Scared of the Dark

I’m scared of the dark;
of the darkness inside.
The rotten mass of questions,
imagined possibilities,
of scarlet liquid endings.

I’m scared of the pain;
of the pain inside.
A memory not yet erased,
a reality not imagined,
the invisible incision not healed.

(Third verse added by Skint Writer)

I'm feeling the love;
of the light inside.
The pure peace of being,
beyond sham imagination,
the true bliss of life smiles.

‘I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date. No time to say "Hello." “Goodbye.” I'm late, I'm late, I'm late.’

In Mexico it is considered rude to be on time. If someone invites you to a party at say nine o’clock and you turn up at ten past nine then you are likely to find your hosts still getting dolled up and the snacks still wrapped up in cling film in the fridge. No, when they say nine, in Mexico the etiquette is to turn up anything between an hour or three later. I mention this because as I was flicking my way through my journal today I realised that in this green edition lateness has been a running theme. I am always late. I’m late for work everyday. I try; I really do, but somewhere between 7.45 and 8.45 chunks of three-seven minutes disappear from the space time continuum. I just don’t know how it happens. I’m late to meet my friends and I’m late for planes, trains and buses. I’m late for pretty much everything. So I was beginning to wonder whether this was a problem.

In some respects I blame my parents. Well my Dad, really. When he promised that he would raise his kids Catholic, what he actually raised me was late. Every Sunday without fail we were late for ten thirty mass. Sometimes we were so spectacularly late that we arrived for the midday Polish mass – or was that when the clocks went forward and we didn’t know? But in any case that’s when I think it started.

Sometimes it has actually caused me near heart attacks. When I first arrived in Paris, a grim grey February descended upon us. I hated Paris, I had no friends and Ian was away for the weekend and I just couldn’t face being on my own. So I dialled up the internet – oh do you remember those slow days of dial up connections – and booked a really rather expensive flight to Madrid for the weekend. Ian raised a few eyebrows when he found out how much the ticket cost, but I was probably sharpening knives at the time so that was as far as that discussion got. Anyway, the fateful Friday arrived and even if there hadn’t been a train strike that day I would still have been cutting it fine. If I had paid attention to the fact that there was a SNCF strike maybe it wouldn’t have been quite so stressful though. After being told that there were no trains from Gare du Nord to Charles de Gaulle, the ticket guy must have seen the look of absolute horror on my face, mixed in with a fair amount of desperation and hastily scribbled down where and how I could alternatively get to the airport. By the time I finally made it onto a bus at Opera I had run up escalators, down escalators, dodged tourists and run round the Opera building what felt like three times in search of the bus stop. By the time I got onto the bus I was knackered, but something was nagging at my brain. I got out the old mobile phone, checked the time did the calculations and realised I was going to arrive at the airport twenty minutes before take off. What the hell could I do? I was on a bus, I couldn’t make the bus go any faster, I couldn’t teleport to CDG, all I could do was sit and sweat it out. What I actually did was call Estrella and wail down the phone to her that I thought I was going to miss the plane. Then I made a nice kindly Japanese business man go through every single sheet of carefully organised paper he had to search for a phone number for the airport. Then I just stared at him in distress and he tried to reassure me that it wouldn’t be long once we got onto the A1. “But I haven’t even picked up my tickets yet.” I wailed. At which point he developed an increased interest in his paperwork and kept discretely waving his own tickets in my direction.

On finally arriving at CDG, the relay race began; I jumped off the bus at a sprint and burst into Terminal 1. Terminal 1, I reckon is loosely based on the futuristic world of Logan’s Run, a circular pod with underground travelators that lead you to the smaller pod/gates. But first you have to do a lap round the terminal to find your tickets. As I approached the desk, the hostess shouted out to me; “Are you Miss …?” I shouted back yes, somehow pulling my passport and booking slip without slowing down, I signed and collected the tickets at a trot and then I was told to run to gate 4, over there. Her voice was already disappearing as I skidded round a corner and began a steady sprint along the travelator. As it began to rise up to the pod I was cheered on by a group of boys who were obviously not late for their plane: “Run, run, run.” They cheered. “Wankers!” I muttered wasting precious difficult to draw breath. And then there was a light at the end of the tunnel and I slammed into the Lufthansa desk, waved my ticket and rasped: “I’m late for my flight.”

