How my heart leaps! But hearts, after leaps, ache.
I can’t help feeling Romeo and Juliet, frustrating as that is, but perhaps because of Prokofiev and the effect of necrophiliac ballet, making my heart leap then ache.

I am always complaining or talking about the weather. My penny’s worth that is worth nothing. Penny chews now cost more than a penny, so I struggle to chew the fat.

Butternut squash, sea monkeys, spectacles, enseamed beds of rank sweat.
Record sleeves, sleeve fights, sleeves that cover my hands.
I throw wine, I throw coffee, I allow my nail varnish to chip, I slice up my hands with paper ever since the blood blister popped.

And I brush my teeth. I am always brushing my teeth. It's more fun to brush teeth with someone else. After we sugared our apples. And failed to stew our tea in the proper way. I like tannins.

And there is a new Barbara Trapido book coming out. And it has a ballet dancer. And it will be read after exams. In the sun. In floral dungarees.

And the smell of barbecue is still on jumpers and sheets. I hope I can bottle the scent and keep it.

How'd you like them apples?

At the moment my head is like a one of those fruit machines you put change into at the arcades, with my eyes being replaced with vertically spinning pictures of fruit.

I'm tracing fruit through the ages...
Eve and the apple.
St Augustine and the pear.
Keats and the nectarine.
T.S. Eliot and the peach.

And now, most prevalently, Jeanette and her oranges, and Rita and her rubyfruit.

'Fruit salad, fruit pie, fruit for fools, fruited punch, Demon fruit, passion fruit, rotten fruit, fruit on Sunday. Oranges are the only fruit.'

Jeanette, I beg to differ. Oranges are plentiful, granted, but they are not the only fruit. Especially in literature. Especially in lesbian literature. And it's turning me into a fruitcake. (Similar to a nutcase, but nuts are not fruit, and therefore not allowed.)

There are also cherries on icecream that are like Greta Garbo kisses. And banana splits, topped with fat cherries bordering on the obscene (that comes crashing down on a misogynist's head). And two raspberries that are ordered alongside a fond female friendship. And Melanies who look like melons. And dried and pickled fruits librerally sprinkled over breakfasts and novels as women age...

And the grapefruit freak. A man who likes strangers to throw grapefruit at his naked body. It has to be a different person every time. He gets off on it (every citrus squelch is described). Fruity.

And of course the famed Rubyfruit. What juicy gossip.

All this fruit has been driving me mad in the attic. Fruit as a feminine and feminist symbol. Gilbert and Gubar would approve.

I think the madness started as soon as I came home, where there are SO MANY grapes on offer. No wonder grapes are associated with ill people. Eating them is like popping pills. Addictive.

People can get lost when diving into fruitbowls, sliding down the spirals of orange peel. Let's hope this fruitcake phase proves fruitful.

Bard allaying boredom

While I wait for Devon Sproule's Keep your Silver Shined to sound sublime, which it only does when accompanying SUN, barbeques, ice cream and bare legs that stick to chairs, I keep myself occupied with slices and slivers of things that are charming.

Such as dancing on the top floor with a barefoot friend, followed by an impromptu waltz that sweeps the crowd. Three-way waltzing is a treat, if one spins to the right beat.

Another thing that makes everything a little brighter is believing that the second Star Wars trilogy was never made. Then re-imagining them written and directed by Michel Gondry or David Lean, rather than the disillusioned George Lucas.

Perfect escapism also comes in the form of Franco Zeffirelli films. I want to live in a Zeffirelli world. It seems to be perpetual twilight, and looks ever so pre-Raphaelite. His 1968 Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is all free love, flowing hair and fluttering eyelashes. And Juliet almost looks as young as Shakespeare intended her to be, which is rare, and therefore the tragedy and adolescent emotion is heightened. I only just realised that Miranda in The Tempest is also pretty young - only fifteen. But Miranda is pathetic, a rubbish Shakespearean heroine. If one can even call her a heroine. Granted, her father is a bastard with super powers who won't let her kiss with tongues, but Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, Rosalind and Beatrice wouldn't have taken any of that crap. And Ophelia always remains a favourite - I don't get Hamlet, but Ophelia fascinates me. Tousled, sing-song, airy-fairy floaty with flowers, ending in a tragic watery farewell. Millais did her proud. Though I don't imagine her in shades of green, rather a faded red or dusky kind of pinkish.

