Write Time

Writing class tomorrow and I haven't done the homework. Plus, I am on strict orders from the Bim to go to bed no later than 11.30pm, due to a recently developed inability to get myself there before two in the morning. (I blame an alarming month, and my need to talk about it on my drug of choice, but that's neither here nor there).

This leaves me with fourteen minutes, and a problem. So I thought I'd get over myself, work to deadline and just do the task:

Writing Exercise Number 2:
Describe an object using each of the five senses. Write for 10 minutes.

Two plain wood pencils, each with a pecky, wingless bird stuck on the pencil's end. The pencils are lathed to a finish satisfyingly smooth; the birds are spotted and bright. One yellow, one red. Chickens? Their beaks - and eyes - are sharp. I can almost feel the yellow bird's predatory peck, peck, peck, as it leans out of the pencil holder towards my typing hand.

I've seen these birds, these pencils, in an off-hand way every day since Christmas, when they were given to Anna-mouse and promptly popped into the holder on my desk. The red bird faces away, dismissive, singing its pecky-peck-peck song. That yellow bird - it has its tiny eye on me. But I can smell the pencil wood before I've even lifted yellow bird from his perch, and it is nothing but safe: nutty, of the earth, like autumn leaves. And the taste - that pencil taste! - comes to me again: school, long afternoons, autumn days.

Okay, so I cheated. I took far too long. It's my weakness. But I finished the task.

Reasons To Be Cheerful

You might have thought - given that 2007 hasn't got off to the best of starts, what with my car being impounded, my acting talents being rejected and my mother discovering that she has a life-threatening illness - that I might be a little... down.

I might have thought so, too, especially in view of the fact that I was, in more youthful days, prone to depression in the same way that some people are prone to accidents. I had only to look at the colour orange and it sent me into a spiral of decline. (Strange how, now that I have discovered Happiness, the same shade can make me beam).

So I am doubly chuffed and surprised to discover that I, like everyone else at a moment of crisis, have Hidden Reserves. I've actually managed to impress myself with my resilience and, believe me, that's not an easy thing for me to do.

My mother Esme has to take most of the credit. She is leading from the front on this one. Way out front. Close friends are stopping her mid-sentence and asking, "But are you really all right, or is this an act?" because they can't believe how serene she is. I'm sure she doesn't feel serene all the time. That would be impossible (and, let's face it, nauseating). But she is, for want of a better word, grounded. Quite clearly standing on her place on this earth and saying 'Here I am. This is me. And I'm okay.'

I had noticed a change in my mother over the last couple of years. Watching her handle this latest situation has confirmed that it really has taken place - quite a subtle but profound transformation that I would hope to go through myself when I've clocked up enough years. Yes, I do think that it is related to the process of getting old. It is an astonishing process, if only we could celebrate it a little more, rather than getting bogged down in the aesthetics. What seems to have happened is that my mother has become wise in the best way it is possible to become wise: she has become wise about herself. She knows herself at last. So her actions and reactions are not muddied by anything, or anybody else's stuff. To be envied, indeed.

To see her like this - this makes me happy. Plus, I can hardly hide under the duvet until the year is out if she is out galavanting, now can I?

Clever of her, that. Blinding us with optimism. Thanks, Esme.

The News

It's bad news I'm afraid.

Tiny words signalling the enormous.

All week I've had the strange sensation of my feelings lagging behind my thoughts, like a bolshy kid dragging its heels behind her mum around the shops. Please keep up! I admonish myself occasionally. Do try to keep up!

I don't know how you keep up with something like this. So I don't. I go through the motions of my days and get most things right (though the butter appears in the oven, and the sugar in the fridge) and sometimes my feelings catch up with the news and I sit down quietly with myself and cry.

This is usually late at night, when the house is silent, and I can hear what my thoughts are saying.

A week ago I went to stay with my mother, Esme, and that night, cradling coffees, cosily ensconced on her sofa, I told her about the existence of this blog. This blog which I have held so closely to me for the last five months, nursing it into sustainable life without the imput of any single one of my nearest and dearest other than the Bim - who couldn't be more hands-off if he tried.

It was a happy moment and her reaction was happy, too. She was encouraging, free-ing, instantly recognising the possibilities I had opened myself up to. She could even converse with me in the lingo of this brave new world, having picked it up from the Saturday pages of The Guardian, speaking proudly of 'hits' and making polite enquiries about my 'traffic'.

She knew why I had told her, too. It wasn't hard to guess, waiting as we were for the results of the biopsy taken at her colonoscopy. Why have secrets now?

Yesterday she called me: It's bad news I'm afraid. It's malignant, and today there was a CT scan to determine the extent of the bad.

Although - although everything else is so good. The lines of communcation, as I wrote, are open and clear. After so many years we are all of us out of the woods and in the clear. There is transparency between us, the family, which has not been there long. I am glad we are all behaving so well. There is dignity in this, respite, and hope.

My mother above all is extraordinary. Brave, and clear. Knowing writing here is what feeds me these domestic days, I asked her permission to write here about what is happening and she gave it freely.

An elderly Quaker friend gave me comfort and insight today. When I told her the news she said: It will work out in the best way, whatever happens, I do believe that is how things work. And then, most profoundly, and the thing which most moved me, she said You're safe.

End of Story

More evidence. Not that I'm obsessed with getting my £200 back or anything.

(God, I could turn into one of those people who do this sort of thing for a hobby. I could be found, years from now, sitting in front of my single bar electric fire, mittened fingers wrapped round a mug of strong tea, churning out letters of unrelenting bile to Organisations Who Have Done Me Wrong...)

Actually, it's just a little coda to 'Impounded!':

The Bim told me that had a Corkonian (that, for the uninitiated, is the very lovely word for a person who hails from Cork City, Ireland) been telling the story of the missing car, they would have said "There it was, gone!"

Tee hee.

Ten Minutes

There was a moment in December when I made the decision to take the plunge. This week, the plunge was taken for the first time: Anna-mouse is a nursery virgin no longer. Her mother braved the waves of guilt and, how 'bout that, survived.

The Writing Class felt good. Different and good. We were given an exercise to follow every day of the week until we next meet: Write for 10 minutes about the present moment. Time yourself. When the time is up, stop.

Yesterday, this is what I wrote:

The timer has begun. The countdown timer. The present moment. Take it as your starting point. Now.

The flickering fire. My mother yawns. I hear her through the kitchen door. The day spent looking after my child, now she looks after hers. The pots on the stove, I see them, full of water; the mushroom sliced on the side. A jar of red pesto sitting DON'T INTERRUPT ME! Do you want to keep these, Liv, the cold potato and peas? Only a mother. A mother. The theme of the day, the week, the hour. My mother. Extraordinaire. Her pebbles ranged on the bathroom windowsill, the joy they give me. The sense of all things right in the world even though we know they might not be. The scan tomorrow then not. A doubt. I don't know how she stays so - what? What do I want to say? Herself. These things do push you to other places. Other parts of yourself. That's what they say and they're right whoever they are.

The fire I can hear the fire. The present moment. This seems so poignant, to be asked to write about the present moment - the rustling of a packet of peas - at this time that I can feel again the push of tears behind the eyes. I've felt it alot this week since we knew. The good thing is the extraordinarily good thing is that the lines of communication - these are clear. Clear, taut, open, waiting for the pellets of news. The bulletins. The information we need the information. The scan can give us this but the scan was supposed to be tomorrow and now is not.

I'm on a 'Countdown Timer' according to my mobile phone; aren't we all? Never knew you could pack so much into ten minutes - a lesson for life? Precious life. My child sleeps next door. Some things are right with the world. An inspiration! my brother called my mother. Such pleasure, such comfort, such a privilege to spend a night and a day and another night in her company, at her house.

The page turns quick! quick! this should be how we live life, cramming it in - the alarm beep beep beep. Stop.

