... I woke up this morning.
Disappointed I no longer have George Bone to keep me company.
He is still in the book. On my sofa.
She didn't like Wednesday's but she couldn't explain why.
was it something in the word itself, the big W, the nes...
She could never remember how to spell it.
Or the middle of the week feeling.
It was all so promising on Monday.
Hangover Square.
..I felt tired and wanted to stay a slumber.
tucked up in bed warm next to my sleeping baby.
It's a good read.
You go right into the very mind of this very funny
and then watch this large
It is about
It is about the detail of the very mind and the absence too of that very mind.
.......... he becomes nothing, as do his 'friends'.
Some words on a bit of paper.
This narrative moves from the intense going on's of a thoughtful man's mind to the image of him cascading through the streets in various stages of determination and desperation..............
..like the Author, the Character becomes a Name.
Printed onto a bookcover....or etched onto a grave stone...or somewhere.
She deleted this sentence. It was too arbitrary.
Hang on, this is all arbitrary.
She had said she felt like she had a cork in her, stopping the writing.
Then she said to him in the same room as her, half listening,
"This is an excuse for I cannot write".
Or ,she thought..... is the cork repressing champagne or bad wine?
I am corked.
A bad bottle of wine.
The vinegar has set in.
There is nothing to say...
....within a story.
I can't make a character. It always turns into me.
It could be a
....managing to remain somewhat dignified though we can see it's very arse and watch it as it changes moods, lumbering about, or cares for it's kin.
Lets say, I could...
....write a story about a gorilla named Jack or Hilda or Arumnatumbo or something, I don't know what they actually call each other............
and it would turn into me before I get to the end of the
first paragraph.
Poor fictional Gorilla.
It will become me.
A 35 year old woman who can't relate to those numbers
when she can't remember how she got to 35 since wasn't she only five a little time ago.
Now she is thirty five and going to a hairdressers with a complimentary voucher and having a charming man called Brett cut her hair into a classic bob.
(That was yesterday. Tuesday. )
She doesn't mind Tuesdays.
Now it is Wednesday, her least favourite day and she is awake and writing or typing very much specifically
and her hair is an unclassic tangled mop on top of her head.
It is pointing this way and that and doing just what she specified to the hairdresser named Brett that she did not want it to do.
Chic and easy she said...when you wake up in the morning. I have three children or four if you count the little one she left behind.
"A Classic Bob" he murmurs, catching his eyes in the mirror.
He like's his eyes, his face, youthful at 41
the way his hair is cut, and when he is not cutting he meets his eyes in the mirror and they sparkle back at him as he talks of normal and not normal and his dreams and the spirit.
"I am a creative like you he said. An artist. That is why I cut hair. I was artistic at school, I have done many things... this seems to fit..."
I made no mention of being a creative. Maybe he can see into my soul.
"is is organic" I say.
It changes.
A creative she thinks. What do they do?
Maybe it is because I forgot to polish my boots.
I remembered to paint my nails.
"Your nails and shoes are important or so I have been told" said my mum once.
"They are what people forge their first impression with".
Good nails, teeth, hair and shoes.
My boots are grubby, I hide them under the chair in case his first impression makes him do a less than better job of my hair.
In case he discovers the real me.
I am wearing my new azure blue corduroy trousers (£7 H&M) and a black sparkly jumper.
It is just my boots that give me away then.
I tuck them under the chair but they are still visible there in the mirror.
I need a new pair of boots.
"To frame my face....not middle aged hair"
she said to Brett.
She hadn't wanted to utter these words but out they came.
She thinks that he will take this the right way.
Not be incredulous like some hairdressers are.
Intransigent.
What does that mean? Intransigent asked my brother yesterday. Tuesday.
"Unmoving, unchanging. Unreachable, I think, wont change?". I laugh, "Look it up, I say... I can't be sure". It is very important
This morning.
It is middle aged.
"Do you like it" Her little sister had asked afterwards. In a text from university in Sussex.
She is in Brighton near where Bone or George spent such desperate nights.
She had been so excited about this hair cut.
'Chic, Easy, Neat...a slash of red lipstick and you're ready to go' texted her sister... giving advice
Actually if she dies at 70, then she is actually middle aged.
But she thought he could see into her soul and make her look how she thinks it best for her to look.
He cuts and talks. Not of the weather, or holidays but of seeing things in his dreams...of the soul and the spirit. Of life going on afterwards.
