STFU

It turns out that the best way to get me to do something is to behave like an arsehole towards me. Last night I was told to ‘shut the fuck up’. I responded by not shutting the fuck up. I replied, at quite some length. And then I blogged, for the first time in years. About Dad. Dad. We only get one. Or if you’re my eldest brother, you get two (my eldest brother was adopted, I didn’t meet him until I was well into my 30s). But I only got one shot at it, and I ended up with Dad, my dad, my make, Mac. 

 Difficult, annoying, argumentative. Smoked too much, drank too much, fuelled by coffee and the need to be right. The need to know you had done the right thing, however hard it might be. Excruciatingly honest at times. Able to perform in public, but hating the limelight. Stupidly softhearted at others and hang on a minute I’m supposed to be writing about my dad, and I seem to have ended up talking about me instead. 

We were a bit too alike. Which is why we argued, endlessly. Oh my god, did we argue. I am faintly proud that ‘doing a Jess’ has now passed into the family lexicon, meaning ‘to stand up during a heated discussion, tell the other party to fuck off, and then storm out’. I am very mature. Very. I can’t tell you how many times I did a Jess when I was with Dad. No, I literally can’t, it was kind of expected of me and I would have hated to disappoint him. Actually, thinking about it, I should have done it at his funeral. Bugger. 

 We always worked things out though, eventually. Usually by him saying ‘I’m a stupid old git, I shouldn’t have said what I said. I love you to bits, make.’ And then we’d both get a bit tearful, and I’d call him a silly old arse, and get him a glass of Merlot so we could both have a bit of a weep without the other one seeing. We were too alike. What he didn’t like in me was what he didn’t like in himself. 

What did he like in me? He liked my determination. He liked my honesty. He liked my refusal to back down when I knew I was right (aside from the whole ‘doing a Jess’ thing). He admired me for my strength, my intelligence, and my intuition. He loved that I can think around corners, that what seems so obvious to me is something that eludes others. He loved me for my voice, my love of words, and the joy I took in writing. He loved that I am, and always have been a contrary little bastard, and he regularly would tell me to move on to another subject when I’d got the best of him. Quite often by telling me to shut up. At which I would fold my arms, jut my chin out and say ‘No.’ 

 So being told to ‘shut the fuck up’ last night was a bit like Dad re-emerging from um… his urn actually. I wish I could make that sound slightly more dramatic. Would it help if I knocked my ashtray over, to make it seem like some kind of spiritual apparition? I could pick the fag butts out, and then chuck the ash in the air with a bit of decent lighting. No? Ok. 

 Shut the fuck up? No. You should know me better than that. Dad did. And if he were here now, he’d laugh & tell me to get another glass, give me a hug and tell me that he loves me, stupid twats that we both are. And I would give a shaky laugh, and it would be ok. It would all be ok. It doesn’t feel ok right now, but I have to have faith that it will be ok, somehow. I don’t know how, but it will be ok, because it has to be, because I have to be. It will become ok.

Dad

My dad died. At some point I know I will be able to articulate that better. I’m still not really sure how to tell people that Mac isn’t around any longer. He died. Suddenly, horrifically. I’ve been spared much of the immediate pain, it has fallen entirely to my beautiful, kind, generous Doobs to deal with, my darling Biggus Sissus. I’ve just been thinking a lot about Dad this weekend. Because this is exactly the type of weekend that Dad & I would have spent an afternoon having lunch together, getting gradually down units of alcohol, arguing, telling each other to fuck off, then him teaching me how to do crosswords, and being so kind, so encouraging, so proud when I got a clue right. Eventually I would have tottered off home, having poured him into a taxi, having seen how out of breath just the 10 yard walk would make him. Then I’d get a text from him ‘hoho make, safely home. Love you to bits.’ I miss him. I miss him so much. I miss my dad. I regret every time I didn’t let him know how much I loved him, I regret not telling him to fuck off more, I regret not just holding his hand that little bit longer. I regret not protecting him, when I should have done. But I look out across the people I know, and so many people are only families because of what Dad did. He had his children, his family, his friends who made me laugh so much at the wake. But he changed so many lives with what he did, and that is his legacy. I just miss him so much. Hoho make. Safely home. Love you to bits.

Don't need a reason

     If she were here now, she'd tell us to stop being such a puddle of wusses. If she were here now, she'd tell us to rattle our dags and get the hell on with it. If she were here now, she'd deliver the twitter equivalent of a clip round the ear & tell me to get the bollocks on with writing again. So that's what I'm doing.

     She's not here though. Like an awful lot of people I woke up on Sunday morning to the news that Dr Dianne Tillotson – or @hipbookfairy as many of us will always think of her – had died. I cried a bit. I suspect I'm not alone in that. If you didn't know her, then that loss is yours. If you did know her, then that loss is ours. Because she was one of the best people I've encountered on twitter. She was funny, she was clever, she was kind, formidable, gentle, straight talking, fascinating, full of knowledge, yet she always wore her learning lightly, and despite being hugely appreciative of other people and their work, never once do I have a memory of her showing off all that she knew and had worked on. All she ever wanted to do was share her own enthusiasm in the hope of encouraging others.

     And she did. She truly did. It didn't matter to her how many letters you had after your name or how many hours you'd spent in dusty archives researching esoteric brasses or church crawling in ever increasing selfimportance, she just cared that you cared. About anything. If it was important to you, she took an interest, because despite her searing intelligence and rock solid understanding of so many things, what fired her most were people. I don't think there have been many I've come across who were so joyfully engaged with people, regardless of subject. There were no airs and graces, no pretensions, no false front with Dianne. And she didn't entertain it from others either, her legendary bluntness coming to the fore as and when required, but always with a gleam in her eye, and the unspoken understanding that she would forgive you almost anything, but wouldn't let you get away with much.

     She told me off a lot. She told me off when I was being a brat. She told me off for swearing too much. She told me off for being lazy, being silly, for being a bit of a twat. But always with kindness, and always with generosity.

     Generous is the word that keeps coming to mind when I think of her. She gave so freely, so easily, so simply that it never felt she was doing it as a favour or an obligation. Her generosity was really altruism. She saw an opportunity to help others, so she did. She never thought about receiving. Never thought about what she got back from it, just a natural reflex to help, and to make things better. And she did, she always did. The number of word exchanged between us pales into insignificance when I think about what they really meant. She was an absolute one off, one time, one individual who took her own path and forever was drawn to those who did the same. She inspired and encouraged so many others, and we are all diminished by her loss. She was, in her own words, a volunteer with attitude. I shall miss her, and I lack the eloquence to truly pay tribute to her. All I can think is that if she meant so much to me and others who never even met her, then how much did she influence and shape the lives of those who really knew her best, who benefited from her calm, witty, insightful wisdom?

     A better person than I reminded me last night that 'No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away'. With Dianne, those ripples will continue into the foreseeable future, for at least as long as I strive and endure. She pushed me forward whilst holding my hand. I shall miss her presence, almost more than I can say, the kind consideration for everyone she came across, the humour, the biting wit and silliness that never once hid just how good a person she was, and just what a hinterland there was behind every insight.

     If she were here right now, she'd be wagging a gently chiding finger at me, telling me to write more, telling me that I have the same spirit in me, telling me to put my boots on and kick the arse out of the things I can do to make the world a better place. If she were here right now, I'd know she was right. She always was. But she's not here, and won't be, so instead I've written this. Mawkish and self-indulgent it may be, and she'd almost certainly give me a good ticking off for it, but I know the difference she made to so many of us. So I am writing this in my most bright and colourful clothes, with my biggest boots on, flowers in my hair, being that 'spunky chick with attitood' that she said I was, because she believed in me. And I never took the chance to tell her how much she meant to me, and to so many others.

