The Obsessive Diary

I found my voice in the hands of a self-styled Colonel Kurtz on an island in the Gulf of Thailand. A white man running from something, he’d decided himself a temple father, fat under a palm tree handing out easy wisdoms to lost girls like me. My Israeli and I had gone to Bangkok to renew our Indian visas; with our passports stamped we travelled out to the islands for a bit more beach life, Colonel Kurtz was a friend of his. I remember almost nothing of the time we spent there except for sitting at the feet of that large, sweating man. My months of mute had made me invisible yet suddenly I felt seen. He told me I was special. That old chestnut. Classic. By the time we left I was speaking again and my Israeli had found God. We returned to our house in Goa where full moon parties were replaced by Friday night prayers. A cloth on my head, he no longer taught me how to load a chillum but how to move my hands in circles over candles, repeating Hebrew texts he knew by heart. His friends came over, but less often. The drugs stopped. I swept and cleaned and cooked and lay beneath him. I broke my collarbone carrying water from the well and accepted this new reality as I’d accepted every other; no longer a teenager on a motorbike or the girlfriend of tendril hair, now I was a good Jewish wife who wasn’t Jewish or his wife but I was adjustable, loyal, hoodwinked; I’d do anything for attention. It never occurred to me to leave. When the seasons changed, we travelled to Delhi and lay hot in our hotel bed, his arm around me. The mattress was thin, the city loud, he told me he was leaving. He was giving up this life of faded pink shirts, he was returning to Israel and his faith. I couldn’t believe it was over. The next morning we parted; I flew to London, to my mother’s house, he to Tel Aviv, to his. I walked barefoot through streets of my childhood, a lungi wrapped like a turban round my head. I spoke pidgin English to street people who looked at me like I was weird. I don’t know what my mother thought. All I could think about was him. Across the park were synagogues still and quiet in Regency rooms. I made an appointment. I found myself there. I said I wanted to convert to Judaism. A Rabbi sat me down.

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The Israeli was handsome and unkind. I grew fat on German pastries, he poked my backside and said so. His cool Israeli friends came over and sat about smoking chillums; a complicated series of rituals which I got wrong. How to mix the charas and tobacco in your palm, how to pack it and wrap your special ragged cloth about the base, the boom shanker throw of a prayer and touch to the forehead, how to light it, get it burning without dying, breath in without throwing a whitey, and for god’s sake don’t pass it to the left. I pretended to know everything while wishing I spoke Hebrew. I think I thought I was happy. I’d cut ties from England, taken off on my own, taken up with a man who’d done military service, who’d stripped out of his uniform and grown his beautiful hair; I felt grown up. We took LSD and walked amongst the apple trees. He taught me how to cook shakshuka. When he went out, I sat in the window and wrote my diary, smoked spliffs and listened to Edie Brickell. The cows beneath our rooms rang their bells at night. We spent three months in the mountains of Manali and then the seasons changed and we took the bus to Goa. He rented a house in Arambol. A mosquito net over our bed caught scorpions which he killed with a stick. Pigs chased us through bamboo for a feed on our morning faeces. Water was pumped from the village well and carried in buckets, and his friends, more of them, gathered on our porch. Circles of handsome women and confident men, they moved effortlessly, sat carelessly, knew the rules; not tourists but travellers, they made that distinction in every sweeping statement about Indian life. I swept the floor and made the bed and fetched water from the well. We went to a full moon party on the beach. My handsome and unkind Israeli gave me a microdot. His friends played djembe and threw back their heads at the stars. I ran down to the water’s edge. Thousands of stone soldiers were marching from the sea. I said, Look! and he said, Why do you think I see what you see? You are on your own and he left me there. A night tripping without anchor, I set sail and didn’t come back. The sun rose, we returned to our house and life together. Like a mute maiden he’d picked up at the market, my body continued to sweep the floor and fetch water, cater to his beautiful friends on our porch but my mind was gone. I stopped speaking.

