thinking outside the box

Yesterday the blessed council replaced our stolen recycling bin. Why someone would steal one when they are so readily available is beyond me. I mean it only took us five emails and two months to get ours replaced. (deep breaths, calm, calm)

So I woke from my stuffed nose slumbers to find a bewildered Irish fellow on my doorstep waving a green plastic box at me. Better him than the prostitutes who had been there the previous night scattering Pringles and fag buts all over the steps.

'Oh, love, sorry to wake you. You've ordered this, love? Is that right, love?' he says staring at the glass window above the door.

'Oh yes, someone stole ours. Brilliant thanks for bringing it...'

He looks at the box in his hands.

'It's just that I can't give you this, love, as it's someone else's.' He shows me the number seven clearly written in Tipex on side of the box. He had taken someone else's box to replace ours – my mind literally boggles. Does he provide continuous employment for himself in this way?

'Love, I'll be back in a minute. Sorry to wake you, love.'

'No probs.'

So five minutes later he reappears with a new box.

'Love, here you go, love.' He gazes up at the ceiling.

'Thanks' I say and close the door.

Then I become a fraction more awake and realise I'm wearing a t-shirt and my fairly short (a la James Bond in the seventies) dressing gown. I imagine him going down the stairs crunching through the sour cream and chive crisps mumbling, 'love... love.... love.'

rock the boat and stone the crows

This week I've been pondering what makes a stone a stone, a rock a rock and a boulder a boulder. Or to put it another way, when does a stone become a rock? My first thoughts - size does matter. To my mind a stone is apple sized and smaller. A rock is bigger than an apple but smaller than pumpkin. Lets say a large pumpkin. And a boulder bigger than a pumpkin. But what does the dictionary say?

A stone n. is a piece of earthy or mineral matter, especially smaller than a boulder; a paving block; a gem; the central hard portion of a fruit; a unit of weight equal to 14lbs. It is also - according to the dear dictionary - a rock.

On the other hand, a rock n. is a large mass of stone or stony material; a boulder; a gem; a firm or solid foundation; a cylindrical stick of coloured and flavoured sweet.

So hold on, a rock is a mass of stone AND a boulder?

A boulder n. is a large mass of stone or rock; a climbing route small enough to tackle without ropes; a town in Colorado. (Strictly speaking Boulder not a boulder for that last one)

So according to the dictionary, a stone is smaller than a boulder and is also a rock. A rock is a boulder or a mass of stone. Whereas a boulder is a large mass of stone or rock.

Hello confusion my old friend.

The closer we look, the deeper down the rabbit hole we go as stone and rock are verbs as well as nouns. To rock means to move rhythmically back and forth (He rocked the baby to sleep) and to disturb or upset (the revelations about the will rocked the whole family) How can one word have two almost contradictory meanings?

The conclusion I make from all this confusion is that words - like rocks - are weighty. They can mean a multitude of things depending on where they are hefted or placed.

But you knew that already - right?

P.S. And on the rocks means both likely to fail AND served on ice.

mutton dressed as spam

I know it wasn't my special day or anything, but I was one of the bridesmaids and so I thought, well I better make an effort. I normally feel like a little girl dressed up at weddings, never quite able to get it right, as if I'm wearing someone else's grown-up dress.

I would describe my style as sporty-tramp. I imagine when people meet me they are never sure if I am going to try and sell them a Big Issue or invite them to a game of badminton. This suits me fine most of the time but I wanted to feel more comfortable at this wedding especially as the bride had said – wear what you want.

So I bought a dress I knew for sure I looked good in and as this was an autumn wedding in one of the wettest and coldest years since we have started fretting about climate change, a dress I knew I would be warm in. It is a close fitting black jumper dress with a little belt to tie around the waist. I ummed and ahhhed over the shoes - either boots or little black heels. I settled on boots for warmth reasons. I thought I looked smart, warm and cute.

Unfortunately on the day of the wedding I realised I'd made yet another fashion mistake and would be uncomfortable but for completely different reasons. All the other bridesmaid put on silky flowing dresses in blue and green and pink. Lovely dresses that swung and skimmed below the knee. I had a vision of myself in my dress. My short black dress with what were essentially fuck-me boots.

