100 words a day

I’m hurtling along a street, racing for the library, when my overstuffed rucksack catches an elderly lady. She loses her footing, topples to the ground, cracking her head.

All is activity. Two passers-by and I get her to her feet. Someone fetches a chair, someone else calls an ambulance.

‘I bet you feel really guilty,’ whines a teenager girl as the paramedics take care of the woman (Sally).

Sally, though, is going to be fine. She waves away my apology from the back of the ambulance, gracious as a queen. Part of me thinks she is almost enjoying the attention.

I subscribe to various freelance writing websites, and always stop what I am dong to read emailed job ads.

I was greatly taken by one from this morning:

Horror torture scripts require someone with experience.

Wow, I think. Do they mean, like, someone with actual experience of torture and horror? I rack my brains. Some of past colleagues have been pretty awful. I lived in Birmingham for a while, once, and that was fairly tortuous. But, on the whole, I’m rather lacking in the torture and horror experience department, and don’t think I can apply.

I liked their ad, though.

So, here I am, Canary Wharf, the smart heart of London’s financial district. White towers soar up around me, big as mountains. I’m meeting some bankers for an article I have been commissioned to write for a magazine, despite not knowing a thing about syndicated loans. I am also very late. The bankers usher me into their plush meeting room. I tell them about my complete ignorance of all things financial, and can see by their faces that it’s all over.

There’s an email from my editor next morning. And a ‘kill’ fee in the post a few weeks later.

It’s late, and I’ve just rolled off the train from London.

My bus home is leaving, so I stand in front of it, forcing it to stop. I have forgotten that, after midnight, the fare goes up to nearly £5. I have precisely £2.27 on me. I empty my pockets to show my lack of further funds, then try to play the lone female late-night traveller, but the driver remains unsympathetic and unimpressed.

I appeal to my fellow passengers’ sense of charity. They look away, as though in pain.

Finally, the driver screeches to a halt. Next to an ATM.

I’m waiting by the bus stop, and feeling twitchy. My usual afternoon transport is nowhere to be seen.

An elderly lady comes up to me, muttering something I can’t hear. I frown, and mumble back. Why can’t the old crone leave me alone? Then, suddenly, I understand. She’s offering a ride into town. I burn with shame. The last thing I suspected was a stranger’s kindness.

And so we ride together, and have a delightful conversation. She drives alarmingly before screeching to a haphazard halt. I get out smiling. She has given me a lift in more ways than one.

My housing association has laid on a day trip to the seaside, and I’ve come along for the ride. On the bus home, an envelope is being passed round. I realise I have no money on me, and no option but to feign sleep as the envelope makes its way up the rows of seats towards me.

Thankfully, no-one tries to wake me up.

‘Thanks for your contribution,’ says the organiser, raising the envelope, as I get off.

‘Oh, that’s OK,’ I say breezily.

As I head off, I realise I will know whether or not she was being sarcastic.

It’s wonderful to see my friend S, to see her looking so well five weeks after her kidney transplant from her father. Over the sausages and Pimm’s, she tells us about the operation, and how it all went far better than could have been dreamed of. It’s wonderful to hear how her previous symptoms, especially the tiredness, have all but vanished.

It’s rather less wonderful, when we leave, deciding to head off together. A London bus comes into view. Wow, I think, five minutes later. I officially run slower than someone who just had major surgery. How did that happen?

Sunday morning and the day stretches ahead, kind of empty. I’m sniffly and weepy because I haven’t seen him in three weeks, and it’s kind of lonely. Even the nice weather seems a taunt.

Then, big stripes of colour run down my laptop screen. Oh, God. Panic runs through me. Where will I get it fixed on a Sunday? What the hell will I do all day?

I turn it off then on again, breath held. It’s fine. Now I can get on with the day. Hey, I think. I don’t believe in God. But did He just do that?

Friday night, we’re discussing where to meet, and there’s talk of pizza. A restaurant, I think. How marvellous.

Meet on top of the clock tower, he Skypes.

For some reason, I don’t register the sarcasm. Maybe I read ‘by’ the clock tower in my haste.

