Thank You For The Music

A person's taste in music is an incredibly subjective thing. What moves one person to tears to finally find the lyrics to articulate a feeling, does without a doubt move another to change the radio station.

Last night I went to an ABBA Thank You For The Music concert with my older sister. Most people I have mentioned this to have looked at me strangely. Judging by their expressions I assume this to be for two reasons: 1) why would you, they are beyond cheesy and incredibly bad and 2) why would you readily admit to something like that? I admit to something like that for a number of reasons.

Almost two years ago my best and closest friend was going through an intensely difficult and hard time. Despite talking as often as we could via every medium to hand I lived miles away and so couldn’t physically be there for her. I couldn’t hug her, or make her something nice to eat, or get a DVD to distract her with, or just show her how much I cared. I hated it. I hated knowing what she was going through and felt helpless that I couldn’t be there in person to support her. I did what I perceived to be the next best thing; I sent her a hug in a bag. I thought of all the things that made me smile or gave me reason to smile and I wrapped them up and sent them to her in a goodie bag. They weren’t expensive things, just some chocolate, a new bottle of perfume, a purple necklace I knew she would love, a face pack to pamper herself with and a CD. A ABBA Gold CD to be precise. You see many people dismiss this group as Euro Trash, as a band that shouldn’t be allowed out of the 70s or out of a themed club where you hire a costume and dance ridiculously. But I beg to differ.

I used to share a room with my older sister when we were growing up, and being the youngest I had absolutely no say in what music me listened to. So, the blame for my somewhat dubious taste in music lies firmly at her feet (being the youngest does at times have its advantages). She introduced me to ABBA. I have to admit other than singing along loudly and normally tunelessly or dancing in a hired costume at one of those aforementioned themed clubs, I hadn’t given my taste in music that much thought. That is until last night.

A short while ago we had a pretty serious falling, serious enough for me to still be feeling the repercussions and also to be acutely aware of it whenever we spent time together. Yesterday, through the medium of ABBA I began to repair my relationship with my older sister. As I stood in the middle of Hyde Park dancing (badly and singing even worse) I laid to rest much of my hurt and anger and much of the bad feelings I had been carrying around. I had never noticed before how many of the lyrics to songs I had previously dismissed choked me, how they helped ease the wounds inside and as always, made me smile. Smiling isn’t something I have done much of lately, well, actually for quite some time, but yesterday I did and it was with my sister at my side.

Last night as I made my way home I thought about it all; my husband, my mum, my sister, our falling out, my friend and her difficult times. I thought about my journey over the last two years and how far I had come. I thought how much I had achieved even if it didn’t (and it still mostly doesn’t) feel like I have achieved a great deal. And it occurred to me who would have thought when I sent that CD to my friend to ease her suffering and to give her something to smile about (ABBA does if nothing else make most of us smile) it would do the same for me. My intention had been to make her feel better, to give her a reason and something to make her smile. When she needed a hug, or felt overwhelmed and like she was drowning, I wanted her to reach for ABBA and for it to be and do all the things I couldn’t be there to give her. I wanted it to be her security, her hope and her comfort. I wanted in a nutshell, for it to be me. Last night during the concert and on the way home it was all of those things for me.

So, as cheesy as it sounds I really do Thank ABBA for the music. It might not be to your taste but next time you have a friend in need try singing Chiquitita to her, listen to the words and see if they aren’t entirely fitting. Look to see if she doesn’t smile too, maybe even laugh. When you are out with your friends on a night out, if Dancing Queen comes on, look to their faces and you’ll see they are smiling. Stupidly and perhaps more than a little drunkenly, but smiling none-the-less. If you ever find yourself in the midst of a relationship break up listen to the words of One of Us, I bet it will do more than just annoy you. Go on, give a shot, what have you got to lose?

Dissertation

When something is breaking you at what point do you throw in the towel? Should that even be an option?

I've just spent the better part of an hour pounding my fists against a punch bag in order to vent some anger and frustration. My knuckles are slightly blue and slightly swollen, and I wore gloves. What's got me in this mood?... My dissertation, yup got it one, there was no possibility it was going to be anything else.

