shhh, strictly entrez-nous!

I feel a little inhibited, yes, me, the mouse who has admitted to the world that she was battered by her first love, treated like a doormat by her husband, bullied by her colleagues and who failed her partner in France...
The mouse who has told the whole of cyberspace that she is anxious and shy and that she drags a Black Dog behind her...
The mouse who insists in standing on her own two feet and walking her own path even if it turns into a dead end or, as has happened recently, takes her to the edge of a precipice

That mouse

Why do I feel inhibited?
Because a New Friend reads this blog

Now, I am nothing if not honest and open because I've learned, through this blog, that there are a great many people out there who have also been abused and bullied and many of them are feeling ashamed and bad as a result and many, many people feel as if they are out of step with the rest of the world and I really want to let them know that they are not alone.

And that they shouldn't feel bad
Because I understand
and hey, if I can survive and keep laughing as I stumble along, then so can they

But, we all have a public personna, the face that we like to show to the world
and a very private one that we keep hidden, often from ourselves
It shouldn't be like that
We should all be able to be ourselves, failings, faults and all
But in our society that is impossible

Even so, with our loved-ones we should be ourselves
They deserve that much
And if who we are and what we are doesn't match their expectations then they are not the right person with whom we should share our lives
I have spent a great many years trying to be the person my partner wanted me to be
I have twisted myself all out of shape in the process
and it has never worked

So, I am the softest, least demanding, most caring person
I can't do conflict, never have, never will
But I am also adventurous and questionning and prone to dreaming
I am shy and often anxious but I can be passionate and wild
I love languages and Lapland and log cabins and snow
I adore my Rags and would, without hesitation, die for them
And I still think that anything is possible given courage and strength and determination
I still believe that if I close my eyes and wish hard enough I can fly

je suis comme je suis
je suis fait comme ça

So, this is me
This is who I am

I am not going to censor myself
I am not going to pretend to be someone I am not
I am going to remain open, honest and, above all Me
Because at my age and with my past experiences I have earned that right

Are you still reading Mike?
I hope so...

more lost diginity...

I managed to avoid a further wardrobe malfunction today so I thought I would be able to make it through to 5:30 without blushing

All was going well until 4pm when I disentangled myself from my computers and walked out of our office to make a nice cup of tea. A well-earned cup of tea since I'd missed lunch, again.

Standing by the coffee machine was A Frenchman.
He works in Translation.
I've never spoken to him.
He's very tall, dark and, well, French and I am very small, grey and, well mousey.

As I was making my cup of tea he turned to me and said " Ca va?"
"Oui, ça va bien merci, er, non je suis tout à fait fatiguée"
I don't know what came over me, talking French to a Frenchman like that.

It was so easy in France but here I feel silly and tongue-tied.
I tried to explain
"The French sound so lovely when they speak English but we just sound dumb when we try to speak French"

"Mais non" he replied with a twinkle in his eyes
"I have heard you speaking French with X. and you sound so charming, so sexy, so..."

I blushed furiously, knocked over my tea and fled back to the safety of my office.
As I sat down I realised that I have become so shy!
I mean, I was never a very brazen type, I'm too lacking in confidence and feminine wiles to flirt openly, but really I should be able to exchange a little light-hearted banter with a friendly Frenchman, n'est-ce pas?

I think the problem is that I don't socialise and the only men I talk to are geeky kids young enough to be my son so I have lost the art of talking to strangers. Strange men at least. Strange men who are attractive and French.

There is no hope for me, I am A Lost Cause
Lost for words.
Lost In Translation

on lost dignity...

So, I'm standing in the ladies loo at work and my left arm is stuck in the sweater that I am trying to pull off over my head because my chain is caught in the collar and I'm muttering to myself like one of those old ladies you see on buses who conduct entire conversations with an imaginary friend, only my language is a little riper and peppered with French expletives, and I finally emerge, tousled and red-faced to discover A Sales Woman standing at the full-length mirror gazing lovingly at her reflection.

She wasn't there when I began the process of extricating myself from the sweater.
I wouldn't have attempted it if I'd had company.
Especially a Dolly Bird Sales Type.

