The vertiginous nature of yes

March 2013
1.
Vanessa and I are sitting outside a cafe, each in front of our laptop, working. Sometimes we are talking, but mostly we are writing. A woman comes along whom Vanessa knows. They've not seen each other in a while and it turns out she is the head of journalism at City Varsity, an educational establishment just down the road from here. A place where the man I fell for lectured on his specialist subject. My mind wanders to him as they talk. He has left town now, which is good... but sometimes my mind trots over to him like a forgetful old dog, hoping to have a good lean against someone it has forgotten died years ago.
I vere back into the conversation as this woman asks who I am and what I'm up to. She says she's heard of the show, but that she couldn't make it. I say not to worry, and, as I mostly do, mean it. I say it might have been interesting for her students, that we're always looking for places to perform it, people who might want to see it. She asks me if I'll do a lecture on journalist safety for her journalism students. I say yes. She heads off. Within the hour she has emailed me and we have agreed a date and time for my lecture.
Hahahahahaha! I'm going to be doing a lecture on journalist safety.
Oh.
2.
Tracey takes me to a lecture by a very eminent African academic. The place is heaving - we get there early to get good seats, and this is a town where you don't arrive on time as a point of principal. During the lecture I take lots of notes... but I struggle to understand what he was talking about - not the finer detail but, you know, what he's talking about at all. By halfway through I had concluded that I am still a ghastly academic, that age has not withered my massive ignorance. He's taking questions and I want to ask Tracey if she has some colouring with her, or a book with pictures. I am such a disappointment.
There were, though, drinks afterwards and I inevitably bump into folk who'd seen the show. Cape Town is a small place. Well, no, it's more complicated than that, but let's say that the pools in which I find myself pleasantly eddying are very small, especially, I guess, if you are used to the enormo-city that is London and its absurdly big, beautiful and bounteous arts scene there.
There are also snacks, which was good, as I am probably having more wine than is right and proper.
A point comes where Tracey introduces me to two men, one of whom seems to be called Zavick. Obviously that can't be right, but I can't for the life of me work out what his name really is. He's an artist. The two chaps and I talk about the lecture a bit, by this stage the wine has loosened my ability to be bold and brazen about my cluelessness. The other chap is a doctor who has practiced in the UK. I do a great deal of communication skills training, including with doctors, and he and I have a ball discussing various matters surrounding communication in the UK and here. Tracey is eddying around the reception - she knows everyone - and then 'Zavick' is suggesting I do the show at his studio, cards are exchanged, farewells are hugged and Tracey drops me home.
In the morning someone called Zavick has befriended me on facebook. Zavick....? Zavick! And he messages me to say that he means business, I need to come over to see the studio, to make a date for the show.
****************************
And there you have it. I bump into people, they ask us to do the show, they ask me to do a lecture. These are the things that happen in a small place when you're the kind of person who gets talking to people. Or maybe it's because I'm 5'4". Who can say? I just know that when people say I am brave or adventurous, I understand that, deep down, all I am doing is stumbling from one preposterous even to another, or, better put, putting one foot in front of the last just as the previous one does not seem to be holding my weight anymore. It's a question of saying yes or plummeting to the floor. Mostly I have a sense of running away from the tidal wave, out of the burning building, rowing away from the sinking liner.
I have no idea how we will do the show in Studio41, but I go there and see it, I understand that Zavick means business, and so we will.
I cannot imagine putting a lecture together, but I cannot shy away. It is my duty to do the lecture: I have been forced, kicking and screaming into a better understanding than most of journalist safety and if someone wants me to tell their students what I have learnt then, quite frankly, it's not about what I think or feel any more. It is about talking about the dangers, telling the stories of those who have died, of those who live now in fear to those who are yet to start out. It's not about whether I feel qualified to talk about any of this, whether it makes me uncomfortable, it's about speaking out for journalists who need our protection and I have to get over myself and do the right thing.

