Hieronymous the Anonymous

Montmartre, here I don't come

I got a text message before from Whisky. I'm in Montmartre he said, where are you?

Last night I went to dinner at the Cheeses to celebrate Cheeseboy's 45th birthday. It was the customary crowd treated to an evening of good food and home-made karaoke. On one of the walls was a collage of photo's celebrating Cheeseboy's life. As expected I was in a good number of them. There was another though showing the Cheeses smiling happily with mum and Fred. It was a good photo, but not one I recognised. I asked Cheeseboy and he told me it had taken in Tuscany about 8 years ago when they were both in Europe at the same time while I remained in my apartment in SY. They had hooked up for a great day of drinking at the Tuscan villa mum and Fred were staying at. I knew the story because I'd heard it many times before, and because I got a call from them on that occasion rousing me from my sleep at about 2am.

I won't go into the things I thought last night. I was glad to see the photo even if there was some sadness there too. Cheeseboy is a sensitive, caring man, a loving friend. I regret often that I'm not more vulnerable with him, but I find that hard to be: it's a burden to be so stoic. I value his affection though, though he may not know it am deeply touched by his concern because it is authentic and deeply felt. As everyone knows, he's a lovely person.

Last week was pretty ordinary for a number of reasons. Towards the end of it I was thinking I was needing my friends. Cheeseboy is there though I don't lean upon him as I might. Donna is good, but has her own issues. Whisky is far away. Of the others JV is a good friend but caught up now in his own life, and the others are either thereabouts or now gone altogether.

In a typical week I catch up with half a dozen people, some good friends, some second tier, some the women passing through my life. I am this self-contained unit no matter who I am meeting, generally affable, laid-back, in control. Beneath that calm exterior all sorts of things are happening.

It would be nice to let some of that occasionally, to engage with others to resolve at least some of the ongoing dilemmas I face. It happens sometimes, but not a lot. Failing all that I'd love to be in Montmartre too, or at least somewhere different just for a little.

Life happens

One of my first jobs of any substance was working at a bank. I was taken in amongst a bunch of others to be processed and spat out by a program they had. The idea was that recruits would enter the organisation, progress through different areas after a few months stint learning the ropes, before finally exiting the sausage machine as a well-rounded banking professional.

I make it sound it clinical, but it wasn't really. I learned a lot there, but also had a lot of fun. It was a different era and the shenanigans we got up to by todays standards pretty impressive. We were young and hungry most of us, we had that youthful appetite for experience and adventure - which we found in some abundance - and all of us expected great things. When I look back I smile at some of the mischief I was involved in and shake my head at the general decadence of the time, amplified as it was in the banking environment. Times have moved on, but I took a lot from the experience and made friends I still see today.

I never completed the program. I stayed just under two years before finding myself in unexpected conflict with management. They wanted one thing, I wanted another. To my surprise I arced up and told them so, digging my heels in when they put the squeeze on. My colleagues wartched on as the battle of wills played out. I was given quiet support by my mates, seen as I was as a bit of a test case representative of them all - if they could do this to me they could to it to anyone. I'd always been independently minded, but till then was unaware of how stubborn and outspoken I could be - I earned the nick-name of punching bags from that episode.

In the end I left and fell on my feet with a much better job and the rest is very interesting history.

On Wednesday last week I caught up for lunch with the two guys I was probably closest to back in the day. I see Royston for lunch and a beer every 6 months or so. He is as he ever was, famously affable and easy-going, a smart man in an amiable persona. Paul I see only every few years or so randomly. Back then he appeared on the scene as an exotic putsider, short and good looking, beautifully dressed always with a copy of The Face in his brief case. He had long dark hair and his feautures a vaguely oriental cast to them - one of his grandmother's was Chinese. In the rough and tumble of the banking environment he stood apart, slightly uncomfortably often.

