For one reason and another I’ve been thinking lately about the men in my life (and, just occasionally, the lack there of). Because my brain is just a weird and wacky place that never wants to give me a break, I keep circling back round to Mr T (some might know him as shanks – and yes, the lowercase is important).

Yup, that’s him posing in the picture at the head of this post – true story? He crashed that bike before he ever even got a license to ride it on the road. Yes, I have wonderful taste.

Another true story? Shortly after dumping me by text (I did mention about my taste, didn’t I?) he ended up getting engaged to my brother’s ex-girlfriend. If I had to put blame to the moment that made me realise my life was more than just a little bit weird and deserving of being shared on the internet, that was it.

I look back on my time with Mr T now with a kind of misty, warm glow and a wry smile for my silliness. Whilst remembering my complete naivety does make me shudder – and memories of spending three hours driving round Guilford still strike terror in my heart – I still have a certain fond attachment to those four/five months. I miss the Bambi-esque Cas I was then. There is something to be said for the way I just ran headlong into the situation like there was a Cas-shaped hole in the wall. Everyone told me “NOOOOOOO!!!!! Don’t trust the red-headed Physics student!” I just got stubborn, dug my heels in, and – I have to admit it – had an absolute blast.

I talked once about how I’m kinked to respond to smiles. Oooooh… that smile. Even looking back that smile gives me the tingles and reason to get a very private smirk. It wasn’t the kind of smile you relied on to bring you cups of tea and hold your hair back when you’re feeling sick. It was the kind of smile that took you out dancing and didn’t bring you home till the sun was just starting to come up. Two days later.

Last time I went back to the Homestead I got chatting with Curly Durly and, for reasons I can’t even remember now, I happened to mention Mr T. Boy do they tell it true when they say hell hath no fury like a mother getting protective over her little girl! When forced to explain her vitriol because as previously discussed, I look back on that incident with no real regrets and surely it should be me who’s still putting pins in the voodoo doll, she came out with “he broke my baby’s heart – of course I don’t like him!”

Ah, the moment where you have to reveal to your mother that despite her long-cherished beliefs your heart was NOT broken by the red-headed Physics student back in 2003. Followed swiftly by having to also disabuse her of the notion that he’d been your first true love…

*wince*

Anyway, back to the post because, though it looks like I’m just pootling around with the words because they want to get said, I do have a sort-of-point I want to make.

And the point is this – no matter what happened with shanks, I am able to look back with a grin in my heart (and a feisty twinkle in my eye) because I have no regrets. The wise thing would have not to gotten into the situation in the first place. Or backed out at the first opportunity (there were several). I should have listened to what everyone was saying from friends to family to random internet people who were clearly under the impression I’d lost what little I had left of my sanity.

But I didn’t. For possibly the first time in my life up to that point I listened to what my heart was telling me over my doubts and low self-esteme. So it ended as it ended; C’est la vie. No lasting damage was done, in fact my reputation around campus went from “she’s an up-tight, frigid cow” to “oh, so she is human after all!” more or less over night. Fun was had by the important parties. Even my friends got something out of it all because there were some mammoth bitching sessions held in the aftermath. You could make the argument that my evil step-gran got something out of the relationship because she could finally hold her head high at Bridge Evenings and say “no, my grandaughter isn’t a lesbian, she has had a boyfriend!” Every cloud and all that. (Bless my family!) So he ended up engaged to my brother’s ex-girlfriend; it gives me stories to tell and sure breaks the ice at dinner parties.

Regret rien. Try it.

So I lied just then – I do have one small regret. We never went properly dancing. I can live with that though I think. It’s an odd thing to feel proud of, but for a few months that smile was for little old ordinary me, and that makes me feel good.

(I’ve been doing some tidying on the desk, sorting through the mountain of paper erroneously referred to as my ‘filing’ and came across a scrappy notebook with a few pieces written down in it. I wrote this one with a mind to blog it but, well, it got ‘filed’ hence you not seeing it till now four months later. This is by way of explanation for the screwy time references as the party in question was actually back in August).

I’m not sure why, but this weekend talking to family and friends of the family at E’s party made me realize quite why I like writing so much. Perhaps it is because I had to explain my choice of publishing about ten times (once to a drunken Punjabi physiologist who’s determined to get me to India to find me a husband – long story).

This is going to sound trite and I’m not sure if I would have come up with it if I hadn’t been two sheets to the wind on some very fine chardonnay myself, but my reasoning was as follows -

I love the power of the written word. I love how two people with nothing in common can read something and it build a bridge between them. I love how twenty people can read something and each one take away a uniquely personal and different reading. I love how it can get people talking.

At the very root, perhaps this is most important to me, Good writing can start dialogue. I’d much rather people sat down and talked through differences than need to solve them at the point of a gun. Violence is abhorent to me – conversation really is the best solution.

