Sylvia

Every now and then we get a message on our answerphone from Sylvia, an elderly lady calling to speak to her friend Denise. We've spoken to her once or twice, when we've been home to answer her call, explained she's got the wrong number but then a few days will pass and we'll have a message telling Denise that she's going to wait outside for her and will see her soon. 

Yesterday Sylvia had called twice, one of the messages was brilliant, a little window into the life of a stranger. "It's 10.27 and you're either out of the house already or you're not up yet, while I am here tucked up in bed, I have had my breakfast..." a perky sounding Sylvia tells Denise, the call is signed off "Love Sylvia" as if she's ending a letter to her. 

I wonder does Denise check in on Sylvia regularly? Maybe she calls her because she's not heard from her for a while not knowing she's returning a call from Sylvia that she never actually received because the message is falling on confused ears in our living room? Does Denise pick her up on time or is Sylvia left waiting in the cold at the end of the road, never to be collected because she told the wrong answer machine that she was going out to wait for her? 

Poor Denise could easily get a reputation as being the unreliable type who has no regard for her elders, her elders who misdial phone numbers.

There's something about these messages, which are really nothing but a voice inside an answering machine, that I find desperately sad. I don't know who Sylvia is but I know when the day that I realise we've not had a message for Denise for a long time comes I'll feel a little bit sad that she's gone.

Such a drag

Allegedly, a few months ago I agreed with Ian that I'd go to watch some drag racing over the bank holiday weekend. I have little recollection of this conversation but last week I went through with the promise.

I can't really tell you an awful lot about the racing itself, mainly because I spent the 7 hours (no, really) that we sat in the grandstands fearing that I was sure to plummet to my death. Have you seen Final Destination? I was starting to feel like the film with the racing incident was actually a documentary. The grandstand where we sat gave a great view of the quarter mile of track we needed to see, however they were made of the most rickety wood I have ever seen, rotten and flexing as you climbed the stairs. I sat rigid, my arse bones digging into the wooden seat, trying desperately not to move too much because it felt like the whole thing moved whenever I did. This Final Destination fear wasn't helped by Ian's friend telling us about a man who once dropped dead in the crowd of spectators after a piece of shrapnel from a car flew through the air and landed in his chest.

Observations

- I had to wear my gig ear plugs because the noise of the cars was so fucking loud 

- A lot of the junior racers and one or two of the grown up racers were girls/women. I was pleasantly surprised about this, it was really nice to see

- That someone managed to get a car I would love (a '90s Peugeot 205) up to 130something mph in the space of a quarter of a mile 

- During the first race, just as I was texting my friend suggesting that we could have a go at it in our cars, one of the cars veered across the track and smashed into a barrier, I swiftly changed my mind.

Despite what I said up there, on the way home I suggested to Ian that he should get his Midget back on the road and we could become a racing team. It must've been a moment of madness on my part, I even said "there's enough room for a much bigger engine in there, isn't there?" I don't know what I was thinking, I really don't. I also suggested I should do the driving because I'm lighter and so we'd have a weight advantage. I have rethought this lunatic idea now, I need the kitchen finished before one of us kills ourselves racing down a drag track. It's a dangerous business whether you're spectating or participating. 

Where we sat, see what I mean? I actually couldn't sit on the kitchen chair the next day without a cushion for support, the bones in my arse were just too sore. Yes yes, I know I shouldn't complain about that but I was so sore, I really was.

Lord of the dance

We were ushered into a large dark room with tiered seating at one end and a black curtain around three sides at the other end. I glanced down at the programme and discovered that the first performance we'd be watching was going to be Stomp! (people banging bin lids), my heart sank. Also featuring on the list of performances was some interpretative dance, my heart sank even further down than I thought it could.

You may wonder what on earth I was doing in such a place, given my obvious dislike of anything we'd be watching. Well, a few weeks ago my brother had left a message with Ian asking if we wanted to watch him dance. Upon further investigation I discovered that he'd refused to allow my step mum to go and so I felt duty bound to accept his invitation. He's dyspraxic which means he struggles with his co-ordination, so I had absolutely no idea what to expect from the evening but I left there feeling so proud and a little teary. I welled up as soon as he started dancing, sadly he was involved in the Stomp! performance but there were no bin lids, just some thigh and a bit of chest slapping. Seeing him, concentrating so hard, sometimes managing to get himself in time with the others made me want to weep. Not from sorrow but pride and a little sadness that our Dad wasn't there to see it. He would have been beaming, as any parent would I suppose but my brother is most certainly our Dad's son, he's outgoing, he knows everybody, you can't go anywhere with him without some saying hello, he's also a performer, as our Dad was. Dad loved to be on stage, singing or dancing - the stories I could tell... and so does my brother.

After the initial sense of dread (I mean, it was Stomp! after all) my heart was well and truly warmed. The way the dance group looked after the others, how they didn't appear to be judging any of the people with special needs they were leading, sometimes people are really lovely, aren't they? To be honest, the fact nobody told my brother to stop bloody singing (I could see him singing along) was a miracle in itself.

