The Equilateral

I take offence to being told my pain is chronic rather than acute. I feel every ache, every jagged edge. Chronic is the medical way of categorising my pain. It is not acute because it will not kill me. It has gone on too long.

Acute pain is described as “sharp” and “severe”. Chronic implies dulled. My pain is not dulled.

There are still days when I am tempted to check in the mirror for wounds. The pain is too much, too strong, too often for there not to be bruises, blood. But there are few outward signs save for some surgical scarring.

The pain is acute in as far as I can almost touch it. I can tell you exactly where it is; if not exactly why. Its central point is that of a triangle; in my mind it is less than 90 degrees. Acute, not obtuse. Would I prefer my pain to be categorised as obtuse? It seems more fitting; chronic pain doesn’t try to understand.

I’m told complementary therapies such as osteopathy and acupuncture are a mere placebo. The method may be questionable, but the relief is tangible. 

The Osteopath has helped me name my pain – or at least where it can be found – better than any doctor. I place my finger on my sorest point and he drives a needle in. It is as if there is a reservoir beneath the skin; waiting to boil over.

I expect blood and pain but there is nothing as the needle pierces the skin. He twists it and like water simmering, it slowly peaks until he finds the nerve.

Gluteus maximus. Pectineus. External oblique. Sacroiliac joint. A needle for them all.

Sometimes there is a relief in causing more pain, as if the needle puncturing my skin will create a new sensation to cover the aching. As if the pain will spill out and drain away.

It never does. Not that I help myself. Occasionally, very occasionally I totter in high heels. On those rare nights out I medicate with wine and gin and tequila until I cannot feel. Until the next day.

This is always a mistake. I clutch the scar on my side to hold myself together as I retch. Alcohol is never an escape; it is merely parole. My body will always reoffend

I have family and friends who would gladly take my pain for themselves. And I love them for this because I know they are sincere. But I cannot bring myself to say I would do the same. It would make sense, better me to take on more than them my heavy load.

This carrying other people’s pain is an imaginary transaction; it takes place only in my head. Like survivor’s guilt, it is between me and my silent God.

Other people’s pain numbs me; it renders me emotionless. I no longer know if that is just my problem, or something felt by everyone. Something not felt by everyone. It is not than I do not sympathise. It is empathy that I cannot bear; I cannot take on more.

I talk to God often, in my mind at least. I am yet to hear him answer, but when I reflect I can see he is there. 

I have always identified with the father of the healed Epileptic child in the bible,

“Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief.”

I do believe. I also struggle to believe. No one talks about the Prodigal Son wandering off again once he has returned. I think that would be a more accurate telling of the tale. Am I always welcome back?

I have bargained with God over and over both while I was treated for cancer and since. I have felt guilt and shame at not being able to bring myself to ask him to take me instead of others. But like bearing other people’s pain, it is a deal which was never mine to strike. I cannot be blamed - not even by myself - for a free fall I had no control over.

Sometimes in the darkest days of blinding pain I am back in that spiralling descent. Or perhaps I have reached the ground and it is my shattered body that I feel.

I have been to the Chronic Pain Team and to Palliative Care. Both clinics who specialise in not finding or fixing but disguising problems. For all understanding of Palliative Care is improving, there is still an air of,

“Cancer didn’t kill you. You are not dying. What more do you want from us?”

I feel selfish in the waiting room because I look young and healthy. At least I am one of the two.

My pain is not acute because they can find no damage to fix. It makes for interesting conversations; if there is no cause then am I in pain at all? An existential crisis. Doleo ergo sum.

And yet I now see everything through pain’s tinted lens. It is a sepia wash that darkens my vision. I wonder sometimes how a painless day would feel. To float comfortably, not on a sea of codeine but instead on a sea of calm.

Medication merely keeps my pain off the boil. That is not to say pain free or painless. It bubbles under the surface. it is always there. Insensitive - or obtuse - to my suffering.

Sometimes my repetition of “I am here. I am alive. Pain is the price of being alive.” like a rosary sees me through the worst. Other times I wonder why these people think being alive is such a gift. It is a consolation prize at best; a poisoned chalice at worst. Everyone else is alive too, but it feels like no one is telling them to be grateful. Why is it me alone who must show thanks for this broken body.

