Whilst you are waking - a memory surfaces.

I marvel at you

The mists of sleep dressing your eyelids

As they move from deep somnambulance

To a dreamy semi-consciousness

The softened muscles, contours

The hills and valleys of your landscape

Your bare-chested forests, 

Uncoiling from winter to spring, taut, vibrating

From dormant brittleness to fluid movement.

I walk your brow with my fingers,

As your abeyant dreams, touched by a cautious sun

Allow a little smile to display itself like clouds of snowdrops

And drooping daffodils,  dressing the banks of a meandering

Riverbed, swollen, sluggish, powerful.

As you emerge from sleep, the weight of burdens

Sliding like silk-sheeted storms from your bed.

And the air is perfumed by your quickening breath

As birds rise, as clouds disperse, as grass quivers

And winds calm. Spring, sweeping hesitant,

Along the lanes and byways, a light touch,

A gentle presence pulling the earth into re-birth.

Whilst you are waking I gather myself in, 

Alert to the uncurling softness, the downy yawn

Surfacing, a blinking moment of awareness

Comforting like my warm palm against your rough cheek

Or a sweet, shy kiss. I hold this moment, knowing

That soon you will rise and wander away towards summer.

February, 2024

Quite the nicest present I've had this Christmas was a cup of tea in bed that my eldest made for me. I can't remember the last time someone bought me a cup of tea in bed, such a simple but lovely treat, full of heart. Tomorrow will be New Years Eve and in 2024 a whole chunk of my past life will have gone, many of the people in it, and the home where I nurtured my family since my husband to be and I, moved there in 2001 shortly before our marriage. The home where I saw my girls grow and flourish, entertained friends and ... so much of all that life, the memories, the love, the laughter have all withered away. My husband has decided that the woman he met on the internet and whom has been calling him, her 'boyfriend' since Christmas Eve 2022, is the one he wants to move forward with because he understood we were over. And beside she's sweet and I'm terrifying (apparently). People are complicated aren't they? There are only victims and survivors when a marriage collapses. Whilst I am grateful that the holding pattern of 2023 is now over, I grieve all those memories, all those wasted years, as I realise what an utter failure I have been. I can't pin point the wrong turn, was it getting married in the first place? Did I miss something? But as this year, this life and this marriage steam-rollers to a close, and I face the spite, and those taking pleasure in my pain, I can't see a fixed point where I failed to do what mothers do 'keep it all together'. Perhaps there were too many. It's really hard to love yourself, without tangible proof that you are loveable.

I'm just embarking on a book by Philippa Perry entitled THE BOOK YOU WANT EVERYONE YOU LOVE* TO READ *(and maybe a few you don’t). In it Philippa, a psychotherapist (artist and agony aunt),  identifies areas where people most need guidance and tools to help them through life. The first chapter is entitled 'How We Love" and why we crave connection... I seem to be losing all mine, unable to find people outside of my working life who make me feel good, and whom have the time to spend it with me. Perry says "Everyone needs to feel that they belong, maybe to a family, a project, a community, or to another person. We are creatures of connection and we deny this at our peril". Then there's 'How We Change" navigating the New for Better or Worse. I'm probably going to have to read this a fair few times and make good notes-to-self. In recent years I've lost a raft of constants and floated on a lake of uncertaintanties. My girls have grown up and are busy forming their own lives, both my parents have gone, my marriage has  inexorably failed, my finances are unstable, my future - a sea-mist. That's a lot to deal with in order to manage the final chapter 'Contentment'. I strive for that, a 'metaphorical' cup of tea in bed, a contentment in life, it's a low ambition to match my low self-esteem but it's something at least. 

It's pretty late in my life to be negotiating such a big and unnatural ending, and if I'm honest I can't find the heart or the enthusiasm to think about beginnings. I'm still processing that one of the biggest life-changing commitments I have ever made has crashed and burned, and how destructive that has been. I've made mistakes before, I've endured life events that took strength to pick myself up from but this one has somehow eaten away at me from the inside and if there's a spark of light left in me to rekindle my spirit, I can't find it. I shall have to be content with that emptiness, continue to read books that may or may not have the answer and remain calm in front of the coming storm. 2025 will be here soon enough, and if I'm there with it having survived, I can only hope that there's the promise of a cup of tea in bed and perhaps a home, cosy, welcoming, with a view from the windows, someone to take my hand, hug my shoulders and walk across a sandy bay,  leaving footprints behind as sea birds wheel overhead and waves run in and out with happy excitement. (I write that with some irony, that line of 'faux positivity' becomes not just nauseating but also exhausting).  A wise soul recently shared some wisdom on dealing with overwhelm,  'just nibble at the edges' they said. Sound advice, I shall nibble at the edges like a biscuit and hope I get to dunk it someday in a cup of tea that has been bought to me in bed.

