Jimjan’s Journal

After a few days of abstaining, I’m back at my laptop. 

I finished reading The Remains of the Day and it was sad.  Stevens travelled to see Miss Kenton, wheels of the past murmuring about dignities, whirring around integrities, trust, all for nothing.  Her letter told him she’d left her husband, and he hoped she’d come back to Darlington Hall.  When he eventually met her, he learned she was back with her husband.  He feels sad and as if his life has passed him by, but quickly pulls himself together.  So, what does he think of, in the end?  He thinks of improving his bantering skills for his master’s sake.  Wow. 

A scenic drive to Peebles released a mist of memories into the banks and braes of my mind.  The fields are turned into a spring levy of gambolling lambs.  Mum and I in the car, mum chatting, me adding the odd word, my concentration on the road, once a well-travelled one for us.  We would walk up and down the high street, going for tea and scones at the Coffee Pot.  On the approach into Peebles, I saw Venelaw Hill, the layers of trees filming my mind with more memories.  Whenever we parked the car, in the carpark opposite, I would ask, ‘did you know I’ve climbed that hill.’  How boring, but she smiled every time.  Wilkies had such a creaky floor, I loved it.  We would walk down passed rails and rails of blouses, dresses, stands with shoes and shelves bearing handbags and scarves.  The iron monger, the ice-cream shop, the chippy.  Two or three times we’d be naughty and buy a poke of chips.  They were great chips.  Today I was going for butcher meat, Forsyth’s being the best butcher around. 

My mum enjoyed her trips to Peebles and so did I.  We stopped going latterly.  I’m not sure why?  She never seemed to want to go.  I can only think it was too much walking for her.  Even so, how can I ever go again without her being there, in my head.  It’s been eight and a half months since her passing and still questions pop up, and things I want to say, like, I’m looking after your Peace Lily’s and your orchid.  I want to tell her I grew the lilies I gave her for Mother’s Day last year.  I’m hoping they come back again this year.                              

I went to the library for a book by Joan Didion.  We’re studying her this week in zoom writing class.  None in stock right now.  I’ve had them order one.  Not the one I wanted – Slouching Towards Bethlehem – but I’m happy just to get a handle on her writing.  Joan Didion died just last month, on 23rd December.  I watched a programme on the TV about her.  She was intriguing.  It turns out she wrote from a very young child and was an avid reader.  I can relate to that.  She worked for Vogue, did journalistic work as well as being an author.  I wrote as a young child, read a lot and had dreams of being a journalist.  But my life went down a different route.   

Instead of one Joan Didion’s books, I got a book called Goblin, from the library, by Ever Dundas.  What a great name.  She’s from Edinburgh.  I’m sure Nicky once told us she was his cousin.  I must ask him.    

Yes, now I want to tell mum, I’m still Writing with Nicky.  I’m learning and think there’s improvement.  There should be, I hear her say.  She once said I thought more about my stories than I did about talking to her and I’m sorry she thought this.  It probably did look that way.  I was completely wrapped up in myself, but I want to tell her I was worried about her, I was worried about other things too, and I felt so bad for her, for her pain, her struggles in even such simple things as buying clothes, dodgy fridge, and desire for a new chair.  Delving into reading and writing took me away from my worries.  I want to tell my mum to believe me when I say I felt so much for her in her decline, which began seriously in October 2019 when she went into heart failure and had to be hospitalised.  I want to tell her all of this.

The History Cupboard, my novel, an auto memoir, is more important to me now, than ever.  It brings my young mum alive.  It brings her mum alive, and writing it has brought my memories alive.    

Capricornians are born between 22nd December and 19th January. So, this is their time in the zodiac.  If you were born between those dates, this is your time in the zodiac.  This is your time to show off the traits of a soul born into this sign of the zodiac.  Capricorn originating from the constellation of Capricornus, the horned goat.  Oh, how some would love to call me that. 

Facts about Capricornians:- Element – Earth – does this mean they’re grounded.

                                                  Polarity – Negative – are they?  

                                                  Quality – Cardinal – definitely. 

                                                  Ruling Planet – Saturn – Ok.

                                                  Ruling House – Tenth.

                                                  Spirit Colour – Dark Blue – my favourite.

                                                  Lucky Gem – Lapis lazuli.

                                                  Flower – pansy – love those colourful little darlings.

