Lou Bradford

Writes

The World as I Know It

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A flurry of new followers arrive, maybe because I was kindly referred to in my friend Amanda’s blog post, or maybe because the book I wrote might have sold a copy or two, or maybe because someone was absent-mindedly scrolling #writersmind or #midlife and found an Instagram musing of mine. It’s mind-blowing to think of the ways that paths might cross. I wonder what it’s like to not have an online presence, to exist only in the real world (or should I say: ‘irl’. That’s ‘in real life’ to the uninitiated). After swearing off Instagram recently – Facebook is pretty much dead to me – I’ve looked closely at my social media use. I am more a silent observer than an active participant. So indoctrinated am I, that I find it natural to voyeuristically scan the Instagram stories of people I don’t know, in their beds and bathrooms, in their pyjamas, in a state of undress. I wouldn’t answer the door to the postman in that! How curious that online we are so embracing and accepting of the sharing mentality. We can’t get enough sharing. Or maybe that’s just me?

In this constant state of human observation, the writer in me gets overloaded. There’s just so much to think about. Whilst out running by the water one morning this week, catching the glorious deep blue, high tide before 8am, I was so full of words that I considered stopping to type them into my phone. This would have messed with my Strava statistics, so I carried on, storing the words in my mind like nuggets. I wish they’d design an app that could automatically capture my thoughts for me, and convert them into text. That would be cool (and terrifying). Instead I give myself mental bullet points and run faster so I don’t forget. Then I forget. Is it possible that the brain fog associated with midlife is conspiring to keep me from getting that key piece of social commentary down on paper? If I were to characterise my writer’s mind it would have two distinct halves. The romantic notion of writing as a whimsical, pleasurable activity (writer’s shed in the garden, anyone?), and the fact that writing can be an up-at-dawn siege on the brain.

Meanwhile, I buy new spectacles, and idly wonder whether that will make sitting in front of a screen for hours easier.

I procrastinate and internet shop. Some of the clothing brands I follow have changed their models; they’re now multi-faceted, multi-racial, multi-everything, and look like model versions of the real women I might see on the street. There are larger models and ones whose bodies don’t resemble the stereotypical clothes-horse versions I am used to seeing. I notice this, and react to it, even. Sometimes, I feel the clothes look less appealing – I am ashamed to admit this – and have to check myself. A fantasy exploded. I am sufficiently ‘woke’, so why do I not embrace this shift? Real women, selling real clothes?

I consider that I was brought up on a 1990’s media diet of supermodels. As a teenager, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford graced my bedroom walls. One of the first things I did when I earned my own money was buy a copy of Vogue, just to see what high fashion was all about. Tatjana Patiitz, swimsuit-clad, on a black-sand beach was the exotic counterpoint to my rural, mud-splattered fourteen year old self. Back then, I bought glossy magazines and pulled out pages to collage my bedroom wall. Surely, it’s no different to what my teenage children do now when they curate their feeds? They scroll Instagram, I worry it’s going to rot their brains, yet I did the same exact thing back then, but without the technological immediacy. The issue with instagram is that it never runs out of wall space.

Models from the past were unobtainable in their beauty, they were as relatable to me, in my suburban British life, as an alien might be, from another planet. Only when Kate Moss was discovered, and it transpired she came from Croydon (a mere fifty miles from where I lived) did I acknowledge that beautiful people might exist in the real world. So what is there to make of ‘real women’ models? It’s good, necessary and about time. But it does make me question the extent to which social conditioning has affected my perceptions. The myriad ways that my generation were raised to think certain things were attractive or unattractive. I can hope that future generations of women can view beauty differently, and won’t have been so conditioned. After all, this is the whole point of change, the paradigm shift that over time takes the abnormal to normal, or back again.

I took my daughter for an offer day at the university of her choice (just the small matter now, of getting the grades to get in) and decided there is nothing more sobering that imagining your first born living on their own for the first time. Recollections of my own university life spiral back at me, Scooby-Do style, and I simply can’t articulate how recently that phase of my life seems. How can it be that I now have a child who will go instead, and I will be the sobbing, greying mother who will have to drive away and reconcile the empty house when I get home. My husband and I might look at each other, full of the knowledge that by then, years will have passed since this happy camper came bombasting into our lives. Our daughter turns eighteen this summer, and the prospect is at once surreal and awe-inspiring. We raised an adult! Look what we did! She remains the most beautiful girl I know, biased as I am. My memories of her flit back to her baby days, when the 2000’s had just started and the 90’s were a recent decade. Meanwhile, March now takes hold. It was my 45th birthday this week. What is it they say? Don’t look back, you’re not going that way.

