What I meant to write about

It’s Sunday and it’s absolutely pissing it. There’s even the occasional rumble of thunder, which makes me feel justified that I didn’t bother to get out of my jim jams today. Nope, that is crazy rain, just had to go and look at it again. The last time it rained like that the metro flooded and so did my workplace! Oooh! But no, the metro flooded. I got drenched not quite leaping over a gushing river of backed up sewage and I then sat through three hours of a Syndic meeting in wet clothes. It was a bizarre event where six of us turned up and we each represented three other people in our building. We spent about an hour discussing the insurance policy of our building, another hour discussing some other crap and then another hour discussing who owned the blinds and who owned the iron awning and what colour it was all going to be painted this spring and what about pastel green and white. I vaguely remember there was a point during this meeting where if I had had a gun I would have blown my brains out. And then when we stepped out of the meeting my sandals squelched with every step but the sky was blue and the streets smelt damp but had dried in the blazing heat and there was the sound of sirens all over the city as the Pompier rushed around pumping water from Paris’s many tunnels and catacombs and caves. I think we squelched over to Republique then to joyfully send some friends off to Mexico, but instead ended up trapped by the mad lonely Austrian woman whose summary of her year began with her holiday in Egypt where she broke her ankle. There was no good news in her life and seeing as I haven’t exactly been over brimming with good news since I haven’t bothered to get in touch with her.

What I meant to write about was writing, but I seem to have wandered onto another path; friendship. I’m not very good at keeping in touch with people, which is a bit crap seeing as the people who care about me the most are mostly across the channel. This life of wandering is a little solitary, and even if I haven’t wandered in the last six years others have wandered away from me. It’s probably easier now to keep in touch with people than ever before; e mail, instant messaging, phones, text messaging, letters, visits even. But still I shut myself away for hours with my computer and don’t see people. (Ah, now I seem to be getting back to writing). Yep, I need those empty hours so that the words come into my head, so that the characters come back. I spent last night wondering whether I could be arsed to do this re-write, was it worth writing? Whether it is or not it’s still in my head. I wrote another beginning today. So now I’ve got a new beginning, a couple of middles and a scribbled down ending somewhere. And when is it going to come together? Blurgh. It’s all a bit intangible at the moment as if I’m groping in jelly to get something out. I prefer it when it rains down onto the page like the precipitation outside my window.

I’m also pissed off that someone stole my story. It wasn’t a written down story, it wasn’t plagiarised, it was just something really funny that happened to me. I was about to tell Lise yesterday and she told me that she had already heard. “What!” I exclaimed. “How?”

“As a friend,” Lise began seriously. “I think I should tell you that Peter was gossiping about it in the bar after work. But Claire made him shut up, she stood up for you.”

Later on as we were having lunch Lise asked me about the story again. “Well, it’s not funny anymore, you’ve heard it, and he got all the details wrong.” I replied sulkily.

I’m wondering whether to mention it to him tomorrow. But how do I get across to Peter that he can gossip all he likes, but if I’m telling a story, it’s mine all mine. Am I being picky? After all isn’t this really the oral tradition of storytelling? But I would have done it better. I would have made people laugh instead of cringe. Maybe that’s the difference; his story was mean spirited and plagued on people’s fears of loneliness, whereas mine was a tale of mistaken identity, cows and misunderstandings. He’s still a bastard though!