Back on track...writing about what I know.

Write about what you know – that’s the old adage, isn’t it?  Here we go then.

I’ve had cause to travel between the UK and mainland Europe over the past couple of weeks for work.  For a start, what a lovely phrase that is, “between the UK and mainland Europe”: the short twenty-one mile gap that separates the island and the mainland and the infinite space that separates the UK from the rest of Europe.  Hackneyed and eye-roll inducing sentiment I know but the longer I stay here the more I am aware that hackneyed and eye-roll inducing is the constant state of being.

Anyway.

Here’s what I know.  I arrived back at Birmingham Airport on the Sunday night after the Commonwealth Games had finished.  At Birmingham New Street station, I approached one of the platform food kiosks and asked for a coffee.  They were not serving any more coffees because they were a few minutes from closing, and so no more coffees.  I didn’t get into a conversation about what constitutes being open – and that perhaps the chain in question may look to pay their staff for an extra half hour to ensure they can serve their wares and then have time to clean up before their shift ended – and went otherwhere to find a drink.  This, remember, hours after Birmingham had choreographed their welcome to the Commonwealth…I freely admit I was four years early.

Down to the platform and on to the train.  The carriage was strewn with rubbish: food wrappers, newspapers, beer boxes, empty cups, cans, bottles.  As the tannoyed voice indicated that people should be sitting in their allocated seat, and that sitting in an unallocated seat would be met with maximum penalty and possible imprisonment and deportation – this is the second time I’ve heard this type of announcement on the trains and you say over-reaction but anything is possible in this hostile environment – three people were faced with sitting at a table full of empty beer and cider cans and bottles.  Full. Beautifully, the table sat under a sign that read, “We want everyone to have a great journey, so please consider others around you.”

The conductor arrived and checked tickets.  I imagined that he might say something to the people at the table – obviously not responsible for the rubbish sat thereon – something like, “Thank you for sitting in your allocated seat, therefore avoiding penalties, imprisonment and deportation.  Once I’ve completed my ticket check, I’ll be along to clear that up.”  He did not.  Nor did he have that conversation as he walked back through the carriage after having completed his ticket check to ensure we were all in our allocated seating.  Another member of staff, with the refreshments trolley, walked past and did not have that conversation either.

I disembarked, having picked up some of the rubbish to put in a bin at the station stop, and asked the guard on the platform whether he might be able to get a message to the staff on the train to clean up the rubbish strewn throughout.  “Ah, well, that’s a Cross Country Train, you see.  We’re Great Western Railway, that’s nothing to do with us.”  He said that as he picked up an empty can I’d indicated that was sat in the doorway of the train.  He advised me to complain on the website.  I think the train would have reached its final destination by the time I’d been able to do that.

*

Last week, I was on a train from Frankfurt City out to the airport.  A lady got on with a babe-in-arms and a toddler.  The toddler was in full melt down: completely beyond comfort and reason.  Two older people tried to help with the toddler, to no avail.  Me and another lady offered to help with the babe whilst the mother looked after the toddler.  Two members of staff came and helped the mother move herself and her gear into a quieter carriage to help sort herself and the toddler out.  Yes, there were obviously a few tuts and eye-rolls at the noise and tantrum but there was an abundance of help too.  In a clean carriage.

I love those old adages.

This is what it sounds like...

“I love how a song can bring back so many memories” – a tweet from the loveliest person online.

Everyone reacts differently to their hero dying.  I have strong memories of me as a child watching my older brother sitting next to a speaker in a pub in Porthcawl and him crying as the DJ played Elvis tune after Elvis tune; the blank eyed despondency of my mate writing in the margin of a page “Kurt Cobain is dead.”

Two years ago, I woke up in a hotel in Wellington and my phone flashed messages expressing sorrow about the news and concern for me.  I turned on the telly and every other story was telling me somebody died.  Prince.  Knowing full well this is the single-most melodramatic phrase you will read today, tomorrow and the next day, I still write: joy stopped that day.  I didn’t understand at the time simply how fragile my state of mind was.

Prince Rogers Nelson 

Prince was my hero.  His music and his attitude made everyday brighter and lighter. Knowing there would always be new music and tours and ideas meant the world was functioning properly. See, just watch.

