Poem

I've fretted over whether to publish this one or not, but in the end, I've decided that it's as much me as anything else I've written here. I'm perfectly fine.

Poem

‘Build a castle!’

‘It’s a cake!’

‘It’s a cake for the sea!’

One child stands

‘The sprinkles!’

hands loosen

tiny stones fall

They catch the sun

a glorious shining moment

as they spiral down

Giggles, love, hope.

Beyond this tiny play

The sea.

Placid

Lumbering

Huge

Blue and silver

heaving. Smooth.

She could reach out now

stroke it with fingertips

She could step onto it

It beckons

Shimmering

Sparkling

Enticing

A line of orange buoys;

‘Here is safe.’

‘Here is not.’

‘We will take care of you.’

She could swim out there

She thinks.

All the way to the buoys.

Past them, perhaps.

She wades in.

The soothing cool.

It meets her

rushing, kindly

gently, intimately

into inside her.

Still on, still further.

Stones shift

Feet slip

She suddenly swims

Not ready yet

Panic

Alarm

The water waits

She composes

Steadier now

she swims.

Water falls over her

like a glistening, satin sheet.

She dreams of sleep

of rest

of quiet.

One strong pull.

Two.

Three.

Soon she slows.

She never swam well:

feeble arms

imperfect technique.

She knows

She won’t reach them.

She’ll fall short.

It’s not important.

They can’t keep her safe

for all their claims.

Still she swims

inch by inch

away from the shore.

She can go no further.

She stops.

The orange buoys watch

in bemused silence.

One leg fails

then the other.

Pain in her knees

unbendable.

Pulse rises slightly

Surprise.

One dip first

head submerged

then scrawny arms pull up.

One more breath.

Cold. Watery.

Choking.

Another dip

More pain

A forced breath

Bubbles. Vomit.

Tired melts away

into the cool, salty sting

and that moment

is glorious.

The bright, shining she

Extinguished now.

Her water

Her salt

Her iron

Shared.

Seaweed in her hair.

A laugh, a shout.

She’s returns.

A giant breath.

Salty eyes.

Dry, safe, warm Air.

Cold heart

Shivering lungs

Head exhausted

Spinning, whirling

Words come slow.

The sea steals round the cake.

Children laugh and goad

‘Eat it! Eat it!’

It accepts the sacrifice.

Her dream fades

hidden. quiet. lurking.

Saved for another day.

Pip

The beach.

I am doing so much better than I have been in the past couple of months. It’s been tough, and I’m not at the top of the mountain yet, but I’m at least half way up.

Part of what I’m trying to do to help me feel better is to take regular walks outside. Unfortunately, my inherent laziness is getting in the way, and I’m finding it easy to excuse myself because of the rain, or the fact that there’s something really good on the telly. (Did you see the sport on Saturday? What a marvellous, marvellous night!) I am trying though, to walk briskly enough to feel the muscles in my legs working, and to feel the blood pumping around. I pay attention to my breathing and concentrate on my breath rushing through my nose, cooling the back of my throat and filling my lungs. These walks don’t always bring a perfect stillness, but it does make the noise in my head a bit quieter for a while. 

This week, I’m at home with the children. I was a bit worried about this, as they tend to add to the head-noise. I was also a bit concerned that I wouldn’t be able to leave to find these moments of stillness, or if I did, it would be on their schedule and not on mine. I pondered and fretted about this, until I came up with a subtle and cunning plan: I’d just take them with me.

I’d walk a little slower, but the breathing could still happen. I could point out the soothing things I found on the way; those bricks, that garden, these leaves, and they could look or not. Yesterday I took them to the park to do some running about, so I got my exercise, and by a clever use of the ‘run all the way to the big rock!’ command, I got my alone time too.

Today, I was happy and confident enough to take them in the car to the beach. And you know what? It ended up being better for having them with me.

Look at my tall strong boy here; all limbs and muscle. He wants to be an Olympic runner, and he has the tenacity to get somewhere with this wish.

Here they are together, about ten minutes before they were both soaked to the skin. Claudia's usually the more courageous of the two, but she had a feeling she didn't want to go far without him just yet.

I wish I had some pictures of them digging in the dark, wet sand, and looking for crabs. Or the moment that Claudia thought she’d try to get back to me walking across the stones, going; ‘Ow… ow… ow…’ with every footstep, but it not occurring to her to go the short way or to cut across the sand.