I glanced at her and smiled but she was too busy admiring herself
She did look quite admirable...
Tall, skinny, not a hair out of place...
While I looked like a pile of jumble sales rejects

I thought about wandering over to the mirror to check my own make-up, the hastily applied kohl around my eyes, the mascara that's been in situ for a couple of days, the unruly hairdo but I felt too intimidated by Ms Perfect

So I gathered up my bag, books and the sweater and fled with as much diginity as I could muster
As much diginity as remained after an early-morning tussle with my unruly knitwear
As much dignity as a woman of my age can scrape together after one such encounter

Alas and alack
When I was halfway back to the safety of my desk I realised that my skirt was firmly tucked into my knickers

Mt St Michel

I heard on Radio 4 that there is an uproar over plans to install a wind farm near Mt St Michel.
What IS the French for nimby?
pdmj?
pas dans mon jardin
It doesn't sound so good, does it?

Long-time readers will know that I have had a long love-affair with Mt St Michel.
During my first après-séparation from The Ex holiday to Brittany I took the Rags there.We'd arrived on the over-night ferry in Dante, my trusty, now abandoned rusty, escort and driven down from Caen. The kids slept while I negotiated the French roads for the first time, driving down through Normandy, past apple orchards, green meadows, cows grazing contentedly until we neared the border with Brittany.

Our destination was the south coast and we had a long way to go but for some reason I took a detour, took a road less-travelled and drove them to Mt St Michel.
And we fell in love.

That holiday was to be un tournant, a turning point.
A few years later I left everything behind and moved to Brittany.
I think that Mt St Michel played a large part in that decision.

We returned and stayed overnight en route to a holiday in Paimpol.
The holiday during which I thought "Why not?"

We took The Bostonian and his son on a holiday to Normandy a few years later
We stayed at La Mère Poulard to celebrate my 50th birthday

When I lived in France it was a mere 1 1/2 hour drive, 2 hours on a bad day, from my house.On March 7th 2007 I declined the offer of a neighbour to celebrate what would have been my wedding anniversary by watching them slaughter their pig, and went, instead, to Mt St Michel.

I once declared that had I married The Someone we would have spent my wedding night there.
He didn't ask me, tant pis, I probably would have declined anyway

But if I do ever marry again then it will be Mt St Michel that will witness the start of our new life together. Room 205 by choice.

Mt St Michel is hell during the day, at any time of the year
It is impossible to move for tourists
It's the most visited site in France
People arrive in coaches from Paris for goodness sake!
But being a tourist myself I can't complain

But if you do stay overnight and have the opportunity to sneak out of bed at 5am on a summer morning it is magical
The empty streets are captivating
The peace and serenity of a sleeping Mt St Michel are as balm to the soul

You can sit on the steps by the gate and gaze down on picture-postcard streets
You can climb to the entrance to the abbey and sit and gaze at the bay and meditate
You can wander back down between the houses and skip and dance for joy
Before returning to your hotel to wake your sleepy Ragazzi and drag them off for breakfast

Do I think that a wind farm on the mainland would spoil Mt St Michel?
No, not at all
Mt St Michel is too timeless, too enduring to be bothered

the magical mystery tour.

Relationships at my age are like bus journeys....

You wait, standing in a cold drizzle at a lonely little bus-stop and watch other buses pass by.
Once in a while a bus approaches, slows down and the driver looks at you appraisingly before accelerating and driving past.
You stare at the rapidly receding tail lights and wonder Why?

Occasionally a bus will stop and you exchange a few words with the driver.
"Are you going my way?"
"Do you already have a passenger on board?"
"How much is the ride going to cost me?"

Many of the drivers can't answer or if they do it's with
"Where would you like to go?"
"Yes but she's getting off soon"
"Everything you possess, and more"
and you know that they are not good buses
They will only take you to a dead-end.
Best not to board these buses.

Once in a while you find yourself on a bus that seems perfect.
The driver is kind, funny, smart, companionable.
He lets you take the wheel from time to time.
You cruise along happily for days, weeks, months, even years.
And then something happens, you take a wrong-turn, he lets another passenger join you, your bus runs out of petrol, and you find yourself back at the bus-stop in the cold drizzle with all of your emotional baggage in a heap at your feet and a crumpled timetable in your hand.

Sometimes you accidentally board a very bad bus.
It may take a while to realise that the driver is not what he seems.
But as you sit in your seat you suddenly realise that he's going the wrong way.
He's jumping red lights, driving too fast, cutting up other buses.
All you can do is stagger to the front and jump off when he's not looking.
Jump off and land battered and bruised in the gutter.
Often without your luggage.