Chewing on the wheelbarrow

February into March 2013

One night getting in from a performance after my flatmates have gone to bed, I am challenged by one of the preternaturally humanoid cats who also share the flat. She shoots out one end of the sofa, I approach the other, she shoots out that end, almost simultaneously, skidding across the wooden floor, Cato-like in her vigilance.

It's about 10.30pm and my roommate is up. Cue drinking, eating, giggling and both of us practicing our standing. It may as well be 10am: the little fella is AWAKE. Quietly awake, but awake nonetheless. And he cannot understand why I won't play ball. Or Barney the Dinosaur (Barney is, apparently, a dinosaur from our imagination..... aargghh!!!) Or that great hair pulling game. Having got up at 6.45 today, before my miniature roommate, in order go to Home Affairs to extend my visa, (because we are extending the tour for a schools' festival!) I want to go to sleep.

And then he starts talking. Really talking, loud, insistent words designed to put me off my journey to bed. He is emphatic, insistent and so I continue with my ablutions, get my stuff off my bed, put on my jim-jams, and then settle him again, dummy, blanket, adoptive-love-teddy. I tell him it's time to go to sleep and, miraculously, he agrees - lights out and not a peep.

The flat, however, is not so accommodating: it makes all kinds of noise in the wind. It's like there are a number of very boisterous ghosts in the flat. The cats are responsible for quite a lot of movement and noise, eating lizards, chasing their own tails, springing unbidden from places I didn't know were there, but there is more to it than them. The wind can get very, very high here in Cape Town, but even when it's not that high the noises are frequent and bizarre. Luckily, though, the skill of sleeping through when my roommate wakes in the night, means that I have extended my already considerable sleeping skills and the wind can rearrange things - and it does - yet I will mostly sleep on through.

My roommate is growing fast, he can crawl forwards now, and says specific things, rather than just burbling. He's not speaking any language I speak, but I can tell he's saying things, proper things with proper meaning. My cousin's boy, Matt, spent lots of time with their Zulu domestic worker when he was very small. So, when he started talking scribble, before he could actually speak in a language anyone else could get, his scribble was Zulu. Ten years on he knows very little Zulu, studying it at school now he wishes he was as fluent in Zulu as he was in its nonsense counterpart.

By day, my roommate is tormented by the cats - they sit and stare at him as his unpredictable shuffle-trundle brings him purposefully closer to them. At the last minute they simply get up and move slightly further away, escaping the baby's grasp. Obviously this is a metaphor for life: you may want something, but it eludes you. Often it seem to elude you at the last minute, willfully, only to sit just a small distance away to observe you, emotionless. Frustration is what it's all about. Or maybe that's just me.

My roommate is, as I have mentioned, a gorgeous, easy baby. He may simply chew on his new wheelbarrow, but he also smiles and burbles, giggles and only complains a bit when he wants feeding/changing/more Barney. He nearly always gets a tour of the kitchen if he visits a restaurant and everyone remembers his name. I repeatedly tell his parents how lucky they are to have such a good baby. I should state clearly here that they seem great parents to me, but being a great parent will not necessarily bring you a good baby, and vice versa.

He is a classically South African baby, given up by his mother for adoption and now living with his gay parents. And his mum chose my friends to be his parents. The incredible constitution of South Africa means that a gay couple can adopt, indeed, a single gay friend of theirs has adopted. Of course, the fabulous constitution combined with the terrible amount of babies in need of families means gay people can adopt a perfect, beautiful, baby.

Not that the exemplary South African constitution means that there is no homophobia in South Africa, far from it, there is even a thing called corrective rape suffered predominantly by women, but I am sure, what with rape not being about sex and all that, that gay men suffer it too... which would be funny, obviously, were it not beyond ghastly. But where there is a constitution, there is hope, and I am committed to hoping that the extensive nature of these crimes will pass into South Africa's history, a strange, chilling glitch.

