The lovely ladies at Aspire Style have sent me The Most Beautiful Bag in all the world.
I’m going away this weekend (I am turning twenty five and wondering how this has happened?) and, while the usual logistics sleeping/eating problems will undoubtedly occur, I am going away with The Most Beautiful Bag which even has a little envelope pocket and an inside pocket for my phone.
Plus, it matches my purse.
I don’t normally do this but it’s SO beautiful you can get yours here
“How was your lesson?” MindReader says as MadFather and I walk through the door.
“Good!” I say. “We did third gear and roundabouts! Not together, though.”
“No…” MindReader says. He is watching the football, tea in hand.
“You know the kitten though?” I say.
“Yes?”
“Well, now, when I don’t accelerate enough MadFather says to tickle the budgie who lives under the gas pedal. And when I forget to check my blind spot I have to kiss the parrot who lives over my right shoulder!”
MindReader smiles. “My god,” he says. “It’s like Early Learning Centre does driving!”
Due to the below, I now own five coats.
This is a tad excessive even for me.
***
We are in United Colours of Benetton. I am in my winter coat which is a Perfectly Acceptable wool trench coat. I also own an old parka and a spring coat.
“Oh,” I say, looking across the room. It is love at first sight. “A purple mac,” I say. Not, I hasten to add, of the Apple variety (with my current coat problem I can but dream of affording an apple mac).
“I’m going to the men’s,” MindReader says, squeezing my waist and walking off.
I stand before the coat. We stayed in London last night and I am tired because Body demands crazy amounts of sleep but wakes up at the slightest hotel-sound. I am tired and stroppy and I could do with a lovely new coat.
I’ll just try it on. I shiver as I take off my woollen coat and drop it to the floor. The puce material slides over my skin. The coat and I were meant to be. £60. That is only a day’s work! I shall make it up next weekend. Or, wait, the one after that.
I go to find MindReader and pass him on the escalators, him coming up, me going down. I try to hide the bag between my legs.
“Billygean!” he says. “You BOUGHT it?”
“Um…” I say. “It’s my coat-soulmate!”
I spend a while on the tube poking into the bag and grinning up at MindReader, who eventually requests that we stop talking about the coat.
***
Actually, at home, front of mirror, when not (too) tired and stroppy, the neckline is a bit weird. It looks like a blazer.
But oh, that purple/pink is so divine.
I shall just look online for a mac with a nicer collar, I think.
***
Twenty minutes later and I own a jade green mac from Miss Selfridge with an absolutely stunning collar.
MindReader comes home.
“I have a coat!” I say.
“I know,” he says, like, ENOUGH ABOUT THAT COAT.
“No no no,” I say. “A NEW one.”
“What?!”
“The purple one – its collar is rubbish,” I say. “This one has a better collar.”
“How much was it?”
“Sixty.”
“So was the FALLING IN LOVE with the purple coat an excuse to give yourself a sixty pound budget to spend on coats?!” he says with a smirk.
“Hmm,” I say. “I hope I can return the first one.”
“To London?”
“Yes. We’re going back soon anyway!”
MindReader doesn’t look too pleased.
***
The green coat arrives as I leave for work.
In short, as I pull it on EVERY SINGLE BUTTON COMES OFF.
I ring the shop on the train.
“Um,” I say. “I bought a coat online and it’s faulty so I was wondering if I could exchange it in store?”
Oh yes, it’s too pretty to part with, no matter how shoddily made!
She says yes and I reserve the size I need.
I decide on a random whim to see if there is a god and a purple AND beautiful-collared coat exists.
“Oh we have it in purple too,” she says. “But you would need to buy the purple one and send the green one back yourself.”
Looks like I am about to have six coats.
“I swept the hall today!” I say to MindReader. We are in his car on our way out for a meal.
“Um, well done?!” he says.
“Ooh look at that big wheel,” I say, pointing to a ferris wheel that has arrived in Birmingham recently. It’s bright white and sparkling in the middle of Centenery Square. “I’d like to go on that,” I say.
“Billygean,” MindReader says. “How long do you think you’d last before you got scared?” He smirks. “I vote 9 seconds?”
“I would not get scared!”
“You’re afraid of ROAD SWEEPERS,” he says.
I smile. There is not much scarier than seeing a big road sweeper coming at me in the street, its bristly moustache swirling towards my feet. “One nipped my toes the other day!” I say.
“Was it helping you sweep up the hall?”
I suppose when things happen incrementally you don’t notice.