By contrast Roy and I were in the thick of things, joining the bank booze culture, flirting with the typists, dissecting the round of football every week, and generally working hard to play hard. Somehow Paul joined us.

That's many years ago now and we have all gone our separate ways since. Roy now works for a German bank as their Australian representative. Paul remains with the bank where he started, though now in a much more senior role. Of the three of us I'm the only one to have left the iudustry, and while Paul has had the one job for all this time I have had a multitude. I remain, as I was then, the maverick of the group. Strange how early we are defined and how true it becomes.

We sat down for a meal Wednesday and remembered old times and the people we used to work with: where are they now? It seemed remarkable that so much time had passed - was it really that long? We were young then, fresh for want of a better word. Now I guess you'd call us pretty seasoned, been around the traps a while, know pretty much who we are, what we're capable, have a fair idea of what we want. We've all progressed down our chosen paths, have all achieved senior positions in one sense or another. So you sit there, you laugh, you recall past memories and faces now faded into oblivion, the talk shifts to now, to a form of shoptalk, about Basel 3 (over my head), about present challenges and events. An you wonder how the three of us, older, wiser, greyer, all now approaching middle-age, went from where we were then to now. Sitting there you trace the path back thinking, so, that's how you do it. Or is it?

It was a fun occasion, good for all of us and rich in nostalgia. We are are each a reminder of our youth to each other. We'll do it again soon, gladly, and it will be different because it wont be as novel.

How it was before I remember

Now that I'm home for the moment I'm taking the opportunity to catch up on a long list of housekeeping items. Last night it was about sorting through old photos in a box and putting them into an album.

I should have anticipated the nostalgic impact of the job. Initially I sorted through the photo's - ranging between 1980 to 2000 - quite methodically, sorting them into piles, discarding the dud pics and highlighting the good one's. Occasionally I would pause to recollect a place or moment, sometimes scratching my head as if it was a life I was unfamiliar with. Mostly I just moved along.

There came a point though when it was more than just a task to complete. I came across a sheaf of photo's from a birthday party for mum at the old Maxim's in South Yarra, plush and elegant. There was a roomful of family and friends and the photo's showed them happy, smiling, laughing, in mid-conversation. As I sorted through them I realised that a few there vibrant and happy have since passed on, and that my own mother, which the pictures showed as healthy, is soon to join them.

I came across a batch of older photo's then, from the mid-eighties. When I look back now that time seems a different world, but looking at the photo's it seemed fresh and current, as if they might have been taken in the next room. Of course my mother was there, much younger, her hair stylish and still with many adventures ahead of her. So to was my sister, a girl still just about, unmarried, motherhood a distant possibility.

The photo's piled up of different times and places. There were many occasions when I struggled to remember where the place was, or what I was doing there. Many times too there were occasions when I'd pause and smile at a happy memory, a funny moment captured on film. Even amongst my own friends I observed the changes, the friends come and gone, the fading in and out of people in different places. Sad to know that dear friends - one I was best man for - have now disappeared (though I had another ring me yesterday out of the blue inviting me to his wedding).

There was me too at different stages of my life. I'm pretty camera shy, and so the photos of me are less common - besides, generally I'm at the other side of the camera. Still I was there in stages, like stop motion popping up tthrough the years. There I am out fishing; there I am in dinner suit out for NYE; there smiling with mum. It was strange to see myself, particularly when young. One photo I looked at unable to reconcile it as being me. I felt like a different person.

I noted other things that had never entered my head before. In some of the photos, particularly of me in my early twenties, I look Nordic in a way I had never realised. I might be a Swede or a German or a Dane with my blonde hair and husky build. In other photos I observed my physicality like I hadn't before, tall I was, rangy in many of the photos, more handsome than I remembered.

Out of it all I felt a sepia tinged melancholy. Melancholy is the emotion of the season, no escaping that, and looking into past lives here and gone that feeling was deepened, and somehow burnished by remembrance. I felt the flow of time that for some - for all - comes to an inevitable stop no matter what has come before.

