Divided

Weeks and months of my life are now divided into chunks of roughly 13 days. The first chunk is that of freedom and carelessness. I can eat yummy French soft cheeses, pâté, raw meat (not that I want to!) and raw fish, and I can drink my usual weekly half-mouthful of white wine (I told you, I don’t drink! I’m not French [or English, for that matter] like that!)

Then the second chunk, I become saintly, extra careful, a new person, ‘just in case’... I stop all soft-cheese consumption, I don’t even have my half-mouthful of wine, I walk and bend carefully, I certainly don’t run and... I wait patiently, for the next big chunk of my life – the one that lasts a lifetime... Babies aren’t just for Christmas or for 13 days – they’re for ever...

What remains practically constant during the 26 or so days is all the symptoms I get – you’d think I was pregnant all that time! Nausea (a biggy!), pains in my tummy (ranging from sharp, short ones, to diffuse, long ones), very very very sore boobs (can’t lie on my front at night at the moment, and groan every time I turn around) and increased saliva production at times (like two days ago).

But yesterday afternoon, I had confirmation from my body that ah ah ah, it had tricked me again, yes yes yes, here’s some blood to prove it. And making this the shortest cycle ever for me: 24 days.

What is my body up to?

Oh well, at least I can go on my holiday without a care in the world! We're going to Limoges, Montpellier, the Cévennes and then to my parents' (southeast of Paris), and I will be able to eat all I want! Yippee!

Norman nostalgia

(This is an entry that should have been posted at the end of September 2006!)

We reached Caen on Friday evening at about 6pm. The rain in Deauville hadn’t followed us and the sun revealed the rich, creamy colour of the stone of the castle around which Caen is built. We parked the car in the Libération car park and walked to our friends’ flat, a stone’s throw away.

Even in their flat in Caen, our friends’ taste and passion for antique furniture was obvious. A few years ago, they bought two flats and converted them into one, and throughout they decorated it with old fireplaces, antique beds and 18th century banquettes and armchairs. The only piece of furniture that was old but battered and ugly was the kitchen table and chairs. ‘While waiting for something better to come along...’ our Australian friend, A., said. Then she explained: ‘Actually, F. [her husband, who is French] wanted me to go and get a cheap table; I got so fed up with the chore of buying furniture that I bought the cheapest and most horrible table. That taught him a lesson.’

We were soon joined by our third friend, D., and an hour later by F., who came back from work and greeted his three children, his wife and his friends with joviality and immense pleasure. Our evening could finally start properly.

For dinner, A. prepared fresh mussels that she had bought from the market that morning, with freshly made... French fries from the local McDonald’s! A Franco-American combination that made the traditional Belgian moules-frites not as delicious as it should have been, but the conviviality of the meal made up for it. We then had a selection of French cheeses and a delicious salad made from proper French lettuce (they just don’t know how to cultivate round lettuce here in England – it just never tastes the same), followed by apple crumble. F. served some divine wine (wine and calvados are his other passions) and I started feeling quite at home.

Oh but hang on a minute – that’s right, I was at home! I was in France! But this is what’s been happening in recent years. I consider myself English and when I go to France, I don’t quite feel French any more. One day soon, I’ll take the test of British citizenship and become a British citizen. How will I feel then?

We spoke a mixture of English and French and I realised, once more, how pleasant it would be if we could do the same at home, Monsieur l’Anglais and myself. But his French is just not good enough. We say a sentence or two, and then have to revert to English if we want to have a proper conversation.

At midnight, after much eating, drinking and laughter, Monsieur l’Anglais, D. and I headed for the car park to drive to our friends’ country chateau, 20 minutes outside of Caen. But the metal doors were well and truly pulled down, our car imprisoned underground. There was no way of getting to our car!

‘I knew it! I should have checked! A 24-hour car park in a small French town? No way, not possible! I knew it! I should have listened to my instinct and double-checked!’

D., who had parked his MG in another part of town, had already left us to our own devices. Luckily, we had arranged to meet up at a crossroads in town, because we didn’t quite know how to get out of Caen to reach the chateau. We waited and waited, and waited some more. I was getting cold, so we decided to call A. and F. and explain the situation rather than wait another minute – who knew how much longer D. would be...

