fifty-fifty

I am standing on the edge of my 40s, hands clasped, watching as the wheel spins. What will my fifties bring? Where will I land? How did I get to fifty so fast? Whaa?

Every decade-turn of the wheel seems eventful, a move up a ladder, a slide down a snake. Okay, maybe not every decade although at 10 I *did* get an ice-skating Sindy with the removable skates so, you know, not without merit.

A lot happened between 10 and 19. Young adulthood bruised me. If “hidden homeless” had been on my bucket list, I was a precocious early achiever. I tried to end my life. (Spoiler alert: not very successfully). I fell into a cycle of minimum wage jobs, friends’ spare put-you-ups and a merry-go-round of rooms-to-rent. Before my second decade was up, I’d spend a couple of birthdays alone thinking “Christ, is this it?” Being a newly-escaped Catholic, this was a legitimate question. Any prospects I possessed were hidden so far under a bushel, you'd need a depth charge to find them. I still wanted to die though not as actively. Then at 20, I got a job/placement/student visa to become an au pair in Boston. It quietly saved me, the seeds of new possibilities and friendships, were being sown. I learned to live with living.

By 30, I was settled back in England and had, improbably, got myself a career in television. Driven to improve my lot, my progression was clear and relentlessly, if naively, pursued. I was living with a wonderful Australian man and had recently realised he wasn’t The One. It was hard to step away from the shelter of love, kindness and security I so badly wanted, and he unquestioningly offered. I felt like a failure - people I loved thought so too. I took a leap into my thirties single, hopeful and child-free (exactly the way I would end up leaving it) but somewhere in my late thirties my world came crashing down. Redundancy was not part of The Plan and when it came, I emotionally and physically collapsed in on myself. It was frightening, I had a hefty mortgage and no safety net. For the first time in years, depression pulled me under. I was trapped in an undertow of my own dark thoughts yet (little seeds) somehow found my way to a GP. He sent me off with a prescription for anti-depressants and an appointment with a counsellor. As soon as I could, I came off the pills but I continued to see my therapist for the next two years, only stopping to leave the country. One day, I thought, I’d like to help someone the way he helped me.

I picked myself up very slowly. I found work here and there, just enough to keep my head above water but the ambition, that had been driving me, packed up and left. I wasn’t tired of the job itself but I was tired of the plate-glass office-spaced three-ring circus that accompanies it. Was this all that there was? I bobbed in a sea of existential angst and at night, tsunamis ripped me from the shores of sanity in my sleep.

40 threw a lifebuoy of sorts: a new job in Northern Ireland. Long story short: the job was a dead-end but I liked my new home, it was bruised but not beaten. (I know a kindred spirit when I see one). During this professional purgatory, something special happened:  I met a man who I could love and who loved me back and that was good. No, it was more than good, it was bloody miraculous! I had Rob, a place to call home and had made new friends easily, it all just felt right. The crappy job didn’t matter. The wheel continued to spin.

We could stop here, maybe. Maybe that would be neater?

You see, things didn’t Happy Ever After. There were no sunsets to ride off into, no credits roll or power ballad. 

I struggled to find work. I lost my new circle of friends in a direct hit during a divorce war. I wrestled with demons, the inner kind. The existential crisis returned as I realised that all love affairs (and poorly chosen friendships) end badly, eventually. I would have to accept Rob’s mortality and my own and everyone else’s. Love comes with inbuilt loss, it’s part of the deal, the rough end of an existential pineapple no-one can escape. 

The wheel just keeps on turning.  

In my late forties, the need to accept the loss of my old career and, let's face it, my part in it, had turned into finding new ways of earning money. I was Mr Benn-ing myself into new roles, ones I might learn to love (or tolerate) to get my bank balance healthier…will I ever love anything as much as storytelling? My bank manager hoped so. And so did I. 

