Romeo & Juliet at the Royal Opera House

Highly recommended, if a little clompy in places.

Birthday

Well here I am again, one year older and wondering wistfully what the 29th year of my life will feel like. Someone asked me the other day, 'If you could be any age again, what age would you want to be?' Without hesitation I replied, 'The age I am now.' I'm glad. I have some regrets, but I wouldn't want to go back, no way. The future is where we're heading and I want to be living now.

A new kind of life

A new kind of life, no more 9 to 5, no more endless checking of email, plane journeys across skies and time zones, my life flat-packed into a suitcase on wheels. Just me, in England, with a laptop and some words to play with each week. I eat better, sleep better. I think I am better, company I mean. The stress has gone and though I lie awake wondering where it's all heading, in the here and now I'm happy, the happiest I've been in years.

Ni hao

Every week I sit in a small hot room with an ever-decreasing group of other students. We make an eclectic mix, yet there's a subtle affinity, a tied-togetherness. A sixty-something woman helps a young girl, whispering encouragement through the cloud of fear. We're learning Mandarin, each new sound an assault to our eyes and ears. We stare through pages of twisted black strokes, unfamiliar grammar, logical nonsense. My mouth turns and spits shh zuuu faaa sheng, with little idea what it's saying.... The room gets hotter. I'm uncomfortable and check the clock. An hour left. Sigh. Then out of the blue, there's a sentence on the board that I can read... each little drawing - the lady with the crane, the house with the jade inside, the one that looks like a lily, and I understand. It's like gold dust falling abundantly from the sky, unannounced and gorgeous. I want to jump up and shout 'I get it! I get it!' But, fortunately for everyone else, I restrain.

My eureka moment doesn't last, next week I'll be back to incomprehension and frantic checking of vocabulary behind lao shu's back.

Grateful Friday

On a crisp autumn Friday with a nip in the cooling air, I pull my collar around my neck and am grateful for:

1. Crunchy leaves of yellow and orange and a pink-ish colour en route to the tube.

2. The thought of Christmas. I love Christmas! Darkness with twinkly lights and a stiff breeze... a gingerbread latte in a red cup from Starbucks, mince pies, and maybe, just maybe, some homemade chutney.

3. The age I am now. Someone asked me which age I would be if I could go back to any age so far. I answered straight away, 'The age I am now'. That can only be a good thing.

4. Ni jiao shen ma ming zi? Or in other words, 'What's your name?' in Mandarin. I've started learning and while it's insanely difficult and tedious and I can't say half the sounds, there's the occasional triumph when I actually learn something.

5. Lots of theatre and art to look forward to. Au Revoir Parapluie at Saddler's Wells, Jewels at the Royal Opera House and hopefully, if I pray really hard, The Masque of the Red Death in a warehouse in Wapping. Just lush.

Damp Soup

We sit, side by side on pale wooden benches facing a window. Soft rain is pouring down the glass, loosening grey dust and forming it into ugly streaks. My eye fixes on a grey droplet and I watch as it falls slowly, blown by a sporadic wind, to the ground. You have your arm around me, and the dampness from your coat is seeping into my jumper. I ask you to take it off. You acquiesce. A waiter brings two steaming bowls of ramen noodles to the table, and we start to eat. You begin with the soup, I with the noodles. You would never agree with me on that one.

We’re silent, damp and silent. I think of my mother, how she dislikes noodles, forcing us to cook rice for her in a separate pan. I’m alone with my thoughts when you begin to speak. I don’t catch the first few words, so faint is your voice through the clatter of the noodle shop. Turning to face you I see you are agitated. Your cheeks are red and your won’t make eye contact. ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘Nothing, don’t worry. I mean, it’s nothing major, but I’ve decided to take the scholarship. I know we’d agreed but I can’t deny what a good opportunity it is for me. I might never be able to do this again in my whole life…’ You trail off. I look down into my bowl and the greasy film on top of the soup turns my stomach. Something in your tone tells me that this is non-negotiable, your mind is made up. I pick up my bag from under the table, hurriedly throw my coat on my shoulder and leave. Stepping out onto the street I walk decisively without destination, aiming to lose myself in the mess of umbrellas and rain coats. I walk four blocks before I allow myself to cry. In a doorway, without restraint, the tears fall, soft rain.

Barcelona in the autumn half-light

Poached

Gingerly I step into a deep white bath while an eager-faced woman looks on. I'm not prudish, and by the looks of things neither is she. In broken Spanish I agree with her questions and, she carefully adds a cup of yellowy oil to the warm water. A few seconds later she's gone, replaced by a ferocious noise as a tumult of bubbles crack the surface of the bath. I lie there, trying to aclimatize myself to the strangeness of being poached, like a big pink salmon in a fish kettle. I'd like to say I enjoyed it, but I didn't. I tried to, really, but all I could muster was a resigned indifference and some very pink skin. Man was I glad when my Spanish friend returned.

'Te gusta?'
'Claro que si!'

I'm such a good liar in a foreign language.

Cherries

As I stood next to the bin
eating cherries and spitting
the stones in, some missed
staining the floor with a
streak of crimson.

