You're there but you're not

I used to wait for the divorce. I used to ache for it; for the day when you finally left. I reasoned then, that without you here we could finally get to know one another. The logic seemed irrational to everyone else. But they didn't see what I did; they didn't feel what I felt.

Most days that was nothing.

When my friend's parents got divorced, they went on outings to the park and the circus and all the other kinds of places that kids go to have fun; all the other clichés. They had hour long phone calls every night and enquiries of their days at school and a genuine interest in who they were as people, a concern for who they were going to be. And even though it wasn't perfect, I wanted all of that too. 

Perfection's a myth anyway.

No one understood my longing. Everyone thought we had it all. From the outside we looked the picture of happiness, whatever that is. Just like the couple along the road; the way they held hands walking up the hill and kissed each other goodbye at the front porch. They looked so happy and content and their love was one to aim for. No one knew that he would pummel fists into her flesh where none could see. No one knew that she would drink a bottle of vodka before he returned home. We never knew what went on behind their closed doors until he flung her through them, along with a suitcase of clothes; until their problems lay bleeding in the street, surrounded by shards of glass and splintered wood and clothes fluttering in the breeze with the distant wail of sirens.

Behind our doors, you were there; sitting in your chair. You always sit in the chair; the one with the groove of your backside and two elbow-sized dents in each armrest. There's an extra cut of carpet under foot because you've worn away the underneath with your shoes. Everyone else leaves theirs at the door. But not you. You stomp and tread your rebellion into every soft surface until it's harden from the repeated knocks.

It used to annoy me, watching you sit there, within my reach, engulfed by an unwavering silence of expectation. I'm still waiting for the things you'll never say and the stuff you'll never do; the moments we'll never have. At least I know where to find you. That's what they say. That's the bright side; the silver lining of this ominous lingering cloud. But there's always an unpleasantness waiting for a storm to break; a tight coil of tension unbearable and uncomfortable the longer we wait for release.

Some days I've never wished for rain so much.

But for the most part, I'm used to it now; that thick tense drought that hangs like a weight around my neck, slowing my responses and my movements and my ability to truly care. As stifling as it seems I don't think I'd know how to breathe without it. 

Not that you would know that. You should, because you're there; in your chair. You always have been. The divorce never came and you never left and we never did get to know one another.

And it still amazes me after all these years that proximity and closeness are two very different things. I always assumed that you can't have one without the other. But we are the exception, you and me. We may coexist in the same space, in the same house, we may breathe the same air, but our time-lines never meet, our paths never cross. Sometimes I might approach that line, I might waver along it but the wall is built too strong, too high. Just like some rocks aren't supposed to be moved, some walls aren't built to be broken.

So I understand. I get it; you're there. You always have been. But I still don't know how I feel about that.

The Big Fat Metaphorical Leaf

Reader, it is 2012. I can't help the twinge of disappointment; I thought we'd all be driving flying cars by now, living with androids or wearing self-lacing trainers. (Obviously I learned a lot about the future from Steven Spielberg, but that is what happens when you're born in the 1980s.)

Regardless of my shattered illusions, it's still a brand new year. There is something about this new phase on the cosmic chart that encourages us to wipe away the webs and shake out the dust. It's a yearly ritual full of hope for improvement, achievement and potential. It's a chance to start afresh, turn over a new leaf; make resolutions.

But I've never been one for resolutions. Never. I still remember the first time I learned about them during an assembly at primary school. Lines of children sitting crossed legged on the cold hard floor, we stared intently, puzzled, as our Headteacher asked us what we going to do differently that year; what did we want to change about ourselves? I was five. I didn't know myself. I only knew my love for playing  Barbie and watching Button Moon. 

Twenty-two years later, not much has changed. Barbie rests in a dust covered box in the loft and Button Moon lost its allure and magic long ago. And though I know more about myself now, making a New Year's resolution to change something makes me feel uncomfortable. It's not that I don't have things that could warrant a change; it's the fact that it only seems normal to do it at the start of the year. 

It still surprises me that an arbitrary date on the calendar can hold so much influence over the way we approach self-improvement. The strength and power to evolve is a source we carry at all times and we can tap into its supply whenever we choose. If you want to stop smoking, do it now. If you want to lose weight, don't start tomorrow. 

I think where people fail is that they see the New Year as this pinnacle thing that has the power to tackle all their bad habits and behaviours at once. But human nature is such that motivation fades and willpower falters and at some point down the line, come February or March, resolutions can (and will) be broken. After such focus and determination and hope, the failure only serves to heighten our human frailties and make us feel worse. Do we really need that feeling? 

But if we wipe away the webs and shake out the dust each day, it makes doing the task the following day a little easier to accomplish until, eventually, it becomes a habit. A good one. Filling our days and months, our whole lives, with little goals and commitments and changes, makes them easier to achieve and far more sustainable. Think of it as a new New Year's resolution, if you will: Don't make any. An amazingly novel idea, don't you think reader?