So I sit on the bench by the clock tower, and wait. And wait. Then I get frustrated. It’s Friday night, we should be drinking wine.

Where are you? I text. I’m by the clock tower. Seconds later, my phone beeps.

Doh, he replies. That was a joke. Come to the flat. Have pizza here.

I’m returning home after an early morning appointment, and have only a £10 note to pay for my £1.80 fare. The driver snarls and bitches – despite my protests that not having the right change has never been a problem before.

“It’s a problem today,” he huffs.

“Thanks for being so lovely,” I beam at him as I get off 10 minutes later.

“Get stuffed,” is his charming response. When I ask him to repeat himself, he does so three times.

I email the bus company to complain, yet, but I realise, the whole thing has cheered me up no end.

S and I are camping at a music festival, and, Saturday evening, the rain arrives as The Damned take to the stage.

A large woman, in a long, soaked cotton skirt, bedraggled hair hanging over her wet shirt, is swaying, eyes closed and one hand on a stick. The water gushes down her cheeks. Her feet bare, she is oblivious to the rain, utterly lost in the music.

At first, I feel something like contempt. Then I realise that what I really feel is jealousy, and a wish that I could abandon myself to the music in the same way.

I’m in tears. I have no Internet connection, and no choice but to call AOL’s ‘help’ desk. My legendary deafness doesn’t help. It takes ages to get through, longer for me to understand what the guy’s saying. Somehow, I manage to hear him ask me to check the cables. I look in horror at the wire between the modem and my laptop, lying disconnected on the table behind my machine.

‘Wow, I’m suddenly connected now. How odd, no idea why,’ I mumble to the guy.

I hang up. I Skype G.

‘Ah, well,’ he writes. ‘It’s complicated. Wires and things.’

Sunday, 5am. He jolts me awake, pinching my nose. I have been snoring. The room is flooded with the murky light of a midsummer dawn, rest is impossible. He wants to sleep next door. I am tearful, remembering a heavy conversation from last night. He rubs my arm and holds me, and stays. We lie side by side, silent and awake.

Michael Jackson videos were on TV all Saturday evening. Billie Jean is going round endlessly in my head. Not my lover. Just a girl who thinks that I am the one.

I doze, then wake again. It is 10.30.

So I’m at this barbecue, the house of someone I don’t know that well, and visit the bathroom soon after arrive. There’s a massive brown log floating in there, which fills me with dread. Dread that, if it hasn’t flushed away before, what hope is there of it doing so now? Worse, if someone comes along right after me, won’t they think I’m responsible?

I picture myself, still in the bathroom in three hours’ time, with anxious taps on the door.

It’s all too much. Nervously, I press the button.  I get a clean bowl first time. Oh, the relief!

Beams of dusty sunlight throw themselves on to the faded floor. We’re at Friday evening ‘ceroc’ dancing – which people take extremely seriously. Couples twirl around, lost in the joy of movement. On stage, a beautiful woman with a river of hair which almost reaches her calves, calls out instructions into a headset.  

G and I sit on the edge, watching. We’re such different heights, our earlier attempts at joining in ended in miserable failure within seconds. So we sit there instead, as the evening and music drift on, as I wonder why dancing always leaves me feeling so left out.

She’s there in the ticket queue at the station in my home town – a rather plump blonde woman in a navy suit with white piping around the jacket.

When I get to London, she’s there again, standing on the subway platform. Even more weirdly, she’s right here on the subway train a couple of hours later, as I’m heading home.

So, I think, here’s the thing. Am I following her or is she following me? Does she think I am stalking her? Or am I imagining it all?

I walk briskly, hoping this time I’ve shaken her off for good.

So I’m struggling up the hill by my flat, laden down with three bags of shopping, ready for a weekend away. I wonder if I’ll make it home. Then, the inevitable. One of the plastic sacks burst splits, spilling stuff on the sidewalk. I sigh, and scoop it up as best I can. Then I see him, an older guy, standing opposite me, holding out a supermarket grocery bag.

“Take it,” he says. “It’s spare.”