From two years’ distance it is easy to see the trigger this was.  I was constructing an image of me that presented as together, happy, content, without worry or stress.  My partner at the time could see that I was not right; she could see I was unhappy, that I was struggling with the distance between my child and me and that I was masking.  I could not see that.  I would go so far as to say that I would not have acknowledged it even if I could have seen it, I think.

I wrote about the physical, psychological and emotional space taken up by the boxes, last week.  The space occupied by Prince died on April 22^nd 2016 and it is still dead.  April 22^nd, of course, because we woke up a day ahead in New Zealand – we get to the future first. I didn’t realise it that day, although I certainly felt it, but the stop that was keeping me level was kicked away.  I became, from then on in, unbalanced.

I was waking up in a hotel because I was on a weekend break away.  As we wandered around the city later on, a picture of Prince from Purple Rain kept appearing, stuck to the walls of buildings around the harbour area.  People were obviously moving it around and placing it in more visible and visited locations as the evening wore on.  It was a lovely commemoration but simply served to make me more morose.

I used the word “crashed”, last week, to describe how I am.  Music is not joy anymore and it used to be vital.  Now, it’s a mountain of memories and moments and visceral reactions to the past, frustrated by ongoing agony created by other songs by other artists.  I try to listen to music and have fun.  Janelle Monáe sweeps in with purple flourishes that stir the heart but those fleeting feelings fade.

The week before Prince did die, he sort of died, was resuscitated and taken to hospital.  At the time, I wrote this.  “I Wonder U” is a short and sweet piece of genius, the kind of which he was producing in his sleep back in his heyday.  It holds in its hands a beautiful blend of hope and of melancholy.  I like the fact that I can still see that there is hope there.

I appreciate this is navel gazing of the worst kind and I am not entirely sure what it is I am trying to achieve through publicly articulating this.  Vocalising these thoughts and feelings haven’t helped before, I know there is still some way to go.  On the face of it, I’m fine. I function. But, I know I am not the complete picture, not functioning wholly. That frustrates me.

So there we are.  Two years have past.  Prince was a creator, an inspiration, a funny man, a musician, an altruist, and a memory.  I want to end writing “and his music lives on…” I won’t: I fucking hate the fact that Prince died.

My journey to the British-side is complete...

The moving company called.  They arranged a time.  Then they called and rearranged the time, naturally – although, to be fair to them it was only an hour’s difference.  Wednesday, they showed up.  They lifted the boxes in through the door and then they left.

There you go: permanency.  I have now moved to the UK from NZ.

Today I have not been happy.

Dealing with fluctuations in my mental state is not something I believed I would have to confront.  I always considered myself aware.  To become unaware, out of control, and to not recognise you are falling out of control is frightening.  Still I wonder whether I actually suffer from depression or anxiety or whether I just simply need to pull myself together and get on with it?  Trying to second-guess my mental wellbeing is to sit on a helter-skelter, one that has no end in sight.  It is simply a spiral and it goes down but you never know how high you are.  It is a hair-raising ride and it sometimes feels tremendous – wholly counter-intuitive.  And I have that sense of vertigo about me.  I don’t know if I am near the end or whether I still have so far to fall.

Today’s lowness has this boxed emblem of permanency at its core.  Whilst there is light in this, 89^th birthdays and board-games, today this feels like the much darker sequel to a chapter that has now been closed and put up on the shelf, out of the way, ended.

Fluctuations in mood and a sense of loss of purpose obviously come and go.  For the last year, year and a half, that is something I have had to try and come to terms with.  All of this results from decisions I made.  I know that I am at the heart of the situation I find me in now.  Acknowledging that this is my fault hasn’t lessened the pain, confusion and suffering.  Moments vividly crash into your head on a day-to-day basis, stopping me cold – constant reminders of the fool I was and also reminders of my descent into illness.

I tried counselling but found the responses I was getting to be trite and clichéd.  Again, that can only come from the information I was giving the counsellor – they can’t second-guess their patient; so whatever it was that I was saying I was either saying it wrong or I wasn’t heard.  People have suggested that I try a different counsellor.  A year on, that would result in different advice: I run now, I’ve moved country now, I don’t drink now, I eat far too much sugar now, I see my daughter again.  The me that sat in with the counsellor is gone.

