy, of course you do, but you don't say hang on, are you still happy, like me?

So then the trees shed one leaf too many and you're bare, bare like the branches, thinking How did this happen? How did I get here? and your husband is sending your brother a text message meant for the woman down the road and it would be funny if it weren't so very close to the bone, shall we say the bone marrow of your family, my family, my life.

Then, there's rage. There's that hour on the bench overlooking the view on the most beautiful day of the year, and those two trees against the skyline with the perfect, little tree in between, smouldering autumn trees which shouldn't be so beautiful on a day like this, when life has taken such a daft, unexpected turn. Weather does its own thing, though. Weather can be ironic.

Four nights apart help. Us, of course, not the child. The child who asks and asks and says and says, even though she took him to the airport because I thought it would make his sudden departure more real. Better than him walking out the front door and not coming back for four days.

So now it's a week later and the world's still turning. It does that, always, it's a good thing to know. The ground I stand on is not firm anymore, but at least I still have a Bim in my life and at least there is talking and love. I couldn't have been more delusional, he said from the country he has longed for all these months, than the strongest narcotic could have made me. And indeed it is clear that his breaking of the faith with us, with me, was the worst sin committed. The woman steered him, even in these early days of friendship, clearly back to me. Which is what you'd hope someone would do.

I look at my year. I look at his. Our lives did not meet very often. We are taking care, now, to make sure that they do.

It happens like this.

All Shall be Well

I wasn't able to sleep the night before. Probably none of us were.

Faithful Hope, my sister, accompanied her. The appointment was at eleven. They made them wait a long time, though not as long as the interminable six months Esme spent having chemo and the rest of us spent watching.

I took Anna-mouse to music class. A bright, chirpy autumnal morning. The end of a week. And a chapter, as it turns out.

I was preparing lunch when Hope rang, as promised. Pizza fingers under the grill, half the fridge scattered over the counter, a bit of rough chopping going on and several half-touched drinks in the sink. Signs of a distracted morning.

"Hi Liv, you can stop stressing now," said my sister, a smile in her voice.

And with that, and the short, happy conversation which ensued, I learnt that my mother is cancer-free. That the scan result was fine. That she does not have to visit a hospital for three months. That the PICC line was being removed as we spoke (no more showers with the arm in a plastic bag!) and that the many and wretched signs of depletion she has recently been showing are due to the extreme toxicity of the drugs, not a return of the illness they were fighting.

I put down the 'phone. Forget Anna-m's lunch. Leap around. Feel the weight of ten heavy months begin to lift.

I pick up the 'phone. Call the Bim. Go into the garden to feel the briskness of the air, and let the October sunshine warm me as I talk. I note the neglected grass, the overgrown borders, the pots I planted with so much care earlier in the year parched and deadened before their time: something had to give this year, and rather than it be any one of the dear persons in my care, it was the garden I chose to let go.

Just had to tell you, I say. It's my mum. She's fine. The scan's clear. Isn't that fantastic?

And then I burst into tears.

Lithuanian Snapshots - Closing Picture

Is it time for lunch yet? reads Jay's text message.

It is Monday, my last full day. The weather has turned; all morning it has been spitting rain. I hop in and out of puddles and shoe-shops, trying to find something more substantial than my sparkly flip-flops. I am thoughtful, even a little melancholy. I miss my two beloveds desperately, at the same time as longing for more time alone. I spent so much of my life alone before I met the Bim that it will probably always be a state I hanker after. Time alone feeds me. I remember who I am again. I remember how to think again. I recognise this sort of time now, though (in a way I never did then, when I had oodles of the stuff ) as an important, priceless luxury.

Jay joins me for lunch at Skonir ir Kvapas, a wonderful, old-style tea-room in a picturesque courtyard where we order ginger tea with orange juice and honey. We talk for ages. I feel my conversation unfolding from me in a way I haven't for months. These conversations I've had with Jay throughout the trip are the longest consecutive conversations with a grown-up I've had in a long time. Jay is a great listener, and it feels good.

After lunch we go our separate ways with a promise to meet again for dinner. I go in search of the Holocaust Museum on Pamenkalnio 12, to complete my short investigations into Lithuania's recent past.