Photo by Unsplash

Millennials and Me

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The hiatus from writing builds up, until I find myself awake in the small hours, furtively typing misspelled notes on my phone, afraid I’ll lose the gist before daylight. Notes which turn out to be jumbled expressions of my half-asleep brain. Not much use for anything, and yet I still dodge writing in the daytime. Last night, I decided I needed a writing shed. In our garden there is a disused shed; I say disused, I mean it’s full of the kind of family detritus that assembles when your children peddle through the stages of toddler to child to teen. Redundant pieces of sports equipment, boogie boards, bike helmets (out-grown), the polystyrene edges nibbled by mice, unused barbecue briquettes from long lost summers. There are pieces of furniture which we’d felt we couldn’t part with, so instead relegated them to the shed and now, years later, they’ve moulded, veneers lifting away with damp. There are vestiges of the failed beauty business I once embarked on. A broken kite.

So this shed, I think, could be the answer. I could renovate it, Scandi-style, and sit out there with the dog and write. What an idea! I look on Pinterest for ‘writer’s shed’ (by this time it is 2.08am; the brain is awake) and note Roald Dahl had one. By 2.10am I am my own version of Virginia Woolf in a room of one’s own. A whimsical notion of old fashioned type writers and battered note books. The romantic, cinematic version of what it is to write a book.

There is some normality to restore now, after a couple of months of upheaval. I revert to where I left off, but have lost my rhythm. The writer’s shed idea is undoubtably a ploy. Like the part in ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ where Liz Gilbert tries to meditate but instead her thoughts turn to what her meditation room might look like should she design one. I listen to podcasts to distract myself and realise I have fallen into a groove of listening to clever, millennial journalists who have, in their cleverness, nailed the podcast medium with alacrity. For example, the eloquence and self-awareness with which Dolly Alderton articulated herself on Emma Gannon‘s ‘Control, Alt, Delete’ was so impressive, it was, quite frankly, disarming. I was not like that at thirty years old. Far from. There’s an openness that is so refreshing. And don’t get me started on the impossibly good commentary of Pandora Sykes. Elizabeth Day is another. Her podcast asks the profound question: how to fail?

I ask myself, were I to answer that question: what would my failures have been?

I flunked my A-levels. I thought I had put this one to bed, but actually it remains the single defining moment of my education and led me down a path that I might not otherwise have taken. It wasn’t catastrophic, but it was sub-par and I wish I’d done better. I wish I’d worked more. The fact was that at 17 years of age, the last thing I wanted to do was revise history. Entirely not interested. I suspect I relied on the possibility that I might be a genius and snag ‘A’ grades regardless, simply from my intellect. Turns out that doesn’t happen (at least not for me) and the only way to get those grades is solid hard work.

I landed a job when I graduated university, in the marketing department of a large publishing house. This was a gift of a job and was exactly what I should have excelled at. I had a three month contract and fully expected to be extended to permanency. But then, when the three months came to an end, they let me go. On reflection, years later, when I was adept at hiring gradates myself, in an other career, I realised I’d been too sure of myself, and it had concerned my superiors. I could not comprehend it at the time, but after I saw that I had breezed in, newly qualified with my degree, and thought I have arrived. Turns out that professional arrival is not about turning up; it’s about time, energy, humility and graft. But most of all, time.

The difference for me and my generation was that there was no constant analysis of these failings. These failings were the natural stepping stones to building a career, to maturing as an adult. There were no ready-made reassurances that I would survive and thrive again, there were no life-affirming quotes on Instagram. I did not, as it happened, look inward to assess whether I was suffering from depression or burnout. I did not cross-reference whether I was exhibiting anxiety symptoms, and I did not reach for a self-help book on managing said anxiety. Life just went on, and not much happened other than I eventually worked it out and continued on my way. Of course the preoccupation we now all have with our own psychological landscape is good; we check our emotional pulse on a daily basis. But I can’t help questioning whether this self-regard might be detrimental. I spend a lot of time level-setting things with my teenage children, helping them to see that the world will keep spinning even in they fail that test or fall out with that friend. It will all be OK. Even during the darkest days, evidence bears out that in time, it will be all OK.

My most potent sense of failure was in early motherhood – when my days were punctuated by the small successes (she sleeps!) and the small failures (she cries!). These moments would linger like a haze as I learned to come to terms with the complete lack of control I had for my own life, and that of this new human we had created.

So whilst the millennial fixation with self-care, self-analysis and self-knowledge makes for great podcasts, articles, essay and novels, the pressure must be immense. Like so many comparisons of past and present, was my being unaware an explanation for my experience? I am a member of Generation X. I came of age in the late 1980’s, was at university in the early 1990’s. I am the slacker generation. I didn’t know to douse myself in self-regard, so instead forged into adulthood feeling untethered. This led to years of stumbling with the lights out. I couldn’t have been less self-aware. But the result is that now, when self-awareness has arrived at the door, it is a revelation. This is why women in their forties these days exude an aura of zero fucks given. We’ve worked it out and I sense that will only continue. Millennials speak of having it all and I am struck by the consideration they give to life choices – but are almost paralysed by choice. Whether to get married and have a family. Or not get married. Their liberal sensibilities untested as life lays ahead of them, rather than behind. ‘Quarterlife’ and the early milestones of a passing decade denotes the transition of youth, but crucially, not the loss of it. They talk of having babies, but they haven’t decided yet. Career jostles with fertility. Can we have it all?

