Hey SK!

Dear SK
I'm resisting the urge to ask how you again are feeling and to imagine you with all sorts of emotions that you may not have. The experience is yours alone; tell it or not.

I'm not quite sure how I am going to get this letter to you, nor how you will feel about it when I do. Furthermore my spacebar is only working intermittently so writing it as well as reading it will have its challenges. Oh, and one of my fingers has stopped moving. It's a bit like an engine that won't turn over though it starts eventually and it clicks whenever I use it, which makes me squeamish.
Anyhoo, typing finger, spacebar and nausea aside, I will press on.

The time is 3.20am and I woke in a cold sweat an hour ago after dreaming of pythons being delivered to a married couple in a lift. Lots of constricted breathing, purple faces and syringes later (in the dream that is), the couple tried to murder each other. The wife got away thinking she’d killed him but the husband had only dashed down the fire escape to have her declared insane. If that's not my marriage in a nutshell, then I don’t know what is.
Anyway, the dream has done me a favour,  because upon waking I suddenly realised what I have been wrestling to get a hold of in my brain since we met. Bear with me.....

I have a commission from the local aspirational magazine to write that piece we discussed about Couchsurfing...700 words. This is significant because I finally decided to give up worrying about getting a job, to have some confidence and to put all my energies into writing. Do or die, now or never. Many people encouraged me to do so and it's a real relief to give in to it, just as you finally made me believe you on another matter entirely. The magazine was the first I approached after my decision and they accepted immediately and so this gives me heart. The Editor is a published author himself and very complimentary of my writing as is an academic I know. I have decided to believe them too.

I am sure many people more accomplished than I have asked you this already,( and I don't know if you'd be interested at all so soon after the journey), but when you are ready,  how would you feel about telling the story of your walk with a view to getting it published? Not for my local rag (though I will give the link for donations) but as a piece of journalism for a bigger newspaper or magazine or in book form as a record of th journey. I'd have to pitch it but it'd be a learning curve for me. You have such great stories to tell and the walk hit a note with so many people that I am certain there’s an audience for it; (and you may also raise more cash along the way) the river- floating, the busty 60 year olds on their way to serve at a Beerfest, the eccentrics in the country home; the reason you walked out one midsummer morning in the first place. It would serve as a record for you and the family too. It would also be great to chat to some of the people you met and stayed with along the way for their view of being part of such a journey. I really think I'd do it justice. But if I don't then someone should.

Would you be interested? If nothing else, it might spark a major newspaper to pick up the story ( if they haven't already) and increase awareness, but that may not be something you’d want to happen. Have a think. You may simply want to move on,or wait till time has passed or are resolved to write it yourself or or...

In the interests of full disclosure, I will reinstate some of my blog posts so that you can see what I can do.

As for the mechanics of it, I would go at your pace, by your timetable and whatever method you prefer -phone, Skype,email, plain old letters.. whatever.

 As you know, your visit was significant to me and you seem to have that effect on people. Your wall is covered in similar sentiments which is why I know there would be interest. You seem to bring out the poetry in people, all of whom are so eloquent about what you achieved.


If I have been cheeky and presumptuous then forgive me and I hope it hasn't ruined a friendship however remote.
I hope you are well and have recovered physically at any rate. If there's any justice, you'll now get a bit squidgy round the edges like the rest of us.

Eat more biscuits.

Much Love
L x

 PS. Still working on being Parisienne with a different date looming. I have even bought a hat ! My daughter says I look like a gay man in it, but then I did buy it in Brighton  :)

www.postcardpam.blogspot.co.uk

 "What is it that caught your Emotionation in that film?" I misheard but what a fabulous word! It really does capture a feeling, an experience. I have decided to invent it.

Eating My Egg With a Spoon

On Thursday, a woman had an Egg; or the Egg had a woman, the nuances were never clear.

 She never did eat her Egg with a spoon but it was one of those things that was always a possibility, at the back of her mind.

She was saving it for a treat.

To the woman, Eggs were comfort food, giving sustenance and support - and they were loyal.

Even when she boiled them.


They really were great like that..Eggs. They noticed her and worked around her silently. They plotted where she was in the kitchen just as she had marked them on her map and then they orbited around each other, mutually appreciative.

She would sometimes talk to them as you would to plants, telling the creamiest of them that she recognised the special care he gave her and how that made her feel Queen of The Eggs; that because of this, she would be attentive to his shell, not drop him nor separate his yolk from white; that Eggs were as safe with her as she knew she was with them..........
And how gloriously golden their yolks were!  How wonderfully smooth to the touch were their shells. They really didn't care that her knees creaked as much as the fridge door or that she was wearing trousers two sizes too big which meant that the crotch was around her knees making cycling proficiency a nightmare. The days when she was as fresh as an Egg herself were drawn far, far into the background of a past hazily sketched. Yet you could read on their settled posture that the Eggs saw nothing of these things. They  saw ....her.

On Friday, something small crawled into her stomach and sat their uneasily, unwanted and unwelcome. It was defiant and vociferous, rendering her unable to sleep. It caused her so much pain that each time it moved -which was frequently for it could not seem to get comfortable - involuntary tears would swim upwards over the ladder of her windpipe, push forwards and  tumble out over her grieving eyes to fall into the pools gathering around the rocks of her lips and chin.

