Choose Your Wish Friends Wisely

Imagine if you had a kind of dream team to help you organise and plan your life. Just for fun, picture a board room table with a bunch of people sat around it. You are standing at thefront of the room with a flip chart, a chalk board or a projector showing avery slick Powerpoint presentation about the way your life should go. In thisdream you are confident and comfortable standing at the front of the roombecause all of the board members are your friends: your little wish friends. So who have you invited to the meeting? Who is influential in your life?

No doubt there are your closest family members and friends; the people that love you. But consider also that there are the celebrities, musicians and writers that you admire. Put famouspeople dead or alive around the table and watch your dream team develop into something quite impressive. Then there are the less famous people; anacquaintance or colleague that you admire, a blogger that you follow on line.All of these people are providing suggestions to your subconscious mind. Someof them are teaching you; setting an example by the way they live their lives.Some of them unwittingly may have given you negative suggestions. “You’ll neverbe good at… (insert talent here).” “It’s not possible for you to achieve…(insert dream here)” You may find that sometimes it’s you coming up with thenegative suggestions.

Beliefs that have been formedabout the nature of reality are stored in the subconscious mind and affect yourconscious thought processes and behaviour patterns. This can happen without theawareness of your conscious mind.

You can’t throw people off the board simply because not all of their ideas are good. But check your flipcharts, flow charts and diagrams. Did somebody else’s ideas get into your plan,without a fair vote from the board?

These are just some ideas I’m mulling over while I’m writing my e-course about making a wish come true. At my table I have my husband and children, friends and family, mum bloggers,entrepreneurs, narrowboaters, writers, musicians and philosophers. You may notice The Beatles are there, sitting between Kahlil Gibran and William Shakespeare.

Who’s at your table?

To be first to hear about the launch of the wishes ecourse sign up to my newsletter. Newsletter subscribers will be invited to join the course either for free, or for a dramatically reduced rate!

Crying on the Commuter Train

Alone and crying on the commuter train in the morning I considered calling the doctor, either for advice on Citalopram withdrawal, or an urgent prescription for more Citalopram. I stopped taking them because of the short term memory loss,  but I intended to cut down slowly as recommended online. (Everybody knows that busy mummies  should source all their pharmaceutical advice from online forums right?) But then we broke down and so actually we left the old boat in a bit of a hurry. I forgot to pack the pills. Short term memory loss wasn’t so bad; but being so short sighted is. Memory loss is better than my serotonin levels plummeting like a wilful lemming¹. For all the rolling stone inner criticism Mothers Little Helper was obviously quite quietly really helping me along. Now I cannot accept honest criticism from friends. I mull over last weekend’s drunken argument and take it all to heart. “Nobody likes me,” thought Mog” (the forgetful cat ²). The woman in the mirror is underweight and overtired. She believes a lot of things that make her lonely. At home, kisses from her eldest child softly break through the mist as her tears fall into The Doctor’s lap. Big Sister pauses, stands back and reflects on the result of her work so far. She asks,

“More?”
Mother smiles through the tears. The child nods thoughtfully.
“Yes, a few more,” prescribes the junior doctor.
The Boat-Wife resolves to call up the doctor and arrange to get her negative beliefs surgically removed. ³

1) My imaginary friend Stephen Fry has begged me to interject that the wilful lemming is fictional; indeed lemmings as a rule have as much self-preservation instincts as the next creature.

2) Mog the Forgetful Cat – by Judith Kerr

3) If the pills hadn’t stolen her short term memory she might have remembered to just listen to her own 20 minute self-hypnosis download.

The New Boat

It’s our first weekend of new owner-ship. We’re  on board The New Boat, for a visit, although we still live on The Old Boat. Big Sister wants to be helpful so I ask her to put the soap powder back near the washing machine.

“Mummy, where is the washing machine?”

“The utility room is between your bedroom and my bedroom!” I reply with glee.

It feels like we’ve gone on holiday to a lovely holiday home where everything is tasteful, lovely and stylish, but tomorrow and the next day we can come back again and again. The new boat is so big that one can take a stroll down along inside it. We wake up and know that we don’t have to fold our futon bed away. There is instant hot water when I do the dishes. After doing the dishes the sink empties with gravity! There’s no need to hold in the button to pump out the dishwater (that was a very silly arrangement on The Old Boat.) In the bathroom I tell Big Sister,

“Check this out – electric flushing toilet!” Whirr!
The girls’ room is the boatman’s cabin.
“Do you know that round window with the swan painted on the glass?” I ask my little one. “Do you know what a round window on a boat is called? A port hole!”
A curious mix of excitement and astonishment crosses her face. She pauses to think.
“And when I wake up I can look out my swan hole and see that it is morning time!”

Photo by Phil Bassett www.boatshed.com

A new imaginary friend has rocked up: Loudon Wainwright III; American comedy folk songwriter. He’s more cheerful than some of my other imaginary friends and he’s strumming away; a half remembered tune about how he can tell by the look on my face, that I just love this new bad ass place.  Then I remember that I don’t believe in imaginary friends anymore, and hope to make shiny new Real Friends, in The Countryside.  He obligingly disappears in a puff of smoke. I left the old boat, haunted with imaginary friends.  William Blake, Ye Olde Boat Wife, Tiny Tim Cratchett, Charles Lamb, Mick Jagger, RonnieWood,  John, Paul, Ringo and George, do not have permission to stow away on board The New Boat.

