Passport photos

The local chemist advertises a passport photo service, so I went along and had mine done in order to renew my passport. I did my best not to smile and to look straight at the camera, but I've just had a letter saying my pictures have been rejected because they can't see my eyes clearly enough. I always understood that if you normally wear glasses, you should keep them on for your passport photo. Now this letter tells me I must take them off! Without them, I look nothing like the normal 'me'. Nobody would recognise me! Still, I must do what they want or my new passport will never arrive. (Not that it really matters. I have great difficulty going anywhere, so I'll probably never go abroad again.)

Daughters and sons, women and men, hammers and roses

I didn't go. I couldn't go. And it wasn't just the travel problems. This was the very first time ever that I had the chance to spend my own daughter's birthday with her. The first time in 41 years (yes, she is an unbelievable 41 today) and I blew it. I was too swamped with feelings. I wanted her to myself. I wanted to spend time with her on her own. Not with her adoptive mum and auntie, not with her boyfriend. Just me and her. But I couldn't have it. I shall probably never have it. And so I went down with a blinding headache.

I tried explaining how I felt to Mr Grumpy, but he turned round and said, "You'll never get what you want. Her birthday has to be the way she wants, it's not about you." Well sorry, it IS about me! I was patient and yearning for 36 years. In all that time, I never knew if she was even still alive. I didn't know where she was, how she'd done at school, whether she'd gone to college, what job she was doing, if she was married, or if I had grandchildren. I didn't even know if she knew she was adopted. She might have been a druggy drop-out. She might have been dead. She might have moved abroad. I didn't know anything. It was a blank wall and I had a huge, gaping hole inside me, a vacuum that nothing else could fill.

Since I have found her, I am gradually learning how to love. Looking back, no wonder I never had a relationship that lasted longer than two years. No wonder I slept with so many men. Having severed the strongest bond, that of mother to child, I could not form any sort of attachment with anybody else. I think I am nicer now, warmer, less brittle. That closed off part of me is now open, but with it comes pain and self-searching. I need time with my grown-up daughter, just the two of us. A holiday together would be great. Is this too much to ask?

Not having seen her for two years is ridiculous. Part of it is down to Mr G's strokes, that made me not want to leave him alone for a good year or so, but then, when I booked a wonderful first class non-refundable cheapie-in-advance ticket, she cancelled me saying she had to catch up on work and I was gutted and it felt like a rejection, which I'm sure it wasn't. It made me wary of booking more train tickets, though. Not being able to drive is a complete pain. If I could, I could simply have drifted down there today or tomorrow in my own time instead of being a slave to the vagaries of public transport.

So there we have it. I am in a difficult position and every time I get put on the spot, I get ill. It's a kind of performance anxiety, maybe - come to think of it, when I was briefly a performing singer-songwriter in the 1970s, I used to get such dreadful stage fright that I had to give up in the end. And at school, when I was called on to play piano for the school assembly, I used to cut my finger with the bread knife to get out of playing, because I felt so nervous and pressurised. I have definitely got a problem. But I still don't think Mr G is right when he said it's all about my daughter and what she wants, and not about me. He doesn't know the agonies I went through all those years. He is much harder than me. He has a son he hasn't seen for years because they fell out. I don't know how he feels about it because he won't say. We are made of different stuff. Slugs and snails and puppy dog's tails? I don't think so. More like hammers and pails and six inch nails. And as for me, sugar and spice and all things nice? More like marshmallow and roses and kittens' pink noses.

Trains

Signal failure at my local station. If it isn't mended by 11, I won't be able to go. I am on tenterhooks, whatever a tenterhook is!

Off to Devon

I'm off to Devon tomorrow for my daughter's birthday. This will also be my chance to meet her much younger boyfriend, with whom she's getting very serious. Needless to say, my stomach is outperforming itself, filling me with pain and nausea and sending me shooting off to the loo at inconvenient intervals. I shall probably stick to soup today, to try and be in some semblance of reasonable shape so I can travel tomorrow. An hour and half on the Tube to Waterloo, then three hours on the train to Honiton. When I get there, there will be no luxurious bedroom waiting for me, but a doss-house full of people from all over the UK who have gathered for her birthday and will be sleeping on the sofa, in the hayloft and anywhere they can find somewhere to pitch a sleeping bag.