What say you? 

Happy New Year

I had high hopes for this final post of 2011. Full of insightful wit and charm; something that pushed my readers into the realm of wonder and thoughts and dreams.

But I'm going away for New Year and, consequently, I am surrounded by un-ironed clothes and mismatched shoes, tired thoughts and a mind wired in lists of things to do and to be and at this point, Hamlet always resurfaces in my memory and I am not sure if it is entirely possible to string a plausible sentence in this state.

So I shall leave you with this; this pithy thing that has played through my mind, dashing and delving between the lists and the inappropriate thoughts of Shakespearean soliloquies:

As a little bud with shallow roots

You filled me with wonder

Found in every shard of sand

Handful of dirt,

Speck of dust.

Clouds were friends

Stars were dreams

The sky was my future...

In this dawning of a shiny new year, untarnished and unwrapped, let's look at the world with childlike eyes again. Let's see its potential.

Happy New Year, dearest Readers. Here's to a good one...

Get cape. Wear cape. Fly?

I was six when my mum found me rifling through the airing cupboard in my room. We kept towels and bed linen on the slatted racks, despite the musty smell that lingered inside. Balanced precariously on my desk chair I stretched upwards, tiny hands lost within soft folds of clean laundry. The floor beneath me was littered with duvet covers, Christmas themed table clothes and doilies. I'd finally found what I was searching for - just one last stretch - when the floorboards groaned behind. 

'Louise, what do you think you're doing?'

Uh oh. Trouble. There was always a little edge to the way she said my name; an extra emphasis on the L. I spun around with a push and twist of glee. That old chair provided me with hours of room-spinning fun.

'Looking for a pillowcase.' I said, as if it was the kind of thing I did every day. It wasn't.

'Are you going to make your bed?'

Me make beds? I assumed some kind of bed fairy did that while I was at school. I explained the complexity of my problem; a pillowcase was needed to complete my very special outfit. With a glance at the carefully ironed table cloths now in disarray on the floor, mum reached above my head and pulled from one of the stacks without any dislodge. Mums really could do everything. Or maybe not.

'No, no, no!' I said, head shaking. 'I don't want a white one.'

'But brides wear white on their wedding day. Don't you want a white veil?'

I may have married off Barbie with Ken a few times (and Ken with Sindy once the divorced had been finalised) but I never wanted to be a bride. Boys were stupid. Did she not know me at all? She stared at me with an increasingly crinkled brow. 

'I need a red one for my cape. You can't fly without a cape!'

At this moment she noticed the rest of my very special outfit on my bed. A bright blue Minnie Mouse t.shirt that I had turned inside out and a pair of red cycling shorts. Beside it a hand-drawn S that I had coloured in, badly, with yellow felt-tip and cut out with kid-friendly scissors that always tore paper rather than cut it. Briefly, mum considered me and flipped through a pile of sheets beyond my grasp. She shook out one of my sister's red bedsheets. I imagined it fluttering in the wind behind me as I soared through the sky and bounced off the clouds. I snatched it from her hands.

With a roll of her eyes, she left me; my behaviour nothing new. I always had a vivid imagination. When I wasn't shouting at my dolls in my makeshift 'classroom', I was entertaining the Queen or pretending to fly on Falkor the luckdragon from The NeverEnding Story. 

My very special outfit now complete, I got dressed with a sense of accomplishment. I secured the yellow S to my chest with a couple of strips of Sellotape and sank my feet into red Wellington boots outgrown the previous winter. As my sister tied the sheet around my neck in a double knot, I was so overwhelmed by the excitement that I forgot the pinch of my toes and the skin growing raw at the backs of my heels. 

It was cold when I stepped outside. At the top of the garden steps I felt the score of goosebumps, the tug of my cape as it toyed with the wind. Hands on hips, I focused on the large tree by the end fence. That was where my mission would begin.

I dragged a rusty paint-splattered step ladder down to the grass leaving a two line trail of flattened green blades behind me. My hands scrapped the roughened tree bark as I wedged the ladder against the trunk. The trail of ants usually would have stopped me from climbing but I had my cape now; I had to finish this. I had one muddy boot on the step when my mum called from the top of the garden. She was watering potted plants. 

'Louise, what do you think you're doing?'

'Climbing the tree.' 

I pushed off from the grass and the ladder wobbled. A few trailing ants didn't survive my sudden grasp for the solid trunk and I wiped their corpses down my top. They looked like dirt. 

'Why are you climbing the tree?'

'Because birds fly from trees.' 

'You're not a bird, Louise. You can't fly.'

'I know I'm not a bird.' I continued to climb.

'Well, you're not Supergirl either.'

'I know that! I'm Superman.'

At the top of the ladder I stretched upwards to a low hanging branch but something tugged and I toppled and tumbled to the ground. Laughter tinkled from every direction and when I opened eyes my sister appeared, all five versions of her head shaking. 

'You're no Superman,' she said. 'He wouldn't have got his cape caught in the bottom of the ladder!'