I have had no “eureka, I am well!” moment and indeed while on some days I would glibly tell someone I am absolutely fine now, on others I would vehemently deny it. I guess it’s because I AM fine, when compared with the Billygean of 08 who could only hold her head up for three minutes, and yet, compared to other people – to you – I am sometimes so far from being well it throbs like a wasp’s sting.
But there is more to it than that – for some reason this makes the big thing – the getting well – less of a big deal.
Three weeks ago, Action for ME said they knew a magazine that was looking to do a feature on blogs. I get offers like this quite frequently but have no desire to appear in Thats Life magazine next to a woman who gave birth to a two stone baby.
And then they said the magazine was Company magazine (for US readers think something approximating Cosmo or Elle). Okay, I thought, but they might not want MY blog. I gave them my number anyway.
A week ago, they rang. My blog would be in their magazine. I tried not to let it swell, to grow. It’s just a real life feature, because you were ill, not because you are a good writer.
Then we had the interview which, yes, was about being ill, but also about WRITING, that beautiful, slippery thing that very often feels like coming home and waking up in the sunshine all at once.
And then today, the photoshoot. Not, as I thought, a real life picture of me looking ill/happy/sad but lighting and hair and make up and mood boards and we brought you this to wear and jut your hip and look over at your shoulder at me and into the light.
And, just like being well, I had moments where I thought, how did I get here? Why are they standing there taking photographs of me? Why are they reading my writing? How come I can run for a bus without thinking?
And then I let it swell, and I felt something I haven’t felt for – literally – years. Not healthiness or joy, or luckiness or contentment, but optimism.
That tacit optimism you carry around with you; the knowledge that good things happen, and when they do, bad things do not necessarily follow.
And as I turned for the last photo and looked the camera directly in its eye, I tried to convey all that.
Am I glad I got sick – now, in this moment?
Yes.
“And… clutch down and brake to a stop,” MadFather says.
“Brake to a stop,” he says again. “Um – brake, Billygean!”
I finally stop the car just short of a fence.
“Bit quicker next time?” he says.
“It’s hard!” I say.
We drive around the block again.
“And clutch down and -”
I slam on the brake, and stall the car.
“Right then,” MadFather says. I wonder if he’s ever had a student as remedial as me. I just learnt the back wheels don’t turn when the steering wheel does.
He taps his bristly chin and seems to ponder for a moment. “Okay.”
“Hm?”
“Okay,” he says. “Let’s say there’s a kitten under the brake,” he says. “You don’t want it to get away so you have to brake quickly, but you don’t want to crush it…”
“Ooh, okay!” I say. I like kittens.
We drive. “Clutch down and…” he says.
I bring the car to a perfect stop.
MindReader and I are at an engagement party in Cardiff (Wales to the Americans amongst us). Incidentally if you and I are ever at a party together please do not ask us when he is going to propose, prompting a hearty ‘never!’ from the sarcastic boyfriend himself and a defensive but well-meaning ‘if it’s forever what is the rush?’ from me.
Anyway.
“What did you do today?” MindReader’s friend asks.
“Well we came up yesterday,” MindReader says, sipping a beer, his other hand slung casually around my shoulders. “you know – a mini break.”
I meet his eye and smile as he glosses over the packing of gluten free bread and the ringing of restaurants and the tears as our ‘neighbours’ in our hotel woke us up shouting at 7am.
“Oh excellent,” he says. “See much of Cardiff today?”
“Yep,” I say, “left hotel at about one, walked to town and I dragged MindReader round the shops til 6, then we got some dinner.”
“And now a house party?” he says, looking at me evenly as MindReader excuses himself.
I nod.
“Better then?” he says, with no hint of irony or accusation.
I look back at MindReader’s retreating form and wonder briefly if it is possible to love as much as I do right now. I think of how he got up at 8 and spent hours in the lobby so not to disturb my slumber til one. I think of my hand on his arm as I needed to stop walking halfway through the afternoon. It is true that if I hadn’t got back to sleep after our neighbours woke us then today would have been a no walking day. It is also true that dinner on both nigts was a complete faff; that if we were abroad And i couldnt demand they wash their woks would have gone hungry.
But – and this is, I grasp, the crucial part – I did manage a full day out; we did go away for the first time since 08, and I am okay. Sometimes, how things seem might just be how they are.
“I suppose I am, rather,” I say, sipping my wine, my only complaint being that my feet hurt in these ridiculous shoes.