Imagine an old rich fella who falls in love with a much younger woman, much to the dismay of his family. They marry and after a few months of blissful happiness, he dies. What I was planning to wear was what that woman would wear to the funeral. In Ape Pro Pre At.

I left putting my dress on till the last minute saying to myself – it doesn't really matter what you wear no one is going to look at you. But when i immerge clad in black from top to toe, look at me they did.

'Its a bit dark isn't it?' I said lamely. Yes, but you look very sophisticated, said one kind friend. You look great, said another, but I have another dress with me, said another less kind friend. It is a bit short said the-nail-in-the-coffin friend. Ah well, I thought, just got to go with it now. And luckily we all did look completely different and, I think, wonderful in different ways.

As we were waiting outside the hall with the bride, the mother of one of my friends said, oh why are you not wearing a silky dress like everyone else? I hid behind my flowers. Unfortunately I'm about three inches taller than the other bridesmaids.

Luckily the wine was flowing and I spotted another girl in a black sophisticated dress and other guess in a belly dancing outfit. The wedding was a fairly eccentric – one of the songs was Food Glorious Food. So I relaxed and enjoyed my champers.

The bride hugged me later on the dance floor saying how happy she was. She thought it was the happiest day of her life. I don't think she would have noticed if I had been wearing a bin liner.

And that after all is what matters.

War - huh - what is it good for?

On Sunday, after the fantastic Free-wheel event, K and I went to the Imperial War Museum to do a treasure hunt test (don't ask).

I've never been to the IWM before - looking at a load of gun, tanks, shells etc. doesn't appeal. And why Imperial anyway? There were lots of visitors, mainly men taking extremely careful photographs of plane propellers.

There was one couple who stuck in my mind. A young man with short dark hair, standing with arms behind his back, legs planted firmly wide apart in the 'I've had military training' position. He was wearing camouflage trousers. It takes a certain person to wear any item of camouflage to a war museum. A certain person who wants to make a certain statement.

He was staring intently at an information board as I raced passed trying to find the name of one of the planes hanging from the ceiling (Big Beautiful Doll if you want to know). He gave the impression that he had given each and every item in the museum the same single minded level of attention. His girlfriend was sitting in a huddle on a bench behind him. A dejected sort of thing, shoulders all in a bunch - a bored slightly desperate expression on her face.

War is wrong, of that I have no doubt, but life is never clear cut. Museums like this serve a valuable purpose, even though I might try and turn away from the brutal side of human nature and violent way humans have of brushing up against each other. It's how the world is I suppose.

We ended the visit in the Tibetan Peace Garden which was how I wish the world was.

One, Two, Three.....

I'm reading a book about Chile called Travels in a Thin Country by Sara Wheeler. No particular reason, I'm not planning a trip to Chile, I haven't heard great things about Wheeler's travel writing. No, it has just been sitting on my bookshelf for 10 years, half read and abandoned. So I am finishing it now.

Wheeler talks about a group of native Indians who are now extinct, wiped out by the actions of brutal and careless Europeans. So far, so depressingly familiar.

They had an extremely rich language, including a word for the feeling you get when you bite into something soft and your teeth hit something hard. I tried to make up a word in English for that feeling of biting into a oyster to find a pearl or a chomping down on a hamburger to find a thumb nail clipping. Squigdack? Murminct? Any other suggestions?

But given this richness, they had no words for numbers above three. I have three numbers to watch today, a meeting at 11 in Leicester Sq for a possible bit of freelance writing, an appointment at 3 in Blackfriars to register with an agency who have a part time job I'm interested in and finally dinner at 7 in Southwark with a friend. Phew.

I tried to imagine living a life with no numbers, no money, no debt, no appointments to be made or kept, no worrying about the big three oh, four oh, or any other oh. But I gave up because I didn't want to be late for my meeting.

A can poo attitude

It's me. I'm back. Sorry for the break in communications. The summer has blinked by, MA done and dusted, my year in Cornwall is over and I'm back in London.

Yesterday I went for a walk to the shops, smiling at the bustle and hustle of people. The sun was shinning and I thought, maybe, just maybe it wont be so bad being back. As long as I make sure we get out of London, slicing the weekend off the week - pulling the days out of London and pushing them in the sand in Llangenth or Woolacombe?

