@ 2007-06-30 – 23:29:12
...there was a very happy family. Georgina and Greg were still very much in love, twelve years after they met. Their three children, Denise, 10, Paula, 8, and Johnnie, 5, were bright and cheerful and never threw tantrums. Denise and Paula took it turns to do the washing up.
In fact, everything was pretty well perfect. Boring, almost. There's little more I can say about them...
Until, one day..
Come on - give me the next paragraph
@ 2007-06-30 – 21:48:08
@ 2007-06-30 – 20:09:54
Not a good Saturday in Motherland.
Every since my therapy sessions last Monday, I have been aware of my anger bubbling under the surface and occasionally bursting out.
And now I am seeing one of therapists again on Monday, it would be better to leave telling the story to her rather than splurge it here.
It's not that I foamed at the mouth, swore obscenely or threw crockery at her. Just a little mild snapping. But it was enough for my mother to get a headache and hot flushes. "It's not an emotional reaction," she explained. Like hell it isn't. "It's physical"
I remember sixty years of "Physical Reactions" and invading my space - and attempt, through gritted teeth, concilatory smiles
@ 2007-06-30 – 09:10:58
Would someone/anyone in the UK tell me/remind me the name of a local community site where I might find somebody to clean my house properly?
(signed) Frustrated of Hammersmith
@ 2007-06-29 – 21:09:55
This afternoon I had a session of colonic irrigation.
I'm feeling good.
Absolutely no details of the session are to be provided. [unless you have more or less the same IBS problems as I do and you care to send me a Personal Message]
No illustration from Google images
@ 2007-06-29 – 14:20:17
This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
@ 2007-06-29 – 08:36:49
George W, in a speech yesterday to naval cadets, revealed his new definition of victory in Iraq. The country, he suggested, should change to resemble Israel.
Apparently no one laughed.
@ 2007-06-28 – 23:43:43
Dead man walking,
Fat lady singing,
A boy on the burning deck.
Lets face it my friends,
We're near the end,
The world is due for a wreck.
Dead man walking,
Fat lady singing,
Roses grow best after the firing of guns.
We've just got time
To commit some crimes
And teach killing to our daughters and sons.
Fat lady walking,
Dead man singing,
Opposites are meant to attract.
The rich man with his Mondrian,
And the poor girl on her back.
Burning boy walking,
Bloated corpse singeing,
And all we want is some fun.
Protest? Where to start?
For the rest,
It's best
To stay calm.
After all, some day,
There may be a way,
Posthumously,
To forget all this and laugh.
@ 2007-06-28 – 22:31:15
Something's got to change, I'm telling you. It's quite ridiculous at the moment. Distracting, too. And, anyhow, I know in my bones in a few days, it will be over. Finendum. We'll get back to normal. Put it all back into the bottle. Breathe safely at night, and all the other cliches.
Sad, really.
@ 2007-06-28 – 20:27:03
Terrifying, isn't it? All the information available about us. For example, here is a list of the last 20 visitors to 2M2D (Too Much to Declare) :
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United States | |||
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United Kingdom | Huddersfield, Kirklees | ||
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Japan | Tokyo | ||
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United Kingdom | London, Lambeth | ||
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United Kingdom | Hill, South Gloucestershire | ||
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Unknown | |||
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United Kingdom | Harrow On The Hill, Slough | ||
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Germany | |||
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United Kingdom | Huddersfield, Kirklees | ||
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United Kingdom | Milton Keynes | ||
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Germany | Riegelsberg, Saarland | ||
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United Kingdom | Hull, Kingston upon Hull, City of | ||
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United Kingdom | |||
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United Kingdom | Hill, South Gloucestershire | ||
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United States | New York | ||
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Brazil | So Paulo, Sao Paulo | ||
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United Kingdom | |||
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United Kingdom | Cheshunt, Redbridge | ||
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United Kingdom | Huddersfield, Kirklees | ||
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India | |||
@ 2007-06-28 – 13:22:26
Never blog a long post before 5pm local time -
- or any time, really.
