Not So Souper! In which I discuss, Lame Game Consomme.

Lordy, how I’ve missed you! I know, I hang my head in shame, but I’ve been AWOL--Avoiding Words on Love--for a reason, because reading my current Saga of Self-Sabotage would be like taking contraceptive, birthing, or etiquette advice from Snooki.  It is bad for your health.  Don’t do it. 

So I removed Self from commentary, but then something happened, dear Reader, something that so incensed, so infuriated, that my livid life-paddles charged and jolted my rotten, ruined writer’s heart into action!

She has a pulse!  Yuppers.  My pulmonary pumps again and has sent emergency supplies to the dark, neglected, wordy whorls, flushing the cobwebs of unused adjectives into the rapids of my mind;  rafts of inspiration hurtling dangerously throughout and coursing straight to my fingertips. 

“What the Fuck?  What the fuck?  What the fuck?”  I didn’t say that they were eloquent words gushing to my digits.  They were, however, incredulous ones, fitting for commentary as to the actions of species Unbelievable Neanderthal. 

Here's the back story... I tend to work weekends, just as much, if not more, than weekdays, but still, even I feel that Pavlovian conditioning when Friday night comes around: that yearning to be out, to be doing things, meeting people; exercising elbow and jaw in perfect social unison.  It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.  I am not 90.  Or 60, or 20.  I don’t need to “party,” but neither do I need to crochet or study my eyelids.  OR MAKE TOMATO SOUP!

My friend, “Samantha” is very much of the same mindset, if not more, so when Friday night rolls around... whoa there Shep!  Samantha heartily believes that life is for living; that you should do and see and experience all the world has to offer; that you should seize the day, or the man, NOT THE FRUIT DISGUISED AS A VEGETABLE.

Samantha is dating a man, let’s call him “Norman.”  I have not met Norman.  I like to think that Norman is a swell bloke, that he appreciates her joie de vivre, that he is chivalrous, charismatic and kind.  (I have not seen or heard evidence of this, but I hope.)  

So here's the scene: it's a sticky Friday night in August; the outside bars are hopping; festivals and fairs are boasting their usual summer fried buffet of ethic oddities and curious cover bands; pools are open; lake-lounging is commonplace; in short, there's shit to do!  Imagine, therefore, my incredulity and fist-thump to the pulmonary when I listen to a pained, wince-worthy, message from mi amiga at 7pm on such a Friday. 

The Pained Heart or Sigh No More, Ladies. Arthur Hughes

“Hey E.” *sigh* “So… guess where I am driving?” *Heart-heavy, disappointed voice—v. unlike Samantha.*  “I’m driving to Norman’s mother’s house, to MAKE TOMATO SOUP.” *insert embarrassed titter bordering on hysteria.* “Yes.  Soup.  I promised I would make an effort and spend time with him and I said “Sure!  Let’s do something Friday.” He told me he had plans, but I was welcome to join.  PLANS!  He said he had PLANS.  Since when does making tomato soup with mom constitute PLANS?”

It’s a very good question, Reader. 

I laughed as the unleashed torrent of words surfed through my brain, and then came the guilt, because my fabulous friend was so disappointed.  This was the guy with whom she really wanted to make it work, but he was, indeed and in fact, LAME.  I sighed with her.

I’m not writing to bash anyone, but to ask an important question in the hopes that we Singletons can evolve and learn from Date-Foolery: is “cooking” with mother an acceptable Friday Date Night?

 Now, before you think me a hideous Date-Snob, let’s talk about what a date is supposed to be and what most women, and men, want from a date. 

A “date” according to the Free Dictionary is, amongst other things, “an engagement to go out socially with another person, often out of romantic interest.”  EXHIBIT A.

A “date” according to the Urban Dictionary is, “two people” uh huh, not three, “getting together for an activity when the possibility of romance between them has been broached but not ruled out.”  EXHIBIT B.

But let’s say, you chose not to go out socially, because your pet Chihuahua has separation anxiety, or you haven’t been paid, or you’ve indulged in a Food Network marathon and now have mad cooking skills, and a tantalizing new recipe for creamy chicken and asparagus risotto.  You can impress and entertain your date with a nice intimate evening at home!  Or maybe, it’s your date who is tonight’s menu feature and you just want to be at home so you can refill glasses, drain inhibitions and get cosy!   

MMMM!  Sounds divine!  Yes, I accept!  I love to be cooked for!  There are fewer, more intimate dates one can be asked on.  Preparation and execution!  Creating, tasting, seasoning a dish and feeding your beloved is quite the act of love.  Or like.  Or lust.  Whatever.  It is some expression of care and is, to me, extraordinarily sexy; so a chap who knows and loves his food, and wants to share it with me, immediately earns kudos.  Bonus points if it's an interactive date where I can help, and lick things.