I struggle sometimes to see where God fits into this pain, is He in the acute or in the chronic? Is He there at all? As a triangle He can only be in the equilateral. All parts equal. Mine are not.

I wonder if my pain would feel less if I could see an ending on the horizon. At 30 I am weary at the thought of my ageing joints and the ways in which I will injure my future self. I have faith that the acute will be fixed. I have stopped praying for an end to the chronic.

Is that why I take issue with this classification of my pain? It is not about placing value on it; one is not worse or more real than the other. To accept my pain as chronic is to acknowledge that I have lost faith in there being an end. 

I need to believe there will be an end.

Originally published on shesaid.com and themighty.com

A Petty Theft

The first thing I ever consciously stole was an anthology of Scottish poetry. I say first which implies it has become a habit but I can assure you it has not. I say consciously because I am sure there were more insignificant thefts both before and since; penny mixtures; supermarket grapes and other such petty crimes.

Duo: William Keyes

It was my final day of secondary school and I agreed with a friend that we would each take a book from the school’s library by which to remember our time there. I can’t remember why we decided on what was for us such a rebellious act, but for all my remorse it isn’t something I can bring myself to regret.

We browsed the titles, grasping their spines only to unceremoniously shove them back onto the shelf unselected. Every so often one of us would hold a book up to the other and invite comment. The Bible; The Handmaid’s Tale; The Complete Works of Shakespeare; Mein Kampf. A shrug or a laugh and then we’d move on to the next shelf.

I’d like to say that the book I stole was one which I had gone back to year after year throughout my time at high school. However, there was no such sophistication on my part. It was not a familiar friend but a new companion which I chose to pocket - Scottish Love Poems: A Personal Anthology by Antonia Fraser. My friend selected The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins; as odd a choice as mine.

Poem for a Goodbye: Norman MacCaig

I look back now and laugh at how daring we thought we were. Our classmates were far more destructive than we as they wreaked havoc on every department. We thought the library would go otherwise unscathed, but we failed to account for the stupidity of our peers.

School was the centre of our universe for six long years. The benefit of hindsight tells me those were the shortest six years of our lives. I spent my time wishing the days away and wondering when I would finally be free but now it is past I wish I could go back to the comfort which it held.

In the Reading-Room: Rody Gorman

Strathaven Academy was built in imposing red sandstone at the turn of the 20th century. By the time we attended the walls were falling in on themselves and the building was held up by scaffolding. When we left that scaffolding was supported by scaffolding of its own. Some two years later the school was pulled to the ground.

The building which we knew as a library was originally the school hall and was overlooked by a gallery of classrooms. If the room had been the prison it felt like there would have been netting to prevent missiles from above. However, none such existed therefore it was not unusual for spittle, paper planes and pupils to find themselves launched overboard into those working below.

On our final day of school it was none of these things which our peers chose to throw into the library. For reasons which I am yet to understand, the miscreants elected to liberate an orchestra of crickets from above.

It was an interesting choice by all accounts which threw the building into uproar. We were unceremoniously turfed out of the library, and in fact the school; our final day cut short. It saddens me that my last moments in such a dear spot ended so abruptly. But then in some ways, perhaps it was best to skip drawn out goodbyes with a place of the past.

A Memory, now Distant: Eric Linklater

At 16 we selected our paths and at 17 we had to follow them; not knowing where they would lead. As we left school for the final time we each began to follow our chosen path. Most stayed near but I moved to Stirling, desperate to try spread my wings.

It was a step into the unknown but with me I took my book and it nestled in the shelf above my head. I didn’t read it cover to cover, but I would dip in now and then, to discover something new or return to something cherished.

In my third year I transferred from French to English and regretted it bitterly. But the book came in useful; the treasures within studied during Scottish Literature classes. Like the connections of home it was a comfort which I knew was there but was not always seen.

In Glasgow: Edwin Morgan

My 30 year old self can laugh at the choices I once made because now I am safe from their harm. My regrets have transformed into relief and my trepidation into thankfulness.

As we left the library that day we had no way of knowing where life would take us. Whilst there is always that strong resolve of the young to stay in touch, all too often life simply gets in the way. But now we are back where we once were and the distance of time has galvanised the bonds of friendship, not diminished them.

I have carried that book with me throughout the years and proudly placed this symbol of my defiance on each bookshelf I have owned. It is a constant comfort; the swansong of my childhood.

