A Monday morning sort of post...

I’ve been missing the gym; not as in yearning for it but as in skipping it, avoiding it. Not ‘skipping’ as it turns out. I only managed one session last week due to a combination of lingering tummy ache and preparing to move apartments. (I am trying to sort out some of the shambolic mess in which I live.)

Yesterday I was leaving the apartment to go out and pick up some fabric I wanted for cushions (with this move I’m feeling the need to nest.) When the lift arrived there was already another tenant inside from one of the floors above.

‘Morning,’ we both said and smiled.

I looked at him and I felt a stab of guilt. He was dressed in trainers, shorts and a t-shirt and was clutching a bottle of water. The light to floor six was illuminated. Bugger it. I jabbed the ground floor button. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You’re going to the gym…’

‘I am.’ He looked pleased and pulled a small towel from the crook of his arm and dabbed his forehead in anticipation of his sweating.

I wanted to be sick. It’s proving so hard to get the fitness back since I was away in the summer and these two weeks weren’t going to make it any easier. Then I realized…

‘Oh yes,’ I said, triumphant; ‘I’m also going to the Jim. I’m going to the Jim Thompson fabric shop; do you think that’ll have the same effect?’

A review: Without Alice by DJ Kirkby

Who doesn’t love a secret?

In DJ Kirkby’s book, Without Alice, Stephen has a secret. “One so important that it feels as if it will tear you in two.”

Without Alice opens with a tantalizing prologue of three couples in three southern cities/towns in July 1977. All of them are in the process of pregnancy, labour or early motherhood. There's a strong sense of the fatalistic about the prologue: that the conception and birth of these offspring to these couples will set in motion the chain of events that would make Without Alice.

Part One begins with Jennie, one of the offspring from the prologue who is in the throes of her own labour. DJ’s birth scenes are graphic but they paint a realistic picture (in my experience) of the range of emotions that come with having a first baby. We are dropped right into the minutiae of Jennie's thoughts: the fearfulness mixed with the joy. A birth - even when it's happened - is a great way to put characters under stress and show how they each deal with the tensions it brings. As readers we see the dynamics and the underlying issues between Stephen and Jennie where the characters themselves can’t or won’t see.  DJ weaves the present, full of tension and anxiety, with flashbacks to allow us to experience the whole story. 

But what, I wanted to know, about Alice?

She’s Stephen’s secret so you have to be patient. Part two begins to explain…

My favourite scene in Without Alice is the picnic scene. I felt I was there at the picnic in the local park with these mums and our children. I’ve said here before that I like realism in a novel and just as I thought things couldn’t be resolved, out of nowhere DJ moves the story on another leap. I can’t tell you anything else about the picnic scene for fear of spoilers but you know what? You’ll just have to read it.

Without Alice is DJ’s debut novel and it’s being published this October but you can obtain a book already via her publishers, Punked Books. DJ’s website is here. There’s a fascinating interview here on Casdok’s blog with DJ Kirkby. And if you like a laugh you have to visit DJ’s blog for the Wordless Wednesday photographs: they are priceless. 

In praise of women

Today I come simply to give a shout out to women friends. I have lunched, had tea and emailed just four of them in the last 24 hours. This isn’t just for them though because there are so many others out there. It’s taken me years to work out that women friends are great. Maybe it’s taken me the shock of real adult life (working in a dull job, the being at home with children, the going off to study while trying to be a full time mum, the challenges of raising children, moving 6000 miles away from home) to work out just how wonderful women friends are.

I look back at my adult life and it’s sprinkled with women friends who have meant something to me: they made me understand something, made me laugh  or were just there. These friendships haven’t always lasted. I remember my relationship with one woman grew only out of the fact that our offices were next door to each other. When York was cut off by snow from Hull she took me home with her and gave me macaroni cheese and a bed for the night. I looked at her photos: I was newly married and I would be her in twelve or fifteen years.

Then there was T. I had my second dose of post-natal depression when our eyes met over a piece of bright plastic gym equipment for toddlers. She’d had PND too and was further ahead in her recovery. Then L when I first came to Bangkok….

Women friends are brilliant.

You know those internet ‘chain letter’ things that people send to say someone loves you/thinks you’re beautiful/wants to thank you? I know they’re cheesy and schmaltzy. And yes, sometimes I do open them with a smirk because if they’d been physical letters, they’d have been written on perfumed pink paper with sparkly bits. Sometimes I can’t bring myself to send them on because they are just so gushing and the uptight English woman in me struggles to say those things out loud. But I do appreciate them. I’m grateful to know that I mean something to you too.

Today though I want to shout out for women friends: permanent or temporary, physical or cyber, here or far away, in my past, present or future. I think you’re brilliant.

I'm really on my own...

I’ve mentioned a few times here about my newish gym habit. I’ve been going down to the gym in our apartment block since about April but what I haven’t confessed to here is that I’ve been doing it with the help of a personal trainer. I’m sorry but when it comes to the gym I am the idlest woman ever; I would so much rather lie on my sofa reading a good book than go to any gym. God, even a bad book would be better than exercise!