Food Porn, by Chala Jan

Once Upon A Time, long, long ago, there was a Beloved who decided he would take me on a date to Mexico in his kitchen.  He blended frozen margaritas, we chopped and sautéed, we fed each other, we danced around the kitchen, guacamole flying to the ceiling as he swooped me up in his arms and licked sour cream from my cheek.  It was all quite 9 ½ Weeks.  It was Caliente.   But, two important factors here, Reader: firstly, no parents were involved, and therefore none harmed, in this Food Date; secondly, tomato soup does not a sexy entrée make! 

“Hey Baby, I make a mean…tomato soup.”  It’s just not sexy.  It makes me think of fingerless-gloves and ugly sweaters, not lusty longing and new third date lingerie.

And I do love soup.  In January.  When there is fuck all else to eat, but really?  Dude?  On a Friday?  In August?  My Inner Gourmand keeled over and just died.

Now, sure, a “date” is supposed to be to get to know one another, and I suppose crushing, stewing, simmering and canning tomatoes is an “activity” so it is bona fide, but is it sexy?  Not unless you are Anthony Bourdain spicing it up with a glug of vodka and inimitable style.  No.  It is not.  It is ordinary.

Oscar Wilde wrote, “Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.”  

I adore a man who shows up at my door, wine in hand, who will sweep me up into his arms and be pleased to see me.  He does not have to take me on an expensive date to impress me; we could go to Jitty Joe’s for ice cream, or a hike, or to the lake, a beach, get cosy watching a movie; or he could surprise me with paint samples and help me reach the places I cannot; or catch me on the ladder; or flick the loaded brush at me and tackle me to the drop cloth.  But we’d be together, just the two of us, a team, perhaps doing ordinary things, but making them extraordinary. 

I can only hope he wants to make the effort beyond the first fistful of dates.

So maybe I am being unfair to poor Norman.  Maybe tomato soup-making on a Friday night isn’t so very awful.  Maybe he had plans of Lycopene-Lovin’ with the fair Samantha.  But sharing with mother?  ON A FRIDAY NIGHT?  Let’s just say, the soup would need to be damn good.  Or, I'd have to be sick.  Or drunk.  Or both.

See, she clearly already deranged.  Don't let this happen to you, Reader.

Have you ever invited a date on a soup-making soiree?  Or have you been invited on a similarly surprising and perhaps bemusingly ordinary date night?  

If there is a next date, I really hope Samantha invites Norman to help her cut her grass.  On a Saturday night.  With her Dad.

And, if that doesn’t give Norman the message, my inner Mary Poppins has a special word to teach Samantha.  It goes like this:

"Soup-dates-can’t-be-vag-permistic-they’re-just-Mommy-focused.

Um diddle diddle diddle, um diddle aye…"

From Florida, with Love...

The wind sock cracked the balmy Pacific air, and suddenly I was seven years old and Mum was wrestling the wet towels, flapping them over the side of the beach hut window, the Atlantic breeze buffeting the material like an invisible bull and Mum was the matador.  My Mater-dor. 

It was odd to be caught so geographically unaware.  How far I was from my seven year old Self—in years and distance—and whilst I still dreamed bilingually, rarely was my homeland and history conjured during daylight hours.  But I dreamed in British: the grass blades thinner, the seaweed slicker, the waters murkier.

When the sun shone, I seldom missed it.  A glance at Facebook could catch me up on the recent unitings, spawnings, splicings and departures; but this surprising flash of summers as a goofy-toothed, gawky, Frecktilian, with wind-blown plaits and duck-like posture, made me oddly misty-eyed.

How strange the passing of years.  How far removed and untouchable is yesterday, today.  How I should love to bundle all those unappreciated days and hug them to me, soaking up the memories like the sun on my skin.  Summers at the beach seemed so golden and luxurious then.  As I stood swim-suited on the steps of our beach hut, my towel flapping against the wind like a superhero cape, held fast by the clenched fist at my throat, I would survey British Summer; I would watch the day-trippers walk shirtless along the prom, set up their nomadic settlements on my beach, and slowly roast their pale limbs to lobster shell pink. 

Mum, never one for the sun, would read in the hut, always her eye on the shore line when I was crabbing, swimming or anywhere a current, or a stranger with sweeties, could sweep me away.  She would call me in to eat lunch from the same plates she had eaten from as a child—sand-wiches, real wiches of sand, for no matter how careful she was, or how well the cutlery and crockery were cleaned, lunch would always be gritty.  I recall the sun-warmed skin of ripe nectarines, the colour of Mum’s lipstick; the glossy orange flesh that—however sliced, bitten or sucked—would roll its sticky trail down my chin.  Summer was nectarines.  Summer was cheese and onion loaf, the gratinated cheddar and caramelized onion crust we would fight for and savour and dip into hot mugs of creamy tomato soup.  Summer was fresh beetroot and iceberg lettuce.  Summer was a small paper bag with 25p worth of Cola Cubes, of Pear Drops, of Sherbert Lemons, boiled sugary sweets scooped from huge glass jars.

