Comfort Food

It is a crowd of strangers who mill about on the lawn outside the pub. Bob’s work colleagues mostly, a few university chums, even fewer family. She's lost touch with her few school friends and she doesn’t have any family. She’s never been easy with strangers and her skin prickles with the nearness of them. She concentrates hard on maintaining what she hopes is a bridal smile. This is meant to be her day. Imbued with the bridal beauty of angels she should be confident, and yet she stands here awkwardly isolated, feeling frumpy. It is a double edge sword with no sword swallower: she wants to be the centre of attention but she would rather no one was looking at her. She does not feel good in her skin and the dress does nothing to hide the fat that has grown to camouflage her lack of confidence. She is a white elephant.

She hears Bob’s laughter bouncing off the walls of the beer garden. She should go to him. She feels safer with Bob, feels stronger, like she belongs. The crowd is broken into groups, archipelagoes of well-wishers,  yet she stands marooned. Get a grip she tells herself, foist yourself onto an island and moor up for a while. But how will she choose? She’s never been very good at reading people. She tries for a devil-may-care approach: what’s the worst that can happen, but she knows the answer to that. 

Why doesn’t Bob come and rescue me? Her insecurity whines. He should be showing her off, it's their wedding day. A thought ambushes her: What if he's embarrassed? He doesn’t want to, after all they are such an odd couple: tall thin Bob and his dumpy new wife. Still, she would feel safer with him by her side. Without him, her nerves are her enemy causing her to tremble and hesitate.

The answer of course is written at the fringe of the longest shadow: the hospitality tent. Food galore presented on beautiful silver salvers. A hundered different morsels each conveniently sized to pop in your mouth with no need to juggle a plate. Maybe I could have just a few, she thinks, for dutch courage. It would give her something to do at least. She would look less like a spare part in this cameo.Food always appreciated her company. It was mutual. No, that was cowardly way. She argued with herself only to find her conscience practiced and ready to justify it: If I go to the buffet table you might be able to introduce myself to someone then follow them back to their group. She knew she would be alright once she was there, she knew how to spin a story.

But greed was a blindfold. Once she was in front of the long buffet table, a choice of delicacies too great to narrow down, the need to quieten the head hunger, the emotional void, the insecurities of social circumstance, were far more compelling than observing social niceties. Her greatest concern became whether or not there was room to do the food justice inside her ridiculous bodice. The lady at the bridal outfitters had assured her three days ago when she picked up and payed for the dress that it wouldn’t matter if it had become a little tight.

“The bride always looses a few pounds before the big day and nobody ever eats at their own wedding." She had been unconcerned about the straining seams. "The nerves will slim you down a bit before the big day.”She had smiled and let her card Bollocks to that she thought. That skinny bitch obviously knew nothing. She had pi

Oh, but here they go again, those alarm bells of shame and judgement. 'Let me just crush them beneath a profiterole or ten.'

Belle View

        The three weird sisters of Belle Vue B&B, godesses of creativity all, were consumate artists of breaking and entering, it was how they secured the profitable running of their business.

       Each morning they would rise early and visit the neighbouring hotel’s kitchens and guest house parlours  on Morecombe seafront, where the breakfast things were being prepared, and layed out and their they would ply their trade. The first sister, Bella, would dexterously cause a diversion while another, Sylvie, would stand in the doorway keeping watch, and the third, Ursula, would load their basket with fresh eggs, sliced bacon, boxed cereal and every breakfast pastry she could lay her hands on. 

        How they would run as they made their escape back along the front, scurrying like gleeful mice- for that is what the other hoteliers feared: they were convinced of a travelling infestation of mice, attacking each establishment systematically. Rentokil cleaned up, made a fortune! They frequently visited the premises along the front to reassure the confused owners that there was infact no evidence of vermin, no droppings, no nests. They were called to every establishment except Belle Vue which had a ‘squeeky’ clean reputation despite being the shabbiest looking B&B on the front.

          It was a rather drastic way of keeping the business afloat, but in truth it was the thrill of the breakfast run that made the tedium of the business tolerable to the sisters, addicted as they were to the adrenalin fuelled rush of it. It demanded a drastic devotion to daring. The sisters would be desolate if one of the three of them were caught but each sister trusted the other implicitly and would not leave another to dangle (for hanging was a real threat for villainy at the time). 

The sisters continued in this vein until they passed into local folklore as ‘the three wee timorous beasties’, criminals, vermin of the most cunning sort, Maintaining a reputation as soft as cotton candy they were three bad mice living in a sisterhood of solitude on the promenade.

One Night Stand

          Sunlight comes creeping in, illuminating our skin with its golden glow. His one arm is flung back like he has been falling backwards in his sleep, but the other hand still clutches mine.

           “Stay” he’d said. “I don’t want to be alone. You may just be my good luck charm, my secret remedy.”

          “Ok” 
           
           It had been simple really. There was something about him, some ‘boy’s don’t cry’ quality that spoke to me. We didn’t have sex. We lay next to each other and talked, held hands. As the night turned to dawn we ran out of words and each drifted into sleep. 

