Broadway Baby

So in 2013 I will achieve one of my lifelong dreams of performing on Broadway (ahem, 42nd Street to be precise!) at the ripe old age of 34. I'm on a one-way ticket to the 40s and the only way to cope with that thought is to embrace it fully and whole-heartedly. On July 4th 2010 I wrote an entry in my Penzu journal (free online journal) that read:

Before I'm 40 I want to...
Marry M
Have a baby
Be in a feature film
Be on TV
Have lived in the USA
Own at least one house
Become a vocal coach
Learn to use a sewing machine
Learn an instrument
Write a book/play
Become a good knitter
Not be in debt
Go around the world

And how many of those things have I actually managed to achieve? Well unless you count a Birds Eye advert that was on screen for 2 weeks as "Be on TV", exactly zero. Funnily enough though that doesn't worry me. After all, I left "Be on Broadway" off the list as it felt too far-fetched (like "Not be in debt" wasn't?) - and look at me now! I figure I still have 6 years to go and I'm confident I will achieve at least one (well I'm still with M and I really hope he doesn't wait till I'm 41). So here is my official revised list as at 30 August 2012:

Before I'm 40 I want to...

Have accepted that there are no limitations, that an age is not a deadline, and that to be good knitter you have to practice (for the record I have recently purchased, with all good intentions,  the fabric and fleece interfacing required to make a knitting needle case with my new and untouched (gift from ex in 2005) sewing machine)

Feathers

Dear Sisters,

It has been a looooooong time and in fact we really should update the blog details to read women in their mid to late 30s! So why am I here? Well, I have a story I wanted to share and I couldn't think of a better place to share it, especially as it begins with Sister Louise...

I visited Sister Louise in the country recently (I am still a Sister in the City) and we had a day out to a local craft centre with her two young children and we sat and ate ice creams in the sunshine next to the duck pond. Her little boy was fascinated by the small fluffy white duck feathers lying all around and started to collect them so he could make a collage of a duck when he got home. I offered to store them in my handbag and he happily went back and forth filling up my bag.

At the end of the day, I'm afraid we all forgot about them and I made my way back to the City with a heavy heart where my career seemed to have reached a dead end and I was contemplating giving up my passion in pursuit of financial security. The ceaseless rain had not been helping my mood. A couple of days later whilst feeling particularly miserable, I took out my diary, opened it, and out flew a tiny white feather which danced in front of my for a while before settling on the ground. After a moment's puzzlement the fog cleared and I was suddenly transported back to that sunny day spent with my beautiful friend and her children and my spirits lifted immediately. I couldn't bear to leave the feather so I popped it back in my bag.

Over the next few weeks it seemed that every time I needed a boost a white feather would appear just when I needed it to. Eventually, of course, the feathers disappeared but whenever I open my bag I remember how I felt when I saw them and I feel grateful and blessed to have such wonderful friends in my life.

Sister Louise has a lot going on in her life right now and I thought about sending her some feathers in the post but then I remembered how those feathers came in to my life in the first place - handpicked by her little blond-haired boy - so I think I'll leave the task to him. They say that white feathers are the calling cards of Angels, and that's definitely how I came by mine.

Yours,
Sister Thelma

Baby in the City!

My son was born on February 1oth 2009, weighing 6lb 10oz. Mum, dad and baby are well and happy!

Having It All

This morning I woke up and burst into tears. The reason being, that no sooner had the snooze alarm gone off, my boyfriend was brusquely calling “morning” in my ear - waking me up abruptly and depriving me of my last ten minutes sleep. This wouldn’t usually make me cry of course, but at the moment I’m a tightly wound coil. The last few days could be likened to tobogganing down a black run. Never sure when you’re going to land or whether it will be smoothly or in an undignified heap. There is no rest after dark either - my dreams are full of work. Last night for example I was trapped in a lift and screaming “will you c***s get me out of here” to no one in particular. Oh yes, my job is not without stress. But then there are the perks I thought, as I stumbled into the sun on Chiswick pier, temporarily de-stressed by the warming effects of a good white wine and a hearty meal and talking advertising b*llocks to other people equally as inebriated and passionate in their subject. We took a chartered boat back to festival pier, one of the survivors from Dunkirk and I had to admit to myself that whilst I am not sure I have the emotional stability to deal with such a life in the long run, part of me really, really needs the buzz.