Most apartment blocks here have gyms but when we drew up a shopping list for our new home, it was still one of the things I emphasised to Husband. The new apartment needs a decent gym, I said. Gawd knows it’s tough enough to take the lift 19 floors to get to the 6^th floor gym… If you’re asking me to leave the building… well, I couldn’t be sure I could achieve that!

So, the new apartment has a gym downstairs. Not a room with some equipment in but a branch of a membership/paying gym and we get membership with our rental. And I was a happy bunny because I knew this gym is the one that my trainer uses for her own personal sessions so it would be convenient for her too.

However, at our session on Friday morning it transpired that we were not on the same wavelength at all. She broke the news to me that the gym doesn’t allow anyone but their own staff to take personal training sessions. That’s when I went ‘arrrrghhhh.’ She thought I was worried about our training relationship coming to an end and tried to let me know that it was okay. Of course I felt bad that I hadn’t realized we couldn’t still work together but actually, selfishly, I was worried about being on my own…

I spent all weekend panicking and worrying. It still astonishes me that I wouldn’t dream of messing my trainer about by cancelling sessions – barring illness or disaster – but I will let myself down. Eventually I thought back to why I started all this; that I’d realized that I am on my own. No-one else can do this for me. I’ll just have to stand on my own two feet (while wearing trainers and attractive, stretchy gym clothes) earlier than I expected.

A Room of One's Own

We gave our landlords notice on our apartment several months ago because we could have been moving to the UK.

When we finally knew we were staying in Bangkok we could have changed our minds and stayed but we decided we wanted to move. This is a gorgeous apartment but it’s expensive and we don’t use all the facilities. (Here is a picture of our present  apartment's garden. It's from my office; I’m sorry I couldn’t be bothered to go downstairs. The tennis courts are part of our garden – I’ve never so much set food on them – and the garden itself: with a playground, a seating area and a grassy bit that's out of sight. All the facilities for which people with small kids and dogs pay a premium. I probably haven’t been down there for two years. Why? Because it’s hot people. Remember, our three seasons are ‘hot,’ ‘really hot’ and ‘hot and wet.’)

But back to the present… I was in the UK; I couldn’t look for accommodation. So I told Husband he had total power to choose an apartment. Gulp. Husband’s quite good at house/condo hunting. I reckoned I could trust him to find us a nice place to live – a nice enough place anyway.

He kept in touch, telling me what he’d seen and where they were. In the end he chose one from the short list and stumped up some money so that they took it off the market…so…you know, there wasn’t any going back. Eeek.

I went to see it this week. Gulp. Our agent was nervous because he thought I might march in and say ‘I hate it. This won’t do.’ I’d never do that. I might think it but I gave all the power to Husband so if I loathed it…well, I was going to have to keep buttoned, wasn’t I? 

I already knew the area pretty well. It’s on the green route (back roads) we use to access our current home. I even knew which building it was… I knew that there was plenty of space inside for me to have my own office (OMG *trembling with excitement*) but I had also clocked that there was going to be a disagreement with our children about who’d have the better of the two bedrooms… This was already being played out in our home and they hadn’t even seen the rooms yet!

It was very nice: older but just as much area and quite light. We have more rooms in the new place but they are all a little smaller than the present place. The minute I saw the two rooms for the kids I knew it was a no brainer. Sure, the nicer room shares the balcony with the living room but the other bedroom – OMG - had a walk in closet. Daughter has always wanted one of those…

Friday Photo

Giant trainers for sale in Emporium.

How I Met Your Mother

I read this lovely story on Green Ink a few days ago about how Phil and her fiancé met.

It’s such a great story: a sort of Sliding Doors meets Richard Curtis movie. Romance isn’t my favourite genre but I do love it. There is something perennially hopeful about love stories – I guess that explains the success of romance books and films.

Anyway, it made me think of how Husband and I met. And I thought to myself ‘gosh, is that a story I’ve never told my blog?’ I think it is.

The polite, unrevealing account is that Husband and I met at university.

You might need to brace yourself for the more accurate version. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Here it is:

When I went to university I moved into a hall of residence. I was on the top floor of a three story block. My immediate neighbour was another first year girl, L. Opposite L and I were three final year students: two chemists and a mathematician. Not Yet Husband (Not Bloody Ever Husband had I known this story!) lived in the block next door.

During the first week NYH approached his friends, the three third year students on my corridor and said ‘I hear you’ve got two fit girlies on your corridor. Which one do you recommend I try first?’ (I am resisting the urge to punch that twenty year old version of him.)

‘Ah,’ the three third years said, ‘L’s got a boyfriend at home. You’d best try Jenny first…’

Ouch.

It’s not quite the romance of Green Ink Girl’s anecdote is it? But it is my story. And to give him his credit he’s stopped calling women ‘girlies’ and as a direct result we have been married 19 years…