He continues on his way down the hill, leaving me calling my thanks after him.

Wow, I think. What were the chances of that happening?

Friday afternoon, and I am waiting for him to pick me up to go away for the weekend. He calls. There’s been an accident, and he’s stuck, not moving, in a queue of traffic.

Two hours later, he finally makes it. But he’s mad I didn’t make it over to his.

I raise my eyebrows, and gesture at the groceries and bags waiting to be loaded up.

“How could I have done?” I say. “Look at all this stuff.”

But, no matter, it’s still all my fault. We spend the next couple of hours on the road, in complete silence.

I Skype him, to wish him a Happy Birthday, and there he is, on the webcam again like Captain Kirk, 67 today. He is neatly turned out, as spruce as a child ready to go to a party, in a clean shirt, all ready for whatever the day holds. Mum wanders into view, and she, too, is nicely got up, in a pretty blouse I haven’t seen before.

“I put on my best blouse for Dad’s birthday,” she tells me proudly.

And that is suddenly so sweet, I feel the familiar little tightening of my throat.

“That’s nice,” I say.

Friday morning. Now, now, he tells me he is going away for the holiday weekend, up north. Till Monday.

(In fairness, he has mentioned this before, but only now is it confirmed. The night before, we were meant to hook up, but somehow it just never happened.)

‘Lovely,’ I Skype.

‘Dear oh dear. Sigh,’ he replies.

Lunchtime, he calls. The conversation is tense, short. Early evening, just before setting off, he calls again. This time, I am barking monosyllables.

‘Just go, if you’re going,’ I say. I slam the phone down. It rings again, almost immediately. I don’t pick up.

The most lovely, sun-dappled evening of the year so far. I am walking to the bus stop that will take me to a train that will take me to my boy. I have been offered some work. My hair has been cut. I have had lunch with a friend.

Someone has emailed a joke. (Freelancers get paid per word, per article, per-haps.) I am in expansive mood. I love the red shoes of the woman walking ahead of me, and tell her so. She looks worried, mumbles a thank you.

In England, you do not compliment strangers on their footwear.

Monday morning, and I am still in my pajamas at 11am.

This wouldn’t be a problem, but the guy is delivering my online grocery order, and the sight of me in nightwear is not going to be a pretty one.

He’s due between 11 and 1pm, so what are the odds of him turning up at 11.06? Pretty good, in fact …

‘I’m not feeling well,’ I say.

He delivers my stuff, and I swear he leaves a little more quickly than usual.

OK, I think, when he’s gone. I may as well not bother getting dressed all day now.

It’s Monday afternoon. For 13 weeks now, I have been signing on as ‘unemployed’, for my National Insurance contributions. The brain-dead teenager calls me to my interview.

‘Ms England?’

Don’t these people realise I have a first name?

He wants to know about my job plan, my job goals. I tell him invent some, that he should write down whatever he wants. He gives me a sheet of paper. He blinks as I throw it in the bin. I walk away in exasperation.

‘You didn’t bin it, you filed it,’ chuckles the more helpful man downstairs. I like this guy.

I watch out for the postman, ducking down under the window each morning so he can’t see me, still in my pajamas as high noon approaches.

I have this other thing I do, too. I watch the mail come half way through my letter box, and then I like to grab it. The postman can’t understand why the mail won’t go through the door. I like to sit there for a while, playing tug of war.

I think I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. When you’re up against it, you get your kicks as best you can

Hey Micky, oh Micky, you’re so fine.

You’re so fine you blow my mind. 
I am at a Saturday night party away from home when the hit comes on. 
Immediately, it is 1981, and I am at school. A guy called Jimmy serves breakfast. I see his greasy hair and glasses. 
Hey Jimmy, oh Jimmy, you don’t understand.

I take you by the heart, you give me cold toast in my hand.

It’s guys like you, Jimmy

Who make me want to puke, Jimmy. 
I stand still on the dancefloor, the party happening around me, a pre-teen schoolgirl once again.

In the webcam, I can see she has had her hair done. Looks good, I say. She smiles. I only saw her and Dad a few days ago, yet I need to go to their place this weekend. To escape my flat, to not be alone. To be looked after. 