Well. There was always next time.

Remember, Remember

Every year on November 5th the British skies are lit with colours and sparks, and gardens warmed by the amber glows of firelight. The ground is usually muddy wet and littered with autumnal leaves and there is always a fine mist grazing the milk of a half moon. The air is filled with the cold scent of winter approaching and the lingering dust of burning wood and smoke. It's the kind of night which makes you avoid dark alleys and abandoned streets to seek the comfort and familiarity of tradition.

We learned of the tradition at school. Pencils in hand we'd chant: 'Remember remember the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot.' There were brief mentions of a man called Guy Fawkes but any embellishments of his story were cut short by the excitement the night would bring. Colourful fireworks, explosions and sparklers were all a kid could wish for. 

When I was little we could rarely afford the fireworks but we always had a permanent supply of wood that my Dad built into a large nest at the bottom of the garden. Our friends would arrive with their own Guy Fawkes; a set of old clothes stuffed with newspaper and a plastic mask attached as the head. We'd sit him on top of the bonfire and slowly watch him crackle and flame. 

The night was meant to be a celebration of victory over a plot against our country's King but, in spite of this, I often remember feeling deflated. The slow melting of the plastic mask on the Guy, the drip and droop of his smiley face in the heat made me sad and wistful for something. The way my sparkler never lasted long enough to write my full name and the singe and spit as I threw its heated stick into a bucket of cold water. The way the fireworks died just as soon as the colour hit the black night sky. Watching the dying embers of the fire; the charred remains and soft drifts of grey smoke as if something was gone forever but never knowing what that something was. 

Our supply of wood died sometime during my early teenage years and with it, the childish excitement. The older I got the less significant this tradition became until it evolved into another November night, with only the loud bangs in the distance to serve as a reminder.

But due to my sister's recent desire to make new traditions, on Saturday I found myself dragged along to the Bonfire Night celebrations at Leeds Castle in Kent. Dressed like my younger self all those years before; coat, scarf and gloves, I trailed my Wellington boots through a field of mud, lugging a camping chair on one shoulder and a desire to be indoors on the other.

We set up our chairs beside the lake before buying bags of roasted chestnuts and cups of hot chocolate. There were thousands of people around us; some stood eating candy floss and hot dogs, others sat on picnic blankets on the grass. As the night darkened and the crowds built further, I blew steam from my cup, legs stretched ahead, waiting. I thought it would be like all the other times; pointless. 

But there was no bonfire this time. No newspaper-stuffed Guy Fawkes or melting mask, no dying sparklers. The music started and the fireworks exploded in the sky and around me kids waved flashing lightsabers that made their faces glow red and blue. For just 40 minutes everyone put their lives on pause to watch the spark and fade in the sky above, illuminating the castle behind and the water below.

And I didn't feel sad or deflated or wistful for something I didn't know. I felt the spark of something new, something long forgotten and suddenly I realised I had come full circle. I wondered why it took me twenty-six years to finally embrace what I should have done as a child; the excitement of tradition. The idea that you grasp fistfuls of these brief celebratory moments (as minor as sitting in a camping chair in the freezing cold with your family) and enjoy it while you can because, honestly, the experience is so fleeting.

And there is one thing that I'll remember now that I never did as a child; soon we can do it all over again. There is always next year. Perhaps because I'm older now, it doesn't feel like a lifetime away. 

Little Things

Two years ago my Nan was a blanket of shrivelled skin; wiry tufts of white hair spilled over the edges of starched sheets. Her eyes were the bluest I'd ever seen; as if she'd stolen all the pigment from ocean and sky. I don't remember how we came to be sitting there in hospital. All I remember was the rough grip of her hand, the feel of her bones as we connected. The watery glaze of her eyes joined with mine as she told me I was beautiful. It was the first and last time.

Sometimes it's the little things...

At 21, I was consumed by a plague of tiredness and endless tears, where the days ran into months and my mood never changed. I don't remember what led me to the kitchen at 2am, how the bottle of bleach came to be in my hands, or why I was so focused on the warning sticker above the barcode. All I remember was the guilty inner debate and the explicit realisation that I truly didn't want my life to end. The dance of hope in my chest was like the first glimpse of sun after a long cold winter. I shall never forget one thought; I wanted the chance for an afterwards.

It's the little things that give you faith...

When I was nine and it was my Granddad's birthday party, I was most excited to see my Great Uncle Tom for the first time in months. I don't remember all the fuss or why he had to leave half way through the day. I remember the stiffening of his slight frame as I hugged him, the fleeting wince of pain across his haggard face. It was the last time I saw him. I never said goodbye.

It's the little things that make you cry...

I was eight years old when I woke early that Christmas Day. At the end of my bed an old pillowcase spilled colourful presents like dominoes. I attacked them with fevered hands and widened eyes. I don't remember exactly how it happened. All I remember was thinking it strange how Father Christmas had the same wrapping paper as my mum. It was the slow dawning of that revelation throughout the day; something else I once believed in was not what I thought. I felt the loss of something I could not put a name to.