I have yet to read millennial-favourite Sally Rooney‘s second novel ‘Normal People’. My mum did and remarked ‘…there’s a lot of not much happening; they get together, they break up. It’s not really my thing.’ Her generation need substance in their fiction; the minutaea is not enough. After all, they grew up post-war. They really knew about people losing their shit.

What would I have been like as a millennial? I am a full generation ahead of them; I am pre-internet for crissake. I have written before about the gulf between my generation and my daughter’s here, and this preoccupation endures. The canyon of life experience between thirty and forty five – the milestone I will reach next month – is vast. Motherhood a raging river. Career a river bank. Marriage a raft. It is these things that I muse over now, in readiness for my mid-forties.

Photo by Arno Smit on Unsplash

J. Alfred Prufock

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A year to the day since last time, my son has tonsillitis, so I am in enforced quarantine, caring for him. I’m in a conflicted throwback to the baby years, when shit really goes down at night, in those small hours when the house is pin-drop still, and he is suffering a temperature of 104. I’m desperately trying not to spread the contagion, as tonsils were my Achilles heel, and my memories of the same, miserable time as a child and teen are fresh in my mind. He and I bond in that way only mothers of teens do; when they crawl back to you needing the kind of love that only last week they swore was embarrassing and unnecessary. Mother love runs strong.

At this time of year, there is a repetitiveness to each day. The darkness means by late afternoon it feels like night. I wake in the dark, is it morning? Really? I look back on the blog from a year ago and see that I was up to my neck in it then, and I am now. Not ‘Seasonal Affected Disorder’ exactly, but an acute awareness that we are approaching midwinter. Time slips by, and I wonder how it’s nearly Christmas again?

I speak to friends and we talk, talk, talkety-talk about everything, about all things. Last week the lovely Amanda and I in a nuclear-hot, fire lit pub having lunch. Endless loops of WhatsApp chats with my buddies, dissecting life, then me alone and walking in the mud with the dog, listening to podcasts. Think, think, thinkety-think. There’s profundity and there’s mundanity. There’s a sense that everything will be ok if I could just get everything sorted, more sorted than they were last year, or even ever before. Sorted-ness has become the measure by which I judge everything. I helped my sister-in-law to move house and came away feeling that I’d helped her get sorted. Unpack boxes. Restore order. There was a disconcerting feeling of chaos as the removal men kept bringing more and more in, everything to be unpacked and fitted in. I read a lot about minimalism when I was working on a recent writing project and looked at mesmerising Instagram feeds of simplistic lives in which everything appeared to be sorted. It was intoxicating; to live simply, to own less, to mend and make do! Increasingly – and somewhat alarmingly – I want to disassociate myself from everything I own, but then simultaneous to this instinct, I furtively press ‘add to cart’ and buy yet more stuff. It’s madness. Declutter to acquire more.

I’m having a lot of thoughts about ageing, and pointedly, the grey hair rebellion, which I wrote about, has brought with it all sorts of feelings which foolishly I hadn’t expected. A disproportionate amount of time peering at my roots, and believing strongly that everyone else is too. What a curious experiment to revert to one’s natural state. Ageing gracefully, meaningfully, I have decided, is a whole other dimension. As my daughter rocks at being seventeen, I head toward forty-five. I have doubts about the process but comfort myself with an armful of manifestos, and tell myself: own it! But, middle age brings a profound new challenge to accept the way I look. I watch YouTube videos of women who have ‘transitioned’ to grey, notably this lady, who, in amongst a charming French-Canadian accent, makes some searing societal points about why women are kept in this straight-jacket of hair dye. I banish my doubts, which are mere vanity and wonder whether if I had a ‘real’ job, as opposed to the one of ‘writer’, I wouldn’t have the time to think about this shit.

I grow old… I grow old…I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

So talking to friends, sorting stuff out, thinking about the multitudinous issue of ageing, and how to wear one’s trousers, there’s a lot to be getting on with.

In the room the women come and go, Talking of Michelangelo.

I went to a creative gathering last week at Hero, the place where I ran a writing workshop last summer, and brainchild of Laura, who systematically defies the ways in which post-career, provincially-based women should think and work. She is an inspiration, actually. A roomful of women, ‘fellow-creatives’ and I wondered: is this now my tribe? The ubiquitous school mums don’t feature so heavily anymore, as I do pick up and the drop off from the comfort of my car (sometimes in my pyjamas). There’s a change from the last fifteen years, where my time was topped and tailed by a social interaction with the mothers. The creative gathering featured a demographic who were not that different, exactly, but they were not from my local community, I had not met them. When we talked, we found common ground, as women are oft to do. I noticed that some skirted around their answers to the question ‘what do you do?’ Unpractised in stating that they were a designer or an editor, or a curator. A heartbeat skipped and an internal worry when asked that question; should I have answered ‘mother’? A social experiment conducted under lovely conditions which gave me pause to think on the way home. We are all making our way, or in the words of the lyric ‘…every day I’m hustling.’ Hustle on.

