Sunday Scribblings: First Love

My first love was called Jim, and he had no sense of smell – he was born that way. It would always make me sad to think that when we split up, as we so painfully did, he would never catch a memory of me on the air as another woman walked past him wearing my scent. We met in a nightclub three days into a new decade, in 1990 when I was sixteen and he was twenty-three. Precocious teenager that I was I chatted him up, on the edge of the dance floor, Pernod and black in my hand. He had long dark hair and a goatee, and the kindest eyes that had ever landed on me. Our first proper date was a trip to the cinema to see When Harry Met Sally, and from that afternoon we saw each other every day. I was still at school, supposedly studying for my A levels, but I would sneak off to the bus stop before class and go to his house instead. Within six months I decided – with the wisdom of a child who wants to be grown up too soon – to leave school and move in with Jim. My only goal in life, back then, was to have a boyfriend, the legacy of an absent father. In my hurry to be grown up I found myself at seventeen living in a grotty bedsit with an unemployed labourer, permanently damp towels hanging over the wardrobe doors and two pet rats. Oh the glamorous life!

Despite the damp, I decorated our home with the standard issue hippy fare bought during trips to Glastonbury, our Mecca. I delighted in shopping for our groceries in the local street market, coming back home with bags full of vegetables and soya mince (we were vegetarian, of course, with rings in our noses and psychedelic swirls on our clothes). Weekends were spent dancing all night in chemically enhanced swells of joy, with occasional days spent with my family (despite the fact that Jim had stolen me from them, my mother and sister loved him). I had wrapped my needy arms around him so tightly I’m sure he couldn’t breathe, yet gradually we started to follow our own paths – me to art college to study photography, him singing in a local band. I loved Jim passionately and jealously, but the new world college opened up to me soon lured me away from him. I realised that I had outgrown my unemployed labourer, and one day, after listening to Joni Mitchell’s Blue non-stop to bolster my nerve, he came home from band rehearsals and I told him I was moving out. Looking back on that day now, I can’t believe how heartless I was, but I was only nineteen. I had no conception of real emotions, real pain. I was selfish, and I was cruel, but I knew no better. Jim, understandably, was crushed. It was the first time I had seen him cry, and remembering this makes me feel so ashamed.

The months that followed were messy, with us getting back together only to part again. While I became caught up in new love stories at college, Jim got together with a friend of ours and last I heard they had a baby together. The irony is not lost on me that he is, one hopes, now settled with a family and I am here, on my own and grieving. It’s curious how things turn out, where the paths we choose take us.

For more Sunday Scribblings, go here.

Ink on my back

I’ve been tagged by Denise, the girl with the pretty feet and beautiful heart, and it’s a good thing too as my bloggery inspiration is a bit dry today – too much wine last night has resulted in a headache all day… I saw that one coming too.

My dos and don’ts

I do look after my insides, with healthy food, lots of water and no caffeine
I don’t look after my outside very well as I don’t exercise

I do want to give up smoking, but
I don’t want to give up just yet

I do have two tattoos
I don’t like one of them; in fact, I hate it and wish it wasn’t there

I do hope I will fall in love again one day
I don’t know if I will ever be ready, or brave enough, to let this happen

I do consider myself to be spiritual
I don’t like organised religion in any shape or form

I do love living on my own – passionately in fact, so
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to live with another person again

I do think I write well
I don’t know if I will ever consider myself to be a ‘real’ writer though

I do think about what it would be like to be a mother
I don’t know if I can be unselfish enough to have a child

I do have lots of wonderful emails in my inbox from new friends
I don’t always have time to reply immediately, and i feel bad about this (they are coming, i promise!)

I do have a lot of gorgeous clothes in my wardrobe
I don’t ever wear them as I work from home in the same old combats and T-shirts every day (must change this)

I do spend too much time day dreaming, thinking and reading, but
I don’t think this is a bad thing

I do acknowledge my own strength, resilience and recovery, but
I don’t think I’d be here today if it wasn’t for Abigail, Mum, Madeleine and Anna

I do love Jeanette Winterson and Siri Hustvedt
I don’t like chick lit or Dan Brown!

I’m now passing the baton on to BB, Megg, Delia and Sarah.

Sunday Scribblings: My Shoes

Shoes tell you everything. Shoes speak my language. Their tap tap tap on the airport runway tells me the story of a lovely, lonely woman flying after love - that old, old story in a new pair of shoes. ~ Erica Jong, from Ode to My Shoes

Circa 1987: white rouched faux-leather stilettos; two inch heel, worn with leg warmers (and Band Aids)
There’s a reoccurring dream I have, where, in the rolling landscape of my head, I have to walk a thousand miles – to find something, go somewhere, runaway – and I suddenly realise I’m wearing high heels. Yet the further I walk the more I can magically walk in these shoes: they’re not pinching my toes, rubbing my heels or making my bones ache. I can run in them, strut in them; they are the most comfortable things I have ever worn. It’s like walking on air… dancing in gossamer slippers… and then I wake up and the reality hits me.

