I have a quite amazing friend, who I haven’t yet managed to fix a blog-name to. She is so much more than her job, so she shouldn’t simply be known that way, and all the other words I can think of to describe her don’t seem to really capture the essence of who she is. She’ll be the perfect wife (if the Journalist ever pulls his finger out and proposes), she’s a grammar school girl, a socialist, an activist, a chef. Superwoman? For the purposes of this post, we’ll call her Birthday girl, though already that isn’t true.

Every year, Birthday Girl invites her many friends to a picnic in the park. She takes the day off work on Friday and spends nearly 24 hours cooking up quiches and biscuits, salads and cake. The Journalist hangs in the background, salivating at the smell; a puppy dog looking for scraps. But Birthday Girl makes him wait like everyone else, smacking his hand with a wooden spoon and sending him out for more chickpeas.
And when we all arrive at the park, hungover – or tired from a morning’s football game – Birthday Girl feeds us with the kinds of food only someone else’s mother would make. Baked with love and seasoned with vintage charm.

My friends are self-confessed foodies, who’s favourite past-time is to try to outdo one another with incredible dishes made from the very best free-range, organic, non-GM, home-grown ingredients. The fact that I have destroyed my tastebuds with years of Cutters Choice, or that I can only really manage to throw together a chilli con carne, doesn’t seem to put them off including me in the invites, so I get all the benefits of their expertise, without having to spend anytime learning anything. I think that might be what real friends are for.
On Thursday night, we went along to Rosie’s, in Brixton Market, for an evening where Rosie books out all the tables, and feeds her customers whatever it is that she has decided to cook. We sit at church hall tables, on chairs that don’t match. The table cloth (eventually coloured by our BYO bottle of Merlot) is white and doily-like. The plates and bowls look happy together, but aren’t from the same parentage. It is a comfortable, friendly experience. Rosie greets us – a small, blonde bundle of cool – before heading to the kitchen to prepare. When we finish our main course, she asks if we’d like seconds, and brings the boys another plate of chicken, couscous and beans. The food is homely and warming. The wine we’ve brought goes down a little too easily for a school night. The company is near perfect, and I am happy.

A wedding in Exeter bought us to Devon, where we camped for five nights in our mansion tent. I never thought I’d enjoy camping. Not because I’m a girly girl – I’m not – but because I find it really miserable to be cold, or not to have had enough sleep. This week, however, was bliss. To wake up in the morning, looking out over the sea, surrounded by green hills. At night, the only sound a chorus of snoring from canvas homes.

Camping; living in such close proximity to other people, is great writing fuel. Real life is stranger than fiction, they say. More than anything, I was struck by the hundreds of parents in the world who have no idea how lucky they are, and no idea how to play with their kids. It was frustrating, listening to the toddler behind us have to call out for his Mummy or Daddy several times before they’d stop what they were doing (reading the Torygraph, talking about the stock market, measuring the size of their BMW) before they’d acknowledge him. I was tempted, not for the first time, to kidnap the poor boy and take him back to my empty nursery. Where he’d never have to ask more than once for anything.

We were back from the (fantastic) wedding in time to sit out in our sleeping bags, a little merry, and watch the sky – a carpet of stars – light up with the Perseid meteor showers: a yearly occurrence, and one I hope not to miss again. There was something so very humbling about staring up at a vast, unending, sky so full of light. We felt small, unimportant, in awe.

I’m not always a great friend. I spent a lot of time inside my own head; my demons are loud and easily persuade me that everyone in my life merely tolerates me, and that no one actually enjoys my company. “Quite right!”, I think “I don’t like me much either”. Which is why, when the people I secretly love (but can never tell, in case they reject me), do something kind, something thoughtful, I can’t easily find the words to thank them appropriately.
This birthday, a year I was hoping would pass by unmarked as I hurtle towards my mid-thirties, my Beautiful Friends clubbed together to buy me the vintage typewriter in the photo. Not being able to carry it all the way to Berlin, where we happened to be, they gifted me my present in the form of riddles. “What has many letters, that can’t be sent?”, “What has a ribbon, that is not wrapped around it?”, “What has hammers, but no nails?”, “What has keys, but no door?”.
I’m still unable to put into words just how touched I was by the present, and by the method in which they gave it to me. What a joy to have friends who know me so well, who are so free with their affections, so open with their love. I feel very blessed. I vow to try harder.