The light may soon be changing to that of a Zeffirelli film set. And Devon will sound as she should. And dancing barefoot will become second nature.

A hot air balloon of youthful enthusiasm

Sneezes are small explosions that are disrupting my learning. My final learning. Less than a week of learning left...Then I will have learned all the things. Though perhaps not all the Things. That comes later. After university.

Some of my final learning was about butterfly personalities. Being stimulated in all sorts of ways. Indeed.
And about Fourier's manias. Apparently manias are excellent and important. His was for lesbians. He also thought that brackish sea water should be turned into lemonade, into something drinkable. This is a good idea.
And about Sadian logic constructed by Barthes, and that 'obviously' the Marquis de Sade and Fourier are connected. Obviously. Duh. I don't know why these names were said over and over and over, at the same time as books and 'isms' were being thrown about willy nilly. This I still need to learn.
Sodom also seemed to come into things. Maybe I need to learn about Sodom.

Other learning has consisted of watching the first series of Queer as Folk in one happy Sunday, then chatting about it with academics at an ungodly hour. And also discussing the lyrics of So Long Marianne and Suzanne. And also looking up youtube videos with Kiwi tutors of his ukelele-playing colleague in The Penguin Cafe Orchestra.

I don't understand all the learning. But that's fine. The things that matter stick. Like butterflies, lemonade and Leonard Cohen...

A Victorian Romantic

I have discovered another heroine. I shall add her to my collection. The collection of heroines I keep in a box. It's a bit like those music boxes with the tiny rotating ballerinas twirling on a mini pedestal, but each time I open it there is a different one of my heroines doing whatever they do best to the lyrical tones of 'I wisssshh I could be yooooouu'.

In this particular case, the heroine will be taking photographs as she twirls to the camera flash.

Julia Margaret Cameron was an ugly duckling. Her mother was an aristocratic French belle, and her sisters were nick-named things like 'Beauty' and 'Dash'. She was dubbed 'Talent'. Cutting. But she lived up to this label with flair.

Born in Calcutta and educated in France, she chose to live on the Isle of Wight from 1860 onwards. Then, aged 48, she was given a camera.

Her photographs are like Pre-Raphaelite paintings, all soft focus and fairy tales. She created a series of Arthurian scenes, with many costumes and limp poses and far-away looks. Religion and literature were her inspiration, and her models dressed up and posed in her chicken shed. Feathered angel wings amongst the poultry. She used ordinary people as her models, 'arresting' them in order to make them pose for her creations. Her Arthur was a strapping young chap who made deliveries on the Isle, and during the Idylls of the King photographic process the locals became impatient due to him being kept in his Arthur guise for hours on end.

The photographs are beautiful. They are over the top, romantic, of another era, yet she believed in them as ART. Rightfully so.

Tennyson was a neighbour of hers. They chatted over cups of sugar (I hope). She created photographic portraits of him, Darwin, Browning, Millais, Burne-Jones, William Rossetti, Ellen Terry - all greats of the age, all of romantic sensibilities. And all magically made immortal and ethereal by her intentionally out-of-focus lens.

And, as if she couldn't be esteemed any higher or be any more AWESOME in my eyes, she was the great-aunt of Virginia Woolf.

I would love to escape to her Isle of Wight world. I could do this through reading Woolf's comic slip of a play Freshwater. Or by simply gazing into her photographs.

Thing Theory

The Thingness of Things is an actual Thing. It was used in a King Lear lecture and everything. By a man who knows Such Things. Probably everyThing.

Things like knickers, school uniform and saucepans. All purchased in John Lewis.

And looking glasses, and feathers and buttons. Thou art the thing itself.

For Leonhart

I made a smudged interpretation of a fuchsia,
Muddied onto the page in Ireland,
Where dogs are named for the wrong star,
Orion.

I find my way by fuchsia-bush Satnav,
The crushed petals plotting a map;
Second stigma from Tufnell Park
And straight on till Hampstead.
The map is now well-trodden,
Releasing rotting perfumes
Just as Ronald releases nausea when
The flowers are beneath his foot.

