On a Clear Day I Can See Wales

In one of those strange twists of fate that crop up when you least expect it (or when I least I expect it), I’ve won a life coaching course in a raffle. The news came perfectly timed: on the same day I officially made it known to my current boss that I was thinking of going freelance. My boss, being lovely but a little less than always forward thinking, looked a little terrified. “Who,” I saw her wonder, “would take care of the routine day to day shores that you currently handle: answering press calls, talking to students, keeping tabs on our place in the media?” It was an unasked question which I could have only answered with a shrug and something along the lines of “I don’t really care, that’s why I’m going freelance.”

I was reeling from my brave, if faltering, steps towards working independence, when I received the message on my mobile phone from “Bob” – a practitioner in “Positive Change Coaching”. I’d entered the raffle at a launch event I’d helped arrange a few weeks back and did so to show a bit of support to the project with no particular desire to win a “Life Coaching Pack”. I didn’t really know what it would mean if I did win anyway. I imagined that people like Madonna might have Life Coaches. Hers, perhaps, dispensing pearls of wisdom on new yoga techniques and how to get your name in the papers by a sickening media stunt dressed up as a random act of philanthropy, for example.

My Life Coach seemed to be a sort of “change facilitator” – life coaches and their ilk use words like “facilitate” you see – who is there to “support me to make the changes I want to make in my life or to support me through changes which are being forced upon me.” Or something like that. If this Life Coach was worth his salt, I thought, I’d be able to outline my plans for the future and with the wave of his magic Life Coach wand I’d be a freelancer with a promising book career ahead of me in no time. Gone would be my propensity for petty distractions, my money worries and my fear of upsetting people, indeed, all the things which get in the way of me actually doing something to make my future plans a reality.

Then Bob suggested we meet in Starbucks (no swanky office in a converted warehouse in the city centre?) and he sent me a questionnaire that looked suspiciously like it had been copied from a self help book… and so I began to have my doubts.

Bob, it turns out, is an amiable enough bloke in his fifties, who was laid off from the Mental Health Service some time ago and decided to take on this path as part of his early retirement plan. He was sitting, looking rather nervous, just inside the door of the coffee shop waiting for me this morning, with a little sign stood up on the table in front of him with his name and the words “Life Coach” on. I wonder if anyone else had come up to him while he was there, thinking perhaps he was running a drop in service, laid on by the good people of Starbucks, for them to access while they waited for their latte?

We settled with our cappuccinos in some cosy seats downstairs and Bob started to outline his qualifications, family history, love of football and favourite bands. He was so keen on talking about himself that I began to wonder if this whole thing had been, in fact, a measly excuse for a date with me. Bob didn’t stop talking for nigh on twenty minutes, a trick, I assumed, to lure me into his confidence, so that I would feel happy to talk about myself. Little did Bob know, I never have any trouble in that department and by the time he’d finished I was chomping at the bit to tell him about my mother’s post-natal depression, my painful teenage years and the range of fantastically beautiful hang ups I now carry around with me as a result of all that. None of this news seemed to impress Bob very much however. Indeed, where as I had been forcible moved from the country town of Malvern to stinky old Berkshire as a fourteen year old (there by ensuring my teenage years were as grim as possible), Bob was able to trump me by revealing that he’d been moved to Australia when he was 13 and had suffered years of persecution as the class “pomme” as a result. He even started to tell me about his anger management issues, but luckily stopped himself after sometime and said (to himself as much as me) “But we’re here for you today not me”, something I was not far off reminding him myself.

The result of my raffle prize then? A free notebook, diary and plastic wallet, 6 more sessions with Bob and a subject for my blog for the next month and a half. By the time we’d got through Bob’s life (and part way through mine) the hour was almost up. Bob threw some grains of advice my way about my plans to go freelance, such as “network with potential clients”, “get some marketing material for yourself”, “do a mind map” and “read a self help book” before telling me that he was going to email me an action plan which I was to fill out. It was to cover the next four weeks and lay out my strategy to change my life before Christmas. “Aren’t you supposed to do that?” I though as he shook my hand and vanished into the crowds in St Anne’s Square.