The beach huts either side of ours buzzed with people.  Families en masse, friends with their families, and their army of plastic inflatables and deck chairs that would colonize and encroach past the unmarked boundary of our beach hut turf.  They would crack their metal beer caps on the stone lip of the wall, or pop chardonnay corks at lunch, and bring out platters of king prawns, flamingo pink with beady little black eyes.  So odd to me at seven; so ordinary at thirty two.  But more peculiar than plucking off crustacean heads and sucking on their bodies was the noise: the chatter, the constant non-stop sociability of adults; the concept of holidays with non-family members.  I would listen to the hum and high-pitched laughter as I lay on the sea wall, close to their clique, cloaked by my towel and childhood invisibility.

A quarter of a century later, the beach scene is quite different, even if the little Frecktilian is still the same.  Well, she’s not, of course, she’s been sweetened, then soured and now just is, ever-hopeful that life will taste good again.

And here, it is.  Maybe it is the reminder of carefree youth.  The wind sock, ripped slightly on one side by a pugnacious pelican, flaps wildly and calls me to adulthood.  It does feel like I have been here before.  Not geographically, of course; not the sights or experiences, but the feeling, a wild déjà vu of a familiar unfamiliar family scene.  It is so glorious: the tangerine sun as it melts into the sun-sequined ocean; the lilac and pink fluffs of cloud on the horizon; the clink of wine glasses on the marble and the warm mellow of chatter, the occasional hoot of laughter, peeling into the breeze, carried off along the water.  I look around and everything shimmers.  In the background, the pale emerald whorls of the kitchen counter tops sparkle; the ornate Italian inlaid mahogany of the dining table glows; the glass, the tile, the polished bronze siren reaching up from the bottom of the spiral staircase to the twinkling crystal chandelier; and here, at my side, the smiles and gums and honey-tanned skins of my generous unrelatives. 

My hostess shakes her linen napkin out—that maternal signature tune—and she places her arm around me,

“It’s so good to have you here, Eleanor honey.  Here, have a shrimp.” 

It’s funny the things that bring you back, those that take you forward, and those that just make you feel like you’ve come home. 

On Love. A Decent Proposal.

“LOVE.”  I suppose I have been thinking about the meaning of this oddly bandied-about word, lately.  Well, it has just been February AND a Leap Year at that, so I feel justified in giving it a bit of consideration.  Just a smidgen.  Don’t tell anyone, or say I’ve gone all moony.

Oh feck, who am I kidding?  I’m a hopeless romantic, and, to me, the concept of a specific day (Feb 29^th) on which women can propose is like walking into the movies to see the closing credits, or absorbing calories without tasting the cheesecake.  What is the point?

Okay, so the point is that you are then engaged, betrothed, promised… ta dah!   I get it.  Mazel tov.  But... but... it just seems so wrong, so unromantic, so emasculating!

I’m an equal opportunities gal.  (In Eleanor World, the Spice Girls were my homies.  Girl Power!  Karate kicks!  Short skirts!  "We're not sluts!"  "We're empowered!"  High five!)  But really?  Really?  What woman wants to tell their friends, family, old school compadres who-you-didn’t-really-like-but-now-have-to-keep-up-with-on-Facebook that,

“Oh, it was so romantic, we were out to dinner and …”  and what?  Men don’t wear engagement rings, so what do you whip out of your little heart-shaped box?  “ …I hid a Home Depot gift certificate under his oysters and said, ‘Sweetie-Prune-Face, will you do me the honour of living with me forever and fixing my shit?’”

Nay, nay and thrice nay.  This is not how the story should go.  Rewrite. 

Now, before you get the impression—as I believe some of the male variety have—that all women are out to get a ring, FEAR not!  Back off there, Champ!  Step away from the Tiffany counter!  Some women are quite happy to march their own merry way, independently slicing through the crowd to the click clack of their heels on the marble, and the sound of their favourite Beyonce track echoing through their cerebellum.  "I don't think you're ready for this jelly."  I know many fine females able to change a light bulb, order direct TV, who own homes, and tools, like drills with attachments, who take out their own rubbish; finding someone you can do some of these with is just an added bonus, not a necessity.

So what am I saying?  If you do erm… *cough* “love” someone, does it matter who or how one proposes?  Does one even need to propose?  Can’t there be togetherness and marital sportsmanship without the whole Pride and Goon bit?  I suppose it makes a nicer story to tell folks.  It certainly must feel good to know that of all the girls in the world, you are special to someone other than your parents and the stray cat you randomly feed.  And Lordy, if he has thoughtfully planned some surprise to take your breath away and says something heartfelt that makes one jelly-kneed, well doesn’t that make one feel valued as a person, adored as a lover, treasured as a Goddess?  Yes.

A good friend of mine was swept away for the weekend by her now fiancé and, as they walked back to their hotel on a spectacularly star-filled night, he turned to her and said “How would you like to be buried with my people?”  It wasn’t the gesture of the weekend away, or the celestial backdrop, it was his words.  He wanted to be with her for the rest of his life and thereafter; their bones crumbling to dust together.  Kind of macabre, yes, but very earthy and celtic and fitting.  My heart melt into my stomach to hear it.

