lost and definitely not the way to nirvana

today i drank 3 g & ts. this was after dave had picked up the boys. they had been to stay for 3 weeks and then returned to him. today he needed someone to look after them while he attended to biz and i jumped at the chance to have them again.

between the last diary(*) entry and now, i had had a blow out with george, we don’t speak anymore. mix has been to south america and back, been acepted by central st martin’s for a BA course in fine art and is now working as a teacher at dave’s school.

im as lost as ever.

after downing the g & ts i was listiening to the reason and thought i needed to finish that story about lina.

isn’t it really weird. there was a time i wanted to kill her. my every thought was how to get away with murder. of course she’s still alive somewhere, but now she’s nowhere that we know of, dave couldn’t care less what happens to her ithink. he’s been asking to get back with me but i’ve said no. not least because fred is here.

i called him this afternoon to ask him about lina. he says that there isn’t one day that goes by now that she’s left he doesn’t regret everything that has happened.

did i call him up just to hear him say that?

i wonder at the demons i wrestle with

(* this post is lifted from a bit from today's diary entry, is the diary i rarely fill in obviously as the last entry was dated some date in August 2008 - i think i even forgot that mix might still have been in middle europe and not got back to civilization yet - i now wonder why i keep these different diaries - what am i hoping to achieve and who are these persona that keep the diaries to date - they're doing a really poor job, ah well the story of my chaotic life which i try to pretend i keep tabs on?)

why the f*** did i call this blog the road to nirvana??

the weather is dull and tends to send me into the doldrums.  which is where i have been.  nothing as devastating as a breakdown, just plain old miz.  the lil boys have gone to spend the last week of their hols with their dad and maybe that was the precursor.  whilst they've been here, we've been so busy that i haven't had time to take stock and notice that things have not been satisfactory and little things really bother me after all.  apart from that massive blowout with the adult son of course which started much earlier on in the month and escalated into a not speaking to each other cos mum drew the line which must be toed and man-child realised he was only human and still a boy.

and i'm so tired right now that it's just as well the weather's shite.

another fishy puzzle

post april fool i discovered that english shoppers are too embarrassed to ask for pollack at the fish counter.  so now it will be known as colin.  the question is er, why and how can pollack be embarrassing?

the darling assures me that it sounds like testicles - really, can you mistake pollack for bollocks?  only a pillock perhaps.

and i read further and discover that colin is not to be pronounced colin but kho-lan.  (!!)

to feel like a prawn

perhaps i misheard her, the reception wasn't wonderful this morning (although the walk certainly was - blue skies, golden sunshine, a crispness, dissipating as the sun rose higher, warming the morning air) but i thought Barbara Young on the radio had said she felt like a prawn sitting alone in her parliamentary office last night working in the candlelight, with no one to see her not using electricity.

certainly when i googled prawn metaphor the only interesting article was peeling prawns, a reference to the gender equality problems singapore society faces.

so if anyone can shed light on this, i shall be grateful.

is it the easter hols again?

that only means one thing - part time mum is due to go full time again as of tomorrow.  i am already looking at kids' timeout listings.  i've pencilled in play dates with london friends.  i am as prepared as a laid back mum can be.  sure there is a whole swathe of days with nothing planned - and i quite like that.  to tell the truth, the playdates made with the london friends were at diary out of handbag point by my friend liz - i have given my promise to her 2 years in advance that my sons will be free to attend her son's barmitzvah.  she has looked at venues and tasted caterers' fare.  the son is 11.  we have playdate arrangements made 2 terms in advance.  woe betide us should i cancel!  secretly i think she is the one who wrote that book by a pushy mum.  i can't even begin to think about the stresses that must go with being a pushy mum.  the whole concept is alien to me.   

when i think of pushy mums i am reminded of one tennis tournament when george was entered by his then coach at age 12.  it was a dry summer's day and the astro surface was slippery with sand.  in the middle of a rally, his opponent slipped and fell and was about to burst into tears when a voice roared from behind me - get up, get up NOW!  Amazingly the tiny thing who must have been only 9 scrambled up and won the point!  i realised then that none of my children was ever going to become champions.  they don't have a pushy enough mum.

eau de streetwalker and one other good quote

the weather is suitably springlike these days and the dog and i have spent many happy long mornings exploring everywhere around us - uphill and downdale, looking at breathtaking views and getting all muddy - london clay is the kind where despite the fact it hasn't rained in the last couple of weeks, some woodland areas are still claggy on the ground.

and then back home to settle cosily on the hammock getting through some entertaining reading material, in the afternoon sun.  

i blame it on the deadly cocktail of pineapple juice and large measure of malibu my son mixed me one evening.  i was reading louis de berniere's latest paperback and was reminded of that awful guerlain perfume which someone had got for the darling back in the day before i knew him - probably some floozy.  that line eau de streetwalker suits it - but of course it was por homme but still to me it stank more like old women.  when i first sniffed it i forbade him to ever wear it and when he asked me why i said it smelt dusty.  he looked at me with some astonishment.  and sniffed it too.  but didn't say anything.  

and then the other line which impressed me from that same book was this one - 

Time screws death into you through every orifice but it never stops you yearning.

the other day i had dinner with sasha after some several months of not seeing her.  she said that marcus (her husband) has no friends and is quite pathetic still.  but they get on alright.  i told her i don't see our friend cath anymore and she clucked with sympathy when i told her why not.  she asked me what i was doing these days and i think she's quite shocked when i openly told her nothing much.  i can see that she's struggling not to say outright that i should pull myself together as it has been 5 years since the dave disaster.  but she doesn't.  i can tell though what is on her mind and i'm grateful for her not saying anything.

you know how you write something and then you re-read it and feel slightly ashamed?

that's how i felt when i read what jonathan myerson had to say here.  

the last post i wrote was so smug.  but of course although i know all about my own son's littl hobby i must say i am relieved that it is the old fashioned kind he was dabbling with.  and that now he's told me he's stopped doing what he had been doing.  he may have only said that because he didn't want his mum to worry, but i can tell that his room smells fresh - er,  well as fresh as a teenage boy's room could smell!  but i think what he told me was genuine, because a few days after we had our little talk, he started to clean his room, had a bit of a clearout,  moved furniture around and had a change of layout.  like the new person he had become, no longer associated with illegal substances.

on other news, alpha male, aka the darling was sulking the whole of saturday because i had not consulted him before doing 2 things - invite the ex for lunch to meet my sister and drive him bck down to winch on friday afternoon when i went to get the boys.    sometimes it's so much less complicated to be single.