I have fourteen pairs of knickers.


and writer's block

Siblings

Just made toast . Half 11 pm.Need to go to bed.

Thinking about my big sister Miranda who has multiple sclerosis.

Thinking about the laughs we had together.

Remember her playing the cello with gusto in the old fashioned dining room. She was in love with David Juritz and Bread. Freezing rooms in her digs in London.

The student in a bath of beans and the priest who gave up the cloth.

Thinking about her blowy auburn hair and how long it took to dry.

I remember her not wanting to hold my hand as we crossed the road outside the convent. She is 7 years older than me. I was 10. I imagine 10 year old hands are sticky and horrible when you're 17.

Remember her physics boyfriend who came top in everything. He had ginger hair. Miranda said she never loved him. But I think she admired his brain.

She met her husband Phil. They lived together in a high-up flat.

Dad and mum were unsure about the arrangement.

Miranda and Phil had a row round about now. Catastrophic it was.

I'm remembering Miranda having children. Five children. Powney Road. Cots. Nappies. Gorgeous babies. Such a happy couple. 

All of us brothers and sisters are gathered around playing pop quiz.

Can't write any more.

It's nice having a blank page to blog on. When you 'Create New Post,' this is what you're given: a big white space. Then you have to marry it up with your filled-up head and put the letters of your thoughts on it. In the right order.

So
Eth remmus yadiloh sah neeb etiuq drah tub yllufknath adsA sah dah ytnelp fo nig dna nongivuas cnalb no reffo!

Eht Dne

!ahwm

So after a disastrous first week, everything suddenly switched like a stick on the tide turn.

All gadgets were set aside and we embarked on a two-person drive to be as Enid Blyton as possible. The tandem approach worked well, jollied along not a little by the sticky weather.

Beach. Burgers. Barbecues. Burning. And that was day one.
Rinse. Repeat.

Hunter will not put clean pants on of a morning. I throw them at him and say 'clean pants' in a clipped, dictator tone. He still doesn't. But he likes me sussing out that he still has stinky pants on.

He's heading for an expensive divorce.

Holiday ugh

Day 2 of the school summer break.

Already I've stopped speaking to my son.

Yesterday, it was blisteringly hot so we went to the beach. I have invested in a sensibly-priced, 10- quid pop-up beach tent. But it needs weighing down with pebbles to stop it disappearing to Mars in the slightest breeze.

It was windy yesterday.

As we padded across the interminable acres of sand that make up Westward Ho! when the tide is at its lowest, he remarked pointedly and in advance, that he would not be collecting the necessary pebbles.

We chose an unimaginative spot and I put all the bags down. Hunter had been carrying his usual self-assured smile and little else. He wandered off towards the ocean leaving me sitting half in, half out of the tent.

I ate an egg mayonnaise sandwich.

I made an executive decision: placing most of the heavy stuff towards the back of the flimsy, fly-away tent I sprinted to the lip-line of the pebble ridge and picked up two rocks the size of a Leeds university student's doner kebab. I puffed back and slung them in the tent with a curled lip like I'd arrested the Kray twins and banged them up.

Job done.

I polished off the second egg sarnie than wondered if Hunter was ok in the sea. I threw caution to the wind: I took my time.

I googled Jean Shrimpton and Universal Credit.

I then blew up a Turbo Ring in triple time which gave me the dizzies. Frightened by now, I thundered down the rippling sands to find him.

It was like that scene from Jaws. The lady in the floppy hat calling for her son.

I couldn't see Hunter and my blood was congealing and I could feel my insides buckling. I walked back and forth shading my eyes, staring for his green top, begging and bargaining with God, mouth dry. Then I spotted him. He waved, embarrassed.

I swam over to him, he had seen me ages before. He had enjoyed watching me looking for him.

Summer Holiday

It is Day 2 of the school summer break.

Already, I have stopped speaking to my son.

1. Yesterday, it was blisteringly hot so we went to

So proud

For 8 weeks we have been living in a shithole.

Not like Yemen. We have sausages. Toilet paper.

I take the dog out for a pee. That's freedom isn't it. I'm not shot at. I can go home and make toast. Kiss my son.
Kiss him again.

The babies with their heaving bones. Old man faces. Struggling to breathe. Huge frightened eyes.

I can't think about it.

So: to local problems. There is damp everywhere. Nothing dries. The morning skies take your breath away but by 4pm it's dark. So dark. I won't buy a lamp as I have a load of lamps in storage. It's costing a thousand pounds a month to rent here, and cover storage.

I earn 742 pounds a month. That's working full time. That's what most TAs earn. I don't know why we earn so little. We're not worth it. I have to accept that.

An army of women are educating your children. An incredible band of foot soldiers who go into school early, giving children words...words! WORDS. Reading. Phonics. Number beads. Denes. More words. A wonderful waterfall of words. Written on whiteboards....buying our own pens. Time and again. Scribbling, laughing, running clubs, doing disclosure forms for all the crap many of them suffer. Words. Giving them a vocabulary. A way out.

The end