Home Alone At Last Hip Hip Hooray (Quick, Change The Locks)

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the Jesus on the Tube paintings and concept
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

Completely On My Own In The House Oh The Joy

The builders, bless their hearts, have gone.  I have a new kitchen in which all my Stuff is put away, I have cleaned everything (except the Boxing Boy who is Teflon Coated and slips out of reach) and reclaimed my dining room table, my sitting room and the whole of downstairs.   In the great tapestry of life, this is but a stitch.  But a big, golden, fundamental one.  Here is how it feels.  I expect many of you will slap your thighs in a recognizing kind of way, and say By George, it is just the same for me.  Well I never.

I live in a nice house and have interesting but wild and wayward children, capable of huge passions and deep loves.  I have a studio in the garden and I plot my ascent to the stars in there, helped by pots of strong tea and pieces of cake.  It is interesting to me that though I am quite tall (5'10") I am much smaller than all of my Deeply Opinionated Gloriously Uninhibited Children.  This means that when I lay down the law I have to look up or get them to sit down.  I have to tune into how little dictators feel, in order to keep my power going.   

A date is set for my kitchen to be replaced.   I remove all of the things from it and cover the downstairs with pots, pans, food, microwaves, kettles, cleaning stuff, matches, pins, paper, glasses, old ham sandwiches, plastic bags, single unsharpened pencils and so on.  The kitchen is bare, empty and shivering in the cold.  Within a day the heart is ripped out of the house, and the kitchen in in pieces in the garden.  I am left with a bare concrete room with no electricity, water, light or hope.  And then the kids go bonkers.  17 Year Old Wonder Boy makes himself homeless and changes his life for ever.  14 Year Old Rambo Boy gets excluded from school for amongst other things, Boxing People.  I become single again and everything grinds to a halt.

We eat bad food from the microwave or takeaways.  I spend money I don't have getting ready prepared food that tastes a little bit like it is going to shorten my life by a few weeks, or at the very least, make us all consitpated.  There is dust everywhere, and I wash up in the bathroom upstairs.  Going to bed at night, I don't feel anywhere is mine, that nowhere is peaceful, and that there will never be anything but chaos and disorder.  There was still work to do too, there was the Art Fair to prepare, there are portraits to do and people to meet and talk to about the A Graceful Death.  Every time I needed to go to the studio, it seemed, a weeny explosion in one or other of the Boys made it neccessary for me to go to London, or Chichester, or Wherever, to sort it out.  And still there was no kitchen, still the house was overrun by dust, disorder, clutter, madness and mayhem.  Then came the snow.  The schools closed and Rambo Boy had to stay home.  So did I, the car wouldn't go over the ice and I was beginning to see a Govnernment Plot to keep me in my house despite the growing need I had to simply run away.  No trains ran, no buses, the airports were either snowed in or on strike somewhere, and the roads were too dangerous.  I did walk into Bognor though, to try and get something or other for the Rambo Boy, but fell flat on my bottom and bruised it and felt that the Government Plot to keep me at home and suffering was spreading to Arun District Council who were responsible for me falling over in town.  And hurting my bottom.  And feeling tearful.

But Lo!  The kitchen is finished now.  It is Green, like I asked.  The units are there, where I wanted them, and there is running water and heat.  I have cleaned the downstairs and everything is in order.  There was a blip, in that Boxing Boy was taken into the local hospital with suspected appendicitis two days ago.  By yesterday, it had all been cleared up, and he has been declared Of Sound Appendix and given yucky medicine for something else.  So he went to school today.  Arty Man went to work today.  17 Year Old Boy Who Dances To A Different Drum But Who I Love Stupidly A Lot, is or at least was, still alive yesterday.  Wonderful 20 Year Old Daughter is fine and dandy in her life in Brighton.  There is no need for anyone to come calling, there is utter silence in the house.  This is where I have to be stronger than the urge to change the locks, change my name, grow a beard and pretend to be someone else.  But that isn't really the answer.  I like all  the people in my house, and they would not be fooled with a name change and beard.  They would just whisper to each other, "Play along, pretend she is called Boris and leave her alone till she feels better.  Alright there Boris??"

Can't Keep A Good Optimist Down,

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the Jesus on the Tube paintings and story
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

Can't Keep A Good Optimist Down.  