     RIP Dianne. We've lost our irreplacable twitter fairy, so instead we've been calling angels down to earth in your stead. Because I believe we need them.

Fearless Girl

     I think we've covered how much fun I had over the festive period. If this were a film, we would now cut to a montage of me crying, staying in bed, listening to Madness on repeat, having an eight hour bender with my Mum the day after my birthday, opening the fridge door & shrugging before closing it again, chain-smoking, staying up into the wee small hours and then an absolute storm surge of wine.

     And then, just at the end, before it fades to darkness, one other little image would creep in too. A little image of a little thing (no, not me). A small statue that I've never seen in person, probably never will. A tiny thing, a seemingly insignificant thing, a silent thing that nevertheless speaks to me and holds my hand in the bleakest of moments.

     Her. Fearless Girl. I love this figure so, so, so, so SO much. I love her, just for being her. I love her boot clad feet standing apart, her fists planted on her hips, her chest out, her chin jutted up, the calm defiance of her face. I love the way the billowing of her clothes suggests movement, the sway of her ponytail. I love how even with that susurration of a breeze doesn't distract from the fact that she is planted solidly, ready to take on whatever is coming at her.

     Then you do see what is coming at her, or perhaps considering taking her on. Older than her, bigger, stronger, heavier, seemingly more dangerous, unpredictable & ferocious, harder, more powerful. The Bull of Wall Street was there first, intended to represent all of those aggressive, macho tendencies, that need to overpower and conquer, to be ruthless and feared.

     This girl came along with her response. To stand in front of something meant to intimidate her, something she can have no hope of defeating, and her response is instead to stand her ground and with every fibre of her being say simply 'I am here.' In contrast to her small, slight frame, the bull now looks clumsy, dull witted and lumbering, his body turned as if he's no longer ready to charge, but is weighing up his options as this girl stands there and says 'I am not afraid of you.'

     And somehow I know with absolute certainty that if he did decide to run at her, she would prevail. Either he would screech to a halt at the final moment or she would neatly sidestep – possibly even with an arm flourish of faux-politeness – and again, he would be the wrong-footed one, not this bold girl facing down the world with no hint of fear, her dress rippling, hair swinging, her boots linking her to the position she defends. For all of her lack of stature, she is stronger than than the Statue of Liberty, because she has freed herself of gestures and of being scared. You could bounce rocks off her, but I doubt you'd even consider it.

     I love her. She's become iconic, and I also appreciate she's been controversial too. Even as I write this, despite what I've just written about her refusal to back down and move away, she is, ironically, doing just that very thing and will no longer be facing her formidable foe. No pasa nada. She'll still be out there somewhere, that spirit and blithe determination living on, inspiring and encouraging others to follow her lead. Her beauty lies not in her face, but in her power, not in her size, but in her strength.

     When it comes to fearsome vs fearless, I'll always back fearless. For she is small but mighty.

It must be love

     The Blondies weren't with me for Christmas. A bit longer than that, really. They left the day before my birthday (which is 22^nd December, just in case you'd unaccountably forgotten to add it to your diary), and they didn't come back until the 27^th. That's an awfully long time to be on your own, and a fairly painful one too.

     I'm not bleating in the hope of sympathy. My family offered, in various ways, to host me, and I refused all offers. Because if I can't be with those whom I love most, then I don't want to be with anyone. Alone I can choose to sleep or not, eat or not, get dressed or not, drink (yeah, there was never going to be a 'not' attached to that one) or just sink into misery and cry endlessly, sitting on the second bottom step of the stairs, reflecting on everything that has, could, and will go wrong. Again there is no 'not' attached to that scenario. It happened. Quite a few times.

     But I tried not to let it, or at least not to give into it too much. The temptation to listen to tear jerking music so that I could descend into solo self pitying snivelling was strong with this one. But I Jessed up as much as I could, listened to endless podcasts, went into hiding on social media because I didn't want pity. Trust me, I was already wallowing in that. I attempted to only listen to happy, upbeat music instead, to at least provide one less excuse for leaving discarded tissues all over the house.

     Trying to stave off insanity, I plunged headlong into madness. Divine Madness, the soundtrack to my childhood and early teenage years, introduced to me by my brother, and never unloved since. The first nine tracks take me back to being 13, playing Sonic 2 on the megadrive with my best friends, glasses of Ribena in front of us, right up to track 10. It's such a simple song.

 I never thought I'd miss you

half as much as I do.

And I never thought I'd feel this way,

the way I feel about you.

     I can't quite write those words without having to swallow a bit too hard. Idiot. But sometimes the simplest lines are – like love – the best. They cut through pretentious, self-conscious referencing or airy-fairy metaphors, to what is open, direct, honest. What is true. And sometimes it is as easy as a hot knife slicing through butter.

     I could write on and on about love, about how it feels, what it is, how it changes us forever. I could tell you all of that, and god knows I have done in the past, self-indulgently and at length. But it really is the simplest of things that convey our truest feelings – a look, a handhold, an understanding. An appreciation of what someone gives to us, even unknowingly. It seems so little, yet means so much. But being small doesn't mean it's not mighty.

     How can it be that we can say so much without words? Because we know. Because when The Blondies finally came home, they followed me around the house like a pair of not so little turtle doves, gently cooing, and I quietly, secretly rejoiced. Loves of my life, I don't need to say it, do I? You know. You know what it must be. It is madness, to love you as much as I do. But to me, it and you are divine. Promise.

Time wounds all heals

     We went to Horsey Gap to see the seals. Along with pretty much every other person in Norfolk, or so it seemed. Christ, it was mobbed. The slowest part was just inching down the track into the car park, and then following the traipsing hordes up onto the dunes, where you're securely held back by constantly having to sidestep family groups, and are, in any case about half a mile from the seals. Compared to Winterton or Blakeney Point, both of which have utterly captivated us all over the years, this was decidedly underwhelming.

     The Girl expressed this most openly, by sulking and trudging and saying 'when can we just GO?' because that always improves a situation, and makes everyone in the vicinity radiate patience and joy. But not too long after this, both Mum & I conceded she had a point and began the walk back to the car, our route taking us past that familiar Norfolk landmark, a coastal pillbox. Usually rubbish strewn, graffitied, left to moulder away in the landscape, smelling of wee. This one was no exception.

     But maybe it was. Built as a solid, squat, defensive structure, over 70 years on the Norfolk coast had done its work, and the outer shell had been weathered and beaten into submission, revealing the structure beneath, which again, faced with the elements had begun to buckle and corrode, facing outwards like an offensive weapon, not the protective construction it was once supposed to offer.

     Sharp, curling, cruel little spikes rippling metal, perfectly placed to take out the eye of some unwary seal porn enthusiast, or catch on your coat, or scrape the legs of those children whose parents thought it would be a perfect #makingmemories photo opportunity and had hefted their offspring up onto the roof of the pillbox without quite formulating a plan as to how to get them down again (clue: not easily). Prongs really, to hack into delicate flesh, to catch and harm. The hurt beneath the benevolence, the steel beneath the outer skin. That which is its strength and support is also that which damages.