I’m not saying every written thing does this – but the potential is there. People have been trying to persuade others with letters and writing since the beginning. One (or quite likely more) of the apostles wrote letters to assorted people to persuade them to be nice to each other. ^*1* People write to their MP and they write letters to the Editor. They sign petitions.

Books can carry information to those who didn’t initially have it. Writing can set you free. You learn about new ways of looking at things. You break down barriers.

That potential, that power for good and for connection, that’s why I want to work with the written word.

A quote from W. Somerset Maugham I came across recently seems an appropriate way of finishing off:

We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.

*1* Yes, I know I’m being vague. But it’s been a long time since Sunday School and I don’t keep a copy of the Bible on my bookshelves any more.

Steven Seagal is playing several gigs in Southampton in the New Year.

Really, truly.

Don’t believe me? Why not book some tickets.

Seasons greetings from us here at Meadow Towers.

Yes, we have a penguin wreath for the door.
No, I didn’t buy it.
No, I wasn’t going to put it up yet (the week before Christmas is soon enough for decorations thank you very much!) but Moose insisted.
He does look kind of cute though – any suggestions for names?

And now for the point to this post – I would like to do what I did last year and send out real christmas/holiday/non-religion-specific-hello cards to any one who would like one. Just my way of showing that I do appreciate you all for hanging round and reading my ramblings.

So, if you would like a card, email me and I will do my damnedest to get it in the post and to you by the big day. Or as near after as international posting and my unorganized nature allow!

(Even if you think I have your address already for whatever reason, let me have it again. My address book is a little… non-existent *blush*)

As a kid I absolutely adored Gerald Durrell’s “My Family and Other Animals” and devoured the battered paperback many times over before I reached my teens. Looking back on it now I am struck, not so much by the animals that litter the pages and that were the driving force for me reading the book as a child, but the his family itself. They are just so joyfully… odd. And British.

I remember at the time I was bitterly envious of this family who, seemingly on a whim up-sticks for Corfu for a few months and end up staying five years. They are close, zany, arguably certifiable and clearly live life as it comes. By contrast my own family seemed so darn ordinary. I’d have given my right kidney to live in Corfu, not Glastonbury. To be tutored at home whenever my tutor wasn’t drunk or too love-sick over my fictional sister. Not to be 2.4 with dog + cat. To truly not care…

Looking back now I realize how lucky I was, in fact still am, with my family.

My Dad worked for an international shoe company, packed eggs, bottled Babycham, raced all types of boats from dinghies to tall ships, drove taxis, worked for a Sheik, irradiated small schoolchildren and was the target of a local residence association petition (though they didn’t know it was him they were petitioning against – lord, they’d have thrown rocks if they’d known it was our family!). All by the time I was fifteen.

My uncle is an engineer-turned-brain-surgeon, a member of the TA-MC, featured on a C4 documentary, served in both Gulf Wars and Bosnia, drives a TukTuk, is building a working miniature steam railway to take people on rides round the farm, and makes his own honey.

My aunt weaves, makes marmalade and flapjacks to die for, is a Ph.D, has been to two garden parties with the Queen, and has made the most welcoming and friendly home imaginable.

My grandmother was called Mop, was an award winning artist, made her own jewelry and liked Burmese cats.

My grandfather chewed coffee beans at night in the kitchen in a vain attempt to hide from his wife that he’d been eating garlic. My surrogate grandmother was called Nobby.

My other grandfather served in Africa, taught me to play chess, couldn’t stand peas, insisted that custard tarts were served with afternoon tea and that only lime worked in a G&T.

My mother very nearly got sacked from work because she was a day late back from holiday due to being ship-wrecked off Portland Bill, but her boss didn’t believe her till she showed him the headlines in the papers. She raised my brother. She raised me. Her garden is the most beautiful patch of serenity I have ever seen, she was once snogged by a camel. She in invincible on Tetris, is unbeatable at Scrabble, and she once flirted with Charles Dance in the car park at school.

My cousin is a fully trained and qualified glass blower who has exhibited at Sotherby’s and who is now training to be a doctor. Another cousin has ridden for the UK. Yet another lives in Taiwan where he teaches English and helps his wife run a business where, among other things, they sell their own line of soap. He also rides a motorbike.

My brother lived in New York for four years, loves cooking, flies light aircraft for fun, annoys the hell out of me on a daily basis, listens to R.E.M, the Doors, and P!nk, plays the piano like an angel, the guitar like a devil, and has a pet rabbit called Gilbert.

And to top it all, my dad now lives on a narrowboat.

People seem amazed that I find things about my life to write about. I’m quite frankly amazed that most people can’t find things in their life to talk about.

I used to think my family were pretty normal, then I looked again and saw that no, they are wonderfully special. Everybody has stories to tell, you just need to have your eyes open so you can see them. I’m not sure what gods were smiling over my birth, but someone up there certainly had her finger in the mix. I guess I’m thankful I come from the family I come from. More than that though, I’m grateful I realised that before it was too late. Just think of the stories I would never have been able to tell you all else-wise!