Phew, she said whilst drowning,
No longer playing the heroine
Of an exhausting gothic melodrama.
She had peaked, but now prefers
To float as a mannequinned martyr.
She chassées into futile cha chas
Down the sewaged moat,
Making her red gown wilt.

Wash, dry, rustle taffeta,
And silk shot with scarlet,
Vining, veining, blotting blood
That scabs with fine flesh tissues.
Expose those billowing bloomers,
A shade darker than the tutu,
And dangle tiny ballet slippers,
Quiver, caught in gentle gusts.

Grown beneath my smudged interpretation
Is the greatest compliment I ever had;
A copy of my flower, stuck with
Sellotape.

YOUR FACE

Everything's purple except the red beret. And there's bones in the Quad, and I'm all milkshake and flapjack. And Maud is a rose lily queen gem ghost, never HER. And I want a t-shirt saying 'I shot the Albatross'.

And your face is a stream of consciousness that I don't want to row down.
And your feet look like Tony Benn.

Visitors

They cling to lampshades and live in windows,
And other insects consider them bimbos.
But domestic or wild, bird or bug?
I question these ladies who reply with a shrug,
They pose static upon bottles of wine,
Preferring this perch to Edenic vines.
Even through our drunken fug,
We can spy these shrunken bugs,
Finding them in the flour and mince
And on the butter - little-leg prints.
I learnt that birds are code for the Sapphic
(Lesbian play made less graphic)
Are you this way inclined or not,
Covered in pin-prick anti-acne spots?
'What does it matter?', I hear them cry,
'The most awesome thing's that we can FLY!'
It's true, that's cool, so don't be cruel
To these intruding studding jewels.

I am fond of our lady-like insects, much maligned by others. The prettiest of vermin. I'd paper my walls with your shells - black and bugged and red all over.

Vim and Spunk

I think I went through a Coraline phase. And I don't mean a phase of liking, loving, and being obsessed by Coraline, as that is pretty much a way of life, a mindset, a philosophy that is constant in my very being. I mean a phase of looking like Coraline. Though I was not eleven. More like nineteen or so... Eleven at heart however. As I shall forever be.

Cartoonish features, spaghetti limbs, bobbed hair (though not blue, for shame), an evil glare when enraged...

I may no longer resemble her physically, but I like to flatter myself by thinking that I am still part Coraline. Neil Gaiman writes that she's "full of 'vim' and 'spunk' and all those wonderful old-fashioned words." And she's curious, and scrappy, and sees the world through holes in stones. She likes candyfloss and the mouse circus, and talks to cats and is attracted by green gloves. She wears ace jumpers and shiny blue boots. She travels through acid-trip tunnels and hunts for the trapped souls of ghost-children.

Well, I'd say that's me in a nutshell. It has, after all, been said that I am all wool and fairies. This seems to fit with the Coraline world, which is all threads and fantasy.

And I do love buttons. Though more so on CARDIGANS, rather than sewn into eye sockets.

I Beam

Anybody who knows me knows that I am all about the EYEBEAMS.

The single best thing I have KNOWLEDGE of. They are an ocular obsession of mine. The conception of visual reciprocation achieved by the exchange of eyebeams. This is actual SCIENCE. Renaissance biology in corporeal motion. Fiery darts that pass through the eyes and hit the object of one's desire. Eyebeam emissions that are shot from the soul and pierce the reflecting target. Venus, Adonis, and wide-eyed sparks.

Then someone told me about the science of blinking.

If a person is attracted to another, they blink more often. Hence the fluttering of eyelashes. Looking into someone's eyes, with real connection, with a steady gaze, exposes one's ocular orbs (and, arguably, one's heart...) to the elements. Therefore increased blinking is necessary: to keep eyejuice flowing and to give an alluring glaze. When this someone told me this, I blinked too much, became too aware of eyejuice, and almost succumbed to his over-active flickering eyelids. I held myself back and struggled to resist the science. Damn his eyes!

[Parenthetically, this makes me think of the girl in Indiana Jones, who sits in class and stares at the dreamy Indy-in-Teacher-Guise, slowly blinking, with the words 'LOVE' and 'YOU' written on her eye-lids. A perfect moment in film - disturbing, frivolous, beautiful, true]

But surely blinking science contradicts eyebeam science...