     'Well now' I thought to myself. 'there's a HANDY METAPHOR. That something that from a distance looks blunt and solid has been so ravaged by time and passing circumstance that when viewed up close proves to have scars and open wounds that are in themselves capable of wounding. But you have to be close enough to see that, to feel that. That's the only way it will touch you, or you touch it, although everything in you screeches 'noli mi tangere'. Or in my case JESUS CHRIST THE GIRL DON'T PUT YOUR FACE THERE EVEN AS A JOKE.' Not that I'm anxious or anything.

     But it is a handy metaphor. We hurt the ones to whom we are closest, or those we touch. We let them in, or let them near, and they see us in our weather, eroded state, the cracks showing, spikes and all. And that it why it hurts, and that is why sometimes we are cautious – because we fear being hurt again. And that's also why sometimes it's so familiar that we forget the danger of not approaching things as delicately as we should. We assume familiarity equals safety.

     You just know I'm going to end this with some other kind of clunking great metaphor, don't you? Yep. Because having tested if a certain prong was indeed at a level certain to take her eye out, The Girl turned to me and said scornfully 'It's totally blunt Mum. Not sharp at all. It just looks like it should be.'

The point at which we vanish

     I've held off writing this for a while, deliberately. Partially because at the time, I didn't have the time to do so. Mostly because I didn't want to piggyback on what was someone else's moment – because it was their moment. More than a moment really, it was their triumph. Whilst those of us who were around during it had our own little moments, it was pretty much down to one person that it even happened at all.

     If you follow me on twitter or we're friends on facebook, you probably know I broke a fairly prolonged period of silence in November to talk about an exhibition that was open for some of those brief moments at St Peter Hungate in Norwich – Vanishing Points, the landscapes, archaeology, artefacts of the Western Front. It was supposed to be solely a photographic exhibition, but like work, it expanded to fill the time & space available, and instead became something far more expansive, personal yet distancing, brutal yet sensitive, visceral yet haunting, the ghosts still flitting past us out of the corner of our eyes, just as long as we didn't watch, still moving.

     An awful lot of you visited. It was like the biggest, longest tweet up that Norwich/Norfolk/even further afield has ever known. I hugged a LOT of people. Sometimes more than once. I grinned lots, I did a happy dance more often in public than one should ever do, I even performed a Charleston around the Visitor Book. I cried too. So many times.

     The comment that kept coming up again and again from people was 'moving'. And it was. Despite having been recruited to help with 'generally kicking arse', having known pretty much every detail of every feature, of every element – sometimes in the most nitpicky fashion – I still, when first faced with it all, burst into tears. And I don't mean I got a bit mimsy mouthed, and let one tear trickle down my face, artistically. No. I properly went. That sort of involuntary response that makes both hands fly up up in a gesture of prayer to cover your mouth, the noise that comes out of your throat that can only accurately be described as a strangled 'mmmpppfff!!', followed by an inevitable and instinctive 'Sorry!' in a high-pitched quavering register that no one would ever recognise as your voice. Twice, in two minutes, that happened, before regaining control of myself, the back of my hand pressed against my mouth to prevent further outbreaks.

    It has previously been recorded, both here and in other places, that my emotions are never far from the surface. I laugh easily, can be a mopey lachrymose twat at the brush of a feather, bridle & swear with no provocation. But in this case, I wasn't alone. For all of my irrational, fractured behaviour, I am sometimes capable of being disciplined, and in this case and place I was, assiduously totting up visitor numbers, and people who, like me, cried.

     1,019 visitors came in through the door in a little over 60 hours. On average, one person an hour cried. Not including me, or anyone else making it a new reality (I say 'new' reality, because it is/was always a reality, but Vanishing Points gave it a new life). And some of those people who cried, made me cry too, just seeing their responses, seeing what it meant to them knowing what that response would mean to the person responsible for it. Sometimes it was old men I can only describe as Paul Whitehouse characters. Sometimes a relative of the deceased. Sometimes when I saw people realise the reality of war is not numbers, but stories.

     But the reactions, despite me knowing how good the exhibition would be, despite understanding it, despite doing my best to help – those reactions took me aback. I realised again the power of stories. How one storyteller can create a narrative that changes us, for the better. I know that's not an entirely popular opinion, it hasn't hasn't found favour with others, and the storyteller could not have done his job without help, insight, and support from many others, playing their parts in different ways. But I was there, as much as I could be, not as much as I wanted to be, and I saw the impact that it had. People who wandered in, smiling & laughing, before departing, slightly hollow-eyed, tearful, and so obviously captivated by the words and landscapes. It lingers in me still. I find it strange that those hours of mine I so gladly gave are no longer so consumed by the stories I wanted to be told, whether visually, with long interpretation boards, or the starkest of words under a monochrome sky, they're ghosts now too. Not just of the places they died in, but the place where people came to meet them for the first time. I miss them.

     I miss them, and I miss talking to people about them, about lives and memories. That will slip away so easily, if other people don't take up the baton of carrying on memories and telling those tales. That was what Vanishing Points did. It told stories, various stories, in various ways, and it connected. It was beautiful and bone shaking, hilarious and heartbreaking, terrible, yet terrific.

     So thank you, to those who came (Hi Mum!). Thanks to those who kept me company and kept me in coffee. Thanks to everyone who played a part. I owe a pint at least to Julian S and Andrew 'no I'm not Nick' M A stupid & ridiculous amount of thanks to Matt for all of the negotiating & facilitating he had to do. Nick... mates, innit. I'd go to the cross for you. Actually, I did, which was the first public snotting I did. After all of the build up there he was, our predecessor in looking a bit arsy, and fighting pointless battles. His spirit lives on, even if the exhibition doesn't.

     Goodbye Francis. Different stories took hold of different people. Yours will never let me go, so I suppose it's not goodbye, not really. It's thank you. All we have left of you are footprints, fragments, fingertips. But what more can anyone hope for than to have left some kind of trace of their story?

     Goodnight Poogy x

The Crucible

     'Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life.'

     I was mooching about at Norwich Cathedral last week, because apparently I don't spend enough time hanging out in freezing cold medieval places of worship, taking crap photos of graffiti on my phone. I could add a few examples of these photos here, but you seem nice, and probably don't deserve that.

     Anyway, as I lurked in dark corners and stalked around cloisters and reflected that I definitely do require a far more dramatic coat to make an impressive entrance (my £20 much abused Primark overcoat is fantastically warm & waterproof, but it does make me look a bit as though I'm wearing half a sleeping bag intended for someone of more generous proportions than I. Or, as my son put it 'Your legs look like two pieces of string hanging out of a sack'), I snapped a few later bits of graffiti too. Like this one.

     Lovely handiwork, I think we can all agree. And because it's historic, it's important, so most people assign it not to 'vandalism', but instead as a 'vital record' or 'human heritage' or slightly less charitably (and almost certainly wrongly) as 'bored choirboys/parishioners' etc. The same people who would have a fit if 'J. Brown November 25th 2018' were to appear next to it.

     As we know that's – perhaps ironically – a modern attitude to have towards graffiti. As we also know (shh, you do know, I've told you often enough) 'graffiti' only entered the language relatively recently, only appearing because a term was required to describe the inscriptions being found in Pompeii during its exhumation. It held no negative connotations then, it was just a handy term for people leaving their mark.Now, of course it's anti-social and a sign of how far society has fallen. You know you live in a rough area if it's described as 'riddled with', 'covered in' or 'besmirched by' graffiti. In these times, Banksy would surely replace Pestilence as one of the horsemen of the apocalypse. Except that the pale horse traditionally featured wouldn't be pale these days, but tagged to spray-painted indecipherability, because That's The Way of The Modern World.

