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Firstly a caveat to yesterday's blog - bring on the revolution but only if it becomes mandatory for everyone to wash thoroughly: a ride into Basingstoke on the early morning bus shook my socialist pretensions somewhat. What is so hard about soap and water?

There, feel better for that. But it made me think - how would I label myself - took two grande lattes in Starbucks to come up with - Buddhist, Catholic, Socialist, Wannabe Mitford Girl. That sums it up. I can't help it if there are inherent clashes - I am a woman of mystery.

Talking of culture clashes: there was I drinking my latte in the chilly September sunshine and reading Debo Devonshire's wonderful book 'Wait for Me'. For twenty minutes or so I was removed from Basingstoke and its endlass parade of shopping pilgirms and inhabited a world of sharp wit and unblinking aristocracy. It says a great deal about the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire that she writes about her family as a group of misguided but loveable eccentrics but never once does she seem to realise that she is as wonderfully eccentric and funny as the rest of them.

I was in the beastly place  because I had an early morning fasting blood test - for those of you who are too young to understand, this happens when you get fat and aged - not only do you get wrinkles and grey hair but you  have to undergo this riutal of blood being taken and then being told everything you eat is off the menu! Hence the grande latte - I was caffeine deprived and the autumn sunshine was the result of being nicotine deprived as well. God help me when the whole lot goes under cover -I visualise myself in the nearby churchyard sheltering under a friendly gravestone.

I was also wating for the blind neighbour, having arranged to meet him and take him  to open a bank account - I have no idea why - something I said perhaps, but anyway, we went to Lloyds where he was well looked after and left brandishing his new papaperwork with great pride.

We came home and I collapsed exahausted only for my doorbell to ring. The blessed man had gone back into Basingstoke and bought me a bath bridge so I wouldn't keep dropping my book in the bath. Now that is what I would call romantic!

We'll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here

I'm not sure whether I am finally in touch with trendy thinking but I am thrilled that Ed Milliband is the new Labour Party leader. The son of a Marxist with unashamed old Labour tendencies leading the opossition fills me with joy - I had all but given up on the politcal machine as simply too tacky - too sleazy. But here we have an unmarried father of two who makes no aplogy for leaning clearly to the left. I may even rejoin the party.

Now before all my beloved true blue friends jump up and down, we are talking opposition but oh, what a thought, the chance of real socialism back on the agenda. I have this theory that Marx's theory is proven as much by the fall of the Soviet Union as it was by the Revolution itself. Basically if you push people down enough eventually they will rebel and change the system that has brought them down. Sadly, communism in Russia became Stalinism and stopped the real revolution in its tracks. Also, humanity isn't that nice - we all want that shiny new toy and we want it to be slightly bigger and better than our neighbours',

So if I know and understand all that why  am I so pleased that we have 'Red Ed' as the new leader of the oppostion - simple - naively I still believe in the greater good, that we have a responsibility to care for those who cannot care for themselves, that I will willingly share what I have so that each gets a fair share. Of course it is naive, credulous and probably unworkable but  it is aspirational for the future of all of us. It is about believing in inherent decency and god knows we need that. Look at the world around us, Sarkhozy threatens war if he is reprimanded for deporting Romans in a style eerily reminscent of other European deportations that ended the lives of millions. Europe is nearly bankrupt - there are riots in the streets of  of the major capitals and the elephant in the room is trumpeting his presence.

I think we stand on the threshold of a frightening time and decisions will have to be made that will affect not just the next generation but the one after that as well. And this is not about Iran, Iraq or Afghanistan - those wars are symptomatic not causal - at the risk of sounding like the worst kind of conspiracy theorist, it is more convenient for us to fear the outsider than to look too closely at ourselves.

So yes - I am thrilled we've got Ed, for, as Marx would say:

Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Working Men of All Countries, Unite!

Rainy Days

I seem to be losing days at the moment - I spent all of yesterday firmly convinced it was Sunday - and I am having real trouble accepting this is Tuesday. Think it will take Holby City to convince me. I wonder if Eliot was alive now and writting Prufrock - would he measure out his days in soap operas instead of coffee spoons?