Apologising profusely, I explained the problem to F. – we were stranded in the middle of Caen, waiting for D. who wouldn’t be able to take us both in his little MG. The solution imposed itself: it was half past midnight and our host would have to get out of bed, put some clothes on and drive us to the chateau, after drinking we were not too sure how much alcohol. He assured us that he was fine and that he hadn’t drunk much at all. It was obvious to me that he had drunk well over the legal limit, but we decided to take our chances, since there was no room for us to sleep in their flat. Well, there was, but F. wouldn’t let us sleep on his banquette or floor, ‘Come on!’.

Anyway, F. and I arrived at the chateau, unscathed, 20 minutes later, and Monsieur l’Anglais and D. another 15 minutes later (D. is a bit of a slow driver, and things haven’t changed since he bought the MG a few months ago!).

What I had only been able to imagine these past three years suddenly came to life in front of my eyes. The lighting was subtle, the night very dark outside the huge, floor-to-ceiling windows, but I could tell that I was in truly special surroundings.

‘I don’t see it any more – I know it’s beautiful, but I don’t notice things any more,’ said F. when I uttered a few words of wonder, amazement and awe at the old windows, the original stone fireplace, the shiny parquet and the wood panelling.

‘It’s all 18th century. Even the parquet. I managed to find just enough to cover the floor in this room.’

The bedroom we would sleep in for the next three nights was also 18th century. It was pale yellow with hints of pale green, from the fireplace to the wood panelling to the windows, right down to the bed frame. By comparison, the adjoining bathroom was ultra-modern, but even there, there were hints of history – the tall windows, the antique mirror, the imposing wooden cupboard.

I felt like Marie-Antoinette must have felt when she first entered Versailles.

Monsieur l’Anglais and I slept soundly through the silent night and woke up at 10, after opening our eyes briefly at 8 and thinking that it was far too early to get out of bed. Getting up late is so unlike us, I couldn’t believe we had overslept so much! The sun was shining and it was a very mild air that meandered its way into our room when I slowly, carefully drew the curtains and opened the large, 17th century windows. We were going to have a fabulous weekend!

We had a cup of tea on the terrace next to the kitchen, then Monsieur l’Anglais and D. left in the MG to go back to Caen and collect our own MG from the car park, which hopefully would be open by then and be able to release our little car.

F. disappeared somewhere in the huge grounds that surround the house to do a spot of gardening, while I... set off on an exploration of the park on my own.

I started with the orchard, populated by 5,000 apple trees. In my search for the best pomme for my breakfast, I got very wet feet and trousers but I enjoyed the silence, the low sun rays on my skin and the fruity smells all around me. I ate three apples during my walk, and gathered a few for the men.

When I went back to the house, I took off my drenched shoes and let them dry on the double staircase at the front of the house, which the sun splashed with its rays. I then went around all the rooms in the chateau and relished looking at such gorgeous walls, furniture, paintings and floors. Rameau’s harpsichord music, which F. had put on in the living room, resonated in the whole house – perfect melodies to accompany my tour.

It was so peaceful, I nearly didn’t want Monsieur l’Anglais and D. to come back. As it turned out, they didn’t for another hour, during which I discovered the literature of Anais Nin. Our Australian friend A. had one of her diaries stashed away in the library corner of our bedroom, and I found out a thing or two about this amazing writer. Her diaries will sure be part of my next Amazon order! I had vaguely heard about her, but didn’t know who she was, nor that she had actually spent some time in France. I can’t wait to read her books now!

A scrumptious apple in one hand, the delectable book in the other, I settled myself on one of the front stone steps and let my trousers and shoes dry in the sun and gentle breeze. I was in heaven.

When my husband and D. finally came back, I had a hot shower and delighted in changing my clothes (in which I had spent 8 hours sitting in the car and another 9 hours sleeping in the bed – the heating wasn’t on in the chateau because the weather was still mild, but not quite so mild at night as to sleep with nothing on!). Half an hour later, the three of us were in a little town 5 kilometres away and sitting down at a table in a typical small Norman restaurant. Although D. is English, he is treated like a local when he arrives in that eatery. He has, after all, been coming to the area for 15 years because he also owns a chateau 5 kilometres away, though in the other direction. A place I had been longing to see for three years too and couldn’t believe I was roughly two hours away from discovering.

After our delicious but simple meal, we went to the borough where D.’s chateau is. It is not even a village – it’s just a cluster of five houses, and then it’s fields and national forest all around. While there is a 1-kilometre track to get to A. and F.’s chateau, there is no such path to V..., D.’s chateau. Nonetheless, the view is no less spectacular. It is an imposing mansion, very long and quite high, at the bottom of a grassy slope that you have to negotiate with care when you drive an MG as the path is uneven.