Today's offering to you all is one of careful and realistic hopefulness.  The day began early, I woke with the dawn chorus and felt dreadful.  What, I thought, is the point of being a bit miserable, in bed on a Sunday morning, and waking at dawn refreshed and unable to avoid the day ahead.  Bah, I said, Bah Humbug.  And shut up birds. 

But then the Optimist who lives in me spoke very softly and said, "If you were to get up and change your sheets, have a long bath, and get back into bed, you would feel good.  The choices open to you then are legion.  Breakfast in bed?  A book?  Computer?  You can even chat on the phone if you feel you have anything to say.  Or, of course, you could go back to sleep."  I listen to my inner optimist.  It has much experience and by now knows plenty of ways to get me out of the Slough of Despond.  "OK Optimist," I said with a grumpy kind of sigh.  "I will go and run the bath and do the sheets thing and I hope you know what you are talking about.  Mumble mumble mutter mutter oh what's the use etc".  Funny thing is, once out of bed and looking at all the different colours of bedding I have in the airing cupboard, I felt a teeny ray of hope.  "Ooooh," I said.  And chose a lovely dark red duvet cover and pillow cases and a fresh crisp white sheet.  "Ooooh."  Once the bed was ready and a huge display of cushions and pillows in place to receive me after the bath, I went to the next stage.  The Bath.  My daughter Alexia always says in an astonished voice and a kind of pantomime mock horror, "Why would you only put one bubble bath in your bath?  I always put at least 12 in mine.  Goodness.  Where are you from??"   With this in mind, I poured a bit of everything from the side of the bath that didn't contain bleach into the water and treated myself to the equivalent of a genteel car wash for people.

Coming back into my room I was struck by how inviting the bed looked and how glad I was that the Optimist had suggested this route to my possible happiness. So before getting back in, I went downstairs into the nearly finished kitchen to make some breakfast and take it back to bed.  Hooray, my little heart sang.  The Rambo Boy is still asleep, he won't need me till this afternoon hooray hooray.  And up I went, back to bed, where I sat feeling clean and pampered.  It has been all downhill from there.  I spent an hour on the phone to the Glorious Clarissa.  Just under an hour on the phone to Darling Dublin Friend and a flurry of fascinating texts to and from Eileen, the Photographer Extraordinaire.  After that, with a whoop of joy, I decided to conquer the world.  Start, I said with huge determination, with the house.  And I did.  I cleaned everything, everywhere, and then hoovered it.  I put on 92 loads of washing, and kept the heating on all day... for the drying, of course.  Oh the luxury.  The naughtiness.  The rebellion.

And so.  By 5pm today, I am at one with my Optimist.  She was right.  To begin the day with a tiny action intended to both please and make progress, is a very good idea.  I am now back in bed.  My room twinkles like a Swarovski Crystal.  Both the Rioting Sons' rooms are washed and an awful lot of Stuff thrown away.   I can walk into both rooms and say "Ah yes, a human lives here.  Funny, I thought it belonged to a Mountain Troll but there, I must have imagined it".  I have also made plans.  One of the most important plans is to have an Avoca chandelier in my sitting room.  The Avoca chandeliers are small and multi coloured and full of fire and passion and light - which must be a good thing because I want to be full of colour and passion and light.  

I have three Angels to paint for very nice ladies indeed for Christmas, and I have another fair to organise!  Yes!  I am going to have one here on the 18 and 19 December and sell Angels and Eileen will sell her wonderful prints.  I then have Christmas to do, and next year, 2011, is filling up fast. Much of the time cleaning today was spent giving myself a bit of a stern finger-wagging talking to, and making a realistic assessment of what I actually did have, and not what I didn't have.  There are so many plans and confirmed exhibitions to look forward to in 2011 that all this smelly nonsense with Rioting Sons, Sadness, Building Work, has to end.  I simply can't take it with me and do any of these exciting things that are supposed to happen next year.  Here is the current list of the places I am going to in 2011.  Some are holidays, some are work.