I hope that these memories stay in my head for a while. Good times, small smiles, salt in our noses; these moments are often too few and too far between. I’m beginning to realise though, that one or two tiny moments of joy in the course of the day is just about enough.

It’s put me in mind of this poem by E.E. Cummings;

5

maggie and milly and molly and may

went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang

so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star

whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing

which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone

as small as a world and as large as alone.

for whatever we lose(like a you or a me)

it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

Pip xxx

The Haircut

I enjoy cutting people’s hair. I mean, I really enjoy cutting people’s hair. I think if I could live my life again, I’d ditch university and learn how to cut people’s hair well enough to charge money for it. Well, probably not, and if I did I’m sure I’d learn to hate it, but occasionally, the urge strikes me, and I march into the living room wielding a pair of scissors, and I brightly ask; “who wants a haircut?”

My husband used to let me hack away at his hair a number of years ago. I think I did four really good haircuts for him over the course of a year. Unfortunately, I then did a really bad haircut for him, and he hasn’t let me near him since.

The children, however, are too young to understand the danger of answering me gleefully with; “Yes please! Can I have a Mohican?”

Claudia’s never been to a real hairdresser. I was determined for her to have gloriously long, princess hair when she started school, so the few trims she’s had while it’s been growing have been an inch off the bottom to neaten it up. A few weeks ago I noticed it was looking a bit ratty and tangled, so I asked if I could cut the bottom bit off. She agreed with gusto, and told me she wanted it short like Harry’s. When I suggested just a bit off the bottom, she put her hand close to her crown and said; ‘This short!’ We compromised on a bob.

Being four, I didn’t think layers or anything fancy were necessary, so I just cut it in a straight line to the top of her neck, and I have to admit, it looks really cute.

She spent two, gratifying days saying; “I love my short hair!”

I was briefly sated.

A few weeks later I walked into the living room with a gleam in my eye, and my husband instantly ran away to don every hat in the house while muttering; “it’s fine! There’s months’ worth of growth in it yet! Years even.”

Then my eyes fell upon my son.

Now my daughter has perfectly lovely, normal hair with a slight wave at the back and curls at the front. If I screw up while cutting it, it springs back to wherever it wants to be, covering my epic failure. My son’s hair is a whole different kettle of fish. Tom’s hair is thick. Not just slightly thick, but really, really thick. He has around three times as much hair as is strictly necessary on a human head. Each individual hair is quite fine; it’s not like it’s wiry. There’s just an awful lot of it. And after that bit, there’s an awful lot more.

It’s also straight. Absolutely, completely, utterly straight. It’s straighter than a Roman road. It’s straighter than the route that the crow flies. In the sixties, people ironed their hair for hours on end to get what my son naturally has.

The problem with this is that if it gets just a little bit long, it hangs on his head, covering his eyes, and given time, probably blotting out the sun. It needs to be kept short for the good of humanity. He doesn’t have wispy, fair waves that he can toss freely with a slight lilt of the head. If Tom shakes his head too quickly, lives could be lost. The other problem with this, is that it refuses to nicely cover up any accidental scissor lines or slightly longer bits.

So I’ve been saying for a few weeks; “Tom needs a haircut.” My husband has been happily ignoring these comments, but when his muttering turned from; ‘it’s fine!’ to; ‘it’s not that bad,’ I decided to take matters into my own hands. Literally my own hands. We’re a touch strapped for cash at the moment, so a barber’s out of the question, and an extensive search for the hair-clippers came up with nothing. It was going to be down to me, and my trusty pair of scissors.

I sat him down on a chair, put a video game on to render him virtually comatose, and I went to work.

As always with these things, I started with joy in my heart and a; ‘tra-li-la, hum-diddly-um…’ in my mind.

After the first five snips I realised that we were officially past the point of no return, and I really didn’t have the first idea what I was doing.

There was nothing for it, but to persevere.

I cut a bit more.

I started hoping I’d work out what I was doing before long.

At about half an hour into the experience, Tom asked if we were nearly finished. At this point, the hair at the top of his head looked slightly like the pudding-bowl look as is often seen in medieval period dramas. The back hadn’t been started, and that part was still quite long and flowing. It was… what’s the word I’m looking for here? Oh yes, mullet. Mullet central. There was absolutely no way I could stop now.