It's the little things that you regret...

Three years ago we visited Prague to celebrate my Dad's retirement. On our first day the weather clothed us like a second skin, the air was heavy but the sky was clear. I don't remember how or why we ended up drinking beer under a gazebo in Old Town Square. All I remember was the sudden torrent of rain that engulfed us and the clamour of twenty waiters holding up the gazebo with broomsticks as it threatened to fall. Soaked and shivering, I remember we were the only ones to laugh at the sudden change in weather. Sometimes, being British isn't all that bad.

It's the little things that make you smile...and thus the big things seem worthwhile.

There is no place like home

Home is where the porch door warps on a hot day and refuses to close. It's where the TV plays to ghost audiences once the living have left the room, while the cat sharpens claws on the carpeted stairs. The bottom step has felt the wrath like no other.

Here, the walls were once my canvas and diary. Beneath the scores of wallpaper lies a hidden wealth of drawings and childish ramblings; forgotten secrets only unearthed by some far away future tenant. Somewhere in the box room, the wall was kissed with pink-painted lips to see the effect of my mother's stolen lipstick. In the kitchen by the door, two sets of heights compete in efficient pencil scrawl. Eventually, mine won.

Home is where the cups and plates never match and the best china is only used on Christmas Day, much like the dining table. The rooms are always littered with forgotten activities; cups linger beside a cold kettle, the ironing board is only there to hold laundry and stub toes, and the vacuum cleaner remains at the end of the living room, plugged in waiting. It often waits for a long time.

Here, we keep useless things; rusty keys, books with lost pages and ceramic figurines with missing heads and feet, just in case. There is not just one messy drawer in this dust glazed place. They all are. The yellow papery entrails of encyclopaedia's, history books and the archive of Reader's Digest dating from 1972, spill out from bowed shelves on bookcases. And there's more upstairs.

Home is where I can trace the length and curves of the garden path with eyes closed and still feel it necessary to repeat the hundreds of cartwheels I did as a child. It's where the swing seat is always the hub for chats over cups of tea or glasses of wine as the sun sets and the breeze rises. Whilst mum bemoans the state of the neighbour's fence, we sit underneath the umbrella at the garden table enjoying barbecued meats, despite the rain trickling down our uncovered backs. 

Here, hugs are offered without question and a shoulder sought is given freely. Laughter is first on the agenda and there is always music, whether filtering through the garage wall or tinkering down the stairs. There must always be music. 

Home is where I feel free even with the doors locked and the windows closed. It's the one place where you only ever know its scent once you leave and just the reminder of it makes you long for its comfort with a smile. 

Restless

It's 3.30am. The heat of the previous day has yet to fade and I am restless hot and sweat. In the dim yellow light of my bedside lamp, the artex pattern on the ceiling mocks me. One swirl has joined with another to form what looks like a boot. It jumps out to strike against my head. A dull thud settles at my temple. 

The light flickers to distract. I put my hand up to the bulb, so close that my hand glows red. My fingers; they're almost see-through, as much as skin can be, except for the threads of blue veins. I feel the heat - the slow burn of flesh - and yet, I can't snatch my hand away. I am compelled to leave it there a while,  watch it glow. I feel like E.T.

The sheet, which I tucked in tightly at the end of the bed, suddenly feels like lead. Within the coffin confinement I wonder how it would feel to be buried alive. I imagine the earth, chalky thick and brown, crumbling as it tumbles around me, clogging my eyes, sapping me of air as it fills my throat. I inhale deeply to make sure I can still breathe. I watch the rise and fall, rise and fall of my chest. I think of my veins knitted through my fingers, the job they do. It's all okay. I am alive. 

My legs are heavy with unease and fight with the sheet above. Air licks my feet and toes wriggle with delight in their freedom. My body has a fidget fit and for what seems like an age, I turn and turn and tangle within the sheets. The pillow is not a friend and I punch it with fists until a stream of white feathers graze the air in a soft dance. For a while, all is still. 

But then, the door moves within its latch - a slight hitch back and forth sounds as loud as thunder in the morning silence. There must be a breeze, though surely it's a sinister kind never to grace my flushed skin. I throw my leg over the edge of the bed. It's there all of three seconds before the creep creep of unease; the loss of protection, the feeling that something will snatch and bite and I'd be legless and not in a good way. It doesn't matter how old you are; deep down, a person will always wonder what exists beneath their bed.

I curl into myself with the knowledge that insanity is a real possibility. 

A Letter to Time

Dear Time,

I've got your number. The devious tricks you play.

When you're not around I feel like an addict, crawling the floor, walls, in desperation; frustrations tearing at skin, the fear a rapid scrape against my chest. When will he be back? I wonder. I just need you for a little longer, an hour will do.

But you never come.