I’m a big one for change. When I sense change approaching, the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and the souls of my feet tingle. Why this is, I don’t really know. Perhaps it’s some inherited genetic disposition towards it, I’ve always suspected something of the travelling type in mum’s side of the family and it would nice to thing it was the call of the open road and the next new horizon that kept me moving. But in truth, it’s likely to be something more personally psychological than that: fear of settling down, fear of establishing roots in case they are ripped carelessly from the ground. When I was 14, we moved from the town I had been born in (beautiful spa town of Malvern, stunning landscape, friends I had grown up with from primary school and went south to a housing estate near Newbury in Berkshire (house up house and no where to roam, flat horizon, rougher kids who didn’t know me and who I didn’t want to know). Since that move nothing was ever quite the same again, it’s been as if the momentum cause by the initial jolt out of Malvern has kept me flying through life ever since – from Newbury to the South Coast, up to Bolton, across to Switzerland, back to Manchester, up to Todmorden and then…

I’ve been in this flat for 2 and a half years and in the same job for more than 3 years now: the most settled I have ever been in all my life. And now I’m about to change it all again.

I’ve been making plans at work to jack in the 9 to 5 routine and go freelance: more flexibility in my life, more opportunity to explore ways of working that suit me, a lot less security. And it’s entered my head that, once I’ve done this, it will be time to leave the sanctity of my writer’s garret and return to the big city to live, for fear that otherwise I may become a hermit, living and working at home with nothing to look at but the ever changing colours of the moor land heather from my window and no one to talk to but Jo, the owner of the café next door, whose locally famously line “oh I’ve been sweating cobs in that kitchen” is never a good starting point for a conversation.

This all started a few months ago, when there was a real chance that I would be made redundant in my current job. This news, delivered to me by a colleague who is one of those people who knows everything that’s going on behind the scenes, didn’t scare me one bit. It sent a rush of energy through me, I was ecstatic and wanted it to happen immediately. If the momentum for change had slowed in the last few years, this news gave it a good boot and I was off again, thinking about a new future, a different way of things being.

But sometimes I stop and I wonder. Yeah sometimes work’s hectic, sometimes maddening, but generally it’s an “ok job”. And I love this flat and this sanctuary from the chaotic outside world I’ve built here, even if the windows do ice up inside during the winter and the locals are barmy. And I ask myself, am I just changing things for the sake of it, or I am moving on in life, bravely accepting that change must come in order for their to be growth? When, in short, should I be happy with what I’ve got, and when is it time to mix things up a bit (or a lot)? Answers on a postcard please.

I suppose it’s intuitive. Or it’s about reasons rather than acts. Some people spend their lives “tweaking” – jumping from lover to lover in order to find “the one”, scaling the career ladder, playing the property market game, improving their TV, their looks, their car. It’s as if they are seeking some kind of Niavara of Western consumerist life – the perfect partner, job, house, car, TV, wardrobe. Bliss. And of course, they never reach this place, and go on tweaking forever until they’re all tweaked out and either die of a heart attack, have a breakdown or just give up and settle for whatever they ended up with and take up Buddhism in order to “find contentment” in their lives. For me, it’s never been about having it better, but rather, having it new, different, another challenge, another opportunity – even if that means starting from square one again – where ever that is.

I’m not saying this is the prescription for a happy life – as I said – this urge to tear it up and start again is probably born out of my neurosis rather than my intellect and good sense – but I guess it works for me. Or has done in the past.

And what’s the alternative? To stay here, to continue in my “ok job”, to find the odd scrap of time to write, to dream of other lives, to look at photos of the past, my youth, when I was free, to go on holiday once or twice a year, to get that new TV, have a mortgage, sort out my pension, save for retirement, learn to sit still. It’s tempting, it really is.

But instead I make plans for next year, write a proposal for work, start casting my eye over the accommodation ads in the Manchester Evening News. And I feel that fear and that excitement (they way those two intertwine) and the hairs tingle on the back of my neck and yes, there’s change afoot. Something’s about to happen.

I kind of knew it was coming. Scrawled in a journal somewhere back at the end of July or early August are these words "The next few weeks are going to be mental, in one way I can't wait for them to be over, which is sad really." And they were mental, and I am sort of glad they are over but also kind of sad. I've been all the way to South Africa and back and my feet are just now touching the ground.

