If i jumped from the top of the parachutes

There's been people occupying the writing space for a week. It started with someone I know coming back from her hols in America with lots of stories to tell, then came my birthday, then my friend from way back coming to stay with me for a few days. Birthdays are funny, they make me think too much, when I seem to have a check list of all these things I thought someone my age would have done then compare it to reality. Aren't I supposed to have a real job by now? Aren't I supposed to be married and feel ecstatic at the sight of new lawn mowers and stuff? Where do these things come from? I have no idea. I blame Peter and Jane, cooking with mummy, digging with daddy, who don't look any older than I am now, and of course TV. You can put it down to anything you like, my annual mid-life crisis (we're entitled to more than one, since none of us know how long we will live), the fact that I had thought my writing did more than scratch the surface until it hit bone, the fact that I was just tired. Tired of routine maybe, sick to the back teeth when I heard someone I know talk about hols when I hadn't been anyplace again (she talked the states as if it was her back yard "Oh, you must pop over and see next time we go"), tired of feeling guilty about my new poems and proctrastinating about whether i should use them, and mostly just tired of myself. I still haven't decided if I will use the new poems that are about me, but I am thinking I will write some more and select some ... possibly, maybe, I hope. But I have been looking into practical things about my work and thinking about it, order, gaps, edits, length, and am thinking about the spaces that need filling, and spaces that should be there. Also prose is perculating and I am wondering if I will have the chance to let some out, but enough of that. What I really thought about was how I had said I have realised my own boringness, and self limitation, that is born of fear I suppose, or habbit, or what other people expect of me, or all of the above. I realised I forgot how to have fun, and couldn't remember when I last really laughed. I wanted to laugh like those girls on a bus you see, in stitches about nothing that is visible, the girls that make you feel like you must be the joke, with their laughter in code. The girls who are just being girls. I forgot how to be a girl along time ago. The good thing about this is my clothes are alot more comfy, I eat more that I just fancy, I get more done, but if you stop doing something enough you forget how to do it. I've had to change this abit in the last week.

My friend came to stay and I decided to forget about the work and its baggage and go with it, experiment , see what things where like. I made a list of lots of things I want to try, and either never have tried or haven't done in 20 years. I wanted to just do something, see if I could release me of practicality for a little while,see if I could forget, find out if I was only the woman who tiles walls and writes odd little poems, and see if this was fun.

Birthday To do List

1) Go Iceskating
2) Go on some fairground rides
(the last time I did this was 20 years ago.)
3) Try archery
4) Try a rockclimbing wall
5) Lose some weight
6) Wear a dress
7) Learn to cut glass and lead it
8) Learn to say No
9) Turn off the narrator and try to Dance-
(maybe go to a salsa dancing class or something to get more confidence in moving)

(The thing with the dancing is once I was no longer young or thin I stopped, when I tried again I found I was sort of a puppet with the real me trying to put clamps on my body pulling strings, saying "Oh no, you can't get away with that, what are you doing?" My arms and legs began to work with my brain saying left leg moving now, hand to right, and it just lost the feeling of dancing. I remember it used to be fun, remember when I lived alone dancing in the kitchen to The Smiths with a tea-towel and feeling good at looking like a dick, and want to lose the self awareness enough now and again to do it again.)
10)Put my feet in the sea
11) Go on a boat
12) Try dressed crab
13) Try lobster
14) Visit some country or place I've never been
15) Go on some go-karts/quad bike
16) Try and ride a horse


All of these sound really simple, they are. But I just have never done these things, or have done them once when i was 7 or something, and no one will stop me being boring but me. Alot of things that are very simple and alot of people take for granted I just don't do. I worry about them, I decide they are impractical, I talk myself out of it, and let myself be lazy. On my birthday i tried lobster; the day after I tried dressed crab, and was hugely disappointed that it didn't come in an actual dickie bow or something the way I had envisioned it as a child and a slightly autistic adult. So when Luan was here we kept busy, made ourselves do some of the things that were outside our comfort zone. The first thing wasn't too bad, we went to the Baltic, because last time she visited there was a function on and we weren't allowed in (though I did go in the time tunnel, which I might have avoided before due to the humiliation of the fat girl on a slide.I laughed all the way down, I don't know why. The Baltic man at the bottom looked so serious I thought I must be doing it wrong, but it was good anyway. I liked the little house in Baltic square, it seemed quite moving to me, that little house talking, saying a house is supposed to protect (is it?) , saying it was fat. I also enjoyed watching David Beckham sleep though I don't know why, I kept expecting him to wake up screaming 'Victoria man, get off us', or something, but asleep he just looked like a real pretty man being normal, sleeping, and I didn't have to worry about whether he was a bastard or thick as the Bo selecta sketch, or shallow. He was just a person, ok a real pretty one, asleep.) The next day we went ice-skating (skating is too strong a word , we went to the ice-rink and sort of shuffled along with one hand on the rail- I did let go of the side though and tried to do it, not very well, but ...) The day after that we went on the ferry (can't believe I have never been on this the whole time I have lived in Newcastle) and went on fairground rides. These are such easy things, shallow maybe, with no self impovement involved, but when I was up in the parachutes I no longer felt guilty about anything. I span round on the twister and laughed, for no apparent reaosn, laughed till my mouth was dry as the sand and the people were just sandcastles falling away in slow sifts. I felt my arms juggle air on the way down as I grabbed the rail and laughed so much I forgot who I thought I was. Maybe I never really knew. I felt more alive than I have felt in a long time, doing something just because I could. Some things I want to do aren't on the list, I need to lose the weight first or learn to swim better or things that are quite hard and slow, but it feels good to have ticked some things off the list. I did wear a dress, and looked , I dunno- fat? Yeah, but more than that, more vulnerable maybe, as if I was trying to be a girl, and the safety of jeans that no matter how bad I look no one can say I am trying to be or do anything, there's a comfort in that, a sheild of invisibility somehow as something without a gender. But I do know more about myself for all this, the most trivial things; no I can't iceskate, but do enjoy it, lobster isn't a patch on prawn and my favourite fairground ride is The Twister.