woohoo

Okay so I know it is not a big deal for y'all but I have just done my first personal fiction writing in well over a month. I refused to call it blocked, I called it many things but not block. I went back to what I know. So people I used to know, situations I used to either be a part of or were aware of are getting an airing and possibly I am still on target for nanowrimo. Oh I so hope so, lots of prayer, bucket loads of prayer and an equal quantity of "Get over yourself Suzie, you can write, you great goolar!"

And here it is:

 

Brian made the most of his glass eye, he’d stole a load of
them from some ophthalmic surgeon, just because he could. He was like that,
stealing was never about what he could get for the stuff it was the excitement
of not getting caught.

There was this one time we stole a grandfather clock from
the lobby of a shoe factory. We were running along a towpath when we heard the
cops so Brian said to ditch it in the canal. We could have been caught, it was
so funny.

When we got older and the thieving got more serious, Brian
still did it for kicks. If he needed cash for stuff he went on the rob in our
local nightclub. There’d be a few empty pockets but everyone was so drunk they
never knew.

Up the valley from us was a huge warehouse, we used to recce
while drinking vast quantities of vodka. It was my dream job, like winning the
lottery or something. The pinnacle of my thieving career. Brian didn’t care
about the money, just the fun.

We were nineteen when we teamed up with Pete and Roob, we worked
out that at twenty past ten the watchman settled down to watch a video and by
eleven he was zonko. I was so jittery Brian and I sluiced some H, it took the
edge off but it was nothing like a real high. I needed like meth as well those
days to get a hint of former glory of highs.

The job was going well till we got inside and the freaking
place was empty. Pete went beserk started slapping Brian around . Brian popped
his eye which freaked Pete and Roob. They went running the losers and the old
watchman got them. We went out the way we got in, laughing all the way cos we
nearly got caught.

Brian laughed whenever he thought of that night. Next year I
got cleaned up, I don’t know how and went to college and I got myself a proper
job with a wage and everything. I sometimes would see Brian, he moved out of
his flat and lived in the park and he got older looking and then I didn’t see
him no more.

One day this girl came by and had a box for me, said it was
from Brian. I sat looking at it for a long time. I knew he was gone, proper
gone, and this was his stuff for me. I laughed when I opened it, in the middle
was the mock lizard eye and around – all the eyes he stole from the doctor. I
raised a glass of Vimto to him. 

 

oddities

random thoughts and positions followed me today. I was so flitty in my mind that when Kay came for coffee she told me to shut up. Usually it is the other way round.

I got knocked off my feet and onto my knees by one powerful awesome God and spent some time in the child yoga position and let the peace surround and invade me.

Caroline and Lisa this morning had wisdom for me as well as just being there to let me vent. Rosa sorted herself out which meant I was free for Shona. Life is complicated, or we make life complicated. Caroline is such a blessing in my life, she has that york common sense so missing in my own life. Lisa is stepping up, always a bit of an oddity herself she is pushing through the pontification and had some valid stuff to say today. 

Rosa and Shona, my two bffs, oh how I pray for the day when they will be churched. Rosa making a patchwork quilt of life and Shona like a bull in a china shop. Beautiful people, my people. If or when I leave here I will miss them most.

Just as I put down the dinner, Kay rang and came over. Flitty Suzie and flitty Kay spoke non stop for a thousand sentences or more only curtailed by our phones and more conversations. She left whilst Troolie was sharing wisdom.

A real girlie day with wise flitty unchurched women and a mighty astonishing Lord. I needed today both the fellowship and the kneeling. Bonus yoga.

To Do:

write to Charlene cos she is reading this and I like to give her a land in a good way

write Troolies name too so she can smile wryly

sort my oddities out

 

unblocked birthdays

When the conversation moves towards birthdays I start exiting the building in spirit if not in actual physicality. When I was young, pre-six, birthdays I am sure were the usual mixture of good and bad that every other day was.

On my seventh birthday I discovered that my daddy would not be visiting because it was his girlfriend, Gwendolyn’s birthday. A relative of mine named it "Witches Day" and people wept. I didn't, I went off up the hill and lit a wee fire.

The day I became eight I was encouraged to curse my, by now, stepmother and this ritual was repeated each year until she woke a few days after my tenth birthday paralysed. There was no need to curse the next year.

What a focus to have as a birthday, the ability to paralyse a woman 30 miles away, the inability for a child to celebrate a birthday and a man caught in the headlights. Gwendolyn was scared of the hold I had over my daddy so she kept us apart. We were apart for too long.

Every time I moved I gave him my address and phone number. Not that I am still counting but sixteen years ago he rang me. I was living in a castle; he wanted to speak to my children. I did not refuse but I set limits about when and how. He failed.

My female relatives told me later he only rang because he was drunk. He was drunk every day so that was not a valid reason. Gwendolyn, however, was not present. That was the key difference. She was having a bypass, triple, quadruple, quintuplet, who knows? But she had a stroke and he became a carer.

We finally had something in common but we didn't communicate in this new community of caring. He didn't take to caring very well; he drank copiously and met a new girlfriend. I think he probably always had girlfriends just one or two stick out.

The mill owner's house with its servant quarters and my non-birthdays are all in the past. I am not ready to re-join the community of birthday keepers but every now and then I let it slip. Twenty five years ago I prayed to God for a baby and while I was doing that a girl-child was born on the other side of the world to a big family. She has happily lost too much weight, a bobble head on a skinny frame.

I told a friend on Friday I might write about birthdays one day but I was blocked at the moment. Well I am not blocked anymore and I have written about birthdays and I am thankful I have managed that. It is not a huge story; it is just what it is. A sad tale of thoughtless adults and impressionable children.

My daddy asked me to call him Tony when I was seven; very avant garde, but I needed a dad not just another man. God is my daddy, he is always around. Whenever I need him he is there. And we hang out even when it is just for fun, he guides me when I do stuff wrong to show me the right way. He is everything I need from a parent and more. It would have been nice to have a human dad but knowing I have a heavenly father I can rest in that.

So I consider my birth-day to be the day I became a new creation, transformed, and made new. God is my father and he loves me. I will continue to keep the day to myself and God because the emotions it invokes are difficult for me, forty years of difficult but within a few breaths I remember, this is different, this is real, and this is for God.