dancing to an imaginary song....

It’s very natural, in our more vulnerable moments, to look outward for reassurance and guidance. The problem with that is that we can become over-reliant, and a tiny bit lazy. Think about our average day as humans in the Actual World: we are told each and every day how to do stuff, not to do stuff, the parameters in which we should do stuff (from the interminable announcements about not riding skateboards on station platforms to those signs reminding you to wash your hands in the toilet at work)… and you have to question what it does to us. My point here is that the answer more or less always lies within, and such is the beauty of human instinct. We should trust it more. I’ll share my greatest lesson in this. Eight years ago I gave birth to my first daughter in a Swiss hospital. It was long-anticipated, and in the event a bit traumatic. Finally, this little person appeared. It was wonderful. Then, after the flurry of activity and excitement, night set in and I was wheeled to a private room, with a tiny delicate stranger in a tiny cot. The midwife cheerily bade me goodnight and in panic, I blurted, “Please don’t go. She might cry. I don’t know how to lift her up. Can you show me?” The midwife stayed at the door, and fixed me with a steely stare. “You’ll figure it out,” she said. “You’re a mother now. It’s the most natural thing.” And then she closed the door and left. And when she cried, I figured it out without a thought.

I woke up feeling a bit militant and purposeful today. I know, terrifying thought. So, in the dawning hour I wrote this, my Monday Manifesto, which I hope will provide inspiration to me and all who wish to read it. For the day, the week and possibly beyond: 1. Be more politicised - why the hell not? My life, my world, my family, my opinions. 2. Process just a little bit harder - not everything is as it is presented, there are always new angles and insights to be found. If I just take another tiny bit of time to process harder, I could maybe see clearer, and think smarter. 3. Seek (and accept) joy.  4. Responsibility, not subjection: Seize responsibility and help others to the same (lest we become mere subjects) 5. Be brave and true. *marches off, purposefully*

I’ve been separated for over a year, now; living alone for 7 months; and divorced for 4 months. In that time, it’s been what feels like a smorgasbord of emotion. Sadness, euphoria, heartbreak (administered and experienced), hope and sometimes just.. nothing. All you’d expect from a break up. The little epiphanies keep coming, as do the most unexpected achievements. What’s becoming clearer at this stage in the cycle is that I’m coming onto my own. Steadily, I’m becoming truer and truer to myself and more willing to show the world what and who that is. There’s no doubt that in a relationship, you bend. That’s natural. It’s not a bad thing. But I’m daring myself daily to be brave, to say what I think, and want, and don’t want, and am - in a way I couldn’t before, because I was bending. I’ll bend again, of course, but from a starting point of having a much better idea of who I am, which to me is a daily surprise. I’m more opinionated and curious and brave and demanding than I thought I was. Which, you could argue, makes me an utter pain in the arse. Albeit a pain in the arse who sees herself clearly and can admit it. I think that this is me now. I don’t doubt that the most wonderful company I choose (and CAN) keep is mostly to thank. So I am eternally thankful for those who challenge me, slap me down when I’m too much, built me up when I’m not enough and, well, see me. How blessed I am to have choice, and to be able to just be. 

I’ve not written much lately. I haven’t felt like it. Not because I haven’t had anything to say (this is NEVER) the case but because it all felt too unformed and personal. But I had a small epiphany this week on the train home. I was sitting in a fairly empty carriage when two boys sat near to me and were threateningly shifty and belligerent. I was convinced I’d be mugged and as the thoughts ran through my head on that last leg of the journey before I could actually leg it I looked out of the window and thought remarkably analytically about how I was feeling. I realised that my lifelong bias against “negative” emotions - anger, fear, even hate - was making me quash something healthy. And actually something very necessary. To fear was OK, because it was all I could do. And with that came a bit of anger that I should be made to feel like that. I’m not a black and white person. These extremes do not come easy to me. But realising that I could be angry and not bitter, fearful and not weak, feel hate but not forever, was a precious realisation. Negative is not necessarily the opposite of positive. In fact, it can be a comfortable companion.

If I likened Twitter to a playground, it wouldn’t be the first time. But it’s not a bad analogy – after all, you’re guaranteed to find the cool kid, the nerd, the class swot and the weird one who always wore Velcro shoes and smelled of Copydex and tuna. It’s where we go to let off steam, swap figurative Smash Hits stickers and basically muck about before regretfully sloping off to do some actual work.   So it’s not surprising that Twitter has its fair share of pigtail-pulling, glad eye giving, and invitations to slope off behind the Twitter bikesheds. The playgrounds of our youth were crackling with sweaty, awkward sexual tension, and Twitter is no different. We just have slightly better skin and a more sophisticated line in, er, lines these days.   People are still coy about Twitter romance though, and non-Twits often horrified, deeming it dreadfully risky and potentially sleazy. But given that other possible options available involve the more organized version of online dating (like match.com, which a friend once correctly identified as the Lidl of online dating sites) or actually emailing that bloke who insisted on giving me his email address outside Lewisham station (why? why email??), I’m all for it.   I have dated people off the Twitter, and participated in the odd bit of Twitter flirting. My Twitter dating fortunes have yielded mixed results and to be frank, it seems unlikely that my incredibly ambitious version of the ideal man might come my way via a cheeky DM.  That said, my own picky man-filter is indulged by the fact that Twitter allows you to assess (read: judge) critical factors such as competence in spelling and grammar, and taste in biscuits. And to figure out where the piranhas might be (there are simple tests available for these things). At the very least, I’ve had fun and made some brilliant friends.   So God bless the Twitter playground, I say, and all who flirt in it. Hats off to the Twits who are brave enough to ask others out, and to the Twits who are bold enough to accept. Mavericks of dating, rejoice! For if match.com shrivels your soul, if you’re too old, lazy or stingy for bar hopping, or if you’re simply more comfortable doing your flirting wearing a stained vest and eating excessive amounts of cheese in front of Question Time, this could be your salvation. Or at least a welcome diversion until it’s time to do some work again.

