I’ve been home a lot the last couple of weeks - I broke my foot in two places and the enforced rest has been good for me. And it’s also made me aware of how much putrid news is beamed across our brains, when I’m not busy running my shop.

Being INFORMED with all the world’s disasters 24hrs a day, 7 days a week and reading every polarising political articl…

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I made a big mistake last night. Huge.

I chose a film on BBC iPlayer - New York, New York, by Scorsese. Starring Liza Minnelli ( Francine ) and Robert De Niro ( Jimmy Doyle ) released in 1977.

I didn’t read the synopsis, just picked it, ‘cos I like seeing New York and I like Minnelli. After I’d watched it, I read a couple of the film’s synopsis headings -

“Egoistic saxophonist, meets lounge singer and their turbulent relationship unfolds as their careers grow.”

Rotten Tomatoes cites it as “An aspiring saxophonist and a singer begin their romantic journey. They struggle to excel at their craft which starts to affect their relationship.”

They should put a psychological warning on it when you click PLAY. These two descriptions were so far away from what I watched, I nearly filed a formal complaint (rolls eyes)

Warning: Anyone who has grown up with or had a romantic relationship with a Grandiose Narcissist, avoid this film like the Red Flag that this is. It could trigger you. Or enrage you. Or both. I just felt really angry with Scorsese for allowing the perpetual story telling that brilliant, troubled creative men are allowed to make women’s lives a misery, because they’re “brilliant” rather than calling them out as toxic damaged and not good to be around. I felt sorry and indignant for Francine the whole way through. I thought how high she could have soared in her own career, if she had been with someone else, or single, and hadn’t wasted all her time trying to encourage Jimmy in his music, or placating him, or diffusing his temper and childish tantrums.Shudders. He took advantage of her sensitivity and kindness and robbed her of self respect. But then maybe I’m just super sensitive, right? I just get het up too much about things, that aren’t really that important…

The opening scene shows Jimmy pacing the end of WW2 jubilations at a nightclub. The paper streamers are cascading down from the ceiling, the swing band are popping in a catchy, bouncing beat, and soldiers and civilians mix on the dance floor in a hedonistic flurry of arms legs and snogs. Jimmy weaves in and out of the crowds and each time he spots a woman on her own, he runs through his pick-up routine; He tells each woman that they have met before, that he wants to tell her something really important, but because his mother, father and sister are over there, points to a sea of random people on the dance floor, he asks each woman for her phone number. With each rejection he moves onto the next, getting more insistent and belligerent. He becomes fixated on “scoring.”

The tale of Jimmy and Francine as they struggle to live a life together as musician and singer, is really all about a woman who is trapped in a toxic relationship with a man who has the temper of a 4 year old and the selfishness of a rabid dictator.

I appreciate that in decades gone by, this scene might have just about passed as “Humour” but the reality stings. The male fixation on getting laid, means no woman is actually that special, or enticing, that we are perhaps just part of the man’s “ number’s game “ and eventually one “lucky lady” will submit to his charms, bullying, or focus. There is no flattery in him wearing her down to the point at which she agrees to date him, and my heart sinks for her when I realise she has focussed on the “project” he might be, rather than harsh reality that he is a walking red flag.

The whole film actually depressed me. Rather than Scorsese focussing on the story of two talented musicians struggling to make their way through life, and we observe the unfolding of their respective creative paths, we have to witness poor Minnelli being love-bombed in the first few weeks, then gaslit for the subsequent years. Her constant readjustment to appease his outbursts, her desperation as she jumps through countless hoops to recognise patterns in Jimmy’s moods, and motives, and her utter distress as she is rebuffed, rejected and belittled is so en pointe that it brought me to tears. And that’s the rub, I don’t think this was meant to be this story.