Another friend, actually, my oldest, bestest friend from Blighty, has quite the sigh-worthy proposal story.  Her betrothed, a HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy aficionado, took her to a lavish dinner to celebrate his forty second birthday.  Following an indulgent repast, he noticed a loose thread from his jacket, and he asked her to pull it.  She pulled, and to the thread a ticker tape and then a ring were attached; the tape read, “The meaning of life, the universe, everything is not 42… it’s you.”

Romance!  It appeals, because I suppose a good proposal, or Valentine’s Day surprise, or heck, a surprise any day of the year, means that someone thinks enough of you to make an effort.  Effort.  Change the ‘e’ to the end, lose a 'f', and you have the French “forte,” strong.  A strong effort: not a lame college try; or the Valentine’s day Interflora package deal that comes up first on Google search; but an effort that takes thought and action.
 

Of course, it’s all very well making this grandiose gesture or proclamation of undying love, but a proposal is supposed to be an indication of intent.  If there is a superhuman display and no follow up, one could say that the “buyer” was mis-sold.  And aren’t proposals getting more and more extravagant nowadays?  The simple betrothal from days of yore, the down-on-one-knee bit, looks kinda shabby in comparsion to the sky-written proposal, or the Youtube ode, or the live TV recording.

Who is it for anyway?  Are proposals for the delectation of the viewing Public and bragging rights to ones Facebook friends and Twitter followers?  Or should they be private moments, in which you lay your heart on a plate for someone else to stab, or hold?

Marriage isn’t the be-all, end all, women strive for in 2012 anyway.  We can take out our own trash.  We just want to be happy.  For me, finding that someone who does not “complete me,” but complements me, who makes me want to be even better as a person, even though he loves me “just as I am,” would be a lovely thing.  A ring seems rather irrelevant.

 As the fabulous best-selling author Jane Green writes, “Love is a verb.”  A verb is a “doing” word.  Sometimes the odds seem insurmountable: the geography, or the age-difference, or the family opposition,  or the history involved—just to throw a few little hurdles in there—but if you really care, these things shouldn’t make a damn bit of difference.  If I were in love, I’d pole-vault over all of them.  Or at least try, and crash *splat* into them.

I was trying to give a friend a definition—she was grilling me about love and bemoaning her internet dating experience (that’s for another blog)—I quoted Jane Green, and she replied,

“So love is about doing things for people?”  She looked rather non-plused.

“Well, yes, because you love them.  You do things for them to show it.”

Her frown did not smooth itself.

“Well, I do things for my boss, but I certainly don’t love him.”

“Granted.  He pays you.  There are exceptions.”

“I do volunteering, but it’s not because I’m in love with the …”

“Okay!  Okay.  So, let me define it!  It’s not what you can do for him, or what he can do for you, but it is about wanting to do things for him, of your own free will.  Not because anyone is paying you, or for a profound sense of gratification, or for your reward in Heaven or wherever, but because you want to make his life easier, better.  It's finding someone you want to be a team with; to do things, to share things and enjoy experiences together; someone who makes your ovaries can-can with one look, or one breath of his scent.  And he'll smell so good to you.  It's someone you can curl up beside and not want to be anywhere else, with anyone else.  The person whose gaze feels like the sun on your skin, and in whose eyes you feel even more beautiful and lighter and more interesting.  And the thought of never basking in the heat from his eyes again makes your heart wither with sadness.   And,”  I steam-rollered on, “when you love someone you don’t necessarily need this person to reciprocate and do things for you; you don't need a ring and the whole elaborate public "I do"; you just feel compelled, down deep, like rooted in your stomach-deep, right there, that this is the person you would do anything for, not because of anything he said or did, but just the way he made you feel.  And life will go on without him, if we don't find him, if we lose him, or if he loses himself, but crikey, doesn't everything seem lovelier when you have someone that makes you just...sing?"

She bit meditatively on the flake of skin on her bottom lip,

“Interesting.  So it’s a gut thing.”

“I’ve always thought so.  You know you have more nerve endings in your stomach than your spine?  That’s why you feel that stomach implosion when he so much as looks at you.”

“That’s just nerves.  Or a bowel movement.  That goes away.”

“That’s why love is a verb!  It’s an effort, but a strong effort can be easy, and you will want to make it.  Don’t you want to be 70 and feel full with contentment when he smiles at you, or takes your hand and walks you to your stair-lift?  Don't you want to still feel butterflies?”

“I think maybe, En, you just need some Rolaids.  And a puppy.”

Spitting out the Cyanide

“That’s not what I mean at all,” she said laying a hand flat on her friend’s blouse near enough her heart that she could feel its beat beneath her fingertips.  “Write what’s in here because you must, because it pleases you, but never because you want someone else to like what you’ve said.”