I went to Cape Town for the 4th Homeless World Cup - 48 countries from around the world come together to play a week's a worth of "street soccer" in an attempt to raise awareness about homelessness and help move the players who take part on to better lives - or something like that.

I worked for the England team - a pleasant bunch of lads plucked from hostels and supported housing schemes from across the country. With that, and all the the other things that have been going down at work these last few weeks, I've found the days slip away into weeks and suddenly here I am, the skies darkening before 5pm, layered in thick cloud.

I had mixed feelings before going to Cape Town. South Africa has never been top of my list of places to visit - and I really didn't know what to expect there. I kept bumping into people who had connections to it, a woman on the train who used to live there, someone who went on holiday there last year. Some people went "You'll love it, it's amazing." Others went "It's mad, there are dead people lying in the street. Don't go out after dark." Actually, thanks to its colonial past, it was very British I thought. You go half way around the world and find a sea front not dis-similar to Margate bar the palm trees and streets packed with bars which could be in Manchester or Newcastle. The more I travel, the more things look the same. A cable car up to table mountain like the gondolas up to the alps in Switzerland. A bland cafe on top of the mountain serving chips and beer.

But the people... I can honestly say I've never met people like Capetonians before. Are they perhaps the friendliest people on earth? Laid back, helpful, genuine. If the city left me a bit unmoved, I fell in love with people. Especially the people I met who worked with the street kids over there (of which there are a lot!) People who were motivated to change what they saw as a gross injustice running barefoot in the streets around them. Cape Town is one of those places where the world's rich and poor slam up against one another. People lie barefoot, face down in the street (alive or dead - who can say - I passed two like this and didn't stop to check), but there they are in front of million pound apartment buildings.

Anyway, this is all a bit of random blog, mainly to return to the keyboard and just say something really. The weeks have fallen away, it's autumn, I've been to South Africa, seen Desmond Tutu dance on the soccer pitch waving his hands in the air and learnt the word "Lekker" which is South African street for "cool". Life ey?

Don’t you hate that? I was busy tapping away onto my blog, pressed some key – I’m not sure what - and the fucker went back to the previous screen and lost everything. Twat fuck hoar bum wee.

Now... what was I saying?

Oh yeah this is one of those random blogs… blah blah blah… didn’t write about big brother because as soon as Pete did a forward roll down those steps I lost interest – another 40 hours plus of my life down the pan… blah blah… anyway, I was at my nan’s last weekend and have been busy at work, hence a lapse last week…

Right… My nan (or grandmother for those of you south of Dudley) lives in what used to be a mining village just outside Chesterfield, but what is now a sprawling housing estate clustered at the side of the M1. She lives in a bungalow with her deaf son who’s as mad as a custard cream and she’s 88 – still on her feet – just. My uncle is so bonkers and beset by illnesses himself, it’s often difficult to tell who is supposed to be taking care or who.

My nan, like so many other nans across this country, has had one of those lives that will soon be consigned to the pages of a social history book. People will read about women like her and marvel at how they ever managed – she married a man with one leg – actually she married her first cousin who had one leg – and a drink problem – and they rose out all the family horror and criticism to bring into the world four almost perfectly normal apparently gene-clean children. I’m not quite sure why she did this (marry her one legged drunk cousin), but she had just recently been caught in the blitz at Coventry, where her father had been killed and she had ended up in a full body cast for 6 months, so that might have had something to so with it.

Despite the quality of her life (drunk out of her house when her children were still young, she’d had to send my uncles and aunt to a children’s home to be cared for – my mother was 16 at this time and left home pretty much for good then anyway) my nan laughs a lot and manages to maintain a determinedly positive face in spite of it all. Even after 88 years of battling she’s still going strong, though it was difficult seeing her last weekend, frailer than when she I knew as a child, obviously, tormented by pains in her legs and back, susceptible of infections on her chest.