There are moments when you languish on hands, of clock and human, a slow decay of seconds and minutes, of possibilities. Moments which consume to drown me in awareness. In these, I hate you. I do not like the awareness of time; the tick tock sound of a clock. It's an unyielding reminder, a warning, of life slipping past. At once, I am filled with guilt, regret, for all the things I could be doing, all the things I should have done when I had the chance; when we had the chance.

But I never did.

And it annoys me, time. They speak of you as some magical creature with the ability to eradicate all the bad memories, the unwanted details. As if you are a giant eraser that we may use to clear our page, to wipe clean our slate. But no matter how many times one starts over, we can still see the faint outline of what used to be. No matter how clear it looks to the outside eye, we know it's there. 

They say you are a great healer. That as you pass, the wound mends. But everyone forgets that all wounds, however small, leave a scar. Red and raised, though it may fade, it is always there. No one ever says anything about that.

Some days you seem like an instrument of torture; an endless stretch of suffering. And then there are those days when I reflect on all those moments you afforded over the years; the shared smiles, birthdays, weddings, graduations, parties and friends. The minutes spent watching the sun rise over the Grand Canyon and the catch of my breath that followed, the seconds before my first kiss when I forgot that everyone else existed. They are an accumulation of wondrous, unforgettable things that only you could provide.

I've had enough of you and yet, somehow, I will never have enough. 

Forever Yours,

Lou 

The Family Tree

Roots gnarled, pokes sharp
through black soil.
Trunk slants to one side
in a weary lean of surrender.
The branches,
they don't sit so well;
through moonlight their shadows crawl
up my wall in a crooked twist
and weave; so close,
and yet the distance
of sticks and stems
is a whispered breath,
a wandered mile.

Bark weathered, chipped,
its face of worn whorls, crack
like the desert floor.
I set them free,
these handfuls of dust,
through limp fingers
and the storm carries them away, far,
in a frightful gust of wind.
My eyes sting.
Splinters of past wound me
and I bleed my Grandmother's tears
and the hundred years
of growth rots
at garden's end.

We cut it down;
the rotten tree.
Branches burn to ash,
twig to dust.
By the warmth we wait,
the white singe
of smoke drifts away.
We do not stoke the embers.
We watch them glow orange red,
a slow fade to black
on dying breath.

Early Birds

This morning, I woke early. The birds were deep in conversation, perched on the leafless tree outside my bedroom window. The sky gently roared with a far-off flight.

It was the kind of early which I usually observe as being late. With insomnia, if I'm lucky, I rarely get to sleep before 5am. This morning I found myself surprised, confused, to be waking up the other side of it and without prompting, no less. It felt as if I'd opened someone else's mail without reading the name first. It's all too easily done, absent-mindedly, but once you realise, it feels a bit wrong.

The distant sun, hiding beneath the horizon, washed the sky with lilacs. There was an eerie stillness in that explicit moment - strange and serene - the realisation that no one in the houses around you could possibly be awake. And if they were awake, were they too padding around the kitchen floor barefoot, treading lightly on learned floorboards that did not creak, wishing the sound of the kettle boiling did not seem so loud?

Curtains open, the room flooded with a pastel light. The day was young and the air fresh to my stale lungs. I'd never seen so much potential in a cloudless sky, or a sun that broke orange through the trees at garden's end. I felt boundless and sprightly, as if my feet had springs.

As strange as it sounds, I was handed a gift. Of time. Though I lost more hours through sleep, they were given back. Hours usually spent bemoaning my lack of sleep - my grumpiness, the bruise-like tinge under my blood-shot eyes - these hours have been returned. The mindless thoughts are gone and in their place is the freedom to think as I please. I almost don't quite know what to do with myself. My limbs are alien and these can't possibly be my hands.

And so, as I embark on a day filled with possibilities, with a mind sharp and clear for the first time in months, I wonder. To go to bed as the sky turns black, sleep the night through and wake before the sun; is this what it feels like to be normal?

I wonder...

Confession

Reader, a whirlwind caught and carried me away. A burst of creative energy assailed me and I could not, would not, fight it. But then, who would?

For those new to my blog, eighteen months ago I started writing a novel. It began as a piece to pass the time. A pithy little thing, five pages long. And yet, some days later, it was ten pages. And some time after that, it was twenty. My character had not finished telling her story and so I listened to her pleas. What started as a short story soon evolved into something far more complex. The Novel.

I'd always wanted to write a book. I'd read a lot of them, which helped. Liked the feel of words as they played and slipped from my mind. A blank white page never scared me. It tempted, with possibilities and promises. What could I do with it? Who knew? I'd certainly have fun finding out.

Other people recognised my eagerness to write. In my Year 6 leaving book that I got from primary school, aged eleven, an old teacher had written: 'Be sure to send me the first copy of your book.' Over the years, every so often, my Granddad would ask me: 'So, when are you going to write this book of yours?'