But inside! Inside! I was shocked! D. and his partner have had this chateau for 15 years and practically nothing has been done. Well, everything that has been done is invisible – the electricity, the plumbing, structural work, the taking-out of the mud and soil between the beams in order to relieve them from the weight bearing on them from one floor to the other, and of course, the roof. But there are still rooms with no floor or no ceiling! It’s all still an empty shell, anxiously waiting to be filled with all the things that D. and his partner have bought over the years, themselves waiting patiently in storage.

I soon made myself at home, however. I just ignored the naked walls, the dirty floors, the dusty shelves and furniture items, and sat down next to the floor-to-ceiling fireplace, on the 18th-century rocking chair. Once the fire got going, I stopped shivering from the cold and started relaxing properly.

Soon, it was dark and the fire was roaring, echoing our laughter and D.’s lengthy diatribes about French taxes, the United States (one of A.’s friends there was American) and the awful European laws. We left at 8.30 p.m. and then ate pain perdu for dinner at A. and F.’s, a typical French dish (which I believe translates as ‘French bread’, ironically!) that you usually make when you don’t know what to cook – a mixture of eggs, milk and sugar, in which you soak slices of (usually stale) bread, which you then cook in a frying pan until golden. Absolutely delicious! Because of its unhealthy, fattening quality, my mum never made it for me, but my nanny had a few times, in the many years I had spent at her house, between the ages of 3 and 10.

On the Sunday, we got up at 9 a.m. and joined D. at his chateau at midday. For the next two hours, we prepared bowls of lettuce, some vinaigrette, a kilo and a half of green beans, small potatoes, a two-inches-thick côte de bœuf and the fire to cook it over – an indoor barbeque of sorts!

When guests started to arrive (the American lady and her French husband, A., F. and their children), I felt quite at home cooking, boiling, tossing, marinating, cutting. I was the lady of the house and assumed my role quite seriously. I also took a few pictures. The one of the dining room, with the low rays of the sun illuminating softly the long 17th-century table and benches, is my favourite and became my computer background as soon as I came back home.

The ensuing lunch and afternoon were just heaven. I felt completely at home and realised the chasm that separates the English culture from the French one. Even with English and American people in the house, the simple fact of being in France changes how people eat, act, interact and think. We were truly living how the French live – how I used to live when I was in France full time. I felt so relaxed and so happy, yet at the same time I longed for the possibility of doing this in England and wondered why it just wasn’t possible, even in my own home. It’s all down to the produce (no English butcher will ever sell you a piece of meat like the one the French butcher had sold D.; the green beans do not look, let alone taste, the same [although I have since found some excellent ones at Waitrose, exactly the same as the French ones I’m used to!]), but also, I believe, to the conviviality of the French style that tends to be copied while in France – because it would be an offence not to live as the French do, even when you are a foreigner. The American lady had even made a macédoine de légumes, just the same as I used to have at the school canteen, with a little home-made mayonnaise. You can’t get more French than that!

I felt incredibly good but also incredibly nostalgic. I was this close to wondering why I have lived in England for the past 11 years when life could have been this good all along, in my own country... A bad case of ‘the grass is greener on the other side of the fence’ – of the Channel in this case. Literally, the grass is greener in England, because of the weather – but metaphorically? Sometimes I’m not so sure...

Photos!

Finally! Blogger seems to have solved whatever the problem was: I can now include pictures in my posts, hurray! I've started attaching a couple, but I hope to add a photo to nearly every post that I've written so far. It's going to take a little while. Not that I've written much in one year - that's not what I mean. Just that I don't have a directly relevant picture for each post in my 'My pictures' folder, so I may need to take pictures specially.

I'll start with a photo taken on our honeymoon in the Maldives (where we spent three days, before going on to Sri Lanka). Just because.

Too old

I’m getting old. For the first time ever, I’ve seen the year of my birth (1976) next to an author’s name on the jacket of a book. Normally, they’re either much younger (22, 25) or they’re just a year or two older (for example, Zadie Smith, 1975).

That’s it, I’m old now. It is now officially too late to be labelled a ‘young writer’.