“I still keep a suitcase in Berlin” – Marlene Dietrich

In August, we travelled to Berlin to celebrate the Journalist’s 30th birthday. Berlin. Before going, so many people told me I’d love it, that I started to worry it couldn’t possibly live up to the expectations I had. I did. And so much more. The people in Berlin are just so cool. The graffiti, the run-down buildings, the shops all ooze the kind of couldn’t-care-less that London just doesn’t manage to achieve for all its trying. And it isn’t pretentious. It’s friendly, welcoming; it allows you to feel cool, too.
We didn’t spend a lot of time seeing the sights, instead using our time to drink and eat in the company of friends, and wander the streets taking photos and pointing out those things that people who live there probably no longer see. We did, however, go along to the Jewish Museum, the architecture of which far outweighs the information you might find in there. A beautiful -awesome – building. The Garden of Exile is one which no one should miss. A spiritual experience. I wanted to sit in there for hours and write and write and write.

We rented bikes to cycle round the city. Ten of us, in a row; cars giving way, pedestrians patiently tolerating our hooligan ways. Adults should cycle with their friends more often, I was reminded of my teenage days – the freedom, the silliness, the wind in your hair as your friends do wheelies up front, hold each other’s hands as they cycle; go off road down grassy slopes near crashing into one another.

Simple fun. Life should be more full of it.

The poetry tent, the woods, the poetry tent, the hotdog stand, the poetry tent, the poetry tent, the poetry tent.

I’d never been to a festival before. I’ve actively avoided that big festival, the one that seems increasingly red-taped and mainstream. In Latitude, I found a home. As one of my friends said “You’re surrounded by your people”. Sandal-wearing, floatily dressed, dreadlocked, Guardian readers… with little hippy children.

I ate pine cones in the woods, with ferns in my hair. I danced alone in a crowd; talked religion while listening to Swedish girls sing Leonard Cohen; shopped for rainbow socks with the Lawyer; wore flowers in my hair; high-fived teenagers by the fire; got lost and then found; heard some beautiful music and fell in love with a poet.

Why, why, was I not doing this before I turned 30??

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.  The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt”  Sylvia Plath

They say the best way to become a writer is to write. I have spent a great many years being too scared to write anything in case it wasn’t good enough. Terrified to put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, in case the results proved to me that I wasn’t – as I hoped – the next Nin, Lawrence, Kafka… but, in fact, a writer not even worthy of those godawful chick lit books that seem to be everywhere these days.

And so, I intend to write. Here. Anything. Without editing, without obsessing, without deleting whole pages because it just doesn’t ‘feel right’. And if I am happy with it, I will smile. And if not, I’ll just move on, and write until I am happy. Because at least, that way, I will be writing.

M.

We’ve lived in this house for nearly two years. We’ve never painted it, so we struggle everyday with the awful cream (Magnolia? Really?) that the previous tenants loved so much they used it in every single room. Over the years, P and I have accumulated a number of pictures and frames, promising ourselves one day we’d have the perfect ones, and then we could put them up on the wall.
Today, we admitted the truth and just decided to put up the ones we had, and to hell with perfection! And, really, I think it turned out good.
We’ve got four others to come back from the framers next weekend, but for now, at least they detract from the awful walls…

Also, if you look carefully, while wandering down our corridor, you might spot our little pet, Neruda, who travelled back with us from Mexico, and can now be found lurking menacingly – ready to pounce on intruders!

M.