                                                  Top Love Match – Virgo – oh well.   

I remember once reading that Capricornians were pragmatic and cup half empty types.  Their polarity, as seen above, signifies negative, but some must be positive, or are they just positively negative?

My young grandsons, none of them Capricornian, are living in a time of the zodiac when it doesn’t matter what star sign you are, to have the words negative or positive resonating loudly.  Am I negative mummy, one asks of his mum the day after they’d all had PCR’s.  Yes, you’re negative.  Is D negative, he asks on behalf of his brother. Yes, D is negative.  The younger child, he’s six, runs through to his brother and shouts, D we’re negative.  He then returns to the doorway of his mother’s bedroom and says, I’m sorry you are positive mum.  Will you always be positive?

Now mum’s a Taurean.  The bull.  Are Taureans positive?  Will she always be positive.  Well, on the internet it says they are stubborn, definitely, warm, yep and indulgent in the material world.  I’m saying nothing.  Polarity – negative.  There you are then.  Of course, she will not always be positive with Covid, but that young mind, what will he go on to remember of this time.  Will he be left with an obsession to test things, to discover their conditions, whether negative or positive?  Look at all the words a young person of today is hearing – covid, isolate, cough, test, track and trace, sanitise, mask, negative or positive.

They say we’re coming out of it, but there are more people now than before, falling down with the dreaded lurgy, or being affected by it in one way or another.  No one wants it, no one wants to be told they’ve been in contact with someone who has it. Everyone wants to be negative, but sometimes they’re given the bad news that, they’re positive.  They won’t always be positive.  This positive will return to a negative before long, and they’ll be back on track, up and running, living their life. But in the meantime, it’s hard to remain positive when coming into contact with a positive.  Sadly, two positives don’t always make a negative.  

In a family of four, two adults and two children, one adult positive, what happens? The hope is that the others do not turn positive, one by one, turning the work situation untenable.  Be positive.  I really hope this all rides by us soon and we can stop worrying about this, that and the next thing.  We can arrange our lives without the blight of Covid filtering over us. 

I think now of my granny.  She was fifteen when the Spanish Flu broke out.  Two years it lasted.  She survived and turned out ok.  Our young will recover from this.  Is this positivity at best?  Me whose negative, positive hangs in the ether, the message still to come through.

The results of my daughter sticking a swab back to twizzle her tonsils and then up her nose for her Polymerase Chain Reaction test has proved positive.  I’d decided I’d go for a PCR test today if hers proved positive, as like her, my lateral flow test from yesterday was negative.  Confused.  No wonder.  Anyhow, I do have a cough, which has worsened a bit so I think it wisest to get tested.  My only burst of freedom today.    

That done, I’m lodged upstairs for a second day, hiding out, my potential bugs lurking around my nasal passages, swinging from my tonsils.  Is it in my head that my nose is itching, or am I allergic to cotton wool?  I’ve stuck so many cotton-wool topped sticks up my hooter of late, I’ve perhaps caused an intolerance to it.  My eyes are itchy and heavy.  Anyhow, I have drifted from what I was aiming to say and that is that I needed to find something to keep me alert.  The temptation when one is upstairs is to creep into bed and vegetate. 

I disappear up the attic, my library, and search for my copy of Lust for Life by Irving Stone.  Isn’t it strange how I should search for a book of this title when my life has turned so small, so limited?  But as you probably know, this book is about Vincent Van Gough.  I admire him as an artist.  I love his bold sweeping brushstrokes which people in his day frowned upon, and I love his bright colours, his apparent fondness for the colour blue, which is my favourite colour. 

I had the idea of looking out this book on the back of the Radio 4 articles highlighted by Kirsty, in my Writing With Nicky Class.  Five writers looked at art, to mark the 50^th anniversary of the 1972 series and book by John Berger – namely Ways of Seeing.  Their accounts on paintings that they admired, inspired me very much.  Let me look at Vincent Van Gogh, I said to my bookshelves.  They groaned under the weight of books, and I griped at the struggle to find it.    

But I did and back down the ladders I creak.  Not my legs, no, the metal Ramsey ladder.  It creaks.  Under it I swing, risking bad luck, or maybe just a cracked skull, and make for my desk, the room freezing.  I have the window open for airflow.  Don’t worry though I’m wearing my fleecy muffler and my fleece, with a throw around my feet.  If only I’d bought one of those big slippers you once could buy.  Just like a horse feeder, but lined with sheepskin instead of horse food and for your feet, not for your horse.   I was too cool back then.