• Dublin.  A lot.
• Norway.  
• Majorca
• France
• Maybe Edinburgh if I can wangle it
• Manchester
• Birmingham

So here I sit in bed with my supper (scrambled eggs on toast and pot of tea).  The house is twinkling and releasing little butterflies like it does on the adverts for air freshners and laundry products. Boxing Boy is up and fed, 17 Year Old Son is up in his new flat share in London and since I have heard absolutley nothing at all from him after I took him up there and moved him in yesterday, I can only imagine he is up to no good and is thrilled that I can't see.  Or his phone is out of battery and he is so engrossed in his History essays and catching up with his Psychology and English that time has no meaning and he has forgotten to call his dear old mum.   Whatever.  It's all up to him now.  Thanks to my Inner Optimist, I am looking forward to tomorrow.  I can't wait to start my Angels, and later on in the week I am going to London to talk business for A Graceful Death.  My kitchen will be finished and at last I can get my home sorted.  One boy is back in London, the other has taken up boxing and is getting a new hearing aid fitted in blue.  Daughter has a new flat to move to, and I am starting to feel, like my Avoca chandelier, full of Colour, Passion and Light. 

Putting Up The Boundaries And Taking Down The Barriers

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for my Jesus on the Tube website
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

Boundaries Going Up, Barriers Coming Down

If I could do all this with just grim determination, then all would be well and I would have no discussion with you.  I have been using Barriers in place of Boundaries and wondering why I never quite got where I wanted to be. This week's homework for me then, is to recognise the Barriers, remove them with a firmness that has been growing of late, and replace them with the more gentle and grown up Boundaries.  Barriers are for being scared and staying where you are.  Boundaries are for walking quietly through the quagmire (of life, old thing, of life) and gently refusing to indulge in other peoples' nonsense.  Or thereabouts.

I am sitting in the Waiting Room of Life.  It is possible that I was catapulted in here without feeling that I had much to do with it, but that can't be right.  I am sure I was simply not noticing the signs.  I have dealt with the immediate issues - the 17 Year Old Son will be going back to London on Saturday, possibly for a good long while as he needs to go back to college.  He appears to have found a place to live.  He is also clean, not tired, has been seen and a written note been made, eating good food and not being any more thin that he was when I collected him a couple of weeks ago from street living in London.  He has, and this too has been logged, a healthy bloom in his cheek.  He may be mended on the outside and ready to try again.  Let us see how he finds the next London Experience.  Let us see how the inside fares.

14 Year Old Rocky Bilboa Son is happy today because school was closed. It all seems like a good idea to him, and he thinks this should happen once, maybe twice, a week till Summertime.  There was to have been Boxing Club tonight, but it was cancelled.  I walked him there through the snow and ice this evening because to drive meant that we may slide away helplessly down the wrong road and never be seen again.  Bognor Regis is very icy and thick with tons of snow at the moment.  Cars inch carefully, the drivers concentrating hard, along our roads and gently brake, signal to turn left, turn the wheel left, while the car simply carries straight on, wheels turned to the left, indicator and brakes on, into the oncoming traffic that is going 10 miles an hour and concentrating just as hard themselves, trying desparately not to slide up the nearest tree or into the nearest driveway or shop front.  My tall gangly hoodied boy loved the walk in the dark in the snow, dodging cars who were only trying to maintain a straight line, and chucking snow balls at them.  He didn't even mind that when we got to the gym it was closed.  He pelted it with snowballs and spent the journey home writing his name in the snow on the parked cars which was not so clever if you don't want anyone to know who exactly it was who was writing all over the cars parked on a certain road.  He has had no bad reports this week.  That may be because he has been at home most of the week because of the snow, and unable to get one from this far away. But still, it seems like a bit of progress.

So here I sit in the Waiting Room of Life.  The boys are OK.  I have fended off a rather difficult moment with someone who doesn't like nor approve of me or my lifestyle, and I have with huge regret parted from my dear Alan.  Loving someone is not enough, it seems, to be with them.  We simply didn't have the support we needed.  We had to fight our case all the time, which made me at least, feel too overwhelmed with a kind of dull hopelessness to continue.  Alan felt the same dull helplessness, so we agreed to go our separate ways.   Now, in this proverbial Waiting Room Of Life, I have absolutely no idea where I will decide to go next. And with whom.  I am aiming not to give way to anger and misery, and I am haunted by the thought that there will soon be someone else receiving flowers from Alan, reading his texts, and being important to him.  It should be me, but it isn't.  Not any more. I expect he feels the same about me.