But the symbolism is about more than rebellion; it is an emblem of enduring friendship. And like the breading of the book my friend purloined, it is as yet unfinished.

Recoil: or how I chose to lose my hearing at 21

Originally published on the Limping Chicken blog:

-So you were born like that?

-what?

-you were born deaf?

My hearing impairment always makes itself known at inopportune moments; be that through a squeaky hug or through me completely missing an entire conversation. When asked how I lost my hearing, I have a variety of smart answers, but the truth is that it was a choice.

I chose to lose my hearing when I was 21.

Hearing loss is one of the lesser known, more permanent side effects of some cancer treatments. In my case it wasn’t the cancer which caused the issues; it was the platinum-based chemotherapy which blasted the decibels. Should a man ever win my heart it will certainly not be with a platinum engagement ring.

My consultant was nonchalant. I was sent for monthly hearing tests and told that she could cope with me losing a few of the top notes. I merrily signed the paperwork; if she could cope, so could I. When you’ve got aggressive, late-stage cancer, maintaining your hearing tends to be the least of your problems. And anyway, the hearing loss wasn’t guaranteed; the odds were good that I’d get by unscathed.

Three rounds of intense treatment saw off the high pitches I’d retained into adulthood but I barely noticed. Sadly, the chemotherapy was as ineffective at killing off the cancer as it was my hearing; the tumour had reduced in some places but was making short work of my liver. High dose chemo with stem cell transplants were required and with that came the likelihood of more substantial hearing loss. At that point, however, my options were clear. Drop a few decibels or drop dead.

I didn’t lose my hearing overnight. In fact, it was the noises I could hear which alerted me to the fact that things weren’t quite right. Slowly little sounds were creeping inside my head. The worst was a ringing in my ears. It was a noise I’d heard before; that heady buzz the morning after a gig. Usually by mid-afternoon following the concert it would wear off, but this was different. No matter what I did it only grew louder and lasted long into the night.

As the days went by I made my visitors move ever closer to my hospital bed so I could hear them speak. The sterile whiteness of the hospital room was deafening; I just needed to get outside and I’d be fine.

Once treatment was over I was passed to different teams of medics to take stock of the carnage cancer had left behind. It soon became clear that the issue was not the hospital room at all, but that I had a lost a lot of my hearing.

I say I lost my hearing; I’m not Deaf and I’m not fully hearing. I’m caught somewhere in between, in the no man’s land of the hearing impaired. Clarity of speech is largely lost which often leaves me repeating conversations in unintended cockney rhyming slang, trying to decipher sentences like hieroglyphics.

Once an intrepid traveller, I had to re-learn airports, train stations and public transport through less able ears. Even now, some 7 years later, flying alone leaves me anxious as so many of the announcements are for hearing ears only.

So many sounds are different to what I remember. I’ll hear a memory of a song I used to love but now the orchestra has taken on a menacing tone; the delicate flutes and piccolos have been culled but the cello plays on.

The thing I miss most of all though, is hearing nothing. Cancer stole my hearing, but it stole my silence too. Whether the drone takes on the guise of running water, a tuneless radio or a high-pitched pinging noise, I never, ever have peace and that’s what I crave the most.

In some ways tinnitus is more annoying than the hearing loss. I slam a broom against the ceiling, determined to make my neighbour turn down his TV only to discover it isn’t on at all. The noise I am surrounded by and which I cannot escape is not real. It’s not in my ears; it’s in my head.

I was told at diagnosis that my future would be about living with cancer. What I didn’t understand is that I must live with its consequences all of my life. The hearing loss, the tinnitus, they will never leave me. The tinniness in my ears is like the ringing of a shotgun blast; long after the shell is fired and the damage is done. My body has healed but the echoes of the shot remain for only me to hear. Constant reminders of a time I’d rather forget; the cost of survival.

Still, ask me once more, decibels and death or silence and survival? I’d choose the same again. I’d pull the trigger myself.

More wine

It seems like so long ago, but I ticked off something on my list. I've wanted to learn more about wine for a long time so doing it in Italy was the best way to do it.