New Zealand now

The last few months have been one disaster story after another. It is probably coincidence, but it seems odd that there have been so many so-called 'natural' disasters in such a short space of time. Australia has been victim to a few of these, and diuring the week it was New Zealand's turn.

I went to lunch Tuesday and had returned to catch up for a coffee with a friend midway through the afternoon. On my way home I dropped by the cobblers to collect a couple of pairs of shoes I'd left with him when he told me about Christchurch: "Pretty bad in New Zealand, eh?" he said in passing.

I'd heard nothing and told him so, whereupon he stopped what he was doing to explain a earthquake had hit Christchurch devastating the city centre. Back home I turned on the radio. That night I watched the extended news bulletin feeling the usual combination of fascination and sorrow.

There have been many eartquakes across the world that have claimed more lives than his and left more devastation. This is closer though, more real if you like, because New Zealand is so close to us, just over the ditch as they say.  For all the rivalry and friendly ribbing between nations there is a close bond between peoples that have shared so much together. As so many commentators and editorials have stated, we are like brothers.

To see downtown Christchurch in ruins and to see on screen shocked and despairing Kiwi's - just like us but with a funny accent - made it seem almost as if this was happening in Australia.

Like most Aussies I know a shitload of Kiwi's. Half a million of them live over here. By and large I like them. They're a people I respect, a strong, adventurous nation, perhaps the people I see as being most like us - though perhaps quieter and more humble than what we are.

It goes without saying that our thoughts are with Kiwi's all over the world right now, and especially those in Christchurch right now.

On a pretty tacky sidenote, this tragedy is the excuse for some Christian lowlives to come out and claim it is basically God's doing - man, he get's blamed, or is justification for too much. Apparently their was a gay parade in Christchurch a few days before - ergo, God strikes as if Christchirch is a modern day Sodom. It amazes me how so-called good christians are so often unchristian in word and deed. If that's your God then I want nothing to do with him.

 

Related articles

• Video Shot One Minute After The Christchurch Earthquake (laughingsquid.com)
• It's not only words (homepaddock.wordpress.com)

The approaching cloud

Cover of On the Beach

I don't know if you know the movie On the Beach, based on the Nevil Shute novel. I haven't read the book, but I've seen the movie a few times. It's sort of dated and old fashioned now, and kind of charming because if it. It stars Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire and is set in Melbourne in the aftermath of a atomic holocaust in the northern hemisphere.

The northern hemisphere is dead, but a radiation cloud slowly drifts southwards, bringing inevitable death to those in its path. As the movie begins the cloud is somewhere to the north of the Australian mainland. Obe country after another, thn one city after another succumb to it as it encroaches further and further south, past Brisbane and nearer to Melbourne. There is no escape from it.

In Melbourne they watch as it comes closer, living wildly some of them, tempting fate and indulging their senses. Others prepare more soberly, committing themselves to a pact of mutual suicide rather than succumb to the toxic cloud. Soon there will be no-one left, amid the sunshine, the parties, the summer romances doom sits, the end of civilisation as we know it nigh.

That's how I feel about mum. I watch as she slowly declines, charting the progress of it while not knowing when it will hit. As in the movie there is a sense of resigned futility: there is nothing any of us can do but wait. As in the movie there is a surreal edge to it: how can it end? The sun shines in the movie, life continues; and mum in her way lives as normally as she can, mostly well, her wits intact. Something looms, unavoidable and terminal, but it seems incompatible with what we see.

We all die at some point. Mum is 70, not a bad age, there is no real reason for complaint. Though she is in no great distress this seems a bad way to die. It's a death sentence waiting to be executed. We sit all and wait, watching closely, measuring how things are, up one day, down another. It's a bad way to be. Better I think, to go quickly, or fade away to a well earned rest.

I can't explain how all of this makes me feel in my stomach. Soon that cloud will be here and in its wake my mum will be gone. Very strange.

