DANGEROUS LIES
When death is a desert sunrise away, and survival depends on trust, the most dangerous lies are the ones you tell yourself.
Available June 2009 from
Medallion Press
RUN AMONG THORNS
How can you trust your heart when it calls your enemy, lover?
Available June 2008 from
Medallion Press
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Whatever the day may hold, there are pancakes this evening.
I’m a lemon and sugar gal myself, and have a disgusting tendency to roll them up and eat them with my fingers, folded in half so the lemony syrup doesn’t pour out. Some people sprinkle sugar – I dump vast quantities of it on the hot, crisp pancake, and then inundate the whole in lemon juice. Moderation, depart this place.
What’s your filling of choice on Pancake Day?
I was already in bed. Husband was downstairs watching TV with my parents, who were visiting for the weekend.
Husband and Father were watching some historical programme, when Mother decided she needed to check teletext for some news updates. When they finaly wrested the remote back from her, and turned back to TV, the screen was filled with pictures of a couple, er… getting it on? Performing the horizontal mambo? Loudly. With emphasis.
Husband, caught in that kind of acute embarassment only experienced when found watching something explicit in the company of your (or, worse, your wife’s) parents, spoke without thinking. “Well THAT’s not the discovery of the North-West Passage.”
Silence.
The Mother, deadpan, replies, “Depends what angle she lay down in.”
In bed with Husband:-
Me:- “You promised me tea.”
Him:- “I’m too busy talking about crab paste.”
Yes. Of course. How silly of me.
(I did get the tea eventually.)
I’m stealing writing progress from a greedy and protesting working and home life, and be damned to them! I need to amend my word meters in the side bar because Danglies has turned from edits to rewrites and I’m back to the drawing board.
But this, I quite like. [warning - first draft!]
She shouldn’t have come.
There were doves in the courtyard, snowy while and silent. They slept on ledges and in niches, on the roof above the pointed Arabian arches, even on the bowl of the broken fountain.
In Marianne’s mind’s eye, and in her Grandfather’s photograph, the arches, the walls and the fountain were bright and blinding white. Nearly seventy years ago they would have been, but now the were grey and peeling, and here and there a dirty orange stain showed where some elaborately carved bracket had rusted into memory.
Marianne folded the map she held with careful fingers, and stowed it in her shoulder bag. For years she’d dreamed of visiting Morocco, the country her Grandfather had loved so much. When her Father’s death had dealt her grief and opportunities with an indiscriminate hand, she’d taken those rare and precious opportunities in both hands, packed new clothes and a new courage, and booked her flight before she changed her mind.
Sighing, she stepped forward out of the shaded doorway into the courtyard proper, the rough render catching at the sleeve of her linen tunic. In that cherished photograph, the decorative tiles lay in neat order around the fountain, their decorous arrangement constrasting with the wild exuberance of their design. Now they were cracked, lifted, and scattered under foot, dust and debris half concelaing the gleam of red and blue.
She nudged one loose tile with the toe of her rope soled shoe, absently settling it back into its place by the fountain’s weed-covered plinth.
Her movement startled the sleeping doves who rose in flustered and flapping disarray, swirling the dust with their feathers, and clapping away into the sunlight. With them gone, the space was dead and still, smelling of hot dust and bird. It was a forgotten space, abandoned.
Decayed.
It was a mistake, though, to think that the house had been left empty when her Grandfather left. The agents, eagerly anticipating an impulse buy from a gullible tourist, had told her the property had stood empty only for a year or two. “More like five,” she muttered, running a wary hand down the pillar of one stately arch. And the rust stains and broken tiles told of a neglect much older than that.
It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t matter.
She had wanted to see her Grandfather’s home, and now she had. He’d only been here for a couple of years, in any case.
It didn’t matter.
She was a fool.
She shouldn’t have come.
Tipping her head back, she closed her eyes and let the sun’s heat brand her face. The doves had settled somewhere out of sight – their cooing floated down to her – and her mind conjured the soft sound of water playing in the fountain which had stood dry for so long.
In the photograph with the dancing fountain and the white, white walls, there had been a veiled woman in the shadows of the arches, and a slim black cat walking on the tiles, uplifted tail curling in a confident wave.
The cat’s name, Grandfather had told her, was Bosphorus. But he had never once named the woman in the photograph, when Marianne sat on his knee as a child under the apple tree at home.
Bos was long gone. Her Grandfather had died years ago, before her Mother. And her Father…
“Damn.” She flicked wildcat tears off her chin with fingers that shook. “Damn.”
She shouldn’t have –
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Marianne spun on one foot, half tripping on the loose tiles, steadying herself with one hand on the fountain edge. There was a man standing in the shadows of the doorway, and for a moment the contrast made him appear dark, as Arabic as any other native of Rabat.
Then he stepped forward, and the sun claimed him as her own.
Hmmm. There should be something else in there, something about a demonstration and a mob, and I have a sneaking suspicion it’s too similar to a scene in a book I love, but I’ll see. I can always edit it into submission.
Edits are my friend. Rewrites make my eyebrows sweat.