Impounded!

No, this is not art - though there is something rather decorative about it - nor is it without meaning. It is, my friends, evidence.

Picture the scene: Saturday afternoon. Albert Embankment, London. The Houses of Parliament just a stone's throw across the water, splendidly gilding the horizon.

It's six o'clock, the witching hour, and we're emerging happy and the toddler equivalent of drunk from my god-daughter's sixth birthday party which her mother, my oldest friend, has held rather imaginatively on a boat on the River Thames. That is, we've eaten alot of cocktail sausages, Hula Hoops and satsumas and been given an enormous goody bag of extremely interesting things to take away with us and dress up with in the morning. A pair of wings, a crown and a whole tray of plastic costume jewelry. Rich pickings to a two year old interested in role play. I am also sporting a rucksack to which are attached at least eight large, purple balloons. Oh, and it's blowing a gale.

I carry toddler and party swag in balloon-trailing rucksack across the road. I feel like a one-man band without the music. We reach the side road where I parked the car. Only it isn't there. Six o'clock, with child, miles from home, in the eye of a mini hurricane.

Oh no, Anna-mouse, I say. I can't see our car.

What happen, Mummy? What happen?

I can't see our car, Anna. I think our car's not there.

There it is Mummy! There!

I see a car very similar to ours across the street from where I know I parked. I will myself to believe that it is, indeed, our car and that somehow I have got confused. It's amazing how fast the brain works. I begin to make up scenarios as to how our car moved miraculously by itself from one side of the street to the other.

No, I say at last, desperately trying to make the number plate letters resemble our own, No Anna, I don't think that is our car.

It takes me very little time to realise that our jolly little Peugeot has been either stolen or towed away. I look more closely at the road signs. They are utterly confusing. There are two, within 5 yards of each other, each with conflicting information. So I wasn't completely stupid, I mutter to myself.

I call the Bim. I've forgotten to charge the 'phone so the fact that it's about to conk out adds piquancy to the drama. I can see the headline: DEATH BY BALLOON as I'm pummelled furiously in the wind. I put Anna-mouse behind a wall and crouch down to make the call. I note that she is still clutching a cocktail stick with a rather bedraggled looking sausage on it. God I love this child, I think absently.

A couple of calls confirms it. The car has been towed away to the nearest Pound. The only time I lose my calm exterior, scrupulously maintained for Anna-mouse's benefit, is when they say it will cost us £200 to retrieve. I turn away from Anna-m and weep a few quick tears of frustration.

We rush back to the Embankment, where my friend and party helper are luckily still waiting for their taxi. The owner of the party boat, The English Maid, is a very English gent who rushes to our aid. He sees my problem with the balloons and suggests I cut them free. Are you mad? says my look. Cutting loose the balloons would create a far greater crisis than losing the car... But he does bound across the road and take a look at the offending parking space for me. Apparently there's nothing he likes more than doing battle with Lambeth Council, with no small success on several occasions. And yes, he comes back triumphant, talking very fast about road markings and previous overturned convictions and so on. He instructs me to 'tell my husband to come back tomorrow and take some pictures'.

In fact it is I who returns. I am calmer, and alone. Wonderful Dee, my partner in crime at the Ritz, comes with me to the Pound - a kind of dismal prison for cars - loans us the money and sets our car free. I drive to the side road and take my photographs.

I pause at the wall to remember Anna-mouse and her sausage, which she carried throughout this little drama, determinedly saving it once she knew we were headed home via Victoria Station, for a 'picwic on the train'. The sausage didn't make it. She dropped it on the platform minutes before boarding our train back to Kent Town and the Bim's welcoming arms. It was the worst moment of her night.

Limbo

The call came a little over a week ago.

We'd had a desperate, depressing day batting our budget back and forth, trying to figure out how to make ends meet 'til the end of the month.

I hate this, I said. I don't want to live like this anymore, I said. I need a job. The Bim raised his eyebrows, made his 'We've-been-over-this-before' face, and said nothing.

It's a conversation millions of couples have the world over: how to find your own particular 'Eureka!' balance, where everyone gets nourished bodily, spiritually and mentally, the child is raised the way you always promised yourself you'd raise a child, and you've even got a little over every now and then for a haircut. (Yes, my hair is currently frightening).

I came upstairs. Cried. Had a word with the Universe. A couple of hours later I got the call.

I know you've said theatre is out 'til she's a bit older, my agent said, but this is really good theatre - would you reconsider? The interview's next Tuesday - don't go unless you can do it.

I couldn't help but notice the coincidence. I smiled. I thanked the Universe. Then I giggled to myself and rang the Bim.

I don't know how the hell we'd do this, I said, testing the waters. I don't know if I even want to do this, I said... But it is in London, and commutable, and it is one of the best theatres in the country... I mean, I haven't seen the script yet, and they're saying the part is small but -

If it's more than a word, you're doing it, he said.

We spent the weekend with calendars, calculators and spidery charts drawn on the backs of lots of envelopes, trying to work out how we could make it work. For me there was a massive mental shift to make. I had previously been wracked with guilt about leaving Anna-mouse for a couple of hours in the Writing Class creche. Now here I was, drawing up plans to leave her in others' care for what felt like weeks on end.

Interesting what you can do when you try. When you're motivated. When there's a lovely goal in sight. Come Monday morning, I made the call: Yes, we're there, we can do it, tell them I'm coming to the interview.

Tuesday morning was an act of stunning organisation to get myself ready (hair a little less scary), and get Anna-mouse to dear, loyal friend who'd rather been hoping for quiet, pregnant day alone. I have to say, Anna-m barely flickered when I left, so excited was she by the prospect of a good bed-bouncing session: I decided to take this as a sign from God that I wouldn't automatically become a Bad Mother if I got the job, and got myself to the theatre as quickly as south London bus lanes allow.

They were running late. I sat at the Stage Door, rearranging my skirt and practising tongue-twisters under my breath. Every now and again I got up and paced the floor. It's a little-taught skill, for an actor, knowing how to contain the nerves and retain the energy when you arrive on time for an audition only to be told you'll be going in late. I was feeling hysterical with the possibility of the thing - allowing myself every few moments tiny imaginary glimpses of What-Could-Be - but I was damned if I was going to peak early...

Well, I honoured the adage: I did my best. I came out fizzing, popping, wondering - did I get the job? Did I get the job?

I'm still wondering. I've been wondering all week long. We got to Friday and I thought, Surely I won't have to go through another weekend with the possibility of this dangling before me? But I do have to. I'm bad-tempered and irritable and full of gushy love for my nearest and dearest one minute, and unable to be in the same room as them the next. I'm ridiculous! It's just that... it would change life so very, very much I feel I'm in some strange place of limbo until I know.

So... watch this space.

Happiest of New Years

Being in the extraordinary situation of home alone minus partner and child, I've just had the best time running around all my favourite blogs and saying hello. Astonishing to have the simple gift of time, and space around that time, to do what I want to do.

That's not to say that I don't feel strange. I do. Surprisingly, even though I lived a solitary life for years and years, now that I do have two lifelong 'attachments', so to speak, downtime alone is quite frankly odd.

An amputee sits before you. In fact, it's a wonder I can type at all, what with so many severed limbs. How do they happen, these for-better-or-worse-bonds, so watertight no amount of therapy, distance or even death can dissolve? Here I am, in Kent, and there they are, in Cork, and yet there is a strong, palpable line running straight from here to there between us.

Two memories come to answer me. Both beat with love. The first - Anna-mouse's entrance, literally days after the comic "Water, water!" moment with which I woke the Bim (who went to fetch me a glass) - the prelude to my weekend in labour. They laid her on my belly and with her characteristic, thoughtful gaze she stared up at me, blinking. There and then it was sealed: I was hers forever, let alone she mine.