Related articles

• Nevil Shute Reborn (socyberty.com)

The drowned world in dreams

I'm not sleeping well lately and I'm waking up tired. I'm dreaming a lot too. Most of the dreams are convoluted and detailed. They consume your mind sleeping and on waking linger disturbingly. You can't quite shake your mind of the strange worlds you have entered no matter how much you look to reality. This is characteristic of poor sleep in my experience, though I don't know what comes first: do I sleep poorly because I dream so much, or do I dream as much as I do because I can't settle into a deep sleep?

The night before last I had a particularly vivid dream. What I can recall still is the dramatic imagery. I am on an international flight out of Australia. We are flying north and are about 6 hours into the flight when I look out the window. To my great surprise we are close to the ground, scarily close. Even more surprising is what I see on the ground. At first I think it is one of the wonders of the world I never heard of before. Below the water is tumultuous, it gushes across the land and falls prettily down sheer drops to rival any of the great waterfalls. As I look I ralise this is not normal. What I am seeing is a city being consumed by a tsunami of raging, rising water. The water is high, near the tops of the sky-scrapers, and as I behold it I think no-one could survive this.

I am stunned. This is beyond comprehension. I am in the air above this, safe, yet there is a sense of peril. Perhaps the low flying plane will tumble into this water? Or perhaps the rushing water will rise up to engulf us too? Then I wonder what it means. If the water has risen so high here where has it done. I look ahead: will we find somewhere to land?

That's how it ends, but it is a troubling dream. Much of it is taken I think from recent events, though a wild extrapolation of them. In there as well I reckon there is a growing dread at the effects of climate change: where will it end? Will it? And what will we be left with?

Beyond all that there is surely something of me in this dream, though I am not expert enough to understand what it is.

Related articles

• Dream a little (lucid) dream (healthsass.blogspot.com)
• Sleep and dreams (psychologytoday.com)
• Few Things U Don't Know About Dreams! (socyberty.com)

WC 2011

Image via Wikipedia

The cricket world cup begins today in India and the sub-continent. Winners of the last three competitions and with a remarkable WC winningstreak of 27 (or is it 28?) Australia go into the competition the number ranked team in the world, but aren't favourites. They may be respected still and even feared by some, but much of the shine has rubbed off after a good beating in the Ashes.

There are millions of people around the globe happy to see Australia fall from its perch. It's perfectly understandable and if I weren't an Aussie I'd probably want to be one of them. Over the last 10-12 years the Australian cricket team has won just about every major competition on offer. It's a fair call thinking it might be the turn of someone else. In relative terms I can even understand how the decline of the Australian cricketing hegemony is good for cricket; as an Australian, however, I find it hard to agree.

Though we were well beaten by the Poms in the test series I reckn we're still a strong chance to win this comp again. In characteristic style the team bounced back from that defeat to flog England 6-1 in the one day series following it. It doesn't make up for losing the Ashes, but it was still pretty impressive. There's a lot of pride in this team.

In fact I reckon it's that pride that will steer Australia a fair way through the tournament. Over the course of this contest they've been  lot of teams touted as contenders, and most have either fallen away or been bludgeoned out of the way by Australia. The stats don't lie: Australia is incredibly good at the key moments in the key tournaments. They don't blink, they just better - and they know it.

Of course Australia no longer has that plethora of great stars. I've been watching a program on the history of the World Cup. It has been great fun looking back at some of the great games and great players. Clive Lloyd for example, and Imran Khan. Then there was Wasim Akram, one of the best bowlers I've seen, and the day Pakistan beat England to the title in Melbourne in 1992. I was there.

There have been many other players, but what captured my imagination again were some of the great contests. The classics were 1999 in England when Australia down and out fought back to beat South Africa - the favourites - on the back of a Steve Waugh century to make the semi-final.

