Basket Case for a Suitcase?

At least hanging out by the washing line is a place to think.    Thinking of things I could really do.    I don't mean when I get back inside and see the devastation.    Not those sort of  'things to do'.    I really don't waste precious brainwaves thinking about picking up half sucked Frubes.  

No,   I mean when I walk back into the house and it is clean and welcoming and there's a clear table and all my scrapbooks and materials are in order and all I have to do is breeze into the fragrant living room with my elderflower presse and  CREATE.    You know  -  when.....

Maybe tomorrow?       Ha  ha  ha  ha  ha  ha  ha  ..................   huuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhh........

Maybe in about 12 years time then.    Thuglet will be 16 and might be capable of entering without breaking.    Oh  -  he'll be a large teenage male tho'.    Hmmmmm  -  make it 20 years.    They may have all left home by then.    Or I will have.

Back to my place on this earth and the reason for so being.   It's been a sticky subject for some time.    About 43 years.   I know I definitely don't do blouses and numbers and smiling at people and telephones.    That much I have worked out.    And I keep harping on about being creative.    But really....?    I have recently peered through old notebooks.    Set me back several pounds and hours in The Chair.  

But I have worked out something.    It does need to be creative-y  -  BUT  -   I don't have a novel in me.    And despite sheets of scribblings in the flickering dark in the old days,   I am not going to direct a feature film.    And I may have towers of magazine scraps but I am not going to design shoes,   or jewellery,   or theatre sets,   or  redesign The South Bank.    I won't be unveiling a majestic bronze tribute to the nation's heroic fallen.    Or render Zara Phillips' fizzog on canvas with cow dung and molten Biba macs.    I am not going to emerge from a cellar with the next Wallace and Gromit.    I cannot speak sewing machine and won't be producing the costumes for Holiday On Ice.    I'm never going to hit top C.    Or hold down  'F'  properly.    Or write the next  'White Christmas'.    Or join  'Diversity'.    Or even get both eyebrows to match.

But....

  ....if I try really really hard........

    ....I might remember to scrawl Thuglet's latest funny on a scrap of paper and stick it to the fridge.                      


In my late 20s' phase of madness,   the thunderous clouds parted and left me with the Great Truth that the only things of worth are  Space  and  Passion.    And I still hold with that.    Pretty much anything I value falls into one or the other category.

But there's another:    Funny!

It has taken me  FOREVER  to accept that  FUNNY  is a driving force and is not a joke.

Willliam Morris has his  'beautiful  or useful'  boxes to tick.    I would have it as  'beautiful or funny'.    If it ain't either of those.................ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

I have strived over the years to make things that are beautiful.    Really strived.    But they always come out funny.    And I pretend that I meant it that way all along.    So  -  thinking about it,   whilst pegging out my lovely washing,   maybe I did always mean it all along.    I've been knotting myself into rigging for years trying to think of the things  I COULD REALLY DO.    Reached Cracking Point.    I'm just not fabulous enough at anything to do it beautifully.    So........clouds parting again........maybe I could make funny things.   Or maybe make things funny.    

 (  I     have     a     dream     !!!!!  )    

Shame though that I want it to be funny ha ha  -  but my speciality is funny peculiar.     Knew there was a catch.      Cracking up is hard to do.......

I'm at Cracking Up Point with about everything at the moment.    I have never looked more forward to a holiday than I am this week.    And my  'holiday project'  (ha ha),   this year will be to sit  (ha ha ha)  and scribble and think and think and scribble and come up with a fool-proof plan for foolery itself.

And I'm going to Norfolk!    I'm looking forward to going to Norfolk!!!!



Now that's funny!


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(OK  -   I know we have already off to Dubai earlier so I'm not expecting an over-dose of sympathy  -  but that was a sudden opportunity  -  a treat  -  and didn't seem real somehow.    A lovely dream.    And I wasn't in such a state of lunacy.    So shut it!)


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 * *  Sobs.   Clutches the door-frame.   Bottom lip quivers.    Go!  *  *   -   I have been running on the diesel fumes for the last couple of weeks now.    Total basket case.    Hurtling from one box of frogs to another.     I really really need to  STOP.      And  GO AWAY!      Away from my endless doings.    Unfurrow my unbeautiful brow.    And unthink my unfunny undertakings.      *  *  Sweeps back of hand away from beading forehead and turns sharply to camera  *  *  

Sounding all negative you guffaw.    But too much positive comes back round to negative if you're not a bit more less-y.    You see  -  lately it would appear I'm just a girl who cain't say  'No!'  -  an'  I'm in a terrible fix.      ...Oh yes.....    

'Yes!',   in discord with the Positive Thought Brigade,   merely causes piles of  THINGS  on my kitchen counter and a very muscley clutch control thigh.    'Yes!'   results in me looking in the fridge for a pen,   the washing machine for the tea bags  and the oven for the phone.    'Yes!'  has brought me closer to becoming my mother  -  herself famous for putting milk bottles in the airing cupboard,   stroking her handbag  and leaving that very item on top of the car and driving off.     'Yes!'  has torn apart the organizing part of my brain with the doing part of my body.    'Yes!'  decrees that no thought can pass through my mind until at least 5 biscuits have passed through my lips.    'Yes!'  makes every mundane decision feel like a World Cup Final penalty shoot out.    'Yes!'  has driven me to the brink.....      It's definitely time for some  'No!'


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Hmmmmmmn  -  'No!'  you don't fit into your wetsuit anymore due to extreme biscuit abuse.    

                                                                     'NO!!!!'


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Aaah -   but the British holiday........    Happy smiley slightly neglected kids  and  dappy shiny slightly forgetful grown-ups .    Sand in your ice-cream  and  love in your heart.      Seagulls on your case,   plasters on your toes  and the wind up your jacksie.    

Games.      Conversation.      Makin' memories.

Oh god.

That means   (a)   Cards   (No!   No!!   No!!!)      (b)   'Why can't we have nuggets and chips for dinner?'    'Because you had it for breakfast and lunch.    For the last 5 days!'      (c)   Scrubbing off crayon murals from freshly renovated holiday walls with tiny bendy dinosaur rubbers before Daddy comes back from the paper shop.


That's not so funny.


Maybe I should send them off on holiday and I stay here.    Just me and my washing line.    No no no....


I want to go and stare at the sea.    Ask it some big questions.    Throw stones in it if I don't like the answers.    Or throw stones at wasps like my Dad.    Wonder what he was thinking about?








Wasps probably.