In Person
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Majorca would have been lovely, had I not hired a car and driven off on the wrong side of the road. I had a headlong crash with two very cold German men. I was very lucky that I didn't meet a bus though. It would have been curtains, that's for sure! As the woman at the hotel said, arms in the air, 'You are BORN AGAIN!" I felt really silly. I was even in the local newspaper. I was staying in a hotel in Deia, where Robert Graves lived. It was beautiful, with terraces, lemon and orage groves, the smell of jasmine and orange blossom. The hotel was a bit boring...full of old people and couples who seemed to never speak to each other. I read several novels from the hotel libary. there are some good stories left languishing in hotel libaries, that some writer has sweated over. After my crash I felt quite depressed...my poor body felt so sore and jolted, and my neck was, and is stiff. However, the next day I forced myself to go sightseeing (in a taxi this time), and was remarkably cheered up by visiting the monastery at Valdemossa where George Sands and Chopin stayed one Winter. Her book 'Winter In Majorca' is an account of one woman's period in hell, where the local people stoned her children and stole her food. She didn't behave properly...rolling fags and walking in the cemetary in the moonlight in men's trousers. Choipin was sick all the time, and the monastery was freezing, with winds rattling the doors and whistling round the cloisters. She was over the top in her literary fury. At least I could come home on Easyjet.
The day I went it was warm and lovely, as it was for the whole of my stay. I had some fabulous pre-crash walks amongst the scenty groves with the sheep bells clanking.
I was getting really bad headaches just before I went, but since the crash they have disappeared. Perhaps the trauma has cured me, and next time I go to the hospital they will shake their heads in amazement.
We are rehearsing this week for Flying Homages, the reading based on my trip to Barcelona with Linda France and Bill Herbert. We've got actors and musicians, and backdrops and all kinds of things. It's rather exciting. Yet, I so want to get into a rhythm with my novel....we parry about each other like fencers....I so want to plunge, but the days get fragmented with sore necks and acupuncture appointments. I know the cure...you just MAKE yourself do some everyday and gradually you get absorbed.Posted by julia @ 12:57 PM GMT
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Did I say that Tiger, my new neice, arrived last Tuesday, so she is now a week old ? It was a calamitous birth, involving ambulances, devices like sink unblockers, long agonies, but thank god for my sister, it's all over now and there is a lovely baby. What an amazing business it is! And how delicate and complicated!
I am back in Newcastle in a cancer limbo. Actually, I am developing a theory that the hospital has muddled me up with someone else, another Julia Darling who is terribly ill, but they keep telling her that there is nothing the matter with her, whereas I am being told the opposite, but seem to be able to get up every morning and do up my shoelaces, and go to the shops. They will feel awful when they find out, especially as I have ruined my poor body with all these potent drugs!
I am taking so many things at the moment...tamoxifen, milk thistle, floradix, progesterone cream, fentanyl patches, pamidromate, and rather alot of neurofen. Most of it has no side effects, thank god.
This weekend I am getting on an easyjet plane to Palma on my own...I want to disappear for a bit. I used to do that alot....just stepping out of my life and going to some strange place where I know no one. Of course, you can end up feeling like a mad person, stuck in a strange smelling hotel room, miles from everyone you love. But these journeys are oddly liberating and memorable too. For a start, no one will know that I've got cancer, and that's quite a relief.
Yesterday I went with my friend Emma Holliday to look at pink flamingos at Washington wild fowl park. They are unreal. Who thought them up, with their swollen red knees and bizarre hooked noses? And what a brilliant colour they are, but a bit bitchy looking, like thin drag queens pecking at each other ! Emma has an exhibition in June at the Biscuit Factory in Newcastle, and I am going to write some poems....perhaps one about flamingos. I forgot about birds laying eggs while we were at the park, and suddenly imagined, probably because of Tiger being on my mind, ducks being in labour. How bizarre! Is my brain decaying?Been reading like mad....The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillipa Gregory is a very juicy read....now reading Lucky, by Alice Sebold, which is well written, but I can't get into it after the court of Henry 8th and all those corsets and flirtations. Just bought Hilary Mantel's autobiography, and Paul Durcan's poetry collection 'Greetings To Our Friends In Brazil.'
