“Ooh!” I say. I am on Facebook. I point to someone with the same surname as MindReader. It is quite an unusual surname and I was just saying the other day that I have never met anyone with his surname (apart from his family).
“Look,” I say.
“Hmm?” he says, leaving over my shoulder (because I am using the laptop SITTING UP!)
“Oh yes,” he says with a smirk “that’s my long lost wife.”
“Check this out,” MindReader says.
Over the past few weeks he has made a few trips to his home and brought back various random things to put in our loft, from Aston Villa Football Club Russian dolls to his graduation photo WITH HIS EX.
“Ooh what?” I say, turning my head.
“My shirt from school,” he says. “Signed by all my friends!”
“Oh!” I say as he places the grey shirt in my lap, covered in marker pen. “How old were you?”
“16,” he says.
I look at the shirt. I turn it onto its front and look at the back. The first scrawled sentence I see is:
“Nice bum” with an arrow to his butt.
Even at 16!
I read the final line of a short story and set the pages down on the table. I had forgotten how stressful reading aloud can be and I am ashamed to realise I am out of breath. It is one thing writing about your bowel movements on the internet and another thing entirely to read out a serious piece of work at a writer’s group.
There are six of us sitting around the table in the library in Hall Green. “Have fun”, MindReader had said as he dropped me off, “or at least, don’t be sick,” he said with a smile looking at my palour as I got out of the car.
The woman to my left read out a beautiful haiku which I memorised. The women to my right is holding a book of short stories. Hers is the first.
The silence continues. “Well…” I say breaking it.
“I don’t know what it is,” the woman opposite me says. “The way you describe things… it’s not quite one thing, or another, and it’s quite subtle but the result is quirky – edgy.”
The floodgates open and the others seem to agree with her.
“Why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself?” one woman says after the feedback is over.
“Oh,” I say, “okay. Umm I have an English degree. And a law degree, actually, except I barely work at the moment … I’m kind of on a sabbatical,” I say. “I was ill for all of 2008 and a lot of 2009,” I say sadly.
One of the women raises her eyebrows. “And how is your health now?” she says.
I nod quickly. “Better,” I say. “I didn’t think it was going to – get better. But it has done. I’m not perfect,” I say, indeed, I currently have a splitting headache and I stil have some days where doing anything is difficult. But it is difficult, and not impossible, that has left me once more choosing shoes and drinking in bars and taking long walks by myself, with headphones – how I have missed those. “But better.”
And there it is: those delicious conversations I used to loathe in some strange way. I am, once more, smugly remembering how I used to be ill. It is such a part of me now: I feel like Billygean diverged in January 2008. And, just not, and now when I can’t sit up for breakfast – I am glad I am this one. She is deeper.
“Anything else?” the woman says.
“Oh – I have a blog,” I say. She looks about 50, and I wonder if I should explain further.
“A blog! How wonderful!” she says. “Do many people read?”
I nod again. “Yes,” I say, “many wonderful people.”
“What does ‘out of the question’ mean?” I say to MindReader. It is time for bedtime learning.
“It means like – God – how to explain? Like not even within the realms of consideration…”
“And what does beside the point mean?”
“Um… like irrelevant,” he says. “How are you writing a book?”
“Because it won’t be full of cliches,” I say scornfully.
“Is the west midlands a county?” I say to MindReader. We are lying facing each other in bed. I often learn a lot at this time of night.
“Yes,” he says.
“Is the Midlands?”
“No. But it is the middle of the lands…?”
“Ooh yes,” I say, “oooh, I like that.”
This is I confess, often how our conversations go. “Handbag,” MindReader will say. “Oh, a bag for your hand!” I will say, and so on.
“And is Birmingham a county?”
“No,” he says. “No.” He pauses. “How do you not know this? You’re 24!”
I frown. “We didn’t have ‘which are these are counties’ lessons in school.”
I have an ulcer on one of my top gums and I push my tongue into it.
