I've got the blues

The old bluesmen used to sing, "Well I woke up this morning, And I got the blues so bad..." Cue some bottle-neck guitar notes way up the neck of the instrument and a merciless sun beating down on the dust bowl. Well, there ain't no dust bowl in Hillingdon, only wet streets and car alarms and stupid young men bellowing on their mobiles as they walk past the door, and Mr Boom-boom Car Stereo driver deafening himself and everybody else as he makes the house walls vibrate as he cruises by. Dirty main road with grotty kebab shops, little Asian groceries struggling to survive, brothels masquerading as nail bars; grafitti and litter and dog poo and fat girls in ugly clothes, with ugly tattoos and even uglier babies. I, who love beauty, music, art, the shapes and colours of things, am appalled and out of my element and, trapped here with a man who never cuddles me and comforts me, only tells me that I have no right to be miserable because he's the one who's had the strokes, I have the blues. Bigtime.

Once, I would have blamed it on my hormones, but I no longer have any, due to menopause and hysterctomy. So I can only attribute it to the sheer monotony, boredom and harshness of my environment which offers nothing soft and kind and beautiful to my soul.

And if this phoenix could rise, where would it fly off to? Twelve years ago, it was Turkey. I had gone for the summer, to relax and write and just have fun. But a month into my sabbatical, Mr G arrived and hauled me back, promising me lovely things, none of which materialised and when they didn't, he blamed me, saying he couldn't plan any trips or take me away for any nice weekends because I was 'always busy'. Well, I was a writer, with deadlines. But had he given me any dates, I could have made sure I kept them free.

Since then, I have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in the relationship, in the garden, in the house, with the computer, the cooker, the kettle, the TV... if anything goes wrong, I must have made some mistake, been clumsy, broken something, misplaced or mistimed something. Maybe he thinks he is only teasing, but since his only tone of voice since his strokes is a shout, it doesn't sound like it.

No wonder I am no longer the confident, sparkling person he met 12 years ago. Instead, I am ground down like a bluesman's bottle-neck and sliding up and down the frets of my own life.