And the precursor to that - the last moments of a second date with the tall, awkward young man who had walked me home to the Cathedral B&B up Shandon Street to whom I was saying "Don't even think about kissing me..." so confused was I to find someone so utterly different and apart from, and yet familiar, to me. Yes, the lady was protesting too much and within weeks, again, it was sealed.

Some things we can't fight. Why would we want to? And yet we do. When you've been addicted to drama, as I was for years, it takes a while to learn that happy - content - is not boring.

And so we enter another year. It's a wintry afternoon with a watery sun. The world seems live with possibility, as it always appears to me at the start of a new year. I reach for my tea and name my blessings, whispering their names, slowly, with love.

Happy New Year.

The Giving of Christmas

Whenever I talk about the Bim and me, sooner or later I end up hearing myself say We're like chalk and cheese!

It's true: we are. In most things. But it has dawned on me these few weeks past, in those late-night, blurry moments of reflection in front of the Christmas tree, that there's one way in which the cheese, in spite of itself, is getting chalkier. Or perhaps that's the other way round. That way is about Christmas:


I do have some happy childhood Christmas memories, I do. I remember the door to the sitting-room being locked by my parents, Christmas Eve night, and the driving necessity to find the key and get it open and find the presents - at all costs! - shared by me and my siblings. I remember the manic excitement, the thrill, the longing for morning. I remember the colours, the magic, the feasts whipped up by my mother - and feeling sometimes near to happy tears, so heightened were my young feelings by the festivities.

Then my father left. What I remember most of Christmas after that is the terrible trying - the three of us for my mother, and my mother for the three of us - to make the irrepairable good again.

It never did come good, how could it? All times without him were sad, but Christmas really was the saddest of all. We were all the cliches, we lived them then, and we went on living them for many years, right into adulthood. Which is why, when the Bim met me, I was none too keen on the festive season. I weathered it, with a fixed smile and an aching heart.

Ah, how was I to know I'd married a Christmas freak?

This knowledge dawned on me, slowly but surely, not the first December-time we spent together, but earlier, much earlier that year, sometime in July, when I would catch him singing Jingle Bells in the shower; and a blackboard went up in the kitchen around September which announced (with daily, chalked updates) how many days left there were to Christmas.

I was horrified. I asked him to keep me out of it. I asked him to keep his singing to himself. I melted only a very little when he appeared in full Santa suit with six-month-old Little Helper in arms on Christmas morning. I was thrilled when it was all over. His exuberance embarrassed me.

Then, last year, we had a repeat performance of the Santa visit, only this time Santa's beard was alot longer, and his boots shinier, and a great deal more effort had gone into the whole affair. Sleigh bells had been ordered, for God's sake, and Santa's Helper - somewhat bad-temperedly, it has to be said - was now able to walk and carry her own tiny sack. I was a little bit impressed in spite of myself.

And so here we are again. And I find myself strangely lacking in the waves of melancholy I am so used to feeling at this time of year. Indeed, I was confusingly disappointed when the Bim took me at my word and the little chalk blackboard didn't go up until 1st December. Likewise, he really did stick to his promise and kept his bathroom sing-song to various sundry Irish ditties which couldn't possibly be construed as Christmassy. Now that we're nearly at the big day itself, I am delighted to note that his enthusiasm and joy are as unbridled as before.

But the big news is that I'm even more delighted to note that for the first year in - oh, I couldn't begin to know how long! - I too have back some of that joy. Yes, of course I have my own child now, and want to make it special for her. But it's not just that. Somehow, by ways both sledgehammer and subtle, my beloved Bim has done something for me no amount of time has been able to do. He has given me the best present ever.

Against all the odds, through his love and generosity and acceptance of me however I am, he has given me back Christmas.

May yours be merry. xxxx

Putting on the Ritz

I was in the depths of duller than dull domestic chores when the text message arrived:

How does posh Indian in Mayfair sound for dinner tonight?

It sounds like heaven, I reply.

My astonishing friend Dee, whom I have known for nigh on twenty years, is waiting for me at Victoria Station. I fall into her arms and surprise us both by bursting into tears when she says she thought we might begin the evening - which is on her - with drinks at the Ritz.

If you knew how far that idea is from anything in my life right now... I splutter. She doesn't need me to explain. We go way back.

All dressed up for Christmas, London feels sexy and exciting. It's like being around an ex-lover you haven't seen for a while. It makes me feel a little more exciting, too.

Chatting madly, we catch the Tube to Green Park and I catch the buzz. What would have driven me crazy on a routine rush-hour journey when I lived in this city, now appears both desirable and impossible. Why would anyone live like this? I catch myself thinking, coupled with an enormous yearning to jump right back in.

The Ritz is another world. A liveried doorman bids us 'good evening' as we climb the red-carpeted stairs. Everywhere we turn there are sweet-smelling Christmas trees dripping with silver and gold. White twinkly fairy-lights stud the walls.

First off, we take a trip to the Ladies, as much to try out the lotions and potions as to relieve ourselves. It's all pink pastels and cherubs. There is a sofa down there, too, in a roccoccoed resting area of which Watteau would be proud. Frosted glass bottles of chilled water marked simply 'Ritz of London' sit on a little table in the corner, awaiting the dainty patronage of a fainting maiden, as do the various glossy magazines strewn on the coffee table - Tatler, The Spectator and one or two upmarket travel brochures for Africa. Of course: what better to do in a pause from the beautiful upstairs than plan one's next safari?

Thrilled and refreshed we find the bar, only to be taken through a curiously elaborate game of Will There, Won't There (Be a Table) by the dashing Italian Maitre d'.

'Oh, ladies, you haven't booked? I'm so sorry, the bar it is fully booked... Perhaps in twenty minuti? Ah, wait! For you, I will find a little niche, signore, a little sofa, perhaps, if you don't mind sharing for now..?'

We couldn't be happier to share. The sofa he offers us is, after all, half a wall long. And it is in the long hallway through which the hotel clientele must pass to reach their rooms. Since Dee and I share an eye for the absurd, we are in people-watching heaven. I am especially blessed, as my voluptuous armchair is tilted towards the wall, which is a long panel of paned mirrors, so I am able to stare to my heart's content at the various tableaux played out behind me.

A mother and father pass through with their three daughters of varying ages, each sporting long blonde hair and identical pink coats. We identify at least one gorgeous callgirl, and several unhappy rich wives. We squeal with delight that we are here, together, calling ourselves on a life we wouldn't want to live fulltime but which is irresistible to visit every now and again...

We each drink one slim glass of champagne before heading off for our meal. Our conversation, the velvet ambience, our palpable love for each other - all these work over the golden hour to soften life's recent rough edges.

Oh, the salve of friendship.

Road Rage

The Bim took Anna-mouse down to Kent Town on one of their jaunts today, to give me a breather from this 'I-wish-it-would-end' week. On the way, he saw a runaway supermarket trolley sliding down the middle of the road.

He and several other by-standers then watched as the car that came up behind it hooted - yes, hooted - at it to move out of the way...

This little tale, recounted on his return, really improved my day.

Reader, I Married Him

Last night I cried in his arms.

I can't get anything right, I said. I'm so frustrated, I said. I'm so guilty that I'm so frustrated, I said. I'm losing my patience too many times a day. I adore her but...

You're tired, he said. You've been ill, he said. You've been tired since you were ill, he said.

Let's go to the seaside tomorrow, he said. Early. Before I go to work.

So we did.

And as they stood by the shore and threw stones, I turned to him: I need to walk. Just a few minutes, I said. Go, he said.

So I did.

Up onto the shore walk, past the beach huts, running into the wind. Passed an ageing woman, bent double with her metal detector to the pebble stones. What might she find, I wondered. What treasure? None compared to my two, big and small, chatting by the shore.

I went on, past a woman pushing a pram and another with her dogs. Smiled vaguely, pushing on, relishing my own company and the sharp, low, winter sun. There's nothing like a beach resort out of season.

