Author diaries

An old one, a new one

This is a time of year I don’t like.
You are either looking back on what’s gone and you’ve failed to do, or looking ahead into gloomy weather and what you still have to do.

At the turn of the year many strange things happened.
My old car gave up on a long drive from the south; luckily I was in Shieldfield by the time it stopped going, so it managed to get me back to Newcastle. My garage said it wasn’t worth repairing so I felt very grown up and bought my first car all on my own (with help and advice from friends and my brother).
A metallic blue Peugeot 206 diesel (2002).
When we were little, my brother and I called them PewGots. It’s very comfy and goes fast and easily - unlike my old Fiat that shuddered when it got to 50 mph.

I arrived home to an email from an old friend who I hadn’t seen or heard from for 26 years who was trying to contact me. I emailed back and received a long communication about what he was up to and his plans. The next day I was told he was dead. I said ‘No he’s not, he’s just emailed me!’
It turns out that he sent me the email at 10.00 at night and then died half an hour later, completely unexpectedly. I felt somehow implicated and responsible. My sister, who believes in Fate, said he was saying Goodbye. It was very unsettling.

There was a wake for him at The Cumberland - and I went there from Chrissie Glazebrook’s memorial at the Quaker Meeting House. A sad start to 2008.

I share a birthday with Robert Burns, so I always have that to look forward to in the bleak weather of the early year. This year, on Thursday 24th January I was walking down my street and a cat miaowed behind me. I look down at this sleek black and white cat - it was following me - I said ‘Vince?’ and he miaowed back, then I picked him up and ran home.
This was our cat that had disappeared the March before - he’d been missing nearly a year and here he was, looking well fed and in good fettle and he just wandered back in as if he’d never been away. He stayed for my birthday on the Friday, then he went off that night into the dark, and was gone again.
He’s a real Six Dinner Sid, everyone in the street knows him, but the funny thing is, no-one saw him around in all those months, and I keep looking, but I haven't seen him since.
People say put a collar on him - but when he had one, I would be phoned at all hours of the night and day by people saying ‘I’ve got your cat, he won’t leave my house, come and get him.’ So I’d trek all over the place to bring him back, and as soon as he was out the door the next day, he’d be gone again.
I think Vince is teaching us a Buddhist lesson in detachment.

My oldest son has given up university and is back home to concentrate on playing music with his band. It’s lovely to have a full house again, but we both want to use the bike at the same time. So I said my son should have it exclusively - it was his dad’s after all - and I went and bought myself a new one.
Strangely, that made me weep.

Posted by Ellen on 1 February 2008 at 10:50 AM GMT [Link]