Turning the pages, I see that Irving Stone writes so descriptively about Vincent.  He talks of his massive shoulders and chest, of having thick and powerful arms, broad cheeks, voluptuous mouth, a vigorous walker.  He doesn’t mention the red hair in the beginning but it is mentioned later in the book.  He speaks of people finding him eccentric however at age twenty-one he’s in love for the first time, with Ursula, and her presence in his life has changed his nature.  His head was turned as we’d say now.  Poor Vincent soon learned that this girl’s heart belonged to another and she was disdaining of him.  He didn’t give up and spent many months, watching her from the distance, went back to Holland, then back again to England, watching the house, waiting to catch her.  I think it’s called stalking in today speak.  Eventually he did catch her, coming out her house under a cloud of confetti.  That was it.  He went back home. 

One of Vincent’s uncles was called Vice Admiral Johannes Van Gogh, uncle Jan for short.  That makes me smile as I used to think my name – Jan – was a Dutch boys name.  I never liked my name.  The only thing that got me by was that the little Dutch boy by the name of Jan, was a hero.  He’d stopped a flood by putting his finger in the dyke.

I’ve never been to Holland.  I’ve never seen an original Vincent Van Gogh.  There are none of them in the Louvre, in Paris, where I have been.  I was fourteen.  More into the buskers playing My Sweet Lord and the painters by the Seine than Vincent in those days.  My tastes were simple.  Got my first taste of coffee there too.  One of my first impressions was the strong smell of coffee and French cigarettes.  No, not mine.  I didn’t smoke, then.  I valued my singing voice too much. 

Talking of singing, I need to practice my cornet.  Haven’t blown into it since last Friday, and if the competition goes ahead, it’s usually early March.  I pick it up from the floor where it sits, shining its brass bell at me, to remind me to practice.  I begin.  Oh, is that my tonsils I’ve just blown out. Back to Lust for Life.    

Nicky, our writing tutor said keep a Writer’s journal over the Christmas break and sent us three excerpts from writer’s journals – this an excerpt from mine – to help us along the way.  Virginia Woolf, Derek Jarman and Witold Gombrowicz.  In addition, alone, I’m studying the language of Shakespeare.  Think I’ve overloaded my mind.  If I’m not wakening through the night with potential entries for my journal I’m wakening up with other thoughts. 

For example, I awoke at three o’clock this morning, wondering how I could get my old battered mandolin and case into The Repair Shop for fixing.  I dictated silently in my sleep, well demi sleep, into an invisible Dictaphone all the where’s and why’s and who of this instrument’s life, in a bid to get it considered for repair.  It’s old, that’s for sure.  It was given to me years prior, after my dad died and upon my mum’s move to a smaller home.  It was stored up her attic and receiving no reprieve was then sent up mine.  It was such a highly strung manoeuvre. 

I never heard my father play the Mandolin, or even sing for that matter.  He whistled and he played the harmonica.  These simple skills besides, it was always implied that my dad was musical as were his side of the family.  His niece sang like an angel at a family wedding after all, intoning some authenticity to this tale.  I was inspired, took to singing folk songs and hymns from the hymn book, played chopsticks on my granny’s piano and eventually learned to blow my own trumpet.  This was all down to my dad.  

For years this four stringed (there should be eight), mellow-maker, has melodised my attic space, dramatising with the wedding china, transistor radio and the moth-eaten masterpiece.  My aim was always to have it restored but life didn’t allow for this luxury.  I had two young babes-in-arms to look after, I had an assignment with assurers, working on Nursing Officers and University staff pensions, using twelve by twelve calculators, A5 cards and cardboard sleeved folders, and I had my personal disorganisation with which to condescend.  Woe is me. 

TWELFTH NIGHT – SHAKESPEARE

ACT I.  SCENE I.

SCENE I.  DUKE ORSINO’S PALACE. 

Enter DUKE ORSINO, CURIO, and the other Lords; Musicians attending

DUKE ORSINO

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:

Sorry, I depress. 