Kate Walker tagged me, so I’ll have a go….
current clothing: Huh. This would be the first question on a ‘Durham Day’ when I left my overnight bag at home? *sigh* So, it’s yesterday’s grey scoop neck top with self-colour embroidery, jeans, brown suede boots.
current hair: Long light brown. Kind of a looped up pony tail embellished with a purple silk flower.
current mood: Overworked and stressed, but still positive.
current refreshment: Well, we’re not supposed to eat and drink in the computer rooms… ggg I have a bottle of water with me, and I’ve just finished a caremelised hazelnut, sesame and peanut bar.
current annoyance: Leaving my overnight bag at home.
current avoidance: Avoiding thinking about work, and the quest for pregnancy.
current smell: Dove shower creme
current thing you ought to be doing: Reading for this afternoon’s lecture.
current thing or things on your wall: Well, I’m at Durham, so it’s a ‘No food or drink’ poster. At home it’s a huge variety of notes, post cards, and old calendars turned to Aug 05, which is when last year started to go drastically wrong for me.
current IM/person you’re talking to: No-one. (Although it’s usually Julie, but I really want to catch up with Dee soon *waving*)
current jewellery: White gold wedding ring. And that’s it. Because I left my freaking overnight bag at freaking home, and I freaking forgot to put freaking earrings in.
current book: Reading – Mary Stewart’s Thunder on the Right. Writing – The rewrites of the beginning of Dangerous Lies.
current worry: Um, they are legion.
current favorite celebrity: Probably Jason Statham.
current obsession: The Eagle Creek ‘Koala’ washbag in the multi-stripe colour. It’s a long story. Obsessions are not always pretty…
current love: Minnie, for catching the mouse. (And Husband, of course)
current longing: to be pregnant, or at least, to stop caring about it so much.
current disappointment: I think I put on weight last month.
current lyric in your head: Anastasia, ‘out of love’ I think it’s called.
current music: the hum of air conditioning (too cold) and computers.
current favorite book: Mine.
current favorite movie: The Incredibles.
current wish: Um, guess.
current undergarments: Brand new cheap white lace knickers and very old and barely able to cope black lace bra.
current desktop picture: At home it’s a picture of Cleo and Chrissy curled up together looking cute.
current plans for tonight/weekend: Tonight – working late then driving home and giving Minnie extra attention. Weekend, the parents are visiting!
I’m not going to tag anyone else, but do it if you wanna!
Let me tell you about Minnie.
Minnie is so named because she was the tiniest kitten at eight weeks old. She used to crawl up the bed and curl up between our pillows, and Husband and I would lie there in terrified wakefulness in case we rolled over and crushed her.
In adulthood, Minnie is less mini. Her legs have remained short, but her body is long, and she’s quite a substantial young kitty. She’s a confirmed indoor pet, being a complete scaredy cat about the Great Outdoors (well, there’s loud rumbling things and dogs and wet stuff falling from the sky!), but she was also the apprentice of our outdoor-loving and oft-lamented Piggy-Kitty (maysherestinpeace) who was an inveterate hunter.
With me so far?
Now, our house is old, and backs onto a farmyard. Therefore, despite our four cats, and the twenty odd feral ones that live on the farm, we have mice. We never see them, but they lurk beneath the floorboards and behind the skirting boards. There’s one that visits the kitchen, although it doesn’t appear to eat anything there. We only know of its presence because of the occasional ‘ha-ha you can’t get me!’ poops he leaves to taunt the cats.
The mice drive Minnie insane.
She can hear them scritching behind the walls and under the floors, and she spends hours every day and night crouched by the skirting board, ears cocked and whiskers bristling, listening with every fibre of her being, waiting, hoping, praying for the chance… just once!… to catch one.
This morning I received a text from Husband that read:- Months of patience has finally paid off. Minnie got her mouse!
I’m so proud!
Through patience and dilligence and talent, my little kitty has achieved her goal.
There’s a lesson in there somewhere.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Actually, there’s two, and the second lesson is about positive thinking.
I posted a little while ago about gratitude, and had cause to be grateful and stunned yet again barely 24 hours later. When good things like that start happening to you, you start to expect them. And, expecting them, you find good things in the strangest places, and rejoice in the things you find.
Since I’m currently thinking so positively, Minnie’s success ranks as another good thing, and has made my day for me!
Someone’s getting tuna for supper…
I’ve been tagged by Julie to list five guilty pleasures. I’m adopting her qualification process, limiting guilty pleasures to those that are not educational, writing-related, or professional, and that are probably harmful.
Hmmmmm.
I’m really rather a boring person, and most of my pleasures are alarmingly worthy and boring. Walking in the Lake District, reading, writing… Even chocolate and the occasional glass of wine have some health benefits (even if only mental health benefits). I refuse to feel guilty about most food stuffs – eating is a sensual, joyful experience.
This could get ugly.
Okay, so, my five guilty pleasures are…
1) Not exercising. There’s nothing quite like being curled up under the duvet on the sofa watching Blackadder instead of heaving away on the rowing machine.
2) Playing mindless computer games. Command and Conquer. Age of Empires. Rome: Total War. Lord of the Rings – the Battle for Middle Earth. And, coming soon: Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. *whimper* The last time I got into an Elder Scrolls game, I think Husband was considering an Intervention. It stole my life…. But, actually, even computer games have their non-guilty rationale. I use them to shut off stress.
3) Cheap chocolate. Despite my new year resolution to the contrary, I am continuing to be a chocolate slut, a veritable tart for cheap, underbred, rough and ready chocolate…. Especially those little foil cups that are almost fondant-filled.
4) The Jacket Potato. Not jacket potatoes per se, but THE Jacket Potato. This is the one that’s largest enough to serve three, and is heaped with enough butter to grease a Scotsman, and enough cheese to finance a mouse-war. Mmmmmmm. Even thinking about it makes me happy. And makes my arteries weep.
5) Monsoon clothes. There are clothes in my wardrobe from Monsoon that I will rarely wear, because I don’t go to enough posh dos. But, oh, they’re gorgeous. And they’re gorgeousness justifies their purchase. Really. It does.
Now I’m reveiwing the above and thinking, “well, that’s not really guilty. There’s stress-relief in the gaming, calcium and vit c in the potato, style aspirations in the clothing….
There’s obviously no hope for me.
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