If eyebeams are shot from love-struck eyes, then blinking would hinder and disrupt this process. The science of amorous eyes is a complex one. However, perhaps eyebeams are stronger than the thin tissue of eyelids. They come from within, from the thick-tissued aorta, and are powerful enough to penetrate the eyes and heart of another being. Mere blinks cannot halt or offset their path. They will always hit the target they are aimed toward, as this is determined by the heart and is not subject to direction-distorting blinks. Blinking serves to fan the flames of the fiery darts, making them blaze all the brighter and strike all the hotter.

These two concepts are perfectly combined in a myth of an icon. An icon of the Chelsea Hotel, who inspired a party, lived fast, died young, loved too much. It was her big eyes that were to blame... a speeding Edie Sedgwick was said to have set her room on fire while gluing on her thick false eyelashes by candlelight.

She flamed, framed in mascara.

My Day in Real Time

Nosleep, busrun, workworkwork, errand-bank-errand-stationers-errand-printers-errand-COFFEE, mad-dog-mad, workworkwork, facebook, foldfold–nofoldingmachine-foldfold, make-tea-wash-up, fascinatingviewing: fortyfiveminute list of lords and ladies, guests for the bookshop party, RUTHLESS, struckoff, allergies (to people), oh no, I don’t think so, do you, Tarquin etc, I know a sordid secret…chatstruggle with boss’husband, trip-to-Bangladesh, DRINKSONTHEM, drinkdrinkdrink, tales of heart attacks in Fortnum&Mason, drunken-drugged-up falling sisters, skull removed for months, bloodymindedness/braindamage, literatichitchat, busbusbus, flatmate-attack, old-man-Malcolm, quicknap/threehoursleeeep, bed-pile-in, phone-call-record-the-wine-fed, busbus, happybirthday-insertname, disturbinggoogling, joint, HUNGER, dodgysamosa, packet-of-ice-cream-crackers, funnynoises-helloooomynaameiseeeddd-low-deep-sci-fi-villain, smiles, sleeeeep, countering-nosleep.

Waiting for Rainbows

I was held captive by the Washing Machine Man. Or rather what the Washing Machine Man said. You must be both IN and AWAKE for the next few washes. To make sure it doesn't EXPLODE.

So I stayed in and listened to the whirr of the circulating colours (which will all end up pink. Fact) and the rain outside.

I woke to the rain this morning. And I had dreamt that my usually suited and scarved attic-dwelling friend was wearing a lacquered anorak. Coincidence? I think not.

Also, merely days after leaving the creepy kitten umbrella at an Islington Public House that had both chandeliers and disco balls. That kitten had it coming, wearing its lime green jumper and staring, staring at me with its cat's eyes that followed mine incessantly through all weather, whether it was pouring cats and dogs or not.

This is all a sign I should sail to Cherbourg. In an upturned umbrella, across the Channel. To a technicolour sixties world of pastels and brights, co-ordinated wallpaper, carnival apocalypse, fake snow, helmet hair, 'maybe the happiness is making me sad', and where Catherine Deneuve et al sing everything, including ps and qs, Francois et Francoise and postmen have cameos of Bonjour ou Au Revoir.

And umbrellas reign supreme among practical yet pretty accessories. It's a hard life running an umbrella boutique. Poverty can strike if precipitation does not. So I shall sail to Cherbourg, wear a mini-dress, marry a jewellery salesman with a 'tache, have another man's baby, backcomb my beehived hair, and buy many an umbrella. All in french melody. Jolie. And in harmony with washing machine whirring.

A dash of silly

Back to usual FRIPPERY. Declared with triumphant fanfare arm-movement. 'Frrrrippperryy!'

Because being Romantic and Square is Hip and Aware.

Because...

It should be in a conservatory,
you in a white frock with a red rose in your hand...
and a violin playing in the distance,

and I should be making violent love to you behind a palm tree.

[ Laughing ]
Poor darling. Never mind.

Because that is how Maxim de Winter thinks best to propose.