On the way back I saw a Tennants Extra can glinting in the sunlight on the pavement. Not to strange a sight in the litter strewn streets of London. What did make it stand out was that there was a small cat poo drapped over it. Was the cat bored? Did it wish to set itself an extra challenge that day? Was it trying to make a comment on the contents of the can, a kind of catty review?

Maybe it just had a can poo attitude.

Mudslide

It's been a beautiful day here in Cornwall but to say today has gone well would be a fucking lie.

On the first day of sunshine in ages I figure I'll go for a bracing sea cliff walk and a dip in the sea before starting work. I should have known something was not right when I step in some dog shit.

I knew that I had stepped in dog shit as I'm wearing flip flops and some flicks up onto my wrist. Nice.

The path is really muddy and I start regreting my optimistic flip flops. Coming back down the hill, I stop just before the really muddy bit and spot a path up the side of the bank around some behind some tree trunks. Ah! I think. How clever I am to spot this path.

Negiotating this steep brown track, I slip - right on my arse. Thump. I walk the rest of the way back with a big brown mud patch on my arse smelling slightly of dog shit.

Back on Gylly beach I take of my muddy trousers and I realise - shit - my pockets are empty - I've lost my phone.

I plan to jump in the sea to cool off – dash back to the house, drive back to Swanpool; the nearest point where the road meets the coast path and have a look. It is bound to be on the floor near where I fell.

I strip down to my new bikini. New and free with Elle. One size fits all they said. One size reveals all they should have said. I dive into the sea in the 'Itfreezingletsgetthisoverwith' manouver. The bikini bottoms peel of and roll up down my thighs and my bikini top peels off and twists over. So I have to stay a moment longer in the bracing sea to re-organise myself.

But after I got out the sea, home, into new clothes, into the car, back to Swanpool and back along the path, it was nowhere to be seen.

The good news is that my contract was due for renewal on the 26th – so I don't have to pay a months rental for a phone I don't have. The bad news is that the insurance I'd been paying every month for the last year, that I had just cancelled cos I was just about to get a new phone ran out yesterday.

So, even though the rest of the day improved somewhat, think it is safe to say - fucking lie.

Climacophobia

A couple of Fridays ago, I fell down a flight of stairs outside 5 Degrees West - a pub in Falmouth. I bent back my thumb nail and bruised my knees and shins pretty badly. Sufficient time has passed that I can now think about it without a shudder. My bruised have almost healed and I think I have managed to halt the tide of irrational thoughts that were washing around my brain.
I remember talking to my friend at the top of the stairs, and then next thing being at the bottom of the stairs on my hands and knees. In the doggy position to be precise. Like I was waiting to be fucked by the stairs.

I was fine at first - adrenalin - but after a few minutes my legs started to really hurt, but that was not all.

I have a phobia of falling down stairs - Climacophobia as it is known. It is not your usual phobia of snakes, heights or spiders, but there it is. As the pain increased I started feeling really scared. I ended up at home in drunken tears wailing at my boyfriend. 'See I told you. I was right to be scared of stairs, THEY ARE OUT TO GET ME.'

Realising that I was being completely irrational did not stop the feelings. I could feel my sanity bend; my rational self, literally losing some of its grip on my mind.

Due to my sisters illness I have been around a lot of crazy people. Not just 'We drunk a whole bottle of sambuca' crazy, but 'God told me to jump on the bonnet of that car rip off the satan's eyebrows (aka windscreen wipers) ' crazy.

This has had its effects, some good, some not so good. I do fear having a breakdown, but it also means that I know mental illness is just an illness and one that people can recover from. It has taken me quite a few years to get my fear of a breakdown into perspective and the way I look at it now is that it could happen to me, but I don't think it is likely to.

It also means that I look after my mental health as seriously as I look after my physical health. If I have been working too hard and not sleeping and start getting a sore throat – I will take action – early nights, lemon & honey and heaps of fruit & veg.

If I start thinking stairs are REALLY out to get me, I take action. And in this case the action was to come straight home – spend time with Kai, relaxing, reading, sleeping and funnily enough lots of fruit and veg.