She has frequently berated me for giving her a birthday at the start of February. Her party last year was snowed off but this year it looks as if all we'll have is pouring rain. Nice! I haven't actually seen her for two years, though we keep in touch via text, phone and email. It's a strange relationship, really. As I did without her for 36 years, two years of not seeing her seems nothing, after the sheer wonder of finding her after all that time.

She lives with her adoptive mum and I feel awkward around her - an interloper, an inconvenience; a threat, even. That's one reason I haven't gone there much. She is perfectly polite and civil to me, but I sense a tension and that makes my stomach even worse. In fact, I wish I didn't have to go at all and that my daughter would come up to London instead. But she works nearly every night of the week doing online tarot readings, so that makes it difficult for her to travel. I suppose I will just have to fill myself with pills and force myself onto that train.

Miracle!

I did my normal waking up in the middle of the night, then thought: that's funny, there's rather a lot of traffic going past. Perhaps I've only been asleep for half an hour. Picked up the clock and pressed the button to illuminate the face, and found it was ten past seven. I had slept for a full, unbroken eight hours. I cannot tell you how rare this is to have such a long sleep without any pills or swigs of Night Nurse.

But do I feel better for it? Well, I don't feel tired, that's for sure, but my flaming stomach feels very unsettled. I think I shall just have to pluck up the courage to slash my finger with the lancet that comes with the York Test kit, that has been sitting in the kitchen for a fortnight because I am too much of a wimp to wound myself in the cause of finding out what foods I am sensitive to. Oh, to be able to make travel plans again. I was looking at a website for Leptis Magna in Libya today. Now that's a place I'd like to visit, with all that Roman architecture. It's also home to the Gorgon's head seen above, which is a little what I looked like when I got up. But hey, don't you need jabs to visit Africa? Needles... another thing I can't abide. Perhaps I'd better stick with holidaying in Devon.

Synchronicity

A friend and I had a chat about synchronicity last Saturday and agreed that things tend to happen when they happen, for a reason. Having had a lift to an overground train station, which made the journey to Ealing much quicker than the 50 minute slog there by bus, I decided I would get the same train back, which was the Heathrow Connect train.

My friend and I rabbited on for a bit longer than we'd intended, then I set out for the station, only to find a load of paramedics and police rushing in. I headed for my platform, to find a policeman barring the way. As I stood there wondering what was going on, a teenage boy came stumbling down the steps looking pale and burbling about all the blood. Later, I discovered that if my friend and I hadn't talked for those few minutes longer, I would have been there just in time to witness the horrible death of some poor man beneath the wheels of the Heathrow Connect train. Synchronicity?

I have just had another rather odd example of it. I had a card through the door to say there was a letter for me at the parcel office which hadn't been delivered because of insufficient postage and it would cost me £1.50 to retrieve it. Just before I got to the office, as Mr Grumpy was literally turning into the driveway, I had a call from Foxtons estate agents to tell me about a house for sale. It was too expensive and I told them so. Are you still with me? There is a purpose to all this preamble! For once, there was no queue so I went straight up to the window and passed them the card. They gave me the letter and I recognised the writing of a slightly loony friend who photocopies his favourite cartoons and sends them to me once a month. They normally end up in the bin a few minutes later.

"I'm not paying £1.50 for that," I said, and asked them to throw it away for me. Then I noticed... He always uses a secondhand envelope and this was a Foxtons one! I'm starting to feel a little spooked.

February

One of my favourite poems is February, by Francis Brett Young. I learned it as a kid in school and can still quote it today, 50 years on! Here is a link to it.

http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/85683-Francis-Brett-Young-February