Spectacles

Glasses, spectacles, specs call them what you will. I've been wearing them since I was 1 1/2 years old. But, we haven't always had the most positive of relationships.

It all began at the bottom of the garden. That was my favourite place to bury them when I was a tot. Seemed like the sensible thing to do. Dig a little hole, plop in my glasses, claim complete ignorance and watch mum go ballistic at yet another pair going missing.

I got a little older and started to play games with what it would be like to see or not to see. In a moment of great childhood wisom, I decided one day, that I could take my glasses off, close my eyes, and navigate my way to my friends house. I was going to be clever enough to negotiate my way down hills and stairs, between buildings and across two roads ( ok! I did intend on having a peek when crossing the roads).
I was doing remarkably well. I had gotten myself down one flight of stairs and along to the end of one row of houses before I smacked my face into a lampost and burst my nose wide open. Lesson learned. Keep the glasses on the face with the eyes wide open.

And so I got a little older. Just into my teens, and a little bolder, I was going to make a statement. I couldn't avoid having to wear them so why not? Thank God my mother managed to talk me out of the pair that I was determined to have. Blue, trimmed in white with the word 'cool' written across the top of the lenses. I was persuaded to opt for a tamer pillar box red pair. I was the bees. Even when they broke, I invented ways of keeping those glasses together. Sewing the legs back on with red thread when they fell off. Red duct tape to hold them together, goodness that stuff is fantastic.

There was also a phase in my mid teens when vanity kicked in and I decided I didn't need to wear them at all. OH, come on we all go through it. And into adulthood. I got sedate and I got boring, but this is not where the story ends uh uh!

The glasses perched on my nose right now maybe a little on the uninspired side, but the story of how I ended up with them isn't.

I was temping in a shop at the time. It was a usual boring day, few customers and not much to do. So we decided to rearrange the entire shop front. The forst incident wasn't fatal, but it was nasty. My work colleague managed somehow to impail herself in the forehead with a metal hook. With blood squooshing everywhere she was quickly rushed to A & E by my manager. That left me on my own.

At last a customer. In the middle of processing the till transaction, I did what everyone who wears glasses does, I reached up to push them up my nose. That's when they snapped completely in half. I couldn't see. I was fumbling about asking the customer to help me put the sale through the till. Eventually they left unserved.

Phone the parents I thought in a flash. Dad can come up and watch the shop and mum can help me put the sales through till my manager gets back. God love them they came running to help out there daughter in her time of need.

At last my manager returned and I left to go and get glasses form one of those do it really fast shop optician places. I was gone lesss than an hour. On returning I turned to my mum and said, " All we need now is for the shop to go on fire."

As the distance shortened and I passed shops on the way someone stuck their head out of a shop doorway and said," Did you hear? The shop went on fire!"

At The End Of The Rainbow

The rain was thundering down outside. Huge fat droplets hitting the ground as if the ground were a trampoline. It was a warm day sometime several years ago.

A yell of, " Quick you have to come and see this," had me jumping up from the computer desk and running to the bedroom. "Look out the window, look at the rainbow." It was stunning. A complete arc. The colours were vivid and it ended right at the end of our street.

The decision was made. We looked at each other, bombed out of the room and ran down the stairs to the front door. Our clothes were plastered to our bodies within half a second of leaving the house. And we ran, both of us in our bare feet, laughing and telling the other to hurry up or we might miss it..

I hit the end of the rainbow first. He yelled "Stop, you are there, I can see you. Can you see a pot of gold?"
"I can see you," I laughed. "Quick go stand at the end of the rainbow too, before it disappears."
We passed each other and almost immediately there he was. Soaking and smiling and laughing and standing at the end of the rainbow.

The Naked Cat Story.

It was a relatively warm day. Sometime mid summer. My son was about three at the time, and at that time I had a cat called Nala. Now Nala was a firece and yet loving cat, and generous to a fault. She hunted and brought home many gifts.

And so it was, on that warm day, that I discovered such a gift. Plonk bong in the middle of the livingroom carpet, there it lay. A dead bird. I was aghast, horrified. What was I to do. Dead birds and germs doesn't equate well with little children running about.

I was immediately prompted into frenzied activity. I sprinted to the kitchen and grabbed a carrier bag, ( always sensible to recycle), and rushed back to the livingroom. I picked the poor bird up with the bag and turned it inside out and tied a knot in it.