But can I have it all? I think I’ve fallen for someone recently. Indeed for the first time in three years I’ve made it past six months. But my relationship is not without conditions. Of which the main one is that the mother of any children he might have, will be healthy. Which means eating the right food (no inevitable on the run snacking or skipping meals that my sort of job encourages), exercise (difficult when one is tied to their laptop for 12 hours a day) not getting stressed… Failure to achieve these conditions now, even before we have had children causes arguments. So in order to prove that I can do it all, at 8:30pm on Monday night when I finished work, I changed into my gym kit, got off the tube half way home and ran the rest of the way back to my boyfriend’s house in Putney.

I am intelligent enough to realise that this level of strain on my body is not maintainable. I also realise that some would say that it is none of my boyfriends business how I choose to plan my days. But in so many ways, I agree with him. I want the Georgian house, and the three children and… well, we’re still fighting over whether we have a dog or a cat but you get the picture. And I realise that my earning capacity is unlikely to match his for some years. I also want a huge say in the first few years of my children’s life and that would simply not be possible alongside my job.

But to give it up? Oh I wouldn’t miss the stress… but the buzz? So it seems I have to make a decision because I’m really not sure that having it all is possible.

So Many Are Born Average

So many people in this life are average. And yet I still manage to naively thrust greatness upon people before they've shown me that they are worthy of such belief. I am let down time and time and time again.

Simplicity

August 2007

Sometimes I wonder whether KP ever thinks of me. I mean he must do sometimes? Just like I did a moment ago, when I saw “Staying Alive – real poems for real times” on the table. He bought it for me. I think I’d read about it in the Sunday Times and he sent off for it and proudly presented it to me. He knew he’d “done good”, even though he didn’t understand the impulse to read such matter. He was like that. He aimed to please. The first weekend he came down to stay with me, by the time I’d showered, he’d moved the kitchen table outside into the Springtime sun complete with tulips in a vase and two lots of scrambled eggs and tea. So I’m trying to think what he might still have as a reminder of me. He won’t look at the photo albums of course, they are probably gathering dust in a white drawer in the spare bedroom of his parents house. But he loved two photos that I framed of him and a close friend chatting at dusk in the Bejan sea. I’m sure he’ll still have those and he won’t think of me every time he looks at them…but maybe sometimes, he will.

I try not to think like this any more. But this has been prompted by something else. My first love…the one with whom I listened to Chopin when falling asleep. Our relationship was never easy. We’re too similar, too complex, too in tune with each other. We fought. Vicious attacks taking chunks out of eachother; if I swiped he would swipe harder until we were both a sodden, bloody, mess. But we did love eachother, possibly more than either of us will ever love anyone. But it was painful, all four years of it. And being back in touch and older and wiser, we still have to fight this urge to swipe at eachother. He’s sent me an email. We must decide if we want to be together, to get married, to live happily ever after. Except he knows as I do, that happily ever after would be hard work for us. It could be brilliant, a relationship whereby you are so in tune, you know the other’s thoughts at a precise moment in time. We know why the other swipes, we understand eachother’s reactions, to everything… pretty much… so if we understand, can we learn to behave differently? “Tell me when you have felt most loved by me” he says in his email. This is difficult, because I know he loves me, more than anyone ever has. But I can’t remember a time when that physically manifested itself without any pain. Maybe it’s just too long ago. I remember one time coiled in a ball on his lap after we had split up but were still living together. He was chatting to our flatmate, I was zoned out in my own little world, loved by his long arms wrapped around me and sad because I knew I wanted him to leave nonetheless. Every holiday, every night out… I remember the love but I remember the fights spoiling it time after time after time. And whilst trying to remember when I felt most loved, my mind wondered to KP, and the scrambled eggs. A simple gesture, probably not given with half as much love but certainly given without any pain. And of course it was simpler, because KP didn’t feel any pain, that’s why he didn’t understand me and why my first love does.

But I guess, I want love without pain. I want simplicity. I want scrambled eggs in springtime sunshine and I don’t want rainy clouds destroying it half way through.

The question I can’t answer is “are my first love and I capable of achieving this together?”

Regeneration?

I'm finding it hard to write at the moment. I'm overprotective of my new, three month relationship. It's special, I want it just for me and I don't want to share us.

But I wrote this back in July about My First Love and thought I would share this instead. There is a part two... which I will share in a few days.