You know me less constant

On the bus.
A long day. Left before the sun rose, before the commuter train had passed, staring at scrawled numbers and papercuts and Romantic Theatre handouts throughout the daylight hours, then a final recycle run later...I hop...
Onto the bus.
It's dark, I'm dog-tired, dead-eyed, bus-fugged and glazed. Looking forward to a night of spoken-word, songs, basements, booze and bunting...
Sylvia Plath starts to speak.
She's all iPod poems and plumbs, mixing Massachusetts with a housewife drawl.
In the glass in front of my seat I see myself. My outline is clearly defined, the colours are mostly there, all details visible. But a blank where my eyes should be. Well, not a blank, but a smudgy space of grey wool. Some man's jumper beyond the glass. Where my eyes should be.
As Parliament Hill Fields begins, as I head toward Kentish Town, I gaze into the wool. Unspooled? No, woven.
New Year. Loss of a child. Older only child lives still. All seems prevalent, relevant. As I gaze into the wool.
It is New Year. No longer a child... I'm older, and living. Living in capital letters. In bold, printed, not-grown-up-or-joined-up handwriting, so the child is not forgotten.
Indigo nimbus, cellophane balloon. Nonsense words of colours, mists. I want the balloon to pop. The grey to turn to indigo. The wool to be unspooled. So I can see my eyes.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Stories, in my opinion, should mostly include coloured trumpets, sausages in heat, musings on Thursdays, and the fact that Chaucer's father was a vintner.

And they should have a character named the Yam Man, who offers people yams on the bus and advises passengers against selling their pretty necklaces.

And they should be peppered with anecdotes, like knocking small children over in the street with the Norton Anthology of Shakespeare, then placing them back on their feet with one deft movement.

And they should have a fairly lengthy Bible passage wedged in, preferably from the Book of Revelations as this links to Middle English texts and lists jewels.

And they should be based on true stories of criminality, describing fumbling with locks in a wordy way, rife with innuendo.

And they should be accompanied by beer and cushions and obstacle courses of crossed legs and trendy people from Peckham and cellists wearing floral dresses and choirs who bide their time.

And they should be read from a fairy-lit pedestal, megaphoned to all, spreading mega-fun.

This way, bedtime stories can only lead to better dreams...

Extremely Close and Incredibly Loud

We are going to make an album. A Concept Album of Ambiance.

To make this album, we are going to record both sounds and noises. Yes, both Sounds and Noises. It is a radical new movement.

The track list will be as follows:

Rainfall
Crackling Fire
Passing Night Trains
Breath of a Sleeping Person
The Sea
The Motorway
Birdsong (though not woodpigeon)

And the bonus track, approximately fifteen minutes after the last listed recording, will be Caterwauling. Literally a wailing cat. It will shock.

We will travel around the country wearing headphones and carrying all our electrical equipment. We shall be mostly silent as we go about recording these elemental Sounds and Noises. And of course a documentary crew will be following us. The creation of such an album is perfect documentary material. Intrepid artistes on location. The cameras will capture our patience and perseverance as we quietly climb trees to birds' nests, waiting for them to sing. They will watch us as we daringly loiter on the edge of a busy motorway for seven hours, meticulously sorting the Land Rovers from the Lamborghinis. They will film us scorching our fingers and heating our cheeks as we successfully pick up the subtle and fluid flickers of a flaming log fire.

And they will gaze on with morbid fascination as one of us prods a stray cat in the street, whilst the other bravely holds the mic up to its snarling features.

All in the name of Art.

This will be most high-brow and make us Indie STARS. And, on the back of this and as a side project, I shall start up a band called the Carotene Receptors and write songs about organic growth, vegetarianism and lasers.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

So, what are your Plans With a Capital P, and how do they fit into The Grand Scheme of Things???

Watchwords of the moment. Plans. Intentions. Aspirations. Yada yada yada...

When speaking of The Grand Scheme of Things, one must use expansive, expressive arm movements that signify the great scope of the skies and beyond. It's best to look up.

Characters travel all the way from Posterity to help populate the as yet unfounded Future, adding their blueprints to the plans that will make the settlement stable and help with the perpetual conundrum of the roof. Will it fly off? Will it fall, bringing the walls down with it? Architecture in a nutshell. Though a nutshell that can contain all Life. All your Life yet to be built.