Posted by julia @ 11:41 AM GMT
Saturday, April 10, 2004
A couple of weeks ago I asked my doctor if I could have a lethal injection. He laughed merrily, and so did I, but a part of me feels exhausted at the prospect of more treatment. You have to really believe that the treatment will work, and increasingly, chemotherapy feels like slapping another coat of paint on a collapsing wall. But you also have to have things that you really want to do, like go up in a balloon (no thanks) or swim with dolphins (not that either). And of course we want to stay alive for everyone else, because goodbye is just too final.
Today I did something I have always wanted to do. I went to Charleston, where Vanessa Bell lived,
(and died of breast cancer). I am not very good at museums. I always want to do things quickly...and as my mother said recently, most things go on far too long (poetry readings, dinners, parties, boat trips, church services, plays, explanations...the list is endless). Today we had to go on a one hour guided tour of the house, and we weren't allowed to touch anything either. I am not that bothered about ornaments and furnishings, so when the guide told us about the history of tables etc I went a bit blank. She wasn't bad, as guides go. She told us quite a bit of anecdotal rumour, and although my sister and I agreed we would have liked to have known more about the sex and the cooking arrangements, she was very interesting about Vanessa Bell and her children, and I ended up feeling nothing but admiration for her (Bell, not the guide). Actually when we first got to the house I nearly got terrible giggles, as there are many Woolf/Bell lookalikes wandering around looking as if they have been schooled in vagueness. Also the shop, with it's forty five pound battered felt hats, and loopy jewelery made me feel slightly hysterical. But I loved the house and the garden. I liked the way the Bloomsburys painted everything they could lay their paintbrushes upon....perhaps as a sort of displacement activity. I liked imagining the chaos of it all, and the poor servants trying to keep house. I loved Vanessa Bell's bed, that looked out upon the garden, with a bath in the corner of the room. Here was a woman after my own heart. The house reminded me that we can live how we like, and attack our walls with potato patterns and make lampshades out of cooking utensils. It made me angry with IKEA!
Anyway, there have been several wonderful moments on this holiday, that make it worth having some more chemotherapy, as who knows what else might happen. Like, my daughter and I driving along the sea front from Brighton to Shoreham at sunset, past all the dirty boats, and rusty bridges and places selling fresh fish, and Janis Joplin singing 'Take Another Little Piece of My Heart Now Baby,' on the radio.
Or sitting all afternoon in the Duke of York Cinema in Brighton, eating pork scratchings, watching films, with no adverts in between.
Or waking up in my four poster bed to the sound of wood pigeons.
Or listening to the cd that arrived in the post this morning of some of my poems set to music by Tim Dalling.
Yes, there is still plenty left to delight in.
Posted by julia @ 07:51 PM GMT
Tuesday, April 6, 2004
I've landed in an extension of heaven! I am staying in a tiny cottage in Sussex, nestling into a hill, surrounded by primroses. Slept in a four poster bed last night!! Some kind friends have let me stay here, while I wait for the arrival of my sister's baby, Tiger. Tiger is due this week in Brighton. I can't wait to meet him/her.
Also, my doctor has gone on holiday, so I am sort of on holiday too. Last time I saw him he said that my liver function test was ok, so I could carry on without chemo for another month. So we are all in a delightful bracket of time when we can do what we like! There is not one thing in this cottage I don't like. I like the eggcups, I like the stairs, I like the knives and forks, I like the way the light filters into the rooms through small windows.
This week I am going to learn a poem that I can recite at parties. My daughter wants to learn all the words of a ballad. We will gain friends and influence people with these new skills! It was fun driving down here with my daughter. We pretended to be foreign and talked for ages in a sophisticated manner.
I must eat this boiled egg. Oh eggy Easter!!!Posted by julia @ 08:30 AM GMT
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