I returned soon enough to my two. We found a hotel with leather sofas and ordered coffee and crumpets and early Christmas muffins spiced with ginger. I felt refreshed; truly alive for the first time in too long. It's nice to see that smile, said the Bim.

This day is why I married this man. To be this known, this seen.
Knocks the rest into a cocked hat.

Livvy's Meme: Fulfil Three Dreams

This time of year, I often start to feel jaded, as though my 2006 shininess has rubbed off and all things, including me, need a bit of a spit and polish.

Certainly, today, the unpredictable weather outdoors and the unpredictable child indoors didn't help. There are great clusters of old leaves in every corner of the garden, and similar piles of rubbish cluttering my mind. I'm melancholy, in the way that I used to be as a child. Lonesome (though I was one of three) and longing for company.

(Ah, my child wakes. I can hear the Bim quietening her with a gentle 'Ssssh'. I tap the keys more lightly; pray she will lull back to sleep. Enough demands on my frayed self for one day).

Taking a quick back-check, I realise that the year's tail-end often causes me to pause like this. I'm usually exhausted in December, finding a small drop of juice for Christmas, then collapsing for the final week - only to emerge re-energised by the actual and symbolic hope of a new year.

And this year I'm going to follow the example of my very good friend Luke. A true lover of life, Luke has always said he sees no point in giving anything up for the New Year; that's so negative. His advice is to take something up instead. How's that for positive thinking? And it doesn't have to be just one thing, either, the more the merrier, I say.

So let's have a think, as the days reach their darkest, and there is promise of light and newness growing from the old - think of 3 things, 3 things we want to take up in 2007. The more wistfully longed for, the better. The more previously procrastinated over, the better. I'm going to take time to write mine down over a glass of mulled wine one late December night sometime soon and will share them forthwith.

Join me in fulfilling three dreams.

Happy December, Kay

Two schoolgirls, thirty years ago, catching leaves.

Plane trees offer big, crispy leaves at this time of year. They're ideal for cities; just as humans shed their skin, plane trees shed their bark every few years, so the smoke and grime never overcomes them.

In our quiet North London street they complemented the Victorian redbricks, reaching as high as the first floor windows. They spring to life later than other city trees, and lose their covering last. Which is how it was that Kay and I came to be chasing leaves that 1st of December, all those years ago on our way home from school.

It was dark, of course, so the leaves like our upturned faces were orange in the lamplight. We made up a rule as only teenage girls dizzy for love can, that whoever caught a falling leaf could have a wish, and that wish would come true. I caught a leaf and kept it. I probably still have it somewhere, crackly and dry, tucked in among the boxful of secret notes we passed endlessly to each other during the last class of the day. Invested as it was with such hope, I can't imagine I would ever have thrown it away.

Today, that evening Kay and I caught our leaves gleams purely in my memory; a tiny, thumbnail image of joy with undimmed edges. She is still a friend, though circumstance has taken her to a live her life in a different land. Her house is above a lake halfway up a mountain, really quite near heaven, looking towards a range of mountains. We speak infrequently, email erratically, text less.

And yet, in the manner of the best friendships, I am sure that were someone to ask, she too would be able to describe the night we ran towards the falling plane tree leaves as they sashayed to the ground.

Some things, just a few, never change.

Taking the Plunge

I did it. I have at last taken my whining, wistful self in hand, visited the local Adult Education Centre, checked out the childcare - and booked myself a place on a Creative Writing course starting in the Spring Term.

That means, in less plain English, that I have finally admitted that I can no longer exist on a daily diet of Domestic Soup alone and that for the sake of my very soul I've decided to break my vow that I would be Anna-mouse's only carer until she was all of 3 years old.

It also means that I felt sick the whole time I was discussing my options, filling out the forms, and checking out the 'Baby Room'. It means I almost whisked Anna-mouse up in my arms and turned tail when I read the large sign outside said room: 'We have had several cases of HEAD LICE. Please check your child's hair.' It means I am in no way hardened to the idea, let alone the reality, of leaving tiny person with anyone other than nearest and dearest for an hour and a half each week.

And yet. I'm doing it. And let's just run that bit again. An hour and a half. Each week. For eleven weeks. In the day. That last is important - the very idea of adult company, adult conversation which isn't toddler-based during the day! A slow smile is spreading... I can't help it: as well as being sick with trepidation, I'm also giddy with anticipation. It almost doesn't matter what the course is like - it's what it represents that's important.

Never mind Anna-mouse; Livvy U is growing-up.

Casting with Child

Anna-mouse and I attended our first casting session today. It's too early to know if we got the part. Sorry, if I got the part, that should read...

My agent called well into the Mary Poppins Teatime Hour yesterday afternoon with a 12.30pm casting today. He said he'd checked and, if the worst came to the worst, I could take Anna-m with me. Somebody would look after her for the few minutes of the interview. It being such short notice the worst did come, and favoured Childcare Option Number One (my mother) was doing her contemporary dance group thing in Lisbon while Childcare Option Number Two is about to go into labour... I took my courage in both hands and decided to make beloved child my lucky mascot for the day, and bring her with me.

It was a curious meeting of my two selves, being only the second time I've chosen to let the domestic and the dramatic worlds meet. Not unpleasant, and at the same time not altogether satisfactory if I want to progress my acting career. There's something about the fruit of your loins saying "I want go loo" moments before you're called to audition which isn't best preparation for appearing on camera a few moments later as calm, sophisticated career woman.

And I was so intent on remembering everything Anna-mouse might need for the day that I left my long, beautiful "I-Am-A-Career-Woman" jacket on the banister at home, remembering far too late down to road to turn round and get it. The Bim, bless him, left me a wonderful "I don't know how to tell you this but you've left the main part of your costume at home" message on my mobile, which was actually worth listening to after the event simply to hear the agonised love in his voice.

I have to admit it was fun, though. Navigating the backstreets of London Bridge to find the office-cum-casting studio wasn't easy, and it was a little tricky getting a handle on the script at the same time as peeling the pith from a satsuma for toddler on lap at the same time as finding where to stick the hot air balloon in her Bumper Sticker Activity Book - but once these minor multi-tasks were over, the interview itself was a cinch...

Afterwards, little one and I had lunch out perched on benches in an inimitably London Italian 'caff'. I felt myself relaxing; breathing differently, talking differently, just being differently. At the next table two film crew type blokes talked script. At the table after that a little old crazy gobbled his soup and roll. A posh lady came in with a poodle to order cappuccino.

I understood where I was. I was there so happily with my child. There was the hopeful promise of a job. God, I miss London.

Waiting Game

Almost completely unfurled, I took myself back to the Airport yesterday to pick up beloved Big Irish Man and tiny child.

I like airports. I like them even more since the Bim and I met. They featured heavily in our courtship, given we lived in separate countries then. I still get that little fast-heartbeat frisson as I stand with other fast-beating hearts at the Arrivals barrier, waiting for my loved one to arrive. Only these days of course I wait for TWO loved ones, which is at least four times as exciting.

So I got there a bit early, deliberately early, in order to savour those strange moments-in-waiting unlike any other moments in life. The board informed me that they were in that limbo state of 'Baggage in hall'. Isn't it always, I pondered. Don't we all have baggage in the hall, just waiting to be put out with the rubbish? Don't we all wish, sometime or other, that that ol' baggage would just up and out the front door of its own accord... So my thoughts ran as I ate my cheese and tomato Tostato, which tastatoed of precisely nothing. Even this cotton wool eating experience, however, could not dull the fascination with which I watched the other wait-ers as one by one the folk they had come to meet appeared through the double doors.

Next to me there was a mother and her three-year-old son, waiting for his grandparents. For every single person who came through he informed us: 'That's not Nanny! That's not Grandad!' When his dear Nanny and Grandad did, finally, appear he ducked under the barrier before his mother could stop him, dodging trolleys as he ran - straight into the arms of his grandfather, and shouted 'At last!'