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My boyfriend and I took off on the motorbike, a Royal Enfield Bullet heavy with luggage, and purring. We headed first to meet his brother – also estranged until now – for a few nights of giant beetles flying into my hair and then north up the Western Ghats. The monsoon chased us. We’d mistimed our travels and no matter how fast we rode, the rains caught up. We stopped soaked and freezing in tea plantations, couldn’t undo the swollen ropes that tied our soaking gear to the bike, slept in roadside rooms fully clothed, never time to dry off. In Goa we looked for the parties that had already moved north. At the Taj Mahal we sat on marble away from each other. In Delhi we put on helmets and couldn’t see for moths. In Rajasthan we fell in love with green-eyed women and crashed the bike in sand. In Chandigarh we slept in a barn with twenty men, one of whom put his hand down my jeans again and again until I woke my boyfriend up and told him we had to leave. He agreed, but grudgingly; we weren’t friends, he and I. Already we were unhappy. From the night he unfolded the story of his kidnap to the last dusty road to his mother’s house had been a matter of months. We’d left England on an impulse, no plan except to find her. And we were children; we hardly knew ourselves let alone each other. At a chai stop in the foothills of the Himalayas we met an Israeli couple who invited us to stay. They had a Royal Enfield too. It had got us talking. We followed them, two Bullets chugging up the winding narrow roads of the valley towards Manali, the great drop to our right, the apple trees bending in the light, sudden rainbows bowing to drink from the river crashing below. They parked at a cow shed above which were some rooms. We followed them up the wooden steps. He cooked a meal on a camping stove, tomatoes, onions and green peppers. She unfolded their clothes and made the bed. We ate and then they gave us acid and suggested an orgy. I remember thinking, How revolting. My boyfriend also declined. We went to bed listening to them laughing. The next day a friend of theirs arrived, the most beautiful man I’d ever seen; tendrils of dark hair, a soft pink shirt, faded jeans, he sat cross-legged on the floor and passed me a chillum. My boyfriend went out to get food. When he came back, he found us together. I gave him only the most fleeting of goodbyes. He took the bike.

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When I was eighteen, I met a boy who told me a story of being kidnapped from his mother when he was four years old. He was taken to England by his father, never to see her again. In my mind I saw a room in southern India, gossamer curtains, a broad messy bed of white sheets, a mother sleeping with a child in her arms. I saw a man creep in, he was a pilot so I put him in pilot’s uniform, no jacket. I saw him lift the boy from his mother’s arms, the curtains stirring gently in the breeze, the mother waking hours later, her horror shock of emptiness. The boy and I were in our second year at Manchester University. He’d come over to the house in Withington, I’d opened the door and about two seconds later was going out with him. I remember the night he told me; we were in bed and as his story unfolded I unfolded my limbs from around him. His parents had been on their way to Brazil from Australia when their flight touched down in Karnataka to refuel. They got out to stretch their legs, the loud jungle calling them, and came upon the abandoned house of a colonialist, pidgins making the frightening cacophony of escape as they pushed open the door, holding vines aside. The shock of a man hanging in the hall, his last breath there. This was enough to make them stay, abandon their plans; she was a nurse and one place was as good as another to set up a village hospital. They never reboarded their flight to Rio. The house of the dead colonialist became their home. That was the story he told me. I said, We have to go. It was too obvious. So we dropped out and bought flights to Mysuru, took buses and rickshaws, heading towards Srirangapatna, the village of his birth. We asked and asked and on the final day of searching a tuk-tuk driver said yes, he knew her. I remember feeling petulantly grumpy as we walked the last dusty mile, self-centred as the epic reunion took place – he, knocking on the door, she, opening it. I was hot and tired. It had been all about him. I went for a swim in the river and slipped on stones and got frightened by giant, scuttling crabs. I crossed the unkempt lawn and shook her hand, sat on the wide veranda, gossamer curtains lifting in the breeze. We stayed for months, bought a motorbike and converted it for the long road north. The story of that journey I wrote into my first novel. It sits in a drawer, a great title but not much else to recommend it.

