End of Dream Time

I am fifty next week.

At the moment I am really unwell with the most terrible cold bug that will not go.

Bringing up boy is much much harder than I thought it was going to be.

My friend has moved away permanently.

In fact I don't really have much in the way of friends at all. I have made a list for my party and lots of people aren't coming - uhmm - are they telling me something?

I can't get a job - even one that I don't really want.

I am fat - really overweight, probably the biggest I have ever been and this makes me feel valueless and ugly and useless. It is probably the reason I can't throw off this dam bug as well.

So where am I in life.

Every job I have ever had, even when I have really enjoyed them and more importantly been really good at I have left, got bored, fed up, felt I wasn't good enough and moved on - or tried to. Now I don't really have a job (well bringing up boy is a job but I ain't doing to well at that at the moment). I really want a job and I want to stay in it, be reliable (another thing I ain't too good at) and have a job that I can see and make myself have a future in.

How am I going to make this happen?

I think it is time to stop the dream. All my life I have wanted to write, think that I am good enough to write and be published. Trouble is even when I have the time I don't. I just don't. There is always an excuse. My life is full of excuses for not doing, for not being.

Well it has to stop.

I don't write, I only dream about it. Yes I went to University and got a degree in Creative Writing and what has that achieved. Basically nothing. If I really wanted to write I would, I would stop making excuses. I would stop using it as an excuse for not getting on with my life, getting a job and being a successful, useful person.

If I had a job that paid OK I could go and see my friend in Scotland, I could afford to get the things done on the car. I could do a bit more with my time outside work instead of sitting and dreaming.

Today the dreaming is stopping - I have to get on my life and leave it all behind. I think I will be happier for it. I know I will be happier for it.

Dix

Ill again!!!

I can't believe I'm feeling ill again. Same old, same old. I feel hot and cold, full of yukky phlegm, running nose, headache, knackered, headachy (if that is a word) and cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough. I have always succumbed to things easily but since I had my tonsils out these colds had not been so virulent or often. But I had that grotty flu at Christmas and since then I have gone down with one thing after the other. And it is pissing me off. Today my nose is making a whistling, squeaky noise all of its own accord. It's like it has nothing to do with me at all and is just whistling away on its own. At least it shows I am breathing but hey, think I could do without the side effects and don't get me into the side effect of constantly coughing. I am a woman of a certain age and this constant coughing is well, putting it not very nicely, giving me damp drawers! The weather is brilliant today and all I want to do is curl up on the settee, dozing and watching crap day time TV (not Homes Under the Hammer - I still like that). It's just not fair. Please cold go away, stop my nose whistling, stop me snoring at night like a hog and stop me feeling either extremely hot or shivery cold. I hate being ill. Dix

Postcard Exercises

Dear Jean

The weather is glorious; company is fine! Can't believe I haven't done this before. You were right, as always. Just what I needed. I will be home later than planned though. Your William Billy xxxx

Snooze

The phone buzzes and trembles; Paul Simon calls me Al. I stretch and grapple to find the silence button. I am momentarily awake. I curl back into my warm space. 5 minutes to be in any world. Flying around blue skies, swooping and watching, or swimming across green oceans and floating forever. Or maybe just doing and being whatever, whoever I want.

Dix

This is an exercise I did recently on writing a piece of postcard fiction. Two ideas that I hope give an idea of a story.

Dix

Self Loathing (by food)

All I do is eat and eat and eat and Eat. Past full. A whole packet of cheese sandwich biscuits, quantities of fruit and chocolate too. All I do is eat and eat and eat and Eat. Past fat. Milk chocolate Button Easter Eggs, devoured whilst driving, untasted, un-enjoyed, gone. All I do is eat and eat and eat and Eat. Past life. Mature cheese, broken lump by lump from vast blocks; chewed and savoured unobserved. All I do is eat and eat and eat and Eat. Past morbid. Crap food nags carbs and sugar, momentarily ease my stress and sadness. All I do is eat and eat and eat and Eat. To death. Dix

Silence

He wished he hadn’t spoken those last words.