I got used to rejection letters. My skill-set was Liam-Neeson-particular and hard to see where those skills might fit. Still, I was willing to try my hand at anything which is why I can now silversmith and know the best way to bathe a nervous dog (thanks Chris, you also taught me the value of good wellington boots). It was working an early shift at the kennels when I had an epiphany of sorts. I was hosing down some particularly stubborn poo and singing to myself when I got the giggles which rolled into laughter, like proper, I-can’t-breathe, belly laughter. It came out of nowhere. It was coming out of my nose. I was spraying everywhere and now crying and laughing because….because….because I couldn’t quite believe how much my life had changed or how okay I was about it. I had slid down the longest snake – but here I was being okay! I was a dispassionate tourist at the top of my own life marvelling at the distance between where I once was and where I was now. This was okay! I laughed some more. I was hosing dog poop for money and the world hadn’t gone to cheese. 

Now I sit, on the edge of 50. The wheel’s turning, I’ve rolled my dice. Fingers crossed, I’m a few months shy from being a newly qualified integrated, person-centred, psychodynamic counsellor. (You can just call me a counsellor.)  

I don’t entirely know why I am writing this but if there is a point, it’s this: it’s okay to stumble, to feel lost, to fail un-spectacularly, to wonder what’s the point and wonder if you can carry on once you’ve slid down the board. Things change. For good or bad, whatever’s going on right now, this will pass, the wheel will keep on turning, that's a promise and a threat – it makes us want to bottle the good stuff, it means we can get through the bad.

What will my fifties bring? I have no idea but I think I’ll be okay with it and for those times when I’m not, I’ll find a helping hand to steady my ladder and wait for the wheel to turn.

light fingered

"Would you like some?"

"I've had two already" she replied

"Two? Who eats just two chocolate fingers? You've got to grab a handful or what's the point?"

"Hmm", she responds unconvinced.

"These aren't biscuits," I add, "they are the pickup sticks of the snack world. Not eaten by the few, but by the many"

"I don't want to spoil my tea" she replies 

"Oh yeah, what you having? A fishfinger?"

home

When I moved to Belfast from London, I knew exactly nobody here.

Actually that isn’t entirely true: as I visited Belfast for the odd house-hunting weekend, a few lovely people came my way - care of happy serendipity - and quickly progressed from passing acquaintances to firm friends, by the time my feet and things were no longer “in transit.”

It’s true I didn’t know exactly what I was going to, when I accepted a role in a city I did not know, but my reasons for leaving London couldn’t have been clearer: I’d reached a point, in the back end of my thirties, where I’d grown tired of it. My social life was unsatisfying and dwindling and I couldn’t think of enough reasons to live so recklessly beyond my means just to cover a mortgage. Friends were moving out or moving on, having kids, getting married or travelling such odysseys each week to get to work, they were flat-out exhausted (and far away) by the weekend. And, although it was hard to acknowledge at the time, my job was also making me unhappy and, it turns out, more importantly, making me sick. It was time to ring in the changes (as if change itself wasn’t actually life’s raison d’etre).

It was a new job that bought me to Belfast initially - a 2 year contract with a big London company – it wasn’t a step up or a step down but a sideways move which felt like a step in the right direction. When I found out I got the job, the first person I called was not family or a close friend but a man named Colin, who was a Northern Irish acquaintance I’d made a year before. As it happened, he’d just landed a job which was taking him to Buenos Aires so I wasn’t the only one with travel on my mind. I called him up and said “Guess where I’m going?” and shouted “Belfast!” because I was too excited to let him work it out for himself. I’ve never forgotten his exact response. Even before a “well done” or “that’s good news” he said “You will find home there.” In those words. I remember glowing with pleasure as he said it.

The next few months went by at a giddy pace. I felt as if I’d been given my own personal Get Out Of Jail Free card and nothing could touch me. I was no longer bothered by the push of commuters at rush hour or the constant snarl of traffic outside my window. Not even my former boss who, on hearing my news, told me he wasn’t going to renew my contract anyway could bring me down. When the last thing he said to me on the matter, before settling into a cold shoulder routine (which lasted the rest of my employment term), was a petulant “But you don’t even know anybody in Belfast!” I thought: but I will.

So there I was, one massively ordinary weekday in the middle of August 2009, checking in at the airport with my hand luggage (two sizes too big) and a suitcase (two sizes too small). “I am moving to another country today” I huffed by way of an explanation at The Check-In Man as I struggled to heave the burgeoning fabric case onto the check-in belt.  The Check In Man smiled and wished me luck - and waivered the fee my overweight bag demanded for good measure. I took it all as A Sign.

