impossible.

‘Isn’t it strange how last summer I spent a lot of time wishing this car had proper air conditioning? And how I drove to work most days with the cold air on full-blast – the windows open to let a bit of a breeze in?’

We were driving home, my brother and I, from Glasgow after (an amazing) Olafur Arnalds' concert. It was close to midnight. Sleet was smattering the windscreen.

‘Remember how warm it was?’ I went on, almost talking to myself. ‘How roasting it was in July? It’s hard to remember what that actually felt like...’

I was thinking of bare legs, and painted toenails, and skirts and dresses and sunlight dropping into my lap. There had been days in the café where it was so hot – so stickily, shiningly hot – that, as a special treat from the managers to staff, we were all allowed to unbutton the top button of our shirts. We were allowed to work tie-less for a while. 

If I've not mentioned it already, this winter has been wearing me down a little. The icy rain. The darkness. The whipping wind that makes my mascara run as I bundle down Buchanan Street towards the train station. A couple of weeks ago, the cold air dried out my skin so completely that I felt like I was walking around – counting out change, writing my name – with hands that belonged to a stranger. Cracked skin around my knuckles, scabby scaly roughness to touch. It took half a tube of intensive moisturising cream to rub them back into something I recognised.

‘Summer seems so impossible in the middle of winter,’ I said to Evan. My fingers tightened around the steering wheel. ‘Right now, the summer feels so impossible.’  

He sat quiet, as he often does when he’s thinking. The rain had picked up outside now and streetlamps flashed watery orange light squares across the dashboard. I turned the heating up as high as it would go, trying to angle the air-stream towards my face. And then he said,

‘Summer will come again.’ (Saying the words slowly - as though he suspected I'd been talking about more than just the cold weather.) 

‘It’s not impossible,' he said. 'Summer'll come back round again. It does every year.’

The windscreen wipers squeaked. 

♥

I'm going to try and hold onto those words this week and maybe try and complain a little less. It feels imposssible, but Summer will come again because this coldness isn't lasting. It will come back around. 

It always does.

yellow.

One morning a little while ago, I was reading in the lounge – listening vaguely to the rhythm of rain pattering against the windows – when I happened to glance up and see an anoraked man walking past our house. His anorak was red, with a luminous yellow reflective hood. It would've been difficult to miss him.

As he ambled along the street, my eyes followed him lazily, and I found myself wondering what owning such a loud, retro-reflective jacket might say about him "as a person". Someone did say once that "the clothes make the man”.

The hood definitely shouted: 'this gentleman is safety conscious'! More concerned with not-being-knocked-down, than staying on trend. It also seemed to whisper: 'anxious'. Or maybe just: 'cautious'. There were even murmurs of: 'admirable' as, I guessed, there was something to be admired in a person who was so unashamedly yellow-hooded. It suggested a lack of concern for what others might think (i.e. ‘he looks a bit silly’) and a determination to get out and about, whatever the conditions outside.

One thought skipped along after another, and I began to wonder whether I should buy something reflective – a little armband, perhaps, or something to stick on my bag if I'm ever walking at night. 'I probably should,' I supposed. It would be sensible (even if I’m not exactly prone to nightly saunters. Muggers, murderers, moths etc: too many potential dangers lurking in the dark).

But, I continued to think (the highly-visible man now out of sight, my book, unread, in my lap), in spite of the fact that – yes – it would be sensible to buy a reflective something-or-other, it’s highly unlikely that I ever will. What with all the other things I need to do, need to spend my money on, it’s not really high on the priority list. 

So really, I realised, if I were to go out of my way to buy a – I don’t know – a glow-in-the-dark wrist band or something ...it would be strange, wouldn’t it? Even if it was prudent. It would say something. (‘Poor Melissa! Such a worrier. Loosen up a little, won't you?’)

Not that I particularly want to buy a reflective garment. But how strange, I thought (rain still falling, less vibrant anoraks now passing the window), how interesting to think: if I ever did decide to go out and buy a reflective-something-or-other, that decision might be interpreted as symptomatic of something deeper. Of what? A distrust of all seeming well, maybe. An overly keen awareness of life’s unpredictability. An inarticulated fear, perhaps, of the real world, of risk taking, of love...

♥

(P.S. I’m not trying to 'diagnose' all people who wear reflective clothes, by the way. I’m just remembering a thought that I followed... and wondering where the boundary lies between being cautious and afraid.)

(P.P.S. After musing on the Case of the Sensible albeit Somewhat Silly Looking Anoraked Man - and also knowing the difficulties of seeing dog walkers when I'm driving at night - I actually think Topshop et al. should start making coats with luminous yellow reflective belts or stripes or fun glow-in-the-dark shapes so that being safe wouldn't be such a big deal. It would actually be sort of cool. I might sell this idea to the high street... y'all heard it from me first.)

(P.P.P.S. The pictures are kind of unrelated to the words. Just a small collection of things that have made me pause recently and - click - need to take a picture of.)

that's old news.

Something I couldn't help but notice is...

I passed my driving test! I passed it (on the first attempt) ...in November. Quite old news now, I suppose, but it's still exciting. I get little moments while rumbling along the road where I suddenly realise: ‘Huh! I’m actually driving a car.’ (Both wonderful, and slightly terrifying at the same time).

