yours always

been thinking about this whole blog business, and the reasons for doing it. It's quite egocentric in a way, would be nice to think that it's just for me, but really i have to acknowledge that it's about wanting to communicate on some level with other people, and to do that you have to go public, and to do that you start censoring, and that negates the whole point of the private blog. So i think i will stop now, because if it is just about the writing i can do that in a journal, and if it is about communicating, then i have to write more letters, and if it is about me, then i have to think more. End of story.

kind hearts and coronets

Haven't managed to get to the pc all week, too many shifts to fit in online before dying quietly in bed. meant to write a few words last sunday, Valentine's Day, but that was just too much of a fiasco to want to relive it all over again. Then work this week proved to be one long complaint by the people who hadnt had the good sense to move on to other pastures full-time, and then yesterday i woke up and realised that my house was so cold that even the houseplants were dying from hyperthermia...not good really.
felt really blue on thursday though. had taken the day off to catch up with a hundred and one things i keep putting on the proverbial back burner and so decided to bite the bullet and take epix of your gold necklace to send to Christie's. Felt sad and guilty...sad at losing something of yours and guilty because i hadn't made a similiar gesture for Doiney's 21st. i think you would be okay about me selling it, i hope so. it's the only way i can acquire enough money to give Gee a decent cheque for his birthday, an ammount that might help him forge a new path. i've tried to sell Mirage but without success, which is why D. didn't have a big cheque in her card. maybe for her 25th. No way that i can talk about this with the one and only of course, he simply would neither understand nor approve...approve of my gesture that is. makes me feel very alone. alone, not lonely.makes me realise how lonely you must have felt after Ron died. how deep the abyss must have yawned at times. this is all too sad. time for sleep.

Through a glass darkly...

i saw you yesterday. It was a lovely frosty winter morning with the sun shining and so much ice on the inside of my windows that they were no longer transparent. i was out in the Glen with the dogs and when i looked accross the gulley there you were. it wasn't YOU of course (i don't think!) but it looked like you in the distance, and the jack russell with you had a coat on, as your would have done, because of the cold..mine were all exposed to the elements, purist that i am. so i thought of you, and how much i miss you, and wish all too often that you were here to share all the hundreds of moments that would make us laugh, or smile, or even cry, together. and then i looked accross again, and you were gone. inside no doubt to a hot cup of tea...you never were one for the cold. or too much tea come to that. how you hated what you called the English habit of surviving on tea and toast instead of cooking a proper meal. mothers-in-law and irritation i guess, built up over time, all the minor hurts, the one lasting injury...i can remember Nana once telling me that i would never understand how deeply she missed her mother until i lost my own...kind, that, but true as it turns out. so careless of me, to lose both my parents before i was forty! "only the good die young".
Went to see Hugh's grave yesterday, all eighty-six years of him, i was in Tintagel with a client. The conversation turned to chivalry and men in armour and Prince Charming riding into one's life on a white charger. My client told me that she figured that being safe in prison with a bed and three meals was worth getting raped for...i should have known i was screwed when Hugh didn't know how to ride.

...but for the grace of God

Life is full of irony, some more tragic than others...what was it my professor said? That the difference between tragic and tragedy was inevitability? And which way round is that? i spoke to Dee this evening. She told me that my fifteen year old godson was now totally off the rails, a habitual meths user and generally an anti-social nightmare. Last week he spent the night in prison because neither his father (who fought tooth and claw for residential custody) nor his mother (who finally gave in to the father's bombardment) could bear the thought of having him at home. Mother and father do not, typically in this day and age, live together. The irony struck me that that my godson actually typified the many youngsters that i now work with..in fact, there is a slim possibility that he may turn up as one of my case files at some point. And then i thought how close Gee has been to ending up in the same position, and about all the many infintesimal small differences that go into creating a different result, and about how lucky i am, and how blessed. it niggles at my conscience of course, because he is my godson, and i feel that i should have tipped the scales somehow, made a difference, rebalanced the deficits somehow or other. So i scurry now, desparate to pull him back from the brink, slip into my professional role and suggest websites, promise to track down contact numbers, offer a sympathetic ear, give well tried advice...it's going to get much worse before it gets better i tell her, as if any mother wants to hear that, and i think again to myself how frightened i feel, how terrifyingly close it all is to my own family, my own range of possibilities. So i scurry, increasing the pace, hoping that i can stop the rising crescendo of anger and frustration and betrayal that i know will loom on my godson's horizon every day...that looms on the horizon of every young person's horizon, should they choose to turn their heads and gaze that way.

Never on a Sunday

..one of those special moments. You know, the ones that people tell you will stay with you for all the years ahead logged into your memory..only they don't of course, not once the alzheimers or the dementia sets in...so better hang onto them tightly for now...well, it was one of those. i was sitting on Gee's sofa, wrapped up on my dressing gown because it was so bloody cold in the house...ran out of oil two weeks ago and still can't afford to order any more...looking around at the detritus that seems to be mandatory for young men in this day and age, and listening to him playing the guitar: an acoustic that my best male friend had lent him the evening before. Gee was sitting in bed strumming away and really enjoying the search for those Bob Dylan chords and making quite a pleasant sound in the process. And i was THERE, actually being welcomed into his bedroom, holy of holies, or maybe unholies, although i don't think Christ would really have minded a bit of adolescent (is twenty too old for adolescent?) angst and untidiness if the spirit was true, and Gee's is, true and straight as a die, which can cause a few conflicts in this era of broken promises and dwindling integrity. still, we like challenges, runs in the family, and at least he can cook! Iron too, which is just as well since i don't. Iron that is, i do cook. i sat there listening and watching, breathing in the sense of belonging and peace like an athlete breathes in the early morning freshness before trying to burst his lungs doing the two minute mile. My mile would start soon enough, even if it was a Sunday, but for just those few frozen moments my son was mine.