Now, you’d think for someone who was well-versed in writing a blog, I might’ve written about my move by now. I’ve been here seven years this summer, after all. Surely I have something to say about the country I have found myself in? About the little idiosyncrasies that make here, here vs there, there? About the little eateries I’ve discovered? The bars I’ve drunk in (and got drunk in)? The people I’ve met? The hideaways I’ve unhidden? The understandings I’ve hilariously misconstrued? The friends I’ve formed? The life I’ve built? But I didn’t. And I haven’t. I can’t say for sure why. I think because I’ve been too busy…experiencing it.

I don’t expect Northern Ireland is everybody’s cup of tea…and it's not for me to change anybody's mind. But my experience has been a blind date turned full-blown affair.  I fell in love with my tiny arts-and-crafts, turn-of-the-century house in the middle of the city with its pretty pitched roof, stained glass and Victorian tiled path. I fell in love with the soft rain and the eye-contact and the unexpected friendliness of strangers and neighbours, on buses and over partition fences. I fell in love with the countryside and the way the weather and light whips and changes in the blink of an eye. I fell in love with the warmth and innate wryness of those who live here and have lived. And survived. And thrive against some extraordinary odds. And when I fell in love literally, it was this life I wanted him to see and share. And together we fell in love with a rural existence, and for a ramshackle cottage near the sea. And we made a home and gave that home to a cat and then another cat and then a dog and then one more.

Life isn’t perfect here (Is it anywhere?), the ups and down continue apace: the weather is reliably unreliable; the politicians reliably regressive; friends come - and, sadly, friends go; my Crohns flares up and it abates; work is satisfying and unsatisfying; and for reasons, I still can’t fathom, it’s too damn hard to find a crusty loaf of bread or an honest-to-goodness gastro pub.  But the countryside makes my heart sing, the mountains make my soul soar and the beaches so expansive, so glistening, so…empty...unfurl my shoulders. I can breathe.

There was a time I couldn’t breathe. Not without a paper bag and counting to ten.

I never did get the chance to tell Colin he was right.

I guess this is my postcard, long in the making, to those who once read this blog. It doesn’t say Wish You Were Here. Instead it says: I Hope You Find Your Own Here To Wish Upon, Wherever That Here May Be.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

It was the Eighties. Which is irrelevant. And I'd just ordered a burger and fries from that once popular burger franchise, you know, the one? The one that became Betamax to Mickey D's downloading capabilities.

Anyhow, I took my tray of bun-related, skinny-fried joy to the seating area upstairs, passing the little white mouse as I went...

Wait.
The little white what-now?

I head back to the counter, careful not to step on the wee critter in the process and wait patiently for eye-contact, my fries quietly congealing in their damp paper sleeve. The put-upon man at the tills is used to one-way traffic. He has the look of a man haunted by the flotsam of directionless teens and John Waters movies and right now he is doing everything in his power not to catch my eye.

Me: Excuse me (I shout over the din) EXCUSE ME!

He reluctantly looks over, waiting for whatever fresh hell I'm about to lay at his door. He is ancient. At least a decade older than me, the majority of his customers and all of his staff. Even to my 17 year-old self, he strikes me as A Manager Who Probably Doesn't Manage All That Well.

"I saw a mouse"

"Where?"

"There! On the stair!"

"Where on the stairs?"

"RIGHT....THERE!" I point.

It takes a moment for the penny to drop. I can't keep a straight-face. He watches blankly as I giggle like a loon.

"It wasn't wearing clogs. to be fair" I spurt out.

I bet he really hated teens.

limbo

She’s got the cut-glass features of a classic Eastern European femme fatale and, currently, she’s looking at me, from across the bar, with all warmth of a high security prison guard.

“I’m sorry, but that room has already had breakfast”

"Err, no, I haven't"

Her manner is matter-of-fact, she's The Bored Bouncer, as if hotel guests ARE ALWAYS trying to con second breakfasts. The withering disdain seems a bit much, I think. 