July 2007
The fact is I do love him; I always have done and probably always will. I wouldn’t have stomped over old ground by catching the train to Manchester to chat over tea with his mum in the kitchen and remark on how big his little sister has grown if I didn’t. But confused by my motives for coming, he used the open space on the drive to the lakes to question my purpose. And before I could answer, he told me that all he had said last year about how he could definitely envisage having children with me and only me, was no longer true. He was back to not wanting them, he wasn’t ready to marry and he had gotten to a place whereby he saw me as a friend and that was the only reason he could have me to stay with him. I nodded, slightly winded and considered whether I could get him to do a detour to Lancaster station to drop me on the route home. We sat in silence most of the way to Morecombe, which was long enough for him to realise that I was hurt and to start back peddling. He didn’t mean to be harsh, it had taken him five years to get over me and he had only just managed it last year. He viewed me as I had viewed him the year previously, when he had journeyed to see me - driving to London to tell me that he could live without me but his soul couldn’t. He laughed when I reminded him of this speech, “no wonder you ran a mile” he proclaimed. “No, I said, that wasn’t it, I was just getting over somebody else”. We ignored our confusion for the rest of the weekend, we re-visited our caravan tucked away in Ambleside, we ate Tapas in Windermere, which was the place where we sat by the water’s edge six or seven years ago and let the gulls jump for bread. We walked down the pier at Morecombe, his new home and stopped for tea. His choice of home, did not startle me, it made perfect sense. It was how I had envisaged it, knowing him so well. I had been slightly bemused by the cries of “Morecombe is such a dump…you’ll hate it” from my friends but I knew him well enough to know that while he can live in shabbiness, there has to be beauty. And there is beauty in Morecombe, miles and miles of blue sky, it’s a panoramic place, known for its healing properties. The green, calming influence of the lakes on the other side of the bay tells you that you are a million miles from London. And it’s a place of regeneration, half of Morecombe is currently held up by scaffolding, splints repairing the broken bones of the old buildings. There will be a day of glory when the old Art Deco Hotel finally resurfaces and becomes a central point in this slightly shabby but special seaside town. But whether our love can be regenerated, that I don’t know.

A Cross To Share

"In 1290 the wife of Edward Ι - Eleanor of Castile died in Nottingham. It had been a marriage of love and not the usual arranged marriage of political convenience. Her body was brought to London for burial and everywhere the cortège stopped Edward built crosses. The last stopping place was in London at Charing (an Anglo-Saxon word for 'turning') where the road turned to Westminster and Charing Cross was erected."

This is the most fascinating fact that I have read in a long time. How romantic, how exciting, how simple and yet grand a gesture from a King of England to his beloved, deceased, wife. And so I delve a little deeper and discover more new facts… You know those signs that you pass as you navigate your way towards London? The ones that say “London 23 miles”. Well have you ever wondered where they measure that from? I have. And now I know. They measure it from the site of the original Eleanor Cross (South of Trafalgar Square). Imagine that, a simple romantic gesture now defined as the centre of all London.

I am reading one of my stocking presents - “A History of England in a Nutshell.” Before this, the total sum of the history that I remember from school amounted to a vague recollection of a school outing to a muddy field which, it was explained, was the site of the Battle of Bosworth (but I couldn’t have told you what relevance the Battle of Bosworth had on anything). I also remember a fat, ginger, king called Henry VΙΙΙ alongside the ditty to remember his numerous wives… divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. Oh and the Second World War. That’s it. For some reason the government didn’t think to teach kids in the 80s history in the order in which it actually happened and gave so much attention to certain events that it gave everyone a warped idea of their importance in the course of history. Just before I gave up history at 14, I got an A grade in my summer exams. Extraordinary.

Well, on Monday as I trudge back to my job, I will be placing the palm of my hand on the replica of the Eleanor Cross in front of Charing Cross station and pledging that 2008 be the year that I no longer live in ignorance of my country’s history. But that is not my only pledge. Time is precious, I am a part of history and I’ve wasted the last two years of my history in a job which answers to arrogant, petty managers, for very few silver pennies. In 2008, I will go all out to better that. Oh… and hopefully I’ll make a bit of my own romantic history too with my new man man and our first holiday abroad together. How very exciting!

Growing Up

I was standing in a penthouse hotel room overlooking Trafalgar Square on the evening that I grew up.

Over the years I have made some relatively stupid dating decisions. It’s easy to do. Swept up in the romance and thrill of it all it is often difficult to stand back from the situation and think about what it is you are doing, to ask the right questions of yourself. Do I really want to get into a relationship with a man who is going travelling for four years? Do I really want to be sleeping with one of my best friends on and off? Do I really want to be with a man who hates anything to do with his or your family? The answer should have been no to all of these questions but I never did stand back and ask myself even though I think if I had then I would have known the answer even back then. I could have saved myself a lot of heartache.