There have always been lots of black or coloured people looking after white kids in South Africa, but now, more and more, you see couples of all shades looking after coloured and black babies. There are so many different stories, you cannot guess what any given story is, so why bother? The story is that babies need families and grown-ups often want children. Mark says that people sometimes say to him what a wonderful thing they are doing for my roommate, but the truth is that they wanted to be parents and they are lucky to have him and they know it.

In which it's made clear to me I'm lucky that Kate was shot once and killed

March 2013
I have already sung a song of love for the many fabulous folk we encounter in Cape Town, but one song is not enough.
Like many others, as I age I am working out which things really are great for me. Three of them are
1. Walking
2. Seeing theatrical productions
3. Eating fruit.
Mysteriously, amongst other chums, I find myself with two buddies: one is a walker and one is a theatre-goer, with access to seemingly everything which is going on on the Cape Town scene. Frustratingly I do not meet a fruit dealer and find myself having to purchase my own fruit although Mark, one of the fathers of my eight-month-old roommate, makes the best smoothies known to humanity, one day producing a little something shot-through with basil grown on their roof terrace which Ikeraam, the other father, does not like much, so I get extra rations.
What I'm saying here is I really cannot complain. While Martin and Jacques go on the most tyre-expensive trip around Namibia in modern history, I am looked after by the good folk of Cape Town in a way I cannot imagine before and will surely become some kind of dream afterwards.
It is Stacey who takes me walking. There are lots of places to walk here in CT but, how can I put this....? If they can, most South Africans will avoid walking. The vast majority of South Africans have no choice but to walk and walk and walk, to work, to their friends' places, across the highway at dusk - I could do a whole series of blogs about the transport infrastructure crisis here, where pavements are anathema and the idea of a public transport system, owned by the people, seems as far off as full employment and a decent education for all. Those who do have access to a car may well use it to get to the gym, the pool or iron man competition but they would no more think of walking five minutes to the shops than running naked through their own brother's wedding. Actually, my uncle walks his area a lot. He comes across, though, as rather an eccentric, shorts (never mind the season), a woman's red body-warmer with fur-lined hood, cinched at the waist by a belt, and, given the rest of the look, standard sandals with socks. He pounds the streets with breaking-edge scientific philosophy on his ipod and is, remarkably in this crime-ridden city, never bothered by anyone. Can't think why.
Stacey, though, is a walker. She is also a purveyor of coffee, cheeses and little boxes of the best snacks. I even stop talking myself to listen to what she has to say, so interesting is she. The walks are beautiful, her friends and family are interesting and it's just great. I can walk a bit of my angst away, stop worrying about the fact I am not writing, talk about my heartbreak to a woman who Knows About Life, though, disappointingly, she has yet to solve it. And I get to see Cape Town from many new angles, literal ones.
Conveniently, my theatre maestra is Tracey so I do not have to trouble my shocking memory to remember their names. Tracey takes me to opening nights where there is free food, introduces me to actors and artistic directors, explains the Cape Town theatre scene to me. It is at one of these events where, not only do I get to listen to John Kani speak, an inspirational ten minutes where he raises up, above us all, the young people we have just seen perform - where they belong - but I also get to shake his hand and gush and generally embarrass myself. I also meet a woman who has seen Sometimes I Laugh Like My Sister.
She is, she says, pleased to meet me, she wants to talk about the show. And I am grateful that I never, ever relax and presume that someone wants to tell me I'm brave and eloquent and a beautiful performer.... obviously sometimes they do want to do just that, but not on this occasion. No. As she stands just that bit too close, even for me, she tells me that she could hardly stand the show, that she wanted to walk out. I say, I wish she had. Er... that sounds really bad, but I say it in a way that means she would have been as welcome to go as she was to stay. And I mean it. Bartelt and I always mean that. We do not expect everyone to like our work and it is emotional stuff, people must look after themselves. She says it was horrible to sit through, that so may awful things happen in South Africa, she tells me of two terrible attacks on people she knows. Other people are coming up to us, including my friend Tracey, but I do not break eye contact with this woman, who feels as if she might break apart at any moment. I feel I must stand here ready to catch the glowing, furious filings of her shattering self. Because that's what it feels like, as if she cannot keep her self together, that the pain and fear and anger are too much to contain. I hold my ground, I hold my eye contact, just as I tell doctors and dentists and lawyers to do in the communication skills training I dole out with alacrity. Frankly, I do not know what else to do. The show has affected her, or she was already in this state pre-show, and it is my duty, as Bartelt and I have said from the start, to bear witness to whatever the show unleashes.
I'm managing, I'm doing well, and then she tells me I'm lucky, that Kate was lucky just to be shot once in the back and die, she was not assaulted by several people, tortured, afraid for her life as the cruelty that humanity can dole out enjoyed her fear and suffering. She was not tied up, not gang-raped, not left for dead. She had a good death, a clean murder. I hold my ground, my eye-contact, it is all I have left: I must hold this, she is speaking about herself not about me, not about Kate, she is hurt, she is lashing out, I do not know her journey, I cannot, must not judge, she is allowed these feelings, and it is good that she is expressing them.
I just want to yell "FUCK YOU! YOU KNOW NOTHING!"  but that's because I am weak and I am ego. In the end, that I want to do that, has nothing to do with her, it is my self-pity, as strong as hers, pulling at its reigns, desperate to hurtle across the space between us and shake her until she understands. But we can never understand one another, the gap remains no matter how long your arms.
But I don't. I don't know why, but it's a combination of feeling so sorry for this wounded woman, years of post-show practice and the final bell going for the show I'm about to see. There has been no appropriate moment to stop the conversation, so I choose an inappropriate one and break away anyway.
And this one angry, hurt voice, in a sea of praise for what we have created, is enough; I am assailed by that familiar doubt, wondering if we should ever have made the show, and this feeling sits with me a while, open and unresolved: no one can tell me I was right to do it, but then equally no one can tell me I was wrong.