When I’m with Big Sister in her bedroom we cannot even hear Baby Sister and The Doctor in the living room! Our bedroom is the biggest bedroom I’ve ever seen on a narrowboat. There is a wardrobe, and room for a desk or writing bureaux and a chest of drawers. There is a real free standing bed, not a fitted cabin bed. It’s the first time in ten years that I’ve had a Real Bed, with a headboard and a footboard. I could poke my feet over the end of the bed if I wanted to – without hitting the bulkhead! 

Baby Sister enjoyed toddling from one end of the boat to the other. Until now she has got around with a mix of crawling and tentative toddling. But this weekend she just walked the whole time, arms slightly bent, hands excitedly held in the air. From that weekend onwards she hardly ever crawled again. Space, on this boat, was one small step for baby, and one giant leap for babykind.  

I strolled the lengthy stroll down to the utility room (also the engine room), with a manual in my hand. I read out the instructions. I loaded in the laundry and noticed a stray squatter had been caught up in the laundry bundle. He scuttled across the pillow cases.

“Quick!” I alerted The Doctor. “There’s a massive spider! I don’t want him to get - what a horrible way to drown...”
“...in an incy-wincident!” finished The Doctor.
The Doctor gently removed Incy and put him out of the kitchen window. Then we trekked back to the other end of the boat.
The Doctor pressed the buttons. Green lights came on and we heard the sound of running water and whirring electric. We’ve got a washing machine! I squealed. We hugged. Out came the sunshine. And Incy Wincy Spider climbed up the spout again.

(Written on 12^thMarch - my blog lags behind my Real Life.)

Laundry day

You Don’t Look Like a Boatwoman

Photo Credit: Charles Lamb Pub website

After the funeral , sitting on a crowded tube train into town, and standing still like a plastic mannequin on a grimy London escalator I was thankful to be alive. The Mellow Mum can no longer experience this existence. I am thankful for the daily grind. I feel each breath of winter air as I emerge to ground level at Angel station, I am alive. I am re-evaluating my life. I am lucky, lucky, lucky. There is no time to be wasted; now is the time to live.

Or maybe the future will start when I wake up in the morning. Right now I really want to go to my room and be on my own, with some maudlin music and a bottle of wine. But I don’t have a room. I am in my late thirties now and I don’t have my own bedroom. Suddenly that seems peculiar, absurd. So, to be alone, I went to the Charles Lamb pub. It is full of people. I try to cry secretly. Oh me! I wearily and dramatically feel like serenading the many leaded-rectangle paned windows, gently flickering candles and green-painted wooden panels. All of the wobbly rustic tables are taken. I sit on a stool at the bar and order a large red wine.
“We only do wine in one size,” she says. It ain’t large. But it’s large prices; Islington prices.
The melancholy fellow on the bar stool next to me tries to get her attention to order a drink. She looks right through him. I offer him half a smile, apologetically. He is drunk, and considers my smile to be an invitation to initiate conversation.
“What are you thinking about?” He demands of my pensive face. I pay the lady for my wine and take a sip.
“I’m thinking about my friend,” I reply. He nods, sagely.
“Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have that nonsense respected...”*
I can’t help smiling just a little.
“Friends are like table legs; they keep you stable,” I reply. “If one falls off, you wobble.”
He smiles, holds out his hand and introduces himself.
“Charles Lamb, essayist and poet.”
“I thought so,” I replied, shaking his ghostly hand. I could tell by his nineteenth century fashion sense that he was different somehow. “Associated with the romantics, Shelley , Hazlitt, Coleridge and Wordsworth and considered by admirers as “a pre-Victorian sugar daddy distributing kisses and kindliness”.
“Ah, you have heard of me! Yes, Samuel Coleridge is a good friend of mine.” He sits up straight on his bar stool and glows with satisfaction and pride.
“No, it says all that on the chalk board behind you.” I remind him. His pen name was Elia when he lived in Colebooke Row. “I live in Colebrooke Row too.”
“I’m at Colebrooke Cottage!” he exclaims.
“I’m on the canal,” I tell him. “On a boat, near the Islington tunnel.” He eyes me up and down and looks confused.
“You don’t look like a boatwoman.” He expects to see a frilly black sun bonnet and ankle length skirts.
“Well things have changed a bit on the Cut lately,” I explain. He shakes his head and the very old clock behind the bar strikes seven. My kids will be in bed soon. I’m too miserable to handle the chaos of the bedtime routine but I think about making a move.
“Do you know there was a competition to design the Islington tunnel?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “But old James Morgan ended up designing it himself.”
“ I know that it took three years to build,” I offered. He nods.
“All those navvies with their wheelbarrows, horses and explosives; they finished it in 1818. I’ve seen you boat people walking your horses over the top.”
“Yep, there’s no towpath in the tunnel,” I reply. I didn’t tell him that we haven’t got a horse.

I finish my drink in silence as I survey the fairy lights, the ornate mirror and the deliberately scruffy wooden floorboards. It’s intentionally homely like a Hoxton trendy bar, not like a spit and sawdust back street boozer. The people drinking here are young and probably work in media, but it escapes by a hairs-breadth from being swanky (with a silent ‘s’), to being simply cosy for the younger drinker. I feel a little bit old among the other patrons here, but my new friend looks positively ancient.
He decides not to order another drink, stands up to leave and puts on his rather charming hat.
“I always arrive late at the office but I make up for it by leaving early,” he grins.
Maybe it was the fairy lights, maybe it was the wine, but as I follow him out of the door I feel a little bit warmer inside. A chalk board suggests ‘Mulled Cider – the cure for winter blues’. I turn around to look down Elia Street and Charles has silently gone towards home; nowhere to be seen.

*Charles Lamb 1775 – 1834

http://www.thecharleslambpub.com