So, whose was the mandolin?  I’d always thought it was my paternal grandfather’s, passed from him to my dad and then to me, but my mum, only very recently, gave me a little insight into the mandolin’s beginnings.  She thought it belonged to an aunt of my dad’s.  An aunt on his dad’s side.  She played in an orchestra, or something.  Did she live at Fairmilehead?  In a bungalow?  Memories were sketchy, as memories can be.  The human brain cannot retain everything photographically.  Most human brains anyhow. 

My sleepless, racing brain then went off on a tangent.  I needed to find out more about this mandolin before writing to Jay Blades, it whispered about ten times.  It’s funny how, when you’re meant to be sleeping but you’re not, you’re having a mind conversation, the dialogue lines in that conversation are repeated over and over.  As a result, the conversation takes ten times longer, sees you into daylight.  But how can one write a worthy story to Jay if one doesn’t have a handle on the story?  I needed to get it right. 

Today, I can tell you, I have two harmonicas, keyboard, a trumpet, a cornet, an electric guitar (my lad’s), two acoustic guitars, a child’s guitar, a ukulele, a chanter and tin whistle, a pair of maracas and a mandolin up in my attic. And yet they all gather dust.

Our granny must have been musical, my grandsons will perhaps say one day, when I’m gone and they have at least one of those instruments stored in their attic.  She could whistle a great tune. 

The dream, a home invaded.  It woke me up.  I must ask you at this point, have you ever felt like a tortoise?  I did, this morning on wakening, my head was tucked deep into my neck and a feeling of discomfort coming over me.  I stretched, rubbed my stiff shoulders, then remembered my dream.  I’d been attacked by a bee.  It stormed me then burrowed into my neck.  This dream was no doubt brought on by an occurrence last week, which has continued to torment my mind.  I omitted to note this in my writer’s journal at the time, but I now reflect on it.  It was a shock, rising, shuffling to the bathroom to happen on a bee sitting at the sink.  Honey I’m home, it honed in, buzz off I cried and ran.  Wasn’t sure if it was a wasp or a bee.  It was large                pregnant perhaps.  No couldn’t be.  The honey bee’s mating time is June to August, eggs laid not long after, possibly up to around two thousand a day. 

You may think it strange that, on awakening, I should start penning about tortoises and honey bees, but when you wake, your head retracted some way into your chin with the scent of beeswax around your person after having dreamt of an angry bee coming at you, all buzzes blazing, it has an almost supernatural feel to it and you need to jot it down.  Where had it come from?  The bee, I mean. Not the dream.  Bees don’t appear in December.  I came to wonder if it had been nesting in the eaves above, popping out at the feel of spring, the weather being almost sultry, spiralling in and down through the fan into the bathroom, looking for the first of the year’s nectar.

You’d have thought I was on the nectar when I made speed down the stairs, slipped, battered my hip off the last three steps before landing in an unsightly heap at the bottom, my arm clinging, too late as it turned out, to the banister.  That’s ok you may think, what’s she worried about, it was only three steps full, however, I was worried.   A youth challenged woman with osteoporosis has to worry about these things.  Her bones are brittle.  Now, if I had been a tortoise, I’d have been ok, a shell for a home, and no stairs.  Neither me or the bee had this level of protection.  Bumbling bee, not only lacking in shield but homeless also.      

I went a walk to scatter my cobwebs and to stop my limbs ceasing up.  Came across a small stone dwelling with a thorny pitched roof, doorless and two oblong windows, daylight shining through.  Being the curious person I am, I moved closer for a look.  There were signs of habitation.  An empty crisp bag, a mask, some fag ends too.  Was this the home of a hermit?  It was in a copse, close to the sight of what had been the Roslin Colliery and Brickworks.  It could have been a guardsman’s post, or an air raid shelter.  As I was ruminating a light wind blew a tentacle of thorny bush in my direction, catching my right ear, where a thorn pierced and took lodging.                

Who to help?  I’m isolated, but no from the corner of my eye, I see many lodgings.  New builds.  So many springing up.  Where do all the people come from?  And the deer?  Where do they go?  The deer are homeless, the fox and the squirrels all flung from homes in the surge of construction.  In affirmation of this, I spotted three deer on a grassy banking at the side of the City of Edinburgh Bypass.  Cool as you like, eating the grass, disregarding the hundreds of cars whizzing by.  I hope they stay safe. 

Some facts on bees:-               

Honey bees are descended from wasps.

Honey bees have hairy eyes.

Honey bees have five eyes.

The honey bee brain is sophisticated even though it’s the size of a grain of sugar.