It makes me want to cry, because, of course, she says, I can go there whenever I like.  I will go, and it will be lovely. But I also know that, one day, I won’t be going over there any more. 

I hang up quickly. 

“See you tomorrow,” I say.

The warmest day of the year. A call from a friend, mid-morning. A time arranged. A drive out to the countryside, a stroll through green fields. A pause for breath at the top of a hill, by the statue of Old Father Thames. A carpet of intensely coloured bluebells in a wood. Sunlight on my shoulders.

A drive home, via a shop, for cake. Deck chairs and a garden in spring. The year’s first cup tea drunk outside. The clinking of white mugs. The unutterable bliss of knowing that I am here, sharing an afternoon, and not in an office.

She reminds me of a winner on a TV talent show. Disbelief, shock, then a look almost of pain. Hands are flung in the air, tears tumble. Her daughter-in-law, S, embraces her. S is herself a little misty-eyed.

Mum is gasping for air, shaking her head, her hand on her heart. I guess she’s allowed. It’s not every day you are told your first grandchild is on their way.

The excitement dies down, we try and think of names.

“Grandma or Nana?” I ask her.

We used to call her mother Nana. She hates it.

“Grandmama, of course,” says Dad.

Tomorrow, I’ll wake early. I go straight to my computer. I will not malinger in bed with trashy novels, drinking tea. My fingers will fly across the keyboard. The words will come. I will not be distracted, leaping up when the post arrives, emailing friends or watching daytime soaps. I will limit my coffee intake, and not eat gunk. A productive day’s writing will be followed by two hours at the gym, a healthy dinner and an evening of improving reading. I will call my parents, and retire at a decent hour.

And all will be well with the world.

I stroll down to my local shops to check out the new and eagerly anticipated bistro-bar-coffee shop.

There he is, the man in the almost-smart jacket, with the fountain pen and notebook, scribbling away. Some pages, I can’t help noticing, are already covered with his dense, dark writing.

I am at once oddly jealous and deeply curious. Here is a writer, doing what writers do, putting one word after the other, page after page. Why can’t I be more like that?

But I chicken out of contact, taking my tea and slinking away to my corner table in the shadows.

Each night, it seems, just as I am trying to sleep, the ideas for writing projects spin round in my head. I get so fired up I can’t doze off. My blood is up, adrenaline and excitement flooding my body. I toss, turn, go to the bathroom. Resistance is useless, sleep hours off. Sometimes, I seem to stay awake almost until dawn like this. It’s happening more and more, this awful restlessness.

Next day, I wake up late and thick-headed, exhaustion rather than adrenaline coursing through my veins. Those wonderful ideas from the night before have all gone, quite vanished.

“What a dreadful day,” I say to the woman behind the desk as I check in for my annual work out at the gym.

“Awful, isn’t it,” she agrees, glancing out of the window at the leaden sky. (British to her very core, she is not going to pass up on a chance to discuss the weather.)

“They said it was going to brighten up at lunchtime as well.”

“Actually,” I say, “I wasn’t talking about the weather.”

Her face falls. Uh-oh. This is clearly far more uncomfortable, decidedly non-British territory.

“Right,” she says, handing me my ticket. “OK then.”

It happened again the other day. I met a man, an editor, at some vaguely literary gathering. He’d worked on something I’d done, so he greets me warmly, doing the ‘Pleased to meet you’ thing any normal, friendly person would. Only he makes me believe he really is glad to meet me.

Those eyes, the craggy looks, the crumpled yet smart jeans, shirt and jacket. And, of course, I’ll never seem him again, and, what am I, sixteen? I look around at the end and he’s gone.

This happened last week with someone else.

It’s time to stop this nonsense.

Call it frustration, call it Monday ennui, call it exasperation at the glacial pace of an article refusing to come together. Whatever.  But I need to smash something up, without causing pain or damage. I opt for rice cakes, a chopping board, and a potato masher, and pound away.

Crumbs fly. I cough as a fine rice cake-y powder fills the air. I feel a little better. I sweep up.