It was, I suspect, how most of us would like to behave on first sighting our loved ones after they've fought the battle of the skies and won. No matter how much they tell us we're more likely to meet our death driving to the corner shop for a bottle of milk, air travel still makes the best of us quiver and grown men drunk. It's just not natural, for goodness sake. But I'm not suprised Anna-mouse has fallen in love with it either, for even when your flight's cost you less than a good meal out there's still something inherently glamorous about it.

So what I observed about my fellow grown-ups-in-waiting was this: very few of us know how to do a proper 'hello', in spite of our palpable relief that our awaited travellers have actually turned up alive. Men were the funniest and most touching. Watching them greet other men was quite extraordinary - their pleasure expressed in a series of really-quite-hard slaps, pats and punches. Women were a little more obviously aware that they were being watched (or maybe, theatrical that I am, I was simply more aware of the effect of the double-doors entrance), and were either studiedly vague or deliberately flamboyant.

For the record, the minute I spotted my two I found myself, like the three-year-old, shinning the barrier and hare-ing up behind them making funny faces. The Bim hadn't seen me but Anna-mouse, hanging over her father's shoulder, thought this hilarious and suddenly we were one untidy hugging bundle shrieking and laughing in the middle of everyone. But hey, d'you think I cared?

Unfurling

There was a crooked man

Who walked a crooked mile

He found a crooked sixpence

Against a crooked stile

He bought a crooked cat

Which caught a crooked mouse

And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

Yesterday I took the Bim and Anna-mouse to the Airport for their long-awaited trip to visit my In-Laws-Across-the-Water.

I felt a sickening 'There goes my life' feeling as I waved them through Passport Control and lost sight of them in the interminable security procedures beyond. Then I walked briskly back to the car giving myself a team-talk as I went - and began the strange, slow process to which I can only give the name unfurling.

I have always felt a curious affinity with the crooked man of Anna-mouse's favourite rhyme, and I'm just now beginning to realise why. How very crooked my whole being had become! How very crooked and how very, very tired. And how very wonderful to feel my tired, crooked soul unfurling in direct relation to the amount of time I am spending doing, precisely, nothing.

I had plans, of course. I have several lists made in the days previous to my loved ones' departure of all the things I planned to achieve in this heavenly time alone. These lists are spectacular for their colour-coded organisation and grandiose in their vision. You might almost call them an accomplishment in their own right. I now realise that there is no way on earth that I am going to accomplish a fraction of the tasks set, and that I am going to have to make peace with that fact, allow my body to collapse and my mind to dream and simply be.

With this to the fore, I'm off to soak in a long, candlelit bath, cook myself the most sophisticated, non-nursery meal I can muster, and watch the latest re-run of The West Wing.

Tomorrow I'll have a look at the list. Tonight's for straightening out my soul.

All Change!

So here's how it happens:

You're in your own, toddlerfied world, having a little picnic banquet on white plastic chairs at a white plastic table after morning swimming, when your mobile 'phone rings and you don't answer it because along with all the other little things that niggle you about your ageing, post-birth body you're sure your hearing's going so you only hear it on the last ring; but after you've wiped the Noddy yoghurt from your own and toddler's fingers, propped a book in front of said small one to buy a few moment's grace and found said mobile at bottom of nasty mess in out-of-date handbag, you find that the call is from your brother, who is at home.

Brother 'phoning from home in middle of the day can mean only one thing. I punch the buttons with mounting trepidation and yes, I'm right, and there it is - that's how it happens - life's map has changed. Forever.

I have become an aunt. I'll say that again. I am an Aunt. Note how it's capitalized now, giving my new-found title a little more status. I am Aunt Livvy. Hmm, not sure about that. Aunty Livvy? Auntie Liv? Whatever he likes! The momentous has happened, and Baby Cousin has been born. At 8.13pm last night, to be precise, although his existence became known to me only today, at 11.48am, according to my mobile, when I returned my brother's call. The details are banal and comforting in the face of so miraculous a thing as a birth.

I trip through the rest of the day, with this marvellous knowledge shining inside me. Anna-mouse gets away with murder (and chocolate - a word and a thing I have managed to keep from her for all of her two-and-a-quarter years, despite my own deep association with it). Little seems to matter as my mind does the vital job of updating my life map with Baby Cousin included. It's important, I've read, to take time to do this essential re-jigging of the landscape for oneself at each major life junction. It's an interesting process. I think it helps you to stay present and encompass the subtle changes in relationship that a birth (or a death) inevitably brings.

Eventually, of course, we say 'I can't imagine life without 'x' but for now, while the re-jigging is doing its thing, it's the most wondrous feeling. I keep remembering - Baby Cousin is here! I'm Aunt to Baby Cousin! - and savour feeling curiously dizzy and light-hearted to find myself on such new, welcome, unfamiliar terrain.

William Shakespeare, the Circus and Me

It's been quite a weekend: not one, but two pockets of childhood nostalgia revisited. I'm weak with remembering.

The Circus is in town. The very same Circus that came to our lovely local Victorian park when I was a child. There the Big Top sits, overlooking Kent Town harbour, all white peaks with blue tips. For the Bim, who had never been to a circus, and for me, who has only the faintest, infinitely romantic memory of it, it was all too good to be true.

And thus it was that we decided to try Anna-mouse with her first live show. Since beloved child was in not-so-loveable mood all morning, I employed my best distraction tactics as we prepared to leave by asking her to choose one of her furry friends to accompany her to the by-now momentous event. She chose one of my personal favourites, a soft shaggy bear given to Anna-m on her first day in the world whom I named William Shakespeare (yes, yes, okay; what do you expect from the daughter of an actress and a writer?). Within minutes William had been transformed, with a few bits of string, shiny paper and Anna-m's dark glasses, into the kitschest bear who'd ever had the good fortune to be taken to the Circus.

Off we processed down to the Circus site, Anna-mouse up high on the Bim's shoulders, me and Will bringing up the rear. Spirits were high, the atmosphere carnival and the Bim and I were enchanted with ourselves for creating this special family outing. Anna-mouse too was enchanted; by the peaky tents, the chatty queues, the picket fence holding us back and the general, much touted promise of all that was to happen inside.

The show went up late, but it didn't matter. We had clowns to entertain us, other children to watch, the orchestra to point to. We were in a smoky, penumbral gloom in plastic seats not far from the ringside, and Anna-mouse caught the excitement snaking round the arena like wildfire. Things couldn't have been better.

Until the show started, that is.

The thing we'd not taken into account, of course, was the noise. 'Ladies and Gentleman,' crowed the Ringmaster, 'iiiiitttts showtime!' And so struck up the band. And Anna-mouse tears. No, not just tears. Gutwrenching, end-of-the-world sobs. She sat shaking, her face pressed into her father's shouder until we could bear it no more and she was rushed from the Big Top, to which no amount of cajoling, reasoning or calming could persuade her to return. This was, oh, two minutes into the show. Ten minutes after that I was beckoned from the tent entrance to come and console my inconsolable child. As the Irish Bim put it, 'Only her Mammy would do.'

So that was it: the most expensive ten minutes we can't afford. But... it was worth it. In the few solitary moments Will Shakespeare and I stayed in the glittery dark, I did indeed re-find the sense of magic I'd had all those years ago in that North London park. I could have seen that the ring was smaller, the costumes tawdry, the tricks shoddy and not especially well performed but the hope-filled girl that was me was already there by then. I saw nothing but the glorious, magic world of entertainment in the same way I'd seen it before I knew what entertainment was, and I was transformed by it, as I was then.

Will and me haven't been the same since.