Being my mother’s mother, we obviously have different last names, nan and me, but I’m definitely one of her breed. I’d like to think it’s from her that I’ve inherited my ability to turn every negative into some kind of positive, even if it’s just a random splurge of words on here to moan about the ills in the world. At a meeting at work the other day we were talking about our teenage years and some were saying how they’d been across Europe inter-railing. I said, “I’d like to do that one day.” And someone piped up, “You’re too old now.” “Of course I’m not too old,” I replied. “You can go inter-railing anytime, it just costs more when you’re older.” “That’s such a you thing to say,” someone else said. “Very you indeed.” And I suppose it is, refusing to be defeated by mere trifling matters as age and expense. I’d like to think that in most things I see possibility rather than problems. This weekend anyway.
And what a weekend… I started this on Saturday morning, and now it’s Monday evening. It’s been raining on and off all weekend, and SD and I have been lurking round the flat for most of it, only venturing out to the shops independently and, last night, popping downstairs for a few beers with friends. Bank holiday weekends are funny things, and the August one seems especially odd. All sorts of things are going on, or have been: “Manchester Pride”, as it’s now called, Leeds Music Festival, Todmorden Lion’s Summer fete…

But what with the madness at work, and the insanity of the coming month (off to South Africa in 4 weeks time!) it seemed the right thing to do to shun parties and festivities and stay here in the flat, drinking and chatting and lounging on the sofa watching old episodes of Absolutely Fabulous. And now I trip back and forth between my visit to my nan last weekend, and the events of Friday when I announced to the big boss that I wanted to go freelance next year and she said what a great idea it was, and the coming autumn months following a summer that blazed so hot and bright for a few weeks and then got washed quickly away in that flood water, that Sunday when we’d just been for a picnic up near Hebden.

There’s not been enough headspace these last weeks to string these thoughts and events together. I am being carried forward, out of the summer, into darker evenings and cooler nights. Into the hill again, onwards on the path up and up into as yet unseen places.

I met someone last weekend who doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, doesn’t have a TV but who was - surprisingly, despite all that - interesting. He avoided distractions as much as possible, he said. Distractions like Big Brother and hangovers. It kind of added an extra dimension to my ramblings about Bad Things the other week, since what I suppose I was talking about there, when I said "things that are bad for us" was actually, "things that stop us from doing what we could be doing instead" - like writing that best selling novel, finding a sustainable solution to the Middle East Problem, or plotting the downfall of the current US Administration (which might, indeed, be one of things that would help solve the Middle East Problem).

Two big distractions that should come with public health warnings: Big Brother and Gaydar - which are weirdly connected in some way, both consisting mainly of freaks who are far more interesting (though, rarely that interesting) on the screen than in real life. Big Brother I’ll come to next week, so let’s turn our attention, with lowered eyes, to the bizarre world of Gaydar.

For the uninitiated, Gaydar is a “gay dating” website – well – an on-line cruising site from homos across the world. It’s one big dark warehouse of a place, where the off spotlight flashes across a penis here, a geek there, all lurking around in the depths of cyberspace, scrabbling around in infinity, hoping for a bit or bite – or two bites. Some say they are looking for friends, some say they want only friendship, the truth is of course, 99 per-cent of those who stray into Gaydar’s dark room are really mainly after one thing – it has the tag line “what you want, when you want it” and that doesn’t mean a conveniently timed trip to Asda.

The best thing, the most entertaining thing, about Gaydar, are the different tribes of people you gat floating around in there, all pinging off one another in search of tonight’s fix or fantasy. Let’s look…

Ah yes… First off, we’ve got your Hardcore Gaydar-er. See the stark, rather vomit inducing photo of their cock and arse crack? Not much said about them, a few words about what they like maybe, “fit blokes, not fats or femmes.” Bless ‘em. At least they’re honest, which is more than can be said for most of the others on there. Don’t be confused by those with a profile similar, initially, in appearance to these ones. The cock and arse photos are there, but scroll down and see what they write about themselves: “Not looking for one night stands.” Right. Yeah. Little hint, if you’re after something deeper than a quick shag, you might want to put a photo of something other than your genitals on show for all the world to see, like your face, or your auntie Ida.

In fact, don’t put your Auntie Ida on, as this will place you in an entirely other weird group of people who lurk on Gaydar. Those who seem to think it’s a opportunity to show how popular and “well-familied” they are. Why would you ever dream of putting a photo of “me and my sister at Butlins last year having a right laugh”? Does your sister know there’s a photo of her lurking in cyberspace, next to a photo of you half naked trying desperately to stare dreamily into a camera, and above a list of things you like doing in the bedroom which include fisting and brown (if you don’t know – trust me – you don’t want to).

