Just a quick thought - I really need to get round to changing the title of this blog as I am no longer a wife. Just a woman (or 99% woman, 1% yeast as I used to say in the old days). Actually, these days I'm more half-woman/half-adolescent boy, as I'm perimenopausally sweating all the time and stroking the new bum-fluff formation on my top lip. Life is cruel, eh?
My therapist told me today that she thought I should write a book about my life. She thinks I've led an exciting one, what can I say? She's right - washing ghandi's loin cloths and caring for Ceaucescu's puppy aren't run-of-the mill life experiences. Neither was when I took a cocktail of Alzheimer pills and industrial vodka and started shouting in my sleep or pickpocketing a potential rapist of his cigarettes and surviving unscathed.
Yes, I could write a book alright but so could anyone. The thing is - I have no proud moments to recall or achievements as such, only tale after tale of embarrassment. I was born embarrassed, that's why I was incubated for so long, my red face hidden by a knitted bonnet/balaclava, a tube down my throat in case I would put my foot in it as I usually did and do all the time. My embarrassing moments of note (or the ones I can share) are running for a bus with my knickers round my ankles and bumping into my next door neighbour in just my knickers (but at least I had them on that time). The funny thing is I don't know why I was standing on a freezing cold communal balcony in Pimlico in just my pants. I won't dwell anymore.
Being a mother isn't an achievement - it's just POP! And another POP!! All I did was eat like a pig for 9 months, get incredibly fat and swollen, be eased onto an operating table and have my insides fondled and whoosh! A baby! Then whoosh again and another baby! Both just as I had designed - a brunette daughter and a red haired boy. Yes, the baby part wasn't easy, but you haven't got a choice, you mother them or they get removed by Social Services.
What have I done with my life? Here's my life so far speeded up: puberty, tinnitus, headaches, window-dressing, picking apples, drinking dregs in Jerusalem bars, hitchhiking, French police, shoes vacuumed by customs officials, stand up comedy and a long-awaited bipolar diagnosis. These aren't the ingredients for a book, just pieces of my life that I can't even put in chronological order. Just a messy jigsaw on a messy carpet.
sounds good to me..
ReplyDeleteI've often thought you could write a book. Take all the embarrassing moments of your life and make some money off them. What you just wrote was a story of dull, run-of-the-mill events but it was entertaining to read. Just stretch that out to about 40,000 words, publish it and tell J.K. Rowling to fuck off because all the book money is now going to you.
ReplyDeleteI need a ghostwriter Michael, any ideas?
DeleteCharles Dickens is a ghost. Ask him.
ReplyDelete