The Green House, a modest, green clapboard cottage, is difficult to find. It is not what I was expecting. The door is locked, though the Museum is obviously open: an ominous sign and again, not what I was expecting. No-one comes to answer the bell, and eventually a fellow visitor, just leaving, lets me in. Inside, there is no-one to whom I can pay the ridiculously small entrance sum, so I begin to walk around the house without a ticket.

There is a make-shift, temporary feel to the Museum, nothing like yesterday's exhibition, which was so expertly, expensively put together. This is home-made by comparison. I gather that it is not state funded - that Lithuania is, in fact, in some turmoil with itself about the role its own partisans played in aiding the liquidation of its own Jewish population - and that the Museum is the private project of several Lithuanian Holocaust survivors. Very little of the text is in English, so that I am forced to pick up what I can from the board headings (which are) and the exhibition's many images. They pack a weighty punch.

Pre-war Vilnius was known as the Jerusalem of the North. Ironically, Jews were invited to settle in Lithuania in the 14th Century by Grand Duke Gediminas. In the 19th Century Vilnius became the centre for the European Jewish language, Yiddish, and by the 20th Century it had become the Jewish cultural capital of Eastern Europe. Many eminent Jewish thinkers, artists, writers, scientists and musicians made it their home. Pre-World War II there were 100 synagogues in the city and six daily Jewish newspapers. 100,00 Jews lived here of a total 240,000 in Lithuania as a whole.

Today, there are just 5,000 Jews in Lithuania. And just one synagogue still stands in the city of Vilnius. It survives because the Nazis used it as a medical store. A rabbi flies in from London now and then to officiate.

I'm not a numbers person, except when they become more eloquent than words.

A short way into my tour of the Museum, a door opens and two well-dressed Jewish women of a certain age appear. There is much consternation that I have neither ticket nor a guidebook, and was not greeted on arrival. They introduce themselves by Christian name, insist I retrace my steps to the very front door. Let's start again! they say. Come in, come in! they say, opening and closing the door even though I am already in the building - Now, where did you say you were from? They hand me a well-thumbed wodge of photocopied pages - an extremely wordy, well-written guide to the exhibiton.

I find their kindly attentions extremely touching. I know these women; they remind me of candlelit Friday nights at my childhood friend Shoshannah's house, welcomed into a culture which is not mine but with which I have always resonated. Coiffeured, intelligent, good-hearted women, too concerned for your health and well-being but achingly reassuring. I think of my friend Dee, whose Jewishness seeps through her every pore and more than makes her who she is. I think of Anne Frank, who was born the same year as my mother Esme - how she, too, could have been nearing eighty now. What a body of work we lost there! It was the slim, serious little paperback of Anne's diary, slipped into my twelve-year-old hand, which started my own habit of journal-keeping, which led, perhaps, to here.

There were two ghettos in Vilnius. The Small Ghetto existed for 46 days in 1941. No-one survived it: eleven thousand Jews were marched from here to their deaths in the forest at Paneriai, some 10 kms from the city. The Large Ghetto existed for two years. A few hundred people survived it; some nineteen thousand died. Studying the maps in the Museum I realise how little the streets in the city centre have changed. I make my own, lone pilgrimage to find the streets mentioned. It is a drizzly, sombre little mission. I begin to understand why the comments of Jewish visitors from all round the world in the Museum's leather-bound Visitors Book are so frustrated and angry. The ghetto streets remain largely unchanged, but they pass almost unmarked. I find two or three marble memorial plaques, but blink and you'd miss them.

The Ghettos were made and sealed in the old Jewish quarter, in the very heart of the city. It was impossible not to know what was happening. Indeed, crowds formed to watch the Jews being marched in at the main Ghetto gates. I find myself staring into the faces of elderly passers by, silently questioning: Were you here? I ask them. Were you?