@ 2007-06-28 – 09:13:04
At my "prep" school, where I became a boarder at the age of nine, boys were divided into six squads, named after the Dominions, the first self governing countries of the Commonwealth, the new name for the British Empire. Viz: Australia, Canada, Ceylon, India, New Zealand, Pakistan and South Africa.
I was allocated to the New Zealand squad and had a Kiwi badge sewn on to my uniform cream sweater by one of the under-matrons, whose predominant duty was to darn up the holes in our woollen socks.
The squads competed with each other, week by week. The week's top team was the first to leave the dining room after breakfast.
Each boy was awarded ten points a week - and extra for winning a race or... I can't remember many of the different ways on could earn extra points (We're talking here about the 1950s). You cold lose points if you were naughty.
"Naughty" included not marking the List with a tick or a cross.
It worked like this: After breakfast, when your squad left the dining room, you lined up on a bench in the Common Room - the top squad nearest and to the left of the Master in charge. When he called out your name (in last week's point order) you went to one of the toilet cublicles and tried to shit.
A tick meant you'd had a bowel movement. A cross meant you handn't - this meant a spoonful of cod liver oil the next evening before Lights Out.
It was easy to remember to tick. But a cross felt a little shameful. Once or twice I lied and put a tick. More than once or twice I forgot to put a mark on the list. This meant losing three points - plus the ten bonus points we were all given for not losing points. 13 points in all.
So, when I forgot to declare that I hadn't shitted, it had a disastrous effect on New Zealand's squad ranking. It meant that, the next week we would have to sit in the dining room longer after breakfast. Hold our shit in longer. Which, anyhow for me, meant I was even less likely to shit when my name was eventually called. Which meant shame, and possibly forgetting to mark the list, which meant losing 13 points again, which meant.............
@ 2007-06-27 – 20:30:33
In a Comment exchange on my recent post on narcissism, my Friend mkfunky wrote:
@ 2007-06-27 – 17:41:00
Luckily it doesn't long for me to get to Brighton by train, so this afternoon and popped down to see another couple of flats new on the market - before returning in time to rain start at Wimbledon (while I was travelling southwards thru Gatwick I guess 'we' got a new prime minister.)
I liked one of the flats very much - and the price could be keener than the first one I wanted to buy (and am still interested in). But all three of them happen to be with the same agent, and I'm wary not to be played for a sucker.
Report ends.
@ 2007-06-27 – 11:48:58
Oh, how hard I try to protect women from my own anger! At last, I did until yesterday.
Yesterday, the day after I had ‘auditioned’ two shrinks for the possible role as my therapist – and let my emotions run free within the sessions – one of my good friends at last agreed to meet me at the French café I keep mentioning. Meet for lunch.
Like most good friends, we have a complicated relationship. We first met 21 years ago, in a psychotherapy group in Skyros. She has always been vulnerable, both emotionally and physically. And I have been too careful, perhaps, to avoid conflict. She’s a couple of years older than me – and sometimes treats me – well, frankly as if she’s my mother. What’s more, like my mother, she’s not a good listener.
Anyway, that’s my excuse. For yesterday – maybe freed up by the therapy sessions - I began getting very worked up with her when she began to give me advice about my flat buying without listening to the full story. Don't get me wrong - I wasn't rolling my eyes or frothing from my mouth.
Nevertheless, my friend got upset, censorious. She thinks of someone who loses my temper – although I have not like this for months, I think the last time, again with her.
Since, I have felt a bit ashamed – although the phrases ‘calculating guilt merchant’ and ‘passive-aggressive bitch’ have been running through my mind as well. She’s one of these people who never directly expresses their own anger, but projects it on to others. Which makes me very angry. Because my friend’s behaviour, in this regard too, is exactly like my mother’s.
Later, I had the best night’s sleep for ages.