“Don’t worry.” The cheery hostess smiled at me. “There’s a train strike all the flights are delayed.”

I staggered away and rested on my knees trying not to cough my lungs up and trying to regain my composure then I went back to the Lufthansa desk. “I don’t have a boarding pass.” I pointed out.

“Oh.” The smile disappeared. “You are late.” I ended up getting a first class seat.

The two previous times that I’ve gone away with Jane I’ve turned up within minutes of the train leaving. When we went to Tunisia at Easter she came to my house to pick me up. We arrived three hours early for our flight and spent four and a half hours in various queues!

I was late for one of my friend’s wedding. Well, I thought I was. “Oh,” Sue smiled endearingly at me. “We always tell you to turn up half an hour earlier than you have to because you’re always late. Had you not realised? We thought you’d cottoned on that time you found us shopping in Covent Garden.” I frowned and thought back to that time in Covent Garden where indeed on an extremely rare occasion I had been on time, no one was waiting for me so I had wandered off to the market and found Sue and Will there. What they didn’t know was that in doing a flying leap to get onto the imminently departing train i hadn’t bought a ticket; I had got fined £25.

And then this weekend: I have been late for three out of the four meet ups. I am sure that I would have got four out of four if Lise hadn’t picked me up last night. When I arrived at the Cour Carré this afternoon a cool 20 minutes late Colleen shouted over at me: “Are your ears burning from us talking about you?”

“Why are you annoyed with me?”

“No, I’m starving.” She replied. We were having a picnic and I had brought a fair amount of the food.

“But I’m always late.” I replied.

“I know.” Siobhan interjected. “I told her; why are you leaving the house so early? She’s always late.”

I sat down and smiled. In the end the people that I now call my friends here are the people who are used to my constant tardiness, who just accept it as part of me. I suppose it’s a way of sorting out the real friends from the chaff.

Mind you when I do my language exchange with Cyrille every other week I do get pissed off with her. No matter how late I am, she’s always later!

The Flypaper around the Corner

Last night as we sat around a bowl of potato wedges analysing the deep and hidden depths of X-men 3, I realised several things. The first was that I had not paid close enough attention to the very last scene in the film and had been off flapping away somewhere with Warren Worthington III’s wings. The next thing was that I was having a sense of deja heard.

“Yeah Claire says she hates Wang’s Bar, but then I asked if she wanted to go for a drink after work and she said she was going to Wang’s.”

Yep it was Wang’s bloody bar again. Now at the moment I hate this bar with a passion, but I haven’t really questioned why. Is it that bad? After all how many bars in Paris do I wander into and a glass of wine and a plate of crisps materialise before me within seconds. Wang’s two expression face then appears behind the glass – he’s either smiling or scowling- and he usually enquires about my day and then I get plastered; slowly. But let’s face reality, since Easter I’ve probably had a drink at Wang’s, what, once? Yep once. Mostly I wander past between the hours of three and four, wave at Wang through the window as he’s having his lunch and head off home or to the gym. So why do I hate that place so much?

“It’s soul destroying, I sit with all those miserable people moaning on and on about the same old dross and I just don’t want to be there. I don’t want to listen to that shit anymore, it depresses me.”

That’s a little sound bite from me. Claire had innocently asked me if I was going for a drink after work and I had lashed back with that. Well actually I had said I was going to the gym first and although that was a perfectly good answer had felt the need to add that little snippet afterwards, and that’s the short version, there was more. But on further analysis, although it is soul destroying and everything, in the end it is not strictly true.

Wang’s bar is round the corner from work and it has the ability to draw you in and get you comfortable. Wang’s round smiley face – when he is smiling that is – his ability to memorise everyone’s name and drink of choice and the seemingly never ending supply of crisps, peanuts, spicy peas and fishy smelling twisty stick things. You also get to see the reflection of the Eiffel Tower twinkling in its glass every hour, although now that daylight has increased that is less a possibility unless you get really stuck there. Oh and there’s an Italian Version of the cinema ad for ‘Last Tango in Paris’. A scene was filmed in here in the days when it wasn’t filled with pissed Anglophones, and busloads of Dutch tourists. But in the end it’s like flypaper. You come in straight from work and you begin buzzing angrily trying to extricate yourself, but slowly your resistance gets worn down and you end up resigning yourself to your fate. But that’s still not why I hate it.