Why can I not travel to New Zealand (the land of my forefathers), track down the tribe that honoured my Grandfather with a handmade shroud on his death due to his kindness and sexual prowess, have them make me their princess, be carried around on a thrown until bidding farewell in order to pursue an apprenticeship in clockmaking, learn my trade whilst wearing tiny gold spectacles, then set up shop in New York?

Because this is a Plan for another person.

Mine lies in the hand that comes from the cloud. Hovering above the garden, offering, cradling, elevating the five-beamed star. Five routes I could take as I get lost in London? Don't dwell; it will all be Ace.

All doe-eyed...

Sometimes I feel a bit like Dr Who. I don't own a Tardis (though Ma's temporary car does resemble it a little - unfortunately it is NOT bigger on the inside than the outside, especially when full of tall boys). I don't have an arch nemesis in the form of a Dalek. I don't possess a Sonic Screwdriver (but am asking for one next Christmas). I don't have two hearts. I do, however, frequently wear Converse...
No, I fail in being Dr Who in many ways. Much to my shame. But there are rare occasions when I think we share some powers. In terms of time control. Time can stop for me. I am a Timelord.
I was stomping about in the snowy woods, all alone with my deafening thoughts and my mother's bracken-crushing walking boots, when a moment froze. Across the steep forest flora and fauna, through the framing trees, I spied a deer. It was looking right at me. Eyes connected with mine and time stood still. As time ceased to be, I could not say how long we were locked in this quiet state.
Nothing snapped, nothing burst; the deer merely turned and walked away when moments began to follow one another once more.
And I ran. In a downward direction. Stumbling, tripping, feet disappearing in powdered snow, like a little fearless child. The best kind of running.
A Tardis is not needed with my Time Power. My Time Power and my running feet.

Postcards from the Past

Hexham eccentricities are my favourite flavour of eccentricity. Nostalgia, with a hint of madness, is delicious and the ultimate winter comfort food. I sought warmth away from the icy streets in the fusty, dusty Aladdin's cave of the labyrinthine antique shop today. Warmth was not found (as the variegated clutter unfortunately failed to make the bare brick walls and stone floors toasty) but sociological treats succeeded to wrap me in the heat of secret discovery.

Postcards were on sale for 20p a pop. They were piled up in a box on a shelf, and lurid colours lured me in. Some were stamped and were scrawled over, evidently donated once received by the relatives of travellers. I sifted through the collection, picking out ones that particularly caught my eye. It was only when I was reading them through later, that I realised I had selected three that were addressed to the same person. The Bramwells of The Bungalow. Two of the three were sent by the same sender. Therefore I am granted an insight into a family...

The first is from Amsterdam.



'I'm staying in Amsterdam for the weekend, with Christine, who was at school with Mum. I just suddenly decided yesterday to come, and rang up to ask if it was convenient. Today I've been to the Rifkamuseum with Stephen - it was great. Then we went on to walk around Amsterdam looking at shops, buildings etc. Thank you for the letter, Grandad. I'll write soon. Love Vanessa.'

The next two are written in a more adult, indecipherable script.

This one is from Australia.



'Dear Auntie Evelyn, We are having the usual good time. Visited Cook Town. Had a superb sea-food meal. Oysters, barracuda, prawns, scallops! Mouth watering! Could barely walk away! Then we had an equally superb meal at a German restaurant in Cairns. The flight up to Cook Town was very interesting, flew low over the Great Barrier Reef. Off to Thursday Island & Yorke Island. All love, Barbara xx'

This last one is from India, and dated 4.12.75.



'Dear Auntie Evelyn, Early morning bathers in the Ganges! Saw sunrise over the Ganges, watched the Hindus bathing & taking blessings from priests. (Priests under the umbrellas!) Saw a body being burnt - only saw a foot! & another body waiting in Delhi now. [Squiggles that I can't decipher] city having lots of ice creams! All love, Barbara'

I think I would like to meet this well-travelled Barbara.

Postcards are so much more joyous than texts, so much more heartening than twitter updates. These supposedly outdated means of happy communication may have constraints as to word counts, but pictures can say a thousand words, and handwritten jottings can lift a thousand spirits.