When you're young it's easy.
You know there will be plenty of buses passing by.
You know that you can hop on and off whenever the fancy takes you.
You know that the ride may be short.
It doesn't matter, there will be another bus along shortly.

As you get older you notice that most of the buses are occupied by couples.
Many of them look as if they've been cruising together forever.
They have little stickers proudly displaying the stopping-off points they've enjoyed.
A white wedding, 2.4 children, a silver wedding anniversary.
On the front their destination shines.
Many, many more years of shared travelling.

Some of the buses are full of families.
Dad at the wheel, Mom by his side.
A clutch of kids bickering on the back-seat.
You rode a bus like that once, you think.
And you smile and wave and the kids wave back.

Once in a while a bus comes along that feels right.
You sit back in your seat with a sigh of relief.
You gaze at the back of the driver's head and smile and relax.
And then he tells you that he's not going to be driving for long.
He plans to pull into the terminus.
Your journey ends too soon, you're back at the bus-stop.

The buses that are driven by men of your age are battered and old.
They bear the scars of one-too many romantic crashes.
One too many breakdowns.
They carry too much baggage.
And so you step back from the kerb, look away and pretend to be waiting for a taxi.
You do not flag them down.

After a while you decide that the right bus will never come along.
You decide to cut your losses.
You set off walking.
Alone.

And then, just as your shoes start to pinch, the cold seeps into your bones and your baggage seem to be too heavy to bear
three buses all arrive at once
and they're all going your way

bleached bones

It occured to me the other day that I haven't felt well for, well years. Aside from a brief period during my first year in France when a stranger told me "I can tell you're a resident, you look so relaxed and well". That lasted a few weeks into my relationship with The Someone when a neighbour told me I was "blooming" and then he began to get angry and I began to shrink from his black moods into somewhere deep inside myself where, I hoped, wrongly, the fallout of his fury couldn't reach me.

I tried to think when, pre-France I DID feel fit and well and I can only conclude that it was around 10 years ago. Around the time that I returned to work after my ten year At Home Stint and threw myself into the role of Little Ms Tech Support, a role that I worked at so hard that it eventually led to a breakdown and burnout.

Now I am struggling to overcome the accumulated harm caused by too much hardwork, too many responsibilities and too little support.

Let no-one pretend that work-related stress is not damaging to the health.
The statistics show that the risk of depression, heart-disease, diabetes and yes, even cancer, is greater for those who put work before health and colleagues/customers before self.

I went to France to escape the downward spiral of stress/depression and despair, now I have to find a way to live with it again here in England.

It's not easy, it's not easy at all.
There are days when...
and the nights!

Oh the sleepless nights, the anxious nocturnal wanderings, the endless worries that the dark hours magnify until they've grown into monsters and the dragging myself exhausted and spent out of bed and off to work.

And when I arrive at the office I have to assume the air of an outgoing, enthusiastic, cheerful little soul when inside all I feel is twisted into a knot of fear.

I have to do that because that is how the people with whom I work view me and I am not about to prove them wrong by falling apart again, encore une fois, in front of an office full of embarassed colleagues.

It does get easier.
There are days when I do not panic quite so much
There are even days when I almost relax, but only almost.
I am usually as tense as a hunted animal, ready to run at the first sign of danger, whether real or imaginary and usually the latter

But still I smile a lot, I joke a great deal and I am everyone's little friend and surrogate auntie

I have learned so much in the last few years
I can't even begin to tell you just how much
But I have also become diminished and spiritually dry
Dry and dessicated like a pile of bleached bones

I need to immerse myself in the healing waters of laughter, of frienship, of love.
I need to emerge from the hard little shell that has grown to encase me.
I need to to stop hiding.
From the world, from my problems, from myself

So, I have been listening to a BBC Radio 4 programme called All In The Mind - Happiness
I am advised that each night before going to bed I should write down three good things that happened to me during the day
I hope that I can get away with 2 on some days, perhaps just 1 when I am dragging The Black Dog along with me

And to write a list of my strengths
Hmmm not sure about that
How about compassionate? Enthusiastic? Caring?