I was in Wales a few weeks ago, staying in a ridiculously cosy and perfect cottage with friends. What I loved most about it was the fact that there were books everywhere, clearly collected and enjoyed and brought and left and cherished over the years. Then I found this, which, in retrospect, I realise was a somewhat profound discovery: The Good Housekeeping Step-by-Step Cook Book (1980).  This, my friends, is the book that taught me to cook. But more than that, it is something that unlocked a single vein of creativity and passion I never knew I had, and which has carried me to (and through) adulthood. Food - and more specifically, cooking. Perhaps I protest too much but I feel bound to point out at this stage that I have no pretentions when it comes to cooking - I love it, I need it, but that’s as far as it goes. It’s almost personal - and a rather interesting barometer of my state of mind, closely tied as it is to my emotions. I purposely don’t blog or write about it (beyond posting Instagram foodporn) because of that, and because there are a million people who can do it better than me. So back to Wales.  I pounced on this tattered tome with joy, recognising the cover in an instant, from the days in the summer of 1989 when aged 13 I had a lot of time on my hands and a mother who believed that school holidays should not be spent idly. And I  was as lazy as a 13 should be. So, as my parents went off to work each day that summer, leaving me in a house on the edge of a sleepy Somerset village, I decided to look busy in the least boring way I could think of: cooking. Each evening my parents came home to  ridiculously extravagant 3-course meal inspired by Good Housekeeping’s 1980 “bible” (Crab gratin with banana garnish, anyone?), and I’d had a blast doing anything other than ironing. Cooking, I discovered, was “work”, but I liked it. After that, I never stopped cooking. I remember being bought my first “proper” cookery book, aged 14, by Anton Mosimann. It was terribly 90s and poncey but I loved it, and I grew beyond slavishly following recipes, preferring to use them as inspiration… and then go my own sweet way. I spent my teens working in pub restaurant kitchens and dining rooms and never felt more at home. Cooking became second-nature, as did an interest in food, an appreciation of its scents and sights and sounds, and the sheer happiness to be found in feeding someone well. So, in Wales, leafing through book whose illustrations were so familiar from hours pouring over them as a teenager it was almost painful, I realised quite how powerful that discovery in 1989 was. It’s guided me since. Being able to cook means I can feed myself and others. Loving to cook brings me comfort I can’t describe and the means to do what I long to do most - make people happy. It helps me know myself too. When I’m happiest, I’m a kitchen demon. At my lowest, I don’t even want to think about food. Cooking can be a handy mechanism to drag myself out of a blue spell, because I simply cannot cook without love. So, forced it sometimes may be, but therapeutic too. It’s no surprise that when I bought my current home, its lovely sunny and sociable kitchen is what seduced me from the moment I crossed the threshold. It’s no coincidence that my friends love food and cooking as much as I do. It’s a joy that my kids want to cook and love to eat. So, thank you, Good Housekeeping, for your frankly ridiculous 1980 “bible”. That, and my aversion to ironing, kickstarted something that I couldn’t be without. 

Every now and again, Twitter – that integral part of my day, benign bringer of news and goodness and people pratting about making me laugh, the thing I defend to the end to non-believers – really pisses me off. It leaves me doing an amazed face at the sheer meanness of people who should know better, and thinking, “Christ, is this what we’re reduced to?” Of course, it’s not Twitter, it’s the people. We all know full well what happens when the funny, gobby cool kids latch onto something and get stuck in. Today’s “point and laugh” on Twitter stemmed from Marina Hyde’s typically acerbic and skillful column in which she poked merciless fun at Alex James’ new autobiography (all about cheese). That’s not the problem. That’s her job and it made for funny reading. The problem is various media cool kids taking up the battle cry and using Twitter to frankly grind their axes about everything Alex James may ever have done to piss them off. Now, Alex James might be an utter twat, I don’t know and don’t much care, but I detest how this snowballs into a Twitter hatefest where apparently it’s OK to call someone a smug cunt, all because someone “influential” on Twitter encourages or sanctions it with their own bit of vitriol. It’s ugly and juvenile, and sadly reminiscent of the playground. These are people who should know better, and who I suspect wouldn’t put the same stuff in print for their day jobs (or be allowed to). Like it or not, when you’re a journalist with 50,000 followers or something, what you opine does hold more weight than your average punter’s ramblings. But say it I will and I don’t care if it sounds humourless or miserable. Kick me. The last time I called out the cool kids on similar grounds aged 14, I was the class pariah for a full 2 terms. But at least I knew I wasn’t a mean kid, so I could live with that. Some things are just wrong. In any case, I hope that as Alex James read the column and ensuing Twitter slurry coming his way, he was busy counting his piles of cash and chowing down on a hunk of his finest Double Gloucester, with not a care in the world – but mostly paying no attention. After all, that’s what we’d tell our kids to do, isn’t it?

I am not cross. I am not a secret. I am not a cure for loneliness. I am not really strong. I am not stupid. I am not sure. I am not as negative as this sounds. I am not going to work tomorrow (Win).