There is a big stigma around mental illness and I think this stigma has a lot to do with fear. People fear those with serious mental illness as they can be scary, irrational, violent, and extremely sad. But I think the fear also comes from a horror of ever being like that themselves.

But one thing I know is I've got to get over my fear of stairs – they aren't really out to get me.

dash it all

I used to be addicted to brackets. They were my way of throwing in little asides (like this) without interrupting the flow of the sentence.

But I have stowed by stash of brackets at the back of my writer’s tool box and taken up with the – far superior – dash.

I am not sure why this change has occurred - just as I am not sure really how to use a dash correctly. But now I know – and love – the dash.

The thing is my use of dashes is accelerating and soon everything I write will be – like – this – and – not make any – if at all – sense.

Happy f@ckin' birthday

This morning just before I woke up I asked K what time he needed to get to the airport

He replied, 'Blurrgghh?'

Well, I thought, if he's going to Poland he needs to get a move on. Then I woke up. It was 5:45 am.

It reminded me of a conversation we'd had with our friends L and J recently - sipping beers in NYC.

J had woken up the night before with night terrors convinced something terrible had happened to their delicious dog, Kitty. Fear not, the poodle was fine.

The conversation wandered onto 'funny things we've said when we were asleep.'

My 'stick it in your own eye' is my favourite (see earlier post) closely followed by shouting at an ex - who had the habbit of clamping the duvet and rolling over pulling it from my shivering body - 'You are not a fork and the duvet is not spaghetti.'

J said, that one night while almost asleep and with eyes closed L said,

'well don't you roll your eyes at me!'

But my favourite story of this kind was my friends N and Al – Al snores and sometimes N has to wake him up or roll him over to get back to sleep. On one such occasion, N was prodding Al when he rolled to face her with half opened eyes and growled,

'Happy fucking birthday.'

wake walking

This whole week I have been trying to be really disciplined and get into the mode of working 9 to 5 (what a way to make a living) but the distractions are just too numerous.

The three main culprits are:

- Youtube.com – curse your metal body. The whole internet is pretty frickin distracting. My friend Jon showed me a funny cartoon about this very situation (Jon where did you get that cartoon?)

- Daydreaming – I suppose this isn't too bad as to write one must dream or somesuch bullshit.

- wake walking – I have only just realised I do this. A few minutes ago I was working on research for chapter 4 and then a blank and then I found myself in my bedroom fiddling with the things on my dresser. I think I do this about four times a day. Just jumping up FOR NO REASON. Sometimes I trick myself into thinking OH I've got up to use to loo or to make a cup of tea.

Perhaps I have ants in my pants?

Don't get in a state...

Some of the things I learnt on a recent trip to USA

1. It is never OK to call nine eleven, seven eleven by mistake – ever.

2. Ask for the restroom or bathroom not toilet.

3. US toilets are lower and shallower than ours. I discovered this while wiping front to back – as I have been taught. For a second I dipped the back of my hand into the yellow water below. I did not do this again.

4. None of the Americans I met actually like Bush. Some train guys told us to 'give George a good kick up the but from us.' when we were travelling from NYC to DC.

5. Pancakes, bacon, home fries, huevos rancheros, pizza etc. are good and plentiful, so don't blame the washing machine if your trousers don't do up.

6. Hailing a cab in NYC involves almost standing in the path of moving traffic – kerb clingers don't get anywhere.

7. If someone asks you to be in a film, they are either street fundraisers or film students. Hopes should not be gotten up.

8. The subway is not as hard or complicated as it seems. Just leave plenty of time and don't get in the way of commuters. Remember if you need to stop, stand aside.

9. Filene's Basement rocks.

The future's bright, the future's bright green

The Great Global Warming Swindle, Channel Four's infamous documentary caused uproar, bringing home how strongly many people feel about the threat of catastrophic climate change. It was riddled with inaccuracies and shoddy science, but it did get one thing right. Some people are so convinced about the dangers we are facing that they are no longer able to allow any debate on the topic. Well known commentators reacted to this programme with white hot disbelief. HOW DARE they say we might not be right? They are setting us back YEARS...