The reason why I hate Wang’s Bar is because he’s stolen my friends. I can resist; Champion has now got a range of Kettle Chips that far outstrips Wang’s and a 4€ bottle of wine lasts a lot longer than a 4€ glass at Wang’s, but I want my friends back! Every now and again I can tempt them out by staring them in the eye and dangling something promising and exciting in front of them. “Comedy Club, live bands, Indian restaurants, Mexican restaurants, cinema, picnics,” I say slowly in hushed tones as if talking to a small child. And then I go and spoil it; “Another bar.”

“What do you want to go to another bar for? Wang’s is cheap.”

But it seems that I am beginning to win the souls of my friends back with the help of my other friend; sunshine. One thing Wang’s Bar hasn’t got going for it is a terrace. He’s trying, but when you’ve got the equivalent of a dual carriageway passing in front of it, it just doesn’t cut the mark.

Reading Matters

So I’m reading ‘Eldest’ by Christopher Paolini at the moment. Actually I’m also reading ‘The House at Pooh Corner’ and I’m near the end where Pooh and Christopher Robin go off together and leave everyone behind and I think it’ll make me cry and I just can’t face that bit yet. And then there’s my metro read ‘An Area of Darkness’ by V.S. Naipaul, it fits neatly into my handbag and was purchased a few weeks ago when I also thought I would be purchasing a plane ticket to India and a Lonely Planet guide to India, before my travel companion got put off by a little bit of rain. What’s the problem? V.S. Naipaul put up with the rain, Indians put up with the rain. Pffff! Oh and there’s also ‘The Salmon of Doubt’. I got a bit stuck with that around the bit where he starts getting all technical and talks more than usual about wires and gadgetry and Apple Macs. Douglas Adams did use the word ‘pootling’ though, which I thought I had invented when I was about sixteen. Seems I didn’t, seems it even has an Oxford English Dictionary definition. I don’t like the OED definition and have decided that I did invent the word, because in my head it’s more to do with ambling aimlessly in a Pooh bear sort of way.

Anyway, back to ‘Eldest’. Someone else wants to read it and I’m on page 166 and there are 668 pages in total (you do the math) and I’m beginning to wish I was reading it in French, like I did with the first tome 'Eragon'. See the thing with reading in French is that I was so lazy, I couldn’t really be bothered to look up all the words I didn’t know, but he used ‘guère’ so much that I did learn that*. One word out of a thousand pages! I also got the impression that I had read sixty different descriptions of sunsets or sunrises. Well I now realise that I must have because I’m on page 166 and I’ve read countless descriptions of valleys and mountains and plains and fields and... Basically our boy Paolini likes his descriptions. But it’s nowhere near as bad as Brian Jacques. I was once subjected to this author not once, but twice. I learnt that the way to read him was to skip all descriptions of food, ignore all the poems and songs and the book is about two thirds shorter, but still a very bad mixture of Beatrix Potter and Lord of the Rings... and shoot me down in flames but J.R.R. Tolkein was one imaginative man, but he was not a great writer of literature.

From this train of thought came a list, a list of such shining brilliance that I felt I ought to share it with the world at large: Authors I have lurrrrved (You have to say it in a Barry White/Isaac Hayes type voice to get the full effect there).

Authors I have Lurrrrved:

1. Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Best reads:
Everything I’ve read, he has an amazing ability to weave you into his world so that you do not question a thing and then his endings are so perfect that you don’t feel as if something has been taken away from you. It’s the right time for the story to end.
Worst reads:
Not that anything can be bad by my man Marquez, but ‘News of a Kidnapping’. It was a book that needed to be written, and I learnt a great deal through it, but it wasn’t fiction. (And that last sentence indicates why I am neither a book reviewer nor a published writer – sheesh!)

2. James Baldwin
Best reads:
Oh mmm, everything I’ve read. Don’t know a single thing about Jazz, but if there is a great Jazz novel, then it’s ‘Another Country’ and this man wrote it.
Worst reads:
Nope, not one I’ve read yet.

