One Long Catch Up

Instead of ten small posts.

I have been cursed with too much imagination. My mind seethes with ideas of things I could do, paint, make, write about. I always have ideas. I have lists of my ideas. Lists that spawn other lists.

There are a few things that stop me. Time is finite, funds are limited and my husband’s patience is stretched by all the materials I drag home to start something else before I’ve finished whatever it is I’m doing in the moment. Actual, real life gets in the way. Cleaning, sleeping, getting dressed, all annoyances that suck time. Also, space is at a premium. To mangle the immortal words of Chief Brody: ‘I’m gonna need a bigger boat.’

I say cursed because no matter what I’m doing I am always thinking of the things that I didn’t do. As I have been slowly stitching my life blood into my wonky t-shirt I have thought of at least six other wonky t-shirts I could make, but if I did that, I would never get around to the cape. I have mail art to send out. I have the fixings of two other art projects on the go. I am reading six books concurrently and want to write about at least four of them. I have my husband’s new, zombie LARP costume to finish. My brain is full - of zombies.

My brain is also going through a period of intermittent brokenness which means that I am super anxious all the time, I am not sleeping well and my nightmares are off the chain. I am less self soothing and more negotiating with terrorists.

I think ‘I must write about that,’ at least ten times a day, but I am trying not to turn newsletter writing into another hamster wheel activity. I’m having enough problems with Duolingo at the moment. I have managed to switch it from being a soothing, brain distracting activity into a ravenous, possessive death owl that needs its pound of flesh tous les jours and now I have to fix it before I have a depression nerveuse and get carted off to l‘hopital, toute suite. I trust none of the characters to fix me. Eddie is a narcissist, Junior is feral, Lin is more highly strung than me and I over identify with Lily which is not a good sign. My best bet would be Vikram but he failed to fill the car with petrol when he and Priti went on their anniversary getaway so I am doomed, and don’t even talk to me about the walking wind bag that is Oscar. You see my problem, right there.

Here is Vikram, channelling Victoria Wood. Le chou rouge! Ca coute combien? Le chou rouge! Je n’aucune idee!’ Vikram is not from Kidderminster though. Il habite a Paris.

In an attempt to clear my head of some of the noise, I thought I’d write a single post about a lot of the things I was going to write individual posts about.

Jason and I went to see Annie Mac’s Before Midnight at a day festival at Gunnersbury Park last Friday. I am so into day raves. It started at 2.00 p.m. and finished at 10.00 p.m. I was home in my pyjamas drinking tea by 11.30 p.m. I loved it. I also love that the catering is so good at these things. I no longer wish to be sorted for Es and Whiz but I did get sorted with a large ice cream, steak and chips and a cup of tea. I broke myself from too much dancing but it was worth every excruciating step home, even the ludicrously long walk between platforms at Green Park, which I gingerly hobbled while Jason sprinted ahead shouting ‘Can’t you walk any faster?’ No. I could not. While he was eating chips on the sidelines, I was getting my big fish, little fish on amongst the sequins of my fellow elderly ravers and by the time we jumped onto the Piccadilly Line my knees were beginning to set like concrete.

I realise how London I am becoming, discussing my tube ride home. It’s a very London preoccupation, navigating the city well. On one of my journeys this week I heard someone asking a fellow passenger which connection they needed. The guy said: ‘You need the Lizzie Line. The Lizzie Line is a game changer, man.’ At which point everyone around him started piping up in agreement, nodding and smiling. There is so much love for that line it broke through the froideur of hardened passengers in an instant.

Apart from getting to dance to Donna Summer’s Hot Stuff with ten thousand people while the moon came up over the London skyline, which was magical, my favourite raving moment was people watching. My best person was a lady who looked rather like she was going to a PTA meeting but had accidentally turned left and found herself at a rave. She was standing by a long queue of people attempting to buy cocktails. Engrossed in her phone, every now and again when one of the DJs dropped a fat (phat?) beat, she would start dancing, but only for ten seconds maximum and never taking her eyes off the phone screen. At one point she started doing a dance/canter in the manner of Miranda Hart, which was only surpassed by the time she did a crouch that was more of a bob down followed by a karate kick. She was worth every penny of the entry ticket. I have thought about her every day since the rave. I love her.

I also love the lady who I saw sitting outside a very fancy wine bar in Canary Wharf this week who was sinking a glass of red whilst casually sporting a knitted hat with viking horns. The rest of her clothing was very much the financial sector’s version of Alan Partridge’s sports casual, but the hat was something else. She wore it exceptionally well.

My weekend was spent helping Jason source his costume for zombie LARP. Jason has been doing live action role play since before we met. I only agreed to marry him when he promised he would never make me do it with him, but I do enjoy helping him put his kit together. He has been playing the same system for over twenty years, so the only opportunity to go shopping for weird stuff these days is when he tries something new. This is something new. His old system is rooted in medieval ideas. This new one is a dystopian, zombie drenched future. Think Walking Dead, but near Hull with a budget of £20. Mmmm, Hull.

