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All posts for the month August, 2015

The Guest House

Posted by geoffmead on August 31, 2015
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storm-clouds

Ted and I return home tomorrow after 5 weeks in Brittany. There’s been some stormy weather on this trip, both literally (we were virtually trapped inside the camper van for a few days last week) and emotionally. We’re both ready to go home now. Today we’re driving to Mont St Michel and we’ll stay in a hotel to save unpacking the camper van. She’s served us well but I’m ready for a bath and a bit of luxury before the last leg of the journey tomorrow to Le Havre and the ferry back to Portsmouth.

I had a hunch, earlier in the year, that the busyness of everyday life was beginning to get in the way of the real business of living, and that following Chris’s death, I needed to make space to discover what I was avoiding and to experience whatever feelings came up.

And what did come up was just about everything: loneliness, yearning, joy, contentment, sorrow, pleasure, confusion, rage, despair, self-loathing, and love.

Nothing new there, you might say. Maybe so, but the difference is that I have been forced by the solitude of a “retreat” to face them without distraction or self-censorship. The experience reminds of that wonderful Rumi poem, The Guest House. Here’s the Coleman Barks translation:

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honourably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Of course, I’m not an enlightened being like Rumi and it has been very tough at times, especially the days immediately following Chris’s birthday, though I’ve found writing to be a great solace and a way of getting out of a hole when I’ve fallen in and generally keeping things moving. I’ve written two new stories, a love letter to Chris, a dozen blogs, and a handful of poems while I’ve been away. In the shifting landscape of my identity, “writer” has become figural.

I realise that writing helps me find meaning and a sense of purpose, without which I could easily slip into anomie and depression. It is also a way of trying to connect with the world from inside my own lived experience. I read recently that WB Yeats once said: “Art is the social act of a solitary man [sic].” In my case, as a melancholic introvert, it’s certainly true.

So, I’m very grateful for all the comments I’ve received about this blog. They help me remember that I’m not alone in the world, even if it sometimes feels that way.

Thank you.

Captain Midnight

Posted by geoffmead on August 29, 2015
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paw_prints_in_the_sand_by_essjayycee-d2ytowo

Hello, Ted here.

Actually, Ted is an alias. I am really Captain Midnight, super-dog.

Finally, his back is turned. He’s left the laptop turned on and now it’s my turn to talk. He spends a long time deciding what to say and trying to be clever. I just write the plain truth.

“We’ll go to France,” he said. “The food is great.”

He drinks a lot of red stuff from bottles and cooks bits of meat on the barbecue. His food is great. What do I get? Dog biscuits. French dog biscuits are just as appetizing as British dog biscuits. I go on hunger strike sometimes until he puts a bit of meat or fish on them.

Then there’s camping! Whose brilliant idea was that? As soon as I get the smells sorted out, spray a bit of urine, and mark the territory, we’re off somewhere else in the kennel (or camper van as he calls it). When we do get somewhere else I spend most of the day dossing around and barking at French people until he eventually decides he’s tired of sitting on his backside “being a writer” and wants to go for a walk.

He usually finds somewhere nice for his walk, I’ll give him that: some woods, a river, or a bit of seaside. I go with him to humour him and I always make a point of showing how “grateful” I am by pulling him along on the lead. He doesn’t seem to like being on the lead much.

Last night he was moping around, feeling sorry for himself again. There was one of those full moon things and I had a brilliant idea! In the middle of the night, I clipped him to the lead and dragged him to the beach. There was no-one else there, just him and me. I thought he might like a good run around, so I unclipped him and waited. He just stood there.

I ran around like crazy, showing him what to do. I tried everything: I ate seaweed; ran into the sea; dug holes in the sand; and barked at the moon. It was huge fun. He still didn’t catch on. Leader of the pack? I don’t think so.

Then there’s that other thing he does quite often. That thing when he makes a lot of noise and water comes out of his eyes. I jump up on his lap and lick his face when he does that. He puts his arms around me and makes even more noise. It usually doesn’t last very long and I’m still trying to work out exactly what it means. He seems to like me being there when it happens.

He says it’s because he feels lonely, so every night I let him share my bed in the kennel. I know they say that dogs should keep their humans at a distance, but I think that’s a bit old fashioned. Fortunately, we just have to be “good enough” for our humans to develop self-confidence and a secure sense of attachment. My chap’s coming on quite well, all things considered.

That’s all for now super-dog fans.

If you’re in trouble, just whistle.

