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April 04, 2006
You can call me ‘Thhhhhh’
Come 9am yesterday I was already trying to ignore the never-ending call of ‘Muuuuuuuuummmmmeeeeeeeeeeee,’ or any of its equally irritating variations, I was toying with the idea of changing my name by deed poll to something ugly and unpronounceable. My daughter struggles with the sound ’th’ so yes, that would do.
I got a whole paragraph written; the school holidays, you’ve gotta love them.
I did read two chapters of Ellen Moers’s Literary Women in direct protest against Delighting the Heart (which I never finished) Page 4 and I already found the quote I was looking for, from Harriet Beecher Stowe;
‘Since I began this note I have been called off at least a dozen times; once for the fish-man, to buy a cod fish; once to see a man who had bought me some barrels of apples; once to see a book-man; then to Mrs Upham, to see about a drawing I promised to make for her; then to nurse the baby; then into the kitchen to make a chowder for dinner; and now I’m at it again, for nothing but deadly determination enables me ever to write; it is rowing against wind and tide.’
I heaved half a sigh in sympathy before a sticker was thrust on my chest (from a book of stickers intended to keep her quiet for the holidays) it read ‘I am Cheerful’ but when I bent over to run a bath, it fell into the steaming water and congealed into sticky fragments.
Up at five today, by the end of the week I will no doubt be joining Sylivia Plath;
‘at about four in the morning - that still blue, almost eternal hour before the baby’s cry, before the glassy music of the milkman, settling his bottles.’
Ah hers was the romantic age before tetra-paks, I guess the equivalent in the modern age is the intrusive weekly harassment from the NTL man.
Posted by purple elephant at April 4, 2006 08:12 AM