Who else have we got out there tonight? Oh yeah. Bless ‘em. “Looking for Mr Right.” Ah. Dear Mancboi… Read my lips. He doesn’t exist.

Mr Right Guy is a close relative of the DVD and a bottle of wine guy, owner of the classic profile which has a few photos of him in soft lightening and that immortal line, “I like wild nights out, but also enjoy staying in and cuddling up with a DVD and a bottle of wine.” Why? Couldn’t you find anything else to cuddle? Oh, I see not.

Then... oh then… (and this is a great one to get SD onto if you want a laugh)… there’s the “I’m actually too good to be on here amongst you sex loving scum.” “Gaydar is awful!” they proclaim. “Everyone is just after sex.” Yes. That’s right, That’s why you’re here too, twatt face, so stop pretending you only came in here because the server on Out is down (the thinking (read dull and hypocritical) man’s gay website.)

There are the TVs of course. Sallyanne, who has decided that looking like a hoar in an Amsterdam retirement home is the best way of attracting men. And there are the disco bunnies, who really should be doing their homework. And the no hopers whoa re just… well… hopeless. I mean, why put a photo of yourself on there if it only scares people? And the one’s with scary eyes who are obviously physco’s in waiting. And those who like to list every single facet about themselves and the people they are interested, and then list all the things they don’t like as well in case you can actually be arsed to read what they’ve written. And of course here are the odd, charming, hilarious and cynical fucks like.. well me…. on there. Cough cough.

But yet, annoyingly, it’s fucking addictive. You can spend hours on there, clicking through profiles, marvelling hat in back bedrooms and badly decorated lounges across the world, middle aged men are still referring to themselves as “lads” or worse – “boi”. Since when… Oh I can’t even be bothered.

Now… who’s this… Ummm… “Deepsuck” who describes himself as “Just a normal guy”. Oh dear. Now where's that book on Astrophysics I've been meaning to read...

A mellow Todmorden Sunday Afternoon goes something like this: Kate Bush on the CD Player, SD sketching at the table, sunlight dipping in and out of clouds, falling through the window, on the window sill, where, every so often, SD goes to smoking a cigarette and stare grey eyed at Bridestone Moore over the top of the Town Hall, and to look into the street below at passers by, stopping to browse at the wool shop window.

But two years later - two years, a night in hospital, two and a half boyfriends (that September thing doesn't really count) and various adventures in foreign places later -  and I'm still not bored. I still look forward to Tod Sunday Afternoons, the breeze through the open windows, birds flitting about the roof, the sun sinking behind the ridge. Have I found home? Is this it?

...or what I did last weekend.

And Sunday Tea... Limp lettuce, boiled potatoes (left over from dinner), sliced ham, corned beef (was there ever a more sickening invention in the history of food? I know - let's take all the shit from the abattoir floor and squeeze it together and sell it to poor people in a square can with a weird key thing that always snaps when you try to use it), pickled beetroot in a jar ("made your dinner look like a road accident," said SD), a block of Cheddar, tinned tuna, salad tomatoes... and in our house (but apparently no one else's anywhere ever) cold beans out of the can.
 
I'm not sure if this was just a Malvern thing or a family habit or what. But we did. We had cold beans out of can. Everyone I've ever spoken to about this, says that that was weird. And then of course there was "afters": in our house, maybe a trifle, that collapsed as soon as it was spooned out into the bowl into a semi-liquid clown-coloured sludge.  

SD's spread for Katie was only inspired by this of course - not for us cold beans and tuna fish, it was home made quiche and an Italian mixed salad. But the idea was the same. And, since we had a guest, we had a choice of sweet too. What a host!

We should have gone to Liverpool.

Why do we do things which we know are bad for us?

Why smoke, drink, eat sugar-filled food, lie in the sun, watch Big Brother, waste time (i.e. watch Big Brother), spend money we don't have, blah blah blah...?