Female bees can sting, but male bees cannot sting.

Bees have been trained as bomb detectors and can detect hidden landmines.   

The latter are the bee’s knees. 

Albert Einstein said ‘if the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years to live’ which is why I didn’t immediately pelt my insect dead.  If said insect was a bee and not a wasp then I’d be committing an act of terrorism against the eco system.  I know, I shouldn’t be killing wasps either, but I’m frightened of their ferocity, especially in a confined space.  Nowhere to run.  And I couldn’t just leave it there, eyeing up my bare bum? 

Leo Tolstoy said ‘Bee to the blossom, moth to the flame; each to his passion; what’s in a name.’ So, tortoise neck, what the heck, straighten that spine, and grasp the sublime.    

On this day, the 28^th December, 2021, I turn to my phone and click play.  I have music.  I’ve downloaded Facets of Glass, 1984, Gordon Langford.  PSB’s contest piece for the Scottish Championship in March.  We’re now in the third division and the heat is on.  I must listen, listen and listen to this piece and ingrain it into my head, so I can play with conviction.

I’ve taken the opportunity on this inclement day, (it’s peeing down) a day which holds no demands on my time, to work.  I’m in my office.  My office is merely the wee room where my grandchildren sleep when they come for sleepovers.  Not ideal, and not really an office as such, but it’s the smallest room and it makes sense.  The library is upstairs in the attic.  I’d love my office there, as I love attic spaces, but it’s too cold right now.  Why, I wonder, do I like attic spaces so much?  I’m not sure.  All I know is I’ve always been lured by an attic, whereas my sister refuses to go up an attic.  Ann Frank, who led me on my research of Jews, to learn their horrendous stories, spent time in an attic.  I remember watching the film, being disturbed by it and so talking about it with my dad, who I once thought was from Jewish stock.    

My Penicuik born dad.  He was a character.  And now my mother and he are together again after thirty-seven years.  He died in 1984.  I remember my mum asking, not that long ago, how would my dad recognise her when she joined him in the afterlife as she was an old lady and he’d still be a relatively young man?  I told her that all time would vanish with the passing into this other plain and not to worry, he would know her.  I’m not sure what she thought of that answer and I’m not even sure what does really happen once you die.  I believed in the afterlife once, but age and experience have confused my views.  I do hope they are together though.    

I can’t believe I was sixty-five last week.  I’m an old lady.  I’m not an old lady.  I’m getting on, turning old, stiffening up a bit, but I refuse to let my mind age.  I’m wakening up, after eight months of grieving my mum.  I have to let go of the guilt.  My mum knew I loved her and that I would miss her greatly, and I do.  This is not going to vanish in a mere eight months.  I love her, and my dad, and I thank them both for a wonderful childhood.  They kept us safe, taught us good manners, but showed us humour and love without being demonstrative.  I am now my mum of my family.  I am the matriarch.  I must pick up.

I click play.  Doo do do doo.        

Would you like a cup of tea

a smile a nod, a movement from me

takes me through to the tea jenny jar

where the kettle, the teapot and teabags are

Chamomile tea will do for me

a soothing scented cup of calm

to take me back, to the me I should be

not this bilious, jumpy Jimjan

Would you like a cup of tea

I’ve a scrumptious cake from Sainsbury

or a special treat, a Cadbury sweet

please dig in and find your favourite

I would like to sit quiet with you

watch a programme, perhaps that one

home in the country, with lovely views

or we could sit outside, enjoy the sun

Would you like a cup of tea

or coffee, or chocolate, or how about all three

don’t look like that, it’s just a bit of fun

where’s your sense of humour my honey bun

I would like to laugh, to feel good

but life has turned, I’m sad and I’m down

humour has left me I’m not in the mood

leave me in my pit, with my able frown

Would you like a cup of tea

Or how about coffee she says to me

there’s cake and there’s biscuits too many by far

we can sip and chat, just as we are

I would like to go back to the day

to before you left us, taken gently

I’d laugh and joke, have so much to say

how I miss that cup of tea.   

Here’s a piece of Flash Fiction – I wrote it on the 16^th August – the anniversary of the death of Elvis.   

Eric drives with purpose.  He’s driving an emerald green Ford Cortina with sticky black plastic seats, four balding tyres and a radio which is on, music blaring.  It’s Eric’s first car, bought from hard earned money working in the Post Office, in the accounts department.  By day he works at balancing books and by night uses this learned craft to build savings. 

