Never take the front seat in a taxi…

Not if you’re on your own. I used to always, always, hop in the front, not wanting to seem rude. Politely engaging in short conversations with the driver – whatever their topic-du-jour – I was in the cab, next to them, agreeing, commenting, adding my opinion to theirs. No matter how homophobic or racist or sexist they were. I just didn’t want to be considered rude or snobbish.

Are you married?

Yes. I reply (omitting the fact that it’s to a woman).

They talk to me about property values, the state of the economy, immigration, roads, and all I want to do is stare out of the window and disengage. This relationship that we have is both fleeting and annoying. An invasion of privacy. But it’s my fault none the less. Sitting in the front of the taxi gives licence for conversation.

When my neighbours sold their house, all I wanted was that it not be bought by property developers. When the property developers bought it, all I wanted was for them to improve the house, not sub-divide.

They’re building a new house in their back yard. My small, 2-bedroom dwelling will be dwarfed, surrounded by beige-brick monstrosities.

We, of course, objected… to their plans, to their noisy renters who drink far too much on most weeknights and continue their party into the weekends. We objected, and rang the police to send someone out when at 5 in the morning the bloody noise was still thump-thump-thumping in our bedroom, even though our bedroom was the farthest room from next door.

As I get older, I realise just how precious my privacy is, and just how much I need to preserve it in order to also preserve my sanity.

There’s little I could do when the council decided to approve the development plans, except negotiate for a taller fence. But at least now I choose to sit in the back of the taxi.

I’m not being rude, I just like my space, that’s all.

seven silver sleepers

My friend's mum just died. Correction, my ex-girlfriend’s mum died last week but I only found out about it this morning via text-message. I was in the bus on my way to work thinking how I should reply, or even, should I reply? I didn’t know her at all and I’d met her only once. She’d commented to my then-girlfriend on the ‘metal junkyard’ in my ear. I don’t think she thought much of me at all, which was somewhat of a shock. I had always been the kind of girl that people wanted to take home to meet the parents.

Not this time.

I had seven piercings in one ear, three in the other, and a stud in my nose. And back then, (god, I make myself sound so old… back then… yes I suppose it was thirteen years ago, if not more…)

Back then that level of facial piercing was considered unusual, quite possibly the mark of a serial-killer or handbag-stealer.

I was neither. I just happened to have a good deal of scrap metal in my head, and none of it was for medical reasons.

Prior to the piercings, parents considered me intelligent, interesting, hell even nice. I wasn’t going to remove my piercings just because I might offend someone. On the contrary, they became somewhat of a bullshit-detector.

If you were going to judge me on appearance then by all means you could just bugger off. Besides, I was, and still am, deaf in my left ear. Completely and utterly. No surround sound for me.

It gave people a signpost: ‘don’t walk on her left side… don’t talk to her left side, she’s deaf… I said she won’t hear you…’

I liked to tell people that I used the earrings to stimulate all my acupuncture points in the vain hope that somehow it would trigger a regeneration of the nerve in my ear. Yes. I was trying to cure my deafness, could they not be so cruel as to comment on it? Just how superficial and shallow they were.

Late last year I removed all my earrings, my nose-piercing was taken out many years before. I did this for my partner’s sister’s wedding so that the photos wouldn’t have the shiny reflection of seven silver sleepers in the lens. I just never put them back in. Not for anything but sheer laziness.

Beginnings... beginnings... beginnings...

There is much to be said about the keeping of a diary, thoughts, phrases, ideas. All to be recorded in a notepad and saved for later. I have done this for years. There is a forest of unclaimed notes and general word-guff collecting dust on many of my bookshelves. Every time I move house (which hopefully now will NOT be often) I lovingly pack the books and lug them to their new residence. In short - I am a hoarder. Occasionally I will take them out, have a read, get awfully embarrassed and wonder why I kept them in the first place. Sometimes though, I am proud of what I wrote, and it marks the beginning of a new piece of writing.

This blog is the electronic version. (Oh duh! I hear you say. And... do we need these ramblings?)

No, you don't. But I think I do.

My shoes don’t match, that’s not to say that they’re not a pair. They’re in the style of the Mary-Jane: flat, rounded toe, thin strap across the foot. Very comfortable, very sensible. On the body of the left is embroidered three gold stars, on the right – a crescent moon, and hence, they don’t match, but still are most definitely a pair.

This morning he looked at me , smiled and burped. I waited the customary two seconds before the vomit that goes with the belch to appear. ‘You made cheese!’ I say. Though strictly it is much more like yoghurt, curdled milk. He smiles again and I wonder if I’m giving him a cheese-phobia. Not that he has to eat cheese when he is older, just that I don’t want him to be scared of it or think that it is made from vomit.

This is the beginning, I don’t know what happens next.

I caught a reflection of myself in the glass doors as I was walking past. The cut of my pants don’t seem to go with my shoes and the covering skirt is a different length on both sides. I don’t think I strive to be asymmetrical, it happens by accident.

It has been almost five months since his birth, and when I tell people this they look at me with incredulity –impressed that I have so quickly and easily shed my ‘baby-weight’. It is at this point that I correct them‑there was no baby weight. (Could they shut-up about the baby‑weight?) In fact it was my partner who gave birth, not I. and still, she had no baby-weight. Only three tiny stretch-marks to prove that he was ever in there to begin with.

Does it make me jealous? Yes, I suppose it does. I think I would have liked to feel the kicks from the inside, and known that there were two heartbeats; one- rapid-fire, the other somehow calmer, if not just slower.

But the jealousy doesn’t mature into the now. When my shoulder gets covered with yoghurt, freshly made and regurgitated with a smile, I know that he is also mine.

The blue eyes and blond hair surprise everyone. He even looks like me.