If you have ever grown up with a narcissist(s) as parents, or had the mis-fortune to marry or date one, you will know how exhausting your life is, just trying to keep going alongside them. It is more than frustrating, it’s a grim survival, more like a living hell, wondering what on earth you did to deserve someone like that, parenting or partnering you. One minute their dazzling head beam feels so radiant, their sun warms you like nothing else, and then the next minute, they tear you down so viciously, that you’re left reeling and stumbling in the fog. It takes a very long time to trust people again, and that’s if you managed to avoid any narcissists until you became an adult. But if you were grown up and survived the unregulated misery of narcissistic parents, you may always be stained with mistrust and anxiety.

Liza Minnelli’s character is susceptible to Jimmy, I think, because she has met his kind before, and it’s a familiar wound. She is a kind, empathetic and highly sensitive person ( and aren’t so many creatives like this?) and she tolerates way too much from self-centred types like Jimmy, who bleed her dry over and over again. This, I believe, is due to an upbringing where you were fed and watered, but not given much else. And everything else that was given to you, was given conditionally. Getting fed and watered and cared for was dependent on getting good grades, but not being better or smarter than them, being brilliant, but not embarrassing them, not letting them down, being super kind and thoughtful, but independent and self sufficient, and Kow-Towing so low that you lose your Self. Because of this kind of upbringing, you evolve into being this strange blend of:

high-achieving,

someone with often high emotional intelligence,

super anxious, don’t get me started on the poor sleep patterns, knotted stomachs, exczema and other complaints

you’re often full of self-doubt,

have a propensity for self-sabotage, just when things seem to be going well,

hyper-vigilant,

constantly offering 4 or 5 unsolicited problem-solving scenarios to get yourself and others out of an imagined crisis,

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There is a swirl and storm building around the seaside town where I live on the Sussex coast. I’ve not had a working mobile for some time. It turns out that I have fallen prey to a less than reputable telecoms broker - you know, the sort of phone call that starts with “We can see that you’re a business owner and we’re part of O2 and o…

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And instead of inducing a smile...it made me shudder. It was a post where I’d shared a video of a couple explaining a Cha-Cha-Cha inside a sports hall in Herstmonceux and the caption read: "Excited to be attending my first Latin class tonight!"

I was nervous, excited and expectant to finally attend an adult dance class having wanted to try Latin dancing since childhood... I’d never done the standard ballet, Brownies, Modern Dance circuit - I did do a little bit of tap in a church hall for a couple of years, but Latin was the thing I’d watched on T.V and felt a longing for. (Blame it on my South American roots - or maybe blame it on the Boogie?)

I was feeling very apprehensive because I was used to attending most things with my then husband or a friend. My menopausal symptoms had allowed my anxiety* to sky rocket about so many things - even driving to a new town and the fear of getting lost had really escalated, that’s how far I was out of my comfort zone. The 40 min drive was already feeling like a trip too far; I was all prepped with the SatNav, had left in plenty of time, was psyching myself up like a prize fighter en route, ready to rock up to what I thought, was the dance class to change my life - albeit in sleepy Herstmonceux, and not the humid streets of Buenos Aires.

I was driving through uncharted territory... a Sussex town, a recently separated woman in her late 40’s, and date with her destiny as a dancer?!

I'd would love to say I had a great time, but I didn't.

It felt like the worst form of mean exclusion since School days. I was shunned on arrival, and the sting lingered, just as painfully as it had done back at school.

The Herstmonceux Latin Dance Club website said " Solo attendees welcome. No partner required " 

What actually transpired was a barrage of sly mistrustful stares. I walked gingerly across the large slippery basketball court to an empty seat, but the nearest woman placed her handbag on the spot as soon as I got to it - “ My husband is sitting there “ Stony faced and tight lipped.

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How does it make you feel?

If you're sick, physically and or mentally and you have enforced periods of rest.

Are you stoic and sink into it? Wallowing into the stasis and pause. Remember how many people had to do the same with the Global Reset in 2020?

Or do you get restless and angry and impatient and feel like the world has conspired against you?

…

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I’m meant to be walking my dog but he’s sniffed outside and signalled a firm NO by walking upstairs and heading back to bed.

