"We look like we're in a Gap advert," I say, smiling at MindReader as he pulls his wooly hat off.
He laughs. "Or an Accessorise one," he says, eyeing my stripey hat and mittens. "Or Jane Norman. O'Neill."
"Okay," I say. "I'm an advert for being sucked into named brands."
"Exactly," he says, kissing me and heading across the College of Law foyer to his class. I watch his back retreat, lost in thought.
"Hey," L says, smiling at me. "Well!" she says, her smile widening even further. "Have you told him yet?"
"No," I say, jolted, "not yet."
L's eyes twinkle. "It's so exciting."
"I almost told him last night," I say.
"You won't last," she says. "Bet you tell him out tonight."
"I've lasted 24 hours," I say. "Bit worried what he'll say actually."
"Don't worry," she says. "He'll love you for it."
Labels: MindReader
Dear ClientThank you for coming to see me yesterday, and I am sorry to hear of your father's death.Wait - that's not very sensitive is it?
Dear ClientRe: your dead fatherNo - that doesn't work either.
Dear Client Sorry your father was murdered.
Dear Client
Sorry your father were murdered and all you care about is what he left you in his will.
Oh shit.
I'm going to be a
rubbish lawyer
Labels: law
"So," he says, rolling his shirt sleeves up and sipping a pint. "What does your law firm specialise in?"
I roll my eyes. Must we talk law on our course socials?
"Corporate."
"Oh really," he says, his eyes lighting up. "What areas?"
I slide my hand up and down my wine glass, fiddle with my hair. "
Erm, banking, debt finance," I say in a tone that means THIS IS BORING AND CAN WE PLEASE NOT TALK ABOUT IT.
"Oh right," he says. "Mine does equity mainly. So, contentious probate but also some transactional commercial work."
I look at the clock.
"Great," I say.
My phone beeps.
Sender:
MadFatherI lost my car keys this morning so haven't been to work! Just got new keys cut, found old keys on top of the burglar alarm in the downstairs loo! Love you xLabels: Dad
"You have to compartmentalise your mind,"
MadFather is saying as we drive along in the night. "That's what I do in times of stress."
"Right," I say, ever the cynical lawyer. "And how do I do that?"
"When you're with someone you don't want to be with," he says, "for argument's sake let's say your mum," a smirk, "you are doing 90% of the same things you'd be doing if you were with - say -
MindReader."
"Right?"
"So when you're with
MindReader you're eating and drinking and talking, and you're doing the same things when you're with your mum."
"Yes," I say. "So I just - imagine I'm with
MindReader?"
"No. You have to compartmentalise."
"How?"
"It's..." he says, a hand gesturing in front of his face. "It's... well, it's
coexistent states that have bamboo walls."
"Thanks."
Labels: Dad
MindReader stands up, his face in shadow in the early morning light.
"Can I have a shower?" he whispers, leaning over me. I roll over, marvelling at how surreal it is not to live with a boyfriend, for him to be a
guest.
"Of course," I say, watching him root around in my room. He looks on the back of my door and under my beanbag.
I see the towel he's after, and point.
"It's small and purple," I say.
MindReader turns round slowly, a smile spreading across his features. "Sorry?" he says.
"Oh," I say, blushing furiously. "Not
that."
Labels: embarrassing, MindReader
"
Glissade, assemble,
sissone, pas
de bourris,"
LovelyBalletTeacher is saying, his brown eyes shining.
As my body moves, stretched to its limit, the pianist begins to trill. The tinny notes remind me of
accordions in dimly-lit
Venetian streets, artists' paintings, the wet ink glistening in the moonlight. Of rich Italian food, walking cobbled streets as if it were our tiny corner of the world. We only spent 20 hours in Venice but they will stay with me forever.
A tall, blond boy walks in. He can't be more than 15 and is thinner than me. Yes, even me.
He stands next to me, and I notice his bracelet. It is identical to mine. Yellow and red and blue string, slightly frayed.
The music continues, and I remember crossing the
piazza, drinking in the smells of coffee,
paistries, the bright green canal. The man - talk, dark and handsome, of course - had placed it on my arm. "No charge," he had said as
MindReader smiled and told me he'd want money.
As we strolled over a bridge I had looked back, and the stranger's eyes were still smiling at me through the crowd.