3. David Almond
Best reads:
Ooh I was going to say everything again. OK I’ll commit myself; ‘Heaven Eyes’ (although I do really love Skellig), after I had read it I realised that he was the first non Latin American author I had read who had completely captured the essence of magic-realism. Not only that, but he was a pigeon-holed as a children’s author. In his case I think adults who don’t read him are missing out, his stories are beautiful.
Worst reads:
But this is in a positive way. I recently found a book of his short stories in the library:’ Shooting Stars’ I think it’s called, I can’t remember. They all had that essence of the writer he was too become, but some of them were pretty rough around the edges. In the end I stopped reading them because it just wasn’t to the same standard as I was used to. But it keeps me writing, because I hope that one day I too can write something as magical and moving as David Almond.

4. E.M. Forster
Best reads:
Oh it’s difficult... mmm... I’m going to have to say everything again. I can’t remember any one particular book in enough detail, it’s just these impressions of people and flaws and pain.
Worst reads:
Ooh can’t do it. Why did I come up with this idea, ahh yes.

5. Salman Rushdie
Best reads:
‘Midnight’s Children’ from the first to the last sentence, this book just blows you away. I am still trying to imagine the main character’s nose, I’ve forgotten his name, but I remember his nose. And I learnt so much about Indian Independence in one chapter about mercurochrome (I think that’s what it’s called).
Worst reads:
‘The Ground Beneath her Feet’ – Oh Salman!

6. Cornelia Funke
Best reads:
Ok another difficult one, but I’m going to say ‘The Thief Lord’ because Venice was still so alive in my head when I read it and Cornelia added even more magic. And then ‘Inkheart’ just because above all it’s about her love for books, it spills out from every page.
Worst reads:
‘Dragon Rider’ not because it was bad, far from it, this woman can’t pen a bad sentence. I’m just not really into talking animals. And ‘Inkspell’ because I love fire and the magic that can be created with fire, so I’m a bit peeved. Unless you’ve read it you won’t know what I’m talking about, but if I say more I’ll ruin the book.

7. John Irving
Best reads:
‘Setting Free the Bears’. I could read it again and again and I’ll still laugh out loud and cry.
Worst reads:
‘The Fourth Hand’. Just didn’t enjoy it as much as the others.

Authors I have dallied with:
• Terry Pratchett – Loved the disc world books for a long while and then... there is only so much. Still read his kid’s books though, loved the one about the cat and ... ‘Maurice and ...’ Dear me my memory!
• Kashugo Ishiguro - Will probably read more of him, I’m really into Japanese writers at the moment.
• Virginia Woolf – Finally read Mrs Dalloway after watching ‘The Hours’ it had only been on my book shelf since I did my degree! Got ‘Orlando’ in my pile to read pile
• Margaret Atwood – I did realise that my above list was almost exclusively male. I really really like Atwood, she is extremely clever and had stolen all my science fiction ideas –either that or I am incredibly unoriginal - but I just couldn’t justify putting her up there.
• Jeanette Winterson – Read ‘The Passion’ recently, I’ve had a big break from Winterson, but I think if I read her again I would put her in my ‘lurrrve’ list.
• J.K. Rowling – I am addicted to Harry Potter’s life like millions of others, but I suspect that when I close book 7 and after the last film has come out then that’s it.

Right this list could go on FOREVER and I’ve already been at this for an hour and a half, so let’s draw to a close with a final category...

Authors whose pens, laptops, computers, pencils, crayons, anything that makes a mark should be taken away and they should have their fingers snapped:

Paulo Coelho – I know that as a jumped up wannabe that this is very contentious territory, but I can’t put a book down when I start reading it and this was the very worst waste of time EVER. I didn’t care about his characters, I went and checked up on Alchemy because his writing was so unconvincing and considering my dream was to go to the desert I just wanted everyone to drop down dead of thirst. Coelho, you made me hate the written word and I will never forgive you for that.

THE END

* It means hardly.

I’m Pissed Off

That’s right I’m pissed off again. What is it this time? Well, it was one of those days where I thought nothing could go wrong. My day of work was done and I had literary plans for the rest of the afternoon as well as the promise of a nice cup of tea. To fill the hour in between I chatted to Claire (by mistake, but it was still an enjoyable chat). Anne, Jane and I discussed the meaning of my dreams and other topics of gross importance. Then I tootled off to have another chat with Claire but ended up caught in the conversation about how a trip to Wales had changed the life of the teenager who was divulging all (I don’t think she cared, she’s leaving Paris tomorrow) and left me having to explain why you should never trust men with blue eyes – it popped out before I could stop myself – swiftly followed by my age when I announced that forty-five year old George Clooney was not too old for me. But not even that could dampen my mood. I even found it hysterical when I ambled back to rendezvous with Jim to find the two biggest gossips in the whole place reunited as I glibly said: “Right Jim I’ll go and get my stuff then.” Peter’s eyes widened and when I asked him what was the matter the invisible cat appeared to have got his tongue.