At 11:30 I’ll b…

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BUILD THE LIFE YOU WANT:

We never get the life we truly desire by just wishing it.We have to consciously take small deliberate actions towards it.As a self employed creative for 25+ yrs I went 6yrs without even a weekend break. I told myself; the work will dry up. I can’t "waste" cash on a holiday.  All it did was fuel the belief that life was hard, not …

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I am sitting on my bed up in the box room of 7 Braemar Avenue, Thornton Heath, Surrey, CR4 7RJ, England, United Kingdom, Europe, The World, The Universe, The Galaxy. Space. The bed is a grown up single size (aren’t I a lucky girl?!) and it belonged to my Auntie Eleanor who is only 10 yrs older than me. The bed is made from dark brown, almost black wood. Apparently it was made around the same time that the fat Queen with the scowl and a big black dress was alive. There are four, square cut legs balancing on tiny plastic wheels, and a foot-board lower than the tall head board that my pillows lean on. There is a very simple curve at the top of it, with a roughly carved floral garland. I imagine it is like the one the 3 Bears have in their cottage deep in the woods. I like to trace my fingers along it.

My sheets and waffle textured blankets are tucked in tightly at the bottom and on top there’s a long bedspread to create a taut covering. It’s a roughly textured woven cotton with bold printed arches repeating over and over. Each “rainbow” is made up of four shades of green – from dark seaweed to fir tree green, then a summer cricket green, and then a lime. Each arch is outlined in black and then each section between the rainbows is white –they repeat, stagger and build like fish scales, on and on and on, and all around the edge there’s a binding of white cotton macramé tassels – it’s like a fringe that a camel would have on its tourist basket saddle.

I often use this bedspread as play terrain. Some days it’s a farm with acres of rolling green hills and I can make believe with an array of little toys, and animals and ornaments and Lego people. I like creating daily scenes of bucolic bliss. Or tractors stuck in mud.

Other days it’s a fast moving death-defying racing track for my vast array of Matchbox cars and I growl, purr and roar with the different engines accelerating and chasing eachother. They are in hot pursuit, just like the cars on the Starsky and Hutch T.V show. I sometimes build Lego bridges over the tracks and pile pillows under the bedspread to create hills and valleys.

At bedtime I am tucked in, and my daddy sometimes reads me pages from Watership Down, which I find a bit scary, or Lord of the Rings, which makes no sense to me at all – despite being only 4, I am already aware that this reading time is a rare privilege. My Daddy is usually working really early in the morning and really late at night. I must not disturb him much – he has his office door closed a lot. I often don’t see him for days, even though he works at home.

His reading voice is low and flat and a little monotonous, unlike Mummy’s  - which she makes rise up and fall for each of the characters’ voices. I feel myself drifting off. It feels good to be tucked in tight and have the words wash over me.

On the floor I can just about make out my shiny red Wellington boots. I am hopeful it will be raining tomorrow so I can splash in more puddles. Pink Ted has slipped out of my hand and he’s lying limp on the sisal matting. My bedroom flooring is like plaited straw. Mummy tells me it is from a very fashionable shop in the West End. The matting looks like a flattened beach basket, and made up of flower shapes, which are held inside squares that then become bigger squares. It smells a bit like a New Forest pony and is a bit crunchy and itchy under foot. I prefer to walk on it with my socks on.

Mummy tells me I must not spill anything on it because it is not a lino and it is not a carpet. I wonder why I have it in my bedroom. I must be a very lucky and grown up girl.

I am yawning more and more and as my mouth opens wide my eyes get heavy and I can only see my daddy a little bit. My thumb only seems to taste nice when I suck it with Pink Ted’s big ears held up to my nose. His rabbit-like ears seem to smell like roast beef, Farley’s rusks, washing powder and comfort. Daddy tells me the chapter has ended and that this is enough reading now. He touches my nose and rustle my hair and says “Night-night, Rascal” and switches off the Angle Poise light which is clamped to the headboard. It looks like a robot arm and daddy pushes it over to one side now it is Sleep Time.