It really feels like winter - the dark has settled after the briefest of twilights and the evening traffic whooshes eerily through the rain and puddles. I draw the curtains now - to feel safe, enveloped in my little microcosm world where I feel secure - albeit briefly.

I am sad tonight - not the depressed, grey sadness that seems to pervade my every waking moment - but a kind of tristesse, a melancholy of the soul. I have so many dreams. places to see, people to meet and it seems, for now, that these will die with me, unrealised.

When I was a smal baba at Miss Scrimshaw's school she would read to us in the afternoon as the day grew too hot for work. I would rest my head on my hands and lean thus on the desk to listen and  be transported. It was alwasy the same book - the story of a man who bought two  donkeys, Sancho and Panza, and set about walking them the length of South Amercia, starting from Argentina. It was probably an dry old tale but I loved it - I was there as they crossed the pampas and called Ola to the gauchos, I could hear the rhythm of the tango  as they danced in Buenos Ayres. It was then , at no older than nine, I resolved that one day I would go to Argentina and learn to dance the tango. Like Chatwin and Patagonia I had a destination set deep within my soul.

Here's the thing - I think I've lost my nerve. Not about doing the Tango although god help whoever is brave enough to partner me. No, that invincibility we all have when young - the sense of the world belonging to us and us alone, that seems to have left me. On grey evenings like this I look acrosss the playing fields and train tracks to hundreds of lights, each one a person, each one a dream, each one thinking theirs is only one that matters.

Should we not dream then? But the grey would win and winter  would be in our hearts forever. It is a connundrum that I suspect many people of  my age face. One thing gives me hope - Miss Scrimshaw went on leave to England and when she came back she had a song and a dance to teach us. She told us that every year in May all of the children from this town sang and danced from the bottom of Coinagehall Street to the very top  of Meneague Street and that then the people of the town  did the same.

And so, in the heat and humidity of Calcutta, with Mrs Loe the pianist bouncing on her cushions with the rhythm of the music we learned  the Helston Floral Dance. I can still do it to this day. It gave me another dream in my soul - to stand and watch as the dancers passed by.

On May 8th 2000 Mum and I stood at the top of  Meneague Street and we heard heard the sound of the big bass drum and we saw the dance together - the bluebells and yellow gorse (the gold of Cornwall) bedecking every house and the dancers in long dresses and morning suits. And it was joyous and held all the  promise of spring and new beginnings.

Mum died on the 23rd of May a year later - there were so many bad days, so many horrid things but that day in May was not just the realisation of a dream - it gave me a memory of joy,

WORDS

Serendipity - there's a lovely word. I remember Jug Suraiya returning from a year in the Uk and writing the most poignant and lyrical article for the JS with that as its title. It was the first time I had met the word and it remained cached in my word box waiting for the right moment to be delivered.

And then Radio 4 had to spoil things - Britain's Favourite Word was - yes you've guessed - serendipity. To add insult  to injury it was the title of a rom com ! Starring John  Cusack who I rather like. Suddenly my lovely  secret  word was common parlance and my word  box both barren and obsolete.

The picture above renews my hope in the romance of the word and I found that to change it to serendipitous returns some of the old glamour. My word box can heave a sigh of relief

Another joyous word to throw into a conversation is epiphany - all too often people think you are talking about God and back away whilst others summon the courage to ask if it hurt and were there many stitches. Epiphany sounds bright and shiny and, when one is lucky enough to have one the clarity is overwhelming. I say lucky but many have dark epiphanies too - and they can be destructive with their clarity.

So my word box continues to grow - sometimes now with words and new constructions of words that I  feel confident enough to use in everyday life, For example to flabber my ghast has far more power than the overused flabbergasted. I have an author, Jane Duncan to thank for that one. My favourite at the moment - serenity - much needed and it had sound that is almost onmatopoieaic with the sibilant s and the shortened es and is and then ending with the elongated e sound of the final y.

The Great Zoo and Other Poems (English and Spanish Edition)

Too Hard

You know, writing isn's always easy - sometimes I just stare at the screen blankly and force my fingers to begin their dance over the keys. Other times the laptop can't keep up with my thoughts and I get frustrated and angry and smoke far too much. The worst thing though is what has just happened - a great idea - some research and then - I know not why but everything I typed turned into little squares. Of course I know it was formatting thing - but I don't know how to reformat on this blog thingie. So it had to go and here I am starting from scratch; of course it was Booker prizeworthy writing - well, maybe not.