To be honest, up until the minute I walked into that breakfast room, I'd taken for granted I was indeed the guest in Room 91 - it's the same room I'd stayed in the week before - but now I was being challenged, it threw me a little.

She repeats herself, because repeating her position will clear the issue up. 

“Room 91 has had breakfast” Her belief so unshaken to contrary evidence,  I wonder if she’s a Creationist.

“I'mm in Room 91!” I whine the whine of the unjusted. “And I can assure you I haven’t had breakfast yet!”

She is not having it and, the point is, neither am I. I’m annoyed and I am hungry and I cannot resist challenging this Escher styled logic.

I try another tact:

“Okay, have you seen me before?” she hesitates. Got her.

I imagine my next move might be to invite Her Bloody-Minded Highness to my room...

"See? I can get in!" as I open the door.

"See? ONE toothbrush?" as I show her the bathroom.

"See? A boyfriend I can dial up on Facetime who is a living eye-witness to it just being me and the flocked wallpaper and those weird little disco lights in the bathroom that are meant to affect your mood (which, in fact,  they kind of do, because whatever I am thinking or feeling, their incessant flickering makes me think of Donna Summer and waltzers and screaming-if you-want-to-go-faster and who the hell thought of putting flashing coloured lights in a toilet?)"

I’m about to implement my unconventional plan when I spot my name by the room number

“That’s my name!” I'm indignant now. “Why would I want a second breakfast? I’m not a bloody hobbit!” At which point another waitress leans in. She smiles and informs The Ice Maiden that it's a mistake before disappearing to serve coffee elsewhere. 

The Woman Who Wanted To Say No is foiled. At least this time. Curses. She doesn’t apologise, her mouth as tight as the apron wound 'round her tiny waist.

“Sowhatdoyouwant?” she asks impatiently.

I note she doesn’t offer me a menu. “Can I just have a cooked breakfast, but no eggs?”

“What can you mean by that? Is it meant to be a full Irish breakfast?” 

She really is an arse.

hearing things

“Nothing yet?” he enquired.

And that’s when I knew I was in trouble. The “he” in question was an audiologist and I was his patient, sitting in a heavily-lined bunker, cushioned from sound, much like (it turns out) my ears.

“I’m afraid your hearing loss IS moderate and that IS significant” breaks the casually brusque Doogie Howser with a preference for upsizing his ISes. I am busy guessing our age difference as he points at the damning evidence before me. There it is, a downward-sloping graph, which he is helpfully deciphering with all the jolly detachedness of an Akela reading a map. (I’m guessing sixteen years.) But this is no map, it IS the inner life of my ears. And they are f*cked.

Wow, I thought, I could be his mother.

“I think you should consider a hearing aid at this stage and do everything you can to avoid further exposure to loud noise”

“Define loud…”

He smiles “Been to a lot of gigs, have we?”

“Yes, Father, for I have”

No nonsense, he talks on: anomalies..blah…in my results…blah blah….indicating loss…blah..might be not be environmental..possibly hereditary…blah…recommending an MRI scan…

Ironically, I was only half-listening because my inner Edinburgh monologue had kicked in:  “A hearing aid? A Hear-ing? AID??  But that’s only a short skip to mechanical hearts! Next stop: walk-in baths! Free bus passes! Whay-hey! I was always advanced for my age!” 

I was sent back outside to wait for my fitting. And whilst I sat on the plastic chair, balancing my belongings, I reeled. I sat and I reeled because that day, I had gone in for a check-up and was leaving with an actual disability. Like the man who walked down a mountain and came up a...creek of shit.

“Look on the bright side, you’d qualify for the Paralympics”

My boyfriend, a man with a profoundly-deaf sister and a practical way of seeing things…

But its not like I suddenly discovered last Wednesday my hearing was a bit..faulty. For years I thought I wasn’t concentrating enough or was being a bit dim - really. That’s the thing about gradual deterioration. It’s deterioration. And it’s gradual. Whether it's your hearing or your eyesight, you compensate for the loss, and keep compensating and then before you know it, you’re doing a Helen Keller with the household furnishings.

