The Awkward Conversation

I have been in my boss's office (door closed, tone emotional veering on heated) for close to an hour when it happens.

I start to cry.

Unthinkable, mortifyingly embarrassing, but there it is. I am upset.

I am planning to leave, and he knows it now. We have discussed the whys and the hows and the "what ifs" and we are both feeling a little emotionally drained.

And as the tears start to spill over, I am suddenly struck by the bemusing side of it all: give or take a few words, any nonplussed eavesdropper would think we were talking marital break-up, not career move.

"There have been things wrong here from the start..." I proffer at one point.

"Yes, I know, but no-one's perfect!" he counters, rather needily.

"You've tried to stifle me!" I protest.

"No, no, that's unfair. Look, we've been through some hard times. Times are hard now!"

Then, when the accusations have reached a certain pitch, the tone softens, and we are both riddled with regrets.

"It's not your fault, it's not my fault," I soothe, "I've changed, that's all. My aspirations have changed."

"I know that. Don't forget, I know you so well, Shirley. It's been seven years..."

"I just feel it's time to move on. There's nothing you can really say or do to make me stay. It's my decision."

"And I respect that. I'll do everything possible to help you."

And lastly, the ultimate cliché: the "we'll always be friends" line.

"I hope we'll still a lot of each other, even after you move on..."

"Oh, of course! I hope so too."

Yes, it was funny, and sad, too.

I'm not leaving tomorrow, but the cards are on the table, and I have a few potential options.

It's been one of those cases in which months of reflection have resulted in a single, clear and obvious choice: I need a new job (within the Firm, all being well).

And what I don't mention to my boss, as I sniff and wipe my nose, is that Something had to change. I got to the point in my life where, well, to put it bluntly, it was "them or me."

Personal fulfilment: the starting block from which relaxed Mum and loving Wife can sprint off, each morning, when the gun fires...

Ghost Writer

I just finished yet another book by Kate Long: "Queen Mum".
As with all her others (her most famous one being, I think, "The Bad Mother's Handbook"), I consumed it greedily in less than three days.

I love Kate Long. I love her books so much that I accidentally ordered the American edition of a book of hers I already have (the British version has a different title), so thrilled was I at the thought that there was another work of hers out there that I'd yet to read.

She writes the kind of easy, stylish, thoughtful and people-based novels I wish with all my being that I had written myself.
I hold her books dreamily, stroke their covers in between paragraphs (forcing myself to slow down, lest the pleasure be consumed too quickly...) and imagine it is my name, not hers, in embossed lettering.

When will I put all the stories in my head to paper? When will the words and characters flow as elegantly and as compellingly as hers do?

What an achievement, to write like that. Try as I might to draw a line under all this fantasizing and embrace more corporate ambitions, I still can't help but believe that there is no greater accomplishment than this: put your name to two-hundred readable pages... slide the little volume off the shelf... stroke its cover and know it's all yours.

The Curious Incident of the Mouse in the Daytime

I wander into our kitchen on an uneventful Saturday afternoon, and there's a mouse in there.

A picture-book mouse, just sitting there, rather snootily, if I have to choose an adverb.
I gasp - inhale - clutch my chest, as one does when in shock.
I think: "yes, I know I said I wanted to live in the country... but this is not the country. This is no place for a mouse. If I was in the country, then of course I would expect to see a mouse, and be entirely calm. But here, I do not expect to see mice in my kitchen, so that is why I am not calm" (this is how we justify our silly fears, I know: the rather shameful chasm between the person I imagine myself to be, and the person I am).

Then I flash back to our house in England: I am a kid or a young teen - I can't remember which - and there's a huge rat in our kitchen. After he has gone to inspect and confirm the rat sighting, my Dad (a grown man!) runs back into the living room, visibly scared and uttering a four-word expletive. While he panics, Mum goes off to calmly deal with the rodent.

So what to do?
Survival instinct for non-murderous yet non-rodent-loving urban vegetarians: I throw a big plastic bowl over the mouse, thus rendering it captive.

Then I rush out of the back door, sprint over to our neighbour's back door and yell "there's a mouse in my kitchen!!"
As you may have gathered if you are a regular reader of this humble blog, I am not on hugely friendly terms with my neighbours. I guess you might say "we put up with each other." As people who share a communal garden must.
And yet - and yet - today I am weak-kneed with gratitude: I HAVE neighbours and they are kind enough to be at home!
They come at once to help - three of them: two scared females and one wonderously virile male carrying an A3 size hardback tome that he will use as Utensile B in my grand mouse-evacuation plan.