As I identify street after ghetto-street, walk the pavements, touch the walls, I remember a couple of original, black and white posters in the last room of the Museum, advertising theatrical performances. In 1942, over 120 musical and theatrical performances took place in the Large Ghetto. I am ineffably moved by this. Plays, they did plays. And music. They had a Symphony Orchestra. They took up their instruments and played. They took up their instruments and played, learnt speeches and performed. Of course. As an artist myself I understand this in a visceral, passionate way. It is how I have been taught to live, too. And so it is that in the face of this sad, heartbreaking day, I go back to my hotel room, and write.

The next day I leave Lithuania, and come home.

Lithuanian Snapshots - Four

After lunch, Jay and I visit the Museum of Victims of Genocide, housed in the former KGB building on Gediminas Avenue. It is a fine day, the sky is high and we are cheery after our filming.

We only have an hour. As it turns out I am glad, because atmospheres work on me, and the building was heaving with its history. It is a heavy-doored, stone-staired, long-corridored structure. Eerie holographic hands holding guns reach from the walls.

In the upstairs rooms -which used to be office space to the Russians, then the Nazis, and then the Russians again - is a brilliantly assembled exhibition, beautifully lit, meticulously labelled. The walls are filled with writings and photographs about the various oppressions and occupations this fierce little country has had to tolerate. Cases of priceless human ephemera pinned behind glass like so many insect specimens detail the thousands of lost, deported, murdered lives.

Downstairs in the basement are the torture cells of the KGB prison, maintained virtually untouched since their last prisoner less than thirty years ago. The cells are painted an old, puce green. They boast of the darkest places the human mind can go. The Wet Cell struck me most, a nasty, claustrophobic space with a scooped out floor which would be filled with water which turned to ice in winter. In the centre there is a tiny metal pedestal, the prisoner's only refuge from the wet. Further down the corridor I find the Soft Cell, with its strange, stupid-looking straitjacket hanging on a peg just in front of me. This cell was padded in 1973, the sign says, to stop the torture cries, and the cries from those driven mad by torture, from being heard. Nineteen-Seventy-Three, I whisper, trying to make it fit. My nineteen-seventy-three, the one that I know, held in it Jackie magazine, and the Eleven-Plus, and bell-bottomed trousers.

At the end of the longest corridor, the penultimate cell has been put to a different purpose. It is the Prison Library. Books do not belong here! is my first thought. But then I think yes, yes let there be books. Let there - as with the volume of Shakespeare which Nelson Mandela read and annotated in his imprisonment on Robben Island - be hope. Beyond, a board carries simply a series of black and white photographs, all portraits of dead partisans as their bodies were propped up in town squares against walls and fences, for the people to see. The faces of the dead are beaten and battered, but oddly compelling. I cannot take my eyes off them. In one, the eyes of a woman are like the sewn-on eyes of a ragdoll, so swollen are they. I find myself wondering what act, what atrocity, could have done this to her, and discover that I cannot, literally cannot, imagine.

I step at the last down into the Execution Chamber. I make myself step: there is no-one else around and I make the journey into this brightly lit bowel with dread. The floor is glass and lit to reveal relics of those who died beneath your feet in the sand. Thousands were shot or stabbed in this chamber. I try to say some sort of prayer for them but am so troubled that none comes. I go and find Jay. I've had enough, I tell him. Because I have. Because I can.

I run to hide in the sunlight outside. From an open window in the next building on the Avenue pours a piano solo, someone practising long and hard and strong. I remember that this building is the Academy of Theatre & Music, and almost cling to its walls as I gulp back my tears. This building houses my belief system, I remind myself, my soul.

I walk across the street to a park bench, letting the music work on me, waiting for some sign that it's about love, too, this life: find it in the brief, steadying "Grim" of nodded agreement between myself and my old friend when he too emerges into the sunshine. I put my hand for a brief moment on his arm to pin myself to the moment, here on Gediminas Avenue, beside the bloody geraniums.

Lithuanian Snapshots - Three

Astonishingly, the work itself, the actual shooting of the actual scene including travelling time and all, took only five and a half hours. I was picked up at my hotel at 7am on the Sunday morning and was done by lunchtime.