@ 2007-06-27 – 08:26:53
While I was supervising the cleaning of this house yesterday and attending to various business matters of the phone, Tony Blair and Arnold Schwarzenegger passed not a hundred metres away. They were photo-opping (aka visiting) a local Academy (Power to Business and Weird Religions) School I didn't know existed.
Continuing loosely on yesterday's theme of blogging and narcissism - so what?
My mother, on the other hand, feels personally involved in the regime change which today reaches it's orgasmic climax (I exaggerate) in Downing Street. Tony is off to walk on the Sea of Galilea, and Gordon will - or not - be moving mountains here.
"It's his brooding presence" explains my mother when I asked why she is sounding so depressed and not talking about the tennis. Now I admit there is something rather anal about the public persona of Gordon Brown; and if I caught my mum is a more rational mood she would hint that our new prime minister is a true heir of Joseph Stalin.
But what direct difference is the guy going to make to 'ordinary', reasonably well off middle class people's lives? Conceivably 10% on tax or a ban on driiving over 60 miles per hour... annoying, but hardly the end of civilisation.
No - it's only tangentally about possible Goverment policy. Rather, my mother regards public life as a projection of her own world. As a woman proud of her rationality, she feels she has every reason - a duty, even - to be Depressed by Brown. Inside her, he has stirred up lurking fears.
Still, on the tennis front, things are bit better as far as mum is concerned. Henman won, and Venus Williams has lost a lot of wieight and so looks a lot less threatening. Unfortunately, she is unlikely to change her skin colour.
Brown and black. Narcissist or not, for my mother these are alien forces.
@ 2007-06-26 – 20:43:29
I have opened a new blog on this site, Where the Rainbow Begins, which will contain a collection of my creative writing. The blog has the rather ugly URL start-rainbow.blog.co.uk
Initially, all I'm doing is re-publishing a whole lot of stories, songs etc I have written over the months on this blog. Later I will decide whether to post this kind of stuff exclusively on the new blog which I will get listed on various Literature blog lists, if I can be bothered.
But I rather like the jumbly mix I've created on Too Much to Declare, and will probably continue in this vain for a while.
@ 2007-06-26 – 12:11:28
One of the issues that's likely to feature in my upcoming therapy is narcissism. My mother's, Vanessa's, my father's and sisters. No doubt my own - one can be looking into the mirror for spots as well as reassurance.
Personal blogging is itself a pretty narcissistic activity - inventing a persona as a shield, presenting ourselves to the world for some kind of reassrance - aren't I clever? Or stupid? Or funny? Un/lucky? Sincere? Cynical?
Engaging with others, but at a safe distance. A blog makes us the centre of our little world...
Or is it just me?
@ 2007-06-25 – 22:19:25
... Or, of course, I could have written about this evening at Wimbledon. Henman's last stand.
What odds would you give me, znethru?
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@ 2007-06-25 – 22:00:13
Not a cumbersome joke - my busy day.
It so happened that my second potential psychotherapist, back from holiday, phoned me last night and arranged to see me this morning, ahead of this evening's appointment with the other one. Both gave me free meet-me sessions.
In between, a building society came round to check the house for a remortgage (so I have some breathing space to sell), 'my' solicitor phoned and we had a long chat about a propert issue (not the time here to explain) And I had my haircut in the usual place in Covent Garden.
It was strange 'auditioning' a therapist. Both women in the fifties, both more Jungian than anything else. Both shrewd in their way. One Polish, one Anglo Irish (I guess). One over twice the price of the other, but I felt she could see the score of what troubles me much more clearly....
In fact, practically for the first time since starting this blog, I am deliberately holding back on writing down a detailed account. It won't help me to rehash here what happens in my therapy in the next few (hopefully finite number of) weeks. It would cheapen the experience, somehow. Does that make sense? Of course the crucial thing to sort out is my relationship with my mother.
One thing I will tell you, though - the Polish (more expensive) therapist - the one I want to take on - wants to talk about my lack of boundaries. And perhaps, sometimes here, I have spilt out of boundaries that it might be prudent - and indeed healthy - to set myself...