I fear that the list of my weaknesses would be longer and probably take me a long time to write
Anxious, depressed, terrible with money, too adventurous, too soft, afraid of conflict, too prone to dwell in The Past, nostalgic, did I mention anxious?

to name but a few
I'm not so sure this is such a good exercise

But it seems that positive people live longer so it's a good trick to try to acquire, isn't it?
This positive approach to life

Actually I have one more strength
I am a survivor

Here's to all of those out there who are struggling and especially to those who, once beaten down, bounce back up again

the two-dish woman

Overheard on the radio this morning
"Most mothers in England cook only nine different meals for their family"

There followed an interview with two "working women" one of whom seemed proud of the "only two dishes" she cooks, spaghetti bolognaise, of course, and chicken risotto

My thoughts?
I once stood in the kitchen after a long and very tiring day at work, looked at the back of a packet of chicken in cream sauce (M&S) and timed how long it took me to cook a similar one from scratch - twenty minutes to chop onions, fry them with strips of chicken, stir in some flour, pour into a dish with stock and a handful of tarragon and stick in the oven.
I added a few 5-minute micro-waved jacket potatoes to keep it company.

Of course the chicken bubbled away in the oven for half an hour but during that time we walked the dog through the woods and when we returned I simply stirred in some cream, boiled a few frozen peas et, voilà, dinner à trois

It cost me less than the M&S version
It was fresh and wholesome
It was additive, preservative, e-number free
But best of all was the pleasure I received from cooking dinner for my Rags
A simple act of love that managed to assuage the eternal guilt of the working, single mother

I think that's what the 2-dish interviewee is missing
That cooking is not a chore
It's an adventure, a pleasure, a delight
And it really is good for everyone

and the M&S chicken? It lived in the bottom of the freezer for a long time and then was re-discovered, examined and discarded
I was too busy cooking real food

reading signs, and cookbooks

Life is full of coincidence, n'est-ce pas?
Though I prefer to call them Signs
and lord knows there are times when a few signpots are very welcome as I meander, lost, along this different path, though do not get me wrong, following different paths is what I do best, it is my whole raison d'etre

So, yesterday I was catching up with my blog friends and called in on Marja-Leena to read a post in which she talked about fires and heating and Keep The Home Fires Burning and that reminded me so poignantly of France and my beloved stove and I have to admit, yes I shed a few tears...

but it got me thinking that one of the many, many (read many) things that I miss about France is cooking and all that involved in rural Brittany...
the trip to the Wednesday market in Callac to see what was freshest and available...
driving to Paimpol to buy fresh fish from the horrendously expensive shop by the harbour...
clambering over rocks to collect mussels...
receiving gifts of organic veggies from B's garden all summer...
oh dear, I feel a few tears may soon fall again

Anyway, I thought I should cook more often

And then I was trying to remove a reluctant cat from under the Ragazza's bed when I pulled out, instead, an old copy of one of those trashy mags that she reads. The kind that reveal, in more detail than I, personally care to read, about the intimate lives of Famous People. (Who are they anyway, these Famous Folk I have never heard of?) and it fell open at a page called What Katy Wore, in which Katy's boyfriend blogged for a year about her different daily outfits. I was impressed. I don't possess enough clothes to blog for a week about them, I wear a quirky skirt and a modest top to the office each dayand as long as I never fall into the habit of donning jeans and a company T-shirt, or one of those so beloved of geeks that have binary strings printed on them, then I am content with my lot, and my look.

But it got me thinking that I should start cooking again.
And perhaps a different dish a day?
After all, I have so many cookbooks gathering dust and so many jars of ingredients and a whole cupboard full of spices...
And when I am too introspected too post anything else, perhaps I could just post a Mouse's Daily Meal over on my sadly neglected foodie blog
Plus, it would be great preparation for the day when I return to France and host crazy Breton house parties for guests, n'est-ce pas?

And then I called in at A Muse Bouche to read "a diary of what he cooked and ate over the course of a year." and I decided Yes, I will start cooking again and I will cook a different dish a day and blog about it.

Now, you know me, it will not just be a recipe and a picture
It will also be a random reflection on life and so, often, a little personal, so do not expect to find a Cookbook if you happen to wander over there
No, as is my way, it will be Curing Through Cooking, Healing Over The Hotplate, Dinner for The Depressed etc etc

What do you think?
A Mouse Under The Cooker once more?