I lie very still in the darkness and try to count the number of green arches I can see using the yellowy chink of light that’s coming from the landing. The little channel stretches under my door and fans out like a lighthouse beam. While I count, and I have to restart many times because I run out of fingers or I yawn and yawn and  Y A W N and I forget where I have got to - I can hear the erratic clatter of the washing up downstairs, the roar of the Ascot heater as the gas flame rumbles into life, the hot water making a spitting muffled sound as it starts to splutter and fill up the plastic washing up bowl - or more often than not – I let that noise recede and instead tune in to the tap of my daddy’s foot on the base of his metal office chair. I love this chair – it is an adult merry-go-round. I love it when he lifts me onto his lap and twists me around in time to whatever music he’s playing. He’s working late as usual in his office across the small landing. He is working at his drawing board, His giant drawings of black lines on tracing paper are taped to its steep angle and the huge sliding Ruler moves up and down the surface clamped to the shorter side. His doodles are on these pieces of tape, sometimes they are circles, and sometimes they are maths sums with letters in them. A thick swirl of Henri Wintermann cigar unfurls around him like he is conjuring up a drawing board genie and he taps out the beat to Howlin’ Wolf.

* * *

My bed has deep coiled metal springs. They expand and flex and T W A N G as I move – I think my bed sounds like Zeb-a-dee from The Magic Roundabout on the telly.

If I stand up and hold onto the headboard I can bounce and build momentum so that my jumping becomes a wonderful rhythmic dance and the poster pinned to the wall above swings and recedes, swings and recedes in and out of view as I yoyo. As I am briefly in limbo, my eyes meet those of a beautifully crafted ink drawing of Aubrey Beardsley’s interpretation of Scheherazade and her lover. Her pale white skin, large almond shaped eyes and gorgeous array of billowing harem trousers, are full of pleasing curves. The veils, turban and folds of cloth around her midriff are beautiful and she has long unfurling fingers, clasping a flower in one hand and a wisp of chiffon in the other.

The poster makes me long to be an adult, so I can perhaps wear these miraculous clothes, although my limited experience of “outings” at this moment in time are restricted to Thornton Heath Library for Story Time, a buggy ride to the launderette in Norbury High Street or a walk to “The Rec”  behind our house to play on the swings.

I close my eyes one last time and I slip under Scheherazade’s mountain of cushions and downwards into a deep story of my own making.

* * *

“K, Wake UP!”

“WAKE UP!”

“C’Mon!”

There is a sudden shouting, in the back of my head, and a commotion and the sharp wheezing sound of the roller blind being yanked upwards. The shouting is now in the middle of my head –

“K, I’m not going to tell you again – we’re late, wake UP! “

My head is half awake and the other half is still inside the story inside my head. I feel like I am being held down in the sleepy depths of a pond of dreams, my legs and chest wrapped in seaweed straps, but my head and arms are being dragged to the surface where my mother is shouting at me.

I can hear she is cross and I am now trying to open my eyes  - they are thick with sleep and my lashes stick together – I am aware that something is not good and I am hurrying inside my head to open up my eyes and head and body so I can respond to mummy.

I am HERE NOW.

But mummy is not – I lie in the bed feeling out of sorts – woozy and disorientated. I feel like my tummy is full and then I understand I need a wee-wee. I fight my way free of the tight blankets and get my arms free and then my legs can wiggle out sideways and dangle over the side of the bed. I am stumbling to the bathroom and get the little plastic step to reach the toilet. I don’t have time to ask for help with the kiddy toilet seat so I am balancing carefully and trying not to fall down the well, where I wonder how many children has disappeared down the toilet pipes all over the world. Where do they end up?

There is a lot of slamming of kitchen cupboard doors and taps being opened and closed off and saucepans banging. I can hear a wooden spoon being stirred quickly against the side of an Aluminium saucepan. I can also hear the kettle shrieking on the hob. I half hop, half fall off the toilet and my nightie is twisted up. I cannot reach the sink taps to wash my hands so I skip back to my bedroom and my toes are imprinted with the chafing sisal matting plaits once more. I rub one foot on top of the other to relieve the itchy sensation and my mother stomps up the stairs and she is now tornedo and thunder, she is filling the stairway, the landing and now she is in my little box room and her anger has expanded like a dark storm cloud.