It's been a struggle. There have been days when I could not bear to look at it, think or dream. I've grappled with distrust; of my own imagination and my possible talent. At times I've loved it so much I envisioned marrying it, settling down and having kids. I'd stroke the pages on the screen like it was my precious. Other times I've hated it so much I'd print the whole thing just to rip it up and throw it in the garden, praying for rain to wash it away, from print and from memory. And then I felt bad for wasting a tree.

But through all that, the days of love and hate, the weeks of missing motivation, the months when inspiration left me in the lowly pit of despair, somehow, it has happened. I have finished. I have written a novel. I am full of accomplished glee, like I've reached the top of a mountain and my lungs are full of the freshest air. I'm just like Maria in The Sound of Music, without all the singing.

But now, dearest reader, comes the hard part: the dreaded edit. My lungs are suddenly empty, I've tripped, tumbled down the mountain side and I've hurt my head.

What. Have. I. Done?

Strangerhood

As a child, my street was peppered with children on bikes and roller skates, discarded skipping ropes and goalposts made from hub caps. The road was empty but for a handful of cars: the perfect playground. From the playing children, parents became friendly too. Neighbours borrowed garden tools, helped in fixing cars and deliberated world events on the front step.

Twenty years later things have changed. Despite the recent influx of new families to the street, no children play outside. Bikes are a distant memory and roller skates a forgotten invention. At the end of the street, where cars do three-point turns, a football, deflated, peeps through grass as high as kneecaps. The gesture of a wave or smile elicits a response of wriggling discomfort. We live in a strangerhood of people who come and go; eyes glazed with disinterest, focused only on themselves.

Over Christmas, one telling incident occurred. We awoke one morning, 3am, to a woman running hysterically up and down our road. Within minutes her screams woke every house. Unable to ignore anyone in distress, least of all a visibly frightened woman, we went outside to investigate. Asking one of our neighbours what was going on, his only reply was, 'Yeah, my girlfriend's drunk, what's it to you? You're only my neighbour.' He was right, of course; we are only neighbours. But not long ago, that actually meant something. It's a terrible shame to see the descent; to have grown up in a street once so sociable, now devoid of any neighbourly concern.

Today, society is insular. People have closed their minds, and doors, to the prospect of having a relationship with their neighbours. Community spirit is just that; an essence of something that once was.

Why has this happened? Community spirit was once an integral part of our nation's identity. During the Second World War, Britain was known for its street parties; a social gathering of neighbours under a canopy of coloured flags. Tables and chairs of different height and style would line the street and everyone came together. Drinking tea from an assortment of china cups, people joked, children danced and friendships were built - as war raged on around them.

In terms of human relationships, little has changed. But the outside world has altered drastically. With the advancement of technology, children now play indoors; essentially removing the basis for all neighbourhood networks. If the children do not interact, there is no reason for their parents to either. The impact of terrorism and an increase in anti-social behaviour has also weakened local neighbourhoods. People are wary and distrustful of strangers and so we isolate ourselves to feel safe. Combined with the growth in online social networking, there is little wonder why we have seen a steady decline in community spirit.

But think of what we are missing. A step away from our front door there is a wealth of potential on offer. Support, camaraderie and common ground. Friendship. What better reasons are there to go outside and make the effort? Share more than just a party wall and a garden fence.

Reader, what say you?

The Bright Side

At school I was once chastised by a 'friend' for being too positive. Yes. Me. 'You always see the good in everything. It's so annoying.' Was it? Well, mum had taught me to 'count my blessings' and 'smile when the going got tough.' Clichés featured heavily.

Still, seeing the good in people, life, in the world: what was wrong with that? In response I was nonchalant; a shrug of shoulders and the straightening of my school tie. But underneath my air of indifference, I ached. That one remark carved itself on me like an unwanted scar.

Unnerved, I thought about it for days. Sure, I saw the good in things. Championed happy endings. Appreciated silver linings. Tread in dog poo and I'd thank the stars I was wearing shoes.

Whenever something bad was said, I'd defend. In my eyes, there was a reason why that boy was so angry that he threw chairs across the classroom, or why that girl's uniform was never clean. I may not have know what it was but there was always a bigger picture. There was always a beginning - and middle - to everyone's story.

And yes, I had a penchant for smiling at strangers; the old lady at the bus stop, the pram-pushing mother on the street. Even if my smile could not elicit one in return, it did not matter. They were in a hurry; they weren't in the mood; it was a grey area. Understood.

Even so, I didn't think these things were noticeably a nuisance. But yesterday, as I voiced my anger on the news, mum sighed: 'You should look on the bright side a bit more often.' I wasn't sure how one could 'look on the bright side' of someone doing only two years for murder, but at that moment the point was shelved. Like the new pain of an old injury, memory stirred.

Looking back, to that moment outside the food hall, I understand. Confronted by peers, my thirteen year old self was afraid. Defend the foundations of my personality? As if: courage was just a word in the dictionary. My 'annoying' optimism was wrong in the eyes of my so-called friend. And so my ability to believe in the unbelievable, to treat people as I found them, was bludgeoned out of me with one cruel and unnecessary remark.