Captain Midnight

M2 small

I Wanna Hold Your Hand

Posted by geoffmead on August 28, 2015
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hands

I watched a corny sci-fi movie on Netflix the other night: Mission to Mars. When the human protagonists meet the alien who is waiting to greet them (it’s so predictable that I didn’t bother to give you a spoiler alert) they all hold hands.

I wept.

OK, I’m a sucker for sentiment but I wept because it made me think what a fundamental and profoundly intimate gesture of connection it is to hold hands and, more immediately, how much I miss holding hands with Chris.

I say holding hands with Chris rather than holding Chris’s hand, because of the essential mutuality of the act. I was talking to a friend on the phone yesterday (she is also widowed) about what we miss most. There were many things.

“What about sex?” she asked.

“Yes, but even more than that,” I said. “I miss not being able to walk down the street holding hands, feeling completely connected.”

Chris and I had our own way of holding hands (I imagine every couple does). My right hand and her left hand came together in a way that I realise I cannot describe. It amused us that it had to be just so. Occasionally we’d tease each other by coming into dock (corny sci-fi again) with a digit misplaced. It would evoke a shriek of horrified laughter and the other would retract their hand, refusing to attempt to dock again until the whole hand was offered in the proper manner.

I’ve tried to reproduce the action in my mind but it’s as though the memory is carried in my hand. What’s more, the memory can only be activated by our hands actually coming together. In the absence of Chris’s hand, my hand doesn’t know what to do.

When the Beatles song came out in November 1963, I was just about to turn 14 and it was still 3 years before Chris would be born. Even so, I think they nailed it:

Oh yeah I’ll tell you something
I think you’ll understand
When I say that something
I wanna hold your hand
I wanna hold your hand
I wanna hold your hand

Oh please say to me
You’ll let me be your man
And please say to me
You’ll let me hold your hand
Now let me hold your hand
I wanna hold your hand

Lost and Found

Posted by geoffmead on August 26, 2015
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The other night I lost my reading glasses. I felt for them in my top pocket and they weren’t there. I looked around the camper van – it really isn’t that big – and they were nowhere to be seen. It was nearly midnight and almost pitch black outside. I’d taken Ted for a walk earlier. Maybe I’d dropped them somewhere on the campsite?

I was desperate to find them. The inconvenience I could manage, but Chris and I had chosen them together at Morgenthal Frederics whilst on holiday in New York in 2010 and their sentimental value far outweighed their not inconsiderable purchase price. I quite often misplace things these days (don’t we all) but this was serious. I began to berate myself for my stupidity: fancy putting them loose in my shirt pocket!

As best as I could, I retraced Ted’s walk using the torch on my iPhone to search likely places, but to no avail. I went back to the camper van and checked inside again. Not a sign. I found my big torch and swept the ground nearby. Suddenly I saw a glint in the shadows. There they were, lying in the grass a couple of metres from the van, on a well-trodden route. I picked them up and looked at them in the torchlight. They were undamaged. Phew!

It made me wonder how we can become so careless about things (and people) that are precious to us, when the novelty wears off. Sometimes we have to lose them before we realise how much they really mean to us. Chris and I were lucky: we came close to losing each other a couple of times during our relationship but in the end we found in each other the person we wanted to spend the rest of our lives with.

Even though she’s gone, I haven’t lost her.

9.5

Posted by geoffmead on August 24, 2015
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richter-scale

24 August 2015

Exactly two years ago, while we were on holiday in Portugal, Chris had a seizure in the middle of the night. She’d never had one before. It came out of the blue, without any prior warning signs. We were both asleep when it began. I was woken up by the bed shaking. At first, I thought it was an earthquake. But she was having a full-blown clonic tonic fit: she was unconscious; her body was rigid; she was having violent spasms; she’d bitten her tongue and was breathing with difficulty. I called her name over and over again as I held her against me, trying to make sure she didn’t choke.

Help arrived, first in the form of a wonderful Icelandic nurse called Hjördis who was staying nearby, and then of the paramedics who bundled us both into an ambulance and drove us over the mountains to the nearest hospital. The hillsides were aflame with high-summer forest fires. It was like a scene from Danté or, if you prefer popular culture, from a Hollywood disaster movie.

We learned within a few days, from the results of the various scans Chris had in hospital, that the root cause was almost certainly a tumour located deep in her brain. This diagnosis was confirmed when 8 days later she was flown home by Air Ambulance and admitted to Gloucester Royal. Neurosurgeons agreed that it was inoperable and Chris decided with my support to “wait and see” rather than risk more damage by poking around for a biopsy.