It’s a balmy August day and he’s heading for a far-off forest, tent, fishing rod, axe and airbed in the boot.  Eric is used to camping, doing so in childhood with his dad, an old scout leader.  This man knew his poles and pins, and also his guy ropes, passing on knowledge to Eric, who came to love this life.  He loved the fresh sharp aroma of the pine trees, the dry pine needle carpet and the pine cones.  He made statues with the latter, piling them up with acorns and twigs.  Eric’s dad used to say he was artistic.  Eric would agree before wielding his catapult and shooting down his nutty creation.

Not everyone had liked his artistic prowess.  When he was six, he’d made a collage in class.  It had caused quite a fuss.  The adults insisted on speaking endlessly to him about it, asking what were his thoughts about this and about that?  They meant the mad axe-man, of course, running through the cut-out trees from his dad’s Scot’s Magazine, following another man, chopping the air with a large wood-cutter. 

Eric knew every single tree and shrub, knew their specifications, the height they grew to, the best position for them.  If he’d lived in the noughties, which I’m sure he went on to do, but I’ve still to form that story, I’ve no doubt he would have been a tree hugger.  But that’s not a bad thing.  A tree is a life, albeit you cannot take it out on a date. 

Suddenly, the car shudders to halt in the layby.  Eric rolls down his window, flings out a hasty look before picking up his map.  He thought he knew where he was going, had studied the map before setting off, but now frowns.  Bloody radio interference.  That’s what put him off.  The crackling, the buzzing ground into his bones, right in the middle of Cat Stevens.  Eric is passionate about music, taught himself guitar aged thirteen and now, some seven years later, he’s an accomplished player.  Listening and playing music helps get rid of the pent-up emotions, as well as the mean words of a guy at work.  ‘What girl’s gonna take you on, sad boy,’ he’d said many a time.        

‘So, where did I go wrong?’ Eric asks himself as he scans the map.  Ah, he’d veered right instead of left.  Suddenly the radio restores itself, yowling around Hound Dog.  Eric sighs as he gets out to stretch his legs, smoothing down his flared trousers which had a chic check to them.  They were part of a suit, the jacket wiggling in the back of the car.  A trilby too, in the back seat.  It was forest green, to match the green check on his trousers, a band of gold around it, the gold accentuating his amber eyes, a black leather briefcase peeping out from underneath.      

            There’s another car in the layby and Eric sees a girl in the driver seat.  Her head is down, touching the steering wheel, her red hair strewn across it.  Eric falters, makes to walk towards it, falls back, makes to walk towards it, falls back.  In the end, he walks towards the car and knocks on the window.  ‘All, ok?’ he asks the red-haired girl to which she picks up her head and turns towards him, her pale face saddened.  ‘I can’t believe it,’ she gushes through her pearly teeth and Eric steps back and raises his eyebrows.  ‘What?’ he asks, looking down at his gear.  ‘The King is dead,’ she says in a whisper.  ‘He can’t be.’  Eric’s eyes waver.  ‘I heard it on the radio,’ she shoots back.  ‘Elvis is dead.’ 

Eric stands, frozen, not knowing what to say and watches as the girl gets out her car.  She’s tall and slim, has on a buff-coloured jump suit, showing off a tiny waist.  ‘Such a loss,’ she says, shaking her head, and blinking.  At those words Eric shakes his left leg, wiggles and jumps about, holding an air guitar, and he begins singing, something about being a teddy bear.  His lips curl.  ‘You can sing,’ says the girl.  ‘I saw Elvis in Memphis,’ Eric tells her, leaving out that he’d caused a stir, disappearing to America aged seventeen, no one knowing where he’d gone.  The police were involved, he’d taken money from his father’s money stash under the bed, psychiatrists attended, and social workers, none of whom understood his compulsion to see Graceland.        