All thoughts had been driven from my mind except the overwhelming need to get the contaminant out of the house as quickly as possible. I had to protect my son at all costs. I was not to know at that time the high cost that I would have to pay.

before I knew it I was at the front door bag in hand. best place for dead thing in bag I thought, The black bin outside. I swung the door open wide and suddenly it dawned on me. I looked down. Fuck! SHit! I was completely bollock naked.

I reacted almost instantly. I ducked down and placed a hand over my lower regions and using the other door went to slam the door shut as quickly as I could. AAaargghh I let rip a scream. I had slammed the door right onto my boob.

My mind was filled with awful thoughts. Had anyone seen me? What would they think? It's not as if I have the healthiest of diets and go to the gym regularly. And then I started to laugh and for about 24 hours I couldn't stop laughing. I even laughed when my neighbour chapped my door and said that her brother had been visiting and had noticed me at the door and he was thinking of visiting on a more regular basis. I even laughed when my manager asked me if I was presenting myself and the bag to the street and giving them the option of choosing a live or a dead bird. I laughed when i phoned every member of my family and all my friends. And part of me still laughs now. Only me I swear to god. Only me.

Books in the Bathroom.

Here is the lsit of books currently housed in the bathroom, ( I like to read in the bath). All but one has been read. I'll start with that one, the rest run in no particular order:

The Story of Forgetting, Stefan Merrill Block
A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
The Last Gospel, David Gibbins
I Never Fancied Him Anyway, Claudia Carroll
The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
The Island, Victoria Hislop
The Ambler Warning, Robert Ludlum
The Woman in the Fifth, Douglas Kennedy
The Bookshop, Penelope Fitzgerald
The Book Of Answers, Carol Bolt
The Other Side Of You, Sally Vickers
The New Testament And Psalms, ( the one you used to get handed out free at school)
When Will There Be Good News, Kate Atkinson
The Brutal Art, Jesse Kellerman
The Road Not Taken And Other Poems, Robert Frost
The House At Riverton, Kate Morton
The Jesus Dynasty, James D. Tabor
The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins.

And last but by no means least...Collins Concise Dictionary & Thesaurus.

Do you think the bathroom is a strange place to house a mini library? I don't. There is little room left elsewhere for storing my books. I have downscaled tremendously, but I miss them. My books are the gateways to other worlds. My escapism. It's the ultimate experience for the curious voyeur into the minds, lives, thoughts and ideas of others.
And if I take an hour or two out in a crowded house, it's to the bathroom that I will head. Watch the bubbles multiply as the bath fills with warm water. Lock the door. Forget the stresses and strains of the mundane, of work, of being a mother, a partner, a friend, a daughter, a sister, a counsellor, a brute.

When I had my son almost 13 years ago now, my Mother gave me some words of wisdom, " No matter what, never forget you." And so sometimes , that's where I am, in the bathroom with the door locked. Don't be offended if you knock and I don't answer. I'm just being me.

Stolen Lyrics!

I was wittering away on Twitter today, following joe the publicist and his ten book give away, wondering how he is going to go about giving them away. I was listening to some music and woah, the next thing I have a starburst of an idea. Under no illusions that it only got a tad sparkley in my own wee world, regardless...the idea.....

Stolen Lyrics. Ok Ok I'm getting there. I started thinking what snippets of Lyrics would appeal to me as the title of a book that I would find my eye drawn too in Waterstones or Asda for that matter. That I would think hey! that looks good. So here's a few I came up with:

'If My Thought Dreams Could Be Seen'...Bob Dylan

'And I Will Never, Ever Grow So Old Again'.. Van Morrison

'But Not The Same'...U2

'Before The Glow of Morning'.....Barbara Dickson ( run like the wind)

'Gimme The Beat Boys'...(drift away)..like the Michael Bolton version

'Feeling Half-Past Dead'...(the weight) The Band

'Throwing Caution To The Wind I'll Run Free Too' ...(wild horses) Natasha Bedingfield

'It's A Mess, It's A Start'...(take back the city) Snow Patrol

'I'm Aware I'm Alive'...Snow Patrol again.. (chocolate)

And that is a tiny fraction, I could go on and on. I just know that for me music is very often the inspiration behind any artistic endevours. Melody anf lyric light a spark. They enthuse me. Hmmmmmm...'a magic trick makes the world disappear'.