Winter’s Bridge

Don’t you think the coppered leaves

Swing boating in the damp air

Are treasure, rare?

Can you hear the kestrels cry

As they swoop above the mornings mist

Isn’t it rich with promise?

Have you seen the drooping Bryony

Thin stemmed and weeping

Their bright-berried beading??

Can you smell the wet earth

Decaying under wind-swept skies

Tree roots delving in the fruity soil

And burrowing insect life?

Don’t you think the ancient oak

Bare branched in the biting storm

Stands, a mighty form?

Isn’t the shock of frost cracking

The slap of cold air at night-fall

A moving memorial?

Isn’t the strike of rain on hard ground

The fall of hooves on frozen stone

A percussive encore of land and bone? 

Here at the end of the season

Joy still held like a breath

Ice keeping life in a moment

Of contemplation and death

Stealing through valleys and hillsides

Gardens, field hedge and old lanes

Moving from a ripe maturation

Concealing new life in its pain.

Soon you will see the Spring coming

The revival of field once flood-drowned,

Listen to the song of birds busy building

Feel the give underfoot of soft ground

Sense the quickening of life in water

Flowing with purpose renewed

Wonder at the bounty of changing season that

From this place on this bridge you can view.

©JulietB 2021

The sea was limply swilling around the bay

In the snow-bitten air

As the Dorset mummers prepared to put on their play.

It seemed everyone had stopped to hear.

The thrumming tambours and bashing of tin cans 

Rowdy along the quiet Sunday seafront,

A beer-induced ruddiness spreading a breathy good cheer

The ancient, outlandish, ridiculous flummery

Flashing through a crowd, hungry for all that.

"Here come I, Old Father Time" cried a man in a battered yellow hat

And a soft, beautifully intricate kimono

That once must have been a treasure.

A man in horns, tights and leather flying jacket

Danced among the bollards

Shouting “Keep off me schmatter it cost a packet!”

As a loping woman in fairy lights and boots

Waves her violin and lisps "Give room, give room"

And give me room to rise
And I'll show you such activity
On this merry Christmastide.

Activity of youth, activity of age

Such activity has never been seen

Or acted on a stage.

And by the bus stop, clad in black and fur

The slasher prowled and growled, delighted no doubt, 

By the thought of slashing in his Dorset burr

And terrifying children.

A man in garish Crimbo jumper topped by crown of green

Starts the crowd a dancing (like he didn’t think he’d be seen).

And a man in a nearby guesthouse watching for snow

Sighed a sigh of centuries, as he gazed from his window

Reviewing how his year had passed,

Of what he had to let go

And wondered if his broken heart

Missed him much, or no?

Could he be a better father, uncle, brother

Left without heart amidst all his deep sorrow?

As the bells and flashing lights 

Of the merry mummers passed

Like a cluster of crows

Stoking up the fires of their bravado 

With chaotic percussion.

The man grabbed his coat and set to follow.

And in the warmth of a seaside pub,

Rough and sticky with spilled cheer and blood

The ancient folk tale revealed its own pain

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen all

And a merry Christmas to you all
I am a noble doctor, both stout and good

With my created hand I can purge the blood

Cure the stitch, the itch

The palsy or the gout

All pains within, all pains without,

Silenced by a curvaceous Saint George

Wielding her mighty light sabre 

(from a stall along the prom)

Decrying the crook and climbing on tables

Niftily saving her ample breast from 

Deftly clutching fingers.

Heroically, rising from legend and myth

With the promise of rescue, healing, 

O hold your hand

O hold your hand

And let these quarrels fall

For here we get our bones all smashed

For no cause at all.

And the men at the bar, the women by the fruit machine

Eyes misted with memory and unfulfilled dreams

Slapped their hands, stomped their feet, and joined in with a roar

Because wasn’t this merriment what Christmas stood for?

And the man from the guesthouse, scrolled through his phone

As if Christmas was in there, as he joined with the throng.

Impromptu caroling, all drunken and stout

Erupted as the mummers stealthily saw themselves out.

No asking for dues, no shaking of hats, they left -

Back to the hospital, back to their shifts

Back to a Christmas impossibly lived.

