Quill

Today has been an insanely busy day! It is quite a leap after all the silence of the trees, to dealing with all the emails and comments and traffic here on the blog again after another BBC article. Hugely exciting too though.
It has taken me a while to get used to the link that I have put up over at the side to my book, looks a bit scarily corporate, but hope it's still friendly enough. That link doesn't mean, by the way, that I am stopping blogging, or that it is being replaced by a newsletter — that is just an additional thing, it will be ad hoc updates, and strictly about the book — or just to use if you only visit the blog once, but might still like to be notified when the book comes out in the spring. I'll still be blogging here, about settling in and summer things and whatnot. But progress reports on the book itself, or just whatever might come up from the whole writing process etc, will be by email update through that link. Though it might be that very soon writing the book will have precedence over everything, blogging and breathing included! I'm timed out, will write more about settling in etc, tomorrow. I'm off to bed!
I have one again! Yay!!!
*Blows one of those tiny party horn things*

Of fixed abode

Finally...
Finally, finally, the search is over. I found a place to live last week. And on Sunday I moved in.
It is only a room — a small, cream-walled room, that still smells of new paint, in a shared place, not a place of my own — but it is a room with a door I can lock and curtains I can draw, and after all this time, I have the privacy that I have craved all these months. It is the strangest feeling though...So far I have mostly just wanted to run out of the place. It is too warm and I can't breathe or recognise all the unfamiliar smells or sounds, and nothing feels like mine yet. But for the next six months it will be, and after what I've been through these past months I'm sure I'll get used to anything.

Strange though, I thought my first night somewhere after all this time would be remembered forever. I'd been dreaming about it for so long, planning it so hard it almost felt done. But in the end I was so tired by the time I settled in that I hardly did any of the things I thought I would: not the long candlelit bubble bath, or the glass of wine, or hours of staring at a TV or cooking homemade food that I had ghost-tasted for months, or sleeping for a week in a soft bed piled high with pillows... On Monday night I felt so odd there I didn't even stay; and my car is still only half-unloaded even now, the bags and boxes I did bring up mostly unpacked, slumped against the front of the wardrobe — which I have yet to find a need for. So tonight will only be my second night there. I'm looking forward to it this time though. Am still using the sleeping bag as don't have a duvet yet, but it is on a flat mattress, which I am sure tonight my back will try to resist less, and which my legs can stretch right out on.

Went back this afternoon and in the quiet kitchen at the top, that juts out of the side of the building like a crow's nest, cooked my first meal: beans on toast, and made cup after cup of tea, that didn't cost a pound — and sat there listening to the hum of the fridge, unable to stop smiling to myself. It is clean and safe and there are lots of plants and a bath and even a milkman who delivers, and I am sharing with nice people who are out at work all day, so it should be fine — it will be fine. It is...really it is...but something feels missing: maybe it is that there are no trees or foxes or rain blowing in through the unsealed windows soaking the ends of my bag, no birds at five in the morning or owl tooting for me at night. I don't ever want to be back in the laneway again, not ever, or anywhere like it, but already I miss it — hugely. Miss the smells of it, the sound of rain falling through the trees, drumming soft or hard on the car roof; the bright moon wandering the sky all through the night, keeping me company. In ways, the aloneness of it all, the unboundedness of it all. Sure I'll get used to the drum and bass through the thin, cream walls, but for now its a very unsettled, very odd, very caged feeling.


Have run out of credit (btw I know a great internet cafe that does a 10 hour access for ten pounds, which you can use over 3 months, if anyone needs to use one — I rarely do, use library, even on bank holiday — it does a nice cuppa too. (Yes, I've heard what he has been saying...all of it groundless, but I don't want to be drawn into it all by replying to any of it.)
Will post more about all tomorrow. Good night!

Call and response...

I feel like I have been found and hoisted up and out of this laneway by angels.
Silently, continuously, one after the other after the other of them coming into the darkness this past few weeks and lifting me further out of the laneway. Ian Urbina, the New York Times journalist, who just happened to be writing an article on people living in their cars in the US, was the first. Just when I was at my lowest point, almost giving in to thoughts that things were over for me; when every step and every breath became almost a prayer, there, thousands of miles away, he wakes up one morning and decides to write an article on people living in their cars.

It's an article restricted to American people living in their cars — he didn't figure on finding some woman living in her car in a laneway somewhere in England...but there I was. And what does he do? What he does is do a search on the internet for 'homelessness' blogs — and he finds me...Finds me through the blog that I had, for some reason, only recently then, started. And out of the blue he e-mails me. Soon after, he includes a mention of my blog in the online version of his article; the sky over the laneway lightens, and very soon it feels as though the wind across it is full of the sound of flapping wings, as one after the other after the other approach, and I am left stunned — and full of the certainty of miracles.

Meanwhile, back in the laneway...

