Let Her Eat Cake

I'm sat having a late lunch with a friend in a popular Tunbridge Wells cafe. The cafe is known for its cakes, its hearty salads and its quiches. The menu is small, locally produced and fresh. We are enjoying our lunch immensely when two middle-aged women enter the cafe, one of them pushing a buggy containing a lively baby girl. The lunchtime rush is over, so they decide to sit at the table in the middle of the room and park the buggy across the walkway, blocking access to two tables and the kitchen hatch. The staff politely suggest they move to a corner table where there is room for the buggy. Rather than follow this suggestion, they opt for the table next to ours. The large buggy won't fit in the space between the counter and my friend's back. After a few shoves, my friend, deep in appreciation of her soup and salad, realises the woman is trying to get through, apologises, and moves her chair. It is not enough. She gets up. It is not enough. She lifts the chair out of the way and the woman pushes through, a thin smile that does not reach her eyes is the only thanks she gives.

She parks the buggy in the middle of the space, blocking access to three different tables. There is then the hugely bothersome task of getting a high chair for the baby, and finally, she almost sits down, but not before demanding that I move my bag of shopping and handbag that is next to my chair, so she can sit sideways on her chair, rather than at the table. The back of her chair now touches my ribs, making eating a challenge, but she is too absorbed in her next drama to notice.

The other woman, who has until now been silent, begins to look at the menu and complain. The waitress comes to take the order and questions that seem to cause the questioner physical pain spill from her mouth like bitter seeds of discontent. Do they have any cake that's sugar-free, and gluten-free? Because she's on a restricted diet and can't have sugar, dairy, gluten, legumes, peppers, tomatoes, margarine, butter, olive oil, crude oil, bath bombs, eggshells, foie gras, borsch, roast hedgehog, and a thousand other things you might reasonably expect to find in a cafe and cake shop. The questions go on and on. The waitress suggests there may be some avocado left from the breakfast menu. No. She doesn't like avocado. The waitress suggests the salads, the soup, a sandwich on gluten-free bread, but each is rejected in turn for containing an offending food. The waitress patiently and pleasantly persists, but everything is rejected until, with a huge sigh, the woman bravely suggests some eggs and maybe some ham. But all todays eggs have gone at breakfast, so instead, she orders a panini with ham and cheese without a hint of embarrassment. Not gluten-free, or dairy-free, not even butter-free. Just self-awareness free.

I want to punch her on behalf of the waitress. I want to punch her friend on behalf of myself. But her friend won't keep still, she's up and down fussing over her grandchild, whose oblivion to this spectacle I envy. We finish our lunch and leave them there, eating their sandwiches, stewing in their self-righteous, middle-class, Tunbridge Wells privilege. But I see them, I see two unhappy women trying to exercise control over others, validating themselves, passive aggressively expressing the pain of being them. Compassion eludes me today. Right now, I just hate them and hope their lunch leaves them bloated.

Tea Time

A pot of English Breakfast Tea, a bacon sandwich to be savoured. The window is open, flooding the room with cold December air and birdsong. A door opens inside me and I let go of the pain for a few seconds to enjoy this moment of simple insignificance.

Heated Memory

This summer has been the hottest on record. Online climate change deniers rage that it's unconnected to man's pursuit of capital while the icebergs crumble into the sea. The future looks bleak. But there is comfort in the heat, a mandate to slow down, do less, reflect.

I pad around my house naked too hot to care what the neighbours think anymore and my mind looks back to a moment long passed, in London, mid-Nineties, when, similarly hot, I walked into the little kitchen in our flat one morning to make a cup of tea. As the kettle boiled, I looked out of the window and locked eyes with an elderly lady, also in her kitchen, also waiting for the kettle to boil, also naked.

We smiled at each other, acknowledging the moment, accepting the moment, connecting in the moment, and then went back to our tea making. A random moment of shared experience in a sweltering city of millions, so pure, it still makes me smile over twenty years later.

Closure

I have come to believe that the neat endings we aspire to when we speak of closure are nothing more than a Hollywood fantasy. Life, unlike narrative, does not give us all we need to move on. Instead endings are ragged and messy, their threads combining with those of our beginnings to weave the fabric of life, with its flaws, snags and occasional patches of brilliance. Today's ending, the last day of my Advertising career, is overshadowed by a past made present again through my father's death; I step onto the threshold of going back into therapy, to discuss my grief, my traumatic relationship with my mother in the month following my father's death, and all that has withered and greyed since. Today's beginning is all about endings, today's beginning terrifies me, and it is only in the grey light of dusk and birdsong that I notice, then say 'goodbye' to the job that crystallised the pain and forced me to acknowledge I need to start over again. Fear crawls across the evening, pulling me forward, even as I retreat to bed, reminding me I live and can only keep weaving.

Quid Pro Quo

The show is nearly over, only one more act and a closing number. Back in my leggings with drink token in hand, I ask the barman for something non-alcoholic as I have to drive home shortly. 'You like juice?' he asks me and I nod. 'Lychee? Elderflower?' I smile and nod enthusiastically, 'I'll mix you something up.' he says with a twinkle in his eye.

I run up to the dressing room with the rest of the drinks order and once back at the bar, see him shaking the cocktail shaker vigorously before pouring the contents over crushed ice in a tall glass. With a flourish, he garnishes the drink with two glistening pink lychees, succulent as Tiger prawns, and two straws. I take a sip; it is delicious and I tell him so. He smiles and I understand that the extra care, the desire to please comes from having watched and enjoyed my performances; it is my reward for entertaining him, for doing my job well. The drink tastes even better.

Listening

Communication, they say, is more about listening than talking. And indeed, I've always found that truly, it is amazing what people will tell you when you listen. I'm working in the box office and as the night progresses, things get quiet. The doorman and I strike up a conversation. He isn't challenging any sterotypes; six foot three, broad shouldered, with an impassive face and imposing manner. Our conversation moves from small talk into more personal territory; he tells me about his army days in Iraq - capture, constant fear and coming to care not if he lives or dies. He tells me about his childhood in East London, his feelings of isolation and even of his little black and white cat, Nancy. I ask questions and I listen to the answers, including the casual homophobia, sexism and racism, without judgement, and I begin to understand it's been a long time since this man really talked to anybody. I feel a sense of privilege, I feel intensely interested in what he's telling me - recounting a world that is completely alien to me, yet familiar from the news and Hollywood.

At the end of the night we go our separate ways, not even saying goodbye in the bustle of closing up, and as I drive home, I feel profound sadness for him, alone in his flat with the little black and white cat and those memories of war.

White Bleeding

The tears I cry for my late father are unlike any I have cried before; fat, full and frequent, they stream down my face soaking clothes and tissues alike. They arrive unbidden from some deep unconscious place in my chest and even as they fall, I wonder at their form.

I remember my first yoga teacher telling me that tears are 'white bleeding', that shedding them is healing for they carry cortisone from the body. But these tears catch me unawares; they are an embarrassment to those around me when the sight of one of my father's favourite foods confronts me in the supermarket, or I open a letter in a waiting room to find his new bus pass complete with frail, faintly smiling picture. 

The tears are a marvel, unlike any I have shed before, but the pain they bring with them is overwhelming and I long for an end to these days of sorrow.