At about forty-five minutes, we reached Tom’s sitting still limit. I was roughly at the point at which I needed to snip neatly around his ears. I decided to sacrifice neatness in exchange for not accidently drawing blood.

We mutually decided to just stop when we reached the one hour mark when my trusty method of; ‘just cut it shorter and shorter until it vaguely looks right’ failed me slightly. I went to run him a bath muttering things like; “he’s six! Nobody care’s what a boy of six’s hair looks like!” and “it’s better than it was, at least. Sort of. Maybe if you squint at it a bit.”

Oddly, he actually quite likes it. I suspect I’m going to finish the job at another point over the weekend, but a lesson has been learned. I’m not exactly sure what that lesson is. I suspect Tom’s lesson is; ‘Never say yes!’, and my husband’s is; ‘Hide the ruddy scissors before leaving the house!’ Unfortunately for them, my lesson appears to be along the lines of; ‘if at first you don’t succeed, just keep cutting and cutting until eventually it’s at least short, even if it’s still not even.’

At least I’m not cruel enough to post pictures of it.

Well, apart from this one.

Pip xxx

(I have had another go, and it looks substantially better now!)

Childhood Friends

Childhood Friends

The sun beats down,

finds two hot heads

crowned with gold.

Red cheeks, white grins,

sticky hair swiped from foreheads.

Arms bumping, heads bowed.

In cahoots.

Something from the Earth whispers run.

They run.

Oh shit.

This is supposed to be my final edit:

To be fair, not every page is like this. This is the result of changing two, tiny, insignificant lines in the previous chapter so that they are now fairly important lines. Unfortunately, that tiny change meant that this chapter needed a whole heap of revision.

It is, however, coming along nicely. Well, that's what I think when I can see beyond the red pen, anyway.

Pip xxx

6 - Lunch

Woo! Get me! That would be two posts in one day!

6 - Lunch.

Wait, that's not very healthy, is it?

Here's another go:

On the rare occasions that I get to choose what I eat these days, I tend to go for something comforting, and something that won't make me nauseated. This leaves quite a small list.

On the other hand, the pie was delicious:

I think we all knew I wasn't going to eat that lettuce, didn't we?

And that's me up to date! Tomorrow, my prompt is 'Shadow'. I'm going to keep my eyes peeled for a cool one for the rest of the day!

Pip xxx

Return of the bad blogger

I have so many excuses as to why I haven't written in a while, but what it boils down to is that I've been an inspiration free zone.

I did start writing a whiny post about hormones, but then I was too hormonal to finish it, so that might come in a bit, but it might not.

However, while trawling through the internet looking for something that would make me go 'huh', I found a photo-a-day list for April. The idea, as I'm sure you know, is that you take a photo of something that's on a prompt list, and then stick it somewhere for people to see. I'm a dreadful photographer, but being otherwise inspiration free, I thought I'd give it a shot anyway. I stole my list from @scarlyKFCurtis, who in turn stole it from @FatMumSlim.

1) Reflection of you.

I've seen the cool kidz do this in facebook photos. It's supposed to look something like this; right?

I have to admit I'm a little bit proud that I worked out how to turn the flash off. I'm less proud that MrPip's trousers are drying in the background, but hell, this is what our house looks like most days.

2) Colour.

You probably know, or could guess, that along with being a dreadful blogger and an awful photographer, and a terrible housekeeper, I also can't manage a garden. Ours was laid to lawn before we got it, but I had wild ideas, like planting apple trees right in the middle of the lawn, because surely apple trees are automatically great, right? And surely smack in the middle of a small patch of grass is the perfect place for them, isn't it?  In addition to this, we're right by the railway and get over-run with ground elder as soon as we start digging flowerbeds. So the garden is a messy patch of ragged grass with trees in the middle (oh, and next door's bamboo is invading too). But when they laid the lawn, they weren't very thorough with getting rid of all the bulbs, so each spring, this happens:

I like the fact that someone else's sloppy workmanship causes a gorgeous display of colour right when we really need it.