I have a friend of mine whose Blackberry typeface setting is so big it can be seen from space. She’ll squint at wine bottles, menus, shaggy dog stories - but her glasses remain in the case. She has a clear view of her place in the world, so what if it's a little hazy?

I don’t know when my hearing started to diminish. I know I missed the odd word, then the odd sentence, then I realized I was listening really, really hard in any situation that involved atmospheric noise, or music, or more than one person. I’d rewind TV shows because throwaway lines were lobbed right out of the ballpark. I didn't hear my phone ring so often, it became a running joke amongst friends. Ah, my friends! This news has been a bit of a eureka! moment for them:

“So, I’ve got something to tell you. I’ve met a divorced unicorn and we’re moving in together…”

Me: (blank face) “I’m thinking of having the spaghetti, what about you?”

Under certain circumstance, trying to catch the conversation is akin to trying to roll a jelly trifle across a cattle-grid. It’s simply not going to get there in one piece.The pub chats I’ve missed; the tiny panic during a “mumbled” shopping transaction; the inability to understand A. Single. Word train station announcers say…oh wait, that’s everyone.

My soundscape has been unavoidably retracting, the dull, sometimes shrill, thrum of tinnitus taking its place. This summer, in Italy, I couldn’t hear the crickets chirrup. I don’t always hear birdsong. I can’t remember the last time the lazy hum of a bumble bee registered in my head. My heart breaks a little bit. It feels like part of reality is loosening from my grasp. I’m DiCaprio, slipping from the floating wood, sinking…

My childhood jumps out at me via albums: Drama (Yes); Two Days Away (Elkie Brooks); Elton John and his Yellowbrick Road; Rod Stewart with Atlantic Crossing; The Police, The Stones, The Who, everything by The Beatles ever; Sweet Charity and West Side Story; Modern Lovers and Kate Bush. I was chained to the stereo, I worshipped at her altar as my nimble hands reverentially slid crisp paper sleeves from cardboard jackets. That exquisite pleasure from feeling the weight of the needle balanced upon my finger, the sheer thrill of being completely absorbed.

By Christmas 1981 I had my first Sony Walkman. Life finally had its own score. I was hooked - and I cranked it up to eleven.

The technology attached to my ears has changed: cassettes became CDs became mini-disks became MP3 players...but the isolated joy has always been the same. Pure and unadulterated.

I don’t know how to end this post. I don’t know how this story will end. I hope to preserve the rest of my hearing. If I’m DiCaprio, I want to be saved by the Carpathia, accept losing a foot to frostbite, maybe, put daft Rose behind me as the holiday romance she clearly was. I don’t want to disappear from this beautiful, audibly-nuanced world.

I continue to listen to music – but I keep an eye on the volume and I carry earplugs (just in case). But mostly, I’m no longer ashamed of not “keeping up” with what’s being said – there’s a reason, and it’s been a blessed relief to finally admit it.

"Are you Sarah Connor?"

The first time I knew Something Was Up was right before my move to Belfast.

It was a time of great excitement, a time of dreaming, a time of swotting up on the locale via Google maps, a time of…damn, what is WRONG with my computer? WHY is it sooooooo SLOOOOW…?

The rainbow of doom had been spinning lazily across my screen with alarming regularity for weeks. For a while, the gaily-coloured beach ball companionably bounced me out of one program. And then another.  And then it upped the ante and began cartwheeling across everything. Things got heavy between us when it started to crash.

And then it all went dark.

I don’t remember much after that but my hard-drive was gone, along with my photos, my questionable movie collection, my short stories, my unused blog posts and the countless invitations I’d ignored from the last chance back-up saloon.

I’d had my G4 Power-book for years. It was a tank of a Mac and I’d loved it. It was sturdy and hardwearing, and satisfyingly retro-heavy. It was deserving of a happy montage highlighting all the places we’d been together: high-fiving in parks, laughing on street corners. It was as loyal as a golden retriever pup and I wasn’t willing to let it go. So there I was, sitting in geek pre-op waiting on a couple of bearded, up-talking Macperts who were about to give it a full frontal lobotomy.

I shed a discreet tear but I went through with the unholy procedure anyway.