*Image courtesy of www.freeimages.co.uk

Remember, remember the 5th of November

The bangs began around five, slowly gaining in crescendo and momentum. They've been a source of tension in the house for days: I live with an Irish Catholic and a toddler, for God's sake! The latter is too young to appreciate the Blitz-like soundscape impingeing on her bedtime, and the former takes all Bonfire Night festivities as a personal insult directed towards him by the entire population of his adopted homeland.

And then there is me, whose nostalgia about childhood Guy Fawkes nights begins sometime around Halloween. Sigh.

Every one of those childhood years before childhood became for me about division and divorce, my mother threw the most fabulous Fifth of November parties for my brother and sister and me, all our friends and all their parents. A great crackly bonfire was lit on the stone flags outside the kitchen window, one or two grown-ups were given sole charge of the box of fireworks, and all the children had their own packet of sparklers to light as and when they wished. And it was always colder than it is now. We had red raw noses, cut-off mittens, and woolly hats. The oven was stuffed full of baking potatoes, which we ate, steaming and dripping with butter, in the dark; and old baking trays filled with Black Jacks and Fruit Salad sweets in their black and white and pastel wrappings were passed round to one and all.

Oh, the joy of in standing in a raggedy little circle, lighting our sparklers from the lucky someone who'd managed to get theirs lit from a grown-up's match. And the frisson that passed through the crowd as the grown-up-in-charge would yell 'Stand back!' as they lit the blue touch-paper of the Catherine Wheel pinned precariously to the wooden fence at the bottom of the garden. The sense of the lateness of the hour, of festivity, of danger - that something could, and occasionally did, go wrong - these only added to the piquancy of the night.

It's no wonder my longing for these golden moments has intensified as the date draws near.

But the thing about fireworks is this: they're not much cop if you can't actually see them. And by some geographical Kentish quirk our house is situated on a hilly cul-de-sac which intensifies sound but prohibits viewing. You would have thought, given the hill, we'd be able to see something, but no. The angle is wrong. Even when I held Anna-mouse up to the study window tonight before her bath in the hope of catching a glimpse over the rooftops, we were left sorely disappointed.

And so it was, around 6.42pm, that this forty-something seven-year-old was seized by a force that surprised her as the Bim took over the bath and bedtime. She found herself writing a note ('GONE TO WATCH SOME FIREWORKS xxxx') grabbing the car key and heading out. Yes, out. At beloved child's bedtime, the witching hour, the hunkering down to dozy domesticity, a bit-of-tele-then-bed hour. The pact hour, where it is silently agreed between you and yours that you will both keep to this ritual, this denial of Life Outside, for most, and sometimes all the nights of the week. Said child will be watched over, until child is child no more.

Not tonight. Tonight I stood, hatted and gloved, by the banks of Quaint Town's river and wept for my little self as the showers of light rained above the houses on the opposite shore. Then I pulled myself together, found an open newsagents, realised I was in there to look for Black Jacks and Fruit Salads and to my utter delight, found them. I got back into the car and made my way to the highest spot I could find just as a Council display on some open parkland a couple of miles away was beginning.

I stood and watched, downing my sweets and watching the lights of hope and promise with the wonder I felt of old. I felt myself grow lighter and younger with every chew. Whirling corkscrews, tiny fishes and bursting flowerheads coloured the sky for their moment of fame. There is such wistfulness in the life of a firework! Perhaps that's why they captivate me so.

I returned to the house two hours after I had escaped it. I played down the nature of the force which had caused me to leave, but I could see from the Bim's tired eyes that he saw it in me anyway, and did not need me to explain. Friend to my soul that he is, he went to bed early and left me to continue my chosen time alone.

I sit with hot water bottle on my lap, my heart lighter, and my tongue satisfyingly, brilliantly black.

*Photo courtesy www.freeimages.co.uk

Birth Plan

Anna-mouse loves telephones.

Yesterday I heard her make the following call on her very pink, very fake mobile 'phone:

"Hallo, hopital? Please can you check my belly button please, yes. See if it's working? Thankoo! Bye-bye".

This could of course have something to do with Baby Cousin who is, to everyone's delight, 'coming soon'. She saw me touch pregnant Sister-in-Law's stomach a week or so ago, and later on that day announced that she had a baby in her tummy, too. "Feel my tummy, Mummy. Feel my baby."

Probably just wanted the 'hopital' to check said baby's exit route.

Spilt Milk (Note to Self)

What have I been talking about? 'You don't know you're born', and similar unhelpful cliches have been flitting through my brain all day. Shame is not a comfortable state. Some things happened to cause me to regret my yesterday's post:

This morning I caught a few minutes of Radio 4's usually wonderful, always thought-provoking 'Woman's Hour'. In my moments' listening I heard a woman tell Jenny Murray how, 17 years ago, she went to her missing daughter's house because her son had told her there was a bad smell there. To cut to the awful nitty-gritty (those of faint disposition look away), she was drawn to the bathroom where the smell was at its worst, and after only a little searching pulled open the bath panel to find her daughter's decomposing body inside.

Words fail me. The mother in me shrieks with anguish for that anguish suffered by this woman. But how can I know? I can't. I can only thank God it's not me, and send her loving thoughts. Now, not only did this woman not curl up in a ball and die, she went on, in the intervening years, to campaign to get the Double Jeopardy law changed, so that the man the family suspected of killing her daughter could be re-tried. (He was, and eventually, this year found guilty).

And so I continued my humdrum day, beginning to be more and more thankful that it was, indeed, humdrum.

And then I got an email from someone I had barely known at school, who in fact, if truth be told, I had little time for then. She wasn't one of the girls you wanted to be seen out and about with at break-time. She kept her thick mousy hair in an untidy pony tail and wore her skirts unfashionably long. This girl, now woman of a certain age like myself, found my email address in the Old Girls' Magazine which had found her in South Africa where she now lives. In her message she had put a link to one of the 2 NGOs she now works for, and within the web page that brought me to there was a link to a film she had made about abused women coming to terms with what had happened to them through the quiet transformatory moves of Kundalini Yoga. In fact she has won an award, the page states, for her work with marginalized women. And she raises three children.

What is it about the Universe? I suppose I needed humbling in some degree. Or a kick up the arse. Tonight I'm just feeling sore and nursing that ol' kick, but maybe someday soon it'll push me into a little action, too.

In the meantime I'm trying to keep a perspective. This is best kept by pausing to listen at Anna-mouse's door for her soft breath and nocturnal snuffles. You are, for God's sake, bringing up a child, I keep telling myself. This is a work in itself. This is important work, if you get it in the slightest degree 'right'. Never mind that other people juggle 58 jobs and 5 kids, or whatever. Never mind that. Never mind them. Acknowledge them, doff your hat, deal with the longing, the wistfulness and stay on the path. Your own.

Never mind that you haven't a clue where it's going.

About Nothing in Particular

How's that for a dejected title?

And dejected I am. I'd like to loudly state that this was, officially, one HORRID day.

For a start, it has rained all day long, as only our country can rain; switching between mizzling and drizzling and the all-over-drench.

Maybe it was inevitable, to have a little bump down to earth after the gleefulness of Livvy working again. Which, by the way, went well. Although I could have been truly awful, I've no idea; it was a crazy blur of rushed scenes, working with kids and pigeons and seasoned RSC actor with lovely voice (no, not luvvy voice, lovely voice).

But there are days, aren't there, when the ketchup top does come off the bottle all over your favourite cream fleece; when adored child starts behaving appallingly 5 minutes before the first-time visitors arrive (and stops 5 seconds after they've left); when you and your beloved miss one another completely, even though you're in the same room - every word misconstrued, misinterpreted and leapt on, so that you're left in a well of crossness and frustration when he goes to work. Need I go on.

I can't have a drink because I'm so badly hormonally-challenged I'll go to bed with a hangover, let alone wake up with one in the morning.

I can't do what I need to do, ie. type my Dad's play and earn some sorely needed money, because my head is a jumbly mess.