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The days are beginning to meld into each other and it’s only August, the beginning of my working year that will end next June. Such a long way off yet it’ll pass in a flash, I know it will, time is doing that, I’m getting older and it is speeding up. Thank god I’m sober or else there’s a good chance I’d miss it completely. That’s one of the unmistakable boons of not drinking. Yes, I’m here all the time, but also, I’m here. Experiencing it. Aware of its passing details, the thorns and hugs and crumble all of which happened yesterday when B came home from up north. It’s results day. This morning, all over the UK, this year’s A level students will find out what their last two year’s were about. They will be lettered. Scored. Told what their academic worth will get them. No surprise the system makes me furious. Relentless Guardian articles and Radio 4 interviews dedicated to the declining mental health of our nation while simultaneously continuing to send our children into a factory that spills them out fourteen years later through doors marked Pass and Fail. And we wonder why they’re crying. Even the A star students. Especially the A star students who discover pretty quickly and to their horror that life isn’t like that. At least the C grade, or fails are disabused of the school illusion early on. F*****g hell, it makes me mad.

So here we are today, and B will be handed their grades as will all their friends and there will be phone calls and congratulations and tears and scrabbling at UCAS and plans changing and frying pans bought for student digs. There will be student life beginning for some and year offs beginning for others and the whole lot will look back at school and wonder what the f**k was the point of all that. If we get on to the further degrading uselessness of GCSEs we’ll be here all day. So I’ll move on.

I was LIVE with novelist, poet, and founder of ALLi, Orna Ross yesterday who began our conversation by saying she wasn’t sure yet if Substack was her home. She’s a font of knowledge, a force for good and not only will our community be made richer by her presence, but our indie publishing questions will be answered, so let’s encourage her by subscribing to her publication and giving her three cheers when she shares links to her podcast, affiliated with the organisation which does such sterling work in progressing the cause of the independent author. There’s nothing she doesn’t know about going your own way, and ALLi continues to grow. You can catch the full interview here.

Then B came home and in-between I’d picked apples and blueberries and made crumble and we hugged and they told me stories of their week. They look so well. They said, sorry I haven’t been here, and I said, but my darling you’re living your life. This is what I want for you. It makes me happy. And it does. Isn’t that all we want for our kids? To see them stride off into their lives? J is doing the same, he’s in Wales galavanting at Green Man with friends. I’m so proud of both of them. Result.

Eleanor

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Housekeeping: I’ll be LIVE in conversation with Orna Ross tomorrow, Wednesday 13th 12:30pm BST. Orna is the founder of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), the global membership association empowering writers to create great books, reach more readers, and build successful publishing businesses. Their campaigns advocate for indie authors in the literary and publishing sectors, while their members enjoy tailored education programs, top-flight resources, and the best author community anywhere. I recommend becoming a member to all indie authors setting out on the path. If you’ve questions, experience or suggestions about the process, please do let me know and I’ll do my best to put your thoughts to her. 150 Self-Publishing Questions Answered: ALLi’s Writing, Publishing, & Book Marketing Tips for Authors and Poets, produced by ALLi and available for free along with many other guides to all members. I think it’s essential reading. Subscribe now for the link to join our conversations, or keep an eye on Notes for when we go live.

Rode Tommy. The flies are bad. The horses stand at the gate nodding as if in complete agreement at how much they need shade and the land, rain. As ever, I love Tommy almost more than I can bear, and tell him so. He’s on the verge of being too handsome. His silk nose, his glinty eye, the way he understands everything. He follows me in from the field, a headcollar without rope, he considers being led beneath him, which it is. Only at the road where he’d prefer to munch the verges than cross into the yard do I grab him, though I wonder if I just left him completely whether he’d eventually follow, the urge to be a herd, his friends already clip clopping away to be tied up and tacked, stronger than his love of cowslips.