This, the thought I had Thursday night smoking a bit of stuff, - supplied to me by a mate at work who obviously thought I wasn't chilled out enough (and who can blame me with the current redundancy / IT issues / general nonsense and now threat of an office move out of the city centre to fucking Hulme thank you very much!) I turned over the tobacco, flicked a thought back to Canada where the earnest Canadians smoked pure grass joints that knocked you out with one toke because "like, tobacco is just so bad for you..." yeah and I supposed weed is just like a fucking trip to Lourdes.

Anyway, emblazoned on the back of the tobacco pouch: Smoking may cause a slow and painful death. I wonder if anyone has ever ever ever been about to have a fag when they've seen that warning and thought "oh well bugger me I didn't know that, better stop then."

The thing is, if I didn't have the occasional smoke, there would still be a million other things that I do and don't do that could cause a slow and painful death, so picking on just one thing doesn't seem fair really.

But why do we do it? I mused sitting in the window. More of us than not I mean. People who are vice free, live the healthiest lifestyles, do everything they should and nothing they're not supposed to must surely be in the minority (and have very few friends). It's particular to the human animal, I would imagine, this doing stuff that's bad for us. I mean you don't see Dolphins hanging around the marina with fags in their mouths talking about how they got wasted the night before (though admittedly, the cigs would get a bit damp).

But humans seem to regard pleasure as a goal above all else, pain, poverty, ambition... Offer the average person an all expenses night on the town every week with the sex, drink and drugs of thier choice or a lifetime of hard work, rewarding career and healthy body and mind and I'm sure most people would opt for the former - they would in Todmorden anyway.

Perhaps, I mused on Thursday night, we do these things in order to throw into relief the sensible, intelligent, difficult, annoying, healthy things we do - as part reward, part re-balancing. I could't imagine living the kind of lifestyle that, if you followed every piece of advice about how to live a healthy life that was out there, you could have. Watch what I eat, go running, never smoke, drink one glass of red wine a day (just one), stay motivated, stop caring who's out of the BB House next Friday (please let it be that twatt Richard - I mean for fuck's sake - "I'm an older gay man and as such he should be coming to me for advice.") But then I couldn't imagine living a purely self-indulgent hedonistic lifestyle either. Well...

Discuss.

Summer has settled over the Calder valley again. Intense sunlight blasts over the top of the woods and into the window of garret, where I sit to type. SD is asleep on the sofa with the Guardian Guide open across his chest. We walked to Hebden and back today, me, sweating out a hangover from last night. Now foot sore and heat weary we are back in the flat at 7pm, and another Sunday is drifting slowly to sunset and a new week waits, as yet unseen, burning within the fireball.
A strange week behind. Things have taken a strange turn at work as redundancies are once again on the cards. A handful of people from our floor are marked to leave, though in the typical style with which are so called touchy feeling organisation does thing, nothing is official or properly discussed. Instead, rumours abound, about who’s next, how bad it really is, whether we are really going under altogether. So far, I have again managed to pass below the radar. I even found out that I’ve been granted permission to go to South Africa this September to support the Homeless World Cup – and their paying my department 200 odd quid a day for privilege of me being there. That, and my bosses wedding at the end of the year, mean that I’m safe for the time begin I suppose, but times like these are good for reminding you of the instability of things, and for giving you the kick up the arse needed to get on with other plans.
So, I have been looking at building the empire this week – writing, of course, but also finding various morsels to give me hope of a life beyond: the hope of some freelance work here, a new programme for the PC to help me design there, a few books that have come my way, a few more ideas that might, just, given space enough, bare fruit. It’s all a matter of waiting and seeing, seeing and waiting – letting things bake in the summer heat. Like everyone, there are moments that I wish I could snap my fingers and be moving on to the next thing – and typically, as I talk about routine last week, now my thoughts bend towards a disruption to the routine again – I get excited by change, perhaps too readily.
But Todmorden. Walking home along the canal I saw the deep shadows of lush trees marked against the grassy hills near Dobroyd castle. Everything is so green here, lush and alive. Water rattles down the channel outside, the summer traffic heads home on the Rochdale road, lads, pissed up, stagger drunkenly on to the next pub, their skin red and shining. I went for a walk on Tuesday, or was it Wednesday, up onto the hills to the North near the Bridestones. There too, sweeping evening light, deep shadows, lush woodland. Home. In the chaos of everything else, with all this doubt and mystery during the week, then I come here, back here, and sit in the window and listen to the water running down the channel and see the sun hitting the woods on the hills, and I now that whatever happens, things will work out as they should.