I can't have a cracker and Marmite because my stomach hurts.

But I suppose... I can blog.

I can believe my own blurb and use my drug of choice.

I can make myself feel better for not writing for a week by thanking all those, er, 3 of you out there who are staying so loyal...

I can say I've never had an experience like blogging before.

I can ponder that I've rarely kept a secret for so long (no-one I know, except the Bim, knows I write a blog).

And I can wonder as I often do why I still haven't done a huge round-robin email announcing where I am in the blogosphere. Certainly would increase my traffic.

Tonight, as the rain beats on the window, and adored child sleeps after 8th try, and the Bim isn't due for another hour, I know that I keep it that way because writing a blog gives its own special buzz on a wretched day like today. The achievement can feel truly massive: 500 or so words strung together to make some kind of whole which will then be published into a beautiful space with a quote I treasure at the top. There is great grace to me in this. Great hope for sunny, time-filled days in the future spent stringing together 5,000, even 50,000 words. Each post, each present five hundred is like a little pledge towards that time.

Mmm, ahah, yes, you know what? Drug of choice is working.

Rogues and Vagabonds

And yet it comes at a price, this creative urge.

All day I have felt myself slowly slipping away from life-as-I-know-it; I may have paid my pound and got my bin liner to fill with second-hand goodies from the NCT Nearly New Sale, gone through the racks and decided to be extra specially frugal and only get what I came for (Grobags, as it happens) - but all the while the essential being that is me, well, wasn't there.

A strange morphing of self has been taking place. I warned the Bim a few days ago that I might be a bit vague in the days running up to the job (I leave for the North tomorrow), but until today I only half-remembered why. To become someone else, and do it really well, you have to, yes, become someone else. Literally. There is a massive amount of concentration and thought that goes into the creation of a believable character for someone like me who has the craft in her blood. As a child I well remember hearing my mother, also and still (passionately) an actress, rehearsing her lines at the kitchen sink and wondering who on earth she was talking to. And there was I, a mother become my mother today, doing the same thing.

"What you doin', Mummy?" Anna-mouse chirps.

Something twangs at the back of my neck, like it's been twanging all weekend. The tension between these two beings of mine made physical.

"I'm..."

What? What can I say? My answer is precariously conflicting, emotional, unneeded to a toddler. I'm preparing to leave you and be solely, utterly who I am, and do solely and utterly what I do know how to do in this world, I might say. But the only reason I can do it so well and so happily these days is because of you, little one. Because you and your father exist, and will keep the notion of me here at home and loving you alive in your tea parties while I am away...

"I'm learning my lines," I simply say.

Anna-mouse of course already has a book about Fred and Ursulina, the bear twins who appear in the school pantomime.

"Well done, Mummy," she says, as she toddles off.

To Thine Ownself be True

So here's the thing.

Way back when, pre-Anna-mouse days, what I did was act. Even further back, I trained as an actress and most of my decades before meeting the Bim were spent in an anxious and frustrating pursuit of fame and glory. Well, kind of. I got the glory occasionally, and even the odd moment of fame. In fact my jobs tended to be pretty classy - mostly theatre, mostly classical, or quirky - just far, far too spaced out for my soul's or my bank balance's liking. That's how I know how to massage, and type, and run someone's office, and teach, and dance, and... That's why most actors have hundreds of strings to their bow.

When the glorious empress that is Anna-mouse was born, I had to tell my Agent that I couldn't do theatre anymore, not for a while, seeing as I had found a love to usurp my love of the stage. So I said 'Go and find me some TV jobs, ones I can do in 2 or 3 days'. And he did. Lots of them. Detective-type progs, and spooky drama progs and the odd historical film in period costume (if the light's right I have the face of someone straight out of the eighteenth century). And finally, after getting really rather despondent on these strange days going up to London to audition and getting the train right back again, finally I have been offered one. I have a job! Hoorah.

The part is the guest lead in a sort of soap. Okay, okay, it is a soap. But it's one of the better ones, honest. If I say I've got to do some research on agoraphobia, schizophrenia and depression, you'd be right in thinking my particular episode isn't a barrel of laughs.

But... I've noticed something lovely has happened to me in the days since I've known I'm doing it. A certain jaunty spring has appeared in my step. Domestic chores are done before I think of them as chores. Anna-mouse can be howling and I won't mind. I'm holding my head up high. Sometimes there's nothing like a job for giving your sense of identity a little pick-me-up. And, when we're so very hard-up, the thought of a few pounds which I have earned myself is very gratifying (after fending for myself for so many years I've found the transition to being kept child-minding woman quite harrowing). Yes, the week has been transformed.

So I am brought once again to ponder my frequent, fervent search for a sense of balance in these autumn days. And that in going for and getting this job it has been somewhat restored. For the first time in a long while, I can hear the beat, beat, beat of my creative heart.

Make 'em Laugh

When I was ten, there was this joke that used to tickle me pink. It still does.


Q: What comes out of the sea at 100mph shouting "KNICKERS!"

A: Crude oil.


(Just in one of those ten-year-old moods).

Three Beautiful Things

A tribute to Clare's idea. My own, on this 7th day of October:

1. Finding an slow, easy acceptance in myself of today's picture of me: aproned, domestic, biscuit-baking, breadmaking, child-holding me. Last night I went to dance, so I guess today, as the house filled with Anna-mouse, and her Uncle and Aunt and Baby Cousin-to-be, I could accept that not all days can I be both mother and spirit that is free.

2. Anna-mouse in her pram being wheeled by the Bim round the picturesque streets of Quaint Town:
"Muuummmy, can I get out of my pram, please" Mother strides ahead, oblivious, pointing out local landmarks to our visitors.
"Mummy, I want to get out of my pram!" Mother again doesn't hear.
"Mummy I want to walk, Mummy." Still no response.
"LIVVY! I want to walk!"

3. Placing my hand on my sister-in-law's belly, waiting for signs of life. It's hard, taut, warm. A little chant begins which stays with me into the night, long after they are gone: this is a person, this is a new person, this is a person I will know and hold and love.

This Writer's Life

Something about me: I like lists.

I like making them, physically passing my best pen over any blank space I can find - best notebooks, flyers, backs of envelopes, receipts, anything - and I like ticking the items off as they're achieved. Some lists, like Life Goals, are important documents, some, like the weekly Shopping List, are random necessities for an easy life placed incongruously, deliciously, side by side.

Writing a list invariably brings me a sense of order imposed, of control regained; a sense, in other words, of myself as a woman who knows what she wants and how she wants it, even (and especially) when I'm living life in a state of unrestrained chaos.

So I thought today I'd write a list or two. You know, balance things out a little, calm a soul which has been too frazzled and distracted to write lately. And they're dedicated to queendebbee - as far as I know my one and only regular reader - who has made me keep the faith and keep writing:

THIS WRITER'S LIFE - 10 RANDOM THINGS:

1. My middle name is Rachel, after actress Rachel Roberts ( This Sporting Life,Yanks etc), because my mother went to drama school with her.

2. I met my husband at a bus stop.

3. In 1997 I went to the Academy Awards for a nominated friend of mine who couldn't attend... he asked me to take his aged mother, who didn't recognise Al Pacino but got very excited at Julie Andrews... It remains one of the favourite moments of my life.

4. I once met the Queen. Aged 10.

5. Shortly after I met the Bim I went to a psychic, who said she'd never seen a spread like mine, was shocked into chain-smoking cigarillos throughout our session and told me several things she never could have known. The oddest was identifying an enormous rift between my sister and me, which I strenuously denied because... it hadn't happened yet. A year later my sister and I fell out so badly she didn't speak to me for a year.

6. My father, my mother and myself have all worked at the National Theatre.

7. I love dancing. I once danced blind with Ned my Salsa teacher. There was no sex, but it was one of the sexiest moments... and I danced naked on a roof in Herne Hill with a dear friend, in the rain. I think dancing could change the world.