A phrase that springs to mind is one I associate with Australian sport: mental disintegration.  That’s what happened to me, I think.  I drank, I argued, I became sullen, I became unbearable – I must have done.  The person who at the time I went home to every day, the person I loved, decided that I wasn’t loveable anymore.  And so the person I loved left.  I crashed.  I am still crashed.

And here we are, year later and I am fifteen boxes.  That’s all.  Fifteen boxes.  Not big ones either.  I threw away loads, gave away a house full, and I boxed up fifteen boxes and sent them on a boat to the UK.  They have arrived and they have taken up space: physically, cognitively, emotionally they take up space – and today has been a bad day.

My dreams are still flooded with Aotearoa and the one who left me. Two nights ago the dream was a push and pull fight, wanting her but never wanting to touch her again.

Two days ago, I walked my daughter to the library and we sat next to each other and worked.  On the walk down the hill she reached out and she held my hand.  She is still of an age where she will confidently do so regardless of time and place.

I hate how I feel.  I hate feeling crashed. I hate feeling fine and then not.  I would give anything to feel not crashed.  I think.

This is why I'm here.

So, there you have it: the reason why I am now back in this country.  I’ve just come back from taking my daughter to visit my Mum on the occasion of Mum’s 89^th birthday.  For all the irritation about, the unfamiliarity of and, the condition of the country, this was just a wonderful three days of me and her visiting them.

The joy of spending, as the daughter so eloquently put it, “quality time” with her was without price.  Train journeys marked by scenery watching, hula-hoop eating, completing maths homework and playing computer games; all tied up with the nice bow that is being hugged and squeezed and snuggled into.  For the last part of the journey we sat with our faces over a computer screen and her dictating the script for the film she wants to make this holiday for me to type.  She is wonderful.

At the end of both days we stayed there, we sat, with Mum, and played board games.  Three generations together over the table, drinking tea, eating chocolate, playing together.  The only sound other than our conversation was the ticking of the clock – one of two Mum has, one left one hour faster than the other, which confused me no end and was explained away so simply with, “I just know to add an hour on, for this one.”  Anyway, the tick of the clock provided the backdrop to the evening – it seemed like a sitting in a metaphor – to paraphrase the wonderful Hugh Laurie’s Thomas Lang.

Listening to the squeal of delight when daughter won, the exaggerated protestations from myself and Mum at the duplicity that must have been occurring for her to win so many games in a row, the shared genuine frustrations when the game wasn’t going the way we wanted it to; these were all treasures – taonga.  I’ve parcelled them up and hold them safe and secure.  They were different from past times, this time.  On those occasions the visits have been too swift in their passing and the plane journey back to the other side of the world sat deadweight at the back of each and every moment around the table.  That wasn’t the case, this week.

The birthday was splendid.  I ate my weight in trifle, as you are meant to do in instances such as this, and Mum worried whether there would be enough food for the family who were coming over to celebrate with her – again, as you are meant to do in these instances.  There was laughter and the general joshing around getting 89 candles on the cake; singing Happy Birthday and the shouts of “Bumps!” – as is traditional…

Me and the daughter have transformed the British fascination with division of bins into recyclable and variants thereof, non-recyclable and perishable rubbish, and the Cwmbrân population’s discarding of shopping trolleys into a conflict between these two vast armies of inanimate objects.  It’s become a continuing story whenever we walked from the house to town centre.  It was no different this week.  For once, the bins had it…there were only four trolleys to be seen…the one at the bottom of the Chems*, though, was sadly left fallen…a true hero in the conflict, a Medal of Honor candidate and no mistake.  Again, the verve and pleasure she gets from the shared surrealism of the idea makes me smile.

Watching the last vestiges of childhood existing in her swells my heart.  The simple way she’ll discard her coat to sit on the floor and rifle through the rows of pens on the shelves of the stationers, keen on finding the right type of pen for the new journal she is buying.  I could have been stood there watching still.

This is why I am here.

*I can’t resist – The Chems, is named thus because it’s a chemical dump.  The path has always fringed a sports field, in my memory. The snow turns orange when it settles on the ground.  The cricket heavy-roller used to sink into the ground trying to get it out to the middle.  Litter decorates the pathway, still. Cans, bottles, packets, bits and pieces of fast food detritus. We decided the bins were not winning here.