And the fridge was empty.

Her Eggs had left behind the scent of their regret. Death by Spoon was exquisite but forbidden and so they had left with tiny cracks in their shells.

It was her legacy.

Egg and Spoon

Can't take my eyes off you...

Until it doesn't hurt so much,

I will let Damien say goodbye for me.

Postcard Pam's Weird Weekend

POSTCARD PAM’S WEIRD WEEKEND

This is weird. I have been looking forward to it for so long. Sitting on a train with nothing to do but write and paint my nails. Instead I have anxiety.

The thing is that I had been feeling quite good about myself; By and large; when all is said and done; relatively speaking.

 I have lost some of the weight I gained. I am back into some of the clothes that remind me of who I am. People are fond of calling me ‘bohemian’. Apparently it suits me. I have stopped fighting it for I recognise myself.

 Several lifetimes ago when I was in my New Romantic year, I would be stood-standing at a bus stop in a frilly shirt or be walking through town in knickerbockers when the ‘yoof’ of my youth would call out ‘Peace man’, giving the standard John Lennon Salute with two inoffensive fingers.

 I didn’t feel insulted; more baffled, violated even.  I’d been hiding myself so carefully.

Maybe that’s what I have done in the past 24 hours, hidden myself and it has caused me anxiety and a longing to turn the clock back 14 hours; to be the person that I was then; the one who liked herself, finally.

Instead I am sitting on a train looking as though I’d been Tangoed.  They promised me in the salon this would not happen.  But it has happened and worse, there are two white panda circles where the crumpled bags under my eyes are, so it has highlighted those to great effect. The thing is, I felt good about my ageing face yesterday. Liked it even; appreciated that it was the face of a nice woman in her 40’s, not an orange woman looking like some terrible caricature of a lush. It has aged me 10 years.

In this train, I can hear an echo of blended voices  demanding to know why, if I am so bloody perfect, did I have it done at all? Well I’ll tell you. I am not perfect, I am just accepting. I am learning to be accepting but sometimes I have setbacks, especially when there’s a £15 offer on and it is something I have never tried before (suggestions anticipated)

During a setback, it occurred to me that although my face (and neck) looked tanned and happy from  my new job as postie  - and the lower two thirds of my arms  similarly so - when I am naked, I look as though I am still wearing a white T-shirt and leggings. That, Dear Reader, is not an image to linger in the mind after 3 children and a lot of cake.

(I’ve just had a cinnamon swirl for elevenses and it’s 8.50am)

Anyway, cutting a long story short – strapless frocks and strappy tops are to be worn this weekend, if not pencil skirts with thigh high splits and all of the above ending just below the knee.

My mother has a favourite refrain when she talks of my daughter’s beauty:

“Thank goodness she doesn’t have your short tree trunk legs”

I try to love her, I really do.

The aforementioned forest favourites are currently covered in scrapes, grazes, bruises and cuts. The reasons for this are many and varied when looked at in detail, but if I paint you a picture with a wallpapering brush, it quickly reveals work-related incidents. 

A fight with a bicycle pedal

A fight with a bicycle stand

A slip on wet floor tiles in an Italian restaurant that I was delivering to (that one really hurt and I didn’t even get a free meal though I have heard that their chicken dishes are to die for)

A fight with a bicycle and a hedge

A slip on a wet manhole cover

A fall down some wet tiled steps on Nutter’s Way! I mean….Why would you? Floor tiles are for inside, and even then only if they have some ridges to protect against aquaplaning.

An incident involving a bicycle chain and a trapped shoelace (I don’t like to revisit that memory too often. It makes me tired.)

The resulting injuries brought me to the conclusion that an all over tan, would at least make the bruises less obvious.

It has, because people can’t take their eyes off my Jaffa Self.

 I am planning to stay in the shower for a very long time when I arrive up North. I may not have time to speak to my parents before I set off to my party 9 hours later because I will be scrubbing my face. I may have to wear a backless frock and a balaclava.

I think I left it on too long. They advised me over and over not to panic as the colour deepened as it would all wash off to an all over glow in the shower and furthermore, they said it may come off on the bed sheets.  I took this as an instruction to have a night’s sleep. So, I slept in the tan rather than set my alarm for 2 in the morning when it was due to come off, and I was up at 5.30 in any case.. To be fair, everywhere else is passable. Certainly I enjoy a bit of colour (however uneven) on my legs. I have also woken up with 2 (count ‘em…2!!) cold sores and there’s obviously the gum boil and chronic infection in my tooth to contend with.

Oh yes! It’ll be a triumphant return home.  .  I am such a catch for some lucky, lucky fellow of indeterminate years and hair possession.

Actually, I generally go for slightly younger men, but this shade of orange would just tip me right over into the category of stereotypical. Boycie's, 'Marleeeen!'  I’d just need a leopard print wrap dress, matching high heels , hot pink lippy and earrings as big as budgies.
If I lift up my buttocks (stop retching you lot in your 20’s, it’ll happen to you too!) there are white lines cupping them from underneath like hammocks where the tan didn’t reach, and a little 6 inch line round my waist where I presume the spare tyre folds over. Just on one side! I wonder if I’ve had a stroke and not noticed.

“Stay classy San Diego!”