Three years ago…I published this post.
Two years ago…I originally published this post, and I posted it last year for a second time.
One year ago…I published this post. I was very pleased with it. So here it is again.
(By the way, I did make it back there at the start of June, I needed to)
I am about to go on holiday for two weeks. I will be visiting various family members and friends. I hope to take lots of photos and share them in posts. Two weeks of pleasure seeking and seeing loved ones – cannot wait!
But before I go, I want to get something out of my system. It has been looming over me…so I am going to tackle it aggressively! Well…I mean face it head on without shutting it out of my mind.
The park I went to that night. It is a beautiful place. One of my favourite locations in London. I had been there hundreds of times in the five years I had lived in London. I want that park to be beautiful in my mind…not a place I associate with a traumatic event. Since that night, I have been back three times.
This is where it happened. There is nothing outstanding about this spot. But I do remember sitting on one of the benches that night. This is a photograph taken from the bench I sat on that night.
When I first arrived at around 10.30pm, it was still fairly light. There were people walking their dogs, there were joggers, there were teenagers sitting on the grass listening to music and chatting. There were people sitting on other benches nearby.
As I sat there, I became engrossed with my own thoughts. I remember tears rolling down my face because I did not know what to do about my ex-flatmate who seemed to be sucking all of the life and joy out of me. I did not notice that all of the sunlight had vanished and I was sitting in the dark. I did not notice that there were no more dog-walkers, no more joggers and no more teenagers listening to music.
I remember a man sitting next to me. I remember a lot of other things which I am choosing not to write about because I don’t see why those details would be remotely helpful to anyone else. What he did does not pain me anymore. It is the situation with my ex-flatmate that pains me still.
The first time I visited this location after that night, I remembered something else. The trees in this part of the park – they are brilliantly easy trees to climb. I had been at this precise location a few weeks earlier with a friend and her sons. We had been teaching the boys how to climb trees. So much fun.
It was ever so helpful to remember that. Such a beautiful park, I want the happy memories to be the ones that dominate.
When I first moved to London I bumped into a friend from Wiltshire who just happened to be visiting one of my neighbours. She wanted to go out for a coffee and a chat. It was a beautiful sunny day. I still did not know the area very well. But my neighbour took us to this park. There is a house, part of which is now a café. We sat outside in the sunshine, before having a wander around the park. I fell in love with the park that afternoon. I would frequently visit over the next five years.
It is very helpful to remember that. This beautiful park, full of happy memories I have shared with friends. I have taken many friends who were visiting me to the park and we have had long walks followed by coffee and cake in the café. I want those to be the memories that dominate.
These are the ponds where people can swim. I had always wanted to go for a swim in these wild ponds, but I was a bit nervous of going alone. A few days before I was attacked, a group of us came down to this park to do our keep fit class. One of the regulars was moving abroad to get married and he wanted to have a special class as it was his last week with us. Everyone used to call the class “fat-camp”. I was too vain to call it that, so I called it “boot-camp”. It was lots of running and exercises designed to train the parts of our body we did not even know were there. Anyone was made welcome, but if you loved pushing yourself you would exult in the class. We normally met once a week near to where we worked so we could go straight from work.
However, a few days before I was the victim of a crime, we drove up to this park and started running. We ran together down to the ponds and then went for a swim. Afterwards we ran back up to a grassy area near to where the cars where and followed the instructions of the guy who took the class – stomach crunches, leap-frogging, press-ups etc. Then we nipped into the pub for a beer before heading home.
I remember loving every moment of that night. It was perfect. Perfect in every way. The delightful summery evening, the friends I was with, the exhilaration of running and swimming at a beautiful location, ending the evening with a laugh and a few tears as we said goodbye to our lovely friend before he moved.
It is very helpful to remember that. This beautiful park, the location for some of my happiest hours doing what I loved with people that I loved. I want all of those memories to dominate.
So there it is…this has really helped to get this out of my system. This is the park where it happened. A tiny blip in an otherwise wonderful treasure chest of happy memories of one of my favourite places in London.
My family
I sometimes went out on my own, not just to see places (I did visit some lovely places) but also just to wander up to the local shops, which were about a forty-five minute walk away, and I would shop for ingredients and then walk back to Goldfinch’s home and start cooking or baking according to a recipe I had picked out from the BBC Food Website. I loved that little routine, I loved the walk. I loved the sense of purpose I had that I was going to make something, hopefully delicious, for Goldfinch to enjoy after he had been working all day.
I could not have been happier cleaning, sweeping, mopping, washing and ironing. I even rearranged the contents of some cupboards, cleaned out the tenant’s fridge (and the tenants bathroom), swept the patio and the leaves that had collected in little corners of the yard outside, washed all of the windows – inside and out (there are a lot of windows in his home, and after several days of trying to get the petrol lawn mower going, I went a bit crazy with trying to prime the motor and eventually got the thing started, which meant I could mow the grass front, side and back of the property.
In addition Goldfinch and I spent a weekend immersed in DIY – we put up a whole wall of IKEA kallaxes (if you unfamiliar with kallaxes, they are shelving units that you can arrange to fit the space you want and you can add drawers or cupbaord doors into individual squares or leave them open as you like), and we moved furniture from where it was in storage into his house, we insulated the garage door, we hung up lots of his pictures. I loved working along with him.