Words from the poem ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’ by TS Eliot

Rage

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During a discussion (although he called it a debate) about Brexit, my Dad and I skirted around the edges of rage. I felt it well up in me and tried to swallow it down, as if it were gristle, unable to spit it out and leave it on the side of my plate. The gap of generational divide exposed. My family have never been particularly argumentative but instead specialise in a kind of quiet respect that could, at a push, be described as passive.

I wondered afterwards if I am too outspoken. I wonder how it comes across when I write here, how I feature here in these posts, and whether it is a supplicated version, mindful of the tremors that can be caused by placing one’s opinions on the internet. The compulsion to write is balanced with a fear of sharing too much, or of misjudging what is appropriate. I am ‘woke’, in the urban dictionary definition of the word, a new concept which I explained to a mother friend recently. But meanwhile, I don’t like to disagree with people, I don’t want to be a person who forces their views on others. I’d rather state my views and see if anyone agrees. Live and let live.

I finished Deborah Levy’s book ‘Things I Did Not Want to Know‘. It’s a book which captures the inner monologue of your forties. A backward glance to childhood and teenage hood, to growing up in the 1970’s, at a time when mothers and fathers aren’t like they are now. She describes the strange hinterland of midlife; of crying (or wanting to) on escalators, not knowing why. From that post-book void, I ploughed in with another, and listened to Lily Allen’s ‘My Thoughts Exactly‘ which lays her childhood bare and tells of the heartbreaking lack of attention she experienced. It seemed sacrilegious for her to expose her parents in this way, when assessing them by today’s standards, but as she alludes to in the narrative, she presents the facts. Whatever my feelings, the book is exceptional. The judgement is ours, as readers. Her honesty blew my mind. I think to myself; her parents did not see it as their role to form and nurture the humans they made.

Levy notes in her book that women mustn’t write in rage, because rage will discolour meaning. We must write in calm, or else we won’t be taken seriously. But what do we do with the rage in the meantime? I get a flashback to passing a country house retreat in Devon where ‘Women’s Screaming Therapy’ was advertised on an innocuous roadside sign. Screaming seems futile and more often than not, any rage I feel dampens down eventually and I continue on without it. Women are intrepid. Acceptance is key; rage is not. Rage comes from a place that does not move forward, but is stuck in an unending cycle of red.

The generational divide remains a fascination to me, though, and I excuse all manner of behaviours from the past because that’s just how society was then. I find myself referring to this in conversations with my husband, my Mum, my friends, to those who can see that society has lumbered along since, lets say, Y2K, and there has been a seismic shift. Do you reminder Y2K?! The end of the world. Binary code and computers without instructions. It didn’t amount to much. Instead, there have been a series of lesser known quakes taking place under my feet. The tectonic plates of family, work, marriage and parenthood have all formed new continents.

My husband calls. The dog sits at my feet. Waiting.

I think of the rage of other women. Ones I know and ones I am only acquaintances with. Rage about failed marriages, divorce and having children who rebel. Rage at promises broken. Rage at not having enough money or not having the lifestyle she might have envisaged for herself. Rage at the deal she might have made with herself to accept that which is unacceptable. Is this rage about loss? I think of those times when I’ve seen women lose their shit on Facebook, late at night, after they’ve had their wine. It’s that witching hour, when women email unsuspecting recipients and spill their vitriol; at the teacher, the volunteer sport coach, the retail outlet where she bought something that wasn’t to her expectations, and lambast the page, as unfair and unnecessary as a hurricane. I do it myself when everything gets too much, like this week, in the supermarket, where the plastic that everything was wrapped in tipped my balance and I became one of those awful huffy, shouty women whose children look at the ground and are embarrassed by. This particular kind of rage –  the middle aged kind- seems to come from a deep source which is more often than not covered up. No one likes an angry middle aged woman. Younger women might have more leniency in this regard, but beyond the age of forty, forget it!

This is what Levy alludes to in her book. The secret inside which stokes the flames. So the irony is that we read about mindfulness, meditation, self care, taking a nightly bath and eating vegetables and trying so damn hard to quell the feelings. As if calm is the panacea to everything that life throws, from plastic, to politics, to wrinkles, to parenthood and onwards. Take a deep breath. But is it?

Summer is for salad

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When writing, I don’t pen a word for days, weeks even, and then I get stuck in, shoulders aching in protest as I sit at the keyboard, in awkward, hunched positions, trying to keep my back straight, limiting my punctuation because I just want to get it down. If the mood to write comes, I musn’t ignore it. In the summer time though, this is near on impossible. Instead, I make endless notes and carry stuff around in my head with the plan to write it when the sun goes down. The grass outside is burnt, tinder-dry, ochre and it looks so odd compared to the usual green lushness of the British summer. This spell of weather brings with it a new way of living; one which feels surreal, and as if we are on borrowed time. It takes three weeks of doing something regularly before it becomes a habit, right? So with this summer comes the habit of throwing open the doors each morning, opening up the back of the house, as the wall is all glass, and allowing a four metres scheme of fresh air in, after a night of being closed up. Checking the garden. Feeling the warmth, choosing clothes that are cool, protective from sun. Incongruously, winter coats hang on pegs and in cupboards and it’s hard to imagine we’ll ever need them again. Oh, but we will, come October! It feels endless, this summer, like an intermission during a long show. Time to get an ice cream and watch the world go by. The summer brings with it an extension of time, of days, one that differs to the dark drawer of winter.

