I don’t understand time.
I know, I know: ‘Shock revelation! Hold the front page!’ and all that. But I don’t understand it.
Like, and par example, time sometimes CRAWLS along – usually when you really need it to pick up some serious pace and get you out of:
a) whatever mess you’ve got yourself into, or
b) were helped into by others,* or even
c) a mess that will happen (caused by you, others, or you and others) if time doesn’t rev up and prevent an opportunity occurring for messing up.
Other times, when you are having a very nice experience and would dearly like to savour it, it flies, v v fast and fleetingly. Zoom, there it is, GONE!
Everything gets all sudden and rushed now. The dress rehearsal is called and everyone is dashing about. I decide to sit it out, because I want to see the live show tonight as it’s happening on TV, for the nation – I don’t want to spoil it by watching this run-through. I know what the Guitars are doing, but I want the rest to be new, even if the ‘NEW’ is great and therefore worryingly competitive.
The guys get into their gear, grab a guitar each† and spill out of the room in a flurry of chat and agitation.
I am abandoned in a mountainous pile of Ten Guitars’ debris, including a rather fetching shirt ’n’ cardi combo that (the God) Bolton was wearing earlier and which I suspect might be a Crimbo pressie, though happily a less embarrassing rig-out than it might have been. Or maybe he’s just gorge enough to carry it? Or maybe I am horribly biased and see him through rose-tinted specs and all that. Wotevs: he wears it well, or he wore it well, cos right now he’s in a white tee and NO ONE wears one of those better than SLB … le sigh!
It might be a bit mad to say it, but the room seems to be ringing with the absence of Ten Guitars, like there is an echo of their departure still banging almost silently off the walls. I tidy up a few bits and pieces and nibble on a scone that survived the latest bout of teenage scoffage. In fairness, it is a bit bashed at the edges (probably from the tussle of grabbing at the plate) but it’s good and still has a few raisins, and that’s adding to my five-a-day target, surely.
Then I sit at my table and, although there are some letters still to answer, I find myself wondering what to do next. The life has gone out of the room.
I’m on my own. I’m in charge … of me, Jenny Q.
For me, the trouble with down time is that I have far too much time to THINK about things. This thinking would be fine if it involved practical, active things, like sorting homework or knitting projects in my head, which, of course, leads to list making and I love a good list-making session. But it’s when the thinking gets on to big life stuff (emotions and relationships and so on) that the trouble starts. You see, with me, thinking leads to OVERthinking, and then I get myself into knots and can’t find my way out and I end up with problems I never had before and they never seem to quite go away as ideas, no matter how hard you try to banish them. And every time they return they have somehow multiplied. They’re like the amoebas we learned about in biology that just divide and increase all the time. In other words, thinking is its own problem and that problem leads to more problems.
Complicated and uncomfortable, if you ask me.
So, problems so far are … (drum roll, anyone?)
a) My dad is only employed part-time now, which means we are bankrupt (I guess) or certainly headed that way. He’s not getting any younger,‡ so that makes it even harder for him to fight for a new job.
b) We have a new baby – not a problem as such, but he needs looking after! He has been brought into the world whether he likes it or not,б so he’s our responsibility. It all means there are more of us to be fed and clothed and housed, although Harry is on mummy-draught-milk at the moment, so feeding him is not one of the economic problems we have just yet.
c) My mum has gone a bit bonkers, and isn’t showing any signs of improvement. This is getting more and more worrying, but I don’t know how to help. And in the meantime I feel she is becoming less like my mum every day.
d) My gran IS bonkers – this is a perennial§ problem and not one that we can do anything about really. It just has to be accepted and sighed over.
e) Everyone I know is broke, including me.
f) My Bestest Galpal, Dixie, is on the hunt for lurve and bound to get herself (and poss/prob Uggs and me) into a scrape.
g) Gypsy – nuff said …
These are not necessarily all as worrisome as each other. Everything is so jumbled in my head right now that I can’t think which to tackle first, which is perhaps a problem in itself. Arg!
Then last, but by no means least, on the list is the Supremo Everlasting Problemo …
h) I have a pash for a guy who will never return my affections – it is written in the annals of LIFE that he never can = FACT = true fact.
Problem h) is where things get outlandish in my head and the overthinking can really get a hold. You see, thinking and overthinking this one, I realize that maybe I love that my lurve for SLB is hopeless.
Say what, Jen?
Well, if it weren’t, I’d be SO embarrassed.
That is to say, if he showed attention to me and I had to be attentive back, I wouldn’t know what to do,
or where to look,
or how to look,
or where to BE,
or even how to be the shape of me, which I usually am (I’d say) most days.
I need the romance of him not knowing I am alive, romance-wise, otherwise I’d have to be some sort of fabuloso romantic heroine-type for real, instead of just in my head … it would be too, too difficult.
It must NEVER be real, unless it is a little bit, a manageable bit. Like, say, him looking wan and thin because he realizes that he lurves me but it is hopeless (how could he EVER be with me?! cos I am way out of his league, even though I am much younger and may grow into a totes nightmare and not the woman of his dreams, which I might be now in this hypothetical situation??), and therefore he must suffer valiantly in silence.
And without (much) bodily contact.
Without, for instance, any spit(tle) having to change company in kisses?**
Oh. My. Actual. I am sitting in a dressing room in the biggest gig venue in Dublin, waiting to see my compadres battle it out on TV and I am in the throes of an imaginary romance and giving it headspace = that is as mad as people talking about Gypsy as if she knows what they’re on about!