I know more than most about the force of this conviction in the green movement. I spent three miserable months working in one of the major environmental charities. I thought I was green and a committed environmentalist, but compared to some of my colleagues I had a long way to go.

I worked alongside people who really, and I mean really, believed that the world as we know it is going to end in a matter of years, not decades. That we are going to descend into a nightmarish future all because we couldn't give up our addiction to air travel/Starbucks/strawberriesinfeb.

I admired their commitment, passion and ability to still keep fighting for change even though they thought it was too late. I did not admire the religious fervour of their beliefs which meant they berated, hectored and looked down on people who asked questions about the validity of the models they were using. The thing is...

WE DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE

This is a fact sometimes forgotten in climate change discussions. The science of climate prediction is an art, a very sophisticated crystal ball gazing exercise. We do have to make an attempt to work out what is going to happen to inform policy and to control our increasingly profligate use of resources, but I believe it is dangerous to present scientific prediction as fact.

I heard a joke on the radio recently.

Scientists have plotted the increase of Kate Moss as the model of choice for various products over the last year and have predicted she will be used to advertise 99% of all new products if current trends continue.

Obviously this is a flippant comparison, but even something as pointless as Kate Moss's career is very unlikely to follow current trends as there are other factors the graph maker has not included.

There is nothing more complex than the Earth's systems. And though the methods used by climate scientists are rigorous and thorough, can't we allow the possibility that the models may not be right?

Yes, we need to cut down our use of power, plastics and petrol. We need to do this now. But not by frightening people into compliance. The human race is not worthless group of parasites, we are not a scourge on the face of the earth, we are a wonderful part of it. Granted we have made many mistakes and it is vital that we learn from them and move to a more positive future.

The organisation I worked with divided its supporters up into segments which were painted an imaginary shade of green. People who wrote a couple of postcards a year were light green and extremely committed supporters were dark green. I think we should find another way, and we should become BRIGHT GREENS.

The Dark Greens are desperate for change and they are frightened. They think that to get everyone else to change they need to frighten them too.

A small child is carrying a glass of orange juice. Her dads says, 'be careful love, not near the new sofa.' She looks up and wobbles. 'I said watch out you are going to drop it, mind the table.... I SAID WATCH OUT....'

Guess what?

She is probably going to drop that blinking glass of juice.

We are all addicted to power, it's too late, we are going going to die, waves of climate refugees will flood into this country, you mustn't fly, you mustn't eat fruit out of season, you mustn't eat MacDonalds, you mustn't, you mustn't you mustn't...

The thing is I know what I must do, and I whole heartedly embrace it as a positive choice. I face my future and it is bright; bright green.

Is it possible to fall in love with a place, like you do with a person?

Yesterday I was practising my surfing at Godrevy, the beach was empty and I was the only person in the whole stretch of white rolling waves. I had just got out and was lying on the wet sand next to my board to catch my breath. Everything was perfect, the warm sun on my the back of my wetsuit, air laden with salt fresh spray. I got up walked back to the sea for my second batch of fast paddled clumsy pop-ups. The water was about a two feet deep and there were elongated circles of white sea foam on the surface, mirrored by dark moving strips of shadow on the sandy bottom. A flock of tiny sea birds flew in a tight cluster ahead of me above the bigger waves out of my depth.

I felt wave of what I can only describe a love for this place.

I had a huge grin on my face all afternoon (apart from the times I was under the water) until I was stuck in a traffic jam in Redruth. It must be said that I don't think I'm in love with Redruth.

Facebook.com; the answer to america's gun problem

I’ve been thinking about the guy who shot all those people at Virginia Tech.

Loner, that is how he is being described.

I know I’m a bleeding heart, dyed in the wool, liberal, pinko, guardian reading twat in many ways. I also know that what that man did what he did alone and if he were alive I would want him to face up to the consequences of his actions.

But surely to avoid violence and terror like this in the future the NRA has to sit down and have a quiet word with itself. Does the free access to guns, including semi-automatics, (which thank god we don’t have in the UK) and the culture of violence towards women (which unfortunately we do) have nothing to do with the terrible tragedy that occurred a few days ago.

