Sunday, April 27, 2008

THE REAL RANDOM FACTS

Tagged by Poppy, so this is a chance to do the 6 random facts over again; the last ones were a cop-out.

1.
I have the most ridiculous things for breakfast; tradition has never made an impact on my life, except where porridge is concerned – salt not sugar. After the first (now, only) coffee I start to think about what to eat, and there are no limits; when I was a lush/drunk, in my thirties, it was often cold curry from the night before (lots of coffee) and craving for cold samosas would drive me around the west end of Newcastle searching little corner shops. I always have or try to do what I want, in the moment. I’m sitting here eyeing up the choice of:

White chocolate; orange Areo; toast; cream crackers and cheese; toast with sliced chicken; or marshmallows - I think I'll begin with them.

2.
I like the CSIs and would sit through millions of them, one after the other, all day and night. I wonder if there’s a name for the kind of person I am; I once watched the whole set of Buffy in a week – that’s a season a day; more than twenty episodes in each. I am perfectly happy with my own company and the added dimensions the laptop and TV can bring. My son and I are rubbing along together in this tiny flat, very happily, as two similarly occupied individuals; separate but together; I write and watch drama: he creates music and plays computer games. We also make use of Instant Messenger; he demands food. I demand that he gets on his bike and go get chocolate!

3.
When I was twenty, Roseanne and I led a starving life in Manchester; not through any kind of altruistic or creative leanings, but because we spent all our money on drinking, parties and night clubs – there was none left for things like food. We were living in a women’s hostel (which is now a nice hotel) which was pretty much a prison at the time; we made lots of friends, who readily shared their food with us; one woman worked in a butcher shop and used to bring me bacon. This is not the first time I cultivated friendship in order to eat; we had just left a job in a hotel in North Berwick where I had to sell my body to both a chef and a night porter to keep hunger at bay – staff meals were terrible.

4.
‘Do it to Marion too,’ was something I said often to my parents, apparently. M-a-r-i-o-n was my imaginary friend. So, after swinging me between them my parents had to swing her too; they had to lift her on buses; search for her in shops; and tuck her into bed. The only memory I have of her now is the name, and how I said it; she was part of my life for over a year and this is one thing I regret not investigating closer – there are a lot of things I should’ve paid attention to that my mother could’ve shed more light on. Why didn’t I think that stuff was important enough to dig it out of her and write it down? I did once tape her talking about her family but it was already too late because she was forgetting names, though she reeled off a huge list of cousins in the order they were born. That tape is lost now. So, I will just have to re-imagine Marion; I don’t know if she was a child too or something quite else.

5.
I much preferred my father to my mother and when he died I was devastated. We had so much in common that my mother hated; Benny Hill, Monty Python, Cook & Dudley – our sense of humour left her cold and she would clank about the kitchen whenever they were on. I was nineteen and he had just turned forty-eight, that day. He died at the exact time he was born. I’d been sleeping on the sofa, looking after him – he had emphysema, we knew he was dying but weren’t ready for it right then. It was a very strange feeling, losing him like that; as if someone had slammed a heavy door in my face. I know I went all peculiar; I couldn’t speak to anyone, not even my friends; couldn’t lift my eyes to people in the street in case of some kind of acknowledgement or something. I think maybe I was hiding from his death.

6.
I worry about what’s going to happen to the bits of writing I leave behind; unfinished, unread. Will they just disappear back into the universe... for someone else to find? I hope so. It would please me immensely if someone could finish them for me. I was thinking about Julia Darling’s unfinished work last week, wondering what happened to it and how it could be finished for her, keeping her voice intact; now that’s something I would love to do, and in a purely selfless and invisible way. I do hope that one of my grandchildren, or their progeny, get the writing bug and can use what’s left of me. So I’m leaving my work to them and my body to science. Sorted.

8 comments:

Poppy said...

What about posting them on the internet sometime, on this blog maybe? That's what I'm going to do with mine. Well, not on your blog, obviously, unless of course you'd like me too!!

pxx

slippingthroughtheworld said...

posting what poppy? you've lost me; it doesn't take much you know. x

Poppy said...

Oh yeah, didn't actually say what i was referring to. Duh! I meant your writing - as in random fact no.6 - and what would happen to it.

So I meant like making a website and putting your stories and things on it. Or into your blog somewhere.

slippingthroughtheworld said...

oooohhhhh. yeah but i wasn't thinking of the finished work; it was the half-done stuff and skeletons that was on my mind - it seems such a pity to waste it; i'd like someone to actually work on it and create the a new piece of work - it would depend on the level of work needed whether it was a ghost writer or collaboration. btw, i've just posted an interesting link in wf. i found the matter of writers and wills and who does what with their posthumous intellectual property. (isn't that a lovely phrase?)

but yeah, i suppose the finished bits could go on the net...unless i was immensely sought after, then there would be LOADSAMONEY! X

Anne Brooke said...

Ah, imaginary friends are wonderful - I still talk to mine. He makes perfect sense.

==:O

A
xxx

slippingthroughtheworld said...

now that's an idea anne; i could invite another imaginary friend into my life...what a wonderful thought. Mmmmmm. x

Anonymous said...

can you make a kind of word and works and pictures scrapbook and let it organically grow into a sort of solid piece of its own. I love your fragments of writing and think they would work really well scattered through images and cuttings

slippingthroughtheworld said...

oh god don't get me started on another project. but yes i have had that very thing swimming around in my head for a while. i seem to live a very fragmented life, but it's been a lot of fun. x