I’m never sure of the value of, and always quite uneasy about, routine. Another Saturday morning in the window, typing away on this battered laptop, which is little more than a portable electronic typewriter now, and not very portable at that, since the battery’s ka-put. I’ve “spruce up” the flat, washed up, showered, dressed, tidied away the work bag and drawn up a list of stuff I need to go and get from town when I’ve finished this. When I get home, I’ll do a bit of work on “the book”, sort out some emails and get in touch with some friends until, around 2.15ish, I’ll expect a text from SD saying that the train has just left Smithy Bridge, or maybe Littleborough, and I’ll check the time and leave the flat and head up to the station to he meet him. We’ll sit in the window then, for most the afternoon, he’ll smoke and we’ll talk about what we’ll eat for dinner. I’ll make a special do about the last episode of Doctor Who, we’ll eat, drink red wine and watch the glad-rags of Todmorden totter up Water Street as another night descends. Candles will be lit. Music played.

I shrink back in some ways, chew my lower lip and think – is this it? No wild adventures in Canada to look forward to? No drunken bawdiness in a Manchester nightclub? I picked up some leaflets from the bus station yesterday, amused to see that GMPTE have published a visitors guide to Rochdale (and just beside the covered shopping market you can see two crack heads beat the shit out of an old woman), then, having opened it, I got excited by the fact that it has an art gallery and a museum I knew nothing about. I did have to stop to wonder if I shouldn’t get out more.

But, it’s in the quieter moments of life that my creativity starts to jump and bubble and fizz. Just finished the first volume of Woolf’s diaries – rich in quotes and things to muse over – one of which: “when things are happening, one never writes”. And so conversely I find in these pauses, during these long summer days, when friends are away at weekends, it starts to happen… little “moments of being” twinkle away in unexpected corners of the week and, despite the struggle to drag myself to the keys, words do start to come out in a way that doesn’t feel as forced as when they are written when I’m weary from a hangover in the morning and thinking of what I’m going to wear that night.

I suppose part of the fear is to do with being complacent – taking it all for granted. Especially where SD is concerned. There would be nothing worse than to have weekend after weekend of sitting here, as afternoon turned to evening, scrabbling around for things to say to one another, just because we felt somehow duty bound to repeat the same action week in and week out. Like those couples you sometimes see in restaurants, who sit there looking at anything but one another, the silence between them almost sickening to experience, even from another table – not the angry silence after an argument; the dead, empty silence of two people who have exhausted everything they have to say to one another and have nothing more to offer, but who persist in sitting there, together, in this silence, in this terror, because to not do so seems even more terrible to them.

They, that couple in the restaurant, have forgotten, or maybe never knew, that it’s not enough to just be together. They need to learn to live together, not in a domestic way, but to really live. To do the things they do, or did, with friends, or do alone, that make these hours, days, weeks pass. I met up with SD on Thursday after work and he helped me out with “the book” – throwing scraps of social history my way, to add flesh to the bones of my characters, and asking me questions about them which forced them still further in to focus. To talk about these things while we were eating felt odd at first, like I was letting him in on a secret part of my life, or that we had strayed somehow from the path of what a “proper relationship” should be about. Now I laugh at myself for only just realising that you can’t spend lots of time with someone and expect the initial “getting to know you” period to last forever. At some point you have to get back on with living the life you were living before worlds collided. That’s the real test. I suppose that’s why so many of my past relationships have withered after a few months, so many relationships my friends have had too.

I spend a lot of time wishing for space. Then when I get it, I feel uncomfortable in it. Now, having got up early, I’ve got hours to myself and am looking forward to getting out, haunting some dusty second hand bookshops and browsing CDs in the library. Again, it’s the writing of this that has helped clear the fog, just a few paragraphs down and the original theme of my blog dissolves away in the morning sun – for now I’m completely happy with the routine of the day ahead and wouldn’t have it any other way.