The semi-final was one of the great limited over games of all time. After posting a modest score Australia looked done for until Warne struck. The game ebbed and flowed from there until it climaxed in the most unbelievable way. How well I remember that! I lay in bed watching it on TV at about 3am with work on the next day. I couldn't turn the TV off. The last over began with South Africa needing 9 runs to win and Lance Klusener at the crease. Fleming came in to bowl the first ball and was smacked to the boundary - Klusener was a scary hitter. He bowled the second ball and Klusener did it again. With 4 balls to go the scores were tired - South Africa were a shoo-in. To the third ball Klusener miscued a drive to mid-on, and narrowly avoided a run-out. The next ball he hit hard to mid-off and ran. Donald, at the bowlers end, paused, watching the ball before running. Too late. Fleming rolled the ball down the middle of the pitch and Donald was run out. The game was over, the scores were tied - and on the strength of the previous win Australia made the final.

It's amazing to think that Australia have not lost a game in World Cup comp[etition since then. They murdered Pakistan in the fanal, as they did to India in 2003, and Sri Lanka in 2007. For every final Australia played they elevated their game to a clinical level that no-one else could match.

In 2003 in South Africa there were a few close scrapes - against England particularly, I remember - until Ponting's majestic innings in the final secured the title. In 2007 no-one came close to Australia. Never will their be a more dominant display in a tournament than that. In the final in Gilly's swansong he scored 149 to kill the contest.

Over the journey there have been all time great players - Ponting, Gilchrist, Hayden, Warne, McGrath, the Waugh brothers, Lee, Symonds, Bevan and so on. In this two tournament only two remain: Ponting and Lee.

What do I expect? Firstly that Australia will extend it's winning streak to beyond 30, never to be surpassed. I'd be disappointed to if Australia doesn't make the semi-finals at a minimum. Injuries, and perhaps interesting selections have not helped Australia, but the team remains formidable. In our way I think are India - potentially frail playing at home in front of their crowds; Sri Lanka - very talented, but possibly not quite ready; and South Africa, the antithesis of Australia in many ways. They are always contenders, but in the opposite of Australia have always choked on the big stage. It's heavy baggage, but I think they may overcome that finally. This is their time if they take it. Hopefully it is Australia again who will stop them.

 

Related articles

• How we agonisingly threw away the greatest World Cup match of all time (independent.co.uk)
• Cricket World Cup: Past Champions (cbc.ca)
• ODI cricket to be 'revived' by World Cup, says Waugh (sportingo.com)
• SA won't miss big hitters - Fletcher (espncricinfo.com)
• Sorcery of spinners makes India and Sri Lanka my World Cup favourites | Duncan Fletcher (guardian.co.uk)

If not you, then this

I catch the tram into the city where I meet with a girl for a wine in the city square. We sit in the dwindling sunshine wondering if the rain will come. We part. I walk down towards Southbank, to an early reunion with my ex-colleagues, some of which have become ex-since I left. We share philosophical smiles and barbed observations on the job that was, smiling as we sip on our pints. The crowd builds and gathers around us, a pretty crowd while the rain begins to fall outdoors.

I dash then to Fed Square to meet with the Publisher. We share a drink at a bar before fronting the Press Club. We are let in, we share a reasonable meal unequal to the hype and the conversation catching up after a month or two absence. Outside we part, she to her car, me to the tram trundling me home.

Throughout all of this the mind ticks over, eyes flit from side to side, taking things in, processing, comparing, contrasting to what I know, what has come before, what I want. At home it continues even as I sit watching the footy; I wake up this morning and it goes on. This morning though there is something tangible.

There seem two things happening in me now and for the last few months. I can't argue against either. One is wishing for other things: sometimes I actually yearn. The other is more pragmatic, a reasonable - and pleasurable - response to the reality of the non-wish fulfilled reality.

Last night is like so many others. Sometimes there is more in it. As I went from one place to another last night I felt the now familiar throb that had me searching for release. There was none last night, but it is never far away.