My old friend Jay was sitting waiting in the people carrier when I came down from my room. Neither Jay nor I had got much sleep, this being my only, and his first, day of filming. We greeted each other with that wide-eyed, butterfly-stomach, first-thing-in-the-morning-actor look I've come to know so well. We were taken to the unit's base camp which was in a leisure centre car park somewhere to the north of city centre and given a warm welcome by one and all. One of the actors remarked that film units look the same the world over, and we laughed agreeement. I felt a little flutter of excitement as we pulled into the midst of the service trucks - winibagos for the actors; hair and make-up; catering; the food tent. Several of the crowd eating breakfast turned their heads as we arrived. Many of the crew had been out there for some time, and were probably as glad to see us as we were to see them. Or as curious, I should say: there's an awful lot of covert curiosity about everybody else on a film set.

The director met us, shook our hands, looked weary and warm. The last time I had seen him was at the interview, somewhere in Central London. It was somehow reassuring that he looked exactly the same, down to the shorts and sandals. He asked the Second Assistant to show us where we needed to go - she showed us the breakfast tent and a winibago for each of us, with our character names printed on A4 pieces of paper pinned to the door. Another, private little flutter! Inside, fruit, bottles of water, our costumes. I got mine on and then, with as much dignity as I could muster without feeling reeeaaallly silly, had to phone the 2nd A.D. on my mobile to come and open my door, as I had accidentally locked myself inside... (Note to Self: Film Star Status not achievable until winibago doorlock mastered).

The filming itself, I am happy to report, went off with little incident. It was fun, and interesting, to be part of this international crew for a day. I gather this was the source of not a little tension on set, but I barely felt it, so glad was I to be working, and working with Jay. It was different, working with someone I knew and trusted. And we both come from stage backgrounds, feeling our way into some kind of a performance in front of a camera (later in the trip we spent an evening recounting our Most Cringeworthy Television Moments). I don't think my tiny scene was my most glorious hour on film, but I don't think I disgraced myself, either.

While I was waiting to be called, going over my lines and trying to keep my concentration (a priceless talent to an actor), Mick the Sound Man came over to wire me for sound. For those not in the know, this involved putting a little furry thing with a sticky back (the mic) between my breasts - Mick himself didn't do this, just suggested it in as tactful a way as possible and looked away as I dropped it down, then guided the wire and little adaptor box from my front to my back and tucked the box into the belt of my jeans. As we performed this intimate little operation, Mick chatted away about Lithuania, because he has worked in the country several times.

He says that he finds it a fascinating place. He says that it gets very cold in winter and this, combined with its painful history, is one of the reasons why the suicide rate is so high. He says that the Lithuanian women are fantastic - and indeed, their beauty was noted (several times) by my fellow actors the night before - but that there are two or three women for every man, so competition is fierce. I think of the band of brides encountered the day before, and of a startling statistic in my guidebook - 57% of Lithuanian marriages end in divorce. Hmm, something not adding up, there.

Through the window, across a sobering vista of Soviet-era high-rises, he points out the TV Tower where Soviet troops killed 14 Lithuanians defending their right to broadcast independently only 16 years ago in 2001 - just months before the USSR finally recognised Lithuanian independence. He tells me about the racist attacks on one black crew member; how the skinhead right is not so very underground in certain places; how difference is not very well tolerated here: the rougher, underbelly of the country which has been nicknamed the 'Baltic Tiger'.


That night I choose to stay in, order Room Service and ruminate on what I have experienced thus far. I am deeply struck by what I am learning; while I'm not sure that I like Lithuania in the same way I could without reservation say that I liked Italy, say, when I first visited, I am intrigued by it. And it seems to be working a curious magic on me. Words pour out of me every time I sit down to write. With no thought. With no problem. In the same way that others have a compulsion to photograph, to record visually, I feel a compulsion to write. To mark-make. Set it. Not in stone, but in words.

It's the feeling I've been looking to accompany my writing for - well forever, really.

Lithuanian Snapshots - Two

I'm pretty good at taking on a new city. I know how to walk the streets with a cheap map until I get the feel of a place and the taste of its smell on my tongue.