This is getting convoluted. I'm tired.
@ 2007-06-24 – 22:12:37
My blog is worth $0.00.
How much is your blog worth?
@ 2007-06-24 – 17:44:15
I am delighted to discover that today Too Much to Declare had a visitor from Iran where I understood citizens have restrictions with their internet access.
The visitor read (or scanned) three posts and stayed on the site for three and a half minutes - longer than most of you [
]
Or that's what my spyware tells me. Hopefully reactionary Ayatollas don't have the same spyware, or the time to check it. On the other hand, the contents of this site is entirely non-contoversial and innocent, isn't it?
@ 2007-06-23 – 22:42:28
An illustration to accompany the last part of the post below:
In this picture, the part of Alec Weston and his grandfather is played by an actor. Alec's grandad, long post-existent and a racist bigot, would not approve of the casting.
@ 2007-06-23 – 21:35:20
Despite my hangover from a dreadful night's half sleep, my day with my mother went a lot better than for a long time. It was a nice, if confusing, surprise.
The key to it, I suppose, was the tennis. We are both great tennis fans, although I came to the game late (and too late to play much) but now follow tennis as avidly as she does. Last Tuesday, for example, I went to watch the Wimbledon Qualififying Tournemant at Roehampton, and I only didn't write about it here because by the evening I was totally out of it with tiredness. (NB to Uni students; there's good money to be made this week in June every year in Roehampton as ball-people)
Anyway, today was the final of the Woman's Tournament at Eastborne. (Henin v Meuresmo - a repeat of last year's Wimbledon final, with a different result) - and my mother and I enjoyed ourselves watching. Now she has a hearing aid in both ears, she is easier to have a conversation with while the TV sound is on.
We talked about the modern, lighter rackets, topspin - and what it had been like to play tennis in her day.
My mother was taught by her father - a terrible, selfish man, who seems to haunt me in, for example, the dark moments I have described here in the last few days and nights. One giant, never-satisfied superego. He deserves a post to himself some other time.
But my mother still idolises him (I often wonder if this is a mask for inchoate fury - it's quite possible he abused her) - and she described his fierce tennis backswing.
"Of course" she said in passing this afternoon, "he was limited in his movements by then because, of course he had a belly like yours..."
A belly like mine? Of course?? A lower stomach distention that looks like permanent 8 month pregnancy stuck on an otherwise slim body?
I've inherited the fucking thing and she has never thought to tell me.
My anally retentive contemptous grandad is stuck inside my large intestine!
Is it too late to arrange an abortion?
There is no age for the need for approval... You can be 90 and still seek approval from the world because it's all part of human nature, so don't worry about it. If there was no approval to seek, and you did not care enough to see approval, then why bother doing anything? It's all about the approval and praise, or lack thereof...
But is it? Yes, it would be pretty hard to live with oneself if one never had any approval of any kind - say in solitary confinement in Guantanemo Bay for example. It would be understandable, even if one wasn't a believer before, to seek the approval of god.
Yet - take an actor who got booed off the stage, or got appalling reviews. Surely her/his sense of worth should count more than applause or critics?
In 1993, I was working in aTV edit suite and Tony Blair (remember him? not yet party leader) put his head round the door. We were introduced, and I held his gaze for about seven seconds? He wants to be liked, I concluded, he craves to be liked.
Now, after the Iraq war he couldn't help knowing he was loathed by a large section of the population. But he still thought he ought to be liked. He still thought he could charm us. His whole personality still revolves round this craving. We have all let him down by not being permanently charmed. He is still convinced that his charm can bring a 2 state solution to Palestine Israel.
He is a pathological narcissist.
Of course I want approval as a writer. It's great to get approving Comments here. I long for my mother's approval, and feel better when I get it. (Though I can't help thinking if she felt love, the approval would matter less) But approval is far less important than feeling good about myself.
Btw, I think this is a good, pertinent post, even if I don't get any Comments to it.