     And it is, to a greater or lesser extent. Graffiti creators these days tend not to leave a calling card of full name, date, or anything that could be considered as personally identifying. Instead we have nameless political statements, street art created by someone whose greatest identifier is their alleged anonymity, endless tags. No one signs their name any more.

     'I mean to deny nothing.'

     Seriously, when was the last time you saw a piece of graffiti that was just a simple entry in the visitor book of walls, that was in any meaningful way 'recent'? A carving, pen stroke, or scrawl that actually states nothing more than 'I was here'? If you want to make a 'Kilroy woz 'ere' joke right now, please do so only inside your own head.

     These days, people leave only first names or initials or tell you whom they love or hate. They make statements, or daub political slogans or tag themselves to be seen, heard, read, left for as long as their message is allowed to remain. Left behind, yet very rarely recording who they are, or when, only where. Whether passing through in a brief moment, leaving it to be seen by an intended audience, or just because it gives them bragging rights over a location. Be seen on the scene as The Young People almost certainly wouldn't term it, unless they're hipster wankers who'd say it ironically at their pop up crowdfunded start up heads up... thing.

     What we don't get are things that mark out individuals, as people that future generations might be able to trace. We are always told by people these days that graffiti is antisocial. I, for once not trying to be contrary, disagree. I think it's interesting that the rise in people viewing graffiti as antisocial seems to coincide with graffiti being seen as something subversive, a little bit naughty, something to clutch your pearls over. It also coincides with people becoming more anonymous in how they choose to communicate with a wider, unknown and unknowing world.

     Yet still, graffiti is created, by & for people. Still people find that texts, emails, blogs, forums, social media as a whole, is not enough to say what matters to them, not if it can be traced back to the author, if it leaves any kind of footprint that can be followed. And that's even without considering the age old method of one person making noises out of their mouth and those sound waves being received into the pink and shell like area of another. Graffiti still retains the honour of hiding its face from the world whilst shouting at it. Like a snooker player plotting the trajectory of a ball at The Crucible, the end result is what matters, not who holds the cue. Those who still leave these marks have told us what matters to them. We don't always have to know their name to understand their message.

     'I have given you my soul; leave me my name!'

(yes, congratulations if you also had to study The Crucible at one point).

Black dog on my shoulder again

     There's a black dog on my shoulder again.

     Licking my neck and saying she's my friend.

     She's not though. She is very definitely not my friend. She is the Megabitch to my Snotface, a Snotface without a Drop Dead Fred to lighten things. The Megabitch who just won't shut up.

     Solitude the one thing that I really miss.

     And it is. Because she's always there, the black dog, the Megabitch, that persistent, insistent voice just slightly behind me, growling poison into my ear that becomes intolerable and impossible to ignore.

     Guess my life is a compromise.

     Which is why she's here again, the hound. I don't feel in control of anything, so I've let the leash slip, and now she's running circles around me, making me doubt myself, every thought, word, deed. I can't step forward because I'm scared she'll trip me up as she runs so freely.

     There's a black dog on my shoulder again

     I'm playing with it but it's gone to my head.

     Not much seems to be helping. I can throw a stick as far as I can humanly hurl anything, but she always comes back to play some more, she never tires of this game even after all of these years. If I get the chance, I'll chuck her a treat or two, and then run REALLY fast in the opposite direction, but...

     Like Carlito's Way there are no exit signs.

     And the Megabitch is there with me again, a faithful frenemy, whose loyalty I get so tired of running away from that I stop and just give in to whatever rough-housing she feels like inflicting.

     Freeze me there until I'm numb.

     And that is what I become. Whilst living in a constant state of fluttery, panicky anxiety, I lose all motivation. I just stop. Everything grinds to a standstill. I get nothing done, there is no maintenance carried out, and I crumble, internally at first, before the cracks start to appear on the exterior, as the Megabitch continues to run amok, chasing cats, squatting everywhere, moulting and generally being a pain. And I don't want to talk about it or look at it.

     My mouth is so dry,

     My eyes are shut tight

     Because maybe if I don't acknowledge her, she'll go away and find some other sap of an owner who'll indulge her needly nuzzling, and I'll be left in peace. If I don't look, she's not real. She is, though.

     Black dog is coming tonight.

     She's always there, really, but the nights are the worst. That's when I give in to her, when she's too strong for this wee short arse to control. The Megabitch stalks me all day, but it's night time when she pounces and makes me entertain her, over and over again with the same old games. Regret, jealousy, paranoia, guilt, fear, self-loathing, confusion, sadness, anger, all her favourite toys and treats, that will keep her happy as I sink lower into myself, wondering why other people don't have this bloody black dog to take up so much of their time, or if they do, they at least have it better trained than I do. That constant feeling of not being good enough, not skilled or talented enough, not being funny, or clever, or interesting, that everyone else is better, worthier, more important, more cared about, so they don't have to put up with their only companion being the black dog.

     My dilemma, but not my choice.

     It isn't. I don't have a choice in when she's going to reappear. I might be able to give her the slip for a few days, weeks, months, even, but like the bloodhound she is, she will always track me down and pin me to the floor. I don't know what to do or how to do it, but I'm faced with something that I can't control or influence, still less call to heel.

     Winston Churchill, can you hear my voice?

     Probably not, because he died before I was born, but he understood the black dog, he knew how it feels to be the unwitting and unwilling host to the Megabitch. How things that should be simple become overwhelming and insurmountable.

     Melodrama there in my kitchen sink.

     To give you some idea, my kitchen sink has been blocked for over three weeks. I've tried to sort it out repeatedly. Nothing's worked. I could – should – call out the council to sort it out. But I can't. I physically can't. The black dog is splashing about in my kitchen, having a great time whilst I wobbly carry the washing up water upstairs to empty into the bath. Because I don't want people in my house. I'm scared they will judge me, accuse me, blame me, because the Megabitch is so out of control that it's embarrassing.

     Double vision the way it is.

     And it is double vision. I seem to see things as the Megabitch does, twisted and confused, everything in an altered state, always with the worst possible interpretation on events and actions, always the negative to everyone else's Instagram. Her eyes become my eyes, misted with self-pity and her unbearable weight on my back. But the thing is, I'm still here too. I still see (in a screwed up, squinting fashion) who and what I am, the stupid things I say and do under the pressure of her, and I tell myself 'it's not me, it's HER' but I can't stay clear-sighted enough to prevent her from behaving the way she does and dragging me down with her as she basks in the mud. And I know she's wrong with what she says, but she barks too loudly and distractingly. She needs to be rehomed.

     Am I coming home to you again?

     NO, but yes, but no. She's still living here, but it's just not suitable any longer. My circumstances have changed, I don't have the right kind of house, let alone a garden, and I can't trust her around The Blondies. I can't afford to keep her.

     Or am I stupid just by design?

     See? That's her yapping away again. I may have some fairly fundamental flaws in both my personality and brain chemistry, but I'm not stupid, I'm not dense, I'm not 'a wee bit dumb'. I do, just about have enough insight into what is happening to me, and how I can try to escape it. That's the worst part, I am not what she tells me I am, but whilst I host her, I behave in ways that make me seem as awful as she tells me I am. Deep down, I'm not.

     Does it matter if you really ever know?