When I was 18 I spent a month doing just that. It was my Gap year, though nobody called it that in those days. It was called Taking-a-Year-Off-Between-School-and-University, and you didn't have to consider good causes or save the world or anything like you do now (though I have to admit this would have appealed mightily to the Do-Gooder in me). No, in those days you needed an Inter-rail pass, a copy of Thomson's European Railway Timetable and enough hutzpah to go off and actually do it.

I was supposed to do my month round Europe with a horsey-looking girl whom I didn't know very well called Victoria, but luckily for me she broke a leg at the last minute. I remember stomping downstairs as only a hormonal 18-year-old desperate to have a few more Experiences can stomp, bursting in on my mother and declaring with bravado that if Vicky couldn't go then I was jolly well going to go on my own. To my astonishment, without a flicker, Esme said I think that's a very good idea, darling, and then I had to go.

So it was that one summer in the 80s I was waved off at King's Cross station with my Inter-rail pass in my pocket and a very large, unwieldy back-pack on my back. In the course of the next month I managed to see a great many European cities, stay in lots and lots of hostels, whack alot of people with the back-pack and have some truly unforgettable Experiences.

And now here I am in Vilnius, Lithuania having another one, and I am reminded on this first morning in the city of those younger days. The Old Town is a surprise of beautiful, baroque streets and cafe culture. This is a country which is finding out how it feels about itself. It's like a new-born colt trying to get up, I think, succeeding for the most part, with the occasional whimsical fall. It's an interesting place for me to be with my first allowed time alone for ages. Memories assail me, flittering like moths, one moment nowhere, the next everywhere, coming at me, my face, my hair. I can't shake them; stop, in fact, trying.

I take a seat on a pretty, flower-laden terrace belonging to an up-market hotel on Pilies gatve. I feel awkward that I don't know the language. I know in fact only one word - the word for 'Thank you' - which sounds exactly how Anna-mouse would say a sneeze - 'Aatchoo!' - so I sprinkle it everywhere, in the vain hope that smiles and sneezes will buy me and my country a good name.

My morning's perambulations have been marked by a curious phonomenon: brides and their bridal parties all over the city. When I first left the hotel and saw my first bride I thought aah, how nice, a Lithuanian wedding. A few moments later I saw my next bride, waiting to go into the Cathedral as the first one came out. Then I saw the third couple, married a good ten minutes before, doing their bridal pics on the Cathedral steps - and then, well, it went on. I became obsessed with them. I started photographing them. I'm thinking of doing a photographic medley of Lithuanian brides in my next post. Even when I left Cathedral Square and took to the side streets I came across wedding party after wedding party. Leaving church. Going to church. Clearly, Saturday is bridal day.

I eat my feta salad on the hotel terrace and listen to a boy busking by the market stalls further down the street. Elvis isn't at his glorious best played on a recorder.

Oddly, towards the end of my meal, as the Second Assistant for the shoot calls me on the Lithuanian mobile I've been given to check that all is well, a tiny moth lands on the tablecloth. It is the colour of parchment, archaic, as old as the hills. I stare at it for a long time. It's as if it holds the meaning of my morning, if only I knew what it was. The next moment, before I know it, it's gone.

Lithuanian Snapshots - One

A happy journey, squished against the window in Lithuanian Business Class, demarcated by a rather shabby cerise curtain between rows 2 and 3. The moon rises, coming into focus as we fly into night over a cotton-wool bed of cloud.

We are flying over Denmark, my co-traveller in the next seat informs me.

We strike up a conversation. He is a 28 year-old Lithuanian IT consultant who works at Canary Wharf, going home to see his family. He is pleasant enough, but by the time we touch down at Vilnius International Airport (a cosy little hanger) I am more than happy to join my fellow actors again. Of Lithuania and all things Lithuanian he is fiercely proud - and this is justifiable, given that this little nation has pulled itself up by its bootlaces, shaken off centuries of occupation and oppression and achieved an impressive economic turnaround in less than two decades.

Of England and of London he is quietly scathing. Dr Johnson tickles my ear (When you're tired of London, you're tired of life) as this jaded young North European talks to older, excitable English me in his low, serious voice. I can't help but wonder if he hasn't been hanging out with the wrong crowd. I also recognise in our short little trip together a kind of microcosmic version of history. Voting in the Eurovision Song Contest of late suddenly becomes crystal clear...