And whenever he took my hand, which he frequently did and being in his arms at night, wrapped up tightly, feeling his kisses on the back of my shoulder…I didn’t want it to ever end. And I am missing him like crazy! Missing thinking and planning and giving and loving every day with him as my priority. Saving my money so I can be back with him again and feel that happiness invade every part of my body.
When you smile you may also be doing yourself a favour. The benefits, studies suggest, include increased confidence and happiness and reduced feelings of stress. Frowning, by comparison, may have the opposite effect.
Jack’s apartment is on the fourth floor (huge penthouse flat he shares with four other flatmates) and it has a lot of floor to ceiling windows. So we can see out onto the roads below. There were a lot of people jogging and walking today. A lot more than usual. I guess they are those who wanted to make a healthy start to the year. Perhaps they have made resolutions.
I saw a couple of Jack’s flatmates when we did get up. I have not met them before. They both moved in around a year ago. Jack introduced saying, “this special lady is Melody” – which made me blush. We made ourselves a cooked breakfast, nothing to write home about (or to write a blog post about 🙂 ). Jack had a tin of baked beans, an onion, some eggs and some bread. So we cooked and ate that in the enormous kitchen dining room at the centre of the flat.
Jack and I in bed all morning, eating a cooked breakfast and on the sofa all afternoon. Then I had to say goodbye and come back here because I am working tomorrow. But when I reached home, I discovered that there is a special edition of Masterchef: The Professionals, which I am watching while I am typing this post up. It’s so good. The chefs are just phenomenal.
I am cheerfully happy because, The Great British Bake-Off and Masterchef (apparently it’s Celebrity Masterchef, but I am rather foggy about who any of them are) are on television, which is great because normally there is nothing worth watching on the enormous monstrosity of a television which is in this little nest.
I am giddy happy that I am about to finish the last parts of the first long fictional project I have ever attempted. I am delighted with the way Annabelle Riley’s story has turned out. I have loved working on her story!
Most of my friends know that I am pretty hopeless when it comes to mobile phones. I wasn’t always quite so dysfunctional as I am now. I completely ignore my mobile phone when I am at home, I have a landline. My new mobile does not receive signal in this house. A guy recently told me that the reason nobody can get mobile signal in this house is because of the underfloor heating. Who knows if he is right? We had just presumed that it is because the walls are so solid.
I was baffled by the hundreds of photos that arrived on a daily basis – what people were having for breakfast, lunch, dinner, their pets, their new this, their new that, their dream this and their dream that, holiday spam, nights out on the town, days out at the fair, even pregnancy scans – it was all becoming a bit nuts! What was weird was the scale – the sheer quantity of posts and that the interconnections were so vast and sprawling.
When I was in Australia I promised Goldfinch I will get myself one as it will make it easier to keep in touch with him, Only…I haven’t yet. I am so reluctant. I want to be able to communicate more easily with Goldfinch, but I dread the thought of having the burden of a smart phone again. What a dilemma! Only I love him you see. Have I mentioned that before? And love makes you do things you don’t really want to do.
However…today, I had to show a builder around my flat. And I noticed my debit card and my little mobile were on the coffee table, so I picked them up and put them in my pocket. And it was because the phone was in my pocket that I felt it buzzing (I keep it on silent all the time) and pulled it out of my pocket.
I guess we have all at one stage been quite taken by a Cinderella story. I know it has perhaps been told five billion times too often. However not even the most hard-hearted can deny that it is the very essence of a happy ending.
I really liked the film “Ever After” which was a Cinderella story, because there was no magic pumpkin or fairy god-mother. It was just about two people from of course the opposite end of the social rift falling for each other. Plus Anjelica Huston has some memorable lines.
Yes, it is sad…especially so for me. After all, this man has given me the biggest smile in London! But, even if I turned out to be a princess with a palace and a collection of sports cars, and any other luxury Goldfinch may ever have imagined – it still would not change things. He is not even keen on royalty, so if I did tell him I was a princess he might want to have me guillotined!
Lots of lovely bloggers have tried to keep me optimistic. I really appreciate that. But he is going. And there is a strong possibility I will never see him again. Yes, it is a big deal to me. But I have come to terms with it and I am alright. I am going to be sad. But I will be alright. Crying is a miraculous gift that helps us to deal with pain and grief and I feel I will be perfectly entitled to my fair share of crying after he has gone. But…I will be alright!
I love him so much and that is all that matters! Let’s not worry about happily aver afters. I am all for them – but Goldfinch needs his freedom more than he needs me. That doesn’t make him a baddie. He is a wonderful wonderful man…but he needs to be home. He is not going to make any decisions that will alter the course of his life, while he is 10,100 miles away from everything that shaped him.
The future has not happened yet…I am not overly worried whether I ever do have a happily ever after myself. I already have a life so rich with memories and experiences that have shaped me…I could be happy until my last breath quite easily. But the future has not happened yet and there is no reason why I should think about breathing my last breath yet!
I set my alarm for a very early hour this morning to give me time to take my painkillers and be ready to face the day. I went back to bed after taking them with a cup of tea, and tried to remember the happiness that filled me when I slipped under the covers last night.
Caramel 