I still remember my grandmother telling me that I really should try to have a novel completed in my early twenties as it’s so uncommon and it would just be so good for marketing purposes, and just so good for my own CV (and pride). I tried, I tried, God knows I tried, but the only novel I finished was a children’s novel, and I was already 26. And it was no way near being ready for an agent or a publisher to even glance at it. And it still isn’t.

On Thursday last week, I went to WH Smith in Oxford and spent part of the money that was on the gift card I got for my 30th birthday last month from my in-laws. I went for something completely different: a novel written by a guy, Jon McGregor, called So Many Ways to Begin. I fancied a man’s point of view this time. He writes very well and is very good at creating atmosphere, with sounds, smells and the small things that his characters do. His first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, was apparently very well received and he won the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award. I’ll let you discover So Many Ways to Begin (I haven’t read his first novel), but the other thing about Jon McGregor is that he now lives in... Nottingham! Where I spent my first four years ‘chez les Rosbifs’! There must be a hidden link. Maybe one day I’ll find out what that is.

My point is this: whenever I see or read a book written by somebody who’s around my age, I get all competitive and think ‘I can do it too! In fact, I AM going to do it!’ Either that or I get very depressed and think ‘I started this story/novel a year ago and look, I’ve only written ten pages’ (or two, or just a few ideas). But still, somehow, it gives me renewed impetus to carry on writing.

I got this feeling the other day when I read Petite Anglaise’s post (on 21 November – see link on right-hand side) about her (potential) new den in Paris that will help her carry on writing her memoir about her life in my birth place. It gave me the kick in the bum that I needed – I was all inspired again. ‘Stop wasting time, just do it now! Today, tomorrow, and every single day after that! Just WRITE!!!’ So Petite, if you read this one day, thank you and good luck with your memoir. I can’t wait to read it as I’m sure it will be as good as your blog, if not better.

One of the things that I have to come to terms with is the fact that no matter how much I love reading novels and thinking up ideas for my own and starting what will be ‘great novels’ in my wildest dreams, I probably will never be a novelist. No matter how much I would love to say ‘I’m a novelist’ some time in the near future, it probably won’t happen (I have to write ‘probably’ – never say never, as they say). I may be able to say ‘I’m a writer’. But if one can only be considered a writer if they are published, then even that is less than certain. (Julia Cameron, for one, disagrees totally with this idea, but even if I told Petite in one of my comments that ‘Of COURSE you are a writer’ even if her memoir hasn’t been published yet [but it will, she has a contract!], somehow I can’t apply the same principle to my own situation – I WRITE, but I’m not a WRITER.) ‘I’m a writer.’ That would be good enough for me, I suppose, but there is something even more mysterious about ‘being a novelist’.

I read today in my writing magazine (Mslexia – a wonderful magazine for female writers of all ages) a very good piece of advice: think of your novel in little scenes, and just write those scenes as they come to you. Don’t think about ‘the whole novel that I have to write’ – only think about these snippets of dialogues and those little ‘happenings’. This advice might help me with my current novel (three pages!). (Yes, I’m still going to try, and probably all my life! Just because I love novels too much and because I love coming up with ideas, sentences, character profiles, similes, non-cliché images. I have been writing stories since I was 8 years old after all – you can’t stop me now I’m 30! I will just carry on till I die, whether I get published or not.)

Still, on Saturday morning, I got up at 6.45 (I was wide awake) and I wrote for five hours non-stop. I think this might have happened once in my life – but only once: when I was writing the final chapter of my children’s novel. I was inspired and it just had to be finished that day, I had decided. I think I wrote for seven hours, in fact. But these five hours on Saturday were not devoted to my novel, as I would have liked them to be. They were spent revising many pages of the self-help book that I’ve been writing for nearly two years, adding more pages to it, and reviewing the proposal that I started putting together a few months ago. It felt good – really good.

But it wasn’t a novel, and I am 30 and getting too old to be a ‘young, fresh talent’.

Courage

Last week, I finally plucked up the courage to erase my grandad’s address and phone number from my palm top. I had wanted to do it several times before, but I just couldn’t bring myself to take out his details from my most private piece of engineering, from my life in names and numbers. It seemed so final.

Last week, I came across his name as I was looking for my uncle’s number. I only have one uncle and he’s my dad’s brother, so my dad, his brother and my grandad all share the same family name, and so it was inevitable that I would come across my grandad’s name in my PDA, every now and again...

