Sandcastles in the air

Sounds of weather like this will probably always remind me of certain nights in the car — driving rain and stormy, wintry winds battering around outside that sound like wet laundry flapping about on washing lines across the sky. One time in the car in particular has come to mind in the last few days. I’m not sure why but it’s always the same one: one evening walking back to the car in the dark to drive to the laneway for the night, cold and wet and absolutely dreading another night of being out in it. I can still feel everything about that walk, from the weight of my damp clothes to the wet-wool smell of my scarf pulled up to cover my mouth and nose, to the rain in my pockets and the way it squelched about inside my boots to the pain in my eyes and across my forehead from the cold, to the uneven wearing down of my heels that made my right foot roll inwards and my toenail cut into the skin, to the tapping sound of the worn down bit of my heel as I walked down the ramp into the carpark, and the smell of petrol as I walked underground into it and the feel of my rucksack thumping against my sore back, to the taste of the fruit shortcake biscuits I ate when I got back to the car, and all that constant, constant tiredness and the longing to be out of sight of people back in the laneway.

I am by the sea at the moment, so lots of long walks and hanging about waiting for the rain to stop. It hasn’t stopped all day today, and the winds even now are battering around ferociously outside still. Yesterday I went down to the beach to search for shells and stones, there was nothing remarkable, nothing worth taking away, but I wanted one to mark getting to this stage of the book so kept picking them up and turning them over in my hands rubbing the sand off, searching for a heart-shaped one like the one I found in Galway when I visited my dad. I searched for ages and it looked like there wouldn’t be one, and then, right at the water’s edge, I saw one, a small smooth white stone, with black marbling effect, almost a perfect heart. Afterwards, I took the steep zig-zag path at the edge of the cove up to the top of the wooded cliffs and out onto the coastal path, and went on a spectacular walk for what felt like far more miles than it probably was. I felt almost dizzy looking down at the cove from the top, it was very dramatic and beautiful, the wide crescent of sand very white and the sea very green against shiny black cliffs, and very calm at the start, and I stood at the top staring down at it for a long while before I walked on, letting the waves carry my mind off. Because, yesterday, it was very good to walk on without it for a bit, I can tell you.

After a while I was pitting myself against the wind, walking precariously close to sheer drops at times and it felt fantastic. There were mushrooms everywhere, of all shapes and colours and sizes, I must have counted eight or nine different types: scarlet ones and vivid yellow ones and tiny flimsy white ones that looked like fingerprints across the grass, and shiny chestnut ones that looked like conkers. I don't know the first thing about mushrooms but would like to, and was hoping to go back today to pick some to identify, using the internet, but they are probably all ruined in this rain anyway. Again, almost this exact time last year, I came across these amazing flat white mushrooms big as tea plates undera copse of trees in a corner of the park. They looked like the kind of mushrooms you eat: soft white flat tops with dark brown, fluted undersides — but some of these were giants, literally big as tea plates. I was almost fainting with hunger when I discovered them and imagined them cooked up in hot peppery butter. Of course while I was in the car I had nowhere I could do that, and I was so frustrated that I couldn’t cook them. I was so hungry though that in the end I carried them to the café at the other end of the park and told them I had come out for a long walk and wouldn’t be back for hours and asked them if they could cook them up for me. Of course they wouldn’t – although to be fair they said it was something about health and safety. I was tempted to eat them raw, but worried that they might not be as innocuos as they looked, so threw them away almost crying in frustration — at the hunger, but also at the constant choice I was making to stay alive despite the circumstances I was in. I walked back tormented by the taste of them in my mouth, my saliva dripping in lemony butter, and had imagined it so hard that by the time I got back to the gates at the other end it felt like I almost had eaten them, which was very strange, and something I wish I could remember when I start on the chocolate biscuits.

Hopefully it'll have rained itself out by tomorrow and I can go see if there are any up there that haven't turned to mulch.

It is done

I did it...it's finished...out there...being chewed, and heavily scribbled, over by my editor, in green ink. But I did it, it's over, a thing now with a life of its own, out there in the world... I don't know if this sad-happy feeling has a name.

Actually this is a little premature, there's a way to go yet...There is lots and lots of editing and weeks, and probably weeks, yet of fine-combing through it all — adding and subtracting and whatever else goes into the next stage. But this stage is over, deadlines have been met and everyone has read it, and I am left heart hammering in my chest, not knowing what to do with myself; waiting.