I have it on good authority that doing a Masters is not meant to be easy. I accept that, but, there's always a but with me, I'm not sure it is meant to be THIS hard. I'll backtrack and elaborate. During my undergraduate I had one or two lecturers who made the comment I was good at academia, stupidly my vanity and pride believed them. So, two years on here I am struggling monumentally through writing 20,000 words.

What's 20,000 words right? We must, on an average day, say so much more than that in idle chit chat, in asking questions, to ourselves - come on admit it you talk to yourself too - just saying hello to people we meet. So, how hard can it be to write 20,000 words intelligently on a subject you've got a great interest in? Evidently the hardest thing I've ever had to do because struggling doesn't begin to describe what I'm going through.

The problem, I think, is that I've lost my voice. I've lost my confidence in myself and my capabilities. I have - in a nut shell - lost myself. Writing academically has always been a challenge for me, something I haven't found easy but have just chipped doggedly away at until I somehow reach the end. It isn't a determination thing but a stubbornness thing, trust me there is a difference. But, with this dissertation there doesn't seem to be an end. It doesn't matter how hard I try or how hard I work it doesn't feel good enough or to be making a difference. And I am so tired of trying. I am so frustrated with the futility of it all.

I don't, not for one moment, expect this to be easy. Nothing worth achieving is every easy, of this I am aware. And, knowing myself the way that I do, I won't be giving up any time soon until it is done. Why? Because I don't give in. That isn't to say I have an aversion to quitting. Not at all. There are times when it is simply better to admit perhaps you aren't on the right path and something just isn't meant to be, and gracefully stop. I know this. I'm just stubborn. Once I have set myself in a direction or on a path nothing moves me from it. See, stubbornness not determination. The thing is, I wouldn't mind this trait in myself if the sense of achievement I got at the end was proportionate to my stubbornness. But it never is. I don't feel a sense of achievement any more. So, if I don't feel this, if I don't feel pride in myself, or relief at the end - why am I doing it? For what purpose?

That said, I guess now is the time to get back on with writing it - so wish me luck because right now I feel like I need a great deal more than luck.

Time Out

My husband and I moved into our current house nearly a year ago, being that he is in the army we are renting. My pet hate, or least one of them, is people who are lazy and only do half a job, the kind of people who cut corners rather than having a sense of pride in what they do and giving it all that they have. Unfortunately it would seem the majority of the those work for the people we rent our property from. Lucky me.

We had a number of bushes outside our front room window, they were so overgrown we couldn't open the windows and absolutely no light came into the room. So, on the day we signed for the house we asked if they could be chopped down and removed. Yeah right. Half a job and watcher of half a job turned up, hacked the bushes down to a stump and then promptly left. Oh did I forget to mention the bushes were so overgrown they had killed all the grass around them? No, well they did. So, mutilating them left nothing behind apart from said stumps and brown lumpy and bumpy earth, which no matter how much grass seed I put down and turn over refuses to look anything other than ugly. Thanks guys. No really, thanks. Every couple of weeks I go outside and do monumental battle with these stubs because they just refuse to die and despite my attempts, they can't be dug up. They manage to sprout new branches and grow wonderfully but can they be dug up or killed off? Not likely. Believe me I have tried. Oh yes, a whole lot of blood, tears of frustration and blisters have gone into trying to get them out of the ground. It's not over yet, I am nothing if I am not determined to make the outside of our house look semi decent and feel like a home.

That said, I have now moved on to the back garden. I'm not fickle I just divert my attention to another problem until I am ready to go back to one that had previously defeated me, and when I do it's with the intention of winning.