"Why did he give me that?" I said to
MindReader, who had laughed off my
paranoia that it was laced with drugs.
The music stops, and I stop dancing, staring at the boy's identical bracelet. I wonder where he got it.
And, because this isn't a novel, I don't ask.
Labels: reminiscing
"Ooh," I say, walking out of my house. "Brr."
"What's the matter?" MindReader says, his face creasing into a smile.
"It's freezing," I say, drawing my coat around me. "When did it get this cold? I was sunbathing at the weekend!" I walk a few paces ahead, my hands deep in my pockets.
I turn around, and MindReader's face is scrunched up with laughter, a hand covering his mouth.
"What?" I say, indignant.
"Sorry," he says, looking delighted. "It's just - you walk like a penguin when you're cold."
Labels: embarrassing, MindReader
I am in business accounts. With a
calculator. Considering this time two years ago I was reading Thomas Hardy by candlelight I think you could say I have officially sold my soul.
I sigh as I attempt to transfer £400,000 between the capital and the cash accounts without losing it. Honestly I am going to get struck off before I am even qualified.
"Okay Billygean?" my tutor says, frowning slightly.
"Fine," I say, moving my papers over the coffee and chocolate stains I have made on the table and casually placing an arm over my accounts. Does anyone else not like to be watched while they work? No?
"Can I just see that?" she says, pushing a dark curl behind her ear.
Reluctantly, I move my arm and look at the ceiling whilst she makes mmming noises.
"How bizarre," she says finally.
"What?"
"You're using such an odd method," she says. "Did you not do the online tutorial?" (yes, you heard right, we are taught by robots).
"Yes," I say. "But that way seemed really illogical."
"I've only ever see one other person do it this way," she says, pausing.
I twiddle my thumbs, used to the bizarre feedback. At A-level I was declared a circular thinker. In my English degree, an idiot.
"Do you have a maths degree?" she says.
Ha!
Labels: embarrassing, law
I click idly on the hyperlink with my morning coffee.
And there it is. Three shorts paragraphs. Compliments and insights into things I didn't even know he thought about.
MindReader writes differently to me. He does not get up in the middle of the night, and, hunched over the computer, produce frenzied blogs only to be filed away in Word documents. His writing is more measured, thoughtful, with careful themes running together.
He does not update his blog often. It is, he says, when he gets a spare moment. I think secretly he is one of those people who thinks online journal is an oxymoron. He is, naturally, a storyteller, but he is best listened to, a drink in one hand whilst the other wildly gesticulates.
I read eagerly, blushing at the detail of it. It was posted over a week ago, I notice, smirking. MindReader has not mentioned it, knowing I would read it someday and having the self restraint to let me discover it privately.
It is not just that it is about me - us - or that it is well-constructed, or even that I suspect he writes better than me. It is in the faults: he can't spell embodies. His sentences are run on and too often do not make sense.
This is where the beauty is: he sidesteps the language and structure that constrain, and conveys a more poignant meaning through almost-nonsense, ramblings where your eyes glaze over and the startling, sudden metaphors jump out at you.
And no - I won't post the link ;).
Labels: MindReader
I open my eyes a crack.
And then close them again.
And then open them.
MindReader and MadFather are in my room.
"Wha?" I say, confused, patting down my morning hair.
I sit up, and almost heave.
"How's your head?" MadFather smirks.
"Bad," I say. "Why...?"
"What do you remember?" MindReader says, sitting on the bed and handing me a glass of water. I take a small sip, grateful that the liquid stops the sawdust feelings on my tongue.
"I remember..." I think hard, my hands weakly clutching the duvet. "I remember trying to draw a judge in pictionary... and DoctorSister said it looked like Mum."
MindReader laughs. "Anything else?"
"And then I remember everything went really dizzy."
"Yes," MindReader says. "You said you thought you needed to go to bed."
"And then," Madfather says, jumping in delightedly, "I said you were going to be seeing hellicopters tonight."
He pauses.
"Because the room was spinning."
"I got that," I say.
"Well," MindReader says, gently, but still ever so sarcastic. "When I came upstairs..."
"... Yes," I say.
"You'd got your passport out for the hellicopter trip."
Labels: Dad, embarrassing, Home, MindReader
MindReader's little car smoking and puffing its way to Nottingham and finally breaking down right outside an RSPCA shelter thus keeping me entertained whilst he tended to the car.