My old friend Jay - unseen for 15 years or so, as happens in this odd acting profession of ours - is in the row in front of mine. We share a giggle when he gets up from his seat and bangs his head on the overhead lockers. Jay mutters a joke about Lithuanian Business Class needing to sort out its headspace, which makes me giggle even more. My Lithuanian companion is non-plussed. He wants to know why we are laughing. He wants to know what is wrong with Lithuanian Business Class. I get a sense of the inscrutability of different nations' humour.

In my mind's eye, Jay and I descend the aeroplane steps wearing red noses, fuzzy wigs and very very big shoes.

Bon Voyage!

As life and luck would have it, my acting star is taking me to Lithuania tomorrow.

That bigger part I went up for a little while ago? Didn't get that, but out of the blue they phoned my Agent and said Would she consider a much smaller part - and by the way it films in Lithuania...

So I'm off to Lithuania tomorrow, did I say that? I need to write it down alot to convince myself it's really happening. Imagine. One minute life's all fish fingers and peas and the next it's brave little Baltic states and Vodka. (I suppose. Not very up on my Lithuanian nightcaps).

Full report next week.

Kisses.

Happy Bloggerversary to Me

Precisely one year ago tonight I wrote this, my first blog post,
sent it out into the universe and began a journey that has changed my life.

What a ride it has been.

As a novice blogger, I remember the euphoria I felt every time I hit the PUBLISH POST button (my heart still leaps at it today).

I remember the lovely freedom, knowing that no-one but the Bim knew that Livvy was out there - and then my growing dismay that this probably meant that nobody was reading her, either.

(I have a reader! I yelled at the Bim when he got home, the night of my first comment. Somebody reads me!)

It took me ages to get the whole commenting phonomena. Small wonder nobody was commenting on my own blog when I was lurking away and never thought to join in the conversation. It took me, in short, quite some while to understand the way the web works. Even now I would love to spend hours surfing, popping in and out of all those lives I've come to know, love and admire. But time, or rather the lack of it, has been the common thread winding its way through this most interesting year.

But oh, the joy of a fresh-faced comment falling unexpectedly into my Inbox! Some blogging joys are constant, and this is one. I will never fail to be in awe of the fact that people return to read what I have written. Small wonder I call it my drug of choice.

And then a quite unexpected bonus - the steady flow of encouragement and support I've received through people's Comments over the year. There were at least a couple of moments of despond, both personal and writerly, from which I was lifted by the generosity of my cyber friends. My readership has never been large (though it's more than two-and-a-half, now, which is encouraging) but goodness it's loyal! International and eclectic, I'm proud to say, too.

What have I learnt? I have learnt to keep my eyes open way past midnight in pursuit of the right word. I have learnt that the great, world wide web has far greater importance and significance for all our lives than I ever imagined. I have learnt that I need to write like fish need air.

I have learnt much, too, about others' lives - how very similar we are in most regards, whatever our colour, wherever we live, each of us marked different and unique by the details. The blogs I read are full of detail. Blogging is a marvellous piece of detail in my life. It has taught me how to show up at the page and let the words go, even (especially) when I feel them to be awkwardly chosen, or incomplete. I don't quibble with them so much anymore.

It's late. I'll have to tiptoe to bed, again. Perhaps as so often happens I won't even make it to my own bed before Anna-mouse cries out and needs me to settle her. But I don't care, I often think to myself around this time, because I've done what makes my heart sing tonight: I've written.

The Fourth Age

A dear friend of mine, Richard, the Strolling Player, has written such a beautiful post about memory, and where he finds himself to be now, that I can only hope all who read this will click on my title link, whizz over there and enjoy the read.

Stay with it; it's a slow, simmering burn.

Launch

Outside the bookshop, the light is drawing in early because the sky is so low. Traffic worms its way home and every so often the red of a London bus breaks up the grey with a swoosh. It's a rainy winter's evening in August.

