Month: April 2021

The ecstasy of St Teresa

‘I’ll be back about 9pm, darling’, I shouted, closing the front door before I’d even finished the sentence. I slid open the back door of our old-faithful people carrier and hastily threw in my bags of arts and crafts material before dragging the door back to close. It took 3 times and I added a mental note to my to-do list. Even minus the children, the car screamed ‘you’ll never make it anywhere on time’. 

I got into the car and slammed my own door shut, the Saint Teresa of Avila prayer card swinging violently from the rearview mirror. I mindlessly kissed my fingers and touched it before sticking the key in the ignition and checking the time. 17:45. Not too bad. 

For the last year I’d been helping at an arts and crafts class at a local refuge. It was a transitory sort of place: most of the women didn’t stay long. It was a nondescript Victorian building where they, and often their children, were housed whilst they waited for the outcomes of their various council applications. Their very own purgatory, though, being mostly heathens or Muslims, that reference would have gone over most of their heads. 

It was probably more of a refuge for me than it was for them. Once a week I was able to take a break from the humdrum of my domestic life, kiss my babies bye for the evening, and leave my husband to fend for them for a whole three hours. It wasn’t exactly a spa break but it fed my soul, and reminded me of the types of things I’d loved to do when I first met Anthony. 

I was only 18, and me and my family had just moved to Hastings and started attending a new church: Saint Teresa of Avila. I was quickly ensconced in the social life of the church, running the coffee mornings, collections and even joining the choir. That’s where I got to know Anthony. A few years older than me, he’d been christened there and was widely considered to be the most eligible man in the congregation – at my age anyway. I was as infatuated as a young, Catholic girl could be, and it seemed the feeling was mutual. 

We were married by Father Michael when I was 20 and Anthony 22. I prayed to St Teresa the night before, alone, and with Anthony again on our wedding night. For our honeymoon, we journeyed to Avila to visit the convent where she lived for 27 years. We each prayed again in the cell she had occupied. 

It seemed she listened: we were blessed with a little boy, Joseph, within the year. A steady stream of 5 siblings joined him over the next 10. After that we started using contraception – most Catholics do, if they’re honest. We didn’t much need it though – with 5 children under the age of 12 and a full life managing admin and social events at St Teresa’s, our sex life had dwindled. 

I parked the car – the lurch of the handbrake pulled me back to the present. It was pitch black and quiet outside. I sat in the silence. Mine and Anthony’s sex life, or lack thereof, was something I’d been thinking about more this last year. Perhaps it was all the babies I’d seen at the refuge, the ones I’d held as their mothers cut up coloured card to make pathetic little greetings cards they’d send to no one, because they weren’t allowed. 

Or maybe it was the feeling of excess. It was like a smell that rubbed off on me. My life seemed so small and bland and easy to categorise compared to their raucous, messy, uncouth existence. It verged on the sensual. The tac-tac-tac of the acrylic nails of the glamorous ones; the nervous tap of the feet of the more downtrodden ones. In spite of where they were, the abuses that defined them were also most definitely not what defined them. Sometimes they sang along to the radio as they pritt-sticked their cards together, and if I squinted it could be one of the church music groups. 

Sometimes I felt jealous of how relaxed they were in these little moments, waited on and indulged by 3 devout women seeking some sort of penance. The women in the refuge surely had had lots of sex, probably still did. Lots of orgasms. I laughed to myself: St Teresa herself almost certainly had more orgasms than I’ll ever have. 

The light came on in the car and the passenger door slammed, jolting me out of my reverie. I kissed my fingers and raised them again to touch the prayer card, swinging. ‘Forgive me’, I said, in my head, glancing upwards to where St Teresa presumably lived. I meant it for the orgasm comment, but I knew I’d soon be saying it again, after I’d had sex on the back seat of the people carrier with Phil, who’d just got in. 

It had been three months and 4,770 Hail Mary’s since I’d stopped volunteering at the refuge, and come to this deserted car park instead.

————–

8 April 2021

Prompt: Imagine yourself in an entirely different life. Tell us how you feel about your (alternative) life, your choices, your future in this persona. Talk about regrets or hopes. Do you see yourself in this new persona as a tragic figure or heroic? Beside the “external” trappings, what do you feel you have most in common with her? Where do you part company? Finally, give her a role model – someone from life or literature or wherever you like.

Photo credit

Chilaquiles – part 2

Chilaquiles, Part One

When my relationship ended in 2020 my first thought was ‘I have to get out of here’. Physical escape has always been my coping mechanism. I can mark each of my relationships by the inevitable trip I took afterwards to get away from my life, to come back to myself. The pandemic put paid to that, although at least I had managed to make it home for Christmas. It became more of a regression than an escape, in truth. 