He wished he could take them back. In his head they were reversing back into his mouth like an old 45 record being pushed backward against the needle.

But he couldn’t.

Her face creased, momentarily. Her eyes were full of hurt and pain. She was staring at him then looked down, her head and shoulders beaten and drooping.

The room went really really quiet, not that comfortable silence of two people secure in each others presence but a ‘cut the air’ almost menacing feel that left him wanting to escape.

They both just stood, still. Neither appearing to know what to say next. He shuffled his feet, noticing the grey green scuff on his white trainers and mentally noting to clean them soon.

Still nothing was said.

He looked over at her feet; they were naked, clean and beautiful, beautiful in a way that only female feet can be. Each toe nail glazed with a pearlescent pink varnish, immaculately done, no chips or messy edges.

Her feet were still, unmoving as she was, head down, body slightly stiff but controlled.

He just wanted her to speak. If she got angry that would be his punishment. She should scream at him, unfurling the hurt into him. He would accept it happily; he would welcome her anger. He would look up and listen, blinking in all the right places, accepting of whatever hurts she would stab at him – just to make it ok. She could list his numerous faults, his physical abnormalities, his weaknesses his tactlessness. He knew them all so well.

She just had to break the silence, to make it be alright.

Maybe he should list them himself; maybe he could throw himself at her mercy, beg and plead for her anger. Maybe he could say he didn’t mean it. That he was sorry.

He just needs her to break the silence.

Dix

This is the result of a writing exercise I did today. I really enjoyed it and felt I had created something I liked and has potential. The exercise started with He wished he .... and we wrote for approx 15 mins.

BR - One Day by David Nichols

I have looked at this book many times over the last couple of years and thought it would be something I would like but not got it. Then I saw it recommended on My Life in Books (can't remember who by but loved the sound of it) so was in a proper bookshop so got it.

It is wonderful - one of those books that you can't put down, one of those books that has moved me in so many ways - at times I felt depressed by the female character because I could understand her life and the male character reminds me of someone I once knew well.

I loved the dialogue between them, their thoughts and feelings hit home so much. The words carried me along with them.

This is a wonderful book, modern, alive and just well, wonderful. I kept reading and reading desperate to get to the end but never wanting it to stop. These were real people to me, real people in my life who I was watching live their lives, making mistakes and doing the right thing, having a great and awful time.

And then, as per normal the problem arose. The ending. I often have a problem with endings and I knew 100 - 150 pages towards the end that things weren't going the way I hope, expected or wanted. Then it happened, someone died and I didn't want that. I didn't want it to end this way. This isn't how life should be (and these people were alive to me).

Where is the happy ending that I so long for; or even the satisfactory ending.

Now I have a dilemma - I loved the book, it is definitely a keeper but it is the whole 'killing off Dobby' thing all over again - as a wanna be writer this ending doesn't feel right - it isn't what I wanted but is it what I would have done. I finished the book Tuesday and have had a day to think about it - how else could it have ended - happy ever after - them getting everything they wanted - dull but satisfying. Not happy ever after because certain wishes aren't fulfilled. Yeah that would have been OK. Not being together - making new lives apart remembering the good time - this might have been what I would have done. But death, hmm not at all sure.

I know I will read this book again someday - I will see different aspects of the characters, perhaps it won't be so relevant to where I am today - who knows. Will I feel different about the ending - not sure - maybe, maybe I do a little already.

What has it really made me think; wish I could write like this; wish I could make a reader connect the way I feel I have. Maybe then I will understand about endings, how difficult it is to satisfy the reader at the end - who knows.

Whatever though - read this book, enjoy it; hate it; love it but read it. I really really recommend it.

Dix

Hurray, hurray, hurray

Yesterday evening the gas was delivered.

We have gas; we have heat and we have achieved a victory (kind of).

And we are warm throughout the house.

Lovely

Dix