“I think you did, but you were doing things like that,” he says, as I turn to him with my tongue stuffed under my top lip.
We are in Boots, developing photographs for our hall, stairs and landing. Yes, we have become middle class suburban people.
“I look dead in this one,” I say to MindReader. We have been experimenting with colour splash, that is, one bit of colour on an otherwise black and white photo. This all works very well unless you are me; my skin being black and white and my clothes being colourful makes me look like a Zombie in nice clothes.
“No you don’t,” MindReader says in an obvious voice.
I gesture towards the till but MindReader pats my arm. “Hang on,” he says, and pulls me towards the homeopathy section.
“Ah,” I say.
MindReader has developed something of a snoring problem, which coupled with my neurotic tendancies about sleep does not bode well. Indeed the last few nights he has not snored until 1am but it was the waiting for him to snore which kept me awake.
“This one?” he says, handing me a herbal remedy that you squirt down your throat.
“The thing is,” he says, “I’m not sure whether to buy something for my snoring or for your insomnia,” he says, rattling a bottle of Kalms.
I have written 20,000 words of my novel.
The self-doubt demons are at bay, because, for the first time in my life, I have got past the ‘setting up the storyline’ part and am actually writing it. Considering I wrote 40,000 words of the other novel this demonstrates how terribly boring I can be.
Anyway, if you were wondering what it’s about, well, I’m not going to tell you. But, the following is a ‘wordle’ of the words I have used:
So yes. Less similies, more metaphors would be what we got from that. And also, the word think alarms me, because I’m supposed to be showing and not telling.
And here’s my blog:
Well: we knew that.
I’m also waiting to hear about a short story competition I entered. They said results ‘may’ be delayed until NOvember so I have been checking their website every day since October. I hope they don’t know this.
Everything is prepared for me to write. Washing on, dishwasher done, coffee made, desk tidied, my list of what I like in a novel pinned definantly to my wall.
I am behind on my wordcount.
And I have reached the end of the bits I’d planned out. Now, I only really know some vague notions of what I want to show before about December in my novel, which is about 10,000 words away.
My characters are in Birmingham – much easier ot write about, and as my fingers skim the keys I briefly describe the canal, easily; the description reads well.
I try some dialogue. If I know what I want to say dialogue is fine as I am sure you have seen.
I don’t know what to say.
My characters ask each other about their days.
I delete it.
What do MindReader and I talk about?
I suddenly have no idea, and my cheeks and the bridge of my nose heat up quickly as I step briefly away from the laptop.
What if – genetically, truthfully – I just don’t have the talent?
I giggle as I slide into our living room. “The rug stops me now!” I say.
We have been to Ikea and the bank is broken as predicted.
“It smells of new carpet,” MindReader says, screwing the legs onto our new end table.
“Mmm,” I say.
He sets the end table upright and we admire it briefly.
“Ooh, I forgot,” MindReader says. “Present time.”
“Ooooh,” I say.
He comes back in with his suit jacket in one hand, the other digging in it. “Here,” he says.
He hands me a box of posh teabags. “Winter spice flavour!” I say excitedly.
“And caffeine free,” he smiles.
“Ooh, oooooh,” I say.
“Right,” he says as I head off to the kettle. I hear him getting our TV unit out of the box and the sprinkling sound of screws on our wooden floor.
I make drinks, and he builds it for a while. I don’t pretend I can help: flatpacking is not my scene for about a hundred reasons.
I write my novel for a while, focussed in my own world and him in his. Our eyes meet occasionally as I stop and scrutinise the air in front of me and he sighs and reaches for the instructions once again.
I close my word document as he stands the TV unit upright. Together we lift the TV onto it.
It doesn’t fit. It hangs off.
Neither of us says anything. We stare at it for a while.
“It doesn’t fit,” I say.
“No,” MindReader says.
His face crakcs into a smile. “It’s ridiculous,” he says, flopping back onto the rug. I join him on my hands and knees.
“Completely,” I say smiling.