Inside the bookshop, it's summer. The light, the faces, the gleam on the wine glasses - all these seem to glow. If ever proof were needed of the power of friendship, of community, of celebration, this is it.

Five years ago, my mother Esme began to write poetry. This evening we are gathered together for the launch of her first pamphlet. It's quite an event.

I can't believe how many people she's invited, my sister Hope and I say to each other, worriedly, over the past few weeks. We have our daughter-carers' hats on, speaking in that over-protective way daughter-carers do. But really, the actress in me knows that the actress in Esme will triumph: she may be exhausted tomorrow, but Doctor Theatre will get her through the reading and beyond.

Plus, she won't be alone up there: the bookshop people are greatly impressed that Esme has managed to come up with not one but two celebrities to share the platform with her. Hope and I will be doing our daughter bit and bringing up the rear, reading two poems each. (The night before, Hope gets cold feet and calls me for a team talk. But I'm the only amateur! she wails. I tell her she'll be fabulous and, whatever else she does, to practise reading the poems out loud. She does, and she is).

So never mind that Esme's three-quarters of the way through her six month stint of chemotherapy, has had two blood transfusions in the past month and can't stand up for very long - she's invited every person in her address book. Twenty minutes to go, it's already standing room only. People are sitting in bookshelves and bagging best spots on the floor. The nice woman behind the counter goes to Somerfield for more wine. It's a party atmosphere, the poems not even read yet.

And it is an extraordinary mix of people, from all the many and varied strands of her long life. Esme may have lost a couple of husbands along the way, but by jiminy she made - and kept - one hell of a lot of friends. Now here they all are, out in force, saluting the grit that got her here.

The poems are a triumph. Each of us readers step up to the mark and let the words speak for themselves. There is a hush each time a new poem is begun, and the air quivers appreciatively at each poem's end, with laughter or murmurs or sighs. Sometimes applause breaks from our audience without a pause, at others there is a thoughtful silence. A few tears are glanced at with backs of hands.

From my possie on the floor slightly to the left of the 'Bestsellers' table, I can watch both Esme and her audience. She stands up to read only once, early on, which is how I know how weak is, but it matters not a jot. Her beautiful, RP tones combined with the Scots of her childhood carry perfectly to the back of the room. When she is not reading she listens from her wicker chair, almost motionless. She seems to me to have arrived at some hallowed place tonight, emitting a most clear, fulfilled energy. She appears to be existing in a place of grace. And because of that all present are touched, too.

After the reading people mill and chatter. Hope tells me that three of Esme's chemo nurses are here, too. They came after work, straight from the hospital. They clutch their signed copies of the pamphlet, and one of them, the male nurse, has even brought his mum. Hope, who knows all the nurses intimately because of the long hours she has spent with Esme on chemo days, takes me to meet them. To both their amusement and bemusement, I am so moved by their presence that I throw my arms around their necks as if they are long-lost friends.

Oh thankyou, I manage to say, thankyou.

When Esme and I get back to her flat, I have Earl Grey tea and a biscuit and she a chocolate brown brew of herbs while we chat happily about the night. I notice a small piece of paper with her signature and nothing else on it. She must have practised it before the reading! I realise. But there is something different about it, too.

I discover the next morning that, to her delight, the best and only positive side-effect of Esme's chemo has been the complete loss of a bad tremor she has suffered in her hands for years. She holds them up for inspection, and we marvel that they are steady as can be.

I glance again at the signature and realise that it is this curious phonomenon which has changed it from a previously frilly affair, to a proud, straight-backed kind of hand.

Esme Peal, it reads, the only flourish a curved line underneath the name, as if to punctuate its simple effect. As if to say - Esme Peal: yes, I'm here.

Brains

It's a blowy, cloud-racing day. It's always breezy in that playground down by the river. Following a week of broken nights, Operation Exhaust (The Child - At All Costs) is in full swing, so I don't immediately clock the funny little girl in the slightly old-fashioned outfit playing with her grandmother.

She's probably about four, quite slight, with a huge, pink sunflower hairtie holding back her dark hair. Her granny is attempting to persuade her to wear a white floppy sunhat. It's too big for her, I can see that from here, and anyway it's way too windy. Anna-mouse's hat never even made it out of the bag.