Circa 1993: black leather Doc Martens; worn with black leggings and swirly 70s dresses
For three years I was a fashion editor in London. Each season I wrote about the latest shoes; the Choos and Blahniks, the round toes/pointy toes/wedge heels/Mary Janes (delete as appropriate) and waxed lyrical over the curve of a heel, the beautiful detailing and sumptuous soft suede. I wrote these articles for the benefit of my readers; in the real world I looked upon the new shoes as objects of torture. My colleagues went shopping in Kensington wearing stilettos and cheese-wire sandals. I went shopping in flip flops.
Eventually I discovered the boots that saved my sartorial blushes in the office. In Atticus on Kensington Church Street I found a pair of suede kitten-heeled knee-high boots that I could wear all day in only mild discomfort. The trick was buying them half a size too big and wearing thick socks. Luckily I lived close to the tube station, so didn’t have to walk too far, but I still had to take them off as soon as I got home. Nevertheless, my office outfits were considerably improved, and I could attend the fashion shows without feeling like the poor relation, shoe-wise.

Circa 1999: silver Nike Air Max; worn with trousers and vintage nighties from Portobello market
I understand that, for some women, shoes are akin to soft porn, but I’ve always been a bag girl myself. Show me the latest Fendi baguette, or Gucci Jackie and I’m drooling. I see women hobbling down the street, their backsides in the air, their fragile feet squeezed into vertiginous heels, and I wonder how it is that women still have their feet, and their progress, bound in this way. Men take strides across the earth blister-free; women are left tottering behind them, unable to run, unable to climb the ladder. Perhaps if my feet weren’t so wide, my skin so paper-thin, I would think differently.

Circa 2006: white canvas Converse All Stars; worn without a second thought for fashion
These days I’ve perfected the Notting Hill boho look, which happily has translated well living by the sea. Jeans, Converse or Ugg boots and a pea coat have seen me through the winter; now that the warmer months are coming I’ll be fishing out my beloved flip flops from the back of the wardrobe and wearing dresses again. I walk fast, and I need footwear that can keep up with me.
However, I do own a pair of heels that I wear when I need to feel glamorous. These chocolate-brown soft leather boots, with a round toe and three-inch heel, make my legs look even longer and make me feel like Kate Moss (which is always a bonus). I can wear them for an evening as long as I don’t walk too far, and as they make me stand six foot tall, you can’t miss me when I’m wearing them. And sometimes, just sometimes, I quite like that.

For more Sunday Scribblings, go here

Sunday Scribblings: Chocolat

There are many places in the world that I have visited and fallen in love with. I have walked in the shadow of the Great Pyramid in Cairo, driven through the Rift Valley in Kenya under a rainbow, climbed the Dunn’s River Falls in Jamaica in pink rubber shoes and a bikini and eaten king prawns with my fingers in a restaurant in Lisbon; but there is one place on the planet where I left my heart, in more ways than one.

One wintry weekend in February 2003 my ex and I went to Paris to see if we could repair our relationship. We walked along the banks of the Seine, and paid our respects to the Mona Lisa. We got as far as the Eiffel Tower, then decided we didn’t want to queue to see the view from the top; we were too tired, of the day, and of each other. We walked and talked, talked and walked, finding new streets to take our conversations along, and when the talking dried up we cried. We constructed solutions only to knock them back down; we looked into each other’s eyes and saw the same thought reflected back. Sitting in the Jardins du Luxembourg we wrapped our coats around us and watched the Parisians strolling past, women with scarves like exclamations marks tied around their necks, men with perfectly polished shoes and cigarettes glued to their lips. We pulled our wooden seats closer together, but in the watery light of the afternoon sun, the distance between us echoed and hummed.

Walking back to the hotel along Boulevard St-Germain, we stopped in Café de Flore for chocolat chaud. Sitting in wicker chairs on the pavement outside, I looked at him and smiled. The chocolat thawed my insides and ten years of life together flooded back and I reached for his hand and told him I loved him. He squeezed my fingers and said the same, and it was then we both knew for sure our time together was over. A new life awaited us back in England, two new paths to follow, a divergent route that would see us fall in love with other people, a birth for him, and ultimately a death for me. When we paid for our drinks, I left a little piece of my heart as a tip for the waiter. Some day I plan to go back to Flore to reclaim that piece, in the café that marked a new beginning, and a bittersweet ending.

To read more Sunday Scribblings, go here, and to get a taste of the wonderful Cafe de Flore, go here.