Nine months after his death, I was finally able to click on ‘delete’, and pfffiiiu, he disappeared again, just like that. Lost for ever. But always in my memory. His smile, the little dimples on his cheeks getting deeper when he laughed, his large, solid, perfect hands, the little lines on his fingernails, his white wavy hair, his light blue eyes, his strong calves when we went up a mountain, the way he had with words (did I possibly inherit that from him? I’m not sure I’m as talented as he was...), his gentle swearing (‘Et meeeerrrrrrrrrddddddddde alors!’), the way he loved my grandmother, the games we played, at home and in the mountains and at the beach.

This week, a page is being turned. My parents are completing the sale of my grandad’s flat in Nice. It makes us all very sad. Nice will never be the same again. The pebbles will never be as shiny, the sun never as bright, the sky never as blue, the sea never as calm, the mountains near by never as ragged and grey, never as good a refuge as they were for us all, the blue chairs on the Promenade des Anglais never as comfortable, the salade écureuil at Le Squale in Juan-les-Pins never quite so tasty, the sand never as soft...

Nine months – le temps d’une grossesse, as Jean-Jacques Goldman says in one of his songs. I have often seen the link between pregnancy and death, and I see it and feel it this time again. Nine months to accept death, nine months to close that chapter of our family book, nine months to create a thought and feeling inside me that doesn’t make me want to cry every time I think about him.

There is one thing I’ll always be grateful for – it’s the day I went to see him in October last year. I was in Paris to celebrate my engagement to Monsieur l’Anglais and was fortunate enough to see my grandad one last time, three days before his death. He knew he was not going to last much longer (he just didn’t want to), so after a very long silence, in his room, while I was withholding my tears unsuccessfully, he took me in his frail arms and said ‘Je t’ai tant aimée’ – I have loved you so much. He said it as if he were already dead, but I heard what he really wanted to say – ‘Je t’aime’. Nobody in my whole family had said anything as close to ‘Je t’aime’ as he had just done. It made me cry even more. These words will stay with me for ever. ‘Je t’aime aussi,’ I replied.

If there can be such a person in a family, he was my favourite person in my whole family. He was wise, he was funny, he was incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable about many different things, he was brave (he was an army officer before, during and after the Second World War), he was witty, he read widely, he could draw and paint, he loved photography (he definitely instilled in me his love of cameras and pictures), he travelled the world, he was a practical man as well as an intellectual, he was the most complete person I have ever met (along, perhaps, with Monsieur l’Anglais, if I may say so myself). And very importantly for me, if there was one person in my family whose love I was certain of, it was his. He loved me, no matter what, and despite the absence of words, I knew he did, simply because I could feel it. It was the most wonderful feeling in the world, and I needed it throughout my childhood. Luckily, I spent many summers and Easter holidays in Nice with my paternal grandparents. And many Christmases too.

I miss him, but I have so many memories to remember him by that I don’t feel his absence so much any more. I am just grateful that I knew such a great man, and that he was my grandfather.

Mariage pluvieux, mariage heureux

Thank God for French sayings – they can turn anything into something great or even greater. ‘Rainy wedding, happy wedding.’ I guess it works in English too.

Yes, it rained. On 21 and 23 July, the sky was cloudless and only the moderate coolness of our house was comfortable. On 22 July, the heavens opened and Berkshire got more rain that day than in the whole month of May – at least it felt that way.

I was getting ready at the venue, in the stunning, huge, nicely decorated room where my parents were going to spend the night, and I was looking out the window feeling like somehow the Universe didn’t think I deserved a nice, hot, sunny day for my wedding. And I couldn’t help asking ‘Why?!’. At the same time, I knew there was nothing I could do, so instead of lamenting over the dark grey landscape, I smiled at the camera and just prayed that the rain would stop for the post-wedding photograph session that we so wanted to do outdoors. We had a Plan B, but I only wanted to follow Plan A.

Going down the stairs after the official legal interview with the registrar, my legs started to wobble and my breath to shorten. Half-way down, I could feel tears forming in my throat. Had somebody not asked me a mundane question about I don’t even remember what, I would have exploded. But that ordinary question saved me, and the emotion flew away as quickly as it had come over me.

Behind the closed doors of the reception room (a beautiful library, which symbolises our passion for books), waiting for the music to start, my breath was getting shallower and shallower. ‘I cannot cry. I must not cry,’ I repeated to myself. The first few bars of the music; the doors open; the photographer just there, asking us to stay still for the first picture of the most memorable day of my life; and off we go, slowly, in time with the music (a march by Handel), my father holding my arm and taking me to my husband-to-be.