Medication controlled her seizures and we had a year symptom-free before new tumours began to cause problems. Before another six months had passed, Chris died. I had thought she was going to die when she’d had the seizure in Portugal. I learned subsequently that she might have done, had her will to live not been so strong.

Every day we had together after the seizure was a gift. Thank you, sweetheart, for coming back from whatever unknowable place you went to when the seizure took hold of you, and for giving us the time to learn to love each other properly.

We went about our lives
as though immune from the shifting
of the continents, unaffected
by the mountains growing inch by inch,
and the abyss that deepened daily
under our feet.

We didn’t see it coming –
the earthquake that shook our world.
The flickering of the seismograph
went unseen; the tectonic plates
inside your head buckled
and strained invisibly.

Until the fault-line slipped,
like San Andreas, collapsing
California into the midnight sea.

I thought you’d never come back.
But you weren’t ready to leave.

You pulled yourself up from the depths
into my outstretched arms,
like the survivor of a great tsunami
and promised you’d stay
for the rest of your life.

You kept your word
my blue-eyed girl,
you snatched a glorious year
from that dark ocean
so we could learn to love
and be loved
in return.

[9.5 is the highest rating on the Richter scale of any recorded earthquake]

Sunday Sunday

Posted by geoffmead on August 23, 2015
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sunflower

Sunday morning and I wake at 8.30. I make my way to the washroom, come back, dress, take Ted for a quick functional walk, fold the bed away, sit down, put the kettle on for tea, and wait for it to boil. Another solitary day stretches out in front of me and I think: what’s the bloody point. It was Chris’s birthday the day before yesterday; I found it unexpectedly uplifting but now I’ve come down with a mighty thump.

It’s only a five-week camping trip and I used to believe that I’d do rather well as a castaway. I quite like my own company and, as an introvert, most of the time what goes on inside my head is much more interesting to me than what goes on outside. Being on my own shouldn’t really be a problem, should it? Chris of course was the complete opposite: an extrovert who found her identity in relationship with others.

It’s a cliché that opposites attract, which is probably why we fitted together so well. Opposites also drive each other crazy. I’d sit quietly enjoying a rare moment of silence and she’d say “What’s the matter?” She’d come home from meeting yet another new group of fascinating people and tell me at length what one person I’d never met said to another person I’d never met, and my eyes would glaze over.

I’d give anything for the chance to piss each other off again.

Bonne Anniversaire

Posted by geoffmead on August 21, 2015
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IMG_2799

Some vintage Clos du Papillon to toast you on your birthday. Only the best for you my girl. How you loved birthdays: yours, mine, anyone’s close to you. Christmas was my thing but birthdays were yours. Not just a day but sometimes a whole week dedicated to celebrating the wonder of being alive.

Last year on your birthday, we went to Demuth’s in Bath for dinner to revisit the scene of our first date. In 2013, we were in Portugal and made dinner for our neighbours. In 2012, we invited some friends to join us round the campfire at Thistledown. In 2011, we were at Gifford’s Circus for the show and dinner afterwards. In 2010, we stayed in Long Island with Karen and Dick after our trip to Minnesota with the black bears. And so on, back until I first knew you. Every year was as special as we could make it.

This year, I’ve brought your photograph with me to Finisterre –World’s End – on a headland I discovered last week. We’re looking out over the Baie de Dournenez at a tranquil sea. At 7.00pm (UK time) a small host of people all over the world, joined together virtually to raise a glass in your memory and to celebrate your 49th birthday. I sipped the Clos du Papillon and ate some blinis with faux caviar.

As I write these words, the side door of the camper van is open toward the sea; Teddy is cooling off in the shade after scoffing his birthday dinner (extra tuna on his dog food); it is silent apart from the sound of waves lapping the rocks; the sun has some way to go before it sets over the far horizon, but the shadows are already long and the birds are coming home to roost. You’d like it here.

Happy birthday my love, wherever you are.

Bonne Anniversaire.

Trefeuntec

Posted by geoffmead on August 18, 2015
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IMG_2789

I was sure that the hotel that Chris and I stayed at four years ago was La Bretagne in Douarnenez. I googled hotel+jacuzzi+Finisterre and the pictures of La Bretagne looked spot-on. I drove to Douarnenez yesterday afternoon, parked the camper van and checked in. It wasn’t what I’d been expecting.