Italy was beautiful and we drank a lot of wine and a lot of aperol. The wine tasting was in Florence, in the Tuscan School of Wine. It was a rather innocuous building which didn't look like the right place from the outside. However, once we were through the door we were surrounded by wine. It was a whistle-stop tour of Tuscan wine and we tried 6 in total. This included one white, four reds and a dessert wine. I didn't think I was a fan of dessert wine and Spanish wine is more my thing. However, learning more about what makes a chianti classico a chianti classico and about the DOC system was fascinating. The six glasses of wine helped the time fly by!

Two out of three ain't bad

3. Go to Rome, see the Sistine Chapel, light a candle for Maurissa

It was all going too well, Laura and I had made it to Sant'Agnello, posh inter-railed from Naples to Florence and then wearily taken the train from Florence back down to Rome.

Sant'Agnello was just as when we'd been before, with its main street roaring with mopeds and 3 wheeled trucks from dawn til dusk. This time we stayed in an Airbnb which made the trip all the more exciting. An unfortunate incident on our first evening involving a waiter inviting us for a drink meant we couldn't return to Ciao Toto ever again. But it was perfect. With the exception of the buses. But more about them another time.

Florence was a dream, perfectly proportioned with picturesque hills, fertile vineyards rolling into the horizon. We hired bikes, we drank wine, we ate pasta, we found a food market. A dream. Honestly. It was just a dream.

Which brings me to Rome. After such a relaxing time in Sant'Agnello and an oh too brief holiday romance with Chianti Classico, Rome had a lot to live up to. The week before we went away, I suddenly realised that we hadn't yet booked tickets to the Vatican Museums. Now this was a major problem; the Vatican Museums include the Sistine Chapel and that was the one place in Rome I was desperate to see. Thankfully Laura managed to get tickets for 7:30am on the Monday morning which would give us early breakfast and entry to the museum. I say thankfully; I was not thankful about getting up at 6.30am during my holiday.

So, on the Monday morning at 7am, make-up free and grumpy we elbowed our way to the front of the already winding queue to the museums. So far so good. After downing an "interesting" breakfast mainly comprised of pancakes and coffee, we decided to brave the crowds.

So we walked. And we walked. And we walked. And I hobbled. The interior of the museums are stunning, it feels like being in a French châteaux; surrounded by history and grandeur. Frescos covering every wall; a story in every painting. However, after well over a week of Italy, we were both wearying and ready to see what we went to Rome for; the Sistine Chapel.

The Sistene Chapel is surprisingly difficult to find, despite being very well sign posted. However, you know you're almost there when the slow moving crowd almost stops and everyone starts looking up.

And that, dear reader, is where it all went wrong. On reflection, it seems obvious that the Sistine Chapel will not entertain flames, what with it being a priceless work of art. However, I was somewhat disappointed to discover that it just wasn't possible to light a candle in the Sistine Chapel.

So I moved on to bigger and better things; St Peter's Basilica. I don't have the words for how splendid and stunning St Peter's Basilica is. You have to see it to quite understand just how amazing it is. The columns stretch for miles, the ceiling may as well be in heaven and all around is marble and beauty. There was one thing missing, however. Candles.

So, the night before we went home, my sister and I ended up in a little chapel by the Trevi Fountain, lighting a candle for Maurissa. In some ways it was nicer than being in the Sistine Chapel, it was quiet and away from the heaving crowds. There was an air of reverance and a beautiful dusk hung over the altar; you had to strain to see the haloed candles. The Priest was quietly closing the doors as we left, the setting sun catching on the fountain. A peaceful moment which is difficult to articulate.

Every so often someone will ask me why I insist on lighting candles in every church I visit. I've lit them in Sainte Chapel, St Paul's Cathedral, St Andrew's Duomo in Amalfi, so many more.

Why?

Remembrance. Respect. Regret.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly why, I can't tell you what I think it will achieve. I don't believe it's magic or that it will somehow bring her back. I don't believe she needs my offering to get her into heaven; she went there long ago. Perhaps I don't do it for her at all; perhaps it is something intensely selfish. A need to stare death in the face and acknowledge what could have been.

I can't tell you. But I don't think it's that.

But what I can tell you is that when I light a candle for her I pause for a moment and I remember a friend I lost 5 years ago. I remember the girl who had us all in stitches as she recounted her irreverent tales of visiting Lourdes.

I pay my respects when I light each candle. I think of where she would be now and how well she lived for the short time she was here.

I regret. I don't need to light a candle to regret. I miss her; I wish we could have one more conversation. That I'd visited her one more time. My regret isn't just for her, but for so many.