Christmas Mummers

© JulietB

Here in the UK we have been suffering a chaotic conservative government that keeps appointing Cabinet Ministers who espouse deeply extremist views, or whom are simply not intelligent enough to hold a position of power without exposing their ignorance and vices to the general public. Thanks to social media, and the digital highway the general public in this day and age are far less tolerant of stupidity and malfeasance when the perpetrator is having much longer lunch breaks in all expenses paid in-house restaurants, and getting away with 'stuff' that others can't, simply by dint of being an 'MP in Westminster'. Our latest 'sacking' of a cabinet member is our wholly 'unsuited to the job' Suella Braverman (1), who despite being the daughter of refugees had taken on a hard-line stance as UK Home Secretary (2) on 'stopping the boats' (3) (refugees fleeing war, or political, moral or religious persecution and crossing international waters in unsuitable craft, often exploited by criminal gangs, in order to take sanctuary in more tolerant countries). She also made headlines by declaring that people who were homeless had made a 'lifestyle choice' (5). Colleagues and senior party members advised her to not discuss such complex issues and to use wiser language but Suella refused to budge and ultimately this was her downfall. She was sacked on Nov 13th, 2023 in a a Cabinet shuffle, following comments made to the media that stirred up the far right and led to ugly confrontations in London during the Remembrance events at the Cenotaph (4).

The Lifestyle choice comment touched me deeply. I recently chatted to a man who came to fix my heating, who told me that he tried to steer clear of politics and get on with living his life. I replied that I felt, as a woman in a patriarchal society, that I had a duty to get involved with politics, otherwise people would make detrimental decisions on my behalf and I would have no voice in the making of those decisions and subsequently less control over not just my own life but over my own body. We had already discussed how he nearly lost his wife in childbirth and how that had affected him.

I don't suppose anyone other than those with an eye to supreme power and megalomania really want to get involved in politics, its a dirty, egotistical world, however as so many enlightened women of the twentieth century have discovered, it's a vital step in giving a voice to the repressed, supressed and downtrodden. Sadly, that clearly doesn't mean that female politicians aren't subject to the same corrupting influence that power and status exherts. But is homelessness a lifestyle choice? Anymore than poverty is? No, I truly think not. I think that a capitalist driven state means the few exploiting the many, that a majority of people are driven into poverty, homelessness, debt, and vice not through choice but by design. The design being government policy influenced by moneylenders, banks and business who profit and exploit the lack of education, ignorance and naievite of people who are trying to live more simply, or whom are more susceptible to undue influence. "There but by the grace of God, Go I". In 2020 Cambridge University press published :-

Stating,  "Many have depicted a steady rise in lifestyle politics. Individuals are increasingly using everyday life choices about consumption, transportation, or modes of living to address political, environmental, or ethical issues. While celebrated by some as an expansion of political participation, others worry this trend may be detrimental for democracy, for instance, by reducing citizens to consumers. Implicit in this common critique is the notion that lifestyle politics will replace, rather than coexist with or lead to, other forms of political participation. 

In dealing with lifestyle choice purely from a political perspective the article echoed something deeper in the fabric of society, that politics was in fact, pre-determining 'lifestyle'. I am not sure that 'choice' is anything more than a throw-away add-on giving the phrase more resonance because increasingly, 'choice' has become a luxury not a right. As government policy undermines, throws in to chaos through its refusal to accept legislature and blindsides any 'human rights' that hitherto have given the poor, the disenfranchised and the vulnerable an opportunity to improve their circumstance, protect their dignity and claim their human rights, there has been an erosion of quality of life, of societal expectation and of access to basic human needs - shelter, food, protection.

These are dangerous times, and any government culpable in the destruction of the roots of a compassionate and humane society, should be held to account. The line between criminal negligence and poor governance has long been blurred by this conservative government and the fall-out is yet to come. Lifestyle choice is not, and never should be an appropriate term to use in reference to people who have been dispossessed or disenfranchised.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suella_Braverman Braverman was born in Harrow, Greater London, and raised in Wembley.^[2] She is the daughter of Uma (néeMootien-Pillay) and Christie Fernandes,^[3] both of Indian origin,^[4][5] who immigrated to Britain in the 1960s from Mauritius and Kenya respectively.

2. The secretary of state for the Home Department, more commonly known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom and the head of the Home Office.^[3]The position is a Great Office of State, making the home secretary one of the most senior and influential ministers in the government. The incumbent is a statutory member of the British Cabinet and National Security Council.