It is Sister's Husband and MindReader smirking at each other as Doctor Sister and I discuss bath products in intense detail.
It is me, drunk on two mouthfuls of wine, playing pictionary whilst crying with laughter as nobody had any idea what I was drawing.
It is Norfolk, skipping with MadFather down country lanes as Doctor Sister shakes her head and MindReader raises his eyebrows. It is hiding from frisbees thrown on the beach, crouching behind MindReader as he and MadFather and Sister's Husband kicked a football around, walking off in search of ice creams for everyone, and a moment of solitude amongst the sandunes for myself.
It is a deer safari, feeding goats and chickens from the palm of my hand, MindReader and MadFather collectively not allowing me to buy another sheepskin rug.
It is a three course meal, the flow of wine and of conversation from the serious to the silly, MindReader's eyes catching mine shining with both affection for the silly moments, and understanding of the serious, of the obscure things I know that no one noticies.
Labels: Dad, Home, MindReader
We are in the cinema.
Atonement, by the way.
The foil rustles against my fingers as I pull the praline chocolate out of its wrapper.
MindReader raises his eyebrows, interested.
"The woman in the advert was beautiful," I whisper as it glints in the dim lights. "I wanted her hair."
"Is that why you bought it?" he says, as I run my fingers along the bar, trying to find a way in.
"Yes," I say, scratching at the foil, tearing a small corner off with my teeth.
MindReader smirks at me.
"Did she have fingernails, too?"
Labels: MindReader
We are in Tesco. This is a luxury and means we are not only seeing each other for one day a week. Actually, we are on the second storey of Tesco, which is slightly surreal.
"Please choose some ingredients for me to make something tonight," I say.
"Like what?" MindReader says, raising an eyebrow.
"Ooh ooh, like that thing you made the other night. With the pesto and tomatoes."
"A toasted sandwich?" he says, smirking.
I grab some crisps on impulse and shove them into the basket. I stand for a while, deliberating on the 2 for £2 offer, my head tilted to one side.
"You are very cute," MindReader's voice says in my ear, an arm encircling my waist.
"Thank you," I say, reaching for another packet.
Except I don't reach for it. I push it off.
I hear the crisps land.
MindReader grins widely as my eyes widen in panic at him.
I peer over the edge.
The crisps have landed on the escalator!
I walk around and watch them come up, and they are delivered neatly into my hands.
I stand, triumphant, and MindReader is crying with laughter.
Labels: MindReader
"Ooh look at that pink building," I say to MindReader. "I'd love to paint my house pink."
"I'd enjoy WellTravelledHousemate's reaction to that," MindReader says.
"It is pretty though," I say.
MindReader tugs on my arm.
"Why do you do that?" I say. "I knew there was a car coming."
"You didn't," he says, his eyes crinkling. "You were looking at the pretty house."
"I can still walk down the street independently," I say.
"You can't!" he says, his voice high with indignation. "You are always walking into people."
"I am not," I squalk.
And then -
- thump.
Labels: MindReader
"The tramp didn't look very well today," I say to MindReader over coffee.
"The one in the subway by the college?"
"Yep. He was sleeping yesterday but today he was moaning when I put my pound in his hat."
"Ah," MindReader says, recognition and then a wide smile crossing his face. "Do you do this everyday?"
"Yes," I say. "They're my coins in his hat."
MindReader smirks, clearly biting back sarcastic remarks. "There were no coins when I walked past. But he did have a nice fresh can of lager."
"Oh," I say. "I'll have to have a word with him."
Labels: MindReader
Coffee hiding mission went well.
Coffee had not been retrieved when inspected on return from college.
HyperactiveHousemate looked tired so could only assume he had not had any.
"Do you want a drink?" he said casually. I muttered no and went and harassed
WelltravelledHousemate.
"
HyperactiveHousemate owes me coffee," I whine. "It's his turn to buy and he's using my nice stuff."
WelltravelledHousemate raises an eyebrow. "You have nice coffee? Why didn't you tell me?"
"I would have to kill you," I say, heading downstairs.
The kitchen is now empty.
I make
WelltravelledHousemate a nice coffee and take it upstairs past
HyperactiveHousemate's room.
He soon gets the message.
We now have coffee.
I am still drinking my expensive stuff, but whatever.
Labels: Housemates
When I moved in here I brought an industrial sized pot of Kenco coffee. It got used and this is fine.