Going down the aisle, the same feeling of near-explosion overwhelms me once again. I try to breathe normally, but I can’t. ‘I must not cry.’ So I breathe out for as long as possible, after each tiny intake of air, and I smile. I smile to the people who are looking at me so intently, who are smiling at me, who are opening their mouths (in shock? amazement? surprise? – I’m not sure, and I’ll never know), and I walk towards my soon-to-be husband, who is looking absolutely gorgeous in his morning suit and top hat.

We haven’t seen each other since 9.30pm yesterday, and it now feels like I haven’t seen him for weeks. He says, ‘You look beautiful.’ I know I won’t cry now. I have him by my side, and that is enough to centre me and get most of my self-control back.

The ceremony unfolds smoothly. Every now and again, I turn around to look at the people who are all witnessing our wedding. Then I realise that so and so is here, and that my soon-to-be mother-in-law looks stunning in her hat and black-and-white outfit, that my soon-to-be father-in-law’s suit is perfect, that my two witnesses are both here, that our readers are also present. They all made it! It feels like a sweet little miracle. It’s all coming together nicely.

Apart from the rain.

But soon, half an hour after the ceremony is over, the heavens close and in their stead appears the first ray of sunshine. Hurray! My wish has been fulfilled! We all rush outside and start taking the group photographs.

And for our own private photo session with the photographer and his wife/assistant, the sun is truly shining, the sky is blue save for a few white clouds that are still lingering, and Mr and Mrs Y can’t stop smiling.

Tomorrow, we’re getting the result of the photographer’s hard work. We can’t wait!

Rain or shine?

A sky like today (if you’re not in Oxfordshire, just to let you know, it’s GRIM: it’s grey and it rains a fair bit, enough to fill our water butts!) reminds me what it could actually be like on our wedding day. Horror! I try not to think about the kind of weather it might be that day, but sometimes, it’s impossible not to wonder. The wedding is now less than four weeks away (I just can’t believe it!) and every now and again, I want to stop somebody in the street and ask them: ‘Do you know what the weather will be like on 22nd July?’. Sometimes it feels like the words really will come out of my mouth. Sometimes I feel that somebody will know for sure. But of course, until the day before, nobody will know, really.

When I remember what the weather was like on 26th July last year, when we first saw the venue, I shiver. It was grey, not very warm, and even if it wasn’t raining, I really hope it won’t be that bad on 22nd July this year...

In a few weeks’ time, I’ll be Mrs Y, after being Miss X for nearly 30 years... It will feel strange for a while, but at the same time I can’t wait to change my name. It’s been such a hard name to carry, all these years. Mind you, Y is just as difficult to understand and spell. But it will define me in a different way: I'll be French, with a weird Corsican first name, married to an Englishman, with a funny, always-have-to-spell-it last name...

Doing too much

(This was actually written on 7th April 2006. I was going to edit it before posting it, but then never found the time or energy – until today.)

Are there not enough things to do in life? Is it not enough to have to get up, go to work (or stay at home but work nonetheless, as the case may be), come back, cook, do the washing-up, clean the house, tend to the garden and the cat, pay the mortgage, update the monthly budget, email one’s friends, speak to the said friends over the phone every now and again too? Why do I, on top of all this, also put pressure on myself to go to the gym, write this article, write that short story, finish my distance writing course, edit my photographs, write my blog, of course – and not only that, write two blogs (there is one in French somewhere in the ether as well!) – write a novel in French, make nice photo albums with my pictures, and now, also, finally, walk my 10,000 steps a day?! (13,000 today!)

Some of these things are laudable – actually, all of them are, it’s just that combined together, they tend to make me become crazy and feel like a zombie, unable to function properly, walking like a disarticulated skeleton. This is what happened to me two weeks ago, after running for 20mn on the treadmill (as well as doing my whole exercise routine) three days in a row (well, two days in a row and then another day after a 24-hour ‘rest’!), when I hadn’t run since I was 18, for the baccalauréat! I was proud of myself on Day 3, but not so much on Days 4 to 7! So I gave myself a two-week break and tonight I went back to the gym for the first time. I still ran on the treadmill, but just for 8mn, and altogether I was in the torture chamber for 50mn – much more reasonable. I listened to my body very attentively and slowed down as soon as there were signs of a slight weakening. I’m feeling quite good as a result, as opposed to a thousand-year-old mummy.