Still trying to catch up with myself and to process all that's been happening in the last few weeks. My mind is in semi-shutdown and it's still not really taking it all in. It's also kind of surreal because I still haven't found a place to live, even though with all this running around that has been my priority for the last couple of weeks. Have been to view lots, and used up several credit vouchers on the phone chasing places, but no luck as yet. Although that might be about to change tonight — so maybe more news about that tomorrow. So for the most part life continues to be sardine sandwiches and sleeping bags...and, for the last few days, an awful lot of rain. But it hardly matters anymore, because it all feels so different now. I know it's temporary rather than permanent, and this book deal gives me choices, which is what makes the real difference in a life.

Have also done another interview, more about that in a few days too, and lots of thinking about the writing that is ahead, and working out a plan of attack for it.

Sorry to be so vague and incomplete, there's nothing I can't tell here really, and you deserve to know as it feels like many of you have been on part of this journey with me, but I am mostly just registering this as a huge amount of tiredness at the moment, and just want to sleep lots. Haven't got energy for much else.

From all that, to all this...I'm still black and blue from pinching myself, and it'll take a while for me to process my thoughts and unpick this emotional reaction. I'm also busy storing up memories, turning it all over in my mind, because it looks like my days of living in the woods are finally coming to an end.
Promise I'll try to be more coherent by next post.

Book deal

Sorry, didn't mean to drag it out — just wasn't sure what I could and couldn't say, and had to wait to ask somebody. Although it was good for me to hold it close for a while, just let it settle in me for a bit. I did already say it though: my news was a book deal — I AM HAVING A BOOK PUBLISHED - hooray! I'm celebrating a bit prematurely though, because haven't got the thing written yet, but after what I've been through with all this, feels like that might be the easy bit. Sitting at a table after a warm, scented bath, Beethoven on in the background, a glass of something in one hand, my pen in the other hovering over all those pristine, blank sheets of paper. Writing a book can't be that difficult;-)

And anyway, all those sheets of paper won't really be blank. Because for months, being here among all these trees, staring up and through them night after night, watching their leaves fall and new ones grow back, their branches snap off in high winds, and stripped clean of bark in rainstorms, laying like bones on the ground around them — night after night I told bits of my story to them. Sometimes talking aloud, sometimes staring it into them - all the things I couldn't tell anyone else, all the things my hunched-up spirit was tired of. Trees absorb pain, and some of these will one day be felled and made into paper, and I have this feeling that if I stare really hard into those empty sheets of white paper once I begin to write, I'll probably see my story already there, like a watermark on their blank surfaces.

You know I would if I could...

Life felt almost close to being over a few times, and now, suddenly, it feels like it might only just be beginning.

Although sometimes, I wish someone would tell me how I am supposed to feel.

Promise I will say more about all that's been happening in the last week or so, when I can...

A stroke of luck

Not sure if I'm dreaming this or not...but I think Lady Luck just came strolling down my laneway, rolling her big, shiny dice. Words have come clattering to a stop, and all I can do for now is smile.
Not sure if I'm dreaming this or not...

Standing back

It is not always easy to see a thing close up. You know what I mean... — I am heading straight for the cliche about it being hard to see the wood for the trees — and trying hard to resist it — but that's exactly what I mean. Because it is — hard to see the wood for the trees at the moment, about a lot of things, but especially about this blog. It seems to have touched a nerve, brought all sorts of people together, and brought out both the best and the worst in them too. Hard to understand what has happened here sometimes. Maybe it is not just one thing, but several, and maybe I won't know until all this is over, but was wondering if anyone could put it into words themselves — help me to see the wood a bit more. I imagine it is a very personal thing, different for everyone.

Not out of the woods yet

But getting closer...

There have been meetings and it looks like there might be a publishing deal. Nothing is settled...and don't know what else to say for now, feel everything, and sometimes nothing, just walking around in a daze...my fingernails bitten down to the quick.

The good, the bad, but not the ugly

Phew! Peace and silence in the blog for a change... Even though I did have to turn off comments completely to get it...

The last week has been insane. From the deep silence of the trees, to suddenly everything kicking off around me, including here in this blog —but not confined to it at all this week. My main priority has been rushing about trying to find somewhere to live, and that's what I've been doing — has been all up-down, disheartening and disorientating at times, racing around psyching myself up, then being turned down, 'already gone', or lack of a job ending it before it gets started. I have enough for the deposit and month in advance and couple of weeks maybe, but even with that and the new determination I have to stand up and be counted in the world again, an end to homelessness is not sudden or easy. Not for anyone. Anyway there are possibilities, and I am working on them. But, in the midst of everything this week, and reeling from some people's reaction to the Paypal button, it suddenly occurred to me that most of this bitterness is probably because nobody actually knows how much I got from it. I read one comment (which made me smile) saying I had probably made my fortune and that you wouldn't see me for dust now. Well, no, obviously, I didn't. But since none of you know that, and because the Paypal donations were only meant to be for month in advance and months deposit to get a place, it seems only right that now that I have that I should take it down. So I did. Not because I was feeling guilty, as one comment suggested, and not because I knew the 'game' was up and I was running scared, as another one did — believe me, living in a car through a long, cold winter, as I did, is no 'game' I can tell you! And also Paypal 'donations' are simply that 'donations' so it does not interfere with benefits situation. But if there is any more publicity and therefore traffic on my blog people will be assuming that I am inviting it in the hope that people will donate. So incase that happens, and at some stage it probably will, I have taken it off.