It’s so unusual to have such a spell of sun, it defies all normal convention in this country. We, as a nation, are so starved of this weather, we have instead a ubiquitous blanket of cloud that hangs low in our skies through most of the year. We went to Portugal and on the flight back (above the clouds) I made lists of things I need to do.  My reminders list stands presently at 59. What will be lucky 60? School holidays are a hiatus that I both love and deplore. A time of flux for us before September returns, and sharpens us all up again. My list spans from essay ideas (social media and teenagers/procrastination methods when it comes to writing/why I want to befriend people who make podcasts), to items I need to source (car wash sponges/’Bitter Orange‘ by Claire Fuller/beaded necklaces perfect for tanned skin). I think of the future and the traction I will need to get from where I am now, to where I really ought to be, and I shudder. Make a fresh list. Write the book.

Writing is not for summer. Summer is for salad.

We’ve had family staying and a houseful of kids. We’ve had a makeshift pool in the garden that’s needed daily coaxing to stay clear-watered. We’ve had builders planning the next phase of renovation. We’ve had the dog groomed and hedges cut. I’ve scoured the summer sales for impractical dresses in retro patterns. A steady stream of stop, start. We’ve watched a season of ‘Ozark‘ and felt the lingering sense of ‘what next?’ when it ended. Season two is out now, I believe. The floor is littered with flip-flops and tennis rackets and half-unpacked suitcases and as ever, there’s more laundry that there ought to be. All this to the soundtrack of comings and goings. I’m aware these summers will pass me by soon; this cornucopia of family life that I am the epicentre of. What’s for dinner? At some point, in the not too distant future, term time and school holidays will be something that affects others, a distant memory to me, like night feeding a newborn, or pushing a pram.

But for now, it is where I am at. Wholeheartedly.

On Endings and Beginnings

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And so, the term ended, and with it, my son’s tenure at his school of the last six years. The school that has been instrumental in shaping my view of ‘the school mother’. They (we) are a breed, a type, a demographically-defined group. As the culmination of the academic year neared, a dizzying run down of leaving events took place; plays, trips, excursions, a sentimentally-charged Prize Giving service, speeches, parties and farewells. I recall this phase with my daughter’s schooling, but back then, with the first born child, there was a deeper seam of childhood nostalgia to mine, and the future that lay ahead was unknown. Little could I have imagined that, like everything in parenthood, the future would bring new challenges and new excitements, and the past would fade into the background, rightly so. With a second child, I know what to expect, and am reassured that this rite of passage from junior to senior is necessary, and correct.

I have been a school mother to young children for over twelve years, dropping off and picking up from the school with the daily regularity of the tide. I commented to another mother, that come the time children attend a senior school, it is possible to drop them at the bus in one’s pyjamas, as there is no need to exit the car. There is no lingering at school, there is no mother’s gossip, there is no influence, meetings with teachers are rare, email communication, if any, is king. She looked horrified. The transition from one domain to the next is a brutal one to navigate. No longer defined by one’s children. The shock!

All of this plays on my mind, because it is this midlife transition that interests me the most and which, despite my best endeavours to diversify my writing, I come back to. I met with my publisher friend last week and described my enduring preoccupation with midlife mothers and she nodded sagely, and said; ‘yes, I see what you mean.’

Meanwhile, whilst not defined by my children, I remain enamoured, and exasperated with them. The love, which spills over as they mature, is constant. But now, my teenage son, who has been swimming in a small and safe pond, pushes against the every boundary. Thirteen and nearly taller than me; and I am tall. Puberty for the male gender is a long and drawn out affair, full of daily updates; voice drop, height (7 inches in 9 months), shoulders, biceps, a testosterone peak. It’s an uncanny process where the sweet, soft, gentle boy of old has gone, and instead there is a lean, young man in his place. I recall it differently with my daughter, as an understated and short-lived process from girl to woman. Childhood draining away in a trickle, rather than a torrent.

My novel meanwhile, remains in an editing file on my laptop and my feelings about it shift over time. I used to consider it a shiny new gem, whereas now it feels older; in my darker moments I consider it hackneyed, even. This is the writer’s fear, I know. The problem with spending years writing your first book is that time doesn’t wait for you, and the world shifts on to its next encounter, and your writing remains frozen in time. I note that maybe this is why writers favour historical fiction rather than the present day? The present day doesn’t stay present for long, and all too soon, references become clichéd. I learnt on my MA to avoid clichés at all costs, so this troubles me.