Like all things bought back from the dead, the replacement hard-drive was… well, it was not the same. Changed beyond all recognition underneath its familiar metal skin, my computer had been violated. The Krays had gone in and moved all the furniture around, it no longer responded to me. What a fool I had been!

I didn’t have my zombied laptop for long before I unceremoniously dropped it on the floor. Killing it for a second and final time, in a domestic collision between my big toe and the corner of a rolled-up-carpet, it landed with a sickening thunk. I knew, this time, it was over.

They call me Elecno

At the Regent Street Apple shop, I bought a spanking new MacBook Pro. It was glossy and sleek and light as a feather. I was taking it out of its box just as I was putting the rest of my life into one. I didn’t have time to try her out properly (yeah, her) but I was pretty sure We’d Get Along Fine. But my new Macbook was faulty out of the box - the very box I’d just packed up, along with the receipt, and carted off to a storage facility ahead of the move.

And that was the start of it, what happened next is how I got my nickname: Elecno. For I, and I don’t like to be immodest here, have a super power and by a super power, I mean, a really crap power: I can make electronic goods go wrong…by sheer dint of using them. 

The next indicator Something Was Up was when the company I was working for in ordered an office laptop for me. It was the size of a small dining room table, weighed more than a short man and was made by Dell. It was almost-new. And it almost-worked. It was eventually repaired enough times to warrant them giving up and replacing it with something new-new. Dell Replacement No 2 (same make, same ridiculously cumbersome build) was just that. I dragged it two hours down the road to Dublin before I realised the screen was dead. It was taken back to the company’s HQ to be sorted out by a mystified IT – the wires to the screen had magically become loose. When it happened a second time, they decided to replace it with another...

About this time, the Blackberry I’d had for nine months also died in my hand. The screen went blank and that was the end of that. Insured by Orange, the replacement phone swiftly arrived but, being reconditioned, within the space of a week, performed the same dying swan song as the first. I complained bitterly and was sent a brand new phone.

Blackberry No 3 lasted SEVERAL weeks before I dropped it in the washing up bowl.

Look, this, and that other (carpet-related) incident, are the only times in this tale of woe where I hold my hand up, and toe, and say, “Yes! THAT was MY BAD!” I’ll tell you what else was my mistake: thinking a pack of rice and a Tupperware dish were ever going to make it any better...

Orange immediately resorted to a reconditioned replacement, replacement phone. Not that I had time to think about that, I had Dell Replacement No 3 to deal with – this one had a keyboard with keys only loosely attached to the board. Still, at least it had a screen that worked even if I did keep dropping my H’s. (And T’s and D’s).

Blackberry Replacement Phone Number Four didn’t work out of the box. It was so obviously faulty, I followed the Orange delivery man down the office stairs demanding he replace it then and there. He didn’t. Blackberry No 5 arrived two days later via the same (now sheepish) courier. It lasted not much longer thanks to its inability to take calls or email on a daily basis. It was at this stage that a wise Orange employee kindly released me from my two year contract and suggested I find another phone – and also another phone company.

Dell Replacement No 4 didn’t like Word documents. Or PDFs. Leading to Dell Replacement No 5 which worked, if very slowly.

IT began avoiding my calls.

Epilogue

I moved on from Orange to O2 and the iPhone. A year in and things are going okay (touches wood). Mostly I keep my phone in a rubber cover and there’s a plastic screen protector too. I try not to touch it with my bare hands. I’m sporting Marigolds as a fashion statement. 

Dell Replacement No 5 was handed into my old company when I left the job – and not thrown out of a high, hotel window, as often fantasied.

Macbook Pro No2 has just had its hard-drive replaced. (Just two years in.) The upgraded hard-drive continues to spawn issues. As I type, I am just back from my fourth trip to the Genius bar in two months. I think I deserve an honorary blue geek tee for keeping them in business - but my requests remain unanswered.

Like I said, as superpowers go, I won’t be recruited to The Avengers anytime soon but maybe I have my role to play? Maybe people like me are the Sarah Connors of the future? Waiting in the wings as humanity’s secret weapon against our robotic overlords?  

Until then, I’m buying a bonnet and a buggy and joining the Amish. If you need me, I’ll be in a field somewhere. Ask for Elecno.