Well, I certainly thought so at the time. As a result, through choice or circumstance, I allowed it to change me. Like a guilty secret, I hid that side of me for so long it started to fade. But it never disappeared. It was always underneath the surface.

Life often makes it hard to be optimistic. Repeated knocks and obstacles only serve to dampen the spirit and lose faith. Black and white, ignore the grey. It feels easier to accept defeat and wallow in the gloom. I've done that. We all do. It's the norm. But sometimes it doesn't hurt to take a walk on the bright side. In fact, it feels quite good...

And so it goes...

I celebrated the New Year with family and friends in Wales. We stood outside holding glasses of pink champagne and watched the fireworks, faces lit with flashes of green, red and blue. We played with sparklers, spelling our names with the fading yellow light. The sky was filled with Chinese lanterns. Hundreds of glowing wishes soaring against a sky made of ink.

Auld Lang Syne played in the background, filtering from a neighbour's TV. There were hugs and kisses, toothy smiles and eyes that twinkled more than usual. Strangers, wearing silly flashing hats, passed us with a jovial wave and clink of near-empty bottles.

Minutes we were suspended, trapped in a time where nothing mattered. Woes and worries, fears and frustrations; forgotten. It was like they slipped into a place, a mere crevice, beyond recognition, beyond memory. But only for a little while. Only while the fireworks still had gunpowder and the streamers still popped and the champagne still fizzed in flute glasses.

But then the cold came. Clawing and biting at our reddened cheeks and ears, pulling at the memories, the past, logic. As the rest stamped muddied feet before going inside, I stood on the driveway amidst the carnage of those suspended minutes. Feet surrounded by the shards of scorched sparklers and a jumble of pink and purple streamers; a champagne cork and an empty bottle.

The sky was dark and still, starless. It hit me like a thwack against my wind-cold cheek; 2010 was really over. There would be no possibility of un-doing, no should-have would-have could-have's. There was no going back.

The finality of it was frightening; that time could really creep upon you like that. And it wasn't just the unexpectedness of it all; it was the reminder how fragile time really is. How little of it we have at our disposal.

The Rolling Stones once said: time waits for no one. And so, dearest reader, let's not be late.

Happy New Year.

Something Wicked this way comes...

Tuesday. 7.30pm. Part of my birthday celebrations is a trip to see Wicked: The Musical. Feel unsure about anything to do with a lady the colour of Slimer from Ghostbusters. It also doesn't help that everyone tells me, 'Yeah, it's wicked; get it?' No. I. Do. Not.

Arrive at the theatre looking like the Michelin Man. Hope that every layer of clothing I wear is another degree of cold I can endure. Take that minus 2 degrees Celsius!

As I unravel from my winter armour, we approach the foyer. Walls, ceiling, floor- and all the people in between- bathe in emerald green. The glow distorts faces to sinister, demented levels. All men, women, children and teens look like The Riddler. Wonder if I'll have to solve a puzzle to find my seat.

With minutes before the curtain rises, I take in my surroundings. Red velvet seats and gold leaf décor. Crystal chandeliers proudly hang from arched ceilings. How do they change those light bulbs? Soon, hundreds of conversations rise up and float down- a chorus of murmurs and shouts. There is a smell- a theatre smell- of polish and something else, something unfathomable. You only know it when you are there.

With the strangeness of strangers, I am transported to how it used to be. Rows of bow ties and ball-gowns. Suited men with ruler spines selling ice cream in the aisle. Suddenly, there's a shriek in my ear. Two guys wearing misjudged Christmas jumpers are jostled and spill beer on my friend. They laugh, while she's left smelling like a brewery. Oh well. At least her hair's shiny...

The lights flicker, the noise falls. And then the math happens. One bottle of birthday wine + warm theatre = sleepy head. My chest is the refrigerator, my chin the magnets. I am disturbed by a fierce clatter of cymbals that jolts me too high to be cleverly disguised as a body stretch. A giggle escapes from behind.

As I prop my eyelids with fingers and thumbs, hoards of school kids pour in from all directions to ruin a song and my perfect stage view. Boy with World's Longest Neck provides me with half a show. A talking goat and a few winged-monkeys later and I wish I had something to throw at his head; a bucket of popcorn or maybe just a bucket. Nah. That would be too wicked. Get it?

Soon enough, it's over. My needle hands sting from clapping longer than advised even though, for the most part, I have no idea what I'm clapping for. I am robotic, following the crowd. They've enjoyed it. The flash of green lights, a blonde who looks suspiciously like Cinderella and a Wicked Witch who is, as it turns out, not so wicked. Imagine that.

Rear Window

From my rear window
Smudged with the greasy print of fingers
And the smeared corpse of an unwanted spider,
The children play.
Fields lush with green beneath spiked boots
And padded shins.
A whistle blows.