‘You could become an Elvis impersonator,’ she says moving closer to him, handing him a crushed-up newspaper.  ‘Chip?’ she asks.  ‘Thanks.’  ‘Got them in the chippy back there.’  She points south.  They sit on the verge and Eric speaks about bands, soloists, guitar chords, piano chords, minor and major scales.  He lies back and croons a soft melody, the girl looking on.  ‘Do another Elvis impersonation,’ she says.  He sits, looks at her, eyebrows raised, and she nods, arms waving him up.    ‘Ok.’  He stands, shakes his legs out, and then his skin pales.  He’s looking over the girl’s head into the distance where he sees four black cars trawling towards them.  A crow cackles from the trees beyond the verge.  The four cars swerve into the layby, tyres crackling on the grit, four black clad men stepping out, a stone rolling.  They walk towards Eric and the girl and she watches as he holds his hands out, palms up.  She looks on with lips full of questions.  Sometimes the answer can be a question, like…’Will you be coming quietly?’    

Cop 26 is in its second week.  In Glasgow the theories are spreading, warnings rife, folk have chained themselves to things, and still, life goes on.  Roads are blocked, merry hell is risen, for a desperate need, they say.  We need to act now.  The police click their heels, roll on their toes, stay aware, watching, looking out for more than peaceful rebellion.  Greta Thunberg marches with her blah, blah, blah refrain, which I understand but don’t like.  Call me a dinosaur if you must, extinct as they are, and you’d be right.  I am on the wrong end of young.  I’m not ancient, just not young. 

I’m not as old as my mum lived to be.  She reached ninety.  A few weeks after her ninetieth birthday, she passed on.  I’m on my way to her house now, to put out her sofa and chairs to be taken away.  The house must be emptied.  The sadness of her passing and then the selling of her house and the emptying of same house have been horrible, gathered possessions, so rudely tipped.  I cry quietly, into myself, each time something else goes. 

I’ve risen early, in part to go round to my mum’s house to put out her furniture, on the drive, for everyone to see, to learn of the waste, the tragedy that is ours, my mum in heaven tut-tutting, saying, ‘my good chairs,’ as they’re carried away to their fate.  The other part a physio appointment.  A sensitive arm needs attention.    

There’s a thin layer of frost on the car windscreen that I scrape, before I can set off.  I stop the car at a bend in the road, to allow a lorry through.  What?  Is that a coal lorry?  I look in disbelief at the sacks, clearly sacks of coal.  You aren’t the daughter of a man employed by the National Coal Board, and not able to spot a sack of coal.  Here we are in the throes of Cop26 in Glasgow, and in Penicuik we have a coal lorry careering around town.  If Greta were here, she’d have something to say.  Blah, blah, blah.  There’s no time to hijack the lorry, I have a sofa to expel to the drive, so I drive on, shaking my head in confusion. 

Job done, I’m now at the physio. 

‘It’s nothing to do with my bones or my muscles or my tendons,’ I tell the professional.  ‘But then I’m not an expert.’ 

She smiles politely, asks me various questions, the word anxious spilling three times from my lips.

‘What’s making you anxious?’ she asks.

‘Me?  I’m not anxious,’ I say and swallow the awful memories continuing to track and trace themselves upon me.    

‘What would you like from this session?’ she asks.

‘To be told it’s not my heart giving up.’

‘Your symptoms aren’t in line with heart problems.  If it was your heart it wouldn’t fade after a few minutes.’

‘You’re saying I’d know all about it, if it was a heart problem?’

‘Yes.’

We go through some routines, after I’ve told her about my routines at home – sitting on the sofa lap top on my knee, feet up, shoulders slouched, neck in the same position for hours at a time, in other words, ergonomics out the window – and then she asks me to move my head left, right, backwards, ouch, forwards. 

‘There we go,’ she says.  ‘That’s the vertebrae squashing together and not liking it.’

‘SO, I’m really not having a heart attack,’ I say.

‘Considering you’ve had your heart checked three times, and each time, a perfect heart sounding, so no.  Here’s some exercises, and an appointment to discuss your anxiety,’ she says and hands me a leaflet.   

I leave her room, with thanks and tell her she’s been a great help.  Am I relieved?  Am I scared, embarrassed, feeling silly?  Probably all of the above.  I need to sort myself out.  I can’t go on being a jittering, jumpy jackdaw for the rest of my life.  But then my life may be cut short anyhow.  No, not of a heart attack.  I’ve got an appointment this afternoon for an MRI scan to check for underlying causes for my poor hearing and tinnitus.  It’s a matter of course.  I’m not anxious about it at all.      