When I was little(r) I'd always just assumed that I’d learn to drive when I 'grew up'. I remember making plans with my sister about all the things we’d do when we could drive (important things like: ‘go to the cinema pretty much all the time’ and ‘go to the swimming pool whenever we feel like it’*). The closer I got to seventeen, though, the harder it was to picture myself actually driving a car. I’ve wrestled with quite debilitating anxiety since I was about eleven – something that I’ve only very recently learned how to manage – and, up until this past year, I just couldn’t visualise myself feeling well enough to drive.

So this is a major achievement in more ways than one! Something which seemed near-impossible even just a year ago has now become a reality. Encouraging to realise that change is possible, that wellness is possible (and that nipping along to Morrisons to get a loaf of bread is also now possible).

Hooray!

(Oh, also. While on the subject of ‘that which once seemed impossible’: I completed and submitted my dissertation last month (my dissertation on that most unfathomable of subjects: the humble sandwich). Now comes the long wait till June for the results.)  

*alas, we’ve not yet done either of these (cinema trips or swimming). I’ve mostly just been driving to work and to pick my brother up from school and whatnot. Being a full-time nurse (her) and in your honours year of university (me) doesn’t really leave much time for doing much else. Plus, I don’t think we factored in the whole ‘we’ll need to pay for the cinema tickets ourselves’ thing! One day soon though!

birthday noticings

A few things I spotted on my (twenty-first) birthday last week:

[one.] Stars and candles on the breakfast table. (Birthday breakfasts are always a big thing in my family. Menu this year: orange juice, granola with vanilla yoghurt and berries, roll and sausage with or without brown sauce, numerous cups of tea ...or coffee, if you so desired.)

[two.] A flower box in Glasgow's west end. If I ever live in France (somewhat unlikely as I don't speak the language, but who knows! I might just marry a French man and learn it) then I will have a window box of red geraniums. If I never get round to living in France, I'd still quite like the window box.

[three.] A photograph at the Oran Mor (where we went for 'A Play, a Pie, and a Pint') with this underneath. I was taught by Louise Welsh in first year. She marked my very first official short story (a somewhat melodramatic - but lovely to write - tale about a circus elephant and true love).



[four.] Another house spotted just outside the Botanic Gardens (I'd like to have lots of potted plants leading up to my door at some point in my life, as well as the window box... maybe even in the same house. I just need to get over my bee-phobia).

[five.] A self-help book in the Oxfam bookshop with Smiles as the author (very suitable sir name). Unfortunately I was too busy taking a picture of 'Smiles' that I didn't notice the book of essays by C.S. Lewis sitting beside him until I got home and looked at this picture. Drat!

[six.] A devilish looking Ford sign (I'm learning how to drive in a Ford by the way. It took me four lessons to learn this information myself. Turns out when you start driving lessons everyone likes to ask: 'So what kind of car does your instructor have?' Not the kind of information I pay attention to. 'Em... a blue one?')

[seven.] You know your 'little' brother, is not so 'little' anymore when he is quite a bit taller than your mother. 

[eight.] These daisies were in my Gran's garden. I agree with Kathleen Kelly in You've Got Mail that daisies are the friendliest flower.

[nine.] Possibly the largest apple pie I have ever seen in my life.

daisies and danger.

Last week I got caught up reading the Hunger Games series so spent a lot of the week (in the house, or on the bus, or in the staff-room after eating soup) with my nose in one of those books. After reading a lot of (interesting but) difficult texts* for university it was a nice change to read something that was compelling and didn't require too many literary dictionaries to decode.

(*When I say 'difficult texts', I mean ones like T.S. Eliot’s 'The Wasteland' (aka ‘I stuck lots of bits of other people’s poems together to make something which is now unintelligible’), Samuel Beckett’s ‘(If you’re) Waiting for Godot (you’ll be waiting a while)’ (which is actually hilarous and I loved it, but watch: this), and Don DeLillo’s ‘White *I-have-a-very-bleak-view-of-humanity* Noise’. No irreverence intended, of course.)

This week, I'm trying to be a little bit more productive so I have started work on my dissertation research, tidied my tip of a room, and I am going to start studying the Highway Code! As of yet I have managed to avoid killing anyone with the car (...if you don’t count that guy with the beard last week), so on those grounds I'd say the driving lessons are still going okay.

Anyway! I thought I'd put up some amusing road signs that I came across in a book today:

[one.] Beware of the ducks (thankfully I've not come across too many ducks yet. This makes me think of the story 'Make Way for Ducklings' which my Mum read out to my little brother when he still qualified as 'little').

[two.] Watch out for Mr. Darcys. 

[three.] Beware! ‘Migratory toads crossing’ (...?)

[four.] Watch out for tankers...

[five.] Not to make you feel anxious or anything, but are you wearing your scuba suit?

♥

(The pictures of daisies are not really relevant to anything in this post. I just quite like them. They were taken in: the Botanic Gardens last summer, in the cutest little town called Cromarty two summers ago, in St Andrews about five summers ago.)

du Boursin.

I just remembered about this advert and had to share it. Ha ha.

♥

(p.s. after four years years of 'not getting round to it yet', I've finally started learning how to drive. It's a lot of coordinating, and it's a tiny bit off-putting when other cars will insist on driving past you on the road... but I'm actually quite enjoying it so far!)