So one night this week I realised that I had grown up when, stood looking over Trafalgar Square with all its twinkling lights, with a glass of vintage champagne in my hand and in my very best designer gear, I asked myself one question. Do I want to get into a relationship with this man who is willing to cheat on and then leave his girlfriend of two years for me and introduce me to his children? At one of the most romantic moments of my life, still looking at the National Gallery in front of me, I put down my glass of champagne and gave the answer to my question to the man stood behind me. ‘No. I can’t do this.’ And with that I grew up.

Tick Tock

Wow. Time flies when you are having fun!

The Protector

I watch her like a hawk.

Not to attack her.

But to save her.

She sits in the office window, mobile pressed to her ear, offering more than she needs to to someone who doesn’t deserve it. Yes there is a work opportunity for him, just like she told him many moons ago there could be. But she knows the time has been and gone when he might have deserved that opportunity. There’s no need to seek his approval now.

They finish talking about the opportunity. She changes the subject. “Did you like my invite” she says.

The hawk swoops lower. She’s on dangerous ground.

“I don’t expect you can come” she says.

The hawk is still.

“Yes nice invite” he says, “I can’t come, but I wish I could”. He offers no reason like people normally would.

The hawk swoops and gathers her in its beak.

“No problem.” She says. She asks for no reason. She’s not hurt. “Anyway, I must be getting back to work now. Bye.”

The predator soars away over the cliff tops, swallowing its weak prey.

She doesn’t need to persuade him of her worth. She doesn’t need him to come back.

She doesn’t need a replacement for the One she was separated from all that time ago, because she never really lost him. She was just too little to understand then.

But she’s a big girl now.

And she’s explained to the child.

“You never really lost him”.

Thou wall , O wall! O sweet and lovely wall!

I lean against the sink spooning Ambrosia rice pudding out of the carton. My gaze wonders absentmindedly outside whereupon it spies Pyramus and Thisbe whispering ten o’ clock sweet nothings to eachother over the garden wall. I smile. This amusing scenario started a few weeks back. My friend (who I shall simply call Sister as this best explains our relationship) had been staying with me and although we are used to sleeping in the same bed having known eachother since Cabbage Patch Kids were all the rage, we have in our old age, come to value our space. Sister had therefore appreciatively accepted the offer of her own bed for the night as one of my flatmates was away. Unfortunately, this perchanced to be the night that Pyramus would attempt to woo his Thisbe. My Irish flatmate (Pyramus) managed to talk my blonde neighbour (Thisbe) into a few jars at Ninny’s Tomb (The Local Boozer) over our garden wall. Unlike Quince's lovers…they did actually manage to meet at Ninny’s…but Pyramus didn’t quite manage to seal the deal …and hence brought Thisbe back to our kitchen (which happens to be directly below where Sister had settled down for a long night’s rest). Here, they proceeded to tuck into a large bottle of Vodka to settle the ‘pre-snog’ nerves…and with each glass, their flirtations crescendoed until eventually there came a knock upon my door in the early hours. “Can I sleep in with you” came the weary voice…"I keep thinking any minute now they’ll snog and shut up…but it’s been HOURS!”

The next morning, I see Thisbe ungainly clambering over the garden wall back to her house. Clearly Pyramus eventually managed to seal the deal.

Time Warp

Sometimes, usually in the dead of night, a cold clammy fear comes over me. A shock wave, jolting me out of my near slumber, sending my eyelids shooting into their sockets and my heart into a clenched fist punching against my breastbone. A time warp. Two years of healing gone in a millisecond and I'm back there. Sometimes, these have felt like the longest years of my life and other times I imagine I've just been dreaming. That I could wake up, pad downstairs, push open the frosted glass door to the kitchen, using my free hand to gently manoeuvre Robbie and Dillon out of the way, help myself to soda bread and stare sleepily out of the french windows at the dewy morning whilst the kettle whistles. If I was dropped back into that life now, I would know exactly what to do. But another girl now pads down those stairs, opens the frosty door and stares sleepily out at the dewy morning. And two years ago, this great big hand reached down from the sky and plucked me out of that life bubble, piercing it's protective film as it pulled me miles into the sky and then released me, crashing down to earth, sticky and wet and broken. But I've been learning to blow life bubbles of my own since then and I can nearly make one big enough just for me to live in comfortably. But every now and then time warps and I fear the cold, clammy hand reaching for me in the dead of night.

