No, I am not wheelchair bound. I am as fast on my feet as what’s his name, the messenger whinging it. What I am is – always somewhere else. Mainly abroad. To top it all my passport has run out. I told longest standing friend (think sandpit) that I am now a prisoner of this island courtesy to my country’s laws and their London embassy’s mills turning slowly. Though they will give me an emergency passport should someone close and across the sea die. Die. What sort of difference does that make to the dead? Prisoner on this island. What friend said – he is very dry: “”You have been a prisoner on those isles for a long time.”

Fact is, passport not withstanding: In theory I can go where I want. But where do I want to go? If there is one thing I hate it is choice paralysis. And choice paralysis has set in. We need reason in life. Definition. And sometimes we realize that we have too much of a good thing. And too little of the other.

U

U

Today I found the assertion that “Erotic lovers view marriage as an extended honeymoon, and sex as the ultimate aesthetic experience”. Be that as it may. I most certainly would never describe sex as the ultimate AESTHETIC experience. It’s gore. If not blood most certainly sweat. Enter condoms – that most evil of inventions since Lord Byron used dried oxens’ bladders to keep population under control; condoms re-instated AFTER a brief and most marvellous interval in the sixties and seventies. The contraceptive pill. Happy days. All we were concerned about was NOT getting pregnant. Yes. Those were the days. Now sex is sex with surgical gloves on. How I do my washing up. Barrier method: Marigold – yellow – guaranteed to keep a skin between hot water and my fair hands. I hate condoms. With a vengeance. Seriously. Has anyone ever considered the exhilarating surge when sperm, unhindered, hits the end of a woman’s tunnel and what it does? No. Thought not.

Where were we? Aesthetics. To me rubber is as un-aesthetic as it can get. Enough to drive you back into the nunnery and dream of better times.

U

PS Don’t forget to wash your hands next time you touch anyone (by accident)

PPS I wonder how sperm feels being tripped up at the first hurdle

Go by your gut feeling. Never ever ignore instinct. The pit of your stomach will tell you where it’s at.

U

In case you wonder why my font has NOT gone large: Don’t. It’s me who is going blind. Not you. And particularly not you, Lorna.

So what’s YOUR snake, the one that spoils some of your enjoyment of life? If you find this question too personal and intimate to answer in public please do indulge me in private. As most of you, and I, know, to my cost: Nothing will go far or further with me.

And it’s only Monday. By Saturday we’ll be roasting in a slow cooker. Falling off the bone.

Hugs and kisses, as ever yours in your hour of no need,

U

U aka V

Hugs and kisses

U

The good news is that I was once proposed to by a Professor of a language I shall not disclose to you.   He had accepted a posting in Paris (Goethe Institut), promised to take me to a Viennese Ball, allow me all licence taking my fancy and generally make my life as soporific as only I can appreciate it. Yes. Insert pregnant pause. And more yes. Except it was a no.

Let’s leave aside that at the time I was married already (to my first husband). Considering that I am not the marrying kind it’s never stopped anyone proposing to me. I wish I were one of Emma’s sisters (ref. Jane Austen). At least her mother wouldn’t have had any problems marrying me off.

So if I had married the Professor my blog’s readers and I would have probably never met, and even if we had, I’d be “Parlez-vous Francais?” NON? Well go away then. Because the French only speak French. Even when ordering French fries.

Fast forward – not that fast. Instead of which after gently disposing of husband number one I married an English man. An English Man of the most exacting type. You want a cucumber sandwich? You can have cucumber sandwich – extra thin. You want tea in The Ritz? You will. Just make sure to wear a tie. Unless you want to be humiliated by the doormen offering you a left over. You want an after-eight? Just make sure you … Don’t ask. I have suffered more than an education in the use of an apostrophe.

Don’t knock The Ritz. I had champagne there after getting hitched at Marylebone Registry Office (the church ceremony being in the father/motherland two days later). Wish that bloody scanner of mine be working to provide you with photographic evidence. Give me a few more months and I’ll be back in the money replacing all that is on its last leg.

Which brings me neatly back to where I started: Instead of speaking French 99 % of the day I now speak English 99.9 % of the day (I do swear in the mother tongue which accounts for the missing .1 %).

I leave all of you with offspring with a dreadful thought: Imagine I’d have married the Professor, the Angel wouldn’t exist. No contest there then.

May your egg hatch too. Happy Easter,

Ursula

PS Not so much an afterthought as a fact: The Englishman proposed to me in Paris.

PPS To keep the record straight: The Englishman is now – and has been for a considerable time – married to an American. A Catholic. The Englishman, apart from being a gentleman and a defender of the apostrophe, only has  two pet hates: Americans and Catholicism. One wonders. So far so good. And let me remind you: He is the father of my son. And few can claim that accolade.

My father, the sailor and ever so practical, will approve. As will any logistics expert. As will Looney and Conrad, the engineers.

There is no rush, guys and guyesses. Take it easy.

U

I loved mangling. Helped my grandmother to pull those sheets in one end out the other. No wonder I find ironing satisfying to this day.

In order to head off my next nervous breakdown (I nearly had ONE aged 19 when I threw a sponge soaked in red red wine against a white wall) I have been archiving and generally tidying up my life in the last few days. Once it’s finished I shall not know what to do with myself. In fact, I live in dread: What do you do once you have cross referenced everything? We’ll see. I suppose I could dance with the devil on the blue sea.

Anyway, the point of this post that I AM IN LOVE. Yes, with my handwriting. I love my handwriting. I do I do I do. I have reams of the stuff. Where the typewritten appeals to my sense of efficiency, my handwriting appeals to my self. My handwriting is ME. My identity. As, of course, is that of others. A few months ago I tidied all my private correspondence received. By sender. I didn’t need to look at ‘sender’. One look at a squiggle, a slant, and I knew exactly which pile it’d go on.

To end on a slightly melancholic note: What we cherish most we live in fear and dread to lose.

U