8. Anna-mouse was born between two blue moons. Just think. No wonder she's a wonder child.

9. When I was 18, and thinking I was very plain, after staring at me for some time a man in Central Park came up to me and said: "You have beautiful bone structure."

10. I am practising writing. I'm practising now. I'm practising allowing myself to write badly and still press the Publish Post button. I've read this is the only way for a perfectionist with gremlins on her shoulder trying to make her stop (like, er, me) to continue. So bear with me. Here goes...

Highs and Lows

Anna-mouse and I spent the day together. An ordinary day. An extraordinary day. Together we, she, or I -

• Read 'The Tubby Custard Mess' for after-breakfast-potty-sit (31st time this week)
• Were late for swimming class
• Got changed extra quick
• Giggled in swimming class
• Got changed extra slow
• Took Anna-m's new toilet seat with us to the loo
• Thought up anything and everything to get her to sit on it
• Left the loo with only the grown-up having gone
• Went to visit the creche to get her (pretend) and me (this is the truth) used to it
• Wiped up biggest pee in history from creche floor
• Told the creche workers 'She is potty-trained, really'
• Ate mini gherkins dipped in houmous for lunch again
• Had total stand-off when toddler pooed in her pants 30 secs after getting off potty
• Made-up big-time
• Spent quarter hour not speaking after second poo in pants
• Made-up, just, after the Bim called with cunning-return-to-Star-Chart-plan
• Did face-painting: a pink tiger(her, done by me); a strange culty person (me, done by her)
• Ate an enormous bowl of pasta for tea; ate a couple of penne. Guess which one which.
• Sat at nursery room window watching the rain and waiting for the 'light'. Thrill of her first storm. Mother's heartstrings twang.
• Endured tantrum when told could listen for thunder no more
• Wiped the tears away when told loo seat she wouldn't hear of this morning not available now
• Cried end-of-the-world-tears when told to leave window to brush teeth
• Sang 'Happy Birthday Anna-mouse', cut the candles, handed out slices of cake
• Screamed in protest at being put into cot with no more songs
• Hugged and kissed with promise of one more song
• Sang 'Happy Birthday Thunder'

Result:

• Child content
• Mother on gin.

The Hunger Site

Link to this title site and click daily to do a Good Deed. A friend sent me this link and I've put it into my Favourites sidebar to remind me to click as I go online each day. How it work is this. Each time you click the sponsors who pay for the site donate something like 1.1 cups of food to those people in the world who can't feed themselves at present. I'm not mad about the principle - there's too much whimsy in it: click here, feed the world and by the way read our ads at the same time - but if it helps, hey, the end is worth the uncomfortable nature of the means.

Click now.

I Could Have Danced All Night

Clicking on my Favourites and checking out the wonderful Petite Anglaise's post today strikes a chord. Yes, freedom does come at a price. Always, I think. Somedays it's worth it; somedays it's not. Take today.

I am allowed off out for the day. A whole day of freedom on the Bim's orders. He takes Anna-mouse off to the playground, then Kent Town, then brings her home to decorate gingerbread men with saccharine-sweet coloured icing pens and I am told to stay out until I have bought something that will cure me of the cry 'I'm not moaning, but I reeeallly have nothing to wear...'

This is no small order. Lately, we've been thinking twice before buying a can of baked beans we've been that broke. So my guilt button is pressed twice before I even get out the door: I've been given carte blanche with time and money. Not easy for a worrier, and the person who knows what state the finances are really in.

I get over it. Off I go, James Blunt doing that quivery thing he does with the high notes all the way down the dual carriageway. I'm going to the shopping capital of the garden of England. I'm all excited. Hope it won't be one of those demoralising trips where the first visit to the changing room leaves me weeping into my coffee in Starbucks for the rest of the afternoon.

It isn't. I sail through the day. I return on a high, confused only for a moment by Anna-mouse opening each bag I've brought home and exclaiming 'Oh, thank you Mummy!' at each one. I fully intend to go to my newly-discovered beloved Salsa class at 8. I act as if for hours. I really think I'm going to go. The time nears, and I'm having more and more moments of doubt as I watch the Bim cook supper, clean up and take Anna-mouse for her bath. He reminds me to set the video for 'The West Wing' before I go out.

I go for a shower, look out my dancing clothes. And find myself putting my pyjamas on instead. I can't do it. I can't go. I discover this caged bird can't leave the cage, though the door is open. For my night of freedom, after my day of freedom, I would be trading a night in with Martin Sheen and the Bim, and a couple of hours spent here, trying to keep my blog alive while I try to keep my eyes open. My old self has a longing to dance. My new self knows that I have more need to embrace my chosen love, and my chosen life, than to salsa with a stranger.

For tonight, at least, the guilt dogs are at bay.

Kentish Salsa

All day it's at the back of my mind, an eight-beat sub-text that won't go away. Finally, one year into our new life in Kent Town I have discovered that there is a Sunday night Salsa class close by. Will I, won't I, brave it alone? It's three years or so since I danced the dance; Ned, my much-loved teacher is long gone and so is my pre-birth body. Everything's gone a little southwards these days.

It's been a tiring day, too. The Bim's parents are with us, Anna-mouse is on her bestest demanding form and I can think of every reason in the world not to venture out just as she's about to go down.

After an antsy half hour throwing clothes around the room and making it entirely the Bim's fault that I have nothing to wear, I find myself driving down to Quaint Town in search of The Venue. I follow a confident-looking woman through the bar and out the other side, down some steps into a long, low room with a nice smiley black man on the door. Turns out I'm early. I was trying to be minutely late so as to miss the hanging about like a wallflower with a neon arrow saying 'New Girl' pointed at my head, so I spend quarter of an hour in the Ladies, hugging a cranberry juice and re-doing my hair. Nerves aren't in it.

At last the class begins. I put myself into the middle group, Improvers/Intermediates, and pray my body remembers something. Bless Ned, it does. First up I'm partnered by a short sturdy Italian who wears a chain and a moustache. He raises an eyebrow as I stumble on a simple turn, but slowly, slowly as we change partners and work our way round the circle I feel my soul wake up, relax and begin to smile. I notice that other people are nervous, too. Some of the blokes have sweaty palms and are saying 'Sorry' more than I am. About the third time I make it round to the Italian guy, he smiles.

Two days later, my feet still hurt. I catch myself practising the cross-body in Debenhams. I know I'm older, slower. I don't move as quickly on the spins. But some long-buried part of me is gasping with relief. It's like finding a long-lost soulmate. It's like bumping into myself and shaking hands. It's Livvy, dancing Salsa again.

Parrot Fashion

This is getting spooky.

Glancing at a community noticeboard in Kent Town Sainsbury's today, I was drawn to a hand-scrawled 'For Sale' sign featuring, yes you guessed it, Baby Senegal Parrots.

Apparently they make lovely pets and are 'Ready Now': I picture rows of expectant tinies waiting patiently by the front door with their duffel coats and wellies on.

Now, two Tiny Parrot references in seven days feels just too much like somebody having a cosmic giggle for me not to take note. So I have.

Seems like if you're looking for a fun, talkative playmate, the poincephalus senegalus could be for you. There's also some indication that our friend in miniature can be a tad on the high maintenance side, but pretty frequent chats, the odd flyaround and strictly no alcohol, caffeine or chocolate will soon see him right. Clearly, though, parrot abandonment is growing: adoption of said birds is recommended over following up handwritten signs in supermarkets.

In my web travels I've come across Baby Senegals called Huggy, Mickey, Iago - hang on, Iago? - what could he possibly have done to deserve that? I can just imagine it. 'Hi, come in and meet my dwarf traitor parrot. He looks a bit lean and hungry but he's really very chatty when you get to know him.'

It's a whole 'nother world.