In January 2021 I had found myself pondering – was there anyway I could make it to Mexico City? It definitely was theoretically possible – my cousin had been travelling there, which had baffled me, mid-pandemic. It was recalling my reaction to that that had made me realise, now is not the time. If I went, I’d lose any ability to sit on my high horse, and I liked the view sitting up there. 

So Mexico went back to its rightful place, sat on the back burner. I made it back to my ‘nueva normalidad’ in Spain, but life felt beige rather than the usual technicolor standard I set for myself. By this point it wasn’t so much about the break up – although the way it ended still stung, given what we’d had to experience together. It was more about the feeling of not being able to see a future, or create a future afresh, in the way I had done so many times before. 

I knew I couldn’t complain – this is how most people had felt about 2020, and I’d had a stay of execution. I had so much to be grateful for, even beyond food, shelter, love and friendships. So I tried to seek more comfort and happiness in the little things: I kept a gratitude diary – it worked but I still stopped doing it. I ran 100km in a month and felt on top of the world, so of course, the next month, I only made it to 13.74. I mediated every day until suddenly I didn’t ‘need’ it anymore, and so it trickled down to 3 times a week at best.

The only thing that really stuck was writing. To begin with, it had been an entirely therapeutic exercise, even when I joined a writing class. Every week I would walk around the local lake with my childhood friend, and talk about that week’s prompt. ‘But I can’t write about him again for fuck’s sake’ I would say, and yet – every week – I’d update her that yes, indeed, I had written about him-again-for-fuck’s-sake. 

The first sign I knew I was finally strengthening was when, after around 6 weeks, I just didn’t want to write anymore. Or rather, I didn’t need to. I had started doing morning pages, and one morning – in fact, one week – I just didn’t need to do it, day after day, after day. But whereas I let the meditation practice waver, I picked my pen back up again. It wasn’t just a way of processing my thoughts, it turned out I enjoyed it. 

——————————————-

The waitress brought over the chilaquiles and I felt my stomach rumble in anticipation. Over 12 months on and this whole writing thing had started to feel like a chore. I just needed sustenance, I told myself. A plate of chilaquiles, a coffee (or two) and a litre of water and I’d be ready to start. 

I’d come to Mexico City to write my novel. I forgive you if you roll your eyes. I roll my eyes just writing this. But hear me out. 

First of all. It’s not really a novel. It’s a novella – i.e. it only has to be about 50,000 words. I’m not sure who defined that but I googled it and it’s a thing. Turns out there’s even something called a novellete, I guess for the real commitment-phobic writers out there. That doesn’t even sound like a real word, so I figured entry-level for me had to be a novella. 

Second of all, I don’t expect to ever publish this thing. I know, maybe I’m just saying this as one of my many defence mechanisms. I’ll talk about it with my therapist. But it certainly helps take the pressure off. 

Even with these caveats though, it turns out to find time to write a novella – maybe even a novellete – both around your day job and with no pressure to finish it, is hard. So I’d decided to take a 6 month sabbatical, fly to Mexico City, and get this shit done. 

Except things weren’t going quite to plan. I’d forgotten just how much I loved life in Mexico City. The first month, I let myself off. After all, I needed some friends, I needed to acclimatise to my new neighbourhood, and I needed inspiration; you know, like all the great artists.

I also needed tacos. I ate a lot of tacos al pastor that month. 

——- To be continued ——-

7 April 2022.

Prompt: Imagine it’s April 2022. Choose a physical place you’d like to be (e.g. Paris), and write a reflection looking back on the year from 2021 – 2022. In other words, project your future looking backwards.

Photo taken by me. San Miguel de Allende, March 2019.

Original sin

When I think of guilty pleasures I think of warmth and excess
The ice cream running down my thumb on a hot summer’s day
	The one I'm eating instead of dinner

The bead of sweat that rolls down into the small of my back 
When I’m jumping up and down around my kitchen,
Rocking out, pretending to be Debbie Harry
	Acting like I’m 12 years old again 

I think of how it feels to dig my toes deep into the sand
As I polish off my third detective novel in row 
	When the spine hasn’t cracked on War and Peace

Or the wave of glee that crashes over me
When the roses and peonies I bought for myself 
Arrive at my door, with a note - from me, to me
	A house deposit on frivolities

I never understood,
What’s to feel guilty about?

Who says I shouldn’t be: 

Eating ice cream before dinner
	Or jumping
		Or singing
			Or imagining
				Or spending
Or you know
	Just generally enjoying myself?

Cool is a box,
made of ice 
shoved in the depths of a chest freezer 
that I don’t want to be shut in. 

