The House of Death (Blood on the KeyBoard if you want it)

The House of Death would be built on a plague pit and riddled with the most vicious of poltergeists. 

As I write I can see numerous opportunities for Final Destination moments waiting to happen. In front of me is a seven foot solid wooden Kung Fu practice pole; I stuffed it in its current position because of the amount of times I've previously had to rescue it mid fall: it could fall again, if promoted and it could smash my head open leaving blood on the keyboard and an unwritten blog.

There is a lamppost outside our front window, weakened by the child’s constant climbing and that time we used it as a prop for zip wiring toys. That lamppost might; during high winds crash through into the bedroom and kill us in our sleep.

We all know that most accidents happen in the home. When hanging washing on the clothes horse, I fear trapping my head as the thing potentially closes up on me. My house is an accident waiting to happen.

Accidents waiting to happen illustrated by AndyArtisan

There are obstacles in this house, the dogs are two of them: they are the tripping hazards that might send you straight into the vintage mirror in the hall, next to an upturned skate board, on which you might, in a darkly comic moment, be carried off to fall into the baby gate, which would in turn shake the wall and knock the radio off the shelf and you might die whilst The Archers came on.

About a year ago I mentioned to my Dad that the lights kept tripping. You would turn a light switch on and all the lights would trip out. It got worse and they seemed to be popping every hour or so.

I am fortunate enough to have a skilled electrician in the family (my little brother) who advised with urgency that we were not to use the lights and “whatever you do, Do NOT have the lights on while you are in the shower.” I had never considered electrocution as a real risk.

Chris arrived with his partner and they tore through my little house like an electricity taming duo, they had ladders and wires and Geiger counters? They refused to stop for tea or sandwiches and sped off in their electricians mobile before I could properly thank them. And we were safe.

How strange then that I enjoyed Sunday’s electricity cut as much as I did. We had just finished dinner when a faraway switch flicked and we were plummeted into the sweetness of darkness. Everything went silent. We lit candles; red glittery ones left over from some Christmas and vanilla scented ones received this Christmas. I read The Golem on my Kindle, the boy read The Subtle Knife by candle light and neighbors called on one another to see if they were OK.

There is a lot of fear wrapped up in darkness. I explain to my students that darkness is the exemption of all light, but on Sunday it was the exemption of all noise: t the noise of technology and fridges and for a little while I felt quite at peace and not for one moment as though I lingered in The House of Death.

Time

Time Management illustrated by AndyArtisand

Have you noticed the peculiarities for time? Of course you have, time flies, time drags, it only seems like yesterday and so on. Those that play video games would have noticed another dimension to time; the virtual dimension. Time passes differently in video games, but it passes differently any way doesn't it?

If you have young children, you will have an all too infuriating awareness of their bumbling perception of time, from learning to read the clock to developing any sense of urgency. You can ask a child to go and put their shoes on now please and their perception of now please encompasses the arrow of time stretching across the morning for the whole of infinity.

Dogs on the other hand, appear to perceive time via routine and symbols; they know that one action most likely follows another and though the timing might be wrong, as long as the order of actions is the correct, the dog understands what time it is. So dinner is cooked, dinner is served and eaten, table is vacated: it’s time for dogs to eat. Boots, hat and coat doesn't necessarily mean time for walk, certainly not if it is preceded by; coffee, shower, mad rush upstairs and usually some shouting about not being able to find: glasses, watch, keys, shoes [delete as applicable]. In fact at this time; the dogs, the child and the husband know that it is time to stay out of the way.

My students have often accused me of being obsessed with schedules, "Good Grief, we are already six minutes into the lesson and we haven’t even discussed the server crash at Dota2’s New Bloom festival." Many years ago I rebelled against time by refusing to wear my watch. Within a week I knew where every clock was; the first was in the newsagents and I could just see it as I passed, then there was a carriage clock in someone’s front room, followed by one of the top of a bank and finally a great big stainless steel looking piece inside River Island which I could see through the window. I was mostly punctual for my job in the jewelers, where there were lots of clocks but they all showed happy time which is about 10.10.

No one else is in my household is bothered about the time. How can they not be bothered when there is so much to do? How can it be possible to do so much in so little time; to paint a hallway in an afternoon, to clean all the downstairs windows before lunch, to make a two course meal in half an hour?  And yet to do five straight forward, uncomplicated and quite familiar tasks such as, let’s say:

1.    Drink a coffee,

2.    Take a shower,

3.    Dress,

4.    Pack a small bag

5.    Leave the house

How can these five things take so long? How can it be that no matter how many times I go through this, nothing goes any faster and if anything the routine appears to be taking longer?