So he was a loner was he? People with friends don’t do terrible stuff like that. Perhaps Charlton Hestonites in the NRA wouldn’t mind if the gun laws were amended so that you could only get a gun if you have at least 10 friends on www.facebook.com

Blyton and Cartland

Yesterday I went into town to do some competition analysis at Foyles Charing Cross Rd and as it was so close, popped into the National Portrait Gallery to check out the Women Writers exhibition.

I peeled of the tracksuit-t-shirt outfit I have been wearing for the last few days and donned a checked shirt, smart trousers and silver shoes so I felt a bit more like a girl about town.
The exhibition was small, just one display case of black and white photos mainly from the '30s and '40s. I stared at buckteeth, wrinkles and large jaws and I wondered why I was obsessed with the way these talented, successful women looked. Possibly the only other photos I am familiar with from this period are of glamorous starlets with perfect rose bud lips and glamour outfits.

There are a couple of beauties. Barbara Cartland as a young woman caught my eye, about as far from the pink frocked make-up encrusted woman I am familiar with. She could have held her own with any starlet.

She is standing with her hands together in front of her lap, index fingers in a downward steeple, forming, what I can only describe as an opening. She is holding this opening directly in front of her other more private opening. It is an extraordinarily sexual pose, contradicting with the innocent faced girl.

There is a really funny picture of Enid Blyton looking like she would cheering strangle the two children posing with her. And then there was only the famous four.

Photographic memory

This weekend we have been staying with my parents and on Sunday night, my mum dug up a load of old photos to show my other half, childhood holidays mainly. The photos charting the change from toddler to child, child to teenager.

Three photos got me.

One of me and my sister holding hands when we were about 3 (me) and 6 (her) wearing our matching stripy t-shirt dresses. We are holding hands. The other two were of me and my sister when we are 15 and 18 respectively on holiday in Cyprus.

In one she has her arm around my shoulders and she is gazing at the camera, I am looking up at her, adoringly. She is so beautiful and calm, with a mona lisa smile. In the other we are lying on a bright white sandy beach asleep with our heads almost touching on a crumpled beach towel.

As my mum handed them to me she said, 'You two always did love each other so much.'

This was the last family holiday we had before my sister suffered a severe breakdown and was caught in the jaws of schizophrenia. She was sectioned, taken from our family home and locked for many months into the local psychiatric unit, in her first of many hospital stays.

For the first few weeks my sister slept in a corridor divided up into 'bedrooms' by heavy green and brown curtains. She was locked in with people that I, a fairly hardy Hackney girl would have crossed many roads to avoid if I had met them on the street. Shouters, screamers, silent rockers; All confused, drugged and unhappy.

So on Easter Sunday, my feelings took a nostalgia trip and the bright grief and pain returned for the evening. I remember thinking that my beautiful sister had died and something else was moving her now leaden, drugged body around, making it do and say horrible things. I can remember thinking that, but I had forgotten how it felt.

She has been so well for the last few years, at least 3 without a section or hospital visit and my recovery has followed hers.

But after looking at those photos, I slipped into the grief again like it was comfortable old jumper. I'd forgotten the feeling of crying quietly lying on my back in bed with the tears falling sideways and filling up my ears.

I had forgotten how easy being unhappy all the time had felt.

Brackets and Crayfish

Over the last two weeks I've been doing a lot of proof reading or copy editing as they call it. After a whole day of just starting at words on a page you start to get into the zone. Mistakes sort of jump out at you, like a lonely bracket without its partner or two guilty looking full stops huddling together at the end of a sentence.

It probably hasn't had much effect on my spelling (consistant or consistent, I dunno) but I think it is definitely helping.

It reminds me of a time when I worked on a dive boat in Far North Queensland which ran day trips to the Great Barrier Reef. I would take groups of qualified divers on little underwater tours, around coral bommies and through sea canyons. At first I was no better at spotting things than any of the other divers, it was all a jumble of sea life swaying in the current, but after a few days my eyes adjusted to the underwater world.

I started to spot things and was able to point them out to my trailing group of divers. Little things would start to jump out, like the lone bracket, except in the sea it was the eye of an octopus peering out from a small crack, a tiny translucent shrimp hanging mid water inside a barrel sponge, or a pair of long delicate crayfish antenna hovering just above the sand, giving away its hiding place in a shallow sea cave.