We did the easy shaded road and forest paths up the top, cool and free of horseflies. T told me of another accident, this time with her leg, but in the exact same spot, a bridleway we avoided. A low branch, a narrow squeeze and her knee got caught. It makes me wince just to hear it. Again, she was lucky. It could have been so much worse. A week or so ago she’d been riding alone, not a crazy windy day but a bit of a breeze. Up the track from the farm road, Teddy plodding along. The next thing she knew she was on her back on the ground, one boot in a tree, Teddy staring down at her, Ronnie on her chest licking her face and Syd howling beside her. She looked at her watch and figured out she’d lost 40 minutes. This is what she pieced together: a branch had cracked and crashed upon the back of her head, knocking out cold. She’d fallen but the safety on her leather had failed and her foot, which had caught in the stirrup, turned her upside down and remained there, attached to the saddle as Teddy took off at a gallop and she was dragged, head and shoulders battering along the ground. Eventually, and praise be that she hadn’t bashed her head clean off, her foot had slipped out of her boot, the boot now free of foot had hurtled into the branches of a nearby tree and Teddy had stopped. How long she’d lain there, the dogs and horse thinking she was surely dead was anyone’s guess, but it was likely 30 minutes or more.

She managed to get them all back to the yard where she called her man who picked her up, but she being a nurse and therefore the most irresponsible and belligerent of patients, she did what you’re absolutely not supposed to do and insisted on taking two paracetamols and going to bed. Hells bells. She told me she said to J, If I start snoring funny, call an ambulance. Jeez.

And then a few days ago on the same track trying to lay the ghost of the accident, she caught her leg and nearly ripped the knee from the socket. We’re all, without saying it, keeping our eyes out for Event Number Three. May it be so minor as to count but do no harm. T has worked in ED trauma for many years. She says if she doesn’t keep her wits about her, sometimes the burns victims she cared for who didn’t make it through will pop out from behind the trees.

Eleanor

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Back in the day when I first joined Substack, my opening gambit was a memoir, mine, written in one minute daily posts which quickly, before I could stop them, took on a life of their own. After ten months of publishing every morning, A Memoir in 65 Postcards & The Recovery Diaries was born, and a year later it was published in print edition. So far so good. It’s available to buy online and in every good bookshop and even some bad ones.

But lately I’ve been getting messages. Can you put it back up on Substack? And, We think you should have it on your site again. You know me, I love a hint, cannot say no to a suggestion and am downright eager with an instruction. Make it visible to those who missed it the first time? Make mine a double.

I’ll be posting chapters periodically as and when I’m in the mood. Look out for them here, and I hope you enjoy.

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Back in the day we made stickers and t-shirts and proclaimed the wares of Daizy Shop in Nimbin, Kaz’s shop that she brought to markets in her battered estate wagon wearing those glasses she gave me which made sure she was taken seriously. Riot Not Diet. Mean Old B***h. Professional Queue Jumper. I don’t remember the moment we met, me and Mel (can you remind me?) but we knew immediately that we were family. These bonds (as D once said to me, from the women’s prison yard in 1800) were as strong and alive and instant as whenever our network of stars first burst into shapes of you and me.

Their grandmother lived in an old people’s home. Kaz & Mel would visit her there where she sat in the half circle of television facing padded chairs, her cohabitants in various stages of decrepitude and lighted rooms within faces losing teeth and skulls shining through paper skin. I imagined shoes clicking like dolls with legs too shrunk to reach the swirling patterned carpet, stockings rucked behind the knees, grey perms and loose cardigans, watery eyes turning to see youth walk in the door. Kaz and Mel, Hello Granny.

Their grandmother held a knitting needle, no knitting, just the long sharp metal and plastic with bobbled end which, as Kaz and Mel settled down for their visit, perhaps Mel found a piano stool against the wall and dragged it over, perhaps Kaz sat on the floor, she tapped rhythmically against the wooden arm of her chair.