A brief history of self-pity

February 2013

I now have the most magnificent opportunity to enjoy Cape Town. And I do.... to a certain extent. But all of it is tinged by me wanting a man who does now want me. Yes, he's the one from a couple of blogs ago, if you've been following my eloquent whitterings. I've been here before, not specifically in Cape Town with a man who does not want me, but you know, in Birmingham, Granada, London, Bury St Edmunds, New York, Beyton etc etc ad nauseam, where there is a man who does not want me. What's weird about this situation is that he does want to spend time with me... just.... you know, on his terms. He wants to step back from where we got to and revert to the good friends setting. It has all happened very quickly and despite my extensive experience in unrequited love (I have a PhD) I am ridiculously surprised at the strength of my feelings after what has been a matter of weeks.

For the sake of my ability to get up in the morning, the coherence of my personality, my general mental health, I should not spend time with him. Spending time with him is too enjoyable, too safe, too exciting, too fricking meaningful for me; it reminds me suddenly and after so many years of not experiencing this, of what my life could be if there was someone beside me, even if they were irritating and difficult and, you know, human some of the time. Even though I know they could not save me from my existential angst they could make me a cup of tea of an afternoon and pop out for nightnurse when I'm ill and prevent my mother from lying awake worrying who the hell is going to look after me when she is no longer here. I don't care about flowers and romantic walks, I want someone to hold my head out of the toilet bowl when I am throwing up. That's probably why I'm single: love for me exists only in action, in engaging with the mess of life, not in lovesongs and grand gestures to apologise for not turning up/being rude to my boss at a drunken party/falling out of love with me.

Unfortunately this man has lifted the corner of a long-neglected curtain into a room so dark and cobweby, so full of skeletons, ghosts, and all kinds of the living dead that I don't know what to do with myself. At 40 I am living the life my 15-year-old self was terrified I would end up with: the strange, itinerant lifestyle of an artist with no husband/boyfriend/fuckbuddy with benefits (see tea, vomit, above) to give a hoot or two about me. And I have the added removal of my still point, my scrambled-egg-making-holiday-planning-company-of-her-younger-sister-loving Kate.