In parenting, and perhaps in writing, there are few project closures, no ‘lessons learned’ meetings. Instead there’s a subtle creep, almost imperceptible, and that alone marks a milestone. It’s usually when I look backwards, promoted by a photo or a memory, do I realise what’s passed. This feels like a new era, and one that comes with good feelings. Here’s to endings and beginnings…

Right here, with me…

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So sometimes an essay on generational feminism, sometimes a rambling list of things, people, books and clothes that are on my mind.

I am reading a lot of non-fiction, and realising that with this medium, writers divulge so much of themselves, but now in a narrative style that mimics fiction. The underlying lesson; anything in life can be a story. Fiction is story-telling, but so is a memoir. When asked last summer at a book event, why I wanted to write, my contemporaries on the panel said the compulsion to write was so strong, that doing so formed a type of cathartic therapy. I answered that I felt I had something to say. Therein lies the rub. This bumps and echoes around the chambers of my creative mind, over and over. If I didn’t have something to say, I wouldn’t keep writing this blog. But if you have something to say, then writing fiction can feel like a straight-jacket, as there is a need to weave your truth – your manifesto – around a purely fictional world. I’ve realised I might not be up to tolerating this limitation, so have started writing non-fiction in earnest, as an experiment. The novel remains in draft form, but I draw from it daily, in an iterative, cumulative process. Morphing from fiction to non-fiction feels less disingenuous. May as well write real life.

I have a heel injury from running up a hill. This strikes me as sad, given that running up a hill is something which didn’t historically result in injury. I receive a litany of tips from any one I mention it to. It’s possibly – although not conclusively – plantar fasciitis, which is the scourge of the runner. I am meant to wear trainers at all times, and yesterday, when sporting a badass denim jumpsuit that makes me look like I stepped out of the the film ‘Tootsie’ from the early 80’s, I had my gait analysed in a Triathlon shop. This was all very technical, and involved me running on a treadmill in my bad trainers and then trying out their good trainers. After much discussion about ‘heel strike’ and hip flexors, I came away with new running shoes which cost a fortune, and the colour of which I did not choose. No other shoe shopping experience like it; a decision based entirely on feel, and not look.

I am still obsessed with podcasts which, on a par with Audible, have altered my days. I am someone who rarely sits still, and I loop from thing to thing; driving, writing, tidying, walking, running, scrolling, googling, organising etc but with minimal time to read. Listening is a different discipline and one that allows me to plunder all sorts of new fascinations. I listened to ‘Everything I Know About Love‘ by Dolly Alderton, and found it compelling, relatable, but also somewhat alien to my 40-something construct. The ‘London Career Girl’ stage is one I missed out entirely, as I moved, as did most of my generation, straight into co-habiting with my future spouse. London remains an amorphous presence in my life; a place I go to but never feel at home in. The book is a powerhouse of writing though, in a journalistic style that I really liked. It’s stayed with me days afterwards and her podcast ‘The High Low‘ (with another girl-about-town Pandora Sykes) is brilliant.

I took my daughter to my old university town, Bristol, for an Open Day, at which we toured prospective accommodation and listened to a lecture from a startlingly clever woman with a PhD, who has designed a super-modern degree course in which students innovate in modern industry. Blew my mind. She talked about ‘disruptive thinking’ and how our children needed it, and I felt like she’d described exactly what defines their generation. Ours was the generation to observe the status quo, berate it maybe, but I don’t feel we disrupted it as my daughter’s generation might. So much of current discussion is around dissecting the way things have always been done and asking why? Is there a better way? It’s not an act of rebellion so much as a collaborative shake-up of everything we’ve ever known. There’s a stealth to it though, it’s subversive and surprising. Which is why everyone must watch, aborb, be shocked by, and understand the song and video for Childish Gambino’s ‘This is America‘. Then to have an opinion on plastic use (David Attenborough’s legacy), sexism (#metoo), corporate ethics (Facebook & Cambridge Analytica), Veganism (why eat meat when you don’t have to?) gender fluidity (identifying as ‘they’ not ‘he’ or ‘she’). It is all about disruptive thinking. It’s all about knowing what your opinion is.

I shop for clothes in the sales and am released from the winter of boots and wool in favour of linen and cotton. I buy with a discerning eye – no longer accepting of polyester or viscose or fabrics that will never decompose. I consider vintage. I feel nostalgic for my youth; the 70’s and what my mum wore, the 80’s and what I wore, and the 90’s when I had money for the first time, and all I wanted was to look like Winona Ryder in ‘Reality Bites’. I think about everything I buy and wonder: where will it be in ten years time? Twenty?

My son is about to end his time at Prep school and so these final weeks of term consist of various events which prick the heart with sentimentality for his childhood. In truth, his childhood is seeping away by the day as he grows, broadening, getting taller, voice changing, becoming a young man. As he enters his teenage-hood, my daughter matures and prepares to leave hers. I feel like a veteran, and note the greener school mothers discussing senior school as if it’s something they will be able to control, whereas I know that the contrary is true. Parenting a teen is to find their behaviour endemic; they will do what they do, and whilst panic ensues amongst the mothers at this prospect, I have learnt that it is a necessary phase. Letting them go is all part of the process, but nonetheless I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t rueful of the change.

