Flossie’s Tales

It’s often difficult to tell if babies are little boys or little girls. Their features are so baby like that it is impossible to distinguish any other features that will make them so distinctive when older. But this morning a very little boy was buggied onto the Metro.

His face, a typical little boy. His cheeks were as masculine as a baby’s could be. His brow was unmistakably that of a young male of the species.

There was a catch. Something that didn’t quite sit right. He was in a pink pushchair with cute bunches and a pretty princess t-shirt.

I could only assume that there were three possibilities: He has an extremely pink elder sister, he suffers very early onset gender dysmorphia or his Mum is sick and tired to the very back teeth of everyone complimenting her sweet and perfect baby girl on being such a handsome young boy.

But ‘She’s a girl’. Sigh.

So, that’s it. No more filling the dishwasher three times a day. No more cringing when the noisy housemate slams the doors at four in the morning. No more madness of house meals that could feed an army.

I’m moving from my house-share of eight, but I now need to learn to share my home with you. I can guarantee it’ll still be frustrating and wonderful in varying measure, but that I can take, if it means sharing my life with you.

I warn you now, mind, that you have a hard act to follow in making me laugh.

As I scroll down the right side of this blog I see the months building up. The months that turned into years of us being apart. It looks like such a long time when, one line after another, it’s listed, bleakly. It feels like we’ve been waiting a long time and suddenly, slowly, now, it is becoming a reality.

Our home.

No longer with the Irish Sea, Offa’s Dyke or Hadrian’s Wall between us.

Our home.

But it does pose a conundrum for this place. It was written for you. I quote from almost three years ago:

… we miss out on some of the news and trivia of daily life. I can’t take your hand and show you something I’ve just seen. Something funny, or happy, or sad. I miss that.

So, this is my attempt at bridging that gap. If I were feeling soppy, I’d claim they were love-letters in a web-enabled world, but you wouldn’t catch me being soppy now, would you?

I don’t know if I will keep writing here. I don’t know if I’ll start somewhere else. I don’t know if anyone else is even reading anymore.

Does leaving my madcap house of Sunbury mean leaving Flossie behind too?

I’m still undecided.

It has been fun, but better things are to come, I feel.

The trill of a singing blackbird makes me happy. The pitch is just right to lift your spirits and see that the world is right.

Not today.

Today, I should be happy, but for some reason I feel flat. There’s no energy, no motivation, just tired.

Walking back the clouds are so low I can feel the moist air forming droplets against my skin.

Maybe tomorrow I can look at the world anew. Maybe all I need is a good sleep.

But this evening, not even the song of the blackbird could raise a smile.

You appear to have missed the entire point, my darling. I was having way too much cliche’d fun. Let there be no adjective left unturned. I even went back to add a few more in, just for bad measure.

Overwritten.

Tsk.

Divebombed by gulls, a lone fox padds along the strandline, scavenging the discarded driftwood and relinquished seaweed. The gull’s cry, harsh, beside the pebble lapping sea.

East, a soliatry ship, navigation lights ablaze, sits anchored between me and the not quite yet risen sun. The sky glows red.

The pier lighthouse punctuates my descent as I take the sodden steps, hanging with wrack, to the cove. The flotsam of beer cans accentuating the vulnerable beauty of this hidden nook.

Flash, the metronomic regularity keeps pace with the sky brightening, but the clouds do not lift. There will be no clear sunrise today.

On my return I see a red car, high on the headland. I do not mind this intrusion into my annual ritual. I’m glad that someone else also finds solace, just occasionally, in our quiet morning world.

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!

In a shocking development, I’m the only one to load and unload the dishwasher over the last few days. Add to that the fact that this morning’s breakfast is probably the first set of crockery I’ve dirtied since a week last Tuesday and you begin to feel my frustration.

Weirdly, I’m going to miss this place.

Driving home from a meeting last night the skies were immense. Dark, ominous clouds hanging low. There was a letterbox of brighter sky to the West.

It wasn’t long before the rain came. The clouds dropped their load, inking the road surface. Spray splashed from the tyres of the vehicles driving past.

The break in the clouds grew.

Behind us, to the East a bright rainbow was cast, arcing high above the landscape. One side reached the ground not far from the Angel of the North, the other directly above some cones and diggers and workmen labouring, digging up the road surface.

I’m sure the council will claim they are improving the main artery that is the A1, but maybe this credit crunch has hit hard enough that they are exploring other avenues of income.

Sometimes being nice is too much like hard work.

After a tough day and arriving home to find my keys were left in the office, I was an hour late getting into the house. However tough, it is nothing compared to TSD who’s boyfriend is still pretty seriously ill in hospital. The kitchen needed a good tidy. The last thing she needed was coming home to the mess.

Then, I went shopping for ingredients. There’s a cake looming for TAA’s birthday. Butter Almond Cake. The recipe looks good.

I then cooked. Enough for TSD if she wanted, with enough for leftovers for lunch tomorrow. Cooking for three is no more difficult than cooking for one.

I lost the willpower however, when I realised I’d forgotten the butter. Apparently a Butter Almond cake is a bit rubbish without any butter. By now I really didn’t want to leave the house again, let alone bake.

You are very good at motivating me when I need it, and after only a minute or two I found the energy to head down the street to the local Tesco.

I was more than rewarded, however. On my way home the sky was lightly dusted with high altitude cirrus clouds. More than that, there was a bright sundog caught at one side of the sun. As I watched, it grew more distinct, as though it were rewarding me for sticking with it. It wasn’t, of course. That was pure chance. The best reward was seeing TSD’s face when I told her there was dinner in the fridge, should she be hungry.

There’ll be enough cake left for pudding, too.

Airports are full of extremes of emotion. Today they felt full of clinging couples, parting or reuniting.

There is something deeply wrong about travelling through airports when you are neither going somewhere special, going to see someone you love or returning home.

Travelling back from Milan this afternoon, past the train that would take me to Glasgow, ending up in an anonymous house in Newcastle feels very badly wrong.

Being away from you sucks to the nth degree.