           I don’t usually do this, go back from the club with strangers. I wonder if I should leave before he wakes? I am expected at Nan’s for Sunday lunch. I wonder where the bus stop is. I scan the apartment . In the cold light of day it seems tired. There is a potted orchid on the window still in its cellophane, a single stalk rising from a moss bed, its flowers wilted to waxy beige. A table sits in the middle of the room, a chipped mug to one side next to an ash tray and an ornate wooden box. An assortment of cushions lie around it on the floor, looking lost without a sofa. The stains speak of a long history which I am glad not to have been part of. No stereo, no TV.

There is a sudden scrabbling and growling outside in the corridor.

“Who let the dog’s out?”

“Hello,” I say. “Sounds like the dogs of hell.”

“I need a piss.” ‘Morning to you too, I think, the charm of the golden morning waning fast.

          He disappears. What ever magic had been conjured last night that made me think I wanted to stay has evaporated. I get up and look for my jacket. I find it discarded on the floor. I really need a glass of water, but when I get to the kitchen area the grime is so thick I decide I can wait. I feel I ought to say goodbye and hover in the middle of the room waiting for him to finish in the bathroom. I am intrigued by the ornate box on the table and lift the lid to find a pouch of tobacco, rizzlers and a wad of hash. “That’s illegal” shouts my mothers voice in my head, all judgemental.

“Ok, I’m off then” I shout.

His disembodied voice floats out from behind a closed door:

“Baby, if these wings could fly…”

         His speech sounds slurred and then there is a noise like he has fallen.

“You ok?” There’s no response. I knock then push open the bathroom door and find him slumped on the floor, a tourniquet cinched round his arm, a syringe still protruding from his vein. His eyelids flutter a pulse. I pull the needle from his arm putting it in the sink and reach fro my phone.

“Ambulance please,” I say. I know there can be no remedy for this.

Festival Season

It’s festival season again. I reach to the back of the cupboard for my daisy boots. Briefly I wonder if I will find a dead mouse lurking in their depths, as I had the previous year with my wellies. Ah, these daisy boots with their furry cuffs: how I love them. 

I consider. 

They are not terribly practical for a muddy arena- more a fashion spectacle than a festival spectacle. We might be lucky with the weather, it has been known. And they are comfortable, and they are me…and they are the only ones I’ve got. What alternative do I have, short of going barefoot over the broken glass and fallen chip forks? They are a better bet than the filigree lace wedges I had bought for summer.

As the days in the calendar tumble to their conclusion, I gather a pile of eccentric ‘must haves’ fro the first weekend of mud and mayhem: boots, a potted marigold, a gold rimmed china rosebed teacup and saucer, a lace edged parasol and a lost tooth I found lying under the sideboard which I hope to have read by the fortune teller. I am preparing for a new role: to be quirky, interesting, outrageous and free. 

When the day comes, I wheel my kit onto the festival sight and look forward to lying out under the stars in sausage villa, my little two-wheel trundle-trolley bed. It unfolds like a concertina sighing songs of the past to me: ‘put on your red shoes and dance the blues’. The past will urge me on: ‘hear your heart out,’ and make dusty memories fresh again.  

As I stumble through the quagmire of a thousand tramplings, the lyrics ‘I can see clearly now, I can se all obstacles in my way’ leap unbidden to my head and make me laugh. I am already wearing the festival sunglasses I got  the previous year and  the outrageous floral decorations work extremely efectively as blinkers. I really can’t see much at all. I may be able to rock the look but I certainly can’t look for rocks!

The relief of finding a pitch is enormous. I settle in and finally relax, determined to expose myself to all the experiences at hand. The breath of a jinx, snow angel happiness and longing explode in my mind in equal amplification. The house of glow worms glints in the gathering gloaming and I breathe it in. It is all rather fine.

Lock and Key

Lola had escaped the hotel conference: a deliberate turn of events where the timetable was so rigid it was as if the company responsible had been ordering a nation for eternity. Without escape, what chance did she have to breath a different sort of air, clear her head? She walked the moonlit shore in all its glorious silvery reflection, blurred by a prosecco-embrace.

She had lived a life of routine, structured and discaplined, but now with the warm breeze chasing her sparkle-ass jeans along the shore line she felt she had grown wings and could fly away from all that restraint.

He was leaning on a carousel and when his wolf-whistle elicited a smile from her he pushed off from his mooring and approached at a lazy trot until he fell in step beside her offering a cigarette before she bolted. She craved the heart flutter of that first drag more than he could understand. She succumbed. He smiled, his teeth a surreal fluorescent in the u-v flare and she couldn’t help but smile back.

They walked and she talked until the lights dropped away from garish to gaudy and then further so that they hung on the horizon like a rope of stars in another galaxy. She didn’t know why she found herself talking about the cumulative years she and her husband had tried to have children. It was painful to think of the slow destruction of their hopes, the torturous dissent into blame and recrimination. They each became the embodiment of the others disappointments and how could you make it work from there? She shrugged. She was over it she said. She laughed it off unconvincingly, her eyes shining in the moon’s gaze. They sat among the quiet secret of the dunes and he put a hand about her shoulder coaxing her to lean in to his warm embrace. He was a good listener, didn’t say much. She wondered  suddenly whether he spoke any English at all. She could tell he was chancing his arm when he said in a thick accent,

“If you need me, let me know’. 