So off we tootled in a very circuitous manner to the tea room. It was a bit nippy and all, but you know I would rather walk out of my way and be sure of walking past a Tabac then get to the tea room and not have walked past a Tabac and not be able to concentrate. Even when we got to the tea room and it seemed to have upgraded to a restaurant that wasn’t open till seven, we just shrugged our shoulders and said: “C’est la vie,” and pootled round the corner to a café and had coffee instead. You see Jim wants to write a book as well. Yeah. The important bit there is ‘wants’. As much as Anne is my mentor, I can’t have these types of chats with her because Anne’s book is on my bookshelf; Anne’s published short story is on my bedside table. Anne is to be respected and revered. And Anne and I are not equal, but that is why she is my mentor and Jim is the pal I can chat about absolutely anything to and we both understand cos we’re still down there trying to jump up onto the stool and reach the keys of the laptop. Anyway we chatted and then we upgraded from coffee to Sangria and from Alma Marceau to the Champs Elysee. And then the other high point of the evening was when I was comfortable enough to say: “Had a fantastic afternoon, but I want to go home and write now.”

But hey not too soon, because after sharing something with me, I had to share something with Jim. So we tootled down to Avenue Matignon, shoulders hunched up against the rain bearing wind and there were the improbable cows. “Oh yeah, the cows. Did you know that this is the only country in the world where they’ve had to open up a cow hospital?” The words were slightly blown around and didn’t quite make a connection with my brain until I showed Jim my second favourite cow; ‘Artisticow’. I hadn’t quite seen that she had been painted up to look like a cow art folder last week in the dusk when I first met her, but now as the art folder beneath her feet was ripped to shreds I made the connection. As we dodged traffic to get to ‘Mademoiselle 100,000 volts’ I noticed that someone had been messing with her voltage, but not only that, they had swiped the tip of her horns. And my favourite - but by now I was too distressed to notice her name - someone had swiped a swathe of skin off her flank. I couldn’t quite get a sentence out I was so flustered and blustered and angry. But when I settled down in my metro seat I thought up a just punishment for such desecrators of art: two years solitary confinement in a darkened room deprived of all forms of stimulation.

What does it all mean?

As usual on a Sunday evening, my head was buzzing with the thought of twisting and turning a sorry tale into something worthy of tragi-comedy. I woke up what felt like five minutes later with the vague remnants of a dream reforming in my head. It involved a Catholic Priest, my least favourite knickers, a parked car and a therapist. Dreams are fantastic aren’t they? I mean I’m not sure that I would have mixed that particular group of ingredients together in a waking state, but I just wonder what I am preoccupied with. I can’t piece all of this one together.

I also had a vivid dream last week which invloved me being part of a gang that was robbing a grocery. There were lots of us doing the robbing, and lots of tills hidden behind the piles of fruit and veg. We filled our white bags with the hordes of cash – mostly coins I seem to recall. We piled into a white transit van with our booty and then somehow I ended up behind the wheel. Bit of a problem as I haven’t ever quite managed to pass my driving test. Well I never took it, so I don’t know if I would have not passed it. Anyway... I’m careering around the streets of a very sunny sort of lego town – it wasn’t made of Lego, but it was fairly nondescript, you know those towns built in that yellow brick with no personality whatsoever. Suddenly the van turned into a bigger van and then a double decker bus. Just as I was about to crash into a post office – I knew it was a post office as there was at least twenty postmen on a ciggie break outside watching me slightly perturbed that I may career into them. And then the bus stopped. By now only one of my accomplices were left and he suggested that we casually walk away. Which we did. Very casually. Hand in hand, but now the bus had turned into a big plastic toy bus that I had to wheel in front of me. Couldn’t work that one out either.

I’ve also had a lot of boat dreams recently. It’s always dusk and the boat is usually moored and I usually end up committing acts of violence towards the end of the dream. Not really violent, one was just a slap, another a rather vicious swipe with a cushion, but my favourite was the slamming of the head between the kitchen cabinet and its door; over and over and over again.