I go from flirting with women I find attractive to conversing with women I find diverting to fucking women I find desirable to remembering women I loved. There's a cycle that will continue until there is something to break it - love perhaps, or a time when no-one wants to fuck me.

I am bored and then I am addicted. I dream wistfully, sometimes sentimentally, I find myself wondering if things might have been different and then thinking well it wasn't, to wondering why it is so hard to find that again. Then in its place is filled lust, razor sharp and irresistible, but why resist? If I can't have one then why not the the other?

I go from civilised conversations with civilised women who claim I look like Colin Firth - yes, Colin Firth (though I don't) - to others who claim I should go into politics, more than once now, claiming every time "I'd vote for you", to others, random others, slinky Cuban's with skin I want to lick so beautifully cocoa-like it is; to a beautiful Korean with long nipples and skin so soft that it is a sensual just to caress; and buxom Aussie girls with fun in their hearts.

I spoke the other night with Whisky. He is back in the saddle again, so to speak, after months of abstinence. He feels better for it, and why wouldn't he? Sex is normal I said, it makes you feel part of the human race, it settles and releases those things that only sex can. Sex is normal, healthy, good. And it is.

I see no reason to stop, on a pleasurable roll after all and besides I don't know if I could, desire begets desire. Still it is not how I want to live forever, no matter how many leggy Cuban's or buxom Turks may tempt me, it is what you do when there is nothing better - no-one better - to do, to be with. That is what I want though, what I find my thoughts returning even as I watch a girl slide her panties back on, this is fine, good, necessary, but I want you, only you, and forever.

Rather do it than watch it

Image via Wikipedia

I've never quite understood the lure of porn movies. I know of otherwise perfectly sensible people who have no hesitation in hunkering down with their loved one in front of a porn movie in the full expectation that it will lead to something more. Not me. Porn movies are so laughable as to be anti-erotic.

Having made that point I have to admit to actually watching one the other night on impulse. It's been years since I saw one and when browsing through the Foxtel menu with nothing better to do I hit upon the 'Adults' area out of bored curiosity and then, following the same lazy impulse, chose to watch one.

It wasn't long before I was reminded why I find these things so dreadful. The production values are notoriously ordinary, the story - if it exists - invariably cheesy (along with the acting), and the camera work, bizarrely, is so poor that the money shot is missed more often than not. I guess they're quibbles in the scheme of things, but watching the other night with my finger on the FF button I endured a series of situations which lacked any sensuality - hey, what's that? - and were crude and manipulative. How is that vaguely erotic?

The girls no matter how beautiful had that hard, seasoned aura, unsurprising considering they probably hop from one make believe orgy to another. Their tanned bodies were worked out to within a few millimetres of perfection, their pubes shaved to the approved tuft, their hair was coiffed and their full breasts half silicon. Overall they portrayed a plastic, almost sterile personality, a million miles from when they might have been young and innocent. What was natural about them, or spontaneous? Nothing. Even the pretty Asian girls spoke American.

Of course it's even worse when you consider the men they do double-time with, a combination of low-lives who look like they might have been picked up from the local bus stop; borderline sociopaths who look like they've just got out of stir; and buff bodybuilders whose brains have long since turned to porridge because of steroids. From a purely technical perspective it seems stupid. If there is an element of fantasy in all of this, what man wants one of these characters standing in for them?

Together they go through the motions, swapping places and positions to a chorus of scripted oohs, ahs, and yes, performing to the camera and doubtless to an audience of horny couples out there somewhere, and lonely guys with their cock in their hand.

I just don't get it. At the bottom end at least it's seedy and unpalatable, unattractive, certainly un-erotic, unprofessionally professional, and in many ways just plain inept. What's the point of watching other people do the things you might want to do yourself? Man I like a naked woman as much as the next guy, but I'd rather her sincerely there, looking in my eyes and seeing me, natural, real, at my side.