Perhaps the Barriers are almost all down now.  Enough has happened recently to make me feel very alone indeed.  From this will come the Next Step, and I have no idea what that will be.  Though having a new kitchen downstairs is turning out to be such a success that a new bathroom may be the next step.  Forget the seriousness of raising Bonkers Teenaged Sons On The Edge, forget the fact that Alan is not here any more, forget the Barriers/Boundaries thing and get a new bathroom.  If I were to say enigmatically that both my dear experimenting boys have set fire separately to the bath at some point, you may agree that this was probably the simplest, most profound way forward.  Only the greatest of minds could have thought of it.  And when that is done I will get the house repainted.  And then... and so on.   

An Uncomplicated Day Off, An Anniversary And Absolutely No More Cake

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for my other website, about Jesus travelling on the London Tube
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

An Anniversary Today.  And Absolutely No More Goddam Cake.

Today I am hiding away.  I have earmarked today to gather my thoughts, make lists, be very silent and most of all, to remember Steve.  As I write now, three years ago today, he had one hour left to live.  It is 2 minutes to 9am now, and he died at 2 minutes to 10am on the 29 November 2007.  I remember, I was on the phone to the Glorious Clarissa at the time, when the hospice called me to come quickly.  By the time I got there, he had just died.  A couple of nurses and the chaplain were waiting for me at the door and gently shook their heads as I arrived to prepare me for the news that he had gone. The chaplain took my hand and led me to his bedside where my lovely Steve lay still and silent and empty of life.  I was crying hard as I took Steve's hand and told him not to worry about me, that I was fine, we had had a wonderful time, and thank you.  That's a relief, his spirit may have said as it began the journey through the tunnel into the light, I was not sure how you'd feel about me dying this morning and all that.  Best get on now, bit busy at the moment.  Tara.  

This morning three years ago, I woke feeling unfocussed and distracted.  I couldn't settle to anything.  My mother called and said she would come in with me to see Steve but I remember saying that I couldn't concentrate and wanted to let myself drift.  I wonder if we had gone in, whether we would have joined Steve's brothers (who came in to see him about some documents that morning) at his last moment.  It is probably best that we didn't, Steve loved his brothers and it was good they were there with him.  I sat with Steve a few minutes after he had died, and had some time with him then on my own.  I suppose I was not entirely alone, as I phoned friends who knew him well and would understand a call from a death bed.  I called Maddy my cousin, who had quite firmly helped me to recognise the progress of his cancer and what it meant.  I called Eileen who had been there all along and had weathered many of the storms Steve and I encountered from my children.  Darling Dublin friend had been in my position herself, and knew how I felt and of course, my mother who had offered earlier on that day to come in to sit with him.  I called each of my children and I called the Glorious Clarissa back to tell her.  So really, one way and another, I wasn't really alone with Steve in his little hospice cubicle, there was a whole party of us.  "You'll be alright," Steve's spirit may have said with a twinkle as he glanced back over his shoulder on his way through the tunnel to the light etc, "not gone for five minutes and you are already on the phone to two hundred of your closest friends.  Tara."

Eileen and I did our Fair yesterday and it went very well.  We would have liked more people to come, but enough came to make it go with a gentle swing.  We will do another in my house in December, so watch this space.  We are unstoppable.  And the cakes made by 20 Year Old Daughter were completely addictive.  We got to the hall at 8am, opened at 10am and left early just before 7pm.  Not only did lots of jolly friends come, but Steve's dear friends from Norway were here on business and popped in.  Eileen and I had no idea they were in the UK so this was a wonderful and welcome surprise.  Our dear friend the Unsurpassable Alex came too and stayed not only to clear up with us, but to drive Glamerous 20 Year Old Daughter back to Brighton.  By about 4pm everyone had gone home from Arundel, so we put on Doris Day and Nancy Sinatra, sang along loudly with gusto, and had a Party.  We were forced to eat as many cakes that had not sold as we could then, so that we didn't have to take them home.  We were utterly compelled to do this, and this is the reason that the title of this account says Absolutely No More Goddam Cake.  I can't control myself over cake consumption.  If there is a cake going I will eat it.  Having a cafe selling Tea and Cakes at our Art Fair was always going to be a challenge for me and to risk my loss of all self control.