This quote is from the richly-wrought The Distant Hours, by Kate Morton.  I had never heard of Morton before, but having spent most waking hours embroiled and en-brained in the company of her heroine this week, she is a writer I hope to know more and more.

Kate Morton

I could write about the novel, how it enchanted me by its idiosyncratic characters, diseased by duty and honour, each chomping on her own little cyanide capsule of emotional repression; how the aging castle is as much of a character as the women in the novel; how it is set during WW II, a period of time I seem to find compelling in its romantic barbarism; how again the twisted altruism of twins has engrossed me (see my blog on her Fearful Symmetry and The Thirteenth Tale http://www.eleanorgwyn-jones.blogspot.com/2011/11/its-all-gone-dark-mother.html); how fire utterly consumes as in Jane Eyre, and Rebecca and BigamE; and how Morton’s style has delightfully drowned my thoughts with each uniquely everyday image.  But I won’t.  It is a novel I urge you to read.

There are people far more educated than I to tell you about the imagery and the nuances.  I want to tell you not what Morton said or how she said it, but how she made me feel.  Because lately, as you may have guessed by my unusual uncommunicativeness, I have lost heart with many things, mostly writing and therefore life.

I have learned recently, as never before, that I am judged not by what I do or how I write, but that people are just people and sometimes they enjoy kicking me to the ground.  And I take that very personally.  If people are going to criticize me for things I didn’t say or do or write, what the fuck is the point in working hard and giving my all when their fiction trumps my truth anyway?  Or so I thought.  And so, shell-shocked Self decided to shut down; that it was a far safer thing not to write; that it was far more sensible to scuttle oneself, to swallow the cyanide, to forget that I could be made to feel worthless; and maybe the flack would subside.  It has.  But I haven’t written for a month. 

And I’m not a happy bunny.

Defibrillators.  STAT.  Or rather… Kate Morton’s, The Distant Hours.

Through happenstance, Morton’s heroines aren’t allowed the opportunity to fulfill their hearts' desires; in post-war years it was the far safer thing to become a typist or sit sheltered away in the castle tower, unwritten stories and histories slowly turning each silent soul quite mad.  I suppose I saw myself in these sad octogenarians whose dreams had lain dead for fifty years; in Meredith, who as a pensioner had blocked out the memory of her girlhood ambitions and had sleep-walked through her intervening beige years.  And I realized that I had written blogs and deleted blogs because I had so wanted “someone else to like what you’ve said,” what I said.  And I sabotaged myself.  I deleted myself.

I may not write literary fiction, I may not weave words with silken sibilants, similes and throat-lumping imagery; I may not spend years researching microfiche in Kew Public Records Office; I may not get to interview Obama or Gaga or Bloody Barbara Walters, but I write from the heart.  And I am sorry if that isn’t a school of writing that some recognise.  I am sorry if that alienates people I love.  But if you loved me—fuck it, even if you merely liked me—if you saw my happiness and it made your heart swell, then you would tell me to write; to type until the flesh of my fingertips frayed, and then to carry on clicking keys until my bones were nubs.  I am a writer.  It is what I do.  Whether published or not, it is words that pump through my pulverized pulmonary, they surf the platelets and circulate my soul, they clog my brain and breathe colour to my world. 

So thank you Kate Morton for making writing-from-the-heart okay for me again.  Thank you for making Meredith, Juniper and Saffy characters with dreams so smothered and futures so melancholy, I can’t own them for myself.  So I’m whipping off the shroud of wordlessness, climbing from the wreck of my Anderson shelter and hopefully, one day, I will knit enough words to fill the missing layer:

“The hunger wasn’t really homesickness at all.  He’d used the term lazily, perhaps even hopefully, to describe the feeling, the awareness that something fundamental had been lost.  It wasn’t a place that he was missing, though; the reality was far worse than that.  Tom was missing a layer of himself.

He knew where he’d left it.  He’d felt it happen on that field near the Escault Canal, when he’d turned and met the eyes of the other soldier, the German fellow with his gun pointed straight at Tom’s back.  He’d felt panic, a hot liquid surge, and then his load had lightened.  A layer of himself, the part that felt and feared, had peeled away like a piece of tobacco paper in his father’s tin and fluttered to the ground, been left discarded on the battlefield.  The other part, the remaining kernel called Tom had put his head down and run, thinking nothing, feeling nothing, aware only of the rasping breaths, his own in his ears.”

Acceptance? Tell THAT to Inigo Montoya!

I am not religious.  I think we have covered that, right?  But I hear this Serenity prayer a lot:

"God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference."

Acceptance.  It stares up at me from the engraved stone paperweight upon the desk from which I type.  It is not my desk, but the live-in, non-lesbian gal-pal, "Monica’s."  She’s very zen and gets a lot of satisfaction from life-affirming mottos.  I, do not.  I rather want to take that paper weight and lob it into Lake Scranton. 
Why should we accept things we can’t change? 
Why should we give up?