So I go to yoga, and plant a herb garden, and write 1000 words a day, and meet my friend for coffee. She says the torrent of words in me is coming, she can feel it. I chatter on. I walk the dog around a field where sweetcorn is growing, and deer bask in the long grass. Look how far I’ve come since those silly corporate days…

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Objects in the Rear View Mirror

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There’s a term in writing, sometimes coined to describe the latter stages of a novel, and it’s called ‘telescoping’. This is where all the strands of the story come together, into a focused, climactic rhythm, driving the narrative forward, and to a close, ideally with the reader clinging on, page-turning and breathless. To do this well requires huge dexterity from the writer; to be able to hold the threads of the story taut.

I could apply the notion of ‘telescoping’ to life right now, specifically to the end of my son’s time at his particular school. His attendance at that school has been pivotal in our lives, in ways that I never could have imagined, not least because it inspired me to write a novel. The school setting being the single best microcosm of female society I could’ve hoped for. A veritable melting pot. I see now that so much of writing my novel was about deciphering my feelings about the school mothers, and more generally, the role women perform when their children grow older. Especially if they’ve got time on their hands. I now look to the last few weeks there, before some much-needed space and time away over the summer, before he starts somewhere fresh in September. So far, so good.

I used to observe the mothers of the eldest year group with interest, when I was a rookie. They had a wry and knowing smile, and flitted in and out of school life like unordained prefects; some attending every single school event, and some opting out entirely, so that on Prize Giving, at the end of term, I’d realise I hadn’t seen them for six months or more. That wry smile is the one I now exhibit, as I reach the end. Exams are done, futures are mapped out, the children stuck in the unnatural holding pattern appropriated by British prep schools, where boys of 13, whose voices have dropped and whose shoulders have broadened, are still in short trousers, surrounded by much smaller kids. And the girls; who mature at such an accelerated rate to boys, look about 16. I smile as I observe the younger mothers, those with toddlers on their hips, who have so much ahead of them; years of nativity plays and easter bonnets and summer picnics. Of team selection (another stalwart of the prep school system) and parents evenings which resemble your worst speed-dating nightmare, but where your child getting an ‘A’ in Latin is apparently the measure of success.

There was a school summer ball a few weeks back – Gatsby-themed – in which money was raised for charity. There were no half measures in dress; most mothers looking as if they stepped out of the BBC costume department, and some probably had. There’s always someone who knows someone, who knows someone. Or they are in fact the someone themselves. There’s a curious vibe when women are in costume, each arrival provoking an up and down glance – a summation – the type of which we can all recognise as checking out. Exclamations of ‘you look amazing!’ as they pull at their headdresses, and adjust uncomfortable straps. Then glance over the shoulder of the person they’re speaking to; you know why. It’s like our own school days, but all over again. That wry smile is because I know I don’t have to do it anymore. School, when you have a teenager, is a place your children go to, that you rarely frequent. Gone are the days of daily drop offs and pick ups. Of mothers’ tongues clacking in the mornings, before the bell rings. No longer the hub.

But the hub, for all its complexity and conjecture, has been a source of solace over the years; the mothers are my tribe and I wouldn’t dispute that. But my time there has reached an end. I shall piggyback my sister in law’s school experience from now on, as her kids are younger than mine, and I am fairly certain I will encounter the same cliques and clichés that existed at our school. I might find, after I leave, that I am no longer interested in ‘the mothers’, in the same way that I am now no longer interested in having babies. It’s a thing I did; an incredible rite of passage, which is over. With two teenagers I now face more serious studying, driving lessons, choosing universities, relationships, parties, and more parties. Dropping off and picking up of a different kind. Maybe all of this will shrink in the distance as I leave it behind.

Or maybe not…let’s see!

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This ain’t no disco

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School is back! The manacle of school holidays thrown off! I reflect; something about the cessation of the term is always bittersweet, mornings spent in pyjama’d free-fall, with too much TV and a messy house. It’s necessary and well-deserved for all of us, but after over three weeks, I am longing for routine again. I now have two teenagers in the house as my son turned thirteen this month. Hormones run high; theirs as they surge towards adulthood, mine for different reasons. Moods fray. Creative work does not get done. It takes a week or so to reacclimatise once they’ve gone back, and now I am alone in the house once more. Order restored.

Who’d have thought that my life would be so closely linked to term time, even though I am no longer an academic? Who’d have thought – and I texted this sentiment to one of my old university friends just yesterday morning – that our lives would have become interminably busy? I don’t recall this busy-ness being an issue in our twenties and thirties. I was the first of our group of friends to have children; the pioneer, a trail-blazer. I now look at women who are 26, as I was when I had my daughter, and I think: I was a child. Twenty six. It’s no age! Not for this sort of serious shit. Parenthood loomed up with a banner that said ‘it’s not about you (anymore)’ and I spent the best part of seventeen years absorbing that new and all-encompassing fact.