Back to today.  I am tired now, and letting Steve come and go in my mind.  I am taking time to feel my way through the day.  I could be very busy, I could fill my time with Organising, Unpacking Fair Things, Emails, Chatting on the Phone - but if I did that I would waste the whole purpose of the 29 November, which is to just let Steve settle on my mind like a mist.  So I am in my home, hiding in my bedroom from the builders downstairs in the kitchen.  I am under a pile of cushions and I may not come out.  The heating is on in the studio too, so if I do want to go and potter in there I have thought ahead and set it up.  Today I must be quiet and wish to be detatched from everyone.  Steve really was a wonderful man.  I miss him very much, and am rather dreading the time today I will feel his memories and think of our time together.  It is so bitter sweet, but there you go.  I am not the only one.  Not only are his family remembering him today, all those who have lost someone are feeling their loss.  However, for myself, today I am feeling the loss of Steve and letting it happen.  And at no point will I eat any of the cake left over from yesterday's Art Fair that is on the kitchen table for the builders. 

Antonia Rolls, Unwilling Fighter Of Fights, Finding Her Feet

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for my Jesus on the Tube website
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the exhibition A Graceful Death, paintings from the end of life

Unwilling Fighter, That's Me, And Doing My Best

 I have not become a Boxer like the dear sweet 14 Year Old Son.  We don't spar after school in the evening and go to bed with black eyes and sore knuckles.  He now goes to a Boxing Club for that and I am hoping his little heart will be happy and he will become good and well behaved and a pleasure to teach at school.  This is not about trying to make 17 Year Old Son happy either, and give him this elusive peace and freedom he wants. The Unwilling Fighting is not about crusading, not about changing the world, not about going out there and showing who is boss.  

I am a peaceful person, longing for people to be nice to each other.  Conflict and arguments make me uncomfortable and unsafe, and I am not good at either of them.  Life is not always an easy ride though.  We all know this, we all have to face the things that we would rather avoid.  How we face and accept them tells us much about where we are in our progress through life, and how we resolve the things we would rather not deal with tells us even more about how mature and wise we may or may not be becoming.  Rather late in life I have been made aware that one of my main shortcomings are Boundaries.  I have not quite got the hang of them, and have had to learn late in life both what they are and how to establish them.  It is a very good thing to have got the hang of, except that I am still getting the hang of them.  However, I am delighted to say that at the age of 50, I am doing a jolly good job, all things considered.  It is difficult though, and I am seeing the consequences of being a bit tougher and saying No.  But I am feeling very strong these days, and I know I just have to get used to being firm.  And oddly enough, it gives me more peace than I had expected.

My three children, bless their furious hearts, are on the one hand wild and unruly, they have much to say for themselves and give me a pretty rough time from time to time.  On the other hand, they really know how to love, they think for themselves and they are not afraid of life.  They are fascinating and funny and clever.  They also don't think I know anything at all and have many jolly conversations amongst themselves about how clueless and amusing I am as I live as a Fairy in this world of Wolves. I expect all youngsters need to feel their parent is slightly retarded so that they can leave them and find out for themselves.  I may seem a Fairy, I have been known to say with a chuckle as I pass amongst them as they eat my food and watch my telly, but I know how to do Wolf if I need to.  A gentle, fairy-ish kind of wolf, but they don't need to know that. 

So. More about these Fights.  I have, as we all know, two rioting sons.  It is hard work to keep one step ahead of them, and keep myself calm in order to deal with them.  I have to fight them because I don't always agree with what they are doing or have done.  I love them dearly but they are so very sure that they can get away with anything, because they are blessed with superior knowledge and anyway, nasty things and unpleasant situations go away if you ignore them.  Or punch them.  I remember my 20 year old Daughter being very angy and utterly without boundaries.  She is now in a good job, being seconded to university, lives in a nice flat and has probably lived more life in her teens than most of us do in our whole lives.  I think of her for comfort when her brothers are hell bent on teaching us all a lesson and following their furious and misunderstood hearts.  There is, I think to myself, possibly, hope.

I have to stand firm too in the face of some fierce personal criticism about how I live and what I have done to make my sons riot.  That is not easy but I can do it.  I do so dislike fighting, and this criticism when it comes, is a very big fight.  Boundaries are the answer here, and I am very glad I have been practicing. 