It maybe that I need to reschedule, perhaps develop an entirely new system or even take a time management course, but really I just don’t have the time.

Dream Home

I need to move. Our house is too small and it is falling apart.  Before we move the house must be put together again and made appealing to new buyers, in the meantime we still have to live there. For now I will put the complexities of house buying and selling to one side because of all considerations the most important is where we shall move.

How delightful it would be to list location and house style as main considerations, to have the sort of budget that might allow us to meet with Kirsty and Phil and then turn our noses up at every single property that comes our way. Imagine the joy of “finding” a beautiful abounded higgledy piggledy witch house, of having The Renovation Man come around and advise us or even (dream of dreams) designing our perfect family home under the approving eye of Kevin McCloud. I have of course designed it with words, and I my husband could make it as a fully rendered 3D model, the boy could make it out of Lego and cardboard, I could make all of us out of felt and see how comfortably we might fit into the dream house.

This could be nice by AndyArtisand

Allow me to describe it to you. It will be in walking distance of my work and the child’s school (the one he’s at now and the one he will be at in the future: as yet to be confirmed).  It will be a Gothic revival cottage with interior Georgian features and art deco follies in the garden. It will be close to the sea in the middle of a dark wood at the top of a hill and provide excellent light for sewing, painting and other craft work: an isolated building at the epicenter of a thriving community of just our sort of people. 

In all; everything about the location will be cohesive, it will have an art crafts type character that lacks pretension. They will be the sounds of music lessons drifting from windows on summer afternoons. In the local pubs will be old people happy to discuss philosophy whilst others are keen to engage youngsters in games of chess. They will be a lively music scene with twice yearly music festivals well attended by the genuine article. There absolutely must be a midsummer festival seeped in pagan traditions stretching so far back that only one old ancient can play the required unrecognizable instrument and no where is written the words of the song children must sing.

The town will have a character so established that you might turn it into a persona and use it for marketing purposes. It will be rich with Tintagel type myths and once visited it will haunt your dreams like a nice version of Gustav Meryink’s Prague.

I shall perhaps be scouring the properties section of the local press for some time, meanwhile I have Pinterest to provide inspiring bohemian interiors and a small two up two down property to repair. 

Which Me?

Writing is a solitary experience; something you do alone when pieces of your mind fall through your finger tips to create a new world, with sights, sounds, smells and feelings that belong to someone else, someone you made up. Sewing is quite different, you craft your creations with your hands and when I do it, I talk to no one. Now the pieces of my mind fall out and have no- where to go, they just waft about me like a mist of questions.

I should hate to be a stay at home mother, yet a part of me longs to live in a cottage by the sea, take walks on the morning beach, grow my own herbs and make a living from selling water colours of beautiful shoes.  I would go crazy if it wasn't for the noise of everyone else to keep my mind in check.

Who then am I? To know ones-self is necessary to emotional growth. How can anything as multi-layered as a person possibly know oneself? How can a writer create a convincing multi-layered character when we are in essence so many layers of contradiction?   Sometimes a character won’t perform unless given the right name. What happens when you change your name? When I married and took my husband’s name I wrote a poem wondering what happened to the other me, where did she go? Then I resurrected her and used her as my writers name. How has she changed over the years? In fact how many versions of me are there? Sometimes I feel like all the Elizabeth’s at the end of Bioshock Infinite, there is the mother me, the crafting me, the writing me, the housekeeper me, the wife, teacher, and the crazy me.

My many archetypes illustrated by AndyArtisand

When I was little I used to stare at my reflection until I had tunnel vision. I would get a feeling of great unease as I became more detached from my reflection and I would wait for her to make the wrong move. Those contradictions have long been the focus of story- telling, Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Bruce Banner and the Hulk even OZ in Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

We are far more complex than the good and bad, we are sometimes the painted face of the crying clown (think Tony Hancock). We develop alter egos, (think Ziggy Stardust). We take on stage names until we no longer exist (Judy Garland where did Frances Gum go? And at what stage did she turn into Dorothy Gale?). After forty two years of playing Deirdre Barlow who’s dreams was Anne Kirkbride having, her own or Deirdre’s?

Am I all of Jung’s archetypes at once? Sometimes I have my mother’s face and my father’s manner, other times my mouth is doing that thing my son’s mouth does when demonstrating yo-yo tricks.

Perhaps I change with the phases of the moon. Maybe I need to leave the sewing for a while and go back to chapter nine where through my finger- tips I can think the thoughts of non-existent characters.