Good Housekeeping?

Last week, I felt amazing. Life was wonderful, and everything was right with the world. This was because I was spending most of my time sitting in a farmhouse kitchen in rural France, watching the sunlight glinting off the Loire and knowing that didn't have to do anything I didn't want to do. It was bliss. Then I had to come back.

My parents were kind enough to drop me off on the way back from Dover ferryport. When my mum asked if she could come in to use the bathroom however, my heart began to race, my palms began to sweat, and knees began to tremble. Despite my exhaustion from the day's travel, I was suddenly filled with the urge to run as far and as fast in the other direction as possible.

Even in the modern world, it seems that women tend to be burdened with the housekeeping. In fact, it seems that once a woman is a fully-fledged adult, she apparently starts to be judged on her home. I have internalised this to quite some degree, and will always clean up for visitors in case they go home and decry my hideous squat of a house afterwards. I will clean especially thoroughly for my pathologically obsessed, hypercritical (about cleanliness, at least) mother, who can see pieces of dust which even electron microscopes would have trouble picking up. It will come as no surprise that my mother believes that those who do not come up to her standards live in squalor - me very much included.

Nor is she shy about 'helping' with the situation. One day last year, she went into my kitchen to put the kettle on, and decided to start spraying surfaces with Dettol and de-crumbing under the toaster. She couldn't understand why I was so insulted. Once when I was at university she came to visit, and the first thing she said as she stepped into my hallway was "Hm. You haven't vacuumed."

On this occasion, though, my fears seemed to be unjustified. Even though I was utterly convinced she'd refuse to leave until I'd let her fumigate the entire flat, everything was fine. "Wow", I said to my housemate, "she's finally learned to keep her thoughts to herself!"

The next day she called me offering to send me some Flash Bathroom and Kitchen cleaner.

Harry and Sally

I am a relationship disaster area. I can take something beautiful, and wreck it like the Hesperus. My problem is very simple, really, and can be summed up in three words. I expect narrative.

In our world, we are bombarded with love stories. On the TV, in movies, in books, even adverts suggest a story (think of the Chanel advert with Nicole Kidman). So, I have come to expect narrative in all my relationships. I find myself delivering lines, setting up dramatic situations, and thinking that I know how it's all going to end because I've seen how it all SHOULD end a hundred times over.

For instance, we all know that when two people have an unconfortable encounter, then become best friends, then have a couple of big fights, then have a very comfortable encounter, they should end up together. Right? Throw in little scenes that demonstrate how well they know each other, how much they have in common, how they depend on each other, and it's a certainty. Isn't it?

Sadly, no it isn't. That big dramatic kissing scene in Trafalgar Square where in a movie 'The End' would roll out across the screen as the leads fade out into 'happy ever after' is not, in actual fact, the end. What happens is she calls him two days later, and finds out that he only kissed her because he felt sad and lonely about how the girl he actually likes doesn't like him. She tells him never to call her again, then calls a week later to forgive him because she misses him as her friend, but has decided she definitely doesn't want anything more to happen. He doesn't answer the phone. Then she blogs about it.

Travels with an Over-Independent Suitcase

For the last few days, I've been in Dublin visiting my parents. My dad took a job there, so they've rented this fancy apartment in the south of the city and as I was dying to get out of London for a bit, I invited myself to stay. About a week before I went, my dad offered to send me money to get a cabin-sized bag, so I wouldn't have to check a bag and then wait around at baggage claim. 'No thanks', I said, 'I'll borrow one'. This is how I ended up going away with a suitcase that is quite possibly possessed by Satan.

This suitcase is very well-traveled. Last week, it went to Frankfurt with my friend R, to whom it actually belongs. The week before that, it went to Amsterdam with our mutual friend C. And of course, it has just returned from Dublin. I think all this globe-trotting has given it ideas above its station. It does not realise that it is a mere receptical for clothing and suchlike. It has become something of a prima donna.

The suitcase does not like corners, and is apt to swing out in unexpected directions. The suitcase does not like bumpy floors or lumpy pavements. The suitcase does not appreciate being jolted over kerbs, and will attempt to hurl itself into the path of the Dublin air coach in protest at such rough treatment. The suitcase goes where it wants to, oblivious to the fact that its handler is desperatley trying to stop it scattering toddlers as it hurtles merrily around Heathrow Terminal 1. The suitcase very definitely does not like the street that I live on, and attacked my left leg mercilessly all the way along to illustrate this point.

I'm going away to Siena next month. I'm buying my own cabin bag.

Once Upon a Time

About nine months after I got my publishing job and moved to London, I went to a party where I met a man who I thought was perfect. I tore my lovely new life to bits in order to be with him, as there were some quite severe obstacles in the way. I was deleriously happy (with him - the rest of my life was going haywire) for oooh...six months (I know, I know, not long). Then, out of the blue, he tells me I'm too difficult and grumpy and stressed for him to be with, and that it's over.

It's now five months after that and I'm living in a new flat with an old friend. It's Saturday morning, and I'm signing onto Facebook, and there it is. My ex (who we will be calling The Capitalist, given his penchant for accumulating things - stocks, shares, and very expensive bottles of wine) is going out with a girl who he claimed was 'just a colleague' when we were together. This would suggest that all the things he said about how difficult I'd become were just so much rubbish; really, I was being left for an easier option.

This morning, I felt like I could let out a breath I'd been holding for months. A weight had been lifted off my chest. Perhaps the greatest heartbreak I'd ever had (and I've had a fair few) had come and gone, and I'd survived. More than that, it wasn't my fault it happened. If I can get through that, then I can do anything. I'm kind of excited to find out what that's going to look like.