A Stretch In Limousin – RSVP

C’est chouette, non?

Monday 15th November, 22:20

I’m not going to apologise about not having written much lately because the reason I haven’t written much lately is that I’ve been busier than twelve-score human livestock toiling beneath an ocean of cracked whips and worse besides – except I’ve been doing things I love, which makes me a very lucky man.

I have moved into a state of unprecedented hypercreativity. In a fabulously perfect storm of breathtaking autumnal theatricals, wickedly lucid marijuana and last, but most certainly first, the love of an awesome woman, I have turned into a self-perpetuating fountain of joy, optimism and shameless creativity. Occasionally it is close – I feel sure – to the same kind of euphoria present in the emotional mulligatawny of many a nervous breakdown.

Damp in the kitchen aside, I have no complaints.

I am writing a lot and gardening a lot and finally thinking of ways I can combine the two. Also, here’s something. I’m coming up to six months here and it’s a powerfully moving thing for me to be able to tell you that I have never been happier in my life.

I have, for the first time in my life – thanks primarily to my sister’s generosity in offering me this opportunity – everything I have ever wanted. It’s really thoroughly awesome and I’m glad that I’m able to recognise it for what it is.

Here is one of a couple of things I wrote recently for the blog but didn’t finish because I was too busy off somewhere, being euphoric.

Thursday 3rd November, 16:47 (Day 156)

So what’s it going to be? My money – at the moment – is on pancreatic cancer. I don’t know why exactly. I guess it’s something of a hunch.

I’m sitting in front of a fire in my home. I live in a little house in a forest in France. The sky is having some sort of fit outside, bombarding the ground so violently that it’s making an instant swamp of the earth outside my front door. I think it might be reaching some kind of climax.

Before the rain came, there was unseasonable warmth – clemency like you’ve never known – and I was out and about making progress with my new strimmer and my old ho. (Hush now.) The new strimmer strims up a storm and has introduced a new zeal to my outdoor efforts.

Another thing which has given me a more identifiable sense of direction in terms of the outdoors is my decision to hold some kind of party on May 31st, 2012.

On May 31st, 2012, I will have passed exactly one year in France, and it will be my birthday.

There will be nascent lawns, infinite paths, wild flowers everywhere, rides, activities, cats and cake. The rides will hopefully include some tyres and ropes attached to some trees, and maybe something I found in the forest the other day. (To make the something I found in the forest itno an actual ride, however, I will need either a couple of horses or another 75 cats.) There may also be hammocks.

I am in an exceptionally good mood. I’m sitting in front of the fire, as you know, although I’ve closed its mouth since last mention because it was spitting at me.

I’m wearing only my pants and an old pair of trainers. I think this is my favourite outfit. Sometimes I throw in a bandanna.

George is sitting at my feet, but facing the fire. She seems to have become hypnotised by the flames. But wait… a gargantuan yawn breaks open her face and pulls her out of it.

When the rains came, I was outside still but I had already turned the strimmer off, satisfied that I had strimmed well and hard. I had also brought the strimmer indoors and started the generator. (The generator is warming up my laptop for a night of writing.)

So I was outside, sitting on a step I’d built with my own gloved hands, with two faultless kittens milling and rubbing and passing the time. Then suddenly the wind got super-excited and the rain joined in and the two of them started doing things that neither of them knew they were capable of. It was a perfect storm, although it wasn’t exactly a storm.

As it picked up, I came indoors, climbed out of my Mears gear and poured myself a super-large measure of rum and pineapple juice. I love pineapple juice. I used to drink it when I was dragged into pubs as a boy.

Then I rolled a joint.

This has been a supernaturally great week so far.

Last night in Limoges an osteopath friend of Heidi’s – his movements very much like those of a magician – took me in hand and healed me.

He fixed my wrist that I’d been having pain with since a bike accident on August 25th. I haven’t mentioned it because I don’t like to moan.

After feeling me out and loosening me up by cricking my spine in three places and my neck in two, he took hold of my hand. He held it in place with his fingers, foraged across the back of the hand with this thumb and then – crack. He popped something back into place and certain things immediately became easier. Since then things that were a cause of considerable discomfort have become a joy every bit as intense as the sight of a jaw-dropping sunset after 40 years of blindness. Scratching my right ear for one. Washing under my left armpit. Shaking hands with hearty men.

He wouldn’t even accept any money.

Imagine that.

The laptop is ready. I’ve got six hours’ writing ahead of me, I’ve got ample inspirationals (should I require them), I’ve got the welcome distractions of watching a tsunami from a warm, dry room, purring kittens playing and the feeding of the fire. As well as more freedom than most people ever experience and a woman with whom I’m really really smitten.

So what’s it going to be?

It’s like when you’re reading a book, watching a film or hearing a story of any kind at all – which of course you are – if you’re a certain, proactive kind of reader, or a writer, which is probably the same thing, you can’t help but jump ahead, and you know how it works. You’ve studied life at close quarters.

So? Pancreatic cancer or the death of a loved one?

The good thing is, whatever it is, I think I’m ready.

Tuesday 1st November, 08:32
I’m stuck in a house – in Heidi’s house – because a train didn’t come when it was supposed to. I can read. I will read. After this. And I will make a fire. And drink coffee. And smoke cigarettes. Maybe a little wine with lunch. It could be worse, I admit.

I may be about to spend a few days writing and gardening and doing little else, so if I disappear for a while, this is why. Do not worry.

I bought a strimmer. I’ve started on the side of the field. I’m regalvanised, garden-wise. I have a moderately clear idea of what I want to have achieved by next summer. I’m thinking of having a party. Probably on my birthday, which will also be the day I celebrate one year in France. Fancy that.

I am reading The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. It is like nothing I have ever read. I think. Bits of it make me sick and murderous with envy.

I am one chapter away from finishing the first draft of my Little Book of Shame. This week I shall make a start on the second draft, which will be typed up on my new Samsung netbook with Beadle keyboard, delusional memory and complete lack of disk drive. This is when I find out if I still have faith.

Inshallah.

Oh, Heidi bought me a lovely old oil-burning lamp…

It has made all the difference.