So that’s the thing. No one told me I was dead. Just like no one told Red and no one told Sarah and no one told the Man from Manchester who died beneath a baler. I just knew. Worse still, I knew what we were and how we came to be that way before most of the people around me knew and that, oh that, is the most annoying thing in the world. In this life or any of the ones that come before. Having people around you galloping about in circles thinking the things they do matter when, really, it’s all just a way to pass the time.

Monday nights are his studio nights. My night to engage in aimless wandering. Alone.

We seldom do anything apart. Lea once questioned the benefits of this. “The danger of always being at each other’s fingertips,” she said, “is that one day you wont be, and where will you be then?

I said it works for us because we know what it’s like to be apart. Really apart. Four thousand miles apart. We once went an entire year without seeing one another. And, until last year, being separated for six weeks at a time wasn’t that uncommon. So we have a lot of seconds and minutes to make up for.

But I digress.

Tonight I’m listening to Simon & Garfunkel. Playing with a plastic dinosaur. And reading Oscar Wilde in the interim. Fitness Bootcamp starts tomorrow, so I may order pizza as well. Normally I don’t do things that counter-productive. But it’s a Monday.

I’ve just spent six hours doing laundry.

In six and a half, you can fly across the Atlantic.

Just sayin.

It always happens around 3:00am when I open my eyes and catch the light from the street lamp throwing itself onto the shadow sleeping beside me.

For a split second I go completely out of myself. I’m startled and even a little angry because I have no idea who this person is! **

My heart is pounding and my voice is caught and even though it just takes a moment to remember, a moment is enough. I’m wide awake and just really annoyed because I’m never gonna get back to sleep and why do I keep doing this?

I’m not sure what this says about me. Chaz will say it’s a boundary issue and I need to get it sussed out properly. Clare will tell me I just need to stop eating Bengali before bedtime. But I’d like to think it’s only this: I’m use to a California King. Not the proximity of a Queen.

When I told The Euro about it he just rolled his eyes and said, “Well, an hour before you do that, you wake up singing some freaky Victorian nursery rhyme in a really scary little voice. Sometimes, I have to get up and leave the room. You’re that spooky.”

At least he can’t say I’m not an interesting bed buddy. (My grandmother will NOT LOVE the way that sounds.)

—

**To the 5 (FIVE) family members who have already written to ask ‘What happened to your husband?’….Good grief, it IS him. Otherwise, there’s very little point to the story. Comprenez-vous?

I just googled ’sister quotes’ and was bombarded with purple prose. Sunshine and solace all over the place. Save it for the love letters because, lets be honest, sisterhood isn’t so much a Hallmark card as a Lifetime movie. And I mean that in the very best ‘Help Farrah Fawcett Cage Her Evil Ex Up In the Fireplace’ sort of way.

Seriously though, I think this quote from Toni Morrison probably sums it up better than anything:

A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves - a special kind of double. ~Toni Morrison

Though I have a sneaking suspicion, if my own sister were asked to pull a quote from her hat, it would be this one:

Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life. ~Charles M. Schulz

Anyway…I just found these photos floating around in cyberspace. So I decided to steal them. She has 24 hours to request a retraction.

No real reason at all to post this except to say “Mal, dollface, call me!” and “I’m getting tired of all this text.”

Nothing goes to lighten up Hazlitt and Homeland Security like a party for a three year old. Photo taken in January, at very same party.

I’m really tired of dealing with the folks at Homeland Security. I understand they have a job to do but there’s only so many times I can be asked to hand over $600 before I feel like pulling my teeth out. Next thing you know the Home Office will be asking me to cough up another grand to solidify my UK visa. Wait a minute…they already have.

I know it could be worse. I could be having to hand out money to an overpriced solicitor as well. Or I could be stuck in limbo somewhere mid-Atlantic because neither country will let both of us land. But that’s just me being melodramatic - something The Euro says I MUST work on.

I’ve been filling out immigration forms pretty steadily for about ten years now; wholly by choice because if you fancy living in a country other than your own it’s just the price you pay. But these last two years have become really tedious.

To be fair, immigration procedures are pretty straight forward* as long as you read the manual. But reading the manual isn’t something most people like to do. They’d rather pay Joe Barrister to do it for them. And even those of us who do read it get bored after a while. Especially if we’re following the instructions.

*Small caveat: Straightforward if you’re a normal Brit trying to get into America or a normal American trying to get into Britain.

I’m reading William Hazlitt and enjoying it. I read most things twice these days. Once for style. Once for entertainment. I’m still on style.

I’m not sure when I quit reading for the sake of a story; when I became more concerned with the way words were used and strung together. I’m thinking it was probably around 2001.

Just after 11 September when I picked up some bit or bob from Waterstones and had to read and re-read and re-re-read it because nothing sunk in or made sense in those days. Internalisation didn’t seem to matter when the external world was going to hell. It all seems very dramatic and probably counter to itself now but that’s exactly how I felt then.

And the more I read the words to understand their meaning, the more I didn’t care. I mean, I did. But only for the words. Only in so far as they were what they were. Not because they told a story or led to anything new or separate on the next page.

I love words - even though I don’t use them so well as I’d like - and they sometimes get in the way because I find myself stopping, as with Hazlitt, and ooohing and aahhing and underlining things like “drab coloured Quakerism of mortality” and “mixed motives of human character” and not getting on with the main…which is reading. So in that way they’re a nuisance.

Anyway, here is Hazlitt. I think. Flynn will tell me if I’m right.

Silas somethin-or-other was his name. But they called him Poor Boy. I forget why. Ever’body was poor back then so him not having no money wouldn’t been the reason. Anyway, they say it was Poor Boy what done it. That he just walked in one day and yoked her up side the head with his grandma’s skillet.

Later, and this is just what they say…me, I ain’t never been one for gossip myself…..but them what are say he drug her back on that mountain and dropped her in a well somebody’d went and dug and forgot about. Covered it up with whatever there was to cover it up with and left her there.

Whether she died in that house or down in that hole, I guess only Poor Boy knows.

I’ve been diagramming Shakespeare tonight. I called my seven year old niece for help but she was busy explaining the merits of water birthing to her mother who was busy explaining the demerits right back.

I watched Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet (1996) twice over the weekend. That’s eight hours. Give or take, but mostly give because I kept rewinding the scenes with Horatio and Ophelia.

I’m thoroughly smitten with Branagh at the moment. He’s both brilliant and beautiful in the role. I stand by this in spite of Flynn’s exclamation…“Kenneth Branagh! Fo’ real??? I find that odd”.

I’ve just booked Steph and me tickets to see The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Globe next month because, you know, might as well.

I should probably call and tell her.