So today, instead of working on my dissertation because I can't seem to say the things that I need to say the way that I need to say them (I have to tick those appropriate boxes after all) I did battle with the garden. On the right hand side of our patio our landlord was kind enough, remind me to thank him, to plant a rose bush, two evergreen thingys and two other unknown trees. Please keep in mind this little side panel to our patio is about twelve inches wide and three foot long. You can see where I am going with this can't you. After months of desperately trying to 'manage' these plants, trees etc I finally gave in ... I took my husband's mini saw, our friend's gardening fork and cut down the trees and dug up one of the evergreen thingys. And I feel suitably smug with myself, even if my back is killing me, I was brutally attacked by snails, yes brutally attacked, got covered in mud and rained on.

The thing is yes I am absolutely fuming that there are people out there who are lazy and pathetic enough to think it is okay to get by on doing just the minimum, to do half a job because it means they don't have to exert themselves and can get home five minutes earlier. How can they live like that? How do they sleep at night? I mean not only can they hardly be tired, they haven't exerted themselves or worked hard enough for that, but how can not feel their conscience nagging them? I might ask them the next time I have the pleasure of watching them do half a job, that should give them something to think about before turning the light out at night.

Complaining, or ranting aside, am I pleased with my efforts? Yes I am. I do feel like I have a sense of having done something productive, but the best thing is I DID IT. No one helped me, no one was there to tell me I was doing it wrong or I should have done it another way instead, or I should have left it alone because I was wasting my time, or that I've made it look worse. Of course there is every possibility that I have done all of those things: made it look worse, done it wrong etc but I don't care because I did it by myself. It might be something small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things but to me it is an achievement. I think there are times when we are too hard on ourselves, others too, but in particular, ourselves. Rather than congratulating ourselves when we achieve something and feeling a sense of pride in what we have done, we dismiss it and move right on to the next thing on our list. Like a fine wine or a tantalising piece of cake I think moments of achievement should be savoured, should be allowed to be enjoyed and luxuriated in. We should all slow down occasionally, take a deep breath and just pause for a moment, however short, to look at what we’ve achieved. When we measure ourselves we shouldn’t look at our far we still have to go, we should take care to see who far we have come, how much progress we have made and be proud.

Introducing Lincoln

My neighbour two doors down is lucky enough to have the kind of job that takes her different places frequently, unfortunately as does her husband. Having taken over the care of Lincoln or Linc for short, a 2 year old Labrador from her mum, he was too much for her to handle and assumed the role the dominate one, they are forced to put him into kennels on a regular basis. Enter me, who has spent the better part of 8 months trying to convince her husband a dog would be a good addition to our family, he thinks I would teach it bad habits. The injustice. After much debating we managed to convince them it would be better all round if we, as in my husband and I, looked after Linc for them while they were away. I'm am entirely sure my husband has agreed on the premise it will serve to teach me the lesson of how much of a restriction they are, personally I think his reluctance is more do with not wanting to share my affection. Well I would wouldn't I? I'm not going to readily agree to teaching a dog bad habits am I? At least not when anyone can hear at any rate.

Any way, getting back to Linc. We had a wonderful pet dog, Mutt (no laughing at the name we were nothing if original in our family when it came to naming pets: our cat was called Kitty), when I was growing up. He might not have been the brightest star in the night sky but he was everything you could want in a pet: loving, affectionate, entertaining, always pleased to see you, great listener and an all round great dog. We said goodbye to him over 10 years ago and I still have a picture of him, groovy carpet included, in my filo fax. To this day I am unable to look at him without being filled with a multitude of memories and becoming tearful. When we used to take him to the park, we had to spell the word because he would go nuts if we said it out loud, he would beg for scrapes of bread from the old couples feeding the ducks (so shameful). If that didn't win him a crust or two he'd simple snatch it away before the ducks could get there and then run as fast as he could away from their angry beaks. Did I forget to mention he was a coward? I prefer to gloss over that part.