     Yeah, it does. It does matter that I keep telling myself I'm better than her. It does matter to me that I remember that when she's bounding about. It does matter to me that I try and stop her from pushing me into these awful self-destructive figures of eight, where the only tail being chased is mine. It does matter to me that I don't let her win, because I am better, and I've beaten her before. It does matter, because I'm the only one fighting this, and because I can't rely on anyone else to tell me, and being a responsible dog owner, it's up to me to try and keep her under control. Except...

     This black dog is out of control.

     Too fucking right mate. And whilst I am going to try and take her to obedience and agility classes to exercise her, eventually, I'm going to have to exorcise her. She has me exhausted and angry, tearful without crying, irrational and erratic, and I'm done with her. The Megabitch, snuggling up to me and telling me she's my friend, briefly seeming like she'd be good for me, only to turn and snap, sinking her teeth down to my bones. I have to shake her off, my shadow, my shade, my dark side, my black dog. She's not a pet, she's a parasite, eating away at me and hollowing me out, destroying the foundations of things I am trying to do. New beginnings, fresh starts, something I can call my own, that only I can do, and be proud of, instead of being unseemly, an embarrassment, a space of silence with no words, no contributions, just an apathetic emptiness of a black dog that overwhelms me, as her noise and frolics press me down into the waves.

     I am not the black dog. She is not me. She is just my shadow, dogging my heels. But I will put my boots on and kick her arse, and keep kicking it until she's gone. I might lose the odd battle, but I will win the war. She is not my friend, she is the Megabitch, and she might make me a bit snotfaced at times. But I will write the fuck out of her. She can howl all she wants, but I will roar the black dog down.

And just to add, as a PS... I'm ok, so don't worry about me. If I wasn't ok, this would have just stayed in the drafts folder, and never made it out to the wider world. The fact that I have kicked my arse into gear enough to blog is a good sign, promise. Even if it doesn't make for the most fun reading. It means the Megabitch is at least back on the lead again.

Bee Day

     I cried the other night. That’s nothing especially out of the ordinary. I cry a lot. But just over a week ago was a bit special. My anniversary of adding yet another burden to an overpopulated planet that urgently needs a Malthusian style cull in order to maintain the fragility of life and ecosystems in order to survive, still less to thrive. Or, to put it slightly more cheerily, it was The Boy’s 13^th birthday.

     My Precious First Born is now a teenager. I can’t pretend I wasn’t listening, head tilted and ear cocked as 06:59 ticked over to 07:00 to see if The Curse of Kevin would kick in and my golden-fluffy haired moppet would suddenly transform into a lank, greasy, groaning pile of BO, acne, and hormones, swearing and seemingly having no control over how his arms swung. The Fear was real indeed.

     In the event, the minute passed without incident, other than realising that for the first time ever in his life he’d set an alarm on his phone to make sure he was  awake for the momentous notification that he’d officially passed from childhood to the terrible teens. Also, for the first time since he started school, a weekday morning saw him sitting up in bed when I went in to his room.

     Beautiful Boy. Far more beautiful now that he ever was as a baby, although of course to me he was the cause of infinite gaze, admiring the delicate perfection of his every millimetre. Growing more beautiful by the day, seeing those features, so dear to me, develop and unfurl as he’s grown. That face, those eyes, those hands that have held mine, those feet that have walked beside mine for so long, and are bigger than mine now. The reassuring, solid comfort of his hugs, the way he still leans his head against my arm for comfort. I’m not sure how much longer that can last for now, because he’s barely an inch shorter than me. So for now that’s still something to treasure, as long it is there, as long as it’s a reminder that he’s my boy.

     A lifetime ago, or so it seems, I wrote about him growing up, and growing away from me. That was my fear. That he would slip through my fingers and I wouldn’t be able to hold onto him, that I would lose him as he flourished.  It seems odd to remember that now. Because that’s not how it’s happened. Even allowing for the upheaval and changes in our lives, that’s not how things have become.  It could so easily have been the case, it would have been so easy to make different decisions that placed barriers between us and meant that I didn’t spend the first ten minutes of his 13^th birthday giggling and cuddling, and the two of us sharing silly memories and words of happiness.

     It was a moment, just a moment, the same as millions of moments that we have shared between us since the first time I saw his face. The same as the moments when I’ve shouted, or he had a tantrum, or I changed his nappy, or cooked a dinner he didn’t like, or walked him to school, or read him a story, or made him groan with a terrible joke, or told him off, or cried with pride over him, or had to listen in excruciating detail to something about Pokemon. It was just another moment in the journey from infant to adult, with me as a witness to his every triumph and disaster, every failure and accomplishment. But those moments count, because each and every one adds up to a life. A life I am privileged to share and know.

     And he hasn’t changed, not really. He is still that same affectionate, loving, considerate, honest, tactile and thoughtful little person I remember from the lunchtime he asked ‘Why doesn’t Mummy fucking need this at the moment?’ I have no doubt that the next few years will be more trying than those than preceded them. But those times too will eventually be no more than moments either.

     And that is why I cried, then (bit choked right now, tbh). All of those moments, hard, difficult, fun, loving, all of those moments  brought me to the point where I looked through his bedroom door to see him, my newly teenaged son sleeping as he always has, in a state of utter abandonment, arms above his head, and I had my own moment, like a slideshow on fast forward, seeing all of those moments together condensed, concentrated, compacted, all of those precious, countless, forgotten but unforgettable moments that have now added up to teenage years. Seeing it all unfiltered, that life I could not be without, and those moments that have made it this way.

     Happy birthday for the other day, my beautiful boy. You are what keeps me honest, because you don’t know any other way to be. You make me brave, because you always are, and you never pretend not to be scared. You remind me to be kind, because that’s all you know. You never hurt, because I love you. You make me laugh, you make me proud, you make me cry, because I am an embarrassing mum who threatens you with public displays of affection. I could not ask for any more from you than just years more of moments together.

      You and me, Bee. I’ve learnt more from you than I could ever teach you. Happy Bee Day – you brightened my northern sky more than I could ever have known, and you make me want to be the best I can, for you. I love you OBeeWanWookieBee. You are, and always have been, as everyone tells me ‘such a lovely boy, he really is’. Please don’t turn into a little shit now though. Fingertips, matey boy. Fingertips, always xx

     

Brexit means...

     Brexit means, according to our omnishambles of a Prime Minister, ‘Brexit’. Very good, well done. But what does it actually entail, in practical terms? So far, it seems to translate into the real world as loss of access to the single market, the end of freedom of movement, an explosion in hate crime, British farming possibly not being able to feed us, a reduction of 96% in EU residents applying to work in the NHS, people who have lived and worked in this country for decades being denied the right to live here, increased inflation with no real rise in income, the value of the pound dropping like a stone. A heavy stone. Oh, and did I mention the loss of jobs, lack of political stability, the potential end of the Good Friday Agreement, international companies leaving the UK in droves, and a widespread feeling that politicians are hellbent on making sure this country implodes in ever more unlikely ways? No? Oh well. You’re probably getting there yourself already.

     Aside from that, it’s all going swimmingly. As anyone caught in a riptide will tell you. There might be some positives from Brexit. I just honestly can’t see any and don’t even bloody START with bollocks about ‘taking back control’ or ‘funding our NHS’ or ‘making Britain great again’, because that’s just soundbite bollocks and I’m not going to listen to cheap little knock off  claptrap. I want facts and figures here, not the meaningless  slogans that translate no further than some kind of wispy belief that it’s all health and safety gone mad, and we have too many human rights and we should look after our own, and somehow being part of a wider community  weakens us so much more than standing on our own. The EU is a community, in just the same way that so many other things are, where we live, where we work, the people with whom we socialise, or come together to effect change.