This is one of the reasons why I haven’t written much in here. After the huge and quick descent to hell (exhaustion) 10 days ago, I decided I really, really, really had to slow down and stop doing so much. It was a big wake-up call. I had had it before, but after a while I had forgotten about it. This time, I am going to make sure I don’t forget.

The other reason for not writing much here lately is because I took part in a travel writing competition and 1) I was busy writing three articles that I wanted to enter, and 2) I was horrified to see my name in big letters across my screen when I checked the competition website (they posted all the articles that were entered, and the results will be announced by 30 April). It was quite a harrowing experience. Most people would be impressed and quite chuffed – I was mortified and very scared, especially when I told my boss and her colleague, along with a few colleagues and friends, about it and they looked at the website. I suddenly thought: ‘What if they think it’s crap? What if they think I probably won’t win? What if they think it’s not interesting? What if they think “Why does she even bother?”’. I just wanted to hide and never show my face ever again.

This taught me a great lesson and made me realise one huge thing. It had entered my mind before, but I had dismissed it, having not looked at it properly, I think. This time, I have, and it all became very obvious and very right: the only reason why I want to be published is because I want some recognition, I want to be acknowledged, I want to be valued. Those murky waters I have mentioned before, that is what they are – a lack of recognition from my parents and family, and therefore a huge lack of confidence, self-esteem and self-worth deep within me. Two weeks ago, I realised: and would being published achieve what I badly need? No, of course not! But most importantly, I became aware that I was chasing a dream, and maybe not that I would never reach it for real, but that the whole pursuit was preventing me from enjoying the present, the very thing I am also trying to get pleasure from and live fully... It suddenly became very clear to me that this carrot (publication) was dangling in front of me, a stone’s throw away, and was likely to be out of reach for a very long time, and that I wasn’t prepared to sacrifice all my life to catch and eat that elusive carrot. 1) It might never happen, 2) even if it does, the price to pay to get there is far too high to even contemplate any more.

And so I decided to stop writing – the ‘for the sake of trying to get published’ kind of writing. From then on, I was only going to write for my own pleasure, with absolutely no pressure. Writing is a business, and as such it needs to be taken seriously if one ever wants to get published. Well, I’m not one of these people any more. The others can take it as seriously as they like, they can spend hours slaving over words and sentences and pages and rewrites, they can worry about the advance they’re going to get (or not), the kind of contract they will be able to obtain from their agent or publisher, about writer’s block, about fame – but I’m not going to take part in this dangerous game, I don’t want to any more.

Since I made this big decision, I have been feeling such relief, it’s amazing! I can read my writing magazine and think ‘Ah ah, I don’t need to do that!’ or ‘Ah ah, it doesn’t concern me!’ and rejoice in the knowledge that never again will I put pressure on myself to finish a piece of writing and to send it to a competition in time. I don’t care any more. That is not what life is about for me any more. That life is too stressful, and I give myself enough stress every day about little things. From now on, I am going to write only when I feel like writing, and write only what I feel like writing, not following the rules, not caring about characterisation, plot and dialects – I am just going to write what I know how to write, for my own pure pleasure, and sod the rest of them!

So you might read me here a bit more often again...!

Put that basket down

Last night, I went to a talk on ‘Living lightly’ at the meditation centre that’s now become my second home (a haven of peace, tranquillity and beauty). Sister Shashi, a famous meditation teacher, was there to enlighten us about this great way of living. She got us mesmerised for an hour, and in stitches at times too. She is a brilliant speaker. You wouldn’t expect this sort of speaker in a meditation centre.

One of the most vivid images that keeps playing in my mind is the one of a man who boards a train carrying a heavy basket on his head, and sits down but keeps the basket on his head.

Why doesn’t he put it down, stupid man?

Well, this is what we all do with our ‘baggage’ in life – we’re so attached to it that we keep it with us, at all times. We’ve taken the announcements that we hear in train stations and airports too literally.

Of course, what does this extra luggage do? It weighs us down, slows us down, wears us down. It prevents us from moving forward. Most of all, this baggage being about our past and our worries about the future, it prevents us from enjoying the present.