He Skypes me.

“How’s it going?”

“Fine,” I reply. “I just smashed some rice cakes. It gave me something to do.”

“OK,” he types. He thinks I’m making it up.

Saturday night has rolled round again. The debate of how G and I will spend it has gone on all afternoon. First a concert, then not the concert. Dinner at my place, vegetable chilli.

He calls. My hearing is getting worse.

“Do you have enough rice?” he asks.

“No, no wine. Bring a bottle if you like.”

He repeats, patiently.

“Do you have enough rice?”

“You want me to buy the wine?”

And so it goes on. In the end, in exasperation, he sends me a written message, on Skype.

“Oh, OK, rice,” I type back. “Why didn’t  you say?”

As I was waiting for my regular sword-crossing session at the Job Centre last week, I couldn’t help noticing the number of seriously obese people there. I couldn’t help thinking – does being overweight make you unemployed, or is it the other way round? 

I was lost in these thoughts when they called my name, or at least I thought they did. People looked on bemused (it’s a busy place these days) as I rushed to the desk, only to discover I had completely misheard. 

Maybe not having a regular job makes you deaf. As well as fat. What a life.

I wonder if Skype has brought me close to my Mum.  Now I can see her face, blown up via webcam, Star Trek style, it’s easier for me to hear her, and I call her up most afternoons.

She frets or laughs so much at every little thing I say. My brother’s web cam has a feature allowing you to put a crown on, or an arrow through, your head. That made her laugh so much she almost needed medical attention.

“Stop picking your nose,” I told her, last time we spoke.

“I’m scratching,” she replied, just a little defensively.

My name is Juliet, and I am a Doctors-aholic.

Doctors is a British lunchtime soap, aimed at the housebound, the lonely, the desperate. (In other words, at most freelance writers.) It is truly compelling in its awfulness, its stereotyped characters – the uptight receptionist, the fruity older (male) doctor.

Yet still, I watch, anticipation mounting daily as 1.45pm approaches. Will George and Ronnie really move to China? (Say it isn’t so!) Will Vivien and Lionel and Heston and Lily finally get together? Please, God, let it happen.)

Doctors is an illness. One for which there seems to be no known cure.

Am I becoming a Skype obsessive? Some nights, I am so desperate for the orange bar on my screen to start flashing, I imagine it, like a mirage. I check my contacts incessantly to see who’s there.

Without Skype, there would be no relationship.

Sometimes, I thump the desk in frustration, wondering why he hasn’t replied to my message.

He was mad the other night, at my curt ‘Good night’. (‘Did we spend last night together?’ he fumes.)

For some reason he was once blocked for messaging me, but called then hung up instead, sending me a plaintive little signal.

Another Sunday, and I have fallen behind with a guy I’ve never seen before, the others vanished. He guides me across a treacherous expanse of mud.

Last time there was a new man in the group, his opening gambit (never mind the preliminary pleasantries or introductions) was ‘Are you struggling?’ With the walk, I guess he meant, I snapped ‘No!’

Anyway, this guy is gentler, but odd, the sole of his boot hanging loose like a flap of skin on an open wound.

It’s almost romantic, being left behind like this together, almost a shame it’s not going to happen.

I’m feeling rather lonely one evening when a Skype call comes in on my laptop. And, there they are on my machine, Mum, Dad and my brother, at home while in the area for work.

Their little faces peer into the screen, beaming, the loneliness falls away, and for a moment I could cry. It must be the cheap wine I am drinking. Mum sees the glass and frowns. Now the poor woman is convinced I have become an alcoholic.

‘What’re you drinking?’ she asks, next time we chat via webcam.

I raise my mug. It’s a cup of tea.

Sunday, and it’s icebox cold. I’m out with the hiking group, worried about my work, about G. It’s a hard trudge, shards of ice on the canal fitting together like a mosaic.

Snowballs fly. One of mine narrowly misses my friend I’s camera. He yells at me, it’s suddenly all too much and tears well up. I ram down my hat and pull up my scarf, hoping no-one will notice.