Tap, tap, tap.

How are you Granny?

Tap, tap, tap.

What are you doing?

The other occupants of the room looked away. They stared resolutely at the blank tv screen or at the book they weren’t reading or the puzzle they weren’t solving.

Tap, tap, tap as Granny leaned forward and whispered, It drives them wild.

This, I knew when I heard it, they were my family.

A roundabout trip yesterday with J trying to solve the problem of his deviated septum, the result of bing punched in the nose, now, and for the past year, when he lies down he can’t breathe through the right side. A walk in village hospital, a trainee who did an awful lot of staring at the computer screen and not much else. A consulting room, cartoon animals stuck to the walls in tiny attempts at being child friendly. I have never got on with doctors and it’s not about to start now. The road to recovery continues. The waiting room was another collection of chairs against the wall, padded and hard, a woman who’d ripped the toenail off her right foot, a man who’d come a cropper on his bike. J and I played the guessing game of how they’d done what.

From there to town and another endless round of mobile fixing proceeded by breakfast. J said, you normally write about this, don’t you, as we sat at our table. It’s a practice, I replied, to observe but not take notes, to see what my brain remembers after. The women on our right, a full brunch of eggs and salmon, Surrey blonde and discussion of weddings. The girls on the table across the way never got off their phones, their bodies splayed like planks ignoring the seat of the chair, belly buttons showing, beads and sandals.

Home, a late lunch, J packed for his next adventure, to London then Wales, we played tennis on our neighbours court in the late afternoon summer light. Andy took him to his dad’s, I happened by his room, lights left on, suitcase exploded, clothes cascading, this is 18, he’s left school, life begins, drive them wild.

Eleanor

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A day of surprises. I met with Vicki Lesley for a zoom, both us feeling there was something good to be mined from our connection and we weren’t wrong. An immediate sense of hello, we’ve more than we can fit in this quick hour of establishing ground. She reminded me it was the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima. I lit a candle and we talked bombs. Here’s link to the post she put out in commemoration.

I watched her documentary The Atom: A Love Affair on Netflix. It’s thorough and heartbreaking, and fascinatingly, she told me how nuclear industry insiders received it as a heroes journey (they’re the heroes). The human instinct to frame according to pathology never ceases to amaze me.

And suddenly it was 2pm and I was LIVE with Cherry Coombe - no agenda, no plan, just a merry see what happens. What happened was a dive into Bagwhan Rajneesh, working in psychiatric facilities aged 15, a commune built around the experimental off book techniques of primal therapy and a near death experience of sepsis which brought purgatory in a line of people asking for forgiveness and the end of blame. Who knew. Here’s the full recording:

By the time 3pm rolled around my head was full of Wild Wild Country and adding Children of the Cult to my watch list. People are amazing. The ability to survive and regenerate turns each one of us into a god of our making.

At 3pm G turned up as planned, but as not planned, bringing with him a jar of honey. I felt the hand of WPR so strongly I had to tell him, and he shivered and said, Do you know, I wasn’t going to bring it, I wasn’t even thinking about it, I just happened to grab it as I walked out the door. L, if you’re reading, you know it’s true.

J comes home today. He’s lost (or rather broken) his phone for the umpteenth time and that’s it, the message is crystal clear, he doesn’t want one and who am I to insist? It flies in the face of so much experience. He’ll get by. I love that he rejects the black mirror. He’s 18 and full of belief. It makes travel a little tricky but I just got a WhatsApp from his girlfriend saying he’s delivered to the airport with pieces of paper on which are written crucial bits of information, and in a few hours time I shall be waiting at arrivals to catch him. Old school. We did it and god knows we’re the better for not having had that hand held addiction ruling our lives and stealing our attention from the reality all around us. He’s on a roll, he’s caught a wave and I salute him. Onward.

Eleanor

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