Ta-dahs and to-dos
A mixed bag of gripes and glorious with all emotionality permitted
So far so Friday. I’ve been up since five thirty. Serves me right for sleeping with windows wide open and having no curtains. Though blearying now late afternoon, the reveille seems worth it for light that turned to gold the morning trees out back. I’m feeling frustrated and I’ll tell you for why.
I twisted a lens on to the camera and stepped outside before clocking six on the wall. To capture the blaze of earlybird colour.
The first dahlia was doing its ta-dah. I’ve never grown one before and this diva (wallflower she ain’t) has lived here in this earth longer than me so credit I can’t claim. Sneaking down the path with the first brew for weeks now, I’ve been trying to guess what colour she’d be wearing once she opened up that tight, glossy fist.
Turns out she’s pink. As pink as the sun-tinted skin on my boy’s neck in fact. I’m not going to say burned because I don’t think it’s quite that. It’s more the contrast between skin and hair that’s causing the illusory rosé sheen he’s got going on. He had his hair turned ‘beach’ Ken from Barbie a week ago and it’s turned hellish yellow. Which in turn makes his flesh appear all the more, well prawny.
He’s not the reason for my frustration feelings. Alright, he’s done a few things during the day which have tested patience. Like, take a cool thirty five minutes in Boots to find the vital purple shampoo which will tone the fuck out of his yellow hair. Me out back leaning on brick with the dog whilst J made the slowest, longest independent purchase in the land.
No, I’m the reason for my frustration.
Me not adjusting to the new and entirely predictable summer routine of work-care-work-feed-clean-work-answer questions-suggest an activity-work-want to give up-work-dog walk days. You know how it is when you’re driving along the motorway, making good time, it’s a scorcher, then abruptly you’ve to halt for the jam? And on a straight stretch with the tangible truth of jammy stuckness filling your field of vision? All that surging and clamour and jolty defiance before the inevitable surrender to what’s beyond your power. It feels like that, this first Friday of summer parenting. Just without any hope of a journey.
There’s plenty I haven’t managed to complete on today. I’ve variously …
Not walked the dog and will surely pay a petulant price for this error later when his reluctance to recall kicks in.
Not sent condolences to our local town bookshop One Tree Books which experienced a giant and devastating fire yesterday. Flames ripped through their roof along with the four adjoining properties. Thankfully no injuries were sustained.
Not quite completed the final fifty shots from a celebration commission photographed in June and which needs to be shared with the couple who’ll be waiting for them now that their moon has honeyed.
I’m also frustrated about the ‘showing her emotions’ situation that’s been all over the papers this week.
Why, when we’ve gathered a TRUCKLOAD of evidence to support that experiencing the full range of human emotions is indeed a sign of health and not the contrary, why are we still shaming certain emotions and positively endorsing others in places of power? And why is legacy media serving that shame up on a salty leading story front page platter?
Why are hard-edged, pointy shards of anger, spiky contempt and disgust hurled like spears around Westminster and yet, emotion which rolls from eyes and down cheeks is not permitted?
Emotions are meant to flow; it’s clearly when they don’t that there’s a real problem. A couple of people who called this on their socials over the last 48 hours are
, and also who shared a beautifully chosen poem on Poetry Shelf.I was going to write that it’s 2025 and that surely in these enlightened times (!) we ought to have normalised emotional range by now. But then, everything is cyclical right? In societal terms and trends. And clearly, cycling through our full humanity in environments where there is poor emotional literacy still poses massive problems.
Now that I’ve written a few of these frustrations out of my head and on to the page, I’m noticing what’s down underneath these words. And quite how alluring the scarlet/mauve striped canvas of that sun lounger is looking to my snoozy eyes. And that a book is needed.