It  sounded cheesy: like a line he’d heard in a film, but actually, she thought, why not? A carnival for the senses would blot away the pain. That’s what she craved: a white noise experience, an escape.

She knelt and swung one leg over both of his and pushed him down into the dunes. Instantly his hands reached for the swell of her ass as she leaned down to kiss him. How far and how near will this take us she thought. If she could hold this moment of brandished love she would take it, no questions asked. Opportunities like this came seldom to a girl of structure and routine.

In reality, there was nothing romantic about the combination of body fluids and wind-blown sand but they made the best of it before falling back, sated and gritty, staring at the stars. A comet blinked in the firmament and a shooting star gave chase. “Should I make a wish,” she thought. They held out for  a moment both in their own solitude then Shakespeare took them: ‘To sleep, perchance to dream.’ 

When she woke he had already gone- ridden into the night with bloody intentions. Neither of them knew he had gifted her the conception-key she had always longed for.

Doubt and Illusion

 I have to tell you, you do not see the vibrant woman I see when I look at you. Do you know yourself at all or are you hidden behind your own illusion? You are not a functional glutton, but mistress of your own gastronomical desires. Where I look through a lens and know it does not lie, you look at the mirror and distrust what you see. Why?

     “Love the mirror, love yourself.” Say it as a mantra. 

Hold the mirror up to yourself and look with honesty. Look with judgement too if you must but do not be too harsh. What you see is truth. Nurture the self you see there and know your qualities are numbered in their thousands. 

      They are not superficial. 

      The mirror does not see all. 

      Surge forward through your self doubt. There is no inverted world waiting to swallow you up like Alice through her looking glass. You are safe and the whole person you are, remains intact, an image edged in ribbons of rainbows.

      If in doubt break glass! Seven years bad luck? That's just a myth. 

But even through the spiderweb of cracks you will learn to see you are entire and whole and perfect.

Wee Timerous Beasty

Glazed by the glare of the sun, three crows sit in the dead branch of an elm, dark portentous. They are ministers of breaking and entering, three weird sisters unphased by the elements. Come thunder, lightning and rainbows there mordant shadows fall. A cloud shutters the sun into a new attitude. 

At the base of the elm the small family of mice think this may be their chance. They are so hungry that they suck on their toes to survive. They are terrified of making a break from the shadows to find food knowing too well the nature of feather and claw above. The crows sit as still as stone. Unless they are fighting, and then they are actually very noisy, it is difficult to tell if they are asleep or awake. The mice cower and quake as they peep through the lattice of brambles that holds them safe. The crows caw and cackle making the mice’s delicate pink ears hurt at their uncomfortable words, words that seem to come from a dictionary of dark magic full of threat and malice.

Peony, the eldest of three, desperate for sustenance, encourages her sisters

"Gather ye rose buds while ye may, and rose-hips and sweet peas and beetles, for surely if we do not the three weird sisters up there will uncork the essence of our lives anyway and we will be no more than dust.”

“But Peony, we are scared. What if the carved three are watching, waiting to prey on us?”

“If we try to find food death is a possibility sisters but it is a certainty if we stay here any longer. Surely you see we cannot hide behind this wainscot of bark any longer?”

After some time and timerous uncertainty, the mice gather their baskets and make ready for the foray, hoping against hope that the goddess of creation will guide and protect them. They reach the opening of brambles with Peony in the lead. With a brave squeak of 

      “Sisters, with me,” they follow Peony into the light and make a dash through the tall grass. Three tails, like worms, snake and bob in the dirt as they scamper head long toward the safety of a nearby thicket.

A sudden whoosh and a down beat of wings causes them to scatter. The faintest scuffle is heard, a squeek, then silence. The sisters reach the thicket and cower low. They watch a fat spider sneak slowly around her web and gradually their galloping hearts calm to a steady rhythm. They breathe more slowly and look to each other for comfort. 

Where is Peony? The sisterhood look around and see that she is fallen, nothing left of her but marks in the dust, her mouse-like persona no more than a memory. In that moment they know she has saved them all. They will offer due ceremony, create a tent of fallen leaves, a resting place for her adventurer's spirit. They will always remember it was her who had shown them the way.

Dance Belovéd

Dance belovéd, summon the deity in your ritual. You are a vessel of duality both earthly and ethereal. You are not fixed like carved stone but tatooed with life’s colour, as vibrant as stained glass, blue to gold. Paint the sky with your voice and broadcast your faith. This is your release. Skip, dance, shimmy in the blue, you are carving a new beginning.

When the dance is done you can stalk home, spent, pour oil from the vase and soak in the bathtub with patchouli and jasmine, sublime notes of duality, echoes of praise, but for now just dance the blues away.