     The thing that Vote Leave loved to bang on about during their campaign was telling us how much we pay in to the EU. That bloody £350 million… What they cannily avoided was mentioning how much of that comes back to the UK. The things in the UK that are solely funded by the EU kitty that we’ve paid into. Yes, some of our money goes to other countries. But we get money back in ways that so many were blissfully unaware of. In science, in arts & culture, in construction, in education, in collaboration, in so many Cinderella areas of study and research that the UK government overlooks. When you consider the value of being able to share ideas with almost an entire continent so freely, then we get that £350 million back in spades. Actual spades. And trowels. And all sorts of other stuff, but I’m going to bang on about archaeology for a bit, because that’s what I do.

     Archaeology in the UK receives 38% of its funding from the EU. 38%. Higher than any other discipline. Once Brexit actually is Brexit, as opposed to just meaning it, that funding is gone. We won’t be paying in, so we won’t get anything out. Losing 38% of funding is pretty much unsustainable for anything. So what that will mean – because I can actually define what words mean, rather than just repeat them – is that there will be scores of archaeology projects that will simply never happen, because there is no money for them. There will still be some funding available, in the form of UK based donations, loans, and grants, but effectively there will be the same number of people chasing money that has been reduced by over a third. Not hard to see where the bottom line is. Projects and groups will miss out. The prestigious organisations probably won’t. The esteemed universities and academics probably won’t. But the little fish in the big pond will, because they don’t have the back up or the cover or the funding. And of all the small fish in the pond, community archaeology is the tiddler.

     Community archaeology, where ordinary people with no previous experience or knowledge can get involved with little or no demand on their pockets. Where the guidance and expertise of professional archaeologists is needed to encourage and inspire people to get stuck in, to learn, to enjoy, to make a difference, not just to archaeology but to the  volunteers lives too as they become part of a community. Part of a community that’s not just the non-professionals having a go, and getting stuck in, making friends and having fun, but a broader, wider community of Historic Environment Record officers, of professional archaeologists giving up hours of their time to help plan and liaise a project before even a single civilian has been recruited, who organise and run the training events, the open days, who advise on funding and grant applications. Who are so often the ones steering and guiding even the most volunteer led community archaeology groups. The ones who actually have to deal with the information generated by groups. Volunteers may like to think of themselves as being the ones who make the difference (and god knows I’ve banged on about that enough), but without the support of so many people whose careers are rooted in archaeology, we’d be both useless and clueless (and I’m not even going to go into how having even just one Real & Proper Archaeology Person linked to something grants it legitimacy, invites respect and elevates it beyond simply a group of people with a shared interest. Oh piss off, I’m not being snobby. You know it’s true; if you’re good enough to have a professional working alongside you, you are considered in the eyes of others to have something special. See? Me not going on about it). But without funding, these experts won't be in any kind of position to make those vital contributions that allow archaeology to be open to you, me, them, us, everyone.

      Community archaeology has changed my life and many others too. But it’s going to wither away to almost nothing, or almost certainly require people to no longer be volunteers but paying customers instead, which is quite some shift. It’s already starting to happen. Crowdfunding to enable digs to go ahead. Paying for access to excavations or membership fees because in the age of austerity, every penny of funding counts, and it’s got to be spent wisely. As council budgets shrink, the museums services face cuts, the archaeology departments are outsourced, HERs are deployed ever more sparingly, and public outreach programmes to encourage participation are either mothballed or never even started in the first place.

     Because when that EU money shrivels up, when archaeology has to face this funding crisis, when archaeology is cut to the financial bone, then anything that doesn’t make money – and community archaeology really doesn’t – is going to be bottom of the pile when grants are handed out. If it isn’t economically viable, it has to go. And professional archaeologists, lovely and shiny and sweet as they can be, have to make a living somehow (although as today’s Guardian  points out, even those who are highly experienced and qualified struggle to do even that when working full time).  So they’ll either have to charge people to be part of the project, or the project will just never happen at all. Those communities of volunteers will never again be the same, or just won’t be created in the future.

     I make jokes about not being your average volunteer. Because I’m not. I don’t fit the demographic. Community archaeology has, for now but not much longer, been able to thrive thanks to an army of retired people who are far from being on the scrapheap, and want not only to keep busy, but also to make a contribution to the groups and places around them. Their communities.

     The demographic of volunteers is generally white skinned, white haired, middle class, retired Brits. People living comfortable lives, in comfortable middle England, comfortable lives that the EU barely impinges on in any real sense. The very same demographic who, by a majority, voted for Brexit, yet can’t tell us what Brexit means. The very same demographic who go out and give up their time to support history and heritage, yet fail to understand what is happening to archaeology. The very same demographic who gave life to community archaeology have effectively ensured that its demise is almost inevitable. They ‘won’ the referendum. Eventually, they may come to see that it was a Pyrrhic victory, when the projects they have been part of can no longer continue as they have done. So that’s one very narrow, very personally relevant, definition of what Brexit means to one small fish in one big pond. There will be a lot more small fish washing up.

Rounded Balls

     It’s going to be on my headstone, isn’t it? “Ed Balls, she totally would have”. Despite my best efforts, you lot are a load of filthy smut lovers and that remains my most popular blogpost by a fuckload. It’s also the most shambolic and chaotic I’ve ever posted, owing to my complete lack of blogging ability at the time. I’ve been telling myself for years to go back and tidy it up, cut out the dead links, make it look neat and tidy and slightly less frenzied, yet I can’t ever really be arsed. I think the crappiness of it lends it a certain charm/worryingly stalkerish air, as though my brain was so addled by Balls that I was typing with one hand.

     Err… I wasn’t, by the way. Just to be clear.

     It just won’t die, that post. Every few weeks it obviously gets stumbled across by someone looking at the dark underbelly of Balls, and it gets shared around a bit. And then, quite often, people are so horrified that they can’t look away from the screen and so they read other posts of mine and… well, I can imagine that it’s not quite what they expected. There’s no obvious overlap between Ed Balls and medieval graffiti, or cricket, or poetry, or music, or me swearing my fat white arse off about other bloggers, or detailing how it feels when your life explodes into the tiny fragments of a shattered mirror and you have to explain to your child why there’s blood on your face.

     Except that there is an overlap. And it’s obvious. At least to me. But then I would say that.

     Friday was a bit of a strange day, all told. For starters it was ED BALLS DAY (which I think you’ll find is an ancient Pagan tradition, actually), so Mumsnet Bloggers reshared That Blogpost, just in case anyone had been spared. My twitter notifications all day were a thing of joy and beauty, the nation uniting under The Balls. Sadly, I had to leave the celebrations for a few short hours to attend the launch event of Flintspiration, a weekend long celebration of the heritage of Norwich’s churches… What? And part of the launch was me giving a tour of the medieval graffiti at Norwich Cathedral, which I just sodding LOVE to do. I’m not much use in many other respects, but I know a bit about graffiti, the cathedral in particular. My contribution to actually finding graffiti there can be confined to one small cross, but I can talk about it for hours. And do.