I can't undo anything that is done. I can't bring her back. But I can remember her and I can carry her with me wherever I go.

I think of her, therefore she was.

We'll always have Paris

When I become lost in my memories it is not to a place of my childhood that I wander.  Perhaps that is phrased wrongly, indeed it is to a place that as a child I visited, but it was not somewhere that I spent a lot of time.  Most people enjoy recollecting childhood burns and braes and nooks and crannies.  I ,however, find joy in recalling childhood visits to France,  and more recent outings to Paris.  It may seem clichéd, after all it was Humphey Bogart who said, ‘We’ll always have Paris’ a phrase which continually rings in our ears.  Perhaps that is true for all of those who have visited Paris, not just for the Ricks and the Ingrids, that even when we have left, we will always have Paris.

I still remember the first time I went to Paris, aged about eight, the obligatory trip to keep the parents happy after Disney Land.  We did the perfect tourist things, we got lost in Pigalle, we gazed across the impossibly busy round about by the Arc de Triomphe and we ate the least reasonably priced croissants available.  And I hated it all.  The smells, from the pollution to the hairy, sweaty man in the metro’s armpit.  The busyness, from the crowded metros to the teeming streets.  The sheer impatience of it all.  I had expected a tranquil place, full of men on bicycles eating baguettes, with onions round their necks.  I was disappointed.

It was not till several years later when I re-visited as a more mature twenty year old that I eventually fell in love with Paris.  From the moment I spotted the Tour d’Eiffel sparkling on the horizon as I entered by Porte Maillot I was transfixed.  The language was, by this point, no longer babble to me, it was coherent, fluent, liquid beauty.  I could feel it, see it, taste it.  When I overhead a couple discussing the Cotes d'agneau grillees frites they had eaten for dinner that night I didn’t need to translate it in my head.  I could see the lamb in front of me, I could taste the crisp fries, I could smell the heady scent of the red wine in front of them.  I was in love.  

Perhaps it is rather unfair to say that this is the moment in which I fell in love with France.  No, that had happened years earlier in the cobbled streets of Clermont Ferrand.  Standing outside a bakery, Jean Jacques Goldman jammed in my ears, gazing, transfixed, upon the sheer Frenchness of it all.  It had been here that I had fallen in love, it had been here my dream had taken focus, the blurry edges had dissipated; my future had taken form.  

Returning to France was a bittersweet experience.  Here was the land I would never live in, the language of which I would never study.  I could peer in the window but I couldn’t step inside.  Disembarking the plane in Beauvais the cool air had hit me like cold reality.  It was gone, life was now an English classroom in an English department.  No French, no baguettes, no joie de vivre.  It was going to be Shakespeare, sonnets and William Golding instead.  Yet when I saw the Tour d’Eiffel glittering in the darkness I couldn’t help but fall for Paris.  It was like meeting your ex boyfriend’s prettier, sweeter fiancée.  You could be great friends but things would never be the same.  Something would either always be missing.

From Porte Maillot I took the Metro to Charles de Gaulle-Etoile, knowing the moving escalator would take me up to the Champs Elysées, into the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe.  The trees lining the street would be twinkling with lights, the street bustling with late night shoppers, the sky reflecting the lights below.  I let myself be pulled along by the crowd, let myself be forced up into the street above.  But there I stopped.  I stopped and I gazed, overawed by the sight of Paris at night.  I spent my evening watching the people pass by the window of a café, sipping a coffee, wondering if anyone would notice if I just didn’t take my flight home.

The last time I had been in France before this return I had whispered as the plane took off, ‘Je vais retourner.’ But I hadn’t meant like this.  I had intended to return as a student, to study my own language through the eyes of France.  To become lost in this inconceivably beautiful language and country.  To become a part of it.

Spending time in Montmartre, the imposing, white beauty of Sacre Coeur looks down at you.  The most impressive thing you will see in Montmartre is not the art deco metro station, it is not the cobbled streets around the church, it is not the birds tamely eating off of the tables of Chez Eugene.  It is the plaque on the school at the base of the hill which tells of the students who died in various concentration camps during the occupation.  And of the teachers who were sent there with them for trying to protect them; sacrifice.  These are the things that the carefree lovers miss in Paris; they don’t see the street corners with their signs commemorating those killed for France; for freedom.  They don’t see the sobering truth of Paris; the homeless living under the bridges of the Seine.  