Wrong jacuzzi. Wrong hotel. Wrong town, in fact.

It threw me at first. I took Ted out for a bad tempered walk round the port looking for a restaurant for dinner later, found nothing that appealed to me, and got back to the hotel just in time for the jacuzzi I’d booked at 7.00pm. By this time, I’d decided that everything about Douarnenez, Brittany, France, holidays in general, and this one in particular, was crap.

45 minutes in the jacuzzi gave me time to realise that my determination to repeat a past experience had come very close to robbing the present of any pleasure. I had a choice: to enjoy the evening as best I could or to wallow in my disappointment that things hadn’t gone to plan.

The hotel receptionist booked me a table on the terrace of a good sea-front restaurant. I watched the sun go down over the harbour and ate well. Ted and I made our way back up the dark cobbled streets to the hotel and slept until late. After breakfast, I set myself the task of having a good day somewhere that Chris and I hadn’t been; to enjoy the warmth of the sun and the feel of the breeze on my face; to be present to the moment as far as I could.

I didn’t manage a whole day or even half a day without getting caught up in nostalgia and longing, but I did have one glorious hour today without a care in the world, sitting on the headland at Trefeuntec, with Teddy contented at my feet, and a Breton mermaid story to read.

I’m hoping for more times like that.

Complet

Posted by geoffmead on August 17, 2015
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la_foret_fouesnant_quartier_ete

This gorgeous establishment is La Crêperie Quartier D’été in La Forêt Fouesenant where I went for lunch on Saturday. Chris and I went there in 2011 and I traced it from the photograph of a chalk-board menu amongst our holiday snaps. I didn’t actually get lunch because it was full.

“Pardon, nous sommes complet,” said the Patron.

No matter, I reserved a table for dinner at 7.30pm instead and drove off to find somewhere to walk with Teddy, and for me to have a cup of tea and read. We ended up by the ruins of the Abbaye Saint Maurice, next to a large wooded lake and let the afternoon drift by.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Seated on the terrace at 7.25pm, I ordered a small carafe of house white and six oysters. To say that they were merveilleux would be doing them an injustice… they were exquisite .

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Now for the main course: a buckwheat galette with scallops in a white sauce involving Lambig (a Breton liqueur distilled from local hard cider).

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For desert: a sweet crêpe with caramel sauce and apple (sadly, no picture as I was too greedy and forgot) followed by a large espresso.

I know Chris would have relished every mouthful. I chose exactly the same items for each course that we had enjoyed together. The meal was a sort of gustatory homage to our shared love of good food and the delights of travelling in France.

Afterward, I spoke to the Patron and told him about the visit Chris and I had made before and how much it meant to me to be back there, now that she has died. I tried to explain in broken French how the evening had been parfait but that without her nothing is complet.

He seemed to understand.

The Duchamp Dilemma

Posted by geoffmead on August 15, 2015
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Duchamp

You walk into the pissoir needing to pee and notice that there are three urinals on the wall. For ease of identification (given that they are otherwise identical) let’s call the furthest from you ‘A’, the middle one ‘B’, and the closest to you ‘C’.

So far so good.

However, another man (I’m assuming that you are also a man, otherwise what are you doing in the pissoir) is standing at urinal ‘A’. While you are still in the doorway, he finishes his business and moves away to wash his hands at the basin opposite.

Now comes the tricky bit.

Which urinal do you use? If you walk past ‘C’ and ‘B’ to get to ‘A’, the other man will think that you probably have a urine-related fetish or that you are stalking him. ‘C’ is closest and you could carry it off, but only with a well-practised air of insouciance, or the other man will think you are making a point of deliberately using the urinal furthest from the one he used in which case you almost certainly have a urine-related fetish or you are stalking him.

No, the answer to this tricky point of urinal etiquette is clearly ‘B’. Having avoided the obvious blunder of choosing either ‘A’ or ‘C’ you have found the Goldilocks solution (assuming Goldilocks to have been a boy not a girl). You have hit the sweet spot, so to speak. Then it occurs to you – mid-stream – that if the other man has also considered the same dilemma, he will necessarily conclude that ‘B’ is an elaborate double-bluff and that you definitely have a urine-related fetish or that you are stalking him.

Now your cover is blown and you will have to shoot him.

And those my friends are the opening lines of my forthcoming, best-selling, block-busting, genre-defining, thriller: The Duchamp Dilemma.

Can I put you down for a copy?