     I had a LOVELY group to take round, who were full of interest and asked great questions and I really, really enjoyed it – you could say I’m still fairly pert and bouncy from it now, the equivalent of a graffiti hangover. The only thing was…. The assumption that I was something more than I am. That I must be something to do with the University of East Anglia. No? A freelance researcher? No? Working for the Museums Service? And each time, I just smiled and explained that I’m just a volunteer, no one special or important and each time I could see a slight frown develop, because it didn’t quite add up. I could almost read their thought process ‘But you seem so confident in your knowledge and explanation, you answered every question convincingly. You seem so passionate and excited to introduce us to graffiti. You can’t just be a volunteer with no qualifications or expertise.’

     But like I said, the answer is obvious. I’m just a person. And like most people, most normal people that is, I’m not a single issue fanatic with only one topic of conversation or interest. Loving medieval graffiti doesn’t exclude me from tweeting CAPS LOCK SWEARS during the cricket. Having a folder titled ‘Political Sex Faces’ on my laptop doesn’t mean I don’t know what it’s like to attempt suicide. Being RARGGGHHH and kickarse didn’t protect me from violence. Because that is the human condition. To be multifaceted, contradictory, interested, and hopefully interesting.

     When I think of the people who know me – and I mean really know me – they have seen all sides of me and accept me for who and what I am. It’s liberating, to know that there is no need for me to impress anyone, to prove my credentials, or claim legitimacy through links to other people who are considered Official. So if that means that sometimes I’m serious, sometimes I’m silly, sometimes I’m sobbing… I’m human. I’m healthy. I am as I should be. I am as I should be seen, as I am, as it is my personality which defines me, and it is my thoughts and interests that define my personality. Possibly not to universal taste, but there we are. I'm rounded, not superficial or one dimensional.

     People might think they know me for one thing, one article, one blogpost, one tweet. I’m more than that. Everyone is. We shouldn’t be afraid to show that, for fear of losing face. We shouldn’t tie ourselves to one subject to avoid standing alone. We should not claim to be something we are not. At least I think so.  But then I’m just an Ed Balls volunteer and I totally do medieval graffiti.

I'm in your head

     This is a truth I hold dear. Some people cannot write. In the same way that I cannot draw, some people cannot write. We can all have a game stab at it, throwing words out there into the world, but the truth remains: some people cannot write. Or rather, some people do not understand how writing works.

     When you read something – anything – whether it’s a book, an article or even just an email, the writer is inside your head as you absorb those words. Yes, I am inside your head right now. Hello! Bit dark in here, isn’t it? You are reading my words, and my written voice is inside your head, right here, right now. If you’ve unavoidably  failed to escape me in real life, then you might even be reading this imagining me actually speaking (for those of you who have been spared, my voice is actually quite small, bit of a Norwich accent, prone to breaking into a hooting laugh that’s as big as The Mane). I am writing these words to you, reader, whoever and wherever you are, distracting you from things you should really be paying more attention to. Sorry, I won’t keep you too long.

     I was hoping to get away with not writing this next bit, but I’m lazy and can’t think of a way round it. People, some people, tell me that I’m a good writer. And I’m not being a faux modest twat when I say that I don’t think that I am. Because to me there’s no magical process that takes place. I don’t struggle and slave over this stuff. If I say ‘I’ve written something, I’ll edit it later’ what I actually mean is that it’s all written in a notebook already, or that it’s there, fully formed in my head, I just need to be poked into actually typing it. I don’t have an angsty tortured relationship with The Muse, I don’t have a writing routine (other than really liking to write in a pub), I don’t spend hours writhing in agony waiting for inspiration to strike, and I very definitely don’t have a writing style. I just write the way I think.

     Yeah. It is honestly that simple. It doesn’t matter what I feel like writing about, or what thought has been bothering me, or what mood I’m in. I don’t rehearse it. I know I’m lucky in that I pretty much only have to write for me, I don’t have to consider an audience or use jargon or seek to flatter anyone. I’m not even writing for self-promotion, just for myself, just to verbalise whatever occurs to me. And sometimes it’s shit, to be honest. Sometimes it’s ok. Occasionally it touches a nerve with people and I get told I’m a Good Writer. Am I bollocks. I’m just honest.

     And whilst I’ve got you here, I’m going to be even more furtherly honest, and admit that I can be a bit of a wanker about writing and saying that I have to write and that I feel like me when I write and I’m a nightmare to deal with when I don’t. The difference in me since I was gifted my beloved desk is noticeable enough to be remarked upon. Also, it does rather feel like the pressure cooker has blown as a result, so I probably will do a lot of navel-gazing selfindulgent tosser blogposts … because I can, now. And before you sneer and say I’m no better than the shit writers I frequently rail against and that this type of writing is essentially mental wanking with my pen as a dildo…. Mate, you don’t have to read this. No one’s forcing you to. Just close the tab. Kthanksbye.

     One the biggest frustrations I have are pieces that…. Just sort of… well. Something that really annoys me is… I’m not sure. What do you think?

     Yes, people who don’t have the courage of their convictions. Who have an idea, but don’t let it blossom. Who have a voice, but deliberately stifle it, for fear of giving offence, or only appealing to a few people, so everything's a bit watery, or even more annoyingly, not fully fleshed out. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – no one is ever going to achieve universal popularity. Not even Michael Palin. So why seek it? If you care enough to write about something, then care enough to deliver your message in full. I’m going to end this paragraph now before I add a picture of a snowflake falling over a rainbow at sunrise whilst a unicorn races past a shower of glitter confetti with comic sans lettering urging you to ‘Be Yourself. There Is No One Else You Can Be.’

     Which sort of leads up to the point I was supposed to be making when I first started hammering this out. Writing only works when it’s honest and direct and written without a filter. I’ve spent far too much time in recent months reading pieces by Other People that leave me cold, unmoved, and frankly really rather bored. Because they are written always with an eye on who’s going to be reading, who do I want to see this, who do I want to impress? So the words fall down because they’re too carefully picked, or they’re not really what the writer was thinking, or they’re just strung together in a way that is too artificial.

     There is no magic guide to writing. None. All there is is the voice inside your head that decides what you think and feel, your inner narrator. And when you read the writing of others, you are giving them headspace. And when I write, when I can actually be arsed to share what I’ve written* then I am, briefly, inside your head, providing the voiceover. That is all that writing is. A voice inside your head.

     

*to prove my point, I wrote this about six months ago, and only found it again today, having forgotten all about it. This happens quite a lot.

Speech Marks

     

I say I’m a ‘bit obsessed with graffiti’. I may be slightly underselling my feelings there. I’m more than a bit obsessed. I am consumed by it. It started, a these things do innocently enough, with a bit of light reading and the odd like and retweet. I liked it, but there were other ore pressing matters at the time. Such as a blog about how my face melted in a sauna in edgefield once.

     As we know, my feelings changed. Quite quickly. Not overnight, but overday, to be honest. Something shifted, clicked into place and I got graffiti. It made sense to me. I felt as though I’d become fluent in a new mother tongue. I hadn’t, as I now cringingly realise. With the zealous passion of a neophyte, I made pronouncements, went off on half-cocked tangents and made probably more mistakes than things I got right. They’re all out there somewhere still, testament to my early excitement. I could go out and cover over those errors and embarrassments with the handy ‘delete?’ button, but I think we usually learn better from our mistakes, so have something of distrust for those who maintain a façade of faultless, blameless perfection. To err is human, to deny that is be dead behind the eyes. It’s instructive too, to go back and see the younger me, on the right track, trying out this new language, even if my lack of knowledge meant that sometimes my hovercraft was full of eels.