"No coffee," HyperactiveHousemate said to me four mornings ago.
"No, I know," I say. The subtext, of course, being that since we are pretty much the only two people to drink it that it is his turn to buy it.
"Do you have any?" He says.
I open my mouth. And close it again. I cannot lie. And I know how it feels to be denied coffee. Eventually I tell the truth. "Yes. But it's really expensive stuff," I say, reluctantly (VERY reluctantly) handing him my beautiful Costa Rican blend.
He heaps a dessert spoonful into his cup and I wince.
"Thanks," he says.
My coffee! I think. It was a birthday present! I don't want you to drink it!
He catches my expression.
"I'll buy some coffee today," he says.
That was four days ago and my beautiful coffee is half gone. It has been put back in the same place in my cupboard each time. Like I wouldn't notice.
Have asked him twice and he has not yet bought any. Will watch from the wings to see what he does. In the meantime, I have done the only thing I could: hidden it.
Labels: Housemates
"So your course starts on Monday?"
MindReader's best friend - one of millions - says to me.
"Yes," I say, noticing the deeper smile lines, friendlier somehow but also a reminder of the slightly older crowd.
"How was your summer?"
I smile, sipping my drink slowly.
If this were a novel, I want to say, this summer would've changed the ending.
Many moons ago, I had said to
MindReader, how he dealt with it, his crises.
"Read this," he had said seriously, pressing a book into my hands. "It'll change your life."
And so it did.
This summer was an obscure comedy evening in a rickety pub in Soho, the wine hot in my throat as I shook with laughter into
MindReader's arm. It was Hyde Park, strolling through
Covent Garden, the square illuminated by the sound of buskers and the smells of new, unfamiliar foods. It was an evening watching him cook in Shrewsbury - for MindReader lives far away - 20 miles from Wales, in fact - a
whirlwind of chopping and tasting in his large kitchen, the
aga warm against my back as I toasted myself on it which he smirked at. It was cat-sitting in Nottingham, getting hideously drunk over dinner and attempting to go to the cinema.
It was the law barbecue, my knees covered in grass stains and my feet in dried mud, our voices hoarse the next day from the bonfire as we went on our first date where we lay sprawled by the river. It was a train station at four a.m, my shoe broken and giggling.
It was driving home, to Tamworth, Norfolk, Liverpool, at one in the morning, full of food and new romance as the black rain pelted down around the car. It was rediscovering Birmingham, wine by the canal,
soy lattes in basements of Starbucks, the Victoria Square fountain glistening in the sun, her stone sides inscribed with the words of T S Eliot which I had never before noticed.
It was Oxford for me, remembering literature and old friends, Barcelona for him, drunken I miss you texts in between. It was a dimly lit club the night before, the night it all happened I suppose, his usually light eyes darkened under the lights, lingering on mine.
And later, much later, it was Gloucester, a family treasure hunt, accidentally stealing a dog and deciding which Shakespeare character to name him after, a stolen walk in a field in the dead of the night, my head so full of wine I fell over myself and
MindReader laughed so hard he cried.
It was him helping me move into my new house, carrying boxes and marvelling - relishing - how much I hoard and which books I've read and who was this card from? It was another party, me telling a joke to someone and watching his lips curl up from right across the garden. Him, laughing at my jokes, wanting to hear more.
It was Venice, Milan, the Lakes. The trains and airports and hideous 3a.m drives. It was a friend's wedding, dancing 'til 3a.m and getting lost in a taxi.
Perhaps, more importantly, was the stuff you forget. That we both worked full time. That he gave me wake up calls,
tentative at first and then full of laughter. That we emailed each other all day, with cheap flights to
Milan - for that's how it began -
anecdotes, news articles he knew I'd enjoy. The knowledge that he was as poor and as bored as I was, and that we both had to work until the day before our course starts tomorrow, pulled us through some fo the long long-distance.
It was, I want to say, an eloquent incident, the one the hero or heroine always has four fifths of the way through the novel. It was an experiment that worked. A change of direction.
I look back to MindReader's best friend, waiting expectantly.
"Hot. I bought lots of jewellery," I say, in true
Billygean fashion.
He both smiles and frowns at me and I look across the pub to
MindReader, who is making some sarcastic comment, already planning the blog entry.
Labels: MindReader