Anyway, the button being there, was playing more and more on my mind. Not only because of the comments I got in the last few days (to be honest despite all your emails asking if I was okay and bearing up after reading them, my mind has been on so many other things this week that I haven't had time to read them, not most of them anyway). Was reading them all before, but this week when they turned ugly I just decided it was best not to read them, not that I would have been that affected by them it is what you expect from the internet — I was always surprised from the beginning that I had not had more of that stuff. So no, it didn't really bother me, I was more concerned for all you reading them, as I said this week was too busy trying to get a life back together to worry too much about all that on top of it all — so I rarely read them (sorry to all the supportive posters, I have been reading emails though, and know the support that is out there for me, so thanks for that.)

Anyway, as I said things have been kicking off, and in the midst of it I took down the Paypal button. I might also make another announcement about that soon, because I may be getting a paid position, and if I do I have decided that the best thing to do is to refund the Paypal money. Not because I feel guilty about it —in the end I looked at lots of American blogs, which people had sent the url to me to convince me it was okay to do. They all had Paypal donate buttons on them too, and so I accepted in the end that people were just donating here if they liked the blog (almost a modern form of tipping or something) just like they do on other blogs. But I never felt entirely comfortable with it, only because of the nature of mine — the fact that I am living in my car and writing about my homelessness here. That made mine different — maybe more difficult to just click out of without feeling guilty in some way. That was never my intention. But I can see the dilemma. I would have felt it too. I always said I wanted to drive out of this laneway with my dignity still intact, and I still can, but I need my integrity to be intact too, and with all this bitterness about the Paypal, and the issue of whether it was a guilt trip, and people's speculation about how much I made from it, has left such a bad taste in my mouth about it all, that I would just prefer not to have the donations at all. Hopefully, I have got a lot of life ahead of me to live, and I don't want to have to continually defend my decision in putting that Paypal button up. It takes up too much energy. So I think that is the only way to end all this nonsense and endless talk about paypal. And that is what I will do. I promised, in thank you emails that the first chance I had I would pass on that kindness to someone else who needs it. Instead, now, I will just refund it and let you pass it on (until I am also able in my own way). What's more important here, to me, is that I was in dire straits, and when I absolutely had no way out of here people, total strangers, donated to help me get out, and I will always be awed by that. But maybe I was wrong, maybe there are other ways out now, and if there are I would rather take them than Payal donations. I am pre-empting things hugely, but even when the money goes back, I will still be left with the kindness that was shown here. I will never forget that kindness, it has changed me.


As you can see, I switched the comments off as well. Finally. Because it got too ridiculous in the end. I tried to leave it up as long as possible so that anyone could have their say here, but had no choice in the end. Good or bad it didn't matter, but ugly did. And in the end some of the comments got really ugly. I didn't have time to read all of them in the last few days but occassionally, when I checked-in I'd scan almost without looking, until I saw swearing and deleted those where I found them, just without looking, clicking the delete button (apologies for the few I deleted by mistake — that was the reason) — not for me really, as I said I expected those from the beginning, so wasn't surprised by them, or the abuse or threats in them. But I thought it wrong that everyone else should have to read them. Even though all the positives still outweighed the negatives — as always...

Actually I have, just this minute, decided to put moderated comments back on, because I think the reaction of the majority here shouldn't be silenced by the few. So there...Abracadabra!...it's back.

Hold on to your hats...

The other piece of news in all that insanity that was the blog this week, was that while it was all kicking off here on the sidelines, I had hardly a chance to look at it, because as well as looking for a place to live and trying to get out of here, I was being approached by people and getting all sorts of response to my situation and the blog. And, in the midst of it all, it looks like I got myself an agent, and put something together and because of the timimg of things and my situation, things and meetings and talks, and what have you, are being rushed through and it looks like there might be possibilites. I thought things like that took forever, but apparently not always. It's all been hectice, crazy. But frustratingly, I wasn't able to mention it here — probably still not meant to. Can't take it all in yet, more as and when it unfolds, but for now, who knows, there may be an eleventh-hour way out of this laneway afterall.

It feels like I have been down at the bottom of this deep, dark hole, for a long, long time, and that now someone is shining a light down and has found me. I'm not out yet, but there is a flicker of light from above, and I sense movement.

Rhubarb