Inigo Montoya never accepted that he would fail to find the six-fingered man who killed his father. The odds were against him, but he never stopped trying, and is, for that reason, one of my most beloved film characters. Let's have a gratuitous clip! 

I don’t think it’s serene to be a quitter and throw in the towel.  I mean, most writers didn’t accept the fact that the majority of agents rejected them; most inventors don’t just throw their prototype away; so how do we know what to strive to save, and what we should watch tornado down the U-bend?

There are several times in my life where I have given up.  I’m not saying I’m proud of them, I'm not.  I am also pretty sure there are more examples than these, but these are the ones that race to the finish line first:

1)     Sports Day 400 m sprint.

2)     Relationship #2 #10 #14

Now, I was never all that athletic.  Sure, I’d cheer—being vocal was never a problem—but actually moving my body with the speed, strength and skill that my brain had so purely conceived, was never my forte. 

School Sports Day and Swimming Sports Day were, therefore, always a wee bit of a trial.  Okay, so we got an afternoon off class, but Sod’s Law was that it was always a class I enjoyed, and would much rather have been doing, than Humiliation 1-0-1.   But there it came around again, Sports Day.  *Grrr! Gnash teeth*.  And there was I, in scratchy, synthetic green athletics pants and second-hand air-tex, proving once again to all my class mates that I was, in fact, the only 15 year old who was so flat-chested she was practically concave.  (Oh, the cache of having boobs then would have made life so much easier!)  I digress.  

Seriously, these were mean-ugly uniforms that were, frankly, emotionally scarring.  Girls aged 11 to 18 should not be made to wear ugly green granny pants.  Full-stop.  I mean, really?  What is the pube-skimming point?  Oh, because an inch more fabric that might make the less-than-hot pants more luke-warm shorts, and would cut down on aerodynamism?  Please.  They were ugly, they were scratchy, they were wrong.  Never do this to your children, Parents.  Never do this to the World, Fashion People.

I was lucky to go to this girls school, because it was far more than my parents could really afford. Most of my items of uniform were from my 5ft 8 neighbour--I was struggling to make 5ft at the time--so I always looked somewhat comical. I even had my brother’s old hand-me-down Dunlop Green Flash trainers. Nike Air they were not. I can still picture their chewing gum white canvas uppers, the thick white rubber sole, the linguine-like laces, the tattoos of my brothers initials, covered over with my own in black marker. Far from ghetto, it just looked like I couldn't spell my own name, so not only was I gawky, unfashionable and sport-spastic, but apparently I also suffered from severe dyslexia.

Ah! Probably the cheapest shoe you can buy for your first child, then give to your second, stained and tangy.  Ta, Mum!

It is one thing sporting such a look, paired with uncoordinated inability, but it’s quite another proving your spasticality in front of the entire school and their parents, siblings and family friends, most hoisting camcorders just to make sure that your complete humiliation is captured forever more.

And so it was that my teacher decided, in the absence of anyone else volunteering, that I--Ennie-Oh-14-minute-mile--should take on the reigning county athletics runner in the 400m.  If I had the bolshy nerve my friends had, I would have nonchalantly proffered the monthly excuse they seemed—poor wretches—to be tormented by EVERY WEEK—Jesus, I must have been in the most menstrual class known to man—but I didn’t.  She had picked me and so, call to arms, I must do my class duty. 
*Sound the bugles!*

When the fateful day arrived, I actually imagined I might win—amazing the tricks your psyche can play on you! I envisaged that white ticker tape snapping as I ran through it, the cheers, the sound of  Chariots of Fire ringing in my ears, the trophy and maybe even the school record! Where I imagined I had conjured this sudden ability is beyond me, but I could see it on the backs of my eyelids, and I could smell victory in the fresh cut grass and the cloying stench of the latest highly perfumed deodorant my friends deemed it “cool” to be using.  (Something begining with a 'K' that smelled of toilet cleaner and Christmas trees.)

I took my marks, as directed, in the inner lane.  My opponent, templed her fingers to the ground, haunches skywards, focused for the pistol.  Oh, thought I, we are doing this proper Olympian-stylee--what a hoot--and I took some seconds to arrange self in what I suppose I would now refer to as, downward dog.  I probably spent far too much time getting comfy and not summoning my running muscles, because the expected “bang!” of the starter’s pistol caught me quite unaware.  What?   Fuck!  Ah!  Where?  Oh shit, she’s running! Goooooo legs, go! And as the Nike Air of my opponent ripped into the turf and away, my Dunlop Green flash squeaked retardedly into action.

I wish I could give you a good account of myself.  That, as I had envisioned, I had suddenly become possessed by Flo Jo; that the banana I had secretly wolfed down, because Linford Christie had a campaign on the telly about banana-gy, had fired my muscles with its potassium and magnesium goodness.  Alas, I can only report this: I was crap.

For the first lap I tried.  I beat my non-running limbs like little whisks; I thumped my arms as if I were having a sparring match with the Invisible Man; she only got further and further away. 

