the first day

The first day we left early and I hated saying goodbye to my children and felt wrenched and torn. The sky was bright blue and the air cold and crisp. We jumped on the first train and our journey had begun. Travelling over and through- eating into time, savouring seconds and minutes. The underground is dirty and gritty and grey. Skins are the colour of ashes; tinged with diesel fumes and intimate with pollution. The vibration shakes our boney segments, quivers in the spine. We are unfathomed city walkers, we wear our country customs in our smiles. We stop at Euston station, jump from our train, meander in an unplanned fashion. I visit where I spent many teenage days, in this building, sitting waiting; watching for my train  after reckless weekends with Z;. Camden market, pubs, cigarettes, smoking dope, raiding divine fridges late at night. Later, now, he and I drink black coffee on fat stinking purple sofas. The station smells of old cooking oil; rancid and sweet. I kiss him as he photographs the trains. I smile and our telephone rings...

the journey

It is 7 o clock and in 2 hours we will be leaving. For three days we will be together, in the middle of the buzzing, moving, screeching, gliding tempest of London. Our bags are waiting in the bedroom upstairs. The children will be tucked into the creamy pink soft surburban love of their grandparents. We have three days of journey, of freedom and hard grey urban excitement. We will drift, meander and wander; discovering and rewriting our city walks. For days I have been imagining this voyage and now we are here. All the time I have dreamed and pictured and written will now tick in reality. The forseen seconds will happen. 

autumn

This morning I awoke and thought it was the middle of the night, so quiet and deep was the darkness. We hauled our weary bodies into institutions and now we're all home yawningly cozy and ready for sleep.

the sky

Today the sky stretched up until eternity, as blue as a dream and smelt of summer; sweet and warm and true. We walked until the tip of the earth, where water met land, and watched the people: bodies hugged grass and conversation drifted as the bees buzzed and the rocks sat in lazy pools of waves. We ate crepes and lime ice-cream at a beachside cafe, admired the black dots of surfers scattered in the sea. The sky sang on and we hummed to it's turquoise tune and wished that the day would never end. A gift from the gods, an Indian summer, an unexpected heat, the arriere saison.

return

Back after 5 weeks away from this space. Been working, running workshops, thinking, organising and moving too fast for my liking. My fingers are touching the keys and I am returning to the here and now of words spilling and letters falling, creating this black and white pattern that you are reading and I am writing. Too long. Too far. Thinking of future and past and catching trains and booking planes and dreaming of hotel rooms where me and my man will sleep in late on a two night break without children. I've been spinning tales and feeling old wounds and trying to get the clothes from our July holiday packed away. Summer dreams and the smell of the beach are scattered across the spare bed, quietly waiting to be put away, to hibernate for winter. I've been cooking delicious soups, autumnal and golden and laughing about our mutual exhaustion as we cough and splutter and wheeze our way around the furniature. I've been thinking about loved one's and hoping for the future and astonished by the growth of my girls. I am back and I am happy as I was reticient to write, wondering if I would stumble from lack of practise. I am my father's daughter, a genetically programmer worrier. I am writing . I am drinking sharp green tea and now it is cold and crisp and blue and sunny. 

There is something immediate about creativity, the capacity of being in the here and now where time stops, starts or just is. In any case I cannot be thinking about planning, washing and work obligation while I am here. Multi-tasking my time away. I am with the golden peacock, playing with the scarlet ball and singing the song of the princess in the tower.

tired

I am tired. I've got weary limbs, snappy voice and the feeling of martyrdom is edging under my duvet and reaching out to the morning sun. I am wishing for absent mornings, writing and not being asked too many questions. The baby hormones are slowly drifting away and I can feel myself speeding up, saying yes and making far too many telephone calls. I am in need of long lunches, total illogical thought and to be unstructured and unobliged. I need to undo stitches, read backwards and forget. Memory is my millstone, I cannot forget what I must do, the lists of tasks build up inside my brain in extraordinary pyramid contructions. I constantly add more playing cards, marvel at the fragile structure. I continue to live as I began as a child busying myself from dawn till dusk, filling time with action, planning, organising and forgetting to breath. At the age of seven I created my own timetable for after school and weekend time- filled with sections on reading, gardening, practising drama and play. Scheduled play. Am I running from death or making the most of every tiny second that I'm here? Four months after my birth I nearly lost my life in an accident where my sister died - time stopped and we were marked forever.