     But what graffiti meant to me then, and always will, is communication. It’s the impulse that causes someone to create it, whether that’s medieval daisywheel, a 17^th century memorial, or a tag on an underpass. All graffiti is created with the intention of being seen. That is the entire point of it. If the person making their mark didn’t intend for it to be seen by others, they wouldn’t do it in the first place, it would remain only a thought, a wish, a prayer even. I’m always wary of over interpreting things (which isn’t to say I don’t overthink EVERYTHING), but even the smallest, most plain and mundane graffito was created with feeling, by someone. For someone specifically? Perhaps. Possibly. Potentially. But always for an intended audience, whether as one individual to another or just as a message wider, unknowing and maybe uncaring world.

     The thing to remember though is that attitudes change. The word ‘graffiti’ wasn’t even coined until 1851, which rather suggests that before then it wasn’t needed. But it certainly existed before then – because the word came into being to describe the inscriptions that were being found on the walls of the newly discovered Pompeii. But until that point, graffiti had been considered as unremarkable as to almost never be remarked upon. And yet it was there, seen, registering with an audience, whether they were the direct targets or not, for as long as humans have been able to write and draw, they have left their ideas behind on the walls. We celebrate the historic graffiti, painstakingly record it, pin the butterfly to the board… but how much do we really think about those who created it and what they are still trying to tell us now? There is a story behind every graffito, it’s never mindless doodling or just a coincidence that it happens to be there.

     Graffiti today is considered unwelcome and illicit, something destructive and bad. That's precisely why artists create it in public spaces, people who feel sidelined, who feel out of kilter and don't feel that they have any other outlet to express their feelings. Whether they do it to claim  space for themselves, or to express their contempt for other people, whether they do it to be provocative, I can't claim to know. But their intention is to be seen, whatever the motivation. It's done to be provocative - either to create moral indignation at the fact that it exists, or a message to make the audience think. Creating it in any space is seen as naughty, subversive, and antisocial. But could anything be more personal, more touching, more human than the need to communicate with others? To leave a speech mark without words in a language everyone can read, but few seem able to understand?

Head desk

   

  I’ve always had a desk. Always. From the rickety little wooden toy school desk with lift up lid & fake inkwell, to the vast mahogany expanse of my teenage homework years of paper pile ups, discarded ink cartridges, and abandoned glasses of Ribena, the boardroom table of my first years in employment,  which dominated my office to the extent that no other furniture would bloody fit in the room, on to the flat pack laminated cheapy naffness of my 20s & early 30s that may also have been used as a babychange station for The Girl at times, and then finally, a much beloved bureau belonging to my parents that sat in the corner of the living room in my last home.

     Now, when I remember that desk, I feel guilty for not appreciating it more. It was a beautiful thing to look upon, golden walnut wood and black leather, with space for my laptop, notebook and a glass of wine cup of coffee. It had useful little shelves at the back to put photos and notes and special sentimental items (also, handy for The Blondies to stuff sweet wrappers and Chupa Chup sticks and bits of paper and all other sorts of fluff and crap I’d discover lurking on  the rare occasions that I deigned to flap some polish around). I did all sorts of things from that desk. My first real attempts at writing. My first tweet. Sitting at that desk, I made friends, had arguments, discovered things I’d never known, I opened up my world to a new perspective and understanding. I sent happy emails, sad ones, angry ones, silly ones. I saved photos and paid bills, I organised things, I changed the course of my life irrecoverably on so many occasions, sitting quietly at that desk in the corner over the space of four years. And I never really considered the desk at all. It was just there, being a handy piece of furniture that was useful in every area of my life.

     But it wasn’t mine. So when I moved, it did not. And in the general complete pigfuck that was the process of moving house, I had to jettison several items that could easily have been pressed into service as a flat surface on which to write (moving was a complete disaster. Maisie’s slightly quirky in that the front door is upstairs, meaning that all of the furniture for living room had to be taken down the very tight and winding spiral staircase. Or not, as it transpired, because hardly any of it would fit. Seriously, I lost all of my bookshelves, my beloved Indian dresser - the first piece of furniture I ever bought – my gorgeous six foot pine antique dining table… and then the crowning glory of not getting the sofabed down the staircase to the living room, which is why it got dumped in my bedroom instead, and I’m still sleeping on it now, a year later, and god, moving was a disaster. It should have taken three hours. It took nearly seven). 

     No desk? No problem. I’ll just use the kitchen table instead. Except that the kitchen table is a bit dodgy and has two wobbly legs. Fine for sitting and eating at, but rather unnerving when you’re typing away furiously, and the table lurches away and to the left of you as though it’s about to collapse in on itself, meaning you have to leap up and hold your laptop aloft every few minutes. 

Oh, and wifi in the kitchen is rubbish, so communication with the outside world is curtailed every few minutes, which is hugely frustrating and rather like living in North Norfolk.

     I thought I’d found a solution. The coffee table in the living room. Sturdy, hardwearing, dependable, and unlikely to develop an aversion to being close to me. Only problem is that it’s about 30cm off the floor, so to ‘sit’ at it, I had to arrange a couple of cushions on the floor and lean against the annoyingly prickly wicker sofa. Ever tried sitting like that? It’s fine for an hour or two. But adopting the same position for hours, day after day, for months at a time gets trying. It’s never wholly comfortable, leaves you with an aching back, pins and needles, and a persistent feeling that things could somehow be more enjoyable. A bit like a rubbish shag, to be honest.

     And because positioning myself like that became such a chore, writing stopped being enjoyable too. The only times I did write anything was in my notebook when I was in the pub, but the thought of then having to drape myself across the floor to transcribe those ciderfuelled scribbles onto my crappy laptop on a narrow table that was usually covered with magazines and books and craft projects and games and toys by The Blondies… It was just dispiriting, and made me feel like I wasn’t using the table so much as banging my head against it. But there was no other space in the house I could use. So I wasn't writing. And when I'm not writing, I'm... frankly awful. And the longer I went without writing, the more unhappy and full of doubts I became and felt as though I was never going to write again. Or, if I did attempt to write something, it would be utter shite. The world does not need more shite writing, trust me. There are already far too many people who can't even type a coherent sentence, let alone a piece that ebbs and flows and is funny or clever or thoughtful. I should know, I seem to end up reading most of their output and twitching as I do so. I felt like I couldn't even hoik my judgeypants at them though, because at least they were writing and being read, shared and valued. I wasn't even managing to come up with a single idea. I was sodding miserable without writing.

     Until last Tuesday. When that arrived. A desk. My desk. Mine. And it might not look like much to anyone, and it’s small, and it’s fairly plain, and inoffensive, but I love it. The first time I sat down at it I felt this ridiculous rush of happiness that made me laugh out loud for the first time in too long. It may seem such an insignificant thing, but it means the world to me. Not least because on the surface of it are ghosts of writing past. Tiny little fragments of words that have been written into the very fabric of the wood by another’s pen, pressing slightly too hard on the soft pine. ‘ighton’ and ‘what is PE?’, marks of doodles and zigzags, a deliberate graffito into the desk of ‘I heart B’ and hundreds and hundreds of jumbled up hours of other peoples lives and stories and homework and letters and admin and idle moments and times when inspiration  struck and days when despite staring out of the window for hours, not a single thing got done. All of those marks are there, from people writing at this desk, people making their mark. Perhaps, now that I have a desk, my desk, their desk, our desk, I can start writing again too. And make my own mark, in one way or another.