Dusk

coming home at dusk

When I was standing outside my house taking this photo a neighbour walked past and asked if I needed a picture of my house so when I was drunk I could remind myself what it looks like. Well, it may come in handy, but the real reason I took it was because it summed up a feeling of being welcomed home – the glow from the window creating a still life of domestic harmony, contrasting with the blue of the sky just before it fades into dark.

I still haven’t decided what to use this blog for.  Diary?  Food stuff? Streams of consciousness?

Shawn you are my only reader (which is just fine for now!) – what do you think?

Hazy day

My son is 16.  He has been for a little while now so I should be used to it. 16 is scary  for a parent.  The world is their oyster but are they going to go for the crab stick by mistake?  You just don’t know and no longer have any real control over their choices or even what appears on their horizons.  They choose for themselves, make mistakes big and small, have days where they seem enlightened and focussed and other days when they seem as hazy and indistinct as the curl of smoke from their spliffs.

It is hard to put myself back in time and remember that despite all the many, many fuck ups I made I am still here, still standing, facing forward and generally speaking not doing too badly.  But therein lies the rub I suppose.  We all want our children to have the things we wanted and didn’t get for ourselves, even if they have no interest in them at all.  I want my son to have access to all the tools he needs for his creativity, to make his art (so he can, of course, be a great painter and artist and be recognised and fulfilled in his work).  However, I have a feeling that his direction is not at all what I had in mind.

Am I ok with that?  Absolutely.  I have complete faith that he will find his own way and be himself, always in the knowledge that he has my love and support.  But the desire to live vicariously through him is still sometimes there, if in need of a slap and a sharp word.

Hello world!

So.  Here it is, my very first entry in the blogoshere.  Despite having had this set up by my lovely and patient friend friend in Seville ( http://azahar.wordpress.com ) since January, it isn’t until now, on this sunny, beautiful day in Bristol that I have finally put fingers to key board.

I am not entirely sure what this blog will be about, probably streams of rather dull consciousness, but bear with me, it may come to something in the end.

I am 48 (not a lot of people know that).  I live in Bristol, UK.  I have a 16 year old son.  I run my own business.  I am single.  I am bored by my life a lot of the time.  I am waking up to the possibilities presented by the world as the stranglehold of childcare begins to loosen.  That is not to say I have hated being tied to raising my son.  I haven’t.  But I have resented and struggled against the necessary curtailing of life outside it due to doing this on my own.

I didn’t mean to do it on my own, but as in so many cases, that is how it turned out.  Other factors, mostly just by being me, have meant that I have not brought another person into this family, except for a brief period at the beginning of this century.  So there I have been, and there I still am.  Champing at the bit but with little idea of where I will run to when the starters gun fires (to use up the horse racing metaphor and be done with it).

Once I get the hang of this blog thing I will post pictures and things that may be of interest to other people, you, whoever you are, who may be reading this in Japan, or Kenya.

I am going to sit outside in the sun now and contemplate the next phase in the life of Elizabeth, Duchess of the Folk House Café .

Here's to it!