When your heart feels heavy

I have the right hump of late. You know when you wish you could sleep for a month or three? Or do a Reggie Perrin if only the thought of being submerged in water didn't make you breathless and feel like vomiting everywhere 

My old man

I'm writing this on Sunday 21st July 2013, this time thirteen years ago I still had a Dad, in fact at about this time we were in the process of having a party in his honour, he was a popular man and the pub we'd hired was packed with people. The last night he was alive he didn't even seem ill yet within a few short hours he would lose his battle against a brain tumour. He was fun, always joking, always singing, he was a self employed mechanic by day but by night he was a compere, a showman. 

I've talked about him before, that was when I was describing him calling me into his bedroom to watch him take his top off in the dark. It's entirely innocent, honest. I have better stories about him than that, I'll share them one day, they're pretty funny.

I had drafted half a post about the day he died, the day my heart smashed into a million pieces but just writing it in my notebook made me weep so I'm going to give typing it up a miss. Besides, you don't want to read that anyway, do you?

Instead of such a maudlin post and as it's the anniversary of his death I thought I'd post a picture of a photograph that sits on my chest of drawers in the bedroom.

In which I observe some strange goings on

The ten minute walk between my office building and the local shopping precinct can be an interesting journey. Sometimes, you'll pass a few people crowded on and around a bench drinking cider and shouting at each other. Sometimes, you'll see a car park attendant scuttling away from the general area of the local sex shop with a DVD box shaped plain package clutched tightly under his arm.* Mostly, you'll pass fellow office workers, strolling back from a sandwich shop and the drunks heading towards the benches, with their cide in hand. Sometimes, there is a string of events like there was today. 

There is a police van, one of those giant yellow ones that house an entire troop of officers (what is the collective noun, I wonder?). It is parked right on the corner of the street with the methadone chemist on one side and the housing association on the opposite side. There are four officers, two of them walk a woman in handcuffs around to the back of the van and help her to clamber in. Another clutches some clothes, while the fourth talks to a man in his twenties who sits, perched on the window ledge of a restaurant. I have my earphones in so I can't hear what's being said but I am aware there is a strange air of calmness, the woman isn't putting up a fight and the man on the window ledge seems to be engaging with the officer talking to him. I carry on walking, on the next corner three teenage girls stare, they've presumably witnessed the whole spectacle and, satisfied that it's come to an end, they start to make their way in the opposite direction. Each one glances over her shoulder to make sure she's not missed anything.

Around the corner something stops me in my tracks, I catch a glimpse of a neon car peeking out from behind a big white van. I take a second look and realise the car is covered in some kind of hairy fabric, the strands moving about in the breeze. Two men stand nearby, they don't seem to be confused, they admire it, they look at it as if it's the most normal optional extra you could get on a car (if it was normal, I'd have leopard). It's parked outside a bar that's opening soon, it must be part of their advertising campaign and it's crying out for a photograph...

Across the road, as I get closer to the shops an elderly man careers past mere millimetres away from me on his mobility scooter, startled, I look up and that's when I notice them. Hoards of people, dozens of them spilling out of the shops and the bingo all just ahead of me, then I notice the fire engine inching its way through the car park. I don't see any flames or smoke but I do see the bewildered people, customers, employees, casual onlookers, nobody quite sure what they should do now. I carry on, past the people standing at their fire assembly points, I walk past one of the evacuated shops and there I spot the best thing I've seen so far, a pair of women who, instead of fleeing the potential fire, have taken the opportunity to have a sit down on the garden chairs that are on display outside a shop which might just be on fire. 

*Ok, so this only happened once but it's always amused me, the slightly shifty look in his eye and the speed at which he walked away, desperate to get out of the vicinity. 

In which I go round and round in circles

I hate exercise, I really do. If you love it then that's fine and to be honest I'm a little bit jealous of you. If you know me in real life, or even if you follow me on Twitter those two sentences will be a little confusing because I am always on about going to the gym. I go every night, Monday to Friday, unless I have something else planned for straight after work. Every day as I approach the gym I secretly will for something to have happened to the building that would mean it was closed for the day. You see, I can't justify to myself skipping a visit there, not going is being lazy but if the decision is taken out of my hands I feel ok about it. I think I've had this routine for about 7 years now, I was super fat when I joined the gym, I was pretty lazy about it then too but I went anyway because a friend I worked with was going to and it really helped my motivation. She stopped going but I didn't, I carried on and got the exercise bug once it started working and the weight started coming off. There was something I hadn't banked on, and I know this is really really stupid, but once you've got really fat and you start to lose weight you have to change your entire lifestyle, there's no going back to being a couch potato unless you want to undo all that hard work. They don't show you that on the TV shows do they? They just show someone drop a few lbs, go on Gok Wan's programme, buy some sucky-in-knickers and that's that. Nobody tells you before you get fat that if you want to not be fat you're going to have to start exercising and you're bloody well going to have to keep it up. Don't get me wrong, I'm not totally thick, I just wish I'd realised this before. You see, my body seems to have got used to a high level of exercise and when it wanes I really notice a difference. And that is precisely what I'm fed up with, the prospect of a lifetime of having to force myself to run/cycle/cross train regularly just to keep up what I started. I wouldn't mind but I'm not even as thin as I once was but that was unsustainable. Now however, I'd like to drop a dress size but I just can't find that motivation in me any more, or maybe I don't want it enough? There's pretty much no point to this post whatsoever, it's just an outpouring from my brain, through my fingers and onto here. I'm going to stop now because I need to put some lycra on and get myself to the gym where I will complain almost non-stop about being there.