Exposed by this latest, vanishingly rare, encounter with a man who actually likes my company and fancies me, each breath seems more painfully comical than the last as I struggle to keep my composure all over town. Beautiful, interesting Cape Town, which was already heaving with loss for me, has, unbelievably, gone and acquired one more loss, a man who is still here in town, who opened up to me, let in the light, and as quickly absented himself, leaving me to deal with what the famous incredible Cape Town light, so popular with all those films and ads, exposes within me. Most surprisingly, most disturbingly, my long-dead father shakes his gory locks at me in ways almost forgotten and I long for him so hard I fear this longing will solidify and burst out of me unbidden.

I walk hard and fast in the summer heat all over town, take myself for that swim every day, trying to outrun my neuroses, zombies rearing their rotting heads unpredictably all over the shop. I try new places I've not been with any of these darn people who no longer want my company, some - admittedly - through no fault of their own, and find myself in a hotel cafe because they have wifi and I can work there, for the price of too many Coke Zeros. The staff are lovely, which helps.

Before too long two English couples are sharing my table and we get talking. They are Rotarians. They are here delivering hundreds of wheelchairs to people who would not get them otherwise. They tell me the story of how they first got into it, how many thousands they have delivered to many countries, of the people they have met along the way - the hopeful users, the other Rotarians who put them up, the dignitaries who attend the Ceremonies Of Handing Over. They describe how disabled people arrive at the prescribed venue, against all odds, dragging themselves, carried by others, and are overcome by emotion at having their mobility for the first time in their lives, a mobility they truly believed, and with good reason, would never be theirs.

They tell me a woman came one day, with a very hunched back, and from under the blanket she was wearing as a cape slithered a human form, a man, collapsing to the floor, her son, whom she had carried on her back for the 19 years of his life. The son gets a wheelchair and their lives are changed forever.

The five of us, five Brits, sit and marvel at the level of need here in South Africa, at how little it takes to change a life - in either direction - at the love-in-action of this mother, of so many people they have encountered in their charitable work, which runs alongside their full working lives.

We talk about Kate, about the show, they are so sympathetic. We exchange cards, take photos, we laugh, I even succeed in not crying my tears of self-pity, because that's what they would be: not tears for these strugglers from their stories, it would come from somewhere else, somewhere dishonourable, and I try to think of those who would like to know about their work.

Walking back down Long Street, walking home, I have had my spirits lifted by this human interaction, with the Brits, with the hotel bar staff, and I am just that bit quieter, slightly less likely to burst into tears. I have a word with myself about my ocean of self-pity, I begin the count of my legion blessings, numbers one and two being the use of each of my legs, number three that I can afford one too many Coke Zeros. My luck is in fine fettle I remind myself. And yet I can feel it there, somewhere very safe, the currently quiet desperation, fear, indulgent, pointless self-loathing linked to a man I did not know six weeks ago, and I wonder what kind of ungrateful meathead I am if even the Rotarians' stories cannot shift that shizzle.

