rainy days and mondays
I pulled open the curtains and looked out of the window. Outside it was sunny and Friday, but in my heart it was raining and Monday because my husband was staying in London at the weekend working. He has it so easy in London, he doesn't understand how grim it is up north. A small bird came and perched on a bush in the garden and I thought, hmm, that’ll make a nice little anecdote for the blog because it shows how sensitive I am and it’s also a metaphor for my life, because I am a lonely little bird shivering in the cool night air, my cockney sparrow feathers ruffled by the north wind. I wondered if the little bird had come to our house to await my husband's arrival from London and was going to be as disappointed as I was, knowing that when I opened these curtains tomorrow I'd still just see The North outside and the sheer awfulness of it all wouldn't be blissfully blocked out by my beloved's range rover parked outside. I went to the stereo and put on my favourite CD. I love The Carpenters, not only because they come from the seventies just like my descriptions of The North and my writing style, but because any pop group with a building related name does it for me. I sighed. I couldn't be on my own all weekend. If I couldn't have my husband I would have to make do with a local for company. In desperation I picked up the phone and turned to one of the names in my list of other mothers from the school, just the other side of the road and yet in another world. Trembling, I began to dial the number. I didn't have to dial the code and I would hear the neighbour's phone ringing across the street but I knew I would still need to punch in that magic London 020 to feel I was about to phone home. Perhaps one day this would be my home, sigh, oh wouldn't it be loverley...
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23 comments:
Lovin' your soundtrack Rilly!
Oh, Rilly, I can't help but think that Karen Carpenter's life of pain is a metaphor for yours - being pushed into the limelight and being more famous than the man of the operation, never really understanding the depth of her talent. Pushing her self to work so hard in an alien environment. Hiding her problems from those nearest to her. Hoping for the 'white picket fence' but never able to escape the need to travel to the city to ensure business was taken care of..
"I'm on top of the world, looking down on creation and the only explanation I can find..."
Rilly! I must admit I'm terribly disappointed! How come you can hear your neighbours phone ringing from across the street? Don't Southerners move North to bag vast (and cheap) tracts of land for the money they got for their Willesden semi!?
Tsk tsk! Come on girl! Three acres at the very least!
It sounds like there's going to be "A Kind of Hush" in the Super household this weekend. It was often like that for Karen Carpenter because Richard usually overdosed on the Quaaludes.
oh thankyou mutterings and meanderings dear, got to think ahead to the film and work on the soundtrack album you know.
anonymous, I think perhaps you know me better than I know myself. I like to think that in twenty or thirty years people will pop the audiobook version of Strife in the North into whatever futuristic hi-fi they have in the future and in times of trouble will find the brief momment of respite they get from playing the carpenters today.
spymum darling, never fear, my agent told me to use dramatic licence and depict a close community and my isolation within it by putting all the houses close together. I hope this puts your mind at rest. If I could really hear my neighbours phone ringing then I would naturally call the council to report a noise, disturbance, or just buy their house and convert it into a pantry
drunk mummy, ah,it's a sad story. If there had been downshifting blogs around in the seventies then nobody would have needed to take downers.
All these Mummies living in Islington! How 90s and Cherie Blair is that? If they must live anywhere, could they not at least pretend to live in Marylebone? Or Southwark perhaps.
oh crikey anonymous, who here lives in islington? We might have been neighbours!
You Rilly? You don't live anywhere. Or not in any one place at a time anyway. You, I believe, are a committee. Probably of middle-aged men, put together one dull evening in some club or other. Go on - admit it! You've had your fun, and the Mummy thing is starting to wear thin.
Afterthought: perhaps it's simply that you all sound as if you live in Islington? Or was it Willesden... it's not always easy to distinguish.
is that a different committee to the one that got together to create a self-pitying professional victim slagging off the north of england to Londoners and americans for money anonymous? Perhaps you should spend less time at blogs you dislike so much and a bit more time where you obviously feel more at home. just a thought, as you would say
Point taken, other anonymous. Had just popped in and probably won't be back this way again. Enjoy!
anonymous 5.34/8.00/10.15 and 2.26 who just popped in, thanks ever so for visiting and for entering into the spirit of things by continuing the My Fair Lady reference with your Henry 'I can tell what part of London someone is from just by reading their comments on a website' Higgins comment. Much appreciated, beatrice darling.
other anonymous,thanks for dropping by although don't know to whom you could possibly be referring dear.
Now how did you do that, Rilly? Blow my cover I mean. When people visit me anonymously, they stay that way - anonymous. Is it the word-matching thingy that gives the game away? And ought I to be reinstating mine? (I'm just not blog-wise yet, am I? But then I am 85.)
So far as Henry Higgins goes, well it's not the way they say it you know - it's what they say that gives the game away. All that tumbling out of 4X4s in Fulham (or was it Battersea?)
We're altogether more self-effacing, in Marylebone..
Dear Anonymous,
I tumble out of my 4 x 4 in Southwark, SE21 actually.
it's not the word matchy thingy beatrice, just women's intuition
Southwark's good dulwichmum. Probably the next Marylebone - and anyway I have another son living there.(Other than the one in Marylebone that is).
Rilly, just in case you are thinking of doing a 'life in the day' of Mrs Super [?!], please save yourself the bother of doing anything before 11am, as I never really surface before then - and to be honest no one in their right minds, or only people who are very non-u, do - and you wouldn't want to create the wrong impression.
Also, I am intrigued to know what you wear ? Is it lavender blue, Rilly, Rilly ? And when William is King - will you then be Queen ?
I think you sounded wistful. I think the others are nitpicking and missing the real point - i.e.your spouse not joining you for the weekend. I well remember when my man worked away from home. I used to be fine during the week but if he was away over the weekend as well then I always felt really lonely. Sundays always seemed particularly hard. This, when I was in a well established home/community with no building projects going on. But I think you should have grabbed the chance to go down south - just to see him.
i'm sensing, in what you write, a tremulous bravery in the face of awful hardship, which i find deeply moving. i can't really deduce how far north you are - surely no farther than st albans? that would be too cruel!
Rivergirlie - but isn't St. Albans terribly oop north? I was near there last week and it was well - so strange.
Karen Carpenter - voice of velvet and all that Rilly - but don't you detect a sniff of 70s?
sarnia, it is indeed terra incognita - but a quick visit to your blog has revealed that virtually everywhere is oop north for you so you'll be even more sensitive to it than the rest of us.
Indeed it is, Rivergirlie. Even the Isle of Wight is oop north from where I am - quite a weird thought really...
anonymous, I do save myself the bother of doing anything before 11am, that's why I have a nanny. Don't tell anyone though, it'll be bad for book sales.
thanks for dropping by thinker dear. I do like your blog. Devon is the north of the south after all. Weekends are particularly hard because I have to give natalia the afternoon off, sigh.
rivergirlie, thanks ever so for visiting and I do hope to see you again as you seem lovely. I remember when St Albans was up north, sob. I'm not saying I'm a long way up north but I had to post this comment two days ago for it to have time to travel south down the internet and appear here this evening.
Sarnia darling, this IS the seventies dear, I'm up north remember. I hope you have recovered from your trip across the channel. It's grim oop Isle of Wight you know
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