A few days away, and I’ve already forgotten how to blog. Forgotten, that is, what it might have been to mark anything other than the act of writing. An act? Long Tuesday, half the day waiting, just like yesterday. I even came back here, to the flat, in the daytime which I never do. Here: for the afternoon, which never happens. But I needed something to distract me; I cleared up, washed the floor in the bathroom, polished the floor in the living room. Waiting – and still waiting tonight, receiving the message: a couple more days. A couple more? But I’m in London tomorrow. I thought it would be decided tonight. I’m not going to say what, though. Still secret.
About 5PM, to the pub for a pint. Time slowed down. Cigarette smoke around me. Much better. I unwrapped my CDs and read the booklets. Grey skies outside. Hoped to reach my hands out and part them to see the blue sky again. All my friends away, so I was on my own. On my own, but London tomorrow. 8PM, back at the flat, listening to American Music Club and waiting. Everything cleared up here, everything ready. Wait, says the tidiness. Wait, says the whole flat. I’ve opened a bottle of bad Tescos Cava. In honour of what? Celebrating what? Distract yourself, I tell myself. London tomorrow, I tell myself.
London: R.M. lives there. We were in Yorkshire over the weekend, near Stokesley. Walked up and down the hills. Ate fresh farm eggs and just-killed turkey. Slept in a room with a staircase to a room above it: two rooms, our bedroom and an attic. Outside the drafty window, the brown hills. I told R.M. as we walked that it suited her complexion, that brown. This was once Abbey land, she tells me. This valley was Catholic, she tells me. There’s a Shetland pony called Twix where we were staying. They’re easily spoilt, Shetland ponies, said R.M. on the phone today. Better surfing the net for Shetland pony information than working, she tells me. Why am I never on the blog anymore?, she asks me. Why haven’t I got my own category?
R.M.’s waiting with me. Everyone’s waiting. Champagne on ice in other parts of the country. But I have my bad Tescos Cava, with which I am waiting. Bad Cava: everyone’s away, and I’m here on my own. The flat smells of the fabric conditioner in the drying clothes. Two Regimes of Madness face down on my bed. Mercury, which I didn’t buy, but exchanged, is turning out well. But the Cava is bad – harsh and acidic. Bad Cava. You won’t get to tomorrow, says the room. No more past and no more future, says the room. The present’s broken, it says. The broken present: is that what it is? Broken, the order of days? Broken: the succession of one day after another?
Day by day. It used to be that time moved forward; the days were similar, it is true, but there was a forward momentum. I would have said: I have the whole of Easter, and then the whole of Summer. Time for work, time for writing. And didn’t I promise myself a whole year of writing whatever I pleased, here at the blog? Isn’t that what I promised myself, crossing the Byker roundabout? But there was the new book, the third book. Another book – as if I hadn’t done enough damage! A third book – as if the first and the second weren’t bad enough! And somehow or another, that third book led me to the present impasse.
R.M. phones. She’s in the office working for her exams. Her friend, the taxidermist Q.C. has written to her of his pathological loathing for velvet. Why then, he wonders, does he stroke the feathers of the stuffed bird in his office? He’s not sure. This amuses R.M.; she phones to share it with me. I tell her I’m writing about her, at last. And about Twix. And Yorkshire. She begins to read. ‘Bad Cava’. ‘Is that the stuff you get me?’, she asks. No, that’s from the Co-op. Co-op Cava is a step up from Tesco’s Cava; Marks and Spencers’ Cava, which comes in two grades, is a step up from the Co-op. Anyway, she’s glad I’m relaxing. There’s nothing else to do, I said. I wish I never began that third book!, I tell her.
But R.M.’s encouraging. She sends supportive emails. Everything’s going well, she says. It’ll all come good, she says. And phones me to share the Q.C.’s turns of phrase.
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