Weightless Wonderland

Staring out of the window as the plane leaves Copenhagen, I am surprised to see a lone house, strong and sturdy on a remote island, surrounded by nothing more than miles of swampy marsh. Carved around it in a crescent moon shape, appears a man made moat, ensuring perhaps that should any would-be-visitor actually manage to reach this house far from harbour or road, the moat would prove one challenge too far. Who would want to live in a place like this, I wonder? The plane moves higher and breaks the mists of cotton, I look down and envision myself bouncing from cloud to cloud, under the gaze of the pink, half moon. A child's "weightless wonderland"... the Care Bears lived in the clouds didn't they? In a place called Care-a-Lot. And if you climbed up the Faraway Tree, you reached wondrous lands like this didn't you?

I rather like looking down from this surreal, fairytale land upon my real life below. Seeing it from this perspective, I realise that I am but a tiny speck in a great,vast, Universe. And everywhere, people are going about their lives as best they can. People have been born and died today, married and divorced, eaten too much or starved and all manner of things that I couldn't even begin to describe because I have no comprehension of their lives and the World that they live in. Tomorrow, I'll go back to my small existence as a black speck in a corner of an office in London, England. But I hope that the bigger perspective stays with me for a while longer.

2030 Vision

Hello people. Have been frantically scribbling in notebooks, on bits of paper and on old filofax calendars whenever the mood has taken me, but have had no time to transfer thoughts blog... so in the meantime, I came across this on a new support website for people in their 20s and 30s. This article rang a few bells for me and judging by our predominant topic of the search for true love it will for a lot of you too. Take a look! In the meantime, we'll be back soon!

http://ezine.2030vision.org.uk/home.php?page_id=51

The Love Plague

As I turn the handle quietly and pop my head round to mouth goodbye, a finger shoots to his lips to warn me against speaking. There was a time when this gesture would have bothered me, the presumption that I'm a) not sensitive enough to know when speech maybe inappropriate and b) his shameless prioritisation of the woman at the end of the phone line. But it doesn't rile me. I wave goodbye, shut the door and descend the familiar cream carpeted stairs with its worn-in grey smudges. I am relieved and a little sad. Relieved that I play no part in his complicated triangles with girls who are engaged or cohabiting with another. Sad because this type of liaison is rife... spreading through the streets of London as quickly as the great plague of 1665; leaving in its wake bubonic hearts piled on top of each other, feebly beating their blood into the gutters and drains - seeping into our ecosystem, spreading, spreading... Love, if you can call it that, has become another victim of our careless, throw-away society. People are quick to fall into it, quick to fall out of it and think nothing of running a few different variants of it together... why? Do we think that keeping our options open will allow us to find as near to perfection as we can? Or do we do it simply because we live in an era where we can? A time where having your cake and eating it is a rite of passage? I don't know. But I want no part of it anymore. I do not want to be a variant of love for someone; I want to be their love. And I'm quietly confident that somewhere on this planet, there is a soul that thinks like me. That wants a simple yet complex love, exclusive, hardy - that will weather the test of time. A deep love which each party knows is worth fighting for even when surface love is temporarily sleeping because of strife or over-familiarity. I still believe that somewhere there is a man that wants that too.

New Project for Sister Zaria

I felt it was time to write again as poor Sister Louise seems to be keeping the site up single-handedly! Sadly, as I cast my mind around for something to write I found myself totally devoid of subjects. For the first time, for a long time, I am properly single. Normally when I have been single I have had someone to keep my interest up, so to speak, but this time I can genuinely not think of anyone I even fancy. So, short of going out with a couple of boys of my acquaintance who I could go out with but don’t really fancy, I am on my own.

Walking home tonight, in the first bit of sun we have had in ages, I got to thinking that I can’t go on thinking that the man I want to meet is just going to turn up at my door (especially as I am 3 floors up and the security to my flats is like Fort Knox)!
So, I have come up with the following plan in order to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. In order to help me both find a man and get some content for the blog I solemnly promise that I will try to do one activity a week to actively try and meet someone!

I have thought about ways in which I can meet a new man and have come up with only one idea so far. The idea does however have drawbacks. The idea is to join the squash league at my local gym. The drawbacks are three fold- 1) I have never played squash before, 2) I have absolutely no hand eye co-ordination, 3) If I do succeed in getting a racquet and enough skill to get a game with a man, I will be meeting him as a sweating heap!