Snipers on the roof

Saturday 16 February 2013
Like all the best stories, this begins with a knock at the door. I was sure it was Martin or Jacques coming down from upstairs, so as I shout "Je viens!" (we are so, like, multi-lingual), I pull what is something between a hand towel and a slightly larger hand towel around my nakedness and head for the front door. It was just me and my eight-month-old roommate hanging out that day, you see, so neither of us had yet bothered to get dressed. Well, one of us was wearing our nappy, but I shan't say which.
I open the door and it's the guy from Telcom. Hoorah! He is a bit surprised and I pretend it's only because I tell him I do not have the key for upstairs, where he is due to do some work today. He was expecting me to be a man called Mark. A dressed man called Mark, I'm guessing. I put some clothes on, grab the baby and the keys and we all go upstairs. After an eternity of ever loudening knocking, finally I rouse Jacques and my roommate and I are able to go back downstairs.
A little later in the day there is another knock at the door. I don't fall for it again: I've elected to put some clothes on but I cannot call out as I am brushing my teeth; I open the door and there are two of THE hottest police officers I have ever seen, and I am a police role actor and assessor and so I've seen a considerable chunk of police officerdom in my time. I lean seductively against the door and say, through my toothbrush,
"E-o"
"Hi, miss. Is Mr Gooding here?"
"No, I air-ibi soway, ee at ork."
"I see."
"E wa men oo ee ere, ut a oo o oo ork. Ca I ewlp?"
He opens his notebook.
"Is this still Mr Gooding's number."
I take the opportunity to lean closer.
"Es, is. Ca I arse wa i abou?"
"It's the opening of Parliament and we usually have snipers here."
"Oh, es! I owe ore abou at! On't ee a oblem!
This would have been the ideal moment to invite these beautiful young men in for something hot, but I glance up at Officer Notebook's companion and notice.... is it a rye smile? Or is it, in fact, an out-and-out smirk? The brush droops in my mouth, the moment passes, and for now they slip through my fingertips. For now.
"I'll give Mr Gooding a call, then."
"Oh, oo!" I semi-shout, just the smallest amount of toothepaste-ridden spittle issuing from my mouth, thinking that Mark will be very pleased to hear from these chaps, very pleased indeed.
We get to watch and hear lots of rehearsals for the opening of Parliament from our 12th floor eerie, which is taking place opposite the flat. Of course, rather than seeing if the sniper is as hot as his colleagues and, oh yeah, watching the opening of parliament actually happen from the flat, we go and do a matinee for a group of drama school students.
At the end of the performance (it was compulsory for them to write a review of it) one young man is overheard to comment that he thinks it's not okay to make money out of your own sister's murder. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Making money. Oh, hahahahaha! Yeah, right. I wish I'd heard him, told him how much we've sunk into this tour, and then advised him that if he wants to make money he should get some proper training for a proper job. So I'm glad I didn't hear him - the students didn't get to see me pull back my skin and reveal the desperate, bitter performer/writer I could be if I just relaxed the clench on my soul.
The Q&A with the students lasts  a long time and is so interesting. When the last one leaves we realise we only really have time to pop to a restaurant, grab some food and head back to do the evening show. It sells out, and the next day and the next day.
Our week at Theatre Arts Admin Collective culminates in a wild end-of-run party, which consists of Martin, Jacques and I wandering up and down Long Street - the main party street here in Cape Town - trying to find somewhere where the music is quiet enough on a Saturday night for us to sit and have something to eat in our old age. We settle outside an only slightly pounding restaurant and watch the young beautiful people walk past. Martin points out a woman and says her hair is beautiful. Jacques and I start wondering whether it is a wig or a weave and Martin asks what we are talking about. Well, we say, we are wondering... whether it was a wig or a weave, obviously. And, we discover, much to our delight, that Martin knows nothing, really, nothing, about the choices open to black women for their hairdos. Seriously, he knows less than a guy with a shaved head and a long pony tail and the laziest woman in history, who washes her hair when something new moves into it. We laugh at Martin, Martin laughs at Martin, we play spot the weave -  Martin loses - and we leave Long Street in good time for an early-ish night.
And we are surprised to find that our two Cape Town runs are over: it is unbelievable. I am reeling from the generosity of the people we have met, their stories, and I am preparing for about five weeks in Cape Town before we leave for Johannesburg. What on earth am I going to do with myself?