Last night, it was suddenly quite clear that carrying these superfluous suitcases (gone over my 20kg allowance, have I?), thinking about the extra weight all the time, was a complete waste of time. What is past is past. I should learn the lessons that those events have taught me, yes, but then I should move on and stop thinking about them. As for the future, I will never be able to control it, so it’s best left to its own devices.

I then asked myself why I was so determined to solve all my past problems: it’s because I want my life to be perfect. Perfectionist that I am, I want my life perfect not only in the present, but also in the past, and of course in the future, too. But this doesn’t make sense! I will never be able to prevent my future from being imperfect, and I will never be able to put my past right! It’s too late, it’s all buried in the ashes of time and will never be resurrected to be changed, so how can I make it perfect now? I can’t! I guess I’m hoping that by trying to make my past perfect, I can make my present perfect.

I then understood that this quest for perfection actually makes my life in the present even less perfect than it could be. Any time I try to make my present perfect, it becomes the past already. While I endeavour to make my entire life perfect, the present is absent, as it were. Trying to perfect the present is not being in the present, it’s not staying present, and it’s certainly not enjoying the present. It’s only about control and perfectionism. I would say that these two aspects make up about 50% of the load that is making me bow like an old lady and slowing me down on my journey through life.

If you rummage around the basket, you will also find things that I’ve grown attached to, such as resentment towards my parents for having done this or not done that, negativity (make that 30% of the rest of the load!), some kind of mild anger directed at life (for not being as easy as it could be), and just complexity in general – I seem to love complexity! For example, I want to be happy but at the same time kind of refuse all the happiness that life throws at me (‘Being happy all the time? What is the fun in that?’ seems to ask my unconscious).

When I left the centre last night, I did feel lighter, literally uplifted, and I kept that feeling with me all through the night: whenever I woke up (I’ve got a bad cold at the moment!), I remembered Shisha’s words and I went back to sleep feeling like a wispy cloud moving effortlessly towards the rays of the sun. This morning, I did my first guided meditation (I bought a CD last night), which was all about Light – imagining blue, pink and golden light surrounding my body. But I also took the word to mean ‘weightless’. So my entire being was bright, colourful and light. It was amazing. I floated outside of my body and couldn’t feel anything – my skin was numb. For the first time in meditation, the imperfections of my body didn’t prevent me from forgetting it completely. Bliss!

What is your basket made of? And are you going to put it down, or at least take a few things out and throw them out of the window, leaving them behind you for ever?

Bilingualism?

Nearly eleven years.

I’ve been in this country for nearly eleven years and I still can’t master the art of understanding perfectly everything that people tell me on the other end of the line when I call, say, BT, my bank, my car insurance, my mobile phone provider or Virgin Trains.

It sounds like, whatever company you ring these days, you always end up in a call centre that is in, as we say in French, Peta-ou-shnock or Trifouilly-les-Oies – in other words at the other end of the UK, in a tiny sleepy town in Scotland or Ireland (when it’s not on the other side of the world, in India for example). You always end up talking to a guy from one of these places who mumbles and speaks very fast, and who, irritatingly, doesn’t understand that the principle behind me asking ‘Could you repeat, please?’ is so that their words can be repeated more slowly and more clearly. Soooo frustrating!

The other day, I spent twenty minutes on a phone call to the bank instead of five (an irritation in itself, of course – they thought it was the right time to sell me a new product and I thought it was the right time to say, ‘Yes, go on then’) and half of that time was spent doing a sort of pas de deux, me asking ‘Sorry, could you repeat please?’ or uttering, disconcerted and flustered, ‘Sorry, I really don’t understand’, and the operator repeating in exactly the same way what he had just said.

Me, bilingual? Think again! If after nearly eleven years I still can’t understand people in these call centres, there is no hope that I ever will. It makes me sad. There is no such thing as bilingualism...

Then again, I can’t always understand a Quebequois or a Belgian when they speak French. And isn’t a Scot or an Irishman the equivalent of a Belgian, in terms of language (and of course, in terms of all the jokes that are made at their expense, in England and France respectively)? So maybe it is normal after all – accents do vary greatly, and our ear is not trained to understand them all.

Although, come to think of it, I don’t even always understand my own parents when they speak to me over the phone – yes! even in French, and no! with no specific accent. So maybe it’s just a phone thing.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s just that language itself is elusive, whether it’s the one you have been speaking ever since you were born, or whether it’s the one you have been learning for 18 years...