In July the French pour tonnes and tonnes of sand upon the stony banks surrounding the Seine.  As you walk along, ice cream in sand, enjoying the sunshine, you could easily walk past the spaces under the bridges that become homes for the homeless.  The only clue is found in the piles of bags stacked along the pillars or the bikes chained to the metal fencing preventing access.  You could miss it so easily, real life.  

I have never been in love in Paris.  I never want to be.  There is too much to miss while being so wrapped up someone else.  I never want to miss the 5 minutes of the Tour D’Eiffel’s lights twinkling every hour because I’m gazing into his eyes.  I don’t want to walk by Némo’s murals in Ménilmontant in my hurry to get back to the hotel room.  Equally I don’t want those memories when I return to France without him.  Of how his arms circled my waist as we admired Saint Chappelle or how we laughed for hours at how ugly the Mona Lisa actually was.  For me Paris is not about love, at least not about romance.  Is it possible that generations of people have got it all wrong?  Paris is not the city of love...Paris is the city of emotion? Whatever emotion we feel when we visit Paris is trebled.  If we hate something then this hatred will never leave us.  

Equally, something which we love in Paris will always be loved.  Look at those poor 12 Japanese women who fall prey to ‘Syndrôme de Paris’ each year.  We all have such high hopes for Paris, it is so built up in our imaginations as being perfect, that when it is not (and even I can admit that Paris is not, in fact, perfect) a -very- small proportion of visitors face complete mental breakdown.  Tell me that is not a manifestation of emotion.  Tell me that these woman do not feel like their heart has been ripped out when they see those crisp packets floating in the Seine, or realise that the Eiffel Tower is only a glorified pylon.

Paris is full of memory, the streets cry out of the things that have happened there.  Walking down the Champs-Élysées you can’t help but see Hitler’s tanks rolling up to the Arc de Triomphe, red Swastika flags decorating the hotels on Rue de Rivoli.  Or in Place de la Bastille the history of the revolution seeps from every inch of ground.  

One of my most favourite places in Paris is not even open any more.  Yet every time I go to Paris I seek out ‘Samaritaine’ just to stare at the building because it intrigues me.  It was shut down without notice a few years ago as a fire hazard and was rumoured to be re-opening in 2010.  If it ever re-opens I don’t think I could bring myself to go inside again.  I see it as a giant, imposing building hiding secrets within.  Abandoned mannequins leering at abandoned shelves; dastardly wooden floors threatening to ignite at any moment.  I can almost see the antique elevators with their ornate cages squeaking from ancient floor to floor.  I have the picture in my mind, I don’t need it to be ruined by the sight of new age escalators, lino flooring and displays of garish Paris fashion.

I remember the first time I visited the Arc de Triomphe, it wasn’t the height of it which struck me but the forever burning flame at the bottom; the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.   I lay in bed that night, imagining the soldier lying cocooned in concrete for all eternity, an eternal symbol of sacrifice.  I couldn’t help but imagine a mother visiting the tomb, crying for her lost son, knowing he could be in any of the mass graves anywhere in France.  In any of the graves marked ‘near here lies a fallen soldier of this regiment’.  This son of hers who could have performed all manner of feats for France, for the Allies, for freedom, is now lost and nameless.  Buried under layers of French soil, French grass with a French tombstone marking the place where he fell.  Who knows why he ended up fighting, if he even wanted to.  If he’d just stayed at home or not been in the wrong place at the wrong time perhaps he’d be an old man now.  Teary eyed every year at the cenotaph, growing old unlike his comrades, remembering them as the sun sets and rises.

Everyone has their own landmarks in Paris; the places that remind them of the last time they were there, a funny anecdote.  One of my favourite places is far more transient than the Eiffel Tower, Sacre Coeur or The Catacombs.  I love any metro stop which has a train leaving for a station called ‘Nation’.  I have never been to Nation, but I want to go- every train which leaves for Nation is perpetually jammed-  packed full of people.  I’ve never even been able to find out what is at Nation; to me it is just the place where the green and the blue lines converge, that carriage after carriage of people drives towards.  Does anyone ever come back from Nation?  