3) Mail

I've been waiting for a letter confirming Claudia's school place all week, but it hasn't arrived. I was hoping to take a picture of this Big Important Letter, but I can't. All of our mail consists of bank statements or bills, and nothing fun at all. It all gets put onto the dining table, and then MrPip loads details of each onto a massive spreadsheet containing all the important information that causes our lives to continue to run. He also likes cake, and drawing pictures with Tom, and I got the jigsaw puzzles out and didn't tidy them away (bad housekeeper, remember), and sometimes we can't be bothered to take books back to the bookshelves, so in the end, our dining table ends up looking like this:

Actually, now I look at it, that's not too bad. The other side of it's obscured under daily rubbish. Perhaps this is what photographers mean about choosing your frame.

4) Someone who makes you happy.

This was going to be a pic of MrPip, as he often does, but he hates having his photo taken, and fortunately, I'm regularly surrounded by, smothered by, jumped on and walked across by two incredibly photogenic people who make me happy:

They're having a staring competition, which is the only way to get either one of them to be vaguely quiet.

5) Tiny.

I like tiny, and Claudia has inherited my love of tiny, and her current favourite thing is a small, clay llama that is part of a decorative solitaire set. I find that that there's something completely endearing about her carrying her little friend around in her fist or her pocket, taking him places to show him new things. I suspect the friendship will be intense and brilliant but short lived, and he'll be dropped as soon as the next thing fascinates her, but right at this particular moment in time, I love that she loves her llama.

Today's prompt is 'lunch', which means I ought to try to remember to have some. That means I have to get this sorry body down to the shops to buy some. This means that I should stop writing things to stick up on the internet.

Damn.

Pip xxx

Feminist and Proud

Over the past couple of days, I have turned my attention to Feminism. I have to admit, I haven’t really thought much about it before.

I mean, I’m pretty clear that I want equality for women. I’m pretty clear that women shouldn’t be treated as second class people, or as possessions of their husbands or fathers. I’ve thought about individual feminist issues, such as child brides, maternity healthcare, the abortion issue, access to contraception, equality in work, and in religion, equality in the home and I’ve spoken out about all of them. It’s just that I’ve honestly never thought about all joined up before. I’ve never considered Feminism as a movement or a cause that might relate to me.

I think that part of the reason for this is that I’ve sort of lost track of the history of it all, and I’m lost as to why Feminism is seen as negative now. I mean, I know about the suffragette movement, and how voting rights happened, and I know how the two World Wars affected the way women’s lives were. I know about the advent of sexual revolution that came with the creation of the contraceptive pill (though I see that one as something of a double edged sword), and I have hazy thoughts about burning bras.

But then it’s all exploded in my head into a mass of ‘but where are we now?’

The reason this has entered my thoughts in the past few days, is that I was invited into a group under the heading of ‘Feminists’, and I thought ‘Am I a feminist?’

Obviously, being a curious sort of soul, I began to look into it a bit, mentioned to several people that I haven’t the slightest clue if I’m feminist or not, and could I please listen and learn a bit.

I have done this. Technically I've only done it for two days, but I have to start somewhere. And while I’ll freely admit that I’m still very much a novice and have a long, long way to go, I can now answer the ‘am I a feminist?’ question.

Turns out the answer is; ‘fuck yes! Of course I bloody am! What the hell was I thinking in even questioning that?’

There are still a lot of questions that I do need to answer. In fact, that I’m building quite a list.

Can I be a feminist if I worry that my teeth are crooked and wish they were nice and straight?

Can I be a feminist if I think that when I’m having a period, I should just stop trying, lie under a duvet and enlist someone to bring me masses of chocolate?

Can I be a feminist if I don’t like how my ankles look when they’re really hairy? (I have to admit, this one doesn’t often come up as I tend to live in jeans.)

Can I be a feminist if I don’t always agree with every statement that another feminist makes?

Can I be a feminist if I sometimes choose to do things that are solely for the benefit of my husband and children?

Is the word ‘feminist’ important?

That last one is the one that I’m working on first. My first forays into the subject have led me to think ‘yes, actually I think that there is.’

It’s been brought to my attention that at some point the term feminist has been skewed so that it sets off uncomfortable images in people’s heads. There seem to be a number of different images; some see unwashed and hairy men-haters. Other people see it as part of a larger class war, and exclusive to their status. I’ll probably come across many more over the course of time. I don’t know how and where this happened (though I’m pretty sure I’ll find out), but it strikes me that it’s probably similar to the other terms that have been diminished and twisted over time. ‘The religious are illogical, unscientific, stupid people’, ‘Catholics are gay-hating, child abusers’, ‘Muslims are war-mongering’, and ‘teenagers are smelly, hormonally driven morons’.