It was about a some poetry that I had used in lessons - The Great Zoo by Nicolas Guillen, a Cuban revolutionary contemporary with Castro and Che. He wrote poetry for the revolution and  its aftermath. His book the Great Zoo takes all the hideous injustices of the world and imprisons them in a zoo where they can looked at safely.

I was thinking about and wondering it this illness of mine could be put there - what would the label say?

DEPRESSION

Approach with care - 

this exhibit is prone to sudden changes

we do not know why

note the markings on the arms

self inflicted - 

we do not know why

Yes, she smiles now but when you leave

she weeps- 

we do not know why

Something like that I think. Or maybe something like this?

Self Harm

See the marks - how deep

look how she makes them bleed

again and again

There is pain in her face

Sometimes the knife shakes

as she draws it across the skin

She is afraid of the pain

but more afraid of 

not feeling it.

Too much you think - maybe? But I find a certain freedom in using Guilen's methods. One more...

The Suicide

This one treat gently 

She is undecided yet

All is at hand -

the pills

the knife

She will not speak to us

She knows we call her to live

She does not know how 

to answer the call

yet

Time Takes a Cigarette....

It's an odd thing about writing - if I write this in the mornings or afternoons it tends towards memories of things past but if, as now, I write at night there is a stillness within me that lends itself to thought and introspection.

Finding my dearest Gail again opened old hurts that I thought had long since scabbed over. She called me her darling little Joanna and I wept for the joy the words gave me and the pain that it been so long since anyone had said them. Don't despair and click off thinking oh god not another one of those  - it isn't. It is about how casually we use our words - I love everyone to the point that love becomes a commonplace word. I call everyone darling, love, sweetie or sweetheart indiscriminately. I remember an inspection of a drama lesson once where the 'nice' lady inspector turned to me and said, "You really must watch your tendency to sarcasm - these are sensitive children you know." My flabber was well and truly ghasted by that comment. It appeared she thought my endearments were of the Patsy and Edina school.
\

My friend Peter phoned yesterday and said, " Darling has your sister read the blogs?" I assured him she hadn't as indeed none of my family have, apart from my dear Uncle Terry and my lovely little Welsh cousin. "Thank God," he said, " You might want to make some alterations before she sees them." Do I though? They represent my truth - maybe not hers - and they reflect my life as it is - if that causes discomfort then so be it.  Which means I will probably spend tomorrow editing madly.

She was so glamorous, my sister. She looked like Julie Christie and had a flock of boyfriends. When we went to Bhutan the first time she stayed on and had to be rescued and smuggled out in the ensuing coup by the King against Lenny Dorje. My mother remembered her standing at by the plane at Dum Dum looking fantastic and saying, "Oh Mum, what an adventure." The hill people loved her - she could play card like a demon, drink most of them under the table and dance through  the night.

She married a Scotsman who worked for American Express, had two daughters and lived in Egypt, Switzerland and Kuwait where Mike died just after his 42nd birthday. She brought up the girls beautifully, got herself a part time job and has done much that I admire. And I do love her - of course I do - but she can hurt me like almost no one else can. She called the love my mother and I gave a "careless generosity". And I am sure she too misses that feeling of being someone's darling.

You know sometimes love is hard - to find and to keep. And we all need it, need to be somebody's darling little best beloved.

Bollocks to bows and flows of angel hair!

Long dark nights of the soul

It's back  - just as I relaxed my guard and began to have such positive thoughts the dark descended rendering me hopeless and helpless. I spent yesterday in bed - swallowing pills and etching lines of blood across my arms.

Today I am numb - unable to think, eat, dress or do any of those things that should rouse me from this blanket of misery. I haven't the energy to think of suicide - too much effort.

I thought instead of a blog from me - a few other people's words might suffice - plus you get to see the hidden gold of the disease: the humour.

"worst thing you can do is straighten up and hold your head high because then you'll start to feel better. If you're going to get any joy out of being depressed, you've got to stand like this.
Charlie Browne

The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversatiothese days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape.