So where shall we leave this account today?  On an up, I say.  My kitchen is nearly done and it is looking fabulous.  Both boys are upstairs, the 14 year old is ill and the 17 year old is still recovering from the shock of being on the streets.  Fine.  I know where they are and while they are asleep there can be no fighting or idiocy.  The builders are not here today so I have my house to myself.  Eileen comes for the weekend and that is always good.  We are doing our Fair on Sunday in Arundel and I think I have done enough for that, so much so that I am giving myself a day off to clean the house today.  And, that is a relief.  I don't like mess and dirt and disruption, and any building work can test the sanity of the home owner, despite my two builders being the nicest fellows you can wish for.  So by the end of today my house will look like Doris Day has got hold of it and done a makeover. And my life, oh my life - it is mine and mine alone.  How about that. 

Time To Get Going Again

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for my other website
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of a life

Time Indeed To Get Going Again. 

The kitchen is nearing completion.  It is more ready today than it was yesterday, which is progress.  I can use the cooker and the hob top, the washing machine and the dishwasher, and I can put some things away in the drawers.  Hooray.  The shelves, the walls, the plastering, the floors, the breakfast block all have to be done but hey ho, all's well that ends well.  My two builders are excellent and thorough and jolly, and I trust them implicitly to give me a kitchen to love.  I know nothing about what they are doing, and have to really screw up my eyes and point a finger at my temple and go "think think think" when I have to talk kitchen details with them.  So they get on with it and I am grateful that they even want to, and the kitchen slowly gets made much to my delight.  Hark, I can hear them arrive now.  They are in their 60s and are remarkable for not having a radio on at any point, and for sitting down side by side together at 1pm on a kind of cutting bench, and having a packed lunch each that is full of correct goodness and no sugary rubbish.  They are experienced and know exactly what they are doing, which is how I like people to be.  So they are in the kitchen now, unpacking their drills and fold-up ladders, their electric screw drivers and their power saws, and Hooray, I say to them.  Hooray.  Let the Kitchen Unfold.

The Boys?  14 Year Old Son, my own dear Rocky in Real Life, went for his first training session at the boxing gym last night.  What an exciting set up it is, the gym sparkling clean and professionally equipped and full of punch bags and boxing gloves and padded areas.  And all around the gym were smaller boys, bigger boys and actual Youffs belting the lights out of those bendy punch bags that whop back at you when you hit them.  Before Rambo Son could do anything Punchy, they made him and the other arrivals last night run around the gym ( a very big space) shadow boxing as they went.  I paused by the door as I left, to gaze with a full and loving heart at my violent little boy as he whizzed around the gym with other darling little thugs, and thought that from the outside as I was, looking in through a little window in the door, they looked like a group of nutters told to take some exercise in their own time, at their own pace, and no one would laugh at them.  I collected Rambo Boy later and was pleased to note that he was exhausted and very sweaty.  "Someone hit me tonight," he said benignly.  "Goodness," I wanted to say, "which hospital are they in?" but it seems it was all part of the training which seemed to have sneaked a few teeny thwacks in here and there.

Other Son, the Older One, is upstairs recovering.  He has been eating, and sleeping, and is looking to go back to London and find a place to live tomorrow.  My job now is to let him go and do his thing and hovver around in the background, and keep an eye on him.  I know what he wants, and it must seem such a simple thing - total freedom and no boundaries at all - but there are so many rules in place to make sure we all muddle along together.  There are laws, rules, boundaries, conventions etc and they all kind of keep us a bit in line so that we do muddle along together.  He will go to London tomorrow and return home here tomorrow night, and we will see what he has found out.  I was a bit like him at that age though.  I remember the conviction that for me, it would be different.  I would get what I wanted, when I wanted and how I wanted.  If asked what it was that I wanted, I would not have been able to reply and would have got cross instead.

But I know what I want now!  Bully for me!  I want a kitchen, a painted house, a nice garden (I have a Cosmic Gardener - a nice and thoughtful fellow who is very interested in spiritual matters and God, who does my garden and who has very long eyelashes.  So he is very pretty in the garden as well as efficient and spiritual.).  I want nice children who do the right things and are very happy and clever and I want lots of painting and writing work.  I want the sun to shine and the birdies to sing and I want everyone to be happy. And I want to go walking with Clarissa in Nepal.  

So off now to do some cards for the fair on Sunday to which you are coming, remember?  Before I do, I will pop in and say hello to my two very jolly builders and see if I have any more of the kitchen to admire. 