So in my very naïve, very ill educated way, I’ve decided that the best way to counter all of this, is to simply go about my every-day business, in my normal, serenely sweary way, while holding myself under the banner of ‘feminist’.

Feminism might well include a some people that could be described by the statements above, but it also includes me, in the only body that I've got, living the only life that I have.

Having settled that, the next question is ‘is feminism still important?’

I only opened that door a teeny-tiny amount, and the wealth of examples of injustice that are still going on floored me. So yes, it would seem that there is a great deal of work to be done, and not just in developing countries with different cultures either. There’s a shed-load just right here on my doorstep.

I don’t know what to do about any of it, but there are an awful lot of people who seem to have extraordinary wisdom on this subject, and the colossal strength to do what needs to be done. I’m going to start by listening to them.

I’m Pip Mulgrue. Feminist and Proud.

Behind Westminster: Hide and Seek.

Don't you just love it when your politician's choose to peg it down the corridor instead of standing up for their robust and principled policies? Like how Lansley does on this video.

Lansley flees down a hospital corridor.

 --------------------------------------------------------------

Cameron sticks his head out of the unassuming doorway that leads to the bike sheds and shouts.

Cameron: Lansley? Lansley!

Miliband: Cammers? Is that you?

Cameron: Millers? I don’t suppose you’ve seen Lansley around anywhere, have you?

Miliband: Lansley? No. The closest I got was spotting the chase a couple of days ago.

Cameron: Huh. Who was chasing him that time?

Miliband: Sheila.

Cameron: Tea trolley Sheila?

Miliband: That’s the one. Apparently the NHS is treating her mum for MS.

Cameron: Ouch.

Miliband: I don’t think she caught him. She told me he jumped down a lift shaft, and she didn’t fancy following.

Cameron: Well, we’ve got a confirmed sighting of his arm on a CCTV picture from Monday afternoon, and another from Tuesday morning that we think we think is his foot. It’s a bit hard to tell though. There were a lot of people chasing him and some of their placards got in the way.

Miliband: Well, I’m sure he’ll turn up eventually. Oh, while you’re here, Balls asked me what was on the Gove emails. Do you know?

Cameron: Oh God! The Gove emails! Why can’t that man just die?

Miliband: <sniggers> Come on; spill. Was he going on about the evils of being gay again?

Cameron: Nope, he’s happy to say that in public.

Miliband: Bibles in schools?

Cameron: No, and in his defence, schools do keep wittering on about needing more books.

Miliband: More about changing the history curriculum so we only teach pupils about Britain’s victories and importance?

Cameron: No, once again, he’s happy that the world knows his thoughts on that.

Miliband: He does know that that was one of Hitler’s key education policies, doesn’t he?

Cameron: Yes.

Miliband: Though he compared himself to Mao I suppose. Does he know the result of Mao’s long march on education?

Cameron: Apparently not! Look, Millers, can we drop it? The emails were sent to the Home Office. I’m not even confirming that I know the content of the emails…

Miliband: Well it is a hard thing to keep a track of what emails you’ve read. James M says so, so it must be true.

Cameron: Yes, and I can’t even play the ‘er, I’m not sure if I read them,’ card, because I did that with the sodding horse and look how that ended up!

Miliband: Yeah, that really wasn’t very good.

Cameron: It was a horse for Christ’s sake! Hell, it’s not like the time when I forgot that several of my close friends were responsible for perverting the course of justice in a murder trial!

Miliband: Yeah. But people like horses. And you rode a retired one that really should have been resting up.

Cameron: Well anyway…

Miliband: It’s sort of a bit like saddling up Shiela’s elderly mother and making her carry you up and down Oxford Street a few times.

Cameron: It really isn’t…

Miliband: Possibly with a whip.

Cameron: ANYWAY, all I’m saying is that if Gove is happy for everyone to know that he’s a homophobic, ignorant idiot, whatever is in the emails that he doesn’t want people to see, well, that must be pretty bad.

Miliband: Time will tell, I suppose.

Cameron: Yes. Unfortunately it will.

Miliband: Oh! Look! Lansley!

Cameron: Where? Are you sure?

Miliband: Just scurried behind that tree there, give it a tick… Yep! There he goes! Run!