The mouse is moved, in its plastic prison, out of my kitchen, out of my house and across the road. Us three females, and a wide-eyed BB, trail behind my male neighbour, like a gaggle of groupies.

The mouse is deposited on a patch of grass, scuttles free, glances up to take stock.
As one, the cortege of females plus child takes a step backwards.

Then, as the mouse (who is admittedly fairly cute when not inside property I own) sniffs and scampers on its new patch of turf, the neighbours and I laugh and chat and make fun of each other, sitting along the low wall opposite our house.
We are soon joined my Grumpy Old Man and Wife, who are never slow to pick up on a whiff of drama.

For a few minutes, we are friendly, chatty, relaxed, connected.
And I'm so happy to have neighbours.

Summer

French Connection

... And, as if purchasing my first mobile phone after all these years of "abstinence" wasn't enough... yesterday I actually managed (all alone, with no help from anyone) to connect up our new landline phone.
The one that - shamefully - has been sitting in its box, untouched, since December 2009*.



Man, this has been one major week for telecommunications.


* Not strictly true: I did make an attempt to connect it sometime last spring... but aborted the mission sometime around 1 a.m. when the Freebox and the phone line just refused to hook up.
The phone only narrowly escaped a grizzly end at the bottom of the bin lorry then, let me tell you.

I Want to Break Free?

For the third time in a week, I flicked on the car radio and the sweet yet resolute mantra "I want to break freeeeee!" hit me head-on.
Seriously. Twice in the same week might be considered a coincidence... but surely three times qualifies as a divine message?? God... or Freddy Mercury... or my own subconscious?
Somebody is trying to tell me something.


The thing is, I DO want to break free.
But I'm not sure from what. Or why. Or where to go.
Does this ever happen to you?
The niggling feeling that you're just muddling along, happy enough, but perhaps not as happy as you could be?
And even as I write these self-indulgent lines, the Optimist in me is smiling wryly and thinking "you just need (another) holiday", and the Realist in me is frowning and cautioning: "You know that 99% of the inhabitants of this planet are not as lucky as you are."

But is it not OK to wonder sometimes? To ask yourself where you want to go from here, ideally... I mean, given that we do have the luxury of a slim catalogue of choices (I say "slim" because, you know, we have two kids and a mortgage and a fairly well-sharpened sense of responsibility... so that eliminates certain alternative lifestyles).

A few things have happened lately to prise open the Question box (the one in my head, I mean).

- Some very close friends moved house yesterday. We used to see them all the time: now they have joined the already swollen ranks of "friends we love but don't see very often".
They are the second ones to leave Toulouse in a year. So I wonder about places to live, and what counts most: culture, climate, family, friends, career prospects?

- We have been house hunting. We started off in the country, dreaming of simplicity and harmony... and the more we looked, the more we saw isolation and - dare I even think it? - boredom.
Then we started looking in town... and we saw Suburbia (and accompanying wave of panic).

- I am officially trying to change jobs. I thought about sleeping through the child-rearing years in a pressureless, mind-numbing job, and decided against it. I thought about handing in my resignation and trying to go it alone... then I opted for "change from the inside."

- Ingrid wrote about a couple she met who have opted to live on a boat. As I read this, the Dreamer in me started doing cartwheels (I absolutely love to hear about people who opt out of conventional society and live differently: it's my thing)... while the Cynic taunted: "You would go crazy within three days, and you know it!"

So I suppose I'm just sitting here pondering all this, and wondering what do it with it.
Live in the present and live every second to its full potential: that's my credo. But I need to see the big picture too.
I just have the sense that - for now - the colours are all mixed up, and the canvas is a little bare.

In the meantime, the work-in-progress that is life continues... and I remind myself that true contentment lies in the present moment.
Boredom - many would say - is happiness: better to be submerged with questions than consumed with worry, right?

Date Night

So, FH and I have devised an original new way of dating.

He goes to the cinema on Friday night. I stay home and babysit.
I go to the cinema on Saturday night. He stays home and babysits.

Sunday afternoon, if we're lucky enough to get a conversation slot, we exchange a few words about the film we both saw.
It's date night stretched over three days... with two kids factored in :-)