Feeling Tough And Tight-Lipped And Meaning Business

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for my other website

www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

Right.  Enough Is Enough.  I Got Work To Do

And a life to live.  I woke this morning with the same feeling of hopeless exhaustion that I have been waking with all last week.  Even though I knew it was Sunday morning and nothing, nothing at all, was planned for the day, I groaned as the day broke through my window.  "Woe," I said to myself as I curled into a tiny ball of Go Away World.  "Woe," I said again "and a smelly old pile of pooh."  I had woken all last week to uncertainty as to where Son No 1 was sleeping.  He for one reason or another had made himself homeless and had seen it out to the bitter end.  Much of last week, day and night, was spent on the phone to social workers, police, solicitors, more social workers, more police, welfare officers and social workers again.  I didn't know where he was, who he was with, and where he was sleeping.  And the worried welfare calls kept coming.  "Your son has presented (he has presented??) as homeless and as a vulnerable young adult I am here to plead his case and can he come home"  "Yep."  I said.  "He can come home?"  they said.  "Yep."  I said.  Then a little while later "Police here Madam, I believe you have a son (yes, I do, two of them and you can lock both of them up - oh sorry, you are not offering.  Not to worry Officer, maybe next time) and your son needs to find an urgent place to stay.  I hear that his family are all Mafiosi and you are a known psycho killer.  Could you confirm that?"  And so it went on.  In the end, I went up to London in the car and by the evening left with Son and All His Belongings.  He had to sit in the back under the black plastic bags of clothes and picture frames, under suitcases and televisions, tables and bottles of ketchup and so gaunt and grey and haggard he was, that he fitted in the little spaces between the bags perfectly.  In the front, having had a day out with Uncle at the rugby, was the Boy Rambo, Son no 2.  And a big tough, rosy cheeked fellow he is too, contrasting ridiculously with his shadowy older brother under a box in the back.  Son no 2 is finally cleared by his ear consultant to take up boxing.  So he is a changed boy.  A now Happy Thug, no longer an Unhappy Thug.

Back then to this morning.  Dawn breaks outside and I fear the start of the day.  Until I remember that both my Blinking Boys are asleep and fed in their beds and I know where both of them are and they are not only here, in this house, but clean and full up and dreaming of fluffy bunnies and lambkins in the Spring.  And I say to myself,  Ho, Antonia.  Make a List.  This is now your day.  Get back on track and get some goddam order in your life.  So I did.  I made a list and got dressed and had breakfast and that is when I noticed I was pursing my lips.  This, I thought to myself, means that I mean Business.  I did go to Arundel and to Chichester and put up leaflets about the Art Fair you are coming to next Sunday, the Eileen and Antonia's Art Fair in Arundel Norfolk Hall on November 28 from 10 am to 7pm - you remember, that one.  Oh yes, that one.  Glad to be going to it, I hear you mutter reassuringly to yourselves.  

And so today has been a day of catching up with things I could not do while Rambo Boy was excluded from school and in disgrace, and Hobo Boy was going mental on the streets of London and worrying me half to death.

Tomorrow, I try and get Older Son to the doctor.  The next day I take Younger Son to a possible Boxing Club.  Tuesday evening I have been asked - funny how absolutely unexpected this is - to dinner on a fancy boat in Chichester with a Flirty Captain.  Why me?  I am accompanying a friend's other half and how lovely that I have been asked.  I know the Flirty Captain a little, and he will be a wonderful host, but I am not sure I can cope just now with Flirtyness.  I will have to see whether I still have the Flinty Look in my eye and the tight lipped tell-me-no-jokes-I-have-no-sense-of-humour expression on my face.  It could be a little light relief and just what I need.  Oh but I know I am expected to be jolly and funny and on the ball.  My light relief at the moment would be a remote cottage on the Arran Isles for a week.  That's how funny and witty and light hearted I am.  Play my cards right, and maybe the Flirty Captain will sail me there and leave me there snarling and muttering and cursing.  "Not asking her to my dinners again", he would say as he puts the throttle on full and leaves the Arran Isles at full tilt, "dreadful flinty tight lipped humourless old bat she is.  And she seemed to jolly at first.  Not going back to fetch her, she can swim home."

Sleep now.  Tomorrow, says the wise man, is another day.  One boy goes skipping like a frolicksome pony to school secure in the knowledge that he can very soon smack the living bejeesus out of a punch bag/other boy in a controlled environment, and the other boy is going to do housework for me for some money and is quite excited about it.  I may get him to finish the half completed kitchen.  That would surprise him.