My other favourite landmark in Paris is rather macabre and just slightly depressing.  It is a graveyard, but not just any graveyard.  It is the final resting place of greats such as Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison and Edith Piaf.  It is so easy to get lost in as you walk round and round in circles, past identical tombstones.  I went to seek out Oscar Wilde’s grave, more specifically I wanted to kiss it.  Two hours later I was still wandering, seeking a glimpse of the familiar tombstone.  When I eventually found it, nowhere near where I had been looking, it was exactly as I had imagined and exactly as I hadn’t.  The stone was marred by lipstick mark upon lipstick mark, graffiti adorned every corner.  It was grubby and as unromantic as something can be.  I added my lipstick to the grave that day: appreciation.  So you see, perhaps the grave of this man is more than a grave.  Perhaps, just perhaps, it is a metaphor for Paris and the feelings people experience when they visit.  For once I was being a typical tourist, I had built this grave up in my mind as being a shining beacon in the middle of a leafy suburb of Paris.  What I got was lipstick and graffiti.  But this didn’t put me off, when I go back I’ll visit old Oscar again.  Just like Paris, she’s pretty grubby, but I love her anyway.  

On reflection this perhaps has not been the best description of Paris, I have not explained to you why you should go there, I have not explained to you what it is about Paris that is just so magical.  I would be a terrible tour guide.  This is the one ‘Everything You Need to Know About Paris’ booklet you would not pay good money for.   Yet what I think I have done is let you know Paris.  Do you feel as if you are just a little bit more familiar with her?  Can you imagine being in Pére Lachaise graveyard now?  Can you see the crisp, scarlet, Autumn leaves dancing dizzily from the trees? Can you see the ancient French widow hobbling to her husband’s graveside trailing a bouquet of white Chrysanthemums?  Paris is not what you think it is.  It isn’t moonlit walks by the Seine, handsome French waiters serving you ‘vin’ and old men riding bicycles with onions around their necks.  It is so much more than that.  Paris is a real moving, breathing, being, city.  It is full of life, not just tourists.  Inexplicable as it is, when we leave, life in Paris goes on.  The widows still visit their husbands’ graves, the Eiffel Tower just keeps on sparkling and the metro keeps going round and round.  

I will go to Paris again, perhaps the next time I won’t feel such enduring loss when I hear the French speaking their beautiful language.  Perhaps I will be content to study the language I was brought up to speak instead of someone else’s.  I’ll stand in the Metro blowing with noiseless, hot, breathless air.  I’ll watch the trains leave for Nation, packed full of people; no one looking at each other.  I’ll stand under the trees in Pere Lachaise and gaze at the tomb, suspended in time.  I’ll stand by the banks of the Seine and gaze into the murky depths as the garish tourist boats glide by.  I’ll stand at the shuttered doors of Samaritaine and pay silent homage to those floors which will never see the light of day again.

Perhaps the conclusion I have come to in our long ramble of through Paris is that Paris is just like a person.  Paris has so many imperfections, she is fallible, she is fundamentally flawed.  Yet I think that I can live with these flaws, I don’t mind that the waiters are rude to me when I falter in my French.  I don’t even mind that the men in Paris are just like the men in Scotland.  I can forgive Paris, not because I am in love with the idea of the perfect city.  I can forgive Paris all of her faults because I am in love with her very being.  

Number 5 - start writing again

Sometimes life is hard. Ok, a lot of the time life is hard and it can feel like it's just one thing after the other. Specifically, it's felt like one bad thing after another for the past 8 years.

But something I have come to realise - and it has taken a while - is that I have a really good set of friends. Really, I have more than one set and they don't always go well hand in hand. I hark back to being ill a lot and I'm sure it's annoying, but that time taught me who my real friends were.

This is a round about way of telling you how I got to number 5 - start writing again. I'm not the world's greatest writer; I'll never be published or win any prizes. However, writing is important to me and it's something that got me though some tough times.

Things have been crap for a whole lot of reasons over the past year or so and maybe it's something I'll write about. But the reason it's number 5 on my list is because a good friend asked me a few weeks ago "when did you last write something?" and I couldn't answer.

So I'm writing again. But I'm going back the way because number 22 is write the unwritten half of my dissertation and there are some changes I want to make as I go along. Refine it if you like. It's been 6 years and there are some aspects of it which I was uncomfortable with at the time - more so aspects of creative non fiction which I had shirked. And I'm not shirking them anymore.

This one's for me.