<Cameron runs.>

It's been a while

Yes, I am still being a bad blogger. What brought me back to the fold was reading this article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/feb/18/anti-gay-book-gove-row

So according to our Education Secretary, it's OK to invite people into our schools to teach our children how to hate.

Nice.

There is some good news on a much smaller and entirely self-centred level. I'm very nearly almost there with the book. It's gone through a number of readers both for general form and for proofreading, and I've got about a month's more work to do on it. It will be published as a Kindle book (and possibly as a Nook Book if I can master that technology), and I'm looking at a possible launch date of April 7, 2012.

I have sent it to a couple of agents, but that was annoying and soul destroying and it basically took all of the fun out of it. As the whole point of writing for me is that I'm having fun, I've decided to bypass that part of the process.

In other good news, winter is coming to a close and we're getting closer to spring again! Huzzah!

Pip xxx

Update and poetry

I'm still working on the novel. The second draft is now done, so it is, in effect, complete (the first draft tends to be plot, fun conversations, and a lot of place-holder notes such as 'insert awful date scene' here). I'm currently going over it in a printed version with a red pen, picking up my own awful use of language and grammar and changing all the names where I forgot what someone were called half way through the thing.


I'm suffering a huge crises of confidence over it. 


Having spent every weekend and evening hammering away at it since October, I've emerged, blinking, into the sunlight, and everything I hear or see or read has me howling 'I'll never be as good as this! I might as well just give up now and bury myself in the ivy leaves in the back garden! It's all I'm good for!'


The main thing for now is to just keep going with it. Well, I think so, anyhow; I don't have a vast amount of experience to fall back on.


Anyhow, this is my state of mind at the moment. This is probably why I randomly chose to write a poem for the first time since.... well, probably since my late teens anyhow.


Do you see how I'm already giving myself excuses in case it's really crap?


Yeah, I'm definitely in a teenage poetry kind of mood.

Winter’s day

Cold forages at my feet.

It creeps up my trouser legs

Licking at my ankles

With its icy tongue.

The pavement sparkles under my feet.

My breath steams

And in my mind

I’m an ancient dragon

Waking confused, bleary, hungry,

A pressing need for food and warmth.

My car coughs and snarls into life

Mauling the silence of the street,

Together we speed off into the day.

Grey desks, grey words.

A sudden laugh,

The dragon soars.

It’s over

The evening comes and I head back into the cold.

Pip xxx

Work in progress

To make up for the bad form of posting a long, self-obsessed post, I thought I'd post this shorter, self-obsessed post.

Basically, I've been quiet, but I have been working, and this is a sneaky-peak at the new novel.

Please be aware that this is a first draft, needs some pretty heavy editing, some lines and colour putting in, and the finished version might look quite different. I think what I'm saying is; don't judge me too harshly! I am very much a novice!

Pip xxx

Gren Peppard: Chapter 1

Marie Fletcher smiled nervously at Madame Sylvia Peppard, as she sat at the opposite side of the table.

“Lovely weather we’re having for September,” Marie said.

“Yes.”

She was sitting in the shadows and Marie couldn’t make out much of her face beyond the wide eyes, heavily outlined in kohl.

Marie glanced around the room and brushed her well-manicured fingers through her perfectly set hair. The window of the room was too small for it’s size, and it had been covered over with long, patterned, coloured silks. There was a small lamp on the table to her left, but it had been knocked slightly so the little puddle of light shone onto her own hands. She wrung them slightly, but then noticed what she was doing so sat on them instead. She resisted the urge to straighten the lamp.

Madame Sylvia had clearly spent enough time examining her, and she stood and walked to the shelves behind her. Marie watched the light catching the sequins on the long, full skirts. There were bare feet sticking out the bottom and she suddenly realised that Madame Sylvia was quite short and slender.

There was a small, wooden, set of drawers on the shelves, and Madame Sylvia opened three of them, and took a deck of cards from each one. She came back to the table, glancing at Marie as she did so.

Marie smiled nervously again, and reminded herself it was rude to stare. She looked over at the smoking incense burner behind on the fireplace instead.

Madame Sylvia sat down and lay down the three decks of cards in a row.

“Choose a deck,” she said.

Marie instinctively started towards the plain, new and nicely clear cards, but at the last moment, she pointed to the ancient, colourful cards next to them.

She smiled at Madame Sylvia, and was rewarded with a frown.