Anna-mouse is hell bent on a heart-stopping manouevre which involves throwing herself off the edge of the climbing frame, hoping to catch hold of the fireman's pole on the way down. I am a wreck, challenged but happy with her increasing physical confidence and the sheer level of application to her task.

The other little girl is attracted by the climbing frame, too, which has all sorts of ways to climb. Her granny briefly catches my eye and smiles broadly, nervously, wanting to be friends. I smile vaguely back, one eye still on my kamikaze kid.

A moment later the old-fashioned little girl does something - I don't see what - which causes her grandmother to say Oh, that was good, wasn't it.

Yes! The girl replies, delighted with herself. I'm clever!

To which the grandmother, who knows I am listening, hastily - sharply - replies We'll have to see about that.

Will we? I think to myself. Why? Why can't the funny little thing be praised for being clever and - more importantly - for thinking herself so? Why is it so important for your grand-daughter to be modest, at the age of four? What special quality was weeded out of you at that age?

I am quite sure that had the girl said I'm beautiful! her granny would have had no problem agreeing with her in public. It was the attribute of cleverness which so troubled her. This tiny moment touched an enormous nerve in me. As one who could never have boasted I'm beautiful! as a child (I was convinced I was plain for many years. Sadly, I look at photos now and think 'Gosh, I wasn't'), and who never felt her intelligence was great enough to say I'm clever! either, I try daily to infuse Anna-mouse with a positive sense of herself. It has taken me half my life to have any real confidence in my brain, though there never was anything wrong with it. Please God may she already have it!

Oh, let our daughters be clever! Let them trumpet their talents at any age, at all ages. Let them know what it is to know that they can outsmart anyone in the room - or playground.

Haiku x 3

My tutor said lots of good things. One of his best ideas was this:

Write a Haiku journal for a week. Every day, use the discipline of the syllable rules of the haiku (5 - 7 -5 over three lines, for those not in the know), to encapsulate your day.

I haven't managed to write much since. I haven't done my Portfolio writing yet, the stuff that needs handing in on Friday. I've barely written a shopping list. I haven't, as you know, written here. (If I simply state the words 'Leaks, Ceilings, Scaffolding, Insurance and Toddler Parties' a picture may begin to emerge...)

But I wrote three haikus. On three separate days. Here they are.

11.7.07:

Last day of class I
throw my hat into the ring.
Contending, at last.

21.7.07:

Roof man did not come.
Fractured our day. But our child
hugged us, and we laughed.

22.7.07:

New painted wall speaks
of sea. Sweeps 'Sorry' away.
We make up again.

A Notice

"Livvy U. would like to announce an unprecedented reaction to the previous week's events, something akin to the development of a nasty rash, only on the inside, in her being and brain, which has been preventing her - along with a go-slow by her computer - from communicating in this space in which she so loves to communicate.

She begs her readers' goodwill and will resume service as normal, as soon as she can decode her errant thoughts and make some sense of them.

In this last week, she has glimpsed a wider world and been thrown by it, after spending almost three in the wilder, but known, world of Domesticity. She is wrestling with metaphorical demons and is hopeful of victory, but has presently lost her poise.

Some would advise, never attend a potentially life-changing Creative Writing course in the same week as:

(1)an interview for a television job which would substantially up-the-ante in terms of your acting career
(2) seeing your mother-who-has-just-had-blood-transfusion because so very weak perform in playreading;
(3) receiving your first daughter's first written assessment (Music Class - 'Anna-mouse is a delight to have in the class');
(4) getting drunk for the first time in who knows when;
(5) not getting the acting job;
(6)writing stuff - actually writing stuff - and thinking, I can see it, I can see the future if I choose it to be so - and getting scared witless.

Livvy U. is not known for her capacity to deal with change.

Livvy U. feels like crying. She used to cry an awful lot (she was known for it, much to her annoyance). These days she has to remember how to do it.

She's not unhappy. She's just seen the Future and is scared by it.

Thank you for your indulgence."