So, taking care of Linc has been both painful for the memories he induced and full of laughter. Watching him shake his squeaky drill toy all over the garden, more often than not hitting himself with it, getting his foot trapped in the strap of his sling-ball and listening to sounds of him sleeping has been one hell of an experience. I will confess to having a really bad night's sleep last night, I kept waking up worrying about Linc: what if he needed to go to the toilet? Did he have enough water in his bowl? Was that the sound of him being sick? Was he okay? I won't admit this to hubby but when I took the large decorative pillows off the bed, which I do every night because hubby simply gets in around them, pretty impressive trick really, I thought about Linc laying on them. At first I was none too pleased, I'm also the one that removes the covers and has to wash said decorative pillows, but, then I thought of him laying on the hard floor. I left them on the floor and purposely didn't put them out of reach. During the night, when hubby was asleep and I woke to check on Linc I felt better seeing him slumped up against the big pillow, his head on the smaller one drooling. I know I shouldn't have left them there in the first place, it was a given that Linc would make himself comfortable, but ... what can I say Mutt had his own duvet so what's the problem with a few pillows? That sounds worse than it actually is, Mutt was not in the least pampered or spoilt I mean we didn't buy him jumpers and blankets to keep warm in during Winter, or cute outfits to for Summer, the worst he had to suffer was me putting a pair of my knickers on his head a bonnet when I was little (his ears poked out the holes for my legs perfectly). The duvet had belonged to one of us kids, when we graduated to a double bed in our teenage years we no longer had a use for it and Mutt was getting old. We used to leave it on the top landing over the hot water pipes and next to the radiator but moved it downstairs eventually, Mutt had by this point got quite old and getting up and down the stairs was difficult (he had problems with his back legs)so we thought his old bones could do with a little padding.

Looking after Linc has reminded me, especially in relation to how hard the last two years have been and how I have been let down, just how much pets give back in exchange for a little bit of food and if a dog, the odd walk. I think Linc has started to help me unlock places within myself that I have kept secure and closed and for that I am thankful as much as I am afraid. With any luck it is journey we can continue together if he gives hubby and I a good report when his real family comes home.

Tired as I am I have made myself do things I wouldn't have done for myself, like leaving the house instead of working at my lap top all day. I got up early, well earlier than I have done in long time, to walk him because he needs me to do that. I take time out from working just to play with him in the garden for 10 or so minutes instead of just surfing the net. I make sure there is shade for him in the garden when it is hot, okay so that bit is maybe going too far because he could just go in the kitchen to cool off, but I do it any way.

So for anyone who has suffered disappointment or has trust issues I absolutely recommend a pet, they can't heal all wounds but they certainly help the road to recovery and I'm going to be more than a little sad when we have to give him back tomorrow lunch time.

Charlotte Debono

On 21st April 2008 we buried my nan, my mother's mother. A difficult day was made all the harder by the things we discovered about her, or more to the point discovered how much we didn't know about her.

My nan was a strange, eclectic lady with a heavy french accent who always smelt of a comforting mixture of cigarette smoke and fabric softener. She was the kind of woman who loved freely, the harder the time you had experienced the more love she lavished on you, but as is often the sad nature of these things she left herself open to being taken advantage of, so perhaps she loved a little too freely.

I remember her funeral being a very emotionally raw day for myself, I'd got married not two days before and was in the midst of a family falling out. Regardless of all the raw turbulent emotions I was feeling that day, not least the hurt knowing my own mother had not been fully reconciled with her own mother at the time of her death, I was stunned at how much of my grandmother's life was shadowed by the unknown. I knew nothing of her childhood, nothing of her sister; was she older or younger, did they fight like I was with mine? What kind of things did she like to do? Where did she spend her childhood? In what country? What was it like? What was her mother, my great grandmother like? What was her father, my great grandfather like? What was my grandfather like? What made her join the nunnery? What made her leave? What made her choose my grandfather as her husband? What was their relationship like? When did they divorce? Why did they divorce? Where did he go after the divorce? Why didn't any one know and why didn't any one talk about it or ask questions?

Now nearly two years on I find myself thinking about her a great deal. Missing her and hating the fact I let me own resentment of family politics get in the way of building a true grandmother/granddaughter relationship. Often, when I least expect it, I can smell her. Smell the scent of cigarette smoke and softener that is my memory of her even though she had given up smoking ten or so years before she died.