As I first met you that time
in the theatre bar and clasping
the cast list the ink
stained my fingers with a
stubborn blackness.

still

Sometimes I live through these times of heightened reality, no other way to explain it. I'll smell or see or feel something and it doesn't just remind me of the past, but actually take me there. Today I saw a guy carrying a hockey stick and I was 12 again chasing a ball around a wet field. I could feel myself trying so hard to be quick, skilled, running hard and then the disappointment that I wasn't ever going to compete with the sporty girls. Then I ate sausages and mash for lunch (it's winter already here, all grey and cold and wispy), and the mash was heavy and thick like the one my granny makes, and I was back in her kitchen with the red and blue striped tea towels and the upside down fish screwed the wrong-way-up on the wall, and her soft tone droning over the washing up as I ate silently. Then I take the tube from Oxford Circus to South Ken, and on the way I decide to stand still on the escalator instead of walking, just to watch the kind of people who stand. To my surprise they aren't all old or fat, or carrying heavy shopping. They're just not bothered about rushing like me. I'm humbled. Then a line from The End of the Affair pops into my head... the scene where Bendrix and Sarah meet after several years, in the restaurant on Piccadilly. Sarah's late and Bendrix asks her why... 'The tube would have been quicker' he says. 'I didn't want to be quick.'

So much emotion, so much more said in those six words than in their whole stilted conversation that follows.

(dis)Affection

I think we missed each other, years back now I come to think of it. Distracted, life got busy and time threw distance between us. Moments of incomprehension, misunderstanding, let go for politeness now clogging up the space our life used to inhabit. It's like you can't see me... I think of waving, like a window cleaner, sure the face I'd see would be vacant, looking over my shoulder. We could be anyone to each other, save a few shared memories thrown into a heap at the back of a wardrobe, we could be anyone to each other.

--

In the half-light, stretched out on an apple green coverlet, I think of you. Far away, miles our enemy, your memory like a ghost. I imagine your thick toes poking out from an unfamiliar blanket and the way your right hand twitches in those precious moments before waking. I wonder what time it is for you, and where you'll lay your twitching hand tonight. The light is snapped off and I throw my life upon these thoughts of you, hope in the darkness and a vision of you coming on the winds of sleep.

--

"There are always perfect times with the people we love, moments of joy and equality that sustain us later on."

Ann Pratchet, Run, (Bloomsbury, 2007).

Reflection

That night her reflection taunted her in the gilt-framed mirror. Far from home, a case of unfamiliarity breeding contempt. Her thoughts patchy, unsettled as the night. The face staring back was enrobed not in beauty, but indifference - the worst kind of ugliness.

ants

Sometimes, when she's stressed, she has this dream in which she's being eaten alive slowly by a myriad of ants, black and shiny with small teeth. They devour her feet and their way up hot calves, chomping muscle, cartilage and sinew until the bones remain, grey and smooth. She almost always wakes up once they get to her thighs, some things are too awful to imagine, even in dreams.

Last night was an ant night. She woke, some time before dawn when the first light pokes itself gingerly through the slats on the blind. Scratching her hot legs, eczema devouring those first precious moments before waking. At once, she's distracted, the day creeps in and the night is gone, and he ants with it.

Nine Dragons (again)

Though mountains surround me,
Clear lakes and skies of azure,
Stillness, stasis in darkness,
My favourite sight - tress, black
Against the sky, I can't feel
At home here. It's my homeland,
My country, that I know, but
My heart looks East and no
Matter how hard I try I can't
Help but search for nine dragons
Siloutted, black against the sky.

Po-faced cheeks

Inside the hushed darkness of the gingerbread shop, there were two po-faced ladies, trussed up in blue ticking, white lace bonnets crowning their scorn. It got me thinking... if you're grumpy, why work in a gingerbread shop? Surely happiness and tea and thoughts of houses enrobed in icing and dolly mixture should prevail therein?

Leaving

I pulled a familiar dress over my head, and waited for the rushing in my ears to subside. I sat on the edge of my bed and thought for a moment. My head hurt. Two clamps around my ears, a dagger through the back of my cranium. I can do it, I said to myself. Go in, you have to. It's the end, and the end is always important. I did a Myers Briggs once and I'm a completer-finisher. I like to tie gifts in grosgrain ribbon. So, I slowly and diligently clasped my oyster card in one hand and walked decidedly to the tube, each step accentuating the swoosh of blood through my head. I made it, opened the door to the office, and sat at my desk for the last time. Inanimate objects took on a sentimental touch, I found myself putting old mugs, a greasy mouse mat and a badly-written book into a bag. At 2pm I tried to leave, laughter had left the building and I was alone. In the ladies touching up faded blusher I felt a sadness, a low kind of regret, and I returned to sit at the desk for another few minutes. Just me and some memories, now fading, now not mine, and I cried. I'm ashamed to say, I cried, with no one watching but God.

Untitled

Each week I pay a not-insignificant-sum to a man in a white shirt, who sits perpetually in a white room. A small low chair, a blue screen and a bed with two pillows. I stand with my back to him and his eyes stroke my neck, looking for change - am I crooked? Still? Stiff? For an hour I let him touch me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders, squeezing gently, pushing below each shoulder blade, holding my head in both hands firmly. Each time I leave and I try to work out if I feel better. I do! is the usual conclusion... But today, as I wake with a stiffness in my neck and a feeling of strangeness I wonder why I keep on keeping on with him... I don't like the reason, it doesn't seem right... I go because I like being touched. I feel safe there, I feel free, valued.

Sick

I reckon I've spent more time being ill this year than the last three years put together. Bronchitis, migraines, stomach bugs... most were exotic, picked up alongside souvenirs and unfamiliar food in countries far from home. Germs blowing decidedly through aircraft air flow. All this sickness has been a disability. I've fought it, ignored a cough for weeks until the stuff coming up is red and thick and I drag my aching lungs down to the hospital, where a guy my age guffaws in shock and doles out high-strength drugs. Surely this can't go on? The rest of the year will surely stretch out like a white sheet of health... vitamin-enriched, mineral-full, health-surrounded?