Too late. He spots me and is quick to comfort me. We both apologise, slightly embarrassed. The words tumble out, colliding.

In the pub at the end, I order tea.

I sweep past the security guards at the place where I sign on as unemployed every fortnight. You’re supposed to say who you are, rather than infiltrate a government building unannounced. To my continuing merriment, this winds those guys up no end.

(‘Customer deaf. Must register her arrival at front desk’, they write on my card.)

I also pretend to a sales clerk at a local store that I can neither speak nor hear, and know I shouldn’t.

When you’re unemployed, when the weather is dire and an afternoon seems an eternity, you get your kicks as best you can.

It’s Friday night, and I’m looking forward to an evening at the local bingo hall with some hiking friends after a long and solitary week. Two bus rides across town leave me close to death from frostbite, and have made me late, but I am determined to have my fun.

My enthusiasm is only mildly dampened by the old crone in reception, who demands all manner of personal information from me – mother’s maiden name, star sign – before allowing me to enter.

When I eventually get in, it turns out the hiking guys aren’t there any more anyway.

Great Friday night!

Valentine’s evening and he’s in the kitchen before we go out for dinner. I feel almost faint with excitement at the prospect of our romantic meal. Then the bombshell.

‘Need to get back tonight, babe. I can’t stay over.’

‘What do you mean you’re not staying? It’s Valentine’s.’

‘I know, but I just can’t.’

He allows me to absorb the full horror of this before grinning and telling me he’s just messing.

My knee is between his legs harder and faster than a ball from a top bowler. He doubles up in pain.

It’s what I’d call a knee-jerk reaction.

In my gym this afternoon, I am greatly taken with the notice in the place I understand Americans term ‘the bathroom.’

‘In the interests of hygiene’, it begins, to great fanfare and maybe a little drum roll, ‘We clean these toilets regularly.’

Waves of relief wash over me. Gosh, but it’s great to have that one cleared up! There was me, all this time, thinking that maybe they scrubbed away at those toilets in the interests of spreading germs and dirt.

I know I’ll breathe more easily now, and sleep a little more easily in my bed at night.

People like me, the unemployed, the ‘self-employed’, and those whose alternative entertainment is daytime TV, have gathered at this government-funded course, Confidence through Colour.

I can’t help wondering whether tips on completing a tax return would be more helpful, but am determined to stick it out.

Olive, the course leader explains helpfully, is the colour of female leadership. Orange is the colour of letting go. She won’t expand on why these things should be so.

I tell my friend R about this as he is a giving me a lift home.

“Brown,” he says firmly, “Is the colour of bullshit.”

I’m on the bus one evening, and we travel past a large office building. I went for a meeting there once, so I glance in.

In the lobby stands a blonde-haired woman. It looks as though she is crying. A man, I assume a co-worker, stands at a respectful distance, a reassuring arm on her shoulder.

And I wonder what office drama, no doubt laced with politics and personalities, led to this little scene?

And I shudder, half with intense relief, half at the painful memories, as I think Thank God I don’t  live my life like that any more.

So he comes back from Euston Station, finds me frozen in Trafalgar Square and we find a bar to have a drink.

“Come back with me,” I say. “Come to the party.”

“No, I should get back to my Mum’s, as planned,” he replies.

At Charing Cross Tube station, we pause to say our goodbyes.

“Well,” I say. “Happy New Year and all that.”

I lean towards him to kiss him farewell.

“Wait,” he says. “I’m coming with you.”

“You are? You really are? We’ll have New Year’s Eve together after all?”

“I’d better not regret this,” he sighs.

I’m outside the National Gallery, and London has never seemed colder, or more beautiful. It’s icy as a skating rink, and, indeed, the pavement appears to have become one. The Christmas tree glitters in Trafalgar Square.

The building is shut, darkened, and there’s no sign of G, who was supposed to be meeting me here, after the exhibition he’s come to see. Surely he knows I’ve come to London especially?

I call him

“Where are you? Didn’t you get my texts?”

“What texts?” he says. “I’m at the station, ready to go back to my Mum’s. Where are you?”