The other cards were removed from the table and Madame Sylvia briefly shuffled the cards, and then lay them down on the table again. She spread them into a fan.

“Choose seven.”

Marie startled. “Oh, I was thinking, could I perhaps go for the full Celtic Cross? Have you the time? I’ll pay for the full hour.”

Madame Sylvia nodded.

“My friend, the one who recommended you, Lisa, said that I should cross your palm with silver. I’ve been polishing fifty pence pieces.” She giggled.

“Lisa was ripping the piss,” Madam Sylvia murmured.

“I’m sorry?”

Madame Sylvia cleared her throat. “There’s no need for silver. You can pay in the shop for the extra time.”

“Oh. OK.”

“Choose nine cards.” There was an edge of impatience in her voice now.

Marie obeyed and with a slightly shaking hand, she started slowly pulling cards out of the deck.

Madame Sylvia picked them up, and laid them out on the table in a pattern. She put her head in her hands for a moment.

“Is everything OK?” Marie whispered.

“What? Oh, yes.” Madame Sylvia looked up again and gave her a somewhat uncomfortable smile. “You have a pet. A new one.”

“Yes! Charlie’s a Yorkie! He’s lovely!”

“Yes. He’ll give you much joy, he’ll be a constant companion and will live a long life.”

“Oh that’s nice!”

Madame Sylvia shifted in her chair slightly and frowned at the cards. Marie suddenly realised that she was a lot younger than she’d previously thought. Beneath the heavy make-up and ridiculous clothing, she was little more than a child. She’d put her at 22 on the outside.

“Yes. Er, what else…” she looked at the cards for a moment and glanced at Marie again. “You don’t need to worry about money.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, I know. I mean; you’ll never have to worry about money.”

“A windfall?”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” Madame Sylvia glanced about the room for a moment and sighed before looking at Marie again. “Look, I think one of the things you need to bear in mind, is that some people worry about money constantly. They don’t know how to feed their families, they can’t answer the phone or the door for fear of debt collectors. Every time there’s a minor mishap and their child loses their coat or something, they want to cry because they simply don’t have the funds to replace it.”

Marie stared at Sylvia blankly. Sylvia leaned across the table and spoke earnestly to her.

“What I’m saying is, that whatever happens, you need to keep in mind that that will never happen to you. You need to keep that in mind, you don’t have to worry about money. You won’t be minted, but you won’t be poor, and in this world that counts for a lot. OK?”

Marie frowned and nodded slightly.

“Er, are you saying I should be giving more money to poor people?”

Madame Sylvia drooped her head and sighed.

“No. I’m just saying; you don’t have to worry about money. Whatever else might happen, money issues will be fine.”

Marie brightened and smiled. “Well you’re very good, aren’t you! I don’t ever worry about money, I never have! David deals with all of that!”

Madame Sylvia rolled her eyes and sighed again.

“For goodness sake, Marie, David’s having an affair!” she snapped.

Marie sat quite still, her eyes wide.

“What?”

“Affairs! David! Your husband! He has them! Two, in fact, at the moment! For goodness sake, how can you not know that?”

Marie didn’t move.

“Look, I’m sorry!” Sylvia went on. “From my point of view it’s not a big deal. So, he’s not faithful, now you don’t need to be either. You might see that as a good thing! Clearly you can do much better!”

Marie seemed to come to her senses. She looked at Madame Sylvia with angry tears in her eyes.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I think that making these vile, baseless accusations is utterly wicked!”

“Fine, he’s not having an affair then. Whatever. It makes absolutely no difference to me!” She stared at the cards on the table. “Do you want me to finish the rest of the reading?”

“No! I think you’re a nasty, vicious piece of work, and I will not be paying you for any extra time.”

Sylvia glanced at the clock. “You haven’t had any extra time.”

“I want a refund then! I will not darken your door again.”

She stood up haughtily and stormed from the room, sniffing and wiping her eyes.

Gren sighed and rubbed her face for a moment and drummed the table with her fingers. After a moment she shook herself out of it and pulled the headscarf from her head and brushed her hands through her long hair. She stood up, unbuttoned the skirt, which dropped to the floor and rubbed the mark on her side where the waistband had dug in slightly. She retrieved a pair of jeans that had been stuffed behind an armchair cushion. She hopped and jumped across the room while pulling them up, then headed towards the shop.