"Don't ever stop believing" he said.
She couldn't help but hug him. Afterwards. She didn't get up and hug him while he was cutting her hair, standing back and meeting both their eyes in the mirror.
He was a bit sparkly.
Very Sparky.
Believing what? she sort of thinks, but perhaps it doesn't matter.
Today he is her angel.
You are an angel she tells him.
He laughs. He also thinks he is an angel.
I rely on the kindness of strangers said Blanche Dubois.
Taking the hand that reached
Away from Stanley. He is so harsh and virile.
She even hugged him before she left.
Her hair looked so nice and he had spoke of those who go on before us.
Who are there amongst us. My sister.
I could swear she was there too. she loved getting a new hair do.
These small things are important.
She was there just for a minute.
Then I lost her.
When she left the hairdressers she half expected him to come running up the road after her.
"I saw your sister"
he shouted in my imagination.
I get to my car. He must not have seen her.
'She died last February' she tells him. That is why I am here. Her friend is a DJ and she put a night on after she died, in her memory, to raise money for Leukaemia research.
Such a pretty word she said when she was alive, but she called it Lookey Dookey.
And then it was an unsaid word. We put it aside on a shelf under some books.
We made it go away.
But it was still there on her adrenals.
This is what it was that morning the day after I never saw her again properly.
It had gone, we had thought.
But afterwards they told us, many months afterwards, they told us, it was on her adrenals, hidden. Hiding, like a mean and conniving little dishonest schmuck. Like Netta maybe. In hangover Square. Violets in the April rain or something George said, but hard and cruel as sharpened knives. With her mediocre minions. A creep actually
"You insufferable bore Bon"e
But I love you, come away with me Netta come away with me............
Coming back to swallow her into the ground like the screaming man sucked from his bed in Florida.
It hid till we were all satisfied she was there she was mending.
Our prayers had worked.
Then it came back like a Tsunami wiping away whole villages and children bathing or watching television, lovers having a cappuccino on the beach front.
I did not go to the fund raiser. I have children, it was too difficult that night. But my brother won this complimentary haircut in the raffle.....
I see my face in the mirror. My hair wet and face vulnerable with the honesty of wet hair fresh from the bath at home before it dries and frames the face a bit better.
"You know, solicitors, accountants. Their brains are wired differently" he says.
Oh I remember your friend he says. The DJ, her friend who died was a singer.
That was my sister I say.
George reminds me of so many people I think.
Bone.
Hullo George, said Netta from where she lay on the sofa so utterly beautiful with the heart of a cruel thing.
I am going to wash my hair now and see what happens to it.
if it looks how it looked when I left the hairdresser's yesterday.
Maybe Brett was pretending. My hair does not look chic now.
"We still have things to do" he said. That is why we are left behind.
Maybe when I left he laughed at my gullibility.
"She thought I was into spirits.
God this job is so boring I have to do something to stay sane."
I think of Virginia Woolf.
She also killed herself.
She filled her pockets with stones and walked in to a lake.
She thought too much.
She had a trillion simultaneous thoughts moving like lightening through her myriadical mind each with their own pattern and agenda.
How could she eventually contain that. or control it.
I wonder what were her last thoughts as she allowed the water to close over her head and for her lungs to drink.
My bath is cold now and the baby is asleep on the sofa. He is ill. I hope he gets better soon.
Inspire me
Ah that is shit he said after I told him, that is really bullshit.
Have you had any strange things happen since she went?
Wow, He is different I think, this hairdresser.
Brett.
I like this name.
She talks to me sometimes I say. Especially if I go out into the garden in a space like that and I lift up my face to the white sky especially if it is spitting with rain. We liked the rain, and rose wine and fairy lights and things.
I call her.
I remember her here in the garden with me.
I think of fairy lights. she was like fairy lights.
I close my eyes in the garden. The sky is being white and quiet.
I hug my self, or I feel like I am hugging myself.
I love you she says in my ear.
I have never said that so clearly to myself.
This is Rachel.
Thank you for visiting me sister I say, I will see you soon.
She will come he says when you are not afraid.
In bed, he says, when it is dark and quiet.
She inspired me.
She sent me inspiration.
I go upstairs to the loo.
It is nearly noon now.
Stop now Alice
she says.
I laugh
This could go on forever.
I can't stop I say.