Leonard Cohen

It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.
Harry S. Truman

Depression is the inability to construct a future.
Rollo May

Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.
Dodie Smith

Depression is nourished by a lifetime of ungrieved and unforgiven hurts.
Penelope Sweet

Depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling...People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.
Judith Guest

Hiding in my room, safe within my womb,

I touch no one and no one touches me.                                                

I am a rock,

I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;

And an island never cries.

Paul Simon

From song I Am a Rock

I drink to stay warm, and to kill selected memories...
Conor Oberst

You know it ain't easy

For these thoughts here to leave me

There's no words to describe it

In French or in English

Well, diamonds they fade

And flowers they bloom

And I'm telling you

These feelings won't go away

They've been knockin' me sideways

They've been knockin' me out lately

Whenever you come around me

These feelings won't go away

They've been knockin' me sideways

I keep thinking in a moment that

Time will take them away

But these feelings won't go away.

Clarence Greenwood, also known as Citizen Cope

From song Sideways

Why do you stay in prison

when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.

Live in silence.

Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi

They say they don't know when but a day is gonna come. When there won't be a moon and there won't be a sun. It will just go black. It will just go back to the way it was before.
Conor Oberst
From song Bright Eyes

I never asked you to earn me. I want only that you should need me. Your path is not one of merit. Bring the recurring desires of your mind to me, every time they emerge. They cannot shock me, for I willed them! Bring me your confusion, your fear, your craving, your anxiety, your inability to love the world, your hesitation to serve, your jealousy, all the deficiencies that defy your spiritual disciplines.
Sri Sathya Sai Baba

It seemed like this was one big Prozac nation, one big mess of malaise. Perhaps the next time half a million people gather for a protest march on the White House green it will not be for abortion rights or gay liberation, but because we're all so bummed out.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
From Book Prozac Nation

I start to feel like I can't maintain the facade any longer, that I may just start to show through. And I wish I knew what was wrong. Maybe something about how stupid my whole life is. I don't know. Why does the rest of the world put up with the hypocrisy, the need to put a happy face on sorrow, the need to keep on keeping on?... I don't know the answer, I know only that I can't. I don't want any more vicissitudes, I don't want any more of this try, try again stuff. I just want out. I've had it. I am so tired. I am twenty and I am already exhausted.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
From Book Prozac Nation

In a strange way, I had fallen in love with my depression. Dr. Sterling was right about that. I loved it because I thought it was all I had. I thought depression was the part of my character that made me worthwhile. I thought so little of myself, felt that I had such scant offerings to give to the world, that the one thing that justified my existence at all was my agony."
Elizabeth Wurtzel
From Book Prozac Nation

I have studiously tried to avoid ever using the word 'madness' to describe my condition. Now and again, the word slips out, but I hate it. 'Madness' is too glamorous a term to convey what happens to most people who are losing their minds. That word is too exciting, too literary, too interesting in its connotations, to convey the boredom, the slowness, the dreariness, the dampness of depression.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
From Book Prozac Nation

I'm the girl who is lost in space, the girl who is disappearing always, forever fading away and receding farther and farther into the background. Just like the Cheshire cat, someday I will suddenly leave, but the artificial warmth of my smile, that phony, clownish curve, the kind you see on miserably sad people and villains in Disney movies, will remain behind as an ironic remnant. I am the girl you see in the photograph from some party someplace or some picnic in the park, the one who is in fact soon to be gone. When you look at the picture again, I want to assure you, I will no longer be there. I will be erased from history, like a traitor in the Soviet Union. Because with every day that goes by, I feel myself becoming more and more invisible...
Elizabeth Wurtzel
From Book Prozac Nation

Insanity is knowing that what you're doing is completely idiotic, but still, somehow, you just can't stop it.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
From Book Prozac Nation

That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
From Book Prozac Nation

A lot of what passes for depression these days is nothing more than a body saying that it needs work.
Geoffrey Norman
If depression is creeping up and must be faced, learn something about the nature of the beast: You may escape without a mauling.
Dr. R. W. Shepherd

People who think that Sylvia Plath was a poor, sensitive poet are not getting that she had great amounts of ambition and anger that moved her along, or she wouldn't have been able to fight against that depression to produce such an incredible body of work by the age of thirty.
Elizabeth Wurtzel