But the thing about proof reading, is that you have to assume their is a mistake, if you think the best you will not spot any errors as your brain will skim happily to the next word. So you have to read with a pessimistic mindset, assuming the worst and feeling pleased when you do find a mistake. And spending hours thinking like that left me feeling moody and depressed at the end of the day.

Struggling as I do with a natural leaning towards pessimism it has made me realise, quite apart from my spelling eccentricities, copy editing is not the job for me.

Human Wreck

She's sat motionless at the bottom of the stairs. She has her back to us, fur lined hood up over her head; not moving.

Love, you alright?

It is 10.30 on a Sunday morning and me and my other half are off to the climbing wall.She's not moving, sitting on the bottom step, just outside our front door. It is Sunday morning. I can see the lacy pink T of a g-string on the pale skin above her jeans. It's twisted off centre.

Eh?

She leans uncertainly to the side and twists around to look at us standing in our doorway. I see her blotchy face. Her eyes are flat and dead. Ah, of course what was I thinking? She's a prostitute, a druggie. In all senses of the word, a human wreck. Have you seen Shawn of the Dead? Like that but without the laughs.

You can't sleep here, this is our home. You've got to leave.

I'm firm, assertive. It worked last time.

I wasn't sleeping, I just fell asleep.

I am angry and a bit frightened. I don't want to leave my flat and find a prostitute not moving, outside my door. How long had she been there? All night?

She doesn't get up. She picks up her handbag and starts to scuffle around in it. My heart is pounding. Then I notice the pigeon. It must have flown up the stairwell. It is flapping against the glass, trapped. It rests on the window sill just in front of the woman.My other half is standing next to me. We'd talked about this, what to say to them. I think it is better for him to stay out of it. It is better for me ask them to leave. They have so much grief from men. More respectful.

You CANT stay here. Get OUT!

My voice has changed, I'm angry and shouting. My insides are shaking. She just looking inside her handbag. There are three things inside it. They rattle as she sticks her hand in. I see a comb but no keys. She is sitting up with a very straight back, every few seconds she sways ever so slightly from side to side. She is off her head and she is not getting up.

YOU HAVE GOT TO GO.

I'm just getting my things together.

You're not checking out of a FUCKING hotel. You haven't GOT any stuff to get together. GET OUT.

Ms Respectful in da house.

She still doesn't move. I start shouting at her for real now. Go away, go away. She looks at me and does a small laugh. This is horrible, my stomach twists. She mimics me saying, Go away, go away softly under her breath.

I'm calling the police.

Another small laugh. She says 'so what?' with her shoulders.

9 9 9

Then, Sorry, all our operators are busy.

I think, that actually HAPPENS! Shit. My other half is looking at me. Wha? he mouths.

She continues to sit and continues to re-arrange the three items in her handbag.

Eventually.

Police please. The is a woman outside our house and she WONT GO AWAY.

I am shouting down the phone at the operator.

She is being threatening towards me.

She stands up at this.

How am I being threatening?

I give our address to to the operator.

I'm not being threatening.

She sways slightly where she is standing. I tell the operator that she is one of the prostitutes that works on Lordship Rd. The ragged dirty skinny woman laughs again. It is not a real laugh, more a world weary acknowledgement of how shit the world is.

The operator tells me she will pass my message to our community safety officer. My message?

The prostitute walks down the stairs. Mumbling. Wasn't being threatening...

So we go to the climbing wall. And they say climbing is dangerous.

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I'm thinking a lot about truth and the way we tell stories and change them to make them better or more entertaining.

So for the sake of honesty, it was more like 11.30 – we'd had a bit of a lie in. And I didn't say that thing about the hotel, I thought of it later.

Everything else did happen. The pigeon, the g-string and everything.

And talking of truth, she wasn't threatening me, in the truest sense of the word. She was there, blocking our way down the stairs and I felt very threatened by her. Does that mean I lied to the police?

Hackademic

...is the word I learnt yesterday. It refers to a journalist who is labouring under the misapprehension that he or she is also an academic.

One of the people on my team is working with a writer who she described thus.

I, myself, thought it was rather funny.