“Here; your tea, drink up – we’re late, we’ve missed the bus so we’re going to have to walk to playgroup – get a move on – NO TIME FOR MUCKING ABOUT.”

I am worried, she has that black storm in her face and her nostrils are wide and her words sharp and short like hammer and nails.

A giant cup is handed to me – it has a bowl shape, a large handle – it is heavy and hot, hot H O T!  – OW, OW, OW!!!! it slips – it tumbles and burns my hand and one of my legs, my Pluto nightie, has a brown trickle of tea running down its ravine and onwards it gurgles and splashes down onto my bedspread, and drops off the cliff face onto the precious sisal matting – mummy is shouting –mummy is shouting NO NO NOOOOO! And my hand is hot and my leg is on fire and my cheeks are red and my eyes are wide and full of hot tears. It hurts. A lot.

The cup tumbles to the floor and brown tea splashes all over the white wood chip wallpaper, the skirting board and the matting – there is sharp pain and heat and fear and now screaming in MY FACE – I am being grabbed by the elbows and shaken – my eyes are wide and wild and I am wailing for mummy to stop the hurting of my hand and leg but she keeps shaking me. My mummy’s beautiful face, my mummy’s face that often gets beeped at by horns in cars, my mummy’s face that is asked for kisses by strangers when we go shopping – my mummy’s face which is unusual and beautiful like Scherazade is now a scrunched up and angry mask. She has become a witch in the Hans Christian Anderson stories she reads to me at bedtime, or a villain from Aesop’s Fables and I am terrified. I want to hide deep inside my bedding or find a magical rabbit hole I can crawl into under the coils and springs of my bed. Her face is bigger than mine and has filled all my vision. I try to pull my face away from hers but it is padlocked to her. And I am trying to breath and not sob. I am terrified and crying for my hot burning hand, I am terrified and crying for my hot stinging burning leg and I am terrified and crying because I have made my mother cross – she is shouting as she runs to the bathroom to get a flannel and begins to furiously scrub the hot tea which is now pooling inside the loops and petals of the sisal matting. She is raging about the stains that will occur from the tea, the sugar that will make it impossible to clean and the damage it will do to the nice floor beneath.  She scrubs the wood chip wallpaper and little specks of the green cloth and flannel are now stuck to the walls and makes it look worse.

I try to stretch out my arms to be picked up and consoled to have my hands and legs soothed from the burning heat of the tea but the screaming continues and as I am asked over and over again,

Stop crying, or I’ll give you something to really cry about

Why didn’t I pay attention?

Why didn’t I watch what I was doing?

Why don’t I look after my things?

I am I so stupid?

My out stretched arms are batted away like they are serpents – I long to be held and rocked and soothed but the nice mummy is not here today. She is trapped inside Tornedo mummy instead.

I try to speak up amongst the swollen sobs that fill my mouth – that the cup was too hot – that the handle was too large – that the giant, adult cup was too heavy and the tea too full to the top, and why was it so heavy?  But only the first protest leaves my mouth before, oh no, here it comes - another fresh terror  - BANG.

A swift smack to the face and I am stunned.

Silent.

Still.

Awake?

I’ve been given something I can’t cry about.

Footnote

Aubrey Beardsley – Art Nouveau artist whose work had a second wave of popularity in the late 60s and early 70s – fashion labels like Biba were modern incarnations of Art Nouveau and Art Deco.  My father lent me his YELLOW BOOK of Beardsley’s greatest works and I used to spend hours tracing over the exquisite costumes and figures. The all black and white – the finely inked details, the sparse and dynamic composition left an indelible mark on my young brain and I’m convinced my love of drawing and was fuelled by the hours in bed I spent as a toddler staring at these amazing artworks in my little room.

Art by Kay Neilson. The swathe of fabrics and textile patterns left a deep impression on me.