***

The hospital greets me with vivid memories.  I had my mum here, on various occasions.  My eyes well up again, for the umpteenth time today.  I can’t bear people being nice to me, and these medical people are really nice.  I know this from my visits with my mum.  I’m told to wait in the waiting room where I listen to a load of weird noises, my head throbbing, neck muscles bunching.  It’s like a bloody space ship.  I mean so many bright lights, clean minimalism, white walls, and of course these strange noises.  Half an hour passes in this way and then it’s my turn. 

I’m taken to a room where there’s a massive tube.  I lie down on the platform as instructed, am given headphones to listen to some nice music, to spare me the noise, and a large hard plastic cover with a hole in the centre is placed over my head.  I’m then eased into the tube.  Let the magnets begin.  That’s how it works, not Xray.  Don’t wear anything with metal, I’m told so I’m in slouchy elasticated gear, my boobs hanging free under my cotton jumper.  But these earphones must contain metal.  No?

I shut my eyes, and try to relax into it, but I open my eyes and the ceiling of the tube is right there, like it’s touching my nose.  It makes me feel funny so I shut my eyes again.  There are days when I struggle to keep my eyes open, but today, in this tube, my eyes are struggling to stay shut, when I especially want them to stay shut.  There’s a buzzer in my hands for emergency exit, but I’ll be damned if I’ll press it.  Relax.  I employ every ounce of willpower.  Don’t howl.  Don’t press, press, press the buzzer.  I lie still, leaning into the knocking, the buzzing, the roaring within.  Tears slip from my eyes and run down towards my ears.  I don’t even know why.  I’m not even anxious.      

‘That’s it,’ I hear say and feel myself moving back into the room.  ‘Are you ok?’

‘Yes,’ I say, wiping a stray tear from my eye as I’m pointed in the direction of the exit, beeps and grinding breaking back into the distance.   

I walk from the institution that holds my records, my number, my bill of health, the lights dazzling me, but I’m soon nearly home, passed all the new houses built on land that was once green, bedroom lights, kitchen lights, twinkling in my path.  Life goes on around me.  A news report tells of the peaceful ructions of the COP26 Extinction Rebels, cars rush past, children play.  Penicuik, here I am.  Has the coalman topped up the all the furnaces without been driven off the road?  Would an electric coal lorry help?  The air is nippy and I hurry indoors.  That’s it.  My day this 10^th day of November, 2021.    

I Want

I want to wake up in the morning and

I want to write

I want a good appetite

I want to feel good, not bitter

I want to wander country paths

I want to look upon the silvery pink of the birch tree, to see the lines on the trunk, an elephant trunk, but no elephant in sight, the knobbles, the dents, the artistry are all the wonders I want to look upon

I want all the sheep in the field to walk without limping, and am saddened to count three who do, no four, is that five

I want to walk without fear

I want to sit on the bench, a memorial to someone passed to the other side, someone who I can only think loved this patch of ground where she could look over the valley town, to the grand green hills

I want to sleep

I want the guilt to dissolve

I want the bile to dissolve

I want anger, hatred, ignorance, arrogance, all to dissolve

I want the traffic to slow

I want to work off the sadness that lays itself upon my pillows at night

I want to rid myself of the cloud which hangs over me

I want to be heard

I want not to speak

I want to cry

I want to free the tears, as I want to heal

I want my mum back

I want to sleep

I want to look at her face in the photographs and talk of her, and remember her, without the pain that for now persists

I want not to wear the horse hair coat, not be haunted with my last sight of her, in peace, blue lips, head resting on hands, before stealing her serenity

I want to die

I don’t want to die but they say there’s peace in death

I want these last two lines to be forgotten

I want to wake every morning

I want to walk in the meadows

I want to fly in the blue, swoop with the swallows, air in my feathers, stroking the dew

I want to see the birch, the rowan, apple trees, blackberry’s, rosehip, the sheep, springing magpies, and the ground that surrounds me

I want to read

I want to play music like an angel

I want to breathe

I want to sleep

I want to be able to paint a picture so beautiful that your eyes would melt

I want to see colour

I want to hear music

I want to sing, to dance, to sway, sweep, swivel

I want to obey

I want to rebel, rebel, rebel against people who drill in their rights and wrongs when some people’s wrongs might be right

I want the stability, I yearn for the stability, the chiselled chin of permanence

I want to feel the strength, the kind hand of the land beneath me

I want that hand to touch me from sleep, to show me that lives live on, in the memory of those who loved them