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugee_crisis

4. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/11/suella-braverman-accused-of-fuelling-far-right-violence-near-cenotaph

5. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/04/fury-as-braverman-depicts-homelessness-as-a-lifestyle-choice

I’ll never forget how it felt, when you were lying in the cardiology unit, the wires and monitors, the dressing over your heart, the vulnerability exposed like a raw wound.  Your heart rate spiked— I don’t know exactly what caused it, a call, a text? but I felt the change, it crackled in the air with one cruel nurse almost ready to physically propel me from the room and the nurse hastily hustled me out. When I was invited to come back in, something had changed, your girlfriend had called?  Do you know at that point, when they walked me out that they asked me if I really was your wife? How was I supposed to answer? Legally yes, if you had died that morning  (and how lucky you were that you didn’t), it would have been me that picked up all the unfinished pieces. The endless paperwork, the bureaucracy, dressing the open sores of grief and sorrow. I hate that I read body language, ignorance would have been so much easier. I hated the nurses for being complicit. I left feeling ashamed that despite my compassion I was being sidelined, discarded. Those twenty years suddenly counting for nothing, nothing at all. Meaningless. I'm older, uglier, I don't get the sympathy vote.

Did you phone her when you thought you might be dying? Did you wish you hadn’t called me? And at any point when you were lying in that hospital did you think how it might have been for me when my father was dying? When I came back from all those attritional visits to see my uncle? When you asked me to pop in and visit your colleagues wife, and I could see, she too was dying ?- Oh, that was the biggest tragedy of them all, given her youth, her humility, and her deep, enduring love for her two young children. 

The next day, when I arrived, having checked with you that you wanted me to come, I was accosted again by a staff member. You had two visitors, you shouldn't have so many. For a moment I thought maybe it was her, but no she'd come the day before - after me. Poor ward staff, how often does this happen, how clear were you? After an hour of trying to find a car-parking spot, I didn't care. I was the wrong person to attempt to lecture, I chucked your next-door neighbours out, they are complicit too. I was past caring, the passive aggressive car-park chaos still burning on my retina - everyone's need was as great as the next persons - no prisoners were being taken, it was a miracle there wasn't a four-car pile up, or maybe there was and I sailed past it - eventually channeling my inner-goodwill hunting-vibe.

Did you ever step out of your self-centred zone and wonder in all the mess and pain after my father died whether you’d really done right by me? Or were you too busy, masking the guilt at the relief you felt and relishing the thought of new possibilities? When you discovered me, alone in the chaos of my fathers house, after a brief hospital interlude myself, having noted the washing-up needed doing — did you feel anything other than the fact you were late for a hot-date with your girlfriend? Did you feel one iota of consideration for my needs, or was your “I’ll help you get rid of some of your father’s junk next weekend” sufficient?…Some weekends are a very long time coming aren’t they? 

As I left your hospital bedside today you said “I’ve missed you”. Really? Or have you missed the twenty years of comfort and nourishment, as I withered. I don’t know. I’ve given up trying to walk in your shoes, it’s not good for me. It hurts me. At the Hospital today, we talked about families. Yours couldn’t drop me me fast enough, I wasn’t sure about calling your parents, was it my place? I called your sister-in-law, when she remembered who I was, she, at least, was compassionate. Your father called me, a whole twelve months and some…too late, asked me how I was before moving on to you. Another question that was suddenly too hard to answer. 

You told me it was my ‘choice’ to leave. I’m not sure self-preservation is a choice, it’s more a visceral need to find high ground, a deep primal cry for help and fear, a lot of fear. I’ve been terrified, every day for the last nineteen months. Every step of that time, I haven’t known what was ahead. You made so many assumptions when I left, and today you said, “we probably need to talk in the New Year”. Talking never seems to have solved anything at this murky end of our relationship. Generally, I listen, you assume, re-fine the narrative that makes you feel more comfortable with yourself, and I go unheard as you listen, but don't hear. Does assuaging your guilt make it better? Even at a moment of life and death, you manage to break my heart. Just when I thought it couldn’t break further.  I will never forget these past two days - the profound emotion of someone you love facing death, (THAT is an emotion I’ve experienced before, it still hits hard). The setting aside of blame, hurt, history, to be compassionate and caring in someones time of need, and then the thunderbolt shift, the realisation that you are existing in a liminal space where you have no place, the utter agony of that loneliness compounding ones loneliness. You let me down, I didn’t deserve that.  I will not allow you to hurt me any more.

Will I regret writing this? I hope not. Every now and then,  I will sit with these words, and as time passes I hope I will be able to edit and re-shape them. May life bring me sweetness to dull the bitter.

Addendum:

The year is not yet done and I have had a final kick in the teeth. And that blow has taught me something that perhaps I knew, intuitively - but if anyone else reads this and can pass it on for the greater good, then please do. 

It is this: 'Don't start a new relationship before finishing the old one" it causes untold hurt, deep, deep, pain - to a multitude of people beyond those involved in the immediate relationship. Weakness, immaturity, is no excuse.