Leave me out on the side to melt 
joyfully

6 April 2021

Today’s prompt: Do you have a guilty pleasure? Make a work from that.

Photo credit: Charlotte R took this photo of me in NYC, October 2018. Find someone who looks at you the way I look at an ice cream sandwich.

La lucha es real


It’s not like I didn’t have enough going on in April 2021.

Working a demanding job. Keeping up with family and friends here, back home, and in my home-away-from-home. Keeping fit. Remembering to send birthday cards. Doing chores. A new writing course. Spanish lessons twice per week. Cooking myself relatively healthy meals. A 30 day creativity challenge. Meditation every day to keep away the scaries. Washing my hands 20 times per day to keep away the Covid.

And not one drop of booze throughout. What was I thinking.

OK, I’m not complaining, not one bit. I know it sounds like I am. I feel supremely lucky to be able to do all of these things, especially in the midst of a global pandemic. And I love keeping busy, dystopian times or not.

But why, oh why, did I decide to – on top of all this – start a blog in another language?

Answers on a postcard (from the Costa Blanca) please. Is it:

A) Cockiness?
B) Love of a challenge? (see: 30 works challenge + no alcohol)
C) Inescapable need for distraction and/or productivity at all times to feel 1) relief from feelings of impending doom + 2) sense of self-worth?
D) All of the above

I’m not talking a casual Spanish blog either, like the several (English) speaking ones I’ve started and never posted on more than once a year. I stupidly pushed myself to have an accountability partner in the form of my Spanish teacher.

Every week she sets me a homework task to write a blog post on one of 3 or 4 topics. And every time I come to write it, I struggle. I should be writing it right now. But instead, I’m writing about putting it off. Both meta and self-defeatist. Well done me.

The frustrating thing about writing in Spanish (which, by the way, I’m not great at), is that I get halfway through a piece and think: what the hell am I writing about again?

Who am I kidding, the same happens when I write in English too.

But often when attempting one of my Spanish posts – about my first pet, for example or my favourite book (all riveting content – again, not so dissimilar from my English posts), I’m focusing so much on trying to make sense in Spanish that I don’t step back and realise the content is all over the place.

It would make sense instead to outline what I think I want to say in English and then set about replicating that, translating. But then it’s an exercise in translation rather than really ‘writing’, the way I can do here.

In English, it all pours out. It might still be a load of shite, but at least I can connect the dots, swiftly edit, and at a glance, try and bring it together or write it off completely. Half the time with the Spanish blog, I read it back to my teacher in class and openly question: what on earth am I trying to say here?

Case in point is the current blog that I should be finishing right now. My teacher suggested I write on feminism. 30 minutes in and I’ve managed a half-baked, passionate rant about reclaiming the streets. I’m not regretting writing my feelings on the matter, but a coherent polemic it is not.

Well anyway, for today, I am putting one struggle to bed (this piece). The other lucha I’ll fight another day, before Friday at 11.30 CEST anyway.

5 April 2021.
Prompt: Is there a work you’ve been struggling to make? Give it a go!
Photo credit

Chilaquiles – part 1

A statue of the Virgin Mary taken in Mexico, 2019


‘Me puedes traer los chilaquiles y un cafe con leche por fa?’ I motioned to my spot outside in the sun where I’d be sitting, eagerly awaiting breakfast after a somewhat debauched night before. I laughed to myself thinking of how debauched in 2022 meant something entirely different than it had in 2012. 

The server nodded confirmation and I made my way to the table. Thank God I’d remembered my sunglasses, the spring sunshine was already strong by 11 and it made my hangover feel ten times worse. 

The difference in debauchery wasn’t just my age, or so I pretended to myself. It was 2022 AD but only 2 AC. After Covid. Bumping up against strangers in a nightclub and spontaneous nights out were a thing of the past, for now anyway. Maybe forever. 

But hey, I thought to myself. By AC standards, this trip was turning out fantastically – almost normal. Normal. Such a bland, flat, small word but one that keeps whole worlds stable, inner and outer. Something it turns out we craved the entire time. I exhaled deeply at my philosophical profundity. All before breakfast. I should drink mezcal more often. 

I’d arrived in Mexico City just as 2022 came to pass – first in London, and then in Mexico – and a fair few places I passed over on the way. A Mexican wave of celebrations, if you will. The flights were cheaper on New Year’s Eve – with restrictions loosening, everyone wants to travel and, as I haven’t got a firstborn I could sell to afford those prices, I decided to sacrifice my New Year’s eve to the Fates. 

I’d be here for another two months. And, to be honest, I needed to get a move on. 