Things happen when you least expect them: a lesson murder has taught me about love

Obviously the last thing I wanted to do (apart from lose a limb, be wrongly accused of embezzlement, start a political movement based on the principles of Scientology, etc) was to fall for some man while in Cape Town. And as everyone tells you there are between 5 - 6 straight men to every straight woman in Cape Town I was pretty much on target for this. Add to this the fact that I am the kind of woman who is approached by a man roughly every decade, and then only because it's a really busy bar and I'm the shortest woman at it so he has to talk to me as he reaches above me for his drinks, and you get the lifestyle of one of the most undesirable women, at least of my acquaintance, if not on the planet.
My undesirability has its upsides: I very rarely get hassle from drinkers in bars/workmen on the street/my friends' husbands when everyone else has left the room. In fact, I am the kind of woman women I have only just met confidently leave their husbands with while they roam a party: they know that everything will be alright. Neither have I ever been pressurised to do anything the least bit jiggy in order to get a job. I was recently talking to an utterly gorgeous young woman, having just seen her do a really good job on stage. We were agreeing vigorously that doing sexual favours to forward your career is not on. I pointed out to her that she was far more principled than I as I have never had the chance to test my ethical stance on this one - no one has ever requested anything from my yard, whereas she regularly gets demands for her milkshake which she turns down. Respec. Oh, and I live a wonderful life of diagonal sleeping, surely the king of sleeps, and not available to those with a nocturnal companion.
It also has its downsides, one of them being that if a chap, who is not concurrently seeing one or more other people and who can actually look me in the eye, does show any interest in me I either miss it entirely (I'm putting this category in because although I'm not sure it exists, it's good for my ego to think that there are more people out there who find me attractive than the handful I've been aware of during these 40+ years), presume he is joking or, well, fall for him.
Of course, in the end, nothing came of this thing between this rare heterosexual man in Cape Town and me. I say of course because, well, I wouldn't be sitting here writing this if I could be going to the cinema/planning a weekend away/sitting in confusing silence with a fella who thought I was of some passing interest. And I found it not going the way I wanted pretty... devastating. That's one of the problems of being thunderously undesirable: I have so little experience of the  ebb and the flow of things 'romantic' that even now I have no understanding of what is going on or any substantial resilience. Give me a bereavement and I reckon I have a fighting chance, but a bloke not wanting to be with me when I fancy being with him, well, I'm defenceless. I know no one understands these things, but I don't understand these thing on another level entirely. I like to think I'm touchingly foolish, but I fear that I'm just irritatingly dense.
People with whom I discuss these matters often opine that I am too choosy when it comes to men. Where they get this idea from I cannot imagine. One day I'll do the True Life blog about the numerous internet dates I've been on with men who tell me on the first date about the brutality of their soon-to-be-ex wife's divorce demands, burst into tears about the way their mother beat them as a child or tell the story of how much the other patients enjoyed their guitar playing during their post-suicide attempt stay in the mental ward. There is nothing, intrinsically, wrong with any of these stories, but they are curious fare for a first date. Incidentally, I don't judge any of these men - they just happened to need to talk about those things at that time, and, after all, they often get to hear that my sister was murdered.
So, you know, I'm really not choosy, unless you call wanting someone who's single, has a sense of humour and can name the capital city of Mexico choosy.
Often friends then say I want to meet someone too much. This happens about 50% of the time. The other 50% they say I do not make enough effort.
Want it too much, not enough. Oh blah blah blah. If only they'd just shout "IT'S YOUR FAULT YOU'RE ALONE, BOZO!" and have done with it.
And a great deal of the time they tell me that I will meet someone when I least expect it, which is odd as I have never met anyone while having a bra fitting at M&S.
As I struggle with my dose of heartbreak, I long for my sister. You'll probably realise I do that a lot anyway, but she would have had that great angle on this. She was of totally different cloth to me, desirable in an utterly mysterious and devastating way, she got all of those genes, but she also received her fare share of heartbreak. And she got me, on every level. And I knew, whatever happened, I'd always have her. Der. Although, now I come to think about it, she was in love, preparing to marry, full of hope an passion for the future when the last thing we all expected happened with the aid of just the one bullet... maybe there is something in that theory after all.