Beyond this glass screen,
Leaves like orange lemons,
Sharp sheets of fire
Burn crisp from starched branches;
A season of weakened spirit,
So it seems.

Past the broken fence and compost heap
At garden's end, to the next street,
The woman, the Adulteress, lies in wait;
Pinching the stub of a cancer stick
To calm nerves before her Lover arrives.
It's exercise.

Birds of black wing and eye
Burst forth from the old Oak next door,
Where neighbours burn tyres and wood
At all hours;
Their garden filled with the carcasses
Of cars and trucks,
And beer bottle lids glint in sunbeams
Like a thousand golden raindrops.

Through the barren hedge where ivy spills
Outwards like green entrails,
The Stranger known for twenty years
Pegs grey whites on a frosted line
With a disheartened sigh;
She retreats inside with an empty basket
Of forgotten dreams.

From my rear window
This play of string-less puppets
Unbeknownst
Act for me in their Acts
First or final,
Who knows?
A whistle blows.

When someone you love becomes a memory, that memory becomes a treasure

What can I say about grief without sounding pretentious? We all know the deal- death is a part of life; loss will get better with time, so on and so forth. Blah blah blah. Whatever I type sounds trite and forced, akin to something that graces the pages of a self-help guide in a bargain bin of a 99p store.

My Granddad died. I had longed for his passing- to see him free from his painful existence. 'Life' does not fit. Despite my expectation, the news stunned the breath from my body.

After a loss there is a moment when you realise things will never be the same. A millisecond, an intake of breath, a beat in your breast. You'll never hear his voice, his laugh. See his face. Hold his hand. Share his smile. And all too soon, time intrudes into seconds, a breath exhaled, a beat in your head. And that's it. Change. Forever.

Now, reader, I think of him. Fear I did not know him as best I could, wish he was here so I could ask him thousands of questions unanswered, study him with my eyes and trap his detail to my memories. He would be the feast and I would gorge because I could never be full.

Instead he watches me in black and white from a silver frame on the edge of my desk. A smile teases his eyes. He is free. And, for now, that I will treasure.

Trapped in Glass

Yellow lights flicker in their dusty overhead shells, like moths trapped in glass. Wheelchairs wait empty in the corridor. Each footstep disturbs an embedded urine stench.

We pass open doors of elderly- shiny eyes poking out from furrowed skin and folds of starchy sheets. Who knew hope was in a footstep? In the distance, a shrivelled voice of vocal chords strained and mouth parched. The kind of yelp pulled from the string of boots. Help, it said. Help. It tugs my heart one way but feet go another. Guilt leaves an unwelcome taste.

I sit in the corner of the room where my Granddad lives out his days. They are numbered. The wrinkled weight of his body rests in a bed he has not left for four weeks, and counting. Muscles, nerves, control have all left him and he waits, we wait, they wait.

His bed faces the window- a sky grey with seriousness, the lone magpie perched on a tree bare from seasons change, the window glass marred with fingerprints forgotten.

But Granddad sees nothing.

With a bib around his neck we feed him spoonfuls of mashed food, share sad broken laughs with our Benjamin Button, the irony of life in reverse. I grasp his hand, stroking the lines of history carved into skin like a well-read map. Briefly, his grip tightens. Blue eyes fix on mine, lip quivers. 'I'm ready but I'm scared.'

It's a pithy whisper but I hear him. My fingertips stroke his brow and I engulf his frame in blankets, as if warmth will keep his fears at bay. It's a small comfort but to whom?

As we leave, the lights continue their amber dance in dusty shells and I wonder. Though his limbs are feeble, his mind is strong. My Granddad, the moth trapped in a glass. If I could set him free, he would fly.

The Unwelcome Guest

If someone dares to tell me I cannot do something, I will prove them wrong. Until that objective is achieved, my actions are absorbed by an unmitigated focus. But there is one area of my life where this system of logic fails miserably. Just as I am raring, ready, I stumble.

But the problem is not an inanimate object that can be moved from my path. It exists in the mind- a place with depths too dangerous. Part of my subconscious has drifted outwards into conscious thought. That little questioning voice is fully fledged and vocal. And with every option and opportunity that I let pass me by, through choice or convenience, or unavoidable circumstance- that voice gains strength.

Now, it is far too loud.

It's the fear- oh, the dreaded wrench of gut fear- of discovering what you thought, hoped you were good at, you probably are not. It's the reason why I don't push myself out there into the world. Why I don't send poetry or stories to magazines and competitions. Why I will never approach a publisher with my novel. Why I think my writing will only be confined to this meagre blog. Oh, it is sad.

On the days when the silence is unnerving and stealth-like in its speed to engulf me, doubt is my only company, an unwelcome guest, my constant companion. Always there, its negative waves erode and chip me until I am rubble and dust.

And now, what little self belief I had in my abilities as a writer has shrivelled. It ventured outside with tentative steps, only for a raincloud of doubt to drift over and soak it, in all its greying scepticism.

Some days, reader, I pray for drought.