Coming back to Mexico City had been on my mind ever since I’d left, after Antayra and Alberto’s wedding in 2019. I was head over heels for how alive and expansive the city felt. A throbbing, sprawling metropolis – everything was supersized in a way I’d expected the US to be. But Mexico City felt even bigger: giant buildings, monuments, flags even. That’s probably why Trump felt so threatened. 

The city is so huge, fast-paced, dog-eat-dog – it’s no secret that it can sometimes be downright dangerous – and yet you feel creativity, tenderness and joie-de-vivre spill out everywhere, as if it’s woven through the city, stuffed behind the concrete and the panes of glass. Maybe the threat of overwhelm is the reason why it’s felt so keenly; why life is lived full throttle. 

On almost every street there’ll be a mural – on another there will be galleries, open houses – each one of them architectural gems. There is art at the heart of the government, music on the streets, and delicious street food on every corner. I knew I had to come back. And here I was. For 6 months. To write my novel.

——- To be continued in Chilaquiles, part two ——-

4 April 2022.

Prompt: Imagine it’s April 2022. Choose a physical place you’d like to be (e.g. Paris), and write a reflection looking back on the year from 2021 – 2022. In other words, project your future looking backwards.

Photo taken by me. San Miguel de Allende, March 2019.

The space beneath the desk


Sometimes, when daily life gets too overwhelming, when the tasks are piling up and the life admin seems insurmountable, I’d give anything to crawl under my desk and take refuge in the space there.

I confess I’ve felt this way a long time. Long days, and some nights, spent at the University Library, reading – or scanning – book after book after book. The desks there had dividers to stop you distracting one another. Putting us into little studious boxes. I fantasised about making my box a refuge. About bringing a sleeping bag, a pillow – maybe some cosy socks – and curling up in the space below, to take a nap every couple of hours.

Not every desk is cut out for this fantasy, though. The ones at the Edward Boyle Library, which started my obsession, were spot on. You never forget your first, I suppose. Around one point five metres wide and just shy of a metre deep; I reckoned that was enough to fit my frame, tucked up and in the foetal position. Knees would probably stick out a touch.

But my desk now… well, no chance. Gone are the reassuringly utilitarian boxes of solid and sturdy wood to burrow down against in my sleeping bag – now it’s style over substance. Spindly metal legs that are open to the office elements. Nothing to rest your head on except the floor. I put it together myself, for God’s sake.

And whilst I know this meandering memory sounds strange, it turns out I wasn’t (only) sleep-deprived, just ahead of my time. Pick a Series C tech start up at random and there’s a good chance they’ll have a sleep pod on hand for frazzled employees. They usually look like a spaceship just discharged them onto Earth, replete with soft lighting, ambient music and cashmere blankets, so employees can recharge for 30 min before they pull another all-nighter.

I even had a friend who chose her sleek, expensive gym on the basis that she could kip for 20 minutes after her daily yoga class. Sometimes she confessed to me she didn’t even make it to the yoga class. Half the time they were booked in advance ‘during’ a particularly drunken night just hours before.

She didn’t have to explain herself to me though. I understood. Even in these Covid times, with my bed a short walk from my workplace, there’s still an allure in curling up, cat-like, in that small spot that usually only my feet will grace.

A sacred space for stillness amongst the busyness. Charged with the energy from above. Just mind the odd crumb.

Today’s prompt: Can you make a tool to help you to make your work?
Photo credit

April showers

I had just stepped out

to catch the last spring sun for the day

there was no sign of rain – until,

chapter sev/// , obscured by a solitary drop

then another.

I still find myself looking to others

check I’m not imagining it

, and I’m not.

I gather up my things to go –

then stop.

even in the storm there is comfort

there is joy

Today’s prompt: ‘What brings you joy?’

Photos taken 2 April, 2021. Parque Central, Valencia, Spain.

April Fools

I am the April fool, she agreed as she tucked the card that came with the flowers back into its tiny envelope casing and into her jeans pocket. She picked up the giant bouquet and gave it a good sniff. Nothing, despite how expensive it looked. 

She didn’t need the card on display: it said the same words every year. ‘To my darling April fool, with love on our anniversary, Simon’. And 3 big kisses. 

It must have been her idea to get married on 1 April. The thought of a themed wedding had repulsed her, and yet, it was only now, 4 years later, that she realised that she’d had one. 

April and Simon Rush were married on 1 April 2017, after 12pm so that no one could take the theme too seriously and object in the church mid-ceremony. They had the requisite hashtag for the socials (#FoolsRushIn) and their first dance was to Frankie Lymon’s ‘Why do fools fall in love?’ The wedding favours were whoopee cushions. And Simon had the perfect line for their anniversary card year after year. She had been so proud. So happy. 

But this year the joke was certainly on her. A bouquet from this florist meant only one thing.

He’d got the job in Singapore.

Photo credit