I remember the cheers from my class.  Oxymoronic encouragement—we were quite the snide achievers—“Come on Smell-eanor!”  “Run, Boobless! Run!”  Their enthusiasm only made me want to cry.  I gritted my teeth and pounded hard, but my legs were burning, the lactic acid gnawing at every sinew. 

I turned into the home straight and she was there, flying into the white ticker tape, feeling it snap against her impressive chest.  The cheers were for her.  The applause, for her.  The trophy that would be engraved, for her.

And I stopped running.

I gave up.

I believe—although this bit is a tad foggy—I pretended I’d pulled a muscle.  I yelped, limped, felt somewhere on my leg and stumbled off the track, without ever crossing the finish line.

That was seventeen years ago, and something that has never sat comfortably with me.  I accepted that I was beaten and I just gave up! 

Did I ever stand a hope of winning?  Hell No!  I was crap!  I think I've made this clear.  But I wish I had carried on, even though there was not a darn thing I could do to change the outcome.  Especially, since for me, this pathetic ending reeked of dishonor.  Shit, I don't think it was even a very convincing injury performance!

I am not saying that one incident taught me a life lesson, but I tasted the bitterness of giving up, and I didn’t like it.

Life has thrown a few sHituations since, mainly relationship-orientated ones, where I have shrugged my shoulders and let go, even though every fibre of my being has yelled “Come back!”  Mum had schooled me in the merits of retaining one’s dignity over actually exposing Self to hurt and saying what you really feel.  I thought this “acceptance” the classier thing to do.  Acceptance and denial that it was ever of any importance or worth anyway.  But, you know what?  That's bullshit.  The classier thing, surely, is not to pretend, but to fight for what you really want, or at least tell someone how you feel, rather than pretending.

I was never going to win that race, but I should have trotted on and taken a bow, proud of my true-blue-crap-at-sport-Brit heritage.  

If you are staring at defeat, what have you got to lose?  Pride isn’t so important when you’ve been unemployed for six months; when you feel a lump or see a mole that wasn’t there yesterday; when you are watching the love of your life slip away. 

Would you remain stiff and inert, paralyzed by pride; would you put up your dukes, but pretend to pull a muscle and limp out to lick your wounds when the going got too tough; or, if this is it, really and truly, what the fuck!  Wouldn’t you run?  Fuck the pretence, blow the stiff-lip, but with thighs burning and arms boxing, looking like a fool, wouldn't you at least bloody well give it a try?

So, I suppose what I am saying is, who is to say that a situation is hopeless or impossible?  If you don’t fight to change it, you’ll never know.  And even if it is irredeemable, wouldn’t you rather be the person who can say, “I gave it my all,” rather than, “Oh, I just half-arsed it, saw I couldn’t win, so gave up”? 

Whether fighting to win for fun, for sport, for work, for survival, for love, don’t be a Half-Arse.  Royally fuck it up with both cheeks exposed, because that will give real serenity.  You can rest your little over-thinking brain, because, props to you Lovey, you gave it your best!

I love this scene from Love Actually.  Andrew Lincoln's character has fallen in love with his best friend's fiance.  He is tortured.  Whilst he would not act dishonourably to his friend, for his own sanity and serenity, he has to tell the fiance he loves her, "without hope or agenda" and once he has, finally, told her then, then, he can let go.

Like Lincoln's character, only when I know I have done or said everything I can; when I have swallowed the lump of fear amassing in my throat--cunningly lodged to smother what I really want to say; when I have ignored the attack in my colon; spoken through the shallow snatches of breath and the yelling in my head that MAYDAY!  MAYDAY!  THIS COULD HURT!  BRACE YOURSELF!  INCOMING!; only then, when I have stripped Self of every defence mechanism I've hidden behind, can I be serene.  So I have rewritten the serenity prayer.  Blasphemous, probably, but …

Grant me the courage to fight for what I want,
Never to accept mediocre, half-arsedness,
(Even when others tell me I should give up and limp off)
But to give my all and know that opening Self to vulnerability and loss,
Takes more courage than hiding behind any protective façade.
Oh, yeah, and grant me wisdom too.  That's never a bad thing.

Everyone's a Little Bit Schadenfreude... la la

This Christmas Holiday, I sent a message to the Mothership.  "Please advise all that I will not really be doing Christmas this year.  I don't want to be embarrassed should folks from Blighty want to send me something, so please ask them not to.  Thanks, Mummita. Love me."

It's not that I am a Scrooge--although I am wearing legwarmers and gloves right now.  No, please don't buy me a Snuggie--I'd just don't want stuff that I will then have to accommodate in the Brooklyn Shoebox and--Heaven Forfend--dust!  I'd rather hibernate, write, read, listen to Adele, with a cannister of chocolate and a vat of wine.  (With a bendy straw.) This is far from an alternative Christmas; in fact, I am holding the very bastion of British Christmas dear: misery and chocolate.