Jason is not playing a zombie (yet). He is a human survivor who used to be a medic and now patches people up as best he can. His name is something like Daniel Axelrod MD, except it isn't that, because that’s the name of my parent’s will writer, but it is along those strong, manly, life saving lines. Imagine square jaws, squinting into the distance and trying not to suck your teeth like a plumber giving you an overly inflated estimate for your ball cock. That sort of thing. All we have in his current get up is frock coats and ruffled shirts which is no good for Dr Stephen Lifesaver, so we went shopping.

First we tried charity shopping, but given that the event is in a fortnight and our needs were very specific, we did not do very well. We wanted something that indicated medic but also the breakdown of society. Think Jim from Neighbours doing a tracheotomy on the kitchen table with a ball point pen if he had a love child with Mike from Spaced when he was kicked out of the TA for being too violent. If you are old enough to follow any of my references, have a gold star.

Eventually we discovered that there was an army surplus shop about five miles away, so we went there. In a random village in Essex, sandwiched between a chicken shop and a chippie, there was a window swathed in camouflage webbing adorned with a large flag with King Charles’ face on. Stop the clock. We had found the clue.

It was stuffed to the rafters with gear. There was one, small path from the door to the counter at the back and everything else was covered in stock. It was intense. Like being trapped in a khaki womb. Out from behind a pile popped a small, balding man with an American accent who said: ‘How can I help you, soldier?’ to my bemused husband and proceeded to bombard him with bits of kit. He was totally confused by our lack of interest in authentic camouflage patterns or kit detailing and point blank refused to get his head around zombie medics. Rude.

He was all about real, honest to goodness warfare and doomsday prepping. And cigars. Which was the only other thing he sold in the shop. Behind the counter was a huge fridge full of Havana cigars, nestling cheek by jowl with water purifying tablets and telescopic sights. Piles of WWII helmets were stacked in the corners, wobbling as the man scrambled over stock to show Jason more and more things.

Another couple came in and the man’s son, who was helping out had to go and stand on the pavement, there was so little room. I went out with him, because I was done with joining a militia and slightly worried that the longer we spent in there, the more likely we were to end up on some list of suspected terrorists. There were a lot of bomber jackets in that shop. Too many. It gave me the skinhead fear. Jason came out sheepishly clutching a carrier bag with an overpriced pair of camo trousers in. I’ve never seen him cowed into buying something he didn’t want before, so props to the tiny man o’ war for that at least. We left, surrounded by people clutching fried chicken and gas masks. It was a moment.

More on Dr. Stephen Squarejaw as news comes in.

Finally, a tale with a moral.

Yesterday I had the boat to myself, which is rare because Jason mostly works from home. In between attempts to wean myself off Duolingo and the ritual blood letting of my sewing practice I decided I would embrace domesticity. I decided to strip the beds and get all the laundry done. I remember thinking, ‘Jason will be so pleased when he gets home to find all the washing done and clean sheets on the bed.’

It was all going so well, I decided after I had put two quilt covers into the machine that I would go out for my walk so that all I had to do when I got home was hang them out to dry. I went off into the sweltering heat and plodded round for a bit feeling like I had achieved great things. As I walked back to the marina, I could see Jason stepping onto the boat. ‘He’ll be so pleased,’ I thought as I followed him, only to see him standing amidst a pile of smashed crockery looking quite stressed.

The machine, it transpires, did not like two duvet covers. As the spin cycle commenced, it had twisted them together to make what was in effect a large, cloth cannon ball and then smashed it against the sides of the machine. This had made the machine jump, knocking the kitchen baseboard off and juddering a whole bunch of my expensive pots off the shelf in the cupboard and onto the floor. By the time we had picked up and disposed of the pottery and replaced the baseboard, we were both quite tearful.

I was particularly sad about my Jane Cox bowl, which I saved a long time to buy and which is now a sad jigsaw of its former self. I believe in using nice pots and not saving them for best, but a part of me really wishes I had put that bowl in storage after all. The one I had is irreplaceable but a similar one is not high on the list of things I need so I am attempting to be sanguine.

The washing machine needs to be re-levelled, which is sad news and a job for another day. Half an hour after we had finally sat down, the freezer started making terrible noises, only for us to discover that the washing machine had jolted it so hard, the door had stopped sealing and everything was defrosting all over the place. An hour of finagling that back into place meant that by the time we finally finally sat down, we were heartily sick of domesticity and I promised to revert to being a slattern again.

The moral being that you should always put off doing housework in favour of other, more creative pursuits, because as we all know and I have just amply demonstrated, no sooner do you do one domestic chore, than nine million others queue up to take their place.

The only good thing about the whole palaver was finally collapsing into bed and thinking ‘mmmm. Clean sheets.’