I hear adults talk about their childhoods. I have a particular penchant at the moment for listening to couples counselling on podcast – utterly fascinating, and makes me want to retrain as a psychologist. Oh no, wait, I’ve already retrained once *grimace emoji face*. The last thing any toddler wants is for their parent to tell them his or her problems. Double that for a child, quadruple for a teen. For teenagers, adult problems are just embarrassing and awkward and the last thing on earth they want to deal with. Feelings are the domain of the young. Is it that my contemporaries and I are expected to navigate life without having feelings, as feelings have become treacherous territory? I therefore make a point of asking people ‘how did you feel about that?’ in conversation, in the style of the podcast psychologist, a gentle lilt to my voice, and I find people surprised, wrong-footed; ‘what do you mean how do I feel?‘

The teens and I sit each night and eat dinner, a table set where I am often the only adult. My son plays offensive rap music during the meal and we argue daily about who is going to wash up. They do it. I assert the rules. We discuss injustices and daily events and the need to develop strategies for managing the future. The future feels awash with the great unknown and I wonder if they regard me with interest. I dispense advice and opinion and they look at me clear-eyed, dispassionate. What do they see? A woman who inflicts too many vegetables on them (chickpeas, aubergines, cauliflower and broccoli in one sitting), and wears slogan sweatshirts that she finds ironic, but they don’t understand. Woke up in Paradise. Give a Damn. This Ain’t No Disco.

I smile to myself and feel grateful. Life is good. I get to wander around in the daytime and ponder my writing. I get to browse the web without limit. I get to make plans and make beds. When driving, my son comments that I have a free life and I agree. I explain to him that I have many responsibilities, it’s my job to hold everything together. He nods and says sagely; ‘it’s like you’re in a cage, but you have the key.’

Yes, I say. It’s just like that.

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Steady selfish

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My parents divorced when I was a child, leaving me fearful of abandonment. This, compounded by my father’s profession – an airline pilot – meant that in my young mind, I worried about plane crashes too. Meanwhile, my brother, who is seven years older than me, navigated the treacherous waters of being teenage with a single mother. Despite my Mum’s best efforts, our home was not always calm. I would climb into her bed some nights, listening to her breathe and she would allow me to sleep there, safe in the knowledge that she was not going anywhere. As I write this, I sense the faint fingerprint remaining from my childhood. Divorce can be misunderstood by those who haven’t experienced it. It’s not that I didn’t understand my Dad had to go, and it’s not even that his leaving impacted us so much in the day to day; after all, pilots are away a lot. But the bedrock on which I relied was no longer sound. It remained, some semblance of its former self, but it was jagged and uneven, and there were gaps where steadfastness used to be. I wonder now if I have fabricated this perception because I have reflected on my own childhood and cross-referenced it with that of my own children? Isn’t that what being middle-aged is all about? Looking back and looking forward; stranded midway.

My children walk on steady bedrock. That is because my husband and I provide it for them, and I particularly, as I don’t ‘work’ for a living, devote myself to ensuring bedrock stability. That sounds as if we lack selfishness. I note in the media the recent preoccupation with ‘self care’ – and how we should all practice it. I wonder: is self care just selfishness, its thinly disguised cousin? I resolve to put myself first more. The happiness of everyone depends on it. But self care can feel like a little-used habit from the past. I remind myself I spent 25 years with just myself, no children to think of, how hard can it be?

I watched a documentary about Joan Didion on Netflix which was fascinating but also tragic, and I was struck by a comment she made about her ill-fated daughter, who died in her late thirties.  She said her daughter found her remote. When I watched the cinematic footage of Joan in earlier years, writing prolifically, immersed in her craft, surrounded by other creatives, it’s clear that the life she strove for did not feature bedrock stability. It featured something else entirely; the pursuit of her own needs, her own compulsion to write. And as such it makes me wonder, as most people my age do, what’s it all about? I don’t write for a day or two because I do mother stuff, kid’s stuff, house stuff. The ‘pursuit of my own needs’ comes low down on the the ‘to do’ list.

When my own sixteen year old daughter sleeps in my bed, as she did so for a brief spell recently, it was for comfort, but also to draw strength. There was something in her own life that required bravery and clarity and she took that from me, her mother life-force. I didn’t see this until after it had ceased happening, and all that was left of those nights she slept next to me was the memory. This time round though, I listened to her breathing and recognised the same in-breath and out-breath of her babyhood, the same snuffles, the same sleeping sighs as she made her dream-led twists and turns. So elemental yet also incongruous, as when your child emerges in to young adulthood, you loose that sense of oneness with them. Their scent, their skin, that extension of yourself. She is me. I am her.

It’s curious but it is from these everyday inconsequential human nuances that I notice my writing gets richer. To me at least. It is there that I find words. I put off the pursuit of what I desire and aspire to because what happens in between is every day life. So these moments have to be lived and enjoyed and even, at times, endured, as from them comes the goodness.

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