you can tell them you’re a Homeward Bounder*

My mum died last month. It has not been the greatest month ever, nor the best three years or so, for her or us, before that.

It’s better for her: she was, to put it mildly, absolutely fed up with being ill and weak and barred from all of the little pleasures that made life worth living for her – mostly a drink at the pub, and a round robin put on at the bookies’, watching grim Brit crime dramas and hanging out with her sprightly middle-aged sprigs of offspring.

I’m not sure it’s better for us: I know it’s better for my mum not to suffer anymore, but all the same, I miss my mum. I was always Mummy’s girl, perhaps because she suffered an injury when I was a toddler that meant I had limited access to her for a while, which is hard for a small child to understand. I remember being tiny and pounding on the loo door in terror when she answered a call of nature, because being separated from her even for a minute or two was terrifying.

I miss her. I’m not weeping, not incapacitated, I go on with my daily life. But I miss her, all the time.

I will also note that, when I pop off this mortal coil myself, and rock up at the Pearly Gates, I’m planning on tossing away St. Peter’s guest list, storming the gates, and punching God in the face. For how she suffered, in those last weeks and months.  It’s not acceptable to me. The point needs to be made.

I think I’ll get a free pass. I think he’ll understand. He’d better.

* From The Homeward Bounders, Diana Wynne Jones.

poem: triffid blooms

how sad, triffid flower

boots on my feet

blood on my boots, a mouthful of meat

i’m a rare handy butcher, trained up good

charcuterie counter/buckets of blood*

*this poem is inspired, in part, by ‘Reviving Ophelia’ by Mary Pipher. Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher | Goodreads There’s an astonishingly glum episode therein, where the author describes an interview with a highschool class. She asks them, if you weren’t a human, what would you want to be?

And the boys all describe fierce, exotic, exciting animals: lions and tigers and bears, predators all. Predators with agency, and motion, and control over their destinies.

The first girl she asks, this tragic bint says, in a dieaway pathetic little whine, “Oh, if only I could be a flaaa-werrr…”

Hey-zooz. Anyhow. You wanna be a flower, buddy-bitch? If I were a flower… then I would be a triffid. Big, and green, and a bit hairy. And mobile.

And carnivorous.

robber barons do the hurdy gurdy 3

And then he collected himself, looking a little guilty. “Well, at any rate, that was a bust. He’s given up the idea since, I’m pretty sure: it can’t help that he’s losing his hair at a jolly old rate of knots, and never had any chin or cheekbones to speak of in the first place. Pulchritude can substitute for talent in youth: but once your youthful charms are gone, all you’ve got is what you’ve put the work in to hone and polish.”

he touched his hand to his hair again briefly, and to his face as if to smooth out the odd faint touch of wear, time’s kisses. Besides the pallor and shadows of the stress he was under, Erik could discern the faintest traces of ageing. Wasn’t he a connoisseur on the subject? It didn’t detract altogether from his charms: only lent a trace of maturity that had been lacking, a spurious air of wisdom. (Spurious, surely. Erik ought to know that by now.)

“Vicarious satisfaction, then?” Erik diagnosed. “If he can’t hog the spotlight himself, let him at least have the star of the show on a collar and leash, jumping when he says jump, hoops a-gogo? Sharing the red carpet and swagging off with every Emmy, Tony and Academy Award, on permanent loan in his creepy little lair?2

“Erik,” Charles said, and shook his head. He smirked a little, as he said, “You used to be such a nice boy.”

“Yes,” Erik agreed. ‘Then you happened to me,’ he added mentally.

robber barons do the hurdy gurdy 2

And then he collected himself, looking a little guilty. “Well, at any rate, that was a bust. He’s given up the idea since, I’m pretty sure: it can’t help that he’s losing his hair at a jolly old rate of knots, and never had any chin or cheekbones to speak of in the first place. Pulchritude can substitute for talent in youth: but once your youthful charms are gone, all you’ve got is what you’ve put the work in to hone and polish.”

he touched his hand to his hair again briefly, and to his face as if to smooth out the odd faint touch of wear, time’s kisses. Besides the pallor and shadows of the stress he was under, Erik could discern the faintest traces of ageing. Wasn’t he a connoisseur on the subject? It didn’t detract altogether from his charms: only lent a trace of maturity that had been lacking, a spurious air of wisdom. (Spurious, surely. Erik ought to know that by now.)

robber barons do the hurdy gurdy

And then he collected himself, looking a little guilty. “Well, at any rate, that was a bust. He’s given up the idea since, I’m pretty sure: it can’t help that he’s losing his hair at a jolly old rate of knots, and never had any chin or cheekbones to speak of in the first place. Pulchritude can substitute for talent in youth: but once your youthful charms are gone, all you’ve got is what you’ve put the work in to hone and polish.”

Three Letters and A Broken Engagement (Oh, Fanny!: A Mansfield Park Variation Book 1)

“An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done” – Mansfield Park, Jane Austen.

But once the engagement be broken?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0968SYMHS

The girl must have lost her wits – had lost them, indeed. That was proven, by her rejection of such an excellent, undeservedly excellent parti as Edmund Bertram. Mrs Norris nodded to herself decisively, the fresh brisk breeze blowing colour into her pendulous cheeks. – Three Letters & A Broken Engagement (Volume 1 of Oh, Fanny!: A Mansfield Park Variation by Alex Ankarr.