So there we have it. Tomorrow I will go to my gym and enquire about joining the squash league. That will be week 1’s activity. I will, of course, report back next week about how I have done but in return I would like you guys to suggest the next thing! I am completely devoid of ideas apart from this one, so far, so all suggestions will be gratefully received.

Oh – just one little thing on the suggestions – please don’t suggest internet dating, I simply cannot get my head around that one just yet!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

After nine days in Devon/Cornwall/Worcs/Lakes = Heaven, I am truly cheesed off this week. London is one of those places that you become conditioned to. This week my conditioning has become unconditioned and I have no patience. Usually I reply to my boss in a polite manner despite his curtness, this week I'm responding in his tone of voice, despite his obvious superiority. As I left the office ON TIME (6pm) for once, he called after me "Yes... bye Louise"... simultaneously making a point about my lack of pleasantries and also pointing out the fact that I've left before 9pm...for once.

And you know those people... sorry guys...it's always guys... those people that can see that the tube is full to bursting and yet just as the doors are about to close, they launch themselves into the carriage, getting stuck in the doors in the process? Well this evening, one of them smacked their elbow into my head as he launched his 6ft frame through the doors at the last minute and then stood pressed with his crotch into me for three whole stops as I tried to refrain from hyperventilating. I'm sorry I do NOT pay £4 a day for this madness. Why do we put up with it? Just because we're British?! I disown my Britishness, my Huguenot blood is running hot - Viva La Revolution! But I put up with the madness, because I love the theatres, the South Bank, Gordon's Bar at Embankment and the unusual opportunities that come my way. But one day in the not too distant future, I am so outta here!

Re-wired

"Listen" I say, pausing mid-conversation. "My flatmate is playing really beautiful music". I stumble off my bed and into the lounge next door, raising the receiver into the air to catch the notes. I bring him back to my ear, "It's Chopin he says, we used to listen to it when we went to sleep, don't you remember?" And in a dark, distant cavern in my head a switch is flicked. A light has lit up a corner of darkness. The wiring to this switch is old and uncertain, it sparks and sputters all the way down the tunnel of my throat and comes to rest in one panging, electrical surge in the mains box in my chest. Yes, I remember.

Life Training

We spent a ridiculously good three days in Devon with everything on our side. No traffic going down, pouring rain at the most appropriate times and beautiful sunshine just as we arrived at Bude beach on Tuesday and Fingle Bridge on Wednesday. Three of my oldest friends and three children (how times change) had a blast. We ate, drank, sunbathed and journeyed home with sunburnt shoulders and sand in our hair. So when the awful call came, it was juxtaposed against a happy three days with best friends and beautiful children and was thus ever more poignant. There are seven of us that have been friends since school days and it was one of the seven that rang to tell two of us (from the seven) journeying back from Devon, that another of us had had her 12 week scan and the baby had died. I was taken off guard; I thought the call was to find out how our Devon mini break had gone and thus all the words that I could muster were “oh my god – no” repeatedly, until it sunk in. And as my friend in the driver’s seat took the news in, I saw her brush away a tear as she put two and two together from half a story and understood the enormity of the call I was taking. And an innocent voice from the back called out for sweeties or a wee wee and mummy silenced her with a “not now darling, Auntie S isn’t very well” and the innocent voice knowing Auntie S replied “I like Auntie S mummy…what’s wrong with Auntie S?” Auntie S has been trying for years for a child of her own and this is quite possibly what all of us dreaded and all of us prayed wouldn’t happen. And I remember the first day we started senior school in all our youthful innocence and I want to throw my arms around her and make it better but I can’t. And she has a husband who is her rock, as she is his and they’ll get through this, I just wish they didn’t have to. And the thing that’s struck me lately, is that for all life’s beauty – of which there is plenty, there is equally some terribly, sad and difficult times and recently I’ve watched my friends pick their way through troubles and realised that this is life. I think until now, I’ve always felt that we’re in training for life… We go to school, and then maybe Uni and we look for a job and we work out how to get a promotion and we get a boyfriend and we learn to look out for the nice guys and leave the bad ones alone and eventually we might get married. And I’m sure that we’ll always be in training to a certain extent, but it feels like this is it now. Life. We’ve done years of training and this is what we trained for. And life will bring magical Devon mini breaks and it will bring terribly sad times. And that poem that says “With all its shams and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world” is so true. And Auntie S probably won’t believe it’s a beautiful world right now. But the six of us and her rock will do our utmost to get her to a place again where she can possibly believe that it might be.