If I had not been already been meditating, I would certainly have had to start. I've treated my own depression for many years with exercise and meditation, and I've found that to be a tremendous help.
Judy Collins

I cry a lot. My emotions are very close to my surface. I don't want to hold anything in so it it festers and turns into pus - a pustule of emotion that explodes into a festering cesspool of depression.
Nicolas Cage

Just like other illnesses, depression can be treated so that people can live happy, active lives.
Tom Bosley

Many people think that depression is something you just have to live with when you get older, but it's not.
Tom Bosley

My recovery from manic depression has been an evolution, not a sudden miracle.
Patty Duke

You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it.
Albert Ellis

Depression is rage spread thin.
George Santayana

"It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily.
"So it is."
"And freezing."
"Is it?"
"Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately."
A. A. Milne
From book Winnie the Pooh

The old grey donkey, Eeyore stood by himself in a thistly corner of the Forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, "Why?" and sometimes he thought, "Wherefore?" and sometimes he thought, "Inasmuch as which?" and sometimes he didn't quite know what he was thinking about.
A. A. Milne
From book Winnie the Pooh

Nobody tells me. Nobody keeps me informed. I make it 17 days come Friday since anybody spoke to me.
Eeyore
From book The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne

After all, what are birthdays? Here today and gone tomorrow.
Eeyore
From book The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne

"Pathetic," he said. "That's what it is. Pathetic."
He turned and walked slowly down the stream for twenty yards, splashed across it, and walked slowly back on the other side. Then he looked at himself in the water again.
"As I thought," he said. "No better from this side. But nobody minds. Nobody cares. Pathetic, that's what it is."
A. A. Milne
From book Winnie the Pooh

"Good morning, Eeyore," said Pooh.
"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it is a good morning, which I doubt," said he.
"Why, what's the matter?"
"Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can't all, and some of us don't. That's all there is to it."
"Can't all what?" said Pooh, rubbing his nose.
"Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush."
A. A. Milne
From book Winnie the Pooh

One can't complain. I have my friends. Someone spoke to me only yesterday.
Eeyore
From Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne

And there you have it - from Charlie Brown to Eeyore - here's hoping for better days - someone smiled at me today....

BFF

It was so unbelievably wonderful to hear from Gail and to be called, 'my dear little Joanna'. Gail marked to turning point in mt life - she knew about the real world beyond India and she had had a boyfriend! So glamorous to the then 12 year old me. This all took place just after Desla had painted the portrait of innocence.

You can see why he wanted to paint it when you look at the 8/9th grade class photograph. With our super short mini skirts, ironed hair and borrowed make up we stood tip top on the threshold of young
   womanhood - eager to get out there and find out destinies.

Trincas on a Sunday afternoon was the place to be - 3-7 - four hours of non stop dancing and ogling the band boys. BY now I was truly, madly deeply in the throes of the crush on Peter Yeti - he eventually went out with Lori - far right, second row. The friendship really didn't survive that .

In between all this rush to be older we were, like so many little girls, dotty about horses and would spend hours at the stables feeding them carrots and  taking our lessons at the ungodly hour of  6 o'clock. Gail was a natural horsewoman and soon moved away from me and the beginners.

We became involved with the Alford brothers - two successful and Ivan who could not help but always to try and find the angle that would make him money - he eventually married Peter Yeti's sister Jean and really did live happily ever after. The there was Richard Haslem - Gail's fella.  It was also very innocent but our parents found that hard to believe - so we were grounded. But we were still allowed to sleepover at one another houses.

Before

We climbed the drainpipe at Lori's by knotting sheets together - Enid Blyton had her uses-  unscrewed the bars at Gail's. bathroom window and managed to wake the cockerel and the Durwan on our return in the dawn's early light t. I had been kissed/mauled for most of the evening and ended up with a beesting pout and several love bites. My mother said very little other to than to box my ears and then take me to the hairdresser where she said, "Cut if all off,". I cried but to no avail  and my hippy street cred soon lay about me as did my dreams.

A Puri Holiday where Gail and I slept under the stars and let the sea lull us to sleep

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