annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Milky milky No, I didn't go to London. Just too raw to get into a conversation about the options on train ticket prices (designed by Kafka), or to rub up against humanity and all the noise and movement and unpredictability. Instead, going to check my mail, I locked myself out of my flat, in the hallway, without my phone, dressed in nightie, cardie and slippers, during a burst of torrential rain. So much better for the equilibrium, to sit huddled up at the bottom of the stairs, flickering between hope and fear that a neighbour would come home. Luckily, first one back after not too long a wait was Her from across the hall, who kindly climbed over the garden fence and in through my unlocked back door. Her place is painted all white inside, instead of the cream I have and is out of reach of the shade trees both front and back - it's another bloody world, a world of light and freshness and - ach, I dunno. It felt really gloomy in here afterwards. I could have done the climbing, but she's around thirty and wouldn't have an old dear like me doing it, no matter that it was my problem. Nice of her, I guess. I used to have to do it at the last place quite frequently, with all kinds of trickier climbing, balancing and negotiating slippery surfaces, but my neighbours there were well into their seventies and did not do yoga. I had a message from J, the diarylander I was hoping to meet, saying she had breastmilk in her hair, which I liked. YD and I recently discussed what stories we had that could be brought into use should we ever be guests on 'Would I lie to you' and one of my second-best level stories is about expressing breast milk for the first time ever, in a toilet at X University, just prior to my interview for a place on a degree course. Son was only a couple of months old and I hadn't left him for more than an hour or two before. We'd all had babies that year - I can't remember which of my friends looked after him, but we all fed each other's babies when necessary, so he was OK, but I hadn't thought of the impact on me. All of us unqualified, 'mature' applicants had done a two hour exam (discussing topics of the day - I did one on vandalism), been shown round campus and were sitting nervously in the common room after lunch when my breasts, which had been expanding at an unfeasible (and some would say enviable) rate, finally reached their limit and began discharging milk in two steady streams, from the forward-most points of my chest, through all my layers of clothes, splashing copiously onto my thighs. Mortified, I was, fucking mortified. Expressing when they're that full is no joke either, especially in the toilet, whence I had fled - apparently if you get the technique just right the milk will all come out in a steady stream, but they were concrete hard, and so tender. I kept my coat on through the interview, saying I was going down with a cold, praying milk wouldn't seep through that as well and it did manage to hold off until I was on the train on the way home.
I just want to see what this fucking care home is like and get on to the next step. This feels like limbo. Ah well. Soon come. This too will pass. Blessed be. That kind of thing. Laters x 11:49 p.m. - 23.10.13 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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