Let me explain my choices:
Adele has the wisdom beyond her 23 years.  She writes lyrics that gut me like a freshly caught jail island salmon.  Shit, she is one heartsick chick.  My non-lesbian, live-in gal pal, let's call her *Monica,* has commented, after having to listen to the same agonized tune play from my computer over and over,
“Adele seriously needs to have a successful relationship.  Or lashings of good, hot sex.”  But, I disagree.  Sorry, Adele.  If I wanted to listen to Mariah Carey's Jingle-fucking-Bells, I would.  I want misery, goddammit!  Pure, unadulterated, gouge my eyes out with  a rusty trowel, pain. So Adele’s angelic voice, bemoaning her stressed and collapsing pulmonary, will be the soundtrack to my Christmas.  Her unhappiness is quite the comfort.  Why is that?  I am no sadist.  I don’t want others suffering, and yet my own puffy-faced, pre-Christmas-Mis is loving her great Cockney choral complaining.  I’m not even German, but I’m reveling in Schadenfreude, right now. 

"What's that?  Some kind of Nazi word?"
Well, click on and listen for the full explanation:

Maybe it is because the holidays are coming, and Adele reminds me of home: of being apart from Mum and Dad and Oliver, as they three sit at the table made for eight, pulling crackers, wearing paper crowns, talking about the gravy and the roasties not being as good as last year’s organic offering from Sainsburys; of settling down for the turkey coma to set in whilst watching the EastEnders Christmas special, in which someone will undoubtedly die, eating a glass bauble--yes, it happens; or in a house fire, because Ethel fell asleep after her annual sherry, her lit cigarette smouldering up the synthetic, brown 1968 sofa;  or because there was a particularly heated argument in which Alfie discovered Kat was sleeping with Matt, Martin, Pete, Phil, Rickeeeeey and Uncle Tom Cobbly, and now half the Square is dead, dead, dead and floating in the Thames. Ah yes!  I could write the script!  Downton Abbey, it ain't.

If 2011 has left you hemorrhaging from the eyes with disappointment, it is such a comfort to see, hear and sing about others less fortunate.  Tidings of comfort and joy?  Fuck that!  We Brits like a dollop of misery to make us feel better about our own shit-uations, then we pass around the Quality Street tin full of chocolate jewels, and allow the chocolate opiate to dull our senses.

Oh, you think I’m joking?  No, really.  Chocolate.  It is a traditional part of a British Christmas: teasing kidlets with the mouthful of chocolate behind their advent calendar door, and then, WHOA, WHEY HEY!  It’s the 25^th Choc-fest! While Americans sit back and watch the marathon brain-melt of American Football, munching Christmas cookies and chugging the eggnog, we Brits watch a marathon of low-income misery-drama and have a high ol’ time on chocolate.  As we age, we also add wine which aids chocolate consumption.  (No, am not being so cultured as to say we pair our vino with dark chocolate to bring out certain notes.  We just drink beyond our dietary inhibitions and stuff our faces.  It is Christmas, after all.)

Chocolate actually releases certain neurotransmitters, which signal between neurons.  Impulses shuttle along our neurons to illicit movement or sensation, so the more particular neurotransmitters we have, greatly impacts on our mood.  I’ll spare you the science, but basically chocolate-produced-neurotransmitters can cross the synapse from one neuron to another, and trigger the receptors to fire off different responses in other neurons.  It’s Chocolate Domino Rally. 

You’ve probably heard of three of the main happy neurotransmitters: endorphins, which reduce pain and stress; serotonins, which are anti-depressants; and phenylethylamine, or “chocolate amphetamine,” which causes changes in blood pressure, can quicken your heart rate and thusly, illicits that heart-pumping feeling of being in love.

Tryptophan, an essential amino acid we ingest, is a pre-cursor of serotonin, and guess what is tryptophan-rich?  Uh huh, turkey!  So really Christmas Choc-Fest and Turkey-Gorging is just one big Serotonin Orgy.

Really, with all this going for it, chocolate should be a major food group.  Does Anthony Bourdain know this?  He’s all about the meat.  The more “unctuous” the better, but he used to be about the drugs.  If only he knew that chocolate was a legal drug.  But then, his story would be much different and not half as scandalous or entertaining.

So, if you should see me over the next week, without my family, not wearing a paper crown, or telling a crappy joke and lighting my Wolverine eyebrows on fire when flambeing the Christmas pud; but instead, bundled somewhere in New York or Pennsylvania, wailing Adele, watching miserable TV, and eating vast amounts of chocolate, know that I am merely celebrating in a very British way.  And if this rather alien description paints a sad picture to you, then maybe I am giving you the gift of Schadenfreude this Christmas,
"we provide a vital service
to society, You and me,
Schadenfreude, making the World a better place to be!"




God Save the Queen.  And Chocolate.  And Wine.

"Yes, we know we are alive when it hurts."  Don Lafferty.

*Please note, the Monica of my blogette does not smoke or play with cigars.  Or Politicans.  She just likes the name.