Lately because I have been struggling to find out who I am, why I do the things that I do, feel the way that I do, react the way that I do I find my thoughts drifting back to Charlotte. I wonder if I am like her, if I love in the same unrestrained and all-giving manner that she did. I wonder if am as secretive as her when it comes to past hurts. I wonder why and what made her fall out with my mother. I wonder a great deal about these things and find the gaps frustrating but more sad than anything else. I wonder if in the name of self-preservation we go through life only revealing what we choose to reveal, hiding that small spark that is at the centre of our being that we may in times of need reach down and find it there without anyone else knowing of its existence.

Pests

I'm not particularly green-fingered, that is I am usually better at killing things than I am growing them but I still try and I do have my success stories however few... tomatoes, Christmas Cactus, and my money plant. That about sums it up really.

I have this vision of having a garden like you see on the adverts, you know the ones where the grass is neat and green and luscious. Mine is lumpy, brown in places and bald in others. Where the flowers all stand proudly to attention displaying their blooms like medals of honour, the colours vibrant and eye-catching. My hand-painted pots are certainly eye-catching, they look like next door’s toddler has been inspired and handed a paint brush, the flowers and plants...bedraggled, riddled with holes and looking incredibly sorry for themselves. I like my pots though.

Next door’s garden is one such garden. Landscaped, well groomed, well tended, well established and picturesque. I shield the eyes of my poor little plants so they don’t know how the other half live.

My problem is the resident slugs and snails in my garden. It would seem that while my flowers and plants look less than desirable to me they are to the slugs and snails. Gggggrrrr.

Finally unable to stand my endeavours being completely destroyed in a fit of rage I stormed into the kitchen and used my entire salt pot on the ones stupid enough not to have disappeared when I had glared at them 30 seconds before. I’m ashamed to say that I felt pleasure watching them suffer, after all how dare they eat my tentative efforts to make my small patch of this planet pleasing to look at. I think I might have trumpeted triumphantly. I might have. Okay I did. I whooped around the patio laughing gleefully as I whisked away my pots and removed them to another part of the garden. Let it not be said Mother Nature doesn’t have a sense of humour; you should have seen the mess those slimy repellent creatures left behind on said patio...so disgusting. Needless to say I was much more subdued when cleaning later.

I still say that I won that particular battle, the proof is in the fact they haven’t come back. Mind you, the damage has been done to my now pitiful plants. But it doesn’t matter because I've moved on, I saw a bag of 45 tulip bulbs the other day.... TULIPS HERE I COME!!

Lost in Nevernever Land

Today is not a good day. I feel tearful and disconnected from everything. I have to hand in my dissertation in about a month and I've no plans for after that date. My life as I know is essentially going to come to an end... Does it scare me? Yes and no. Yes because I am well aware there are people looking at me expectantly, I should of course by my age have figured out what I'm going to be when I grow up, so obviously I should know what my next step is. That bit scares me. That and actually telling people I don't have a clue, sure I have a list as long as you like of what I don't want to do/be etc but what do I want to do? I don't know, worse I don't even know what I can do, what I'm good at or who to ask what I can do. Huh that is a great deal to NOT know when studying for a Masters as an apparent mature student. The irony.

To be entirely honest I am not that stressed about not having this figured out for myself, or least I wouldn't feel so much like a disappointment if the significant people in my life didn't keep pointing out that I need to have this figured out. I know that, I really do. I feel like by not knowing and not having a plan I am letting people down, disappointing them. I can feel their frustration and simmering anger hiding beneath the surface of their calmness, I can see them swallowing it because they don't want to upset me whilst at the same time telling me these are things I should have thought about ages ago. Of course they are right; I should have thought about these things ages ago, like when picking my GCSEs or A Levels. Clearly I've not thought about this stuff enough.

Perhaps my procrastination is about avoiding adult responsibility and wherever possible I will just do nothing in the vain hope 'something' will happen or be decided for me. Perhaps I'm attempting to make myself a permanent resident of Nevernever Land. I'm sure there are some that would agree, to a certain extent I do myself. How can I not when there is so much evidence in its favour?