That's it for me. I watched a 75 minute movie in about 15 minutes and know enough to lock it in: porn is not my caper.

Related articles

• Porn Gets a Bad Rap! (socyberty.com)

Last things

I was walking by the park the other day on my way to lunch with a friend when I spotted a personal trainer putting slightly portly charge through his paces. It was sunny and warm and they were doing shuttle runs. Up and back they went, repeating it again and again with the PT leading a gasping client, head down and his mind doubtless in a painful fugue. The gap beteen them extended as the client began to shuffle like Cliff Young running from Sydney to Melbourne.

I watched with a smile on my face. I knew exactly how he felt having endured much the same - though tougher - exertions in the recent weeks. Having endured it myself there was also a tinge of the cruel voyeur in my smile: if I have to endure it, why not others too?

One of the advantages of having this time off is being able to catch up on 'me' things. I'm not sure if personal training quite belongs in that category, but I've forced myself to three sessions this week. I'm seeing two separate personal trainers, one a girl who comes to me, another a buff looking guy in a nearby gym. They complement each other well, one being more aerobically focussed, the other around weights. After each session the girl - Sarah - asks me how was it? I always struggle to come up with a satisfactory answer. Having come close to throwing up several times and gasping for horribly for the most part good or fine or even satisfactory don't seem adequate responses. Fortunately I'm generally too buggered to answer coherently and generally respond with a guttural grunt.

It has been a productive week in other regards also. I've caught up with a few people for lunch, I've had my hair cut, I've made myriad phone calls and sent emails. I'm finalising the revamp of my website (www.e-nigmatic.com - new version live in about 3 weeks), I've created a Facebook page for the business (to what effect, who knows?), and updated my LinkedIn, including creating an entry for the business. I've also joined sundry networking groups for what will be doubtless dreary but necessary evenings schmoozing.

I would happily live this way all the time if it paid. It doesn't, unfortunately, but I might as well enjoy it while I can. The enjoyment is not unmitigated by the way. In this circumstance you tend to do the things you need to do, rather than what you want to do. I get some satisfaction from all this industry - it's nice to make things happen, good to feel vitally engaged, and pleasant to harbour the illusion of self-sufficiency. I'd rather be reading a book though.

One thing I have set myself is to write. I found myself writting creatively a week ago after a long break. The words flowed and I felt myself in a fertile creative bubble. I considered that for all the time I hadn't been writing my mind had continued thinking about my stories and observing things in the wide world that reflected in some way what I intended to write. It had collected in me, so that when I sat down to write it broke loose and flowed onto the page like a dam of water pierced. It was a very pleasing feeling.

I have made great progress consequently and feel as if I have made another incremental step forward in my writing ability. The voice is the same, but there is more in it. It seems richer and more inclusive, it goes deeper. You find yourself writing this way and you learn afterwards. It happens, as if by magic, and you read nodding your head thinking, so that's the way to do it.

In light of this I have set myself a goal. I don't know how long mum has - my very uneducated guess tells me 6-8 weeks. I want to give her something before then, something of me. She has complained long and hard and with perfect justification that she knows little of my life. I am an enigma to her because that is the way I like to be. Now, with so little time remaining, it seems inadequate.

I want to finish this story if I can. It's a substantial story, long and involved. There's a lot of work in it. My aim though is to finish it and give it to her to read before she goes. I want to understand why I am so passionate about writing. I want to read and see, hopefully, that there is something there, something worth following. And I guess in the reflective surfaces of the story she might see something of my life that she has only ever speculated on before.

I want her to go knowing there was more to me than she thought. And I want her to feel that warmth that comes with the proud realisation that in her son there is more than meets the eye. She is proud of me and praises me up and down for my 'intelligence', and for what I have managed to achieve so far. That is nice, but it is this that really matters to me - one is something I do, the other is who I am. I want her to feel that, to know it, to feel some enlightenment at the end; and I guess I want it for me too.