Sticky Tape

One minute I'm sitting on a chair on the red bricked patio reading Virginia Woolf''s first novel, The Voyage Out.

It's quite tiresome really, compared with the others. I don't really like the main character, Rachel. She's dull and I couldn't care less whether or not she gets together with the other guest. But I do like the descriptions of South America.

Suddenly there is a flash.

I see myself, sitting in the garden, reading.

I remember that I am a person, in the world.

Who am I ?

What is this?

In an instant it all seems so ridiculous. To be a person, sitting in the garden, reading a novel.

My mind goes quiet.

The words once again rear up in front of my eyes. I'm back into the story.

But what story am I back into?

Virginia Woolf's or mine?

Parking Lots

Mind must make up a story. But hard to focus with Adele playing and the coffee and the people sitting around.

Wasn't I meant to meet them for dinner? But I had been drinking champagne at the races. I was there with the French girl. Decked out in a silver chain, and white shoes, and a black shirt. I drunk, and smoked, and feigned interest. The horses ran round and round in the dust.

I couldn't face tallking to her, because what was she really, but a stranger?  Hanging on to Bob as we sped along the burnt road.

Stepped off the bike and there she was. Feeble with her walking stick in the middle of the desert. Dusk with the sea spread out around. The hotel pillars. The orange clouds.

What did we talk of?

Books.

Yes she was interested in books.

Came to me from nowhere in the conservatory this morning.

I think it was the butterfly floating around the roof that did it. It kept on humming and flapping and fidgeting, even though I had opened the window.

And then Gran said that about the cardboard on the glass, and Elizabeth sending her the butterflies "for the conservatory".

But it seemed funny to be sitting there.

And to think that a few months ago I was standing in front of the children.

...

S in my face shouting that I was picking on her. Crying and screaming and stomping and yelling, while I thought "This is not right, this is not right"

But they put so much effort into their work, and all they wanted was their teacher to acknowledge that they had. But the pile was so big.

That little dark office and that awful train.

Leaving it all just sitting there like I'd died.

I did care about them. Their little personalities. And some of  them were so good. Just to abandon them, to  abandon it all like that. And now to be here, drinking coffee. It just doesn't seem right somehow.

It was the Year 9's that did it. That girl shouting out " I don't fancy HIM".

Reading that damn book, just reading - because while I read, they were quiet. Losing track of how many names I'd written, sending out at random.

Malicious faces looking up at me, glowing like malevolent elves from some obscure horror film.

And then that office with all the paraphernalia on the walls

"Best teacher" - "Dear Miss C, thanks for making me love English".

Sitting there like a judge, this woman who I used to like, with her demands.

I was going to fail. She wanted this, and she wanted that and all I wanted was to sleep.

But no, this couldn't, this simply couldn't go on.
...

It was snowing outside and I was doing acrostics with my favourite class. They were so good, so proud to read out their little poems. After they read it they would wait and look up, slightly apprehensive...And I'd say "Brilliant! That was really lovely".

The room felt peaceful with the warm radiator, and the large windows, and the floating white flakes. They were all thinking of  Christmas, and presents, and warm fires.

Everything existed in that moment.

Something jars. An odd feeling. "Yes, you've won". Now I'm free.

But what did I lose?
...

The hearing impaired classroom assistant (tall, long black hair, wrinkled, slight lisp) came  to me after each Of Mice and Men lesson. Her mother was ill so she went to Australia. She was worried about Jacob, but he was lazy, and there was nothing she could do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94bdMSCdw20

The Daily Mail

Some people who experience extreme mood states find it useful to think of themselves as having an illness. Not all mental health patients accept the idea.

For example, Hitchcock and Sophia Loren opened a bottle of beer. As a result, their cars were clamped on their drives, seized, and destroyed.

This memory helped me to locate the lump and carefully extract it from my frame of vision. In the villa courtyard with the world's two biggest movie stars, I took the Intrabeam device and placed it into the breast.

Yet the truth is far, claims my boss. Left wing photos are equally irrelevant. Cutting back lollipop patrols, swimming pools and homes for the disabled, they find the female. Her baby boy is automatically given the title of Crown Prince.

A compelling theory is that anyone who disagrees is cheerfully overlooked, in the name of diversity. It could well be that this treatment becomes the gold standard.

Of course, there are multiple alternatives to regular soda, but many people experience periods of depression and also of elation and overactivity when attempting them. You'll find a similar sentiment among the leaders of most minority disappointments, and naturally it's ironic in Mexico.

Here, the sudden crackdown means that many companies have very convincing, pseudo-scientific websites. They court the legitimacy of a medical diagnosis to hide their problems, blaming young, single and 'jealous' women